Written in Time (33 page)

“As you say, Jack. By mornin’, news o’ this will be spread all over the county. We get a passel o’ armed folks don’t know what they’s doin’ chasin’ all over the countryside, there could be some real problems.
 

“Tom and Mary Bledsoe’s place was attacked by a bunch o’ no-goods with their faces hid behind bandannas and such. Tom caught two bullets in the leg. Ain’t bad shot up, though. Miz Bledsoe’s got herself a bunch o’ bruises and maybe a broke wrist. Brave woman,” he editorialized. “Drove the wagon in with that wrist o’ hers, she did, Tom laid out in back with a tourniquet on his leg. They’re bein’ tended to. But them sons o’ bitches—forgive me, Miz Naile! I wouldn’t blame your husband if’n he felt like horsewhippin’ me sayin’ words like them in front o’ you and the young lady.”
 

“I’ve heard worse, and so has Elizabeth,” Ellen told him truthfully. “I’ve even said worse. So has Elizabeth.”
 

“Yes, ma’am. Anyways, them owlhoots hauled young Helen away screamin’ an’ all, throwed her over a saddle and rode off west with her, toward the mountains. Miz Bledsoe thinks she counted eight o’ them men. We gotta get little Helen back ‘fore any of them eight men tries a, . . .” Marshal Blake let the thought hang.
 

“Having their way with her?” Jack supplied.
 

“Yes.”
 

Jack turned away from Titus Blake and walked toward where Ellen and Lizzie stood just inside the entrance to the room. “No need waking Clarence’s wife, but when you get the chance, mention what happened and see if she thinks it might be a wise move to just casually check out Tom Bledsoe. Not until I get back. The three of you will be safer here, together. When I hear tourniquet mentioned, I start thinking damaged blood vessels and infections and stuff. You guys know I’ve gotta do this.”
 

“I wish I could go with you,” Ellen whispered only loudly enough for Jack and Lizzie to hear.
 

“Me, too, Daddy.”
 

“I know you guys do. When in Rome, huh? So, you guys gotta stay here and be extra alert. Keep guns handy, more than usual. We’ve never had any repercussions from Jess Fowler’s range detectives, and there’s no reason to be paranoid and think they’ve got anything to do with this. It never really hurts to be paranoid.” And at that, Jack looked over his right shoulder at Titus Blake. “I’ll get my gear. If you want a fresh horse, you’re welcome to one.”
 

“I’m fine.”
 

“As you say.” Jack nodded. As he left the room, he shot Ellen and Lizzie a wink.
 

It was nearly nightfall as she looked beyond the corral and toward the mountains to the west, their peaks obscured by heavy clouds. But regardless of the cloud cover, the flashes of lightning that had been visible in the mountains for the past several evenings could still be seen.
 

Elizabeth Naile had the upper-body strength to throw the saddle on her father’s horse, but at three and one-half inches over five feet tall, she had to stand on her tiptoes as she did it. Her mother was making sandwiches for the men to take with them, her father changing into trail clothes and packing his gear. With David away, the job of saddling the big chestnut mare with black stockings, mane and tail had fallen to her.
 

As she tightened the cinch strap, she remembered her father’s explanation as to why he had named the horse as he had. “Most of the horses on television and in the movies had really manly kinds of names. Silver, Scout, Victor, Trigger, Champion, Razor, Buckshot—even Joker is a guy name. But with a mare, it’d be kind of dumb to have a name like that. I needed something to call her, and I was thinking about it, and for some reason I remembered when you were little and used to play with dolls.”
 

“You’re not going to name her Pretty Pony, Daddy!” Lizzie had interrupted.
 

Her father had laughed. “Good idea, though. I decided to call her Barbie.”
 

Lizzie led Barbie out of the corral and brought her to the hitching rail in front of the house and tied her there beside Marshal Blake’s horse.
 

