OverTime 1 - Searching (Time Travel)

This is a work of fiction
with some historical reconstruction. The views expressed herein are the sole responsibility of the author. While the appearance of certain historical figures and locales are inevitable, all other characters and incidents are the product of the author's imagination, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events, is purely coincidental.

OVERTIME BOOK 1: SEARCHING 
(2
nd
edition)

by Yvonne Jocks

Copyright © 2012 Yvonne Jocks

Cover by Laura Hayden

Photo
Credit
© 
Donald Joski
 | 
Dreamstime.com

All rights reserved.

CreateSpace ISBN: 147814767

CreateSpace
ISBN-13: 978-1478147688

DEDICATION

I owe a great debt to those who read Lillabit's adventures early and often—especially Cheryl, Toni, Kayli & Matt, Erin, Pam, Juliet, my agent Paige, Deb, now Arline, and of course to Laura.

But as for a dedication?

This one is for my parents—my own gateway to the past.

"There was only two things the old-time cowpuncher was afraid of, a decent woman and being set afoot.”

—Teddy Blue Abbott
We Pointed Them North

Chapter 1 - Me

The first thing I clearly remember is riding across a hot prairie on horseback.

Seriously.

My awareness of even that came reluctantly, like waking from a deep sleep or emerging from anesthesia. But a girl usually remembers having gone to bed in the first place—or being wheeled into surgery.

I couldn
't access any such background. Just an easy rocking, and the creak of leather, and the strolling clop-clop of what turned out to be horse-hooves.

Occasionally a horse would snort.

My mouth felt gritty and dry. My body ached. Heat warmed my hunched shoulders through heavy material. Something shaded my face and blocked my view of the sky—in any case, my head bowed downward. So the first visual I got was my hands clutching what turned out to be a saddle horn; and a horse's black mane and sleek, brown neck; and, far far below me, some very overgrown grass.

The horse and I weren
't following a trail of any sort.

I could smell the grass baking—that
's how hot the sun was. And I could smell the horses, a rich, sweet, alive smell. Comfortingly real. But why wouldn't it be?

Slowly, very slowly, my confused brain began to catalog other details. My awareness expanded—the soles of my bare feet register
ed rough lacing in the saddle's fat leather stirrups. Sometimes tall grass brushed at my exposed toes. Once I noticed that, I realized that I was barelegged, too—pretty close to nude. I wore a blazer of some kind, hence the heavy material on my shoulders and arms. The oversized suit jacket fell to my naked knees and smelled of horses and dust and sweat too old to stink anymore. I wore no bra. No panties. The only reason my thighs hadn't rubbed completely raw was that some kind of material had been laid across the leather of the saddle beneath me.

I also wore a too-large hat that rested low on the bridge of my nose. The main reason I couldn
't see, though, was how I'd been staring, unfocused, hunched downward, full-body shivering despite the heat.

Why?

Increasingly focused now, aware of the oxygen in my lungs and the blink of my eyes, I still hesitated to look up. Looking up would make it real.

Something awful had happened.

So I rode along that way for a good while, slumped in a real saddle on a real-live horse, trying with muddled success to figure out why I was there and why I didn't automatically know why.

Deep breaths eased the shivering, if not the paranoia.

My brain, once it started to hum, tired of those few details. But when I tried to remember why, shivers and nausea warned me away from full panic. I distracted myself by noticing other, safer, more immediate things, like: I held no reins. I wasn't sure I'd know what to do with them if I had some, but weren't reins a fairly vital part of horseback riding?

I had to look up. Even from beneath the black overhang of that big hat, the immediate world in which I
'd found myself expanded. My horse wore a crude halter made of rope. It followed a man riding a pretty, yellowish horse with a black tail.

Danger? He didn
't inspire fear, though. Just curiosity.

I couldn
't see much of him except his sturdy back and his hair, almost blond on the shaggy ends against his collar but brunette against his head. His long-sleeved shirt had sweated through, bisected by a
Y
of suspenders, and he'd tucked his brown pants into knee-high boots. He rode bareback, thighs clenching and relaxing against the horse's yellow sides, his leather-gloved hands otherwise occupied. His right hand held the rope that led my horse. His left hand held a second lead which—I dared to turn my head, suddenly interacting with this new world—tied onto several more horses that followed behind us. Five of them trailed docilely, like dogs taught to heel, loops loose around their necks. I imagined the suspendered man would be in trouble if they all decided to buck, or stampede, or whatever horses do when they act up. But though their ears pivoted toward my movement, they didn't look like they had any plans for deviant behavior.

Not around
this
man. Just the way he held those two ropes and rode without reins or a saddle indicated that he knew what he was doing.

I held tighter to my
saddle horn.

Around our little equine cluster stretched nothing but more tall, thick, toasted grass—
flat miles of it which we cut through like boats through water. Where was I? And who was the man on the yellow horse?

For that matter,
who was I
? Not only couldn't I remember—the silent question made me gag. My stomach had nothing in it to vomit.

