Written in Time (44 page)

“What can we do?” Ellen whispered back. “We have to do something.”
 

“We will. Got enough pictures?”
 

“For now.”
 

Jack merely nodded, touched at her elbow and started crawling backwards out of the escarpment.
 

This time, it would be easy to “head ‘em off at the pass,” the “pass” merely a place where the two trails away from the site of the time-transfer base would coincide. Not a single one of the four cowboy-looking men looked exactly at home on horseback. The big man who’d roughed up Alan seemed a downright tyro when it came to riding, however professional he might be at killing. Alan’s horse was being led.
 

Jack swung up easily into the saddle. “We’re going to try not killing all these guys, just scattering them. Too much shooting, and we could have an innocent casualty,” he advised his wife, already mounted. Unnecessarily, he knew, he had held her horse for her.
 

“There are two of us and five bad guys.”
 

“Exactly, and we can’t disguise those numbers. We’ll find a nice ambush spot as quickly as we can, position you above it. You open fire when you have a clear shot on whichever guy is farthest away from our great-greatgrandson. Everybody’ll look toward the point of origination for the shot. So you hunker down—”
 

“‘Hunker’? You’ve been living in the West too long, Jack! Hunker?”
 

“Well, you know, take cover, but get over to a different spot in case you have to do more shooting. I’ll take it from there. If we get separated and it’s safe for you to do so, get to Alan and start for the house. I’ll catch up.”
 

“What are you planning?”
 

Jack wheeled his horse almost one hundred eighty degrees. “It would take too long to explain. But I’d like to get one of these guys and see if he’ll talk.”
 

“Not the big guy, Jack.”
 

“I won’t have the opportunity, but I’d love to put that schmuck in a locked room with Clarence and let Clarence beat the living shit out of him. Let’s ride!”
 

As Jack put his heels to his horse’s sides, he thought he heard Ellen calling out from behind him, “Hey, Wild Bill, wait for me!”
 

CHAPTER
FIFTEEN
 

The six men rode through the steep, rock flanked defile almost painfully slowly, which was better than Jack could have hoped for. What was not good was that the big man rode alongside young Alan, and because of the snail’space gait at which the horses moved, all of the riders were clustered together.
 

Jack knew which man would be Ellen’s target: the one at the far rear. Yet he was only about a half-dozen yards behind Alan. Recoil from the Marlin’s .45-70 chambering would have been punishing to Ellen, Ellen never more than a casual rifle shooter when she fired a rifle at all. Ellen had the Winchester in .45 Colt, by comparison very mild against the shoulder.
 

Jack waited, watched, hunched in a deep crouch, more or less hidden, but little protected by sun-wasted scrub brush.
 

Ellen fired. The dun-colored horse under the man at the rear of the group bucked. The rider tumbled from the saddle, and the animal took off as if fired out of a cannon. The other horses shied as it sped past. Jack rose to his feet. There was no clear shot at the big man, not with Alan and the little buckskin sandwiched between the muzzle of Jack’s rifle and the preferred target.
 

Jack swung the rifle leftward and downward, relying on the .45-70’s penetration and power as he pulled the trigger, firing through the hapless little buckskin’s neck. The animal tumbled against the big man’s black-maned old chestnut mare.
 

The chestnut stumbled, then dropped like Newton’s apple.
 

Jack levered the spent case out, chambered a fresh round.
 

Alan was on the ground, his dying horse almost certainly pinning his right leg under it. The chestnut, already dead, struck by the same bullet that had penetrated the buckskin’s neck, lay in a heap, legs buckled beneath it.
 

Jack couldn’t find the big guy. Hoping the man was, like Alan, pinned under his horse, he swung the .45-70’s muzzle right and shot one of the three remaining men out of the saddle of a good-sized pinto.
 

But the first man, the one whom Ellen had initially fired upon, who had lost his mount in the next instant, grabbed for the just-riderless pinto. He used only his left arm to reach for the horse, but wore his gun for right-handed crossdraw, which meant Ellen’s bullet had probably struck him.
 