Her father stepped onto the porch in company with Titus Blake in the next instant. He wore his black hat with the concho band, a dark gray cotton pullover shirt with the buttons that went halfway down its front left open. He wore his fancy gun belt with the long-barreled Colt over a pair of black woolen slacks, boots, of course, but no spurs. A pair of brown saddlebags was over his left shoulder, a slicker-wrapped bedroll, a jacket and his .45-70 rifle in his hands. Lizzie took the rifle and slipped it into the rear-mounted scabbard on the right side of Barbie’s saddle while her father tied the saddlebags and bedroll behind the cantle.
 

Her mother emerged onto the porch a moment later, carrying a white canvas sack and a blanket canteen. Lizzie took the canteen and slung it to the right side of the saddle horn, her mother looping the sack on the other side. “The sack’s got six big sandwiches—nothing that should spoil too easily—extra makings for cigarettes, extra matches and a
 

hundred extra rounds of .45 Colt ammunition, just in case.”
 

“Thank you.” Her father kissed her mother’s forehead.
 

“Much obliged, Miz Naile.”
 

Elizabeth’s mother smiled back politely at Titus Blake, and then looked up into her husband’s face. “You were worried about Jess Fowler and his men. I’m still wondering about the lightning flashes we’ve been seeing. I’m not going to tell you to be careful, but why is it that guys get all the fun?”
 

“You know, I saw George Montgomery and Dorothy Malone play this scene once in a western movie. So don’t worry. He came back after he got the bad guys.” Her father swept her mother into his arms and kissed her, then kissed her again and still again.
 

He pulled on his coat, slipped the knot on Barbie’s reins from the hitching rail and swung up into the saddle. Cocking his hat back on his head, he leaned off the right side of his saddle and took Lizzie’s face in his hand, saying, “Gimme a kiss, kiddo.”
 

She kissed her father’s cheek, her arms closing around his neck and shoulders for an instant. He kissed her head. Then he leaned down off the left side of his saddle and kissed her mother again.
 

Lizzie mounted the porch, her mother stepping up beside her. Her father took off his black cowboy hat for an instant and replaced it, but pulled down low over his forehead. “Let’s do this, Titus.” Barbie wheeled left under her rider’s urging knees and heels and started off toward the mountains.
 

“Riding off into the sunset,” Lizzie’s mother said, her voice sounding a little strained.
 

“Daddy’ll be all right.”
 

“I know. I was just thinking, though. Here’s your father riding off into the sunset after the bad guys, and it has to be overcast.” Lizzie caught the irony.
 

The bundle of rags on the ground wiggled. Jess Fowler eased out of the saddle, walked over to the bundle and reached down into its center. He tugged at one corner of the old grain sack, pulling it away. Helen Bledsoe’s face looked dirtier than it was, he supposed, because her tears had left long, uneven streaks down her cheeks. Despite the darkness, her eyes squinted shut, likely just from the glare of the lantern he’d picked up and held over her.
 

The bandanna tied into her open mouth looked soaked through. Her clothes were torn, the left shoulder of her dress ripped away and its sleeve just hanging there on her forearm, its skirt torn partially down the right side, nothing left of her apron but the waistband, which was still tied.
 

Her wrists were knotted together, drawing her hands up tightly between her barely noticeable breasts. Several coils of ropes secured her hands there, wound round her chest and waist, while another coil of rope passed through her elbows and tied at her back, keeping her hands and arms totally motionless, locked against her. Her ankles were bound as well.
 

“She’s gonna look so pitiful, Jack Naile won’t be able to pass up the chance. He’ll see her and he’ll come on a runnin’ right into where we want him. For icin’ on the cake, before we set it up, one of you men take that spool of barbed wire off the pack horse and wrap some wire around her. And loosen the gag so he can hear her moan. That’ll suck in that son of a bitch for sure.”
 

He looked at the eight range detectives who stood in a circle around him and the terrified girl. “The man who brings in Jack Naile slung over a saddle gets himself a fifty dollar gold piece and can do whatever he wants with the girl here. Any questions?”
 

There were none.
 

Jess Fowler draped the sack over the girl’s head, set down the lantern and went back to his horse, more work ahead of him this night.
 

