A Captive in Time Page 6

  “There’s nothing wrong with that stew,” Dot said.

  “Really,” Stoner agreed eagerly. “It was delicious.”

  “Yeah,” Lolly said. “It was delicious last night, and the night before, and the night before…”

  “Now you know you have no call to complain about Billy’s cooking,” Dot said.

  “It’s so boring. If we don’t have something besides stew pretty soon, I’m gonna follow the Army.”

  “You do that, Missy,” said Cherry. “See how you like horse meat.”

  Lolly picked up Stoner’s plate and wrinkled her nose with disgust. “This might as well be horse meat.”

  Dot swatted her a good one across the rear end.

  Lolly howled.

  “Watch that mouth of yours around company. You want to ruin Stoner’s dinner?”

  “That’s all right,” Stoner said. “I was finished, anyway.”

  Lolly leaned over Dot’s shoulder. “Come on, Dot,” she wheedled, twisting a lock of Dot’s hair around one finger. “Can’t we have something good?”

  Big Dot grabbed Lolly’s nose and shook it affectionately. “How about we turn Cherry loose in the kitchen tomorrow night?”

  “No, Ma’am.” Cherry said huffily. “I’m not going to sweat over a hot stove for any white whore, no more.”

  “I’ll do the work,” Lolly said. “You tell me what to do, like you always do.”

  Cherry made her face hard and doubtful. It looked like an act. “Maybe,” she said. “Depends on how nice you are to me ’til then.”

  Lolly pouted at her.

  Big Dot caught Stoner’s attention and rolled her eyes Heavenward. “When you get back to Boston,” she said, “ask around if any girls want to skittle on out here. I’ll take them on, no questions asked.” She gave Lolly a little push. “You two go get some warm clothes on if you’re going to loaf around.”

  “I will not,” said Cherry. “It’s my day off.”

  “Shucks,” Dot said. “I plumb forgot. You oughta remind me from time to time. But it’s colder than a chicken coop out, and I don’t know what’ll become of me if you get sick.”

  The women grumbled and obeyed.

  Dot sighed a heavy sigh. “I don’t know, Stoner. Sometimes I think being in business for yourself is just too darn much responsibility.”

  “I know what you mean,” Stoner said.

  “Every now and then I get so worn out, I think about going back to my husband.”

  “Don’t do that,” Stoner said in alarm. “Get a partner.”

  Dot thought that one over. “Not a bad idea. You interested? All you gotta be’s a good worker and handy with a gun.”

  Stoner felt her eyes double in size. “Thanks, but I don’t think I have the expertise...”

  “Hell,” Dot said, “you don’t need to know all that much. I’ll teach you to shoot.”

  “Really, I...uh...”

  “I know,” Dot said with a laugh. “You want to get back to that whoop-de-doo big city life.”

  “Maybe Cherry or Lolly...”

  “Good God, girl,” Dot said. “Do you know what you’re saying? Those kids have no head for business.”

  “Yes,” Stoner said. “I can see that.”

  “But they’re good girls.” She chuckled. “’Course, you have to know to stay out of the way of Cherry’s pride, not that I blame her. And Lolly—well, I guess she must be part kitten. She’ll crawl up on anything warm.”

  Stoner could remember feeling that way herself at times. As a matter of fact, what with the cold and the confusion and the lost-ness and—she had to admit it—fear, she wouldn’t mind nestling against that woman’s soft, motherly bosom herself.

  “You want any more to eat?”

  Stoner shook her head. “Thanks, I’ve had enough to last me a week.”

  “Sure,” Dot said. “Bet you’ll be hungry again in an hour.”

  “I doubt it.” Stoner patted her stomach. “This wasn’t exactly Chinese.”

  Dot stared at her. “Chinese? You eat Chinese cooking?”

  “It’s really good,” Stoner said. “I mean, there are bad Chinese restaurants, just as there are bad Mexican restaurants, and American, and Thai...”

  “I swear,” Dot said. “You folks back east have lost all sense of proportion.” She got up. “Guess we better get you and your pitiful belongings out to Blue Mary’s.”