Something truly awful had happened.

Did the something awful have to do with this man? Perched atop a horse, with no memory, I'd rather think he was a guardian than a captor. I ached all over, and my inner thighs were rubbing despite the padding beneath me, but pain? Not really. My wrists, maybe… but a glance at them showed no marks.

Still, I felt sick, and I
was
almost naked.

The man wearing suspenders, I noticed nervously, also wore a gun, backwards, on his hip.

Was I being rescued, or kidnapped?

I considered making a run for it. Running felt right, with fighting a close second. Except… he held the rope to my horse, and I wasn
't sure I could steer even if the horse and I broke free. And I was hardly dressed to scamper through the grass barefoot. Besides, I wouldn't know where to run to, or who I ran from.

Heat and helplessness sucked strength from me. Okay, so it hurt to try to remember. I
'd just start from scratch, right? I could see tangled brown hair on my shoulder, against the gray material of the overlong blazer, making me a brunette. I looked at my long-fingered hands and noted that they had nice nails, but would I have accepted calluses just as easily? They weren't old hands. My calves and ankles, bare beneath the hem of the blazer, looked slim and tanned and clean-shaven. I raised a tentative hand to my face, but felt no wrinkles, and quickly regrasped the saddle horn before I could fall. I even counted my teeth with my tongue. Twenty-six. Against what norm? Besides, wasn't it horses whose teeth tell their age?

Not enough.
Concentrate on something, anything, that's happened before now
.

But my thoughts recoiled, refusing to cross that threshold.

Maybe
he
knew. The man with the suspenders. And the gun.

Even as I watched, he twisted gracefully to look back toward the little herd of horses. I could see his close brown beard, and that the beard wasn
't to enhance a weak chin—his profile was almost
too
strong. Then he turned the other way and glanced casually back at me.

I met his eyes, and he stared evenly for a second. Then he said, "Ho."

My horse stopped, right there, and he dropped its rope leash to dangle to the ground. But he had to say "Ho" a few more times, and more loudly, to get the looped-together bevy of horses behind us to stop as well. Once he even said, "Ho now," and the way he said "now" sounded distinctly thick and southern. The horse he rode had turned sideways in the meantime, and then all the other animals came to a shuffling stop and stood around, swishing their ponytails and rotating their ears.

The man considered me for a moment, and I considered him—early-forties, I thought, wishing I could place my own age so easily. Sun had weathered his cheeks and nose and neck, leaving his paler forehead more smooth. A heavy brow shadowed bright eyes, a light color like blue or gray, so stern and direct that I wondered if he couldn
't have just
stared
those horses into stopping and saved some breath.

Not that he looked to run out of it soon.

He raised a gloved hand toward his bare forehead, paused, then dropped it—an awkward movement. Finally he nodded a mute greeting at me.

I took a breath and realized I
'd been holding it. "Hi there," I said, surprised by my uneven voice. So
that's
what I sounded like. Yay, for remembering language.

He nodded again. "Good day," he greeted formally, his own voice gravelly as if from disuse. "I...
" he started—more a southern-sounding
ah,
really—but hesitated, cleared his throat. "Reckon you'll want to stop a spell."

He shifted his gaze to some nothingness over my shoulder, as if maybe he found discomfort in looking at me. Was I deformed? That suddenly didn
't seem as important as the fact that I had to pee.

Oh!
I nodded, considered the distance between me and the ground, and shifted to get down. Suddenly he and his horse were close enough for him to grasp my wrist, which he did with leather-gloved, iron fingers. That surprised me, but his gray eyes brooked no argument.

I froze at something that wasn
't him.
No. Please, no….

He let go immediately—practically snatched his hand away—but indicated the ground on his side of me, not the other. "Best dismount left," he drawled, as if I hadn
't just whimpered.

He swung gracefully off his own horse, then came around it to help me.

Ah. More clues. I wasn't an experienced rider.

His hands caught me beneath the arms, strong through the heavy material of my jacket, and lowered me. This proved helpful; even before my bare feet touched the ground, my legs went wobbly. I held on to the saddle—too close; it knocked the brim of my over-large hat, which fell down my back and caught with a cord at my throat. When I put weight on my feet, my right ankle jolted me with pain, and I gasped.

The man released me again, stepping warily back so as not to be a threat. The cloth that had covered my saddle began to slide off too. I caught it clumsily, still standing on one foot, and glanced back at where he stood, watching me. "My foot hurts."

I tried stepping more gingerly on it, then drew it back up, stork-like. How was I supposed to pee, standing on one foot? Would I need his assistance?

Should I even know this man?

He stared at me, as if uncertain, then sank into a
n easy crouch in front of me and cupped my lifted foot. I let him have it, inhaling sharply when his leather-clad fingers sent another shock of pain up my leg. All I could see of him now, from above, were heavy shoulders and uncombed hair. Hat hair, minus the hat. Then I looked at the cloth, the one I'd been straddling, now in my hands. A man's vest.