Jack worked the lever of his rifle.
 

In obvious desperation, the apparently wounded man threw his body weight against the riderless pinto’s forelegs. The horse fell as the man clambered into the empty saddle. The horse started to its feet.
 

Jack’s eyes scanned the moonlit defile for the big man. The two henchmen so far unscathed, bouncing in their saddles as if they were trying to sustain spinal damage, were riding back toward the time transfer base, all caution concerning the steep, uneven surface of the defile abandoned. There was a shot from the higher rocks, Ellen giving them a send-off.
 

“Where are you, fucker?!” Jack said under his breath, still looking for the big guy. As his eyes followed his rifle muzzle, swinging back toward the wounded man and the still rising horse, Jack spotted his quarry. The big man was stabbing the muzzle of a large revolver—maybe an N-Frame Smith & Wesson, but by moonlight at the distance, it was only a guess—into the face of the wounded man clinging to the pinto’s saddle. There was a single shot. The wounded man fell away as the big man grasped for the saddle and clung to it as the pinto shook its mane and snorted.
 

Jack fired, and the big man’s body rocked with what could have been a hit or might only have been the horse shuddering under him. The pinto had its head and galloped after the two already escaping riders.
 

Jack levered the Marlin and fired, but the big man was so terrible a rider and the horse moving so rapidly that his shot was an obvious miss from the moment he squeezed the trigger.
 

Another shot from the rocks, Ellen firing, but the range was already too great for the Winchester’s .45 Colt-revolver round. There were two rounds left in the Marlin, two rounds Jack would not waste on a fast-moving target he had no hope of hitting.
 

Instead, he drew his revolver as he walked toward the buckskin. The little horse was still breathing. Alan, under it, moaned, but that was reassuring, affirming that Jack’s great-great grandson was still alive.
 

Jack, feeling genuine sorrow for shooting the innocent horses and wishing that he could experience sorrow— genuine or otherwise—for the vile men he had killed, put a bullet into the little buckskin’s brain, then started trying to pry, push and shove the dead animal off Alan.
 

Almost before it seemed possible, Ellen had joined him in the effort, and worked beside him as always.
 

Cleavon Little, like a black Randolph Scott, rode up out of the horizon, resplendently dressed and armed, astride a magnificent golden palomino, replete with gleaming, silver-mounted saddle. Count Basie’s orchestra, for some reason esconced in the middle of a southwestern desert, was belting out its legendary riff at the conclusion of “April In Paris.” Alan opened his eyes. The face looking down benignly upon him was definitely not the brilliant Mel Brooks, but a woman instead. An angel’s face? Was he dead and in Heaven? The last thing he remembered was a very loud gunshot and the horse that had been under him collapsing against another horse. After that blackness had engulfed him in a roaring wave of pain.
 

The pain was still there, and that couldn’t be right, because in Heaven, as he had learned as a boy, all earthly pain would be washed away.
 

An angel, however. As his vision cleared, he recognized the face, yet was more amazed than if the countenance— smiling now, with a touch of worry in the gray-green eyes—had been ethereal in the literal sense. The face was that of Ellen Naile, born in 1948—or, to be born. Objectively, he knew that since the year from which he’d been kidnapped was 1996, she was forty-eight. Except for that hint of worry in her eyes, dissipating as he forced a smile to his lips, it would have been hard to imagine this auburn-haired, delicately featured woman with almost porcelein skin to have even been thirty.
 

“You.” He realized that his voice was a dry, croaking thing.
 

“Don’t try to talk, Alan.” Her voice was a soft alto, musical to hear.
 

Alan shook his head: a mistake, as tremors of pain washed through him. A glass came to his lips, cool water into his mouth. He swallowed, the first sip with difficulty, the second sip more easily. The glass was taken away, and he tried again, this time successfully, more or less, to speak, the voice still not quite fully his own. “You are my great-great-grandmother.”
 

“Yes.”
 

“You are more beautiful than your pictures, more so than I had remembered you. I grew a beard and brought my oldest son to one of your book signings.”
 