  “Look, Dot, I...”

  The woman cut her off with a gesture. “We’ve already been all through this.”

  “Yes, but…”

  “No ‘buts’. You’re going to Blue Mary’s.”

  That sounded like an order to her. And orders brought the adolescent in her crashing to the forefront. “You heard what Cherry said,” she snapped. “Lincoln freed the slaves.”

  Dot slammed her fists onto her hips. “Look here, I’m damned if I’m going to spend the rest of the night arguing with you. You can let Billy take you out to Mary’s, or you can go back out there on the prairie and freeze yourself to death, or maybe you can find some doorway to huddle in. But as far as I’m concerned, Milady, this discussion has officially ended.”

  “Fine,” Stoner snapped. She grabbed her knapsack from the bar. “How much do I owe you?”

  Dot folded her arms across her chest. “Two bucks’ll do it.”

  The woman was charging 1871 prices, for God’s sake. Stoner rummaged through her wallet until she found a five dollar bill. She slapped it down on the counter. “Keep the change.”

  Dot didn’t go near the money. “Good luck,” she said, and abruptly turned her back.

  Stoner stomped across the room and out the door.

  The night was moonless now. The wind had dropped, leaving behind a hard, dry, numbing cold. Overhead, stars hung like pin-prick holes in black ice. Every window in every building along the street was dark. The yellow light that poured through the saloon door behind her was mighty alluring.

  No, she told herself roughly. You are not spending one more minute in this crazy place.

  She shivered a little, and hunched her shoulders against the cold.

  Come on, a little chill won’t hurt you. Meditate. Think warm.

  She tried to visualize a roaring bonfire, but couldn’t hold the image. The tips of her fingers and earlobes were beginning to go numb.

  Well, don’t just stand there, walk.

  She forced herself to step beyond the saloon’s pool of light.

  The temperature seemed to drop fifteen degrees. By the time she had reached the end of the street—walking as briskly as she could and swinging her arms to get her heart pumping—she realized that this made no sense at all. There was nothing out there but sky and night and prairie.

  Maybe nothing else. There could be anything out there, and most of it probably not friendly.

  Something moved in the shadows of the livery stable. She froze. A rustling sound. Horses, shifting in the hay-lined stalls?

  It seemed too close for that.

  She shrank into a corner between a wooden barrel and a wagon, where the darkness was solid and maybe she wouldn’t be seen.

  The sound came again. Not the casual, natural movement of horses in hay, but the sound of stealth, of someone or something… creeping.

  Stoner felt the hairs on the back of her neck prickle.

  The rustling stopped abruptly, as if the creature had noticed she was there.

  Dot was right. I should have brought less plastic and more metal. A knife, a gun, anything for self-defense.

  Minutes passed.

  She thought she could hear breathing from just inside the livery stable door. She held her breath, and realized in the stillness it was her own breathing she had heard.

  Or was it?

  She exhaled softly and drew in another lung full of cold air. She waited.

  There it was again, low and quick.

  She wished she had worn something besides a white sweatshirt under her khaki parka. White had a tendency to be obvious, e
ven in pitch dark. And if whoever or whatever was prowling around was a local, they weren’t going to be fooled into thinking she was a native. Not in these inauthentic, 20th Century tourist clothes.

  The prowler breathed deeply, seemed to move forward, closer to where she stood. It paused. There was silence, then a series of low clicks, like small sticks shaken together in a box. Another pause. A faint sandy rasp.

  Familiar.

  Associate. Summer, evenings, heat, charcoal, barbecue...

  Matches.

  Someone had tried to strike a match. It hadn’t worked. Now they were waiting, unsure…

  Listening.

  Stoner clenched her teeth, fighting cold and fear.

  The silence lengthened.

  Maybe I imagined it. Maybe I’m just spooked. Maybe it’s only horse noises after all. Or mouse noises, or rat noises, or…

  She started to move out of her corner.

  A sudden scurrying in the dust. A sharp click. She recognized that click. It was the sound of a pistol being cocked.

