OverTime 1 - Searching (Time Travel) (18 page)

Garrison
's expression wasn't surprised. Garrison's was, to use a word he would hate,
pissed
.

I clung to one thought:  He
'd let go of Patches.

"Won
't have it from my boy," he warned, low. "Won't have it from men what do a good day's work for me. I surely won't have it from a useless bit of woman who don't do nothin' but eat, complain, and cause trouble!"

"I—
" I knew I should make an impassioned speech, should defend myself and animal-kind, should somehow show him the error of his ways, but self-preservation had kicked in. "They're just words...."

"Dirty and disrespectful, and I won
't—"

"Have it?" I finished shakily for him. He was not amused.

Neither, I noticed tardily, had he done more than pin me against the cart, and not hard at that. I caught a breath and felt just a little less terrified. Maybe he wasn't going to hurt me after all? Maybe?

A little bolder I asked, "Or what? You
'll fire me?"

"We got soap," he warned, his fingers still biting into my arms.

It took a minute for the meaning of his words to sink in. "You wouldn't!"

But apparently Jacob Garrison was not a man to bluff. And he had the upper hand. I couldn
't fight him off, I wasn't armed, and I doubted any of his men—maybe not even Benj—would go against him for me. I couldn't just
leave
the camp and hope to last long either; not unless I stole some food, and a horse, and oh yeah, a sense of direction.

Something told me that I
'd get a lot worse than a soapy mouth if I tried
that
.

And none of it would do Patches any good.

The helplessness felt familiar, and that angered me more than anything else. I wanted to cry, wanted to kick him where it would hurt, wanted to call him a bastard and a sonovabitch. But the threat was real, just as the threat to Patches—or to one of the other babies, now—was real. This might be a dictatorship, but it was
his
dictatorship.

"You
enjoy
this," I accused, my voice too wavery.

"No, ma
'am." His grip on my arms softened; his gaze dropped to the ground before relocking with mine, and for a moment I thought I saw a glimmer of regret in their cool depths. "And I don't enjoy killin' calves. But some things gotta be done, and I won't have my authority bucked. When I'm shed of you, you can raise Cain if that's how you lean." Regret? No, now his eyes just beheld me with disgust. "Not with me."

He was waiting for some acknowledgement on my part—and he
'd all but released my arms. At least he'd given me an out. Not that I was happy about it.

"No more swearing in your camp," I repeated, and tried to disguise how violently I was trembling by mimicking the cowboys. "Sure thing, Boss."

He dropped his hands to his side, stepped back, ducked his head as he turned away. Suddenly he seemed more uncomfortable about the whole scene than I was. "Ain't yer boss," he muttered.

But he might as well be. And that, I realized, was where I
'd gone wrong. He
couldn't
have his authority "bucked"—at least, he didn't think he could. Dictators aren't known for their ability to take orders, right? It weakens their position as dictator.

But they could, just maybe, listen to reason.

I noticed how, as Amos headed back to us with poor prodigal Patches in his arms, Garrison's shoulders sank. It was almost imperceptible, but I noticed it—and I stepped quickly to his elbow.

"Boss," I said, and his slanted, weary glare corrected me. Okay, then—heaven forbid I insinuate he would hire women.  "
Sir,
" I tried, over the bad taste in my mouth. If I had to grovel, I would be the best damn groveler this side of the Pecos...whatever the Pecos was and whichever side of it we were on. "I apologize. I let my emotions get in the way of my good sense. I apologize for swearing, and for being disrespectful, and I apologize for assuming you don't care about Patch—about the calf. You just can't afford the trouble if the mother cow hangs back." Troublesome women, yet again. "I know that. But that doesn't mean you
want
to kill her ba— I mean, her cal— I mean,
the
calf."

Garrison stared down at me for a long moment, then sighed. "Go back to the wagon."

Oh no—it was starting all over again. I'd have to talk fast.

"Back to the wagon it is...
except... just one more thing? Please? I'm not bucking your authority, promise—" I even took a few steps toward the wagon,
see, look at me following your orders
. "I just have one more question. If I figured a way for that calf to keep up with the rest of the herd as far as Dodge—alive, I mean—then that would make
both
of us happy, right?  More money for you? Less heartache for me? A win/win solution."

Garrison folded his arms and repeated that skeptically, as if the words were foreign. Or as if he knew a sales pitch when he heard one, which he probably did. "Win win."

"I'll carry the calf," I offered in a rush. "I'm sure I can. If it's a matter of life and death, I mean. I know he won't fit on the cart seat with me and Amos both, and that I can't drive a mule and hold a calf at the same time on my own... I mean, assuming I could drive a mule anyway...." Oops. "But I could walk with him. It's only what, seven or eight more miles to the Arkansas River? And you're all resting for a day or so once you reach the Arkansas, right? So Patches will have time to get strong enough to keep up, even if he
is
a runt."

It took everything I had not to whisper that last part, so that Patches wouldn
't hear the slur.

The Boss continued his stare, probably hung up on the fact that he
'd already made a decision, and that decision was a dead calf. Or maybe even getting angry because I wasn't following his orders—again. My stomach lurched at the very thought.

"Please let me try," I said, putting the ball solidly in his court, just where male chauvinist power-Nazis want them to be. And, though it irked me to do it, I added, "Sir?"

"Amos," said the Boss, continuing to stare at me. "Hand her that calf."