It was a nice evening to sit on the front porch, and just being inside the house without Jack being there gave Ellen Naile a mild case of the creeps. Jack’s lever-action Winchester was in the niche beside the door, and a pair of Colt revolvers was on the seat of an empty chair.
 

Peggy sat on the rocker; Ellen, Lizzie beside her, on the steps. “Daddy was telling me something last night.”
 

“What, honey?”
 

“Today’s August fourteenth. You know that Charlton Heston movie that Daddy really likes?”
 

“He likes a lot of Charlton Heston movies. Let’s see,” Ellen mused. “1900. I know! 55 Days At Peking. Right?”
 

“And August fourteenth, 1900 is when the different troops rescued everybody from the embassies.”
 

“I remember that well,” Ellen kidded Lizzie. “Charlton Heston and David Niven were down to their last few rounds of ammunition. Got pretty hairy.” She hugged her daughter, proud that Lizzie had listened well enough to Jack’s mental meanderings to remember. “You’re a good kid. You know that?”
 

“I’m nineteen, Mom. We’ve been here just about four years.”
 

“If you’re nineteen, that makes me—Well, let’s change the subject.”
 

As if on cue, Peggy spoke. “That’s one of Clarence’s favorite movies, too.”
 

Ellen was about to turn to look at Peggy, but there was a particularly bright flash of lightning in the mountains. “What do you think all the lightning’s from, Peggy?”
 

“I’ve been thinking about it a lot, guys. I mean, this is a good time of the year for thunderstorms late in the day, but where’s the rain? And storms move. Those flashes are always in the same place.
 

“I don’t want to be an alarmist,” Peggy continued, “and that’s why I haven’t said anything. I wish your husband hadn’t gone up into the mountains.”
 

Ellen stood up, waited at the edge of the porch steps, and just looked at Peggy.
 

After what seemed an interminable period of time, Peggy went on. “What if the time-travel mechanism that was developed to slip Clarence and me into the past was being used over and over again?”
 

“You guys were up at the capsule two weeks ago. You didn’t say you saw anything strange. You left a message. What if they’re trying to send back a response?” Ellen queried.
 

“Not all those flashes. What if, instead of lightning, it’s electricity of the kind that we generated to duplicate what happened to you guys?”
 

“What do you think is happening?” Lizzie asked, the exasperation in her voice undisguised.
 

“If the flashes are man-made, associated with the time-travel phenomenon, the only reason I can think of for so many of them would be to bring back equipment or manpower or both. The only reason to do any of that would be if they worked out a way of making something like a doorway, or a portal.”
 

Ellen’s mind raced. As if Lizzie had read her mind, she asked, “You mean like a revolving door, so that people or things could go back and forth between here and the future?”
 

“Well, I mean they’d just be experimenting,” Peggy told them. “You see, there was no way in the world that we could actually do what we did any other way than the way we did it.”
 

“What?” Ellen snapped.
 

“I mean, real time-travel? Like a time machine thing? It’s been four years since you guys made the jump. Two years ago that we did. In two years, they weren’t going to discover time-travel. All we did was duplicate with technology what happened by accident the first time, when you guys came here. We didn’t understand it! All we were able to do was duplicate a set of conditions that propelled somebody or something ninety-six years into the past to the exact same place they were in the objective present. That’s why Clarence and I didn’t wind up in Cincinnati or Topeka or Paris or Moscow—or in the middle of Antarctica! We showed up two years after you showed up here because two years had passed in both time periods.”
 

“And?” Ellen prodded.
 

“Well, we had the exact data that we needed to send things ninety-six years, sixty-eight days, four hours, twenty-three minutes and sixteen seconds into the past—no more, no less. It’s not like the first person who figured out that putting a bandage on a cut stopped the bleeding understood the circulatory system, guys! He just discovered a trick that worked and could be repeated. It was mathematically possible, theoretically possible, too, that we could figure out how to do the trick backward. Like removing the bandage from the cut.”
 

“And, if they’d come to let you and Clarence know they could retrieve you, take you back,” Lizzie said very quietly, “they would have let you know two weeks ago when you checked the capsule because they’d know you guys check it and could have left a message in it for them to check.”