She didn’t smile any more broadly with her face, only in her wonderful eyes, as she responded, “And you have your great-grandfather’s and great-great-grandfather’s ability with bullshit.”
 

“How did—?”
 

“You get here? You got here by dint of perseverance, Alan. That buckskin pony that fell on you may have been little, but no fully grown horse is exactly light. Before you ask, Clarence’s wife, Peggy—you remember her, that she’s an M.D.?—thinks that the worst you have is a little concussion, some really nasty bruises—hence, some swelling—to your right knee and a groin muscle you may have pulled. Bet you’ll know about that for sure when you try walking in a few days.” Ellen grinned.
 

“Should I call you Great-Great-Grandmother?”
 

“Only if you don’t value your life. Ellen will do just fine, Alan. Now, get some rest, and a little later we can get some solid food into you and talk some more. I wouldn’t toss and turn a lot. Verifying the pulled groin muscle could be a real eye-opener.”
 

Then, she leaned over, his beautiful great-great grandmother, and kissed him lightly on the forehead.
 

Snippets of conversation as he slept—he’d been given painkillers, he realized—drifted to him like scents on a soft breeze. David and Clarence were back—from where? He had some sips of broth. Diamonds converted to cash successfully. Jack, his great-great-grandfather, was gone for a few days—to where? More broth, a salty tasting cracker. Titus Blake, whoever he had been, was dead. It didn’t sound like anyone would be missing this Blake guy very much. Broth with soft vegetables. Diamonds and cash, again. The general merchandise store had great sales figures, up fourteen percent over the last quarter. Exciting new merchandise spotted in San Franciso. A few bites of a sandwich. House in town nearly completed.
 

Standing up, and the knee hurt badly; walking to the surprisingly modern bathroom affirmed the groin muscle was definitely pulled. Elizabeth, arm in a sling, pretty like her mother, only different. Peggy insisted he use a bedpan.
 

Theodore Roosevelt? A man’s voice had spoken the name several times in low tones to Alan’s great-greatgrandmother. But this was 1900, wasn’t it? Was it still? Had to be. Teddy Roosevelt was yet to be elected to the vice-presidency under William McKinley.
 

Two-way traffic in time? Variations of phrasing notwithstanding, that topic came up a lot, rising as the headaches seemed to dissipate.
 

Sometime later—he realized it was probably several days—Alan opened his eyes and saw a man’s face looking down on him. The man’s eyes were dark brown, with a hint of amusement in them. He had a wide mouth under a graying mustache that extended only to the edges of his upper lip. His hair was a dark reddish-brown, thick looking but not overly so, well salted with gray throughout, but especially on the sides. He wore a coal-black shirt, some type of pullover, but not in the modern sense, his sleeves rolled up to just below his elbows, the dorsal sides of his forearms covered in a light coating of hair, also dark red-brown.
 

Two realizations struck Alan simultaneously. This was his great-great grandfather, Jack Naile, and Jack was the black-clad man who had shot the horse out from under him—how many days ago?
 

“Welcome back to the land of the living, Great-Great-Grandson,” Jack declared. “I understand you brought one of our great-great-great-grandsons to a book signing.
 

Thank you for that. How are you doing?” The same hint of amusement that was in his eyes was present in his voice. “Peggy was a little worried with you drifting in and out of consciousness so much these last several days, lamenting the fact that she hadn’t been able to do more thorough testing for the concussion she suspected you’d sustained.” He held up the first finger of his right hand, a strong-looking hand, and directed, “Follow this with your eyes.” Then he moved the finger slowly from edge to edge of Alan’s peripheral vision.
 

“My head doesn’t hurt anymore.”
 

“Good! The rest was what you needed. Your knee should be stiff. Some of our reference materials contained data pertinent to physical therapy; Peggy will work with you. You’ll have to go easy, though, because of that groin muscle. She doesn’t think it’s too bad.”
 

“She should try wearing it,” Alan told his great-greatgrandfather, smiling.
 

“That might, I’d suppose, be instructive. Who was that really big man who was taking you out to kill you?”