  Adrenaline spurted through her. Her heart pounded in her throat. She steeled herself.

  More minutes crawled by.

  It could be completely innocent, you know. A townsperson out taking in the evening air.

  But innocent towns persons don’t skulk, and whoever this was, was definitely skulking.

  On the other hand, the skulker may have heard her coming along (skulking? Did she sound like skulking?) and was startled into a defensive, counter-skulking posture. In which case, the sensible thing to do would be to step forward in a lively manner, identify herself, apologize for startling Whoever, and go on her way.

  For some reason, her body rejected that alternative. It refused to move.

  She decided to trust her instincts.

  Another light click as the gun was uncocked. A whisper of clothing. Then light footsteps, backing slowly, cautiously into the barn.

  It was several long seconds before she dared to breathe again.

  She looked back toward the saloon. “All right, Big Dot,” she muttered to herself. “You win.”

  She ran back to the light.

  “Well,” said Dot, who hadn’t moved from where she’d been when Stoner left. “Took you long enough, I’ll grant you that.”

  “I’m sorry I yelled at you.”

  Dot dismissed her apology with a flick of her wrist. “Forget it. Good thing I like you, or you’d be pressing that cute little nose of yours against a locked door right this minute.”

  Stoner rubbed her arms. “Cold out there.”

  “Yep,” Dot said. “Want some coffee?”

  “I’d better get wherever it is I’m going before it gets any later.” She hesitated. “Dot, I thought I heard someone down by the livery stable.”

  The big woman frowned. “Heck of a night to be out for a stroll.”

  “That’s what I thought, too.” She shrugged. “It was probably my imagination.”

  “Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t,” Dot said. “We’ve had enough trouble around here of late. What all’d you hear?”

  Stoner told her as much as she could. “You mean the fires?”

  “I’m not sure if it has anything to do with anything. A couple of funny accidents. Barkers’ cow dying. Morgans’ chicken coop turned over and set on fire. Couple of house burnings. Some talk of arson, a little finger-pointing. Been going on over a year’s time. Hard to tell if it means something, or if it’s just something that happens. Life out here’s full of accidents.”

  “But you reported it.”

  “Reported it?”

  “Billy said the preacher had sent for the Marshall.”

  Dot barked a laugh. “We got no sheriff in this town. Never did. Fort Morgan’s too far away for help. U.S. Marshall passed through once before, on his way to Abilene. Stayed about a week. I’m not real optimistic about help from that quarter.” She leaned over the bar and took out her pistol. “Wouldn’t hurt to have a look.”

  “I don’t think you should,” Stoner said quickly. “It’s dark. Besides, if it was someone, I think they left.”

  Dot put the pistol back. “You happen to see Billy out there?”

  “No,” Stoner said. “Do you think it was Billy?”

  “Well,” said Dot, “that’d be a shock and a surprise.” She went to the door beneath the stairs and called him.

  He came into the room at a run, panting a little. His cheeks were pink, as if he’d been outside in the cold.

  “Stoner thought she saw someone down by the livery stable,” Dot said. “You been lurking around out there?”

  The boy looked hard at the floor. “No, Ma’am.”

  Stoner had the feeling he was lying.

  “You know how I feel about you walking the streets after dark.”

  “Yes, Ma’am.”

  “You know how I feel about falsehoods.”

  “Yes, Ma’am.”

  “So if that was you down there, I want you to tell me the truth.”

  “No, Ma’am.” Billy’s face was scarlet with mortification.

  Stoner felt sorry for him. Maybe the boy had been out, playing cops and robbers with shadows. That wasn’t a sin, not even a crime. She wasn’t beyond a bit of fantasy play herself, and she was twice his age. “It wasn’t him,” she said.

  “You sure about that?” Dot asked sternly.

  “Positive. Whoever it was didn’t sound like him.”

  Dot looked sharply at her, then at the boy. “I’ve known this little demon nearly six months, and I couldn’t tell you what he sounds like.”