"
Her
?" Amos gaped. An impatient flick of Garrison's eyes confirmed it, so he did. Suddenly I had my arms full of Patches—and wow, he was one heavy baby. He also didn't like the way I held him; innocently struggling, he kicked me in the leg and kneed me in the ribs. Flinging his head around, he bashed me on the chin with it. But I held on. With only a little struggling on my part, I finally got him positioned like a very, very,
very
big puppy, holding him under the butt with one arm and cuddling him to my chest with the other. There!

I blinked proudly at the Boss, hoping that he wouldn
't notice the tears of pain in my eyes.

Garrison seemed unimpressed. "Eight miles," he drawled. "In the heat."

I knew better than to lie and say I could do it. I sincerely doubted I could, not in one day anyway. But what other choice did I have? "Is there any harm in me trying?"

He tipped his head at something beyond me, as if casually suggesting I take a look, so I did.

A tall, patchy-colored cow with horns almost as wide across as I was tall stood there, giving me the evil eye despite a cowboy—Jorge—mounted closer to her. Patches opened his mouth and bawled. The cow trumpeted back at him, and glared at me.

Hi, Mom.

I looked, horrified, back at the Boss—and surprised him in one of his fleeting, unnatural smiles. He said, "Amos, fetch that sorrel she came in on and keep watch on her. Beeves might try to run again, near the river."

And, shaking his head at what a big joke this all was, he strolled with his awkward cowboy gait out to his horse, mounted in one graceful leap, and rode off toward the front of the herd to make up for lost time.

That was it? I'd achieved this incredible victory—and he just chalked it up as part of the workday and rode on?

I considered yelling "You
're welcome!" after him—but let's be honest. We both knew I wasn't doing this for him.

At least he
'd given me the chance.  Expecting a thank you as well, from Emperor Garrison, was probably asking
way
too much.

So was enjoying the ride—and not just because the brief adrenaline rush of doing battle with our fearless leader had left me drained and shaken. The heat
got worse, especially bareback and with a calf in my lap; like sitting pressed in a waffle iron. The calf and horse also made the flies worse. The smell... let's not go into the smell. And I was tired. Between the failed party last night and the excitement this morning, not to mention whatever I'd survived before the Boss found me in that mysterious creek bed, I'd pretty much exhausted my energy reserves.

I halfheartedly tried to sing, to pass the time, but even after last night I only remembered the words to a handful of songs. I wasn
't a good enough rider—especially not with a calf on my lap—to keep Valley Boy within consistent conversation distance of Amos's calf cart. Sometimes I talked to Patches, but mostly I just rode.

And then time started to blur.

"
The boundaries of time blur," a captivating male voice purrs from the darkness outside of the woman. Her hands are tied, her eyes covered. She has become a victim, an experiment. "Time is relative. All times can exist simultaneously. All times are accessible."

Bound, blind, and disoriented, the woman whimpers against her gag at his obvious madness. The voice becomes less soothing as it says, "Up the dosage."

A new movement yanked me from my unsettling reverie. I felt the excitement before I could place it. It took a long moment for me to reorient myself in the blanketing heat—then to see something that frightened me almost as much as the strange daydream.

The cows were practically power-walking, the precursor to a run if ever I saw it.

Stampede?

"Amos!" I called loudly over their rumble and lowing. Maybe Patches heard the panic in my voice. He tossed his head and bawled.

"They been smellin
' this water last few miles, Miss Lillabit," explained Amos. "Won't be long now."

"Why won
't it—" But now the cows were beginning to trot. "
Amos?
"

Amos laughed. "Just you watch,
child."

The cowboys seemed to be trying to hold the cows back, like they had last night, but I sensed it would not be so easy this time. Then I heard a shrill, familiar whistle from the very front of the herd, and saw You-Know-Who, standing in his stirrups. He waved some kind of signal with his hat, telling folks what to do yet again. The point riders obediently split to either side, getting out of the way.

The cattle began to run. And sunlight reflected off of a strip of water to blind me, hat or no hat.

Real water! I squinted in amazement at the unexceptional beauty of the Arkansas River while clumps of cows galloped excitedly down to it and into it, more and more of them, wading and splashing and then, one by one, just standing there, half covered in
brown, shiny water.

They started to moan happy cow moans.

My own troubles of the morning faded just a little beneath something that seemed far more basic and more significant—we
made
it! I twisted atop Valley Boy and saw that Amos had already stopped the cart and was lifting the calves out so that their mothers could find them. "We made it!" I told him when he reached up to take Patches from me.

"Yes, Miss Lillabit,
" he said. "We surely did."

It was great to get that sweet, long-legged heating pad off of me, but I didn
't dismount just yet. From Valley Boy I had a better view of the river than I would from my own feet. The show was still going on, after all—two friggin'
thousand
cows, remember! With the help of cowboys spreading them out, cattle were still reaching water, wading in, sighing and standing there...and not drinking, which struck me as odd. A couple of cowboys jumped into the water too, with whoops that indicated it was
not
a required part of the job.

It looked like fun...
and as little a part of my world as the bigotry and the calf-killing. And, really, me joining them wouldn't be part of their world either, would it? Not if I really was a lady.

Considering how much I longed to strip to my long johns and join them, maybe I
wasn't
one.

"By my reckonin
', Fort Dodge is only 'bout three miles thataway, Miss," Amos said cheerfully, also watching the herd and the boys. "You'll be there with daylight left."

The truth seeped through my tired bones. I didn
't belong here. It would, in fact, be
wonderful
to reach civilization. Civilization meant indoor plumbing, clean clothes, food with no dirt in it. Civilization should even mean finding the independent, confident, useful version of myself that I'd surely lost somewhere on the windy plains of Kansas.