  “He sounds like...like a kid. The person I heard sounded like an adult.”

  Keep your mouth shut before you make it worse, she told herself, you don’t even know what you’re talking about.

  Dot seemed to know she was being double-teamed. “All right,” she said with a heavy sigh. “Billy, get that wagon hitched up.”

  “I already done that,” he mumbled. “That’s what I was doin’.”

  “You go with him, then,” Dot said to Stoner. “Give Blue Mary my regards.”

  ≈ ≈ ≈

  Maybe he knows how crazy this all is, Stoner thought as the wagon creaked through the night and cold. He’s not from Tabor.

  “So,” she said casually and cheerfully, “Dot says you’re new in town.”

  The boy hunched his shoulders up around his ears.

  “Where did you come from originally?”

  “Where?” he squeaked.

  “What town or state or whatever.”

  “Illinois.” He pronounced it Ill-a-noise.

  “Where in Illinois?”

  “Around.”

  She waited for him to elaborate. The silence grew longer, punctuated by the crunch of the wagon wheels on hard-packed, pebbly earth. The horse huffed and puffed smoke signals of vapor into the night.

  It occurred to her that Billy might be on the run. “I didn’t mean to pry,” she said, trying to rub the chill from her knees.

  “Okay.” He glanced over at her. “You cold?”

  Stoner laughed. “It’s not exactly skinny-dipping weather.”

  Now, that was a stupid thing to say. One does not use sexual language, however oblique the reference, with embarrassment-prone adolescents.

  The boy was holding the reins in his teeth and struggling out of his sheepskin-lined denim jacket.

  “Don’t give me your jacket,” Stoner said quickly. “I’ll be fine.”

  “It don’t stink,” the boy said as he shook the sleeve from one arm. “Not too bad, anyhow.”

  “I didn’t mean...”

  He passed her the coat. It smelled familiar, but not unpleasant. She sniffed it surreptitiously. Witch hazel. She smiled. Billy probably doused himself regularly with witch hazel so people would think he shaved.

  It was also soft, and warm with his body heat. “You’re sure?”

  “Yeah, I ain’t cold.”

  Ah, the metabolism of the young. She draped the coa
t across her lap and buried her hands beneath its warmth. “How much farther is it?”

  “About a mile.”

  It occurred to her that there could be anything at the end of that mile. White slave traders. Gangs of thieves and cutthroats. Drug-crazed High School dropouts hopped up on MTV and eager to rape and pillage. On a stupidity scale of one to ten, leaving her car had been a five. Letting an unknown boy drive her across the Great Empty Nowhere in the middle of the night was an eleven.

  She cleared her throat. “So, what do you do in Tabor?”

  “Not much.”

  “Well, yes, I certainly understand that. Tabor isn’t the Video Arcade capital of the world, is it?”

  His silence suggested he thought she was completely batty.

  “Do you go to school? Have a girl friend?”

  “School?”

  “School. You know, reading, writing, ’rithmetic.”

  “Nope.”

  “Tabor doesn’t have a school?”

  “I don’t go to no school.”

  “You must have a regional school or something.”

  Billy glanced over at her, then looked back at the road without speaking.

  “Football? Proms? Current events?”

  “I don’t like school,” he said morosely.

  “Well, nobody likes school. I have a friend back home who teaches school, and she doesn’t even like it.”

  “What’s she do it for, then?”

  “She hasn’t found anything she likes better. And she has to make a living.”

  “Can’t get a man?” the boy asked with typical male arrogance.

  “She doesn’t want a man.”

  “Sure.” The word was brushed with sarcasm. “Real ugly, huh?”

  No, Stoner thought, Gwen is most definitely not real ugly. Not even by conventional standards. Looked at through the eyes, Gwen was attractive. Looked at with the heart, she was breath-taking.

  She thought of taking a few moments to raise the little punk’s consciousness. But Ignorance is the domain of the young. Let life educate him. Right now she needed his wagon and his coat. And his good will.

  “I’m sorry,” the boy mumbled. “I shouldn’a said that.”