by Bess McBride
“Clint! Where are you?” Despite her earlier fears of a cave collapse, a new terror outweighed everything. Her voice grew louder, more strident. She turned and stared at the tunnel. She hadn’t remembered it being so wide, tall and wide enough to walk through and then some. She scrambled to her feet, trying to ignore the aching pain in her hip, and she peered into the tunnel.
From what she could see in the dim light filtering down through the cave opening, the tunnel continued on for much longer than she had previously thought.
“Clint!” she called, hoping that the tunnel wouldn’t collapse. “Clint!”
She listened carefully. Nothing. No sound.
She dared not go any further into the tunnel. Not without light. If Clint were in there, he would have answered. If he were alive.
She turned back to the cave. Her eyes adjusted to the limited lighting, and she noticed a metal box at the foot of the stairs. Clint’s lunch pail! Hadn’t they taken that up to the surface? He must have brought it back down. Then where was he? Why would he leave her in the cave?
A tear slid down her face, and she wiped it away. Tears weren’t going to help. Maybe he had left her in the cave to go get help. She had been unconscious, and he couldn’t possibly carry her up the ladder. She grasped the rails and put her right foot on the first rung. The rung gave way and cracked, and she fell back, almost losing her balance. Her hands felt grimy, and she looked at them. Thick dark dirt covered them. She hadn’t remembered the ladder being so dirty. Had there been a dust storm while she was in the cave?
She grabbed the rails again and put a tentative foot on the second rung. It supported her weight, and she climbed the ladder slowly. She tested the rim of the cave which seemed sturdy enough, and she crawled out and rolled away from the edge. Her hip screamed with pain.
She pushed herself to her feet and scanned the area. Everything was gone! The tent had disappeared, the wagon was gone, the mules were gone.
Night was falling, and the fading light of the sun highlighted the mountains to the west in black. Bright golden lights twinkled throughout the valley—lots and lots of bright lights.
Hilly didn’t wipe the tears away this time. She knew what had happened. She had traveled forward in time. But maybe Clint had traveled with her! Had they touched when she fell?
“Clint!” she shouted. “Clint!”
She waited, holding her breath and listening intently, but the only response was the howl of a coyote in the distance. Hilly knew with a fatalistic certainty that Clint had not traveled with her. If he had, he wouldn’t have left her in the cave.
She turned around and stared at the cave. Her first instinct was to throw herself in, as if she could be transported back in time halfway through her fall. But the most likely scenario is that she would hit the cave floor and fracture her skull or break her back. She remembered with a sharp pain in her chest that she and Clint had argued and chuckled about that.
She dropped to her knees near the rim of the cave and flattened her body so she could look over the edge. The darkening sky showed nothing of the cave floor.
“Hello down there,” Hilly called, trying to remember the words she’d said to bring Clint forward in time. She stretched out a hand as if to grasp Clint’s.
“Hello, hello, hello...” she called again, her voice breaking. “Hello down there! Come out, come out, wherever you are!” But Clint didn’t call back to her. He didn’t climb the ladder. He didn’t reach for her hand.
“Come back, Clint. Come back to me.” Hilly lay her cheek against the dirt, not caring that her tears mixed in with the dust. “Come back,” she whispered, her voice broken.
After what seemed like hours of crying, Hilly rolled over and looked to the west with swollen eyes. The last light of day had vanished. The coyote, maybe sensing her grief, yipped twice and then howled mournfully. She supposed she should be worried about the coyote, but at the moment, he was the only link she had with Clint.
A breeze blew in, and the air grew cool. Hilly shivered. She hadn’t been wearing her topcoat when she fell into the cave. From her spot on the hill, she could see the occasional headlights of cars traveling over what must now be the highway. She supposed she ought to get up and make it to the road to see if she could get a ride...somewhere. She wasn’t even sure how long she’d been gone or where her rental car might be.
But how could she leave? Clint had said he had heard her voice when he came forward in time. Unwittingly she had left, and he had been stranded in her time for six months until she returned. What if he had heard her now? What if he had heard her cries for him, and she left? She couldn’t leave. Not yet. Not until she was sure that Clint wasn’t coming to her.
She listened to the sound of the wind. Would he try to call to her...from the past? She turned her head as if she could hear better. Nothing. Nothing except the wind. Even the coyote was silent.
Hilly shivered again, wishing she’d kept her coat on. She rolled over and looked down into the dark abyss again. The cave would protect her from the cool wind. Could she climb down in the dark? She would have killed for one of those miner’s headlamps.
Heartbreakingly aware that the rim of the cave tended to be unstable, Hilly carefully swung one foot over and then the next as she climbed back down into the cave. She reached the bottom, noting that the cave was less cold than above. She sank down onto the cave floor, and her hand knocked the lunch pail. She grabbed it—a remembrance of Clint. Loose dust had softened the cave floor over the years, and she stretched out on her back, hardly caring about the dirt in her hair. She clutched the pail with one hand and stared up at the cave entrance. Bright stars twinkled in the sky. She wished. She prayed. She cried. She wished again. But Clint did not come.
****
Hilly opened her eyes and stared up at the cave entrance. The dark purple hue of the sky told her that dawn had arrived. She must have fallen asleep. She peered at her watch but couldn’t see the time in the darkness of the cave. She pulled her knees up, noting with a grimace that her hip still ached. Pushing herself to a sitting position, she listened intently. It was eerily quiet.
“Clint?” she called out. “Clint? Can you hear me?”
Hilly held out little hope of a response, but she couldn’t stop trying. She moved her hand and touched Clint’s lunch pail, still at her side. Rising to her feet with aching difficulty, she felt her way toward the ladder. Clutching the pail in one hand, she climbed the ladder again.
She peered out over the rim. No mules grazed nearby, no wagon awaited her, no tent offered shelter. Clint did not reach for her hand. The golden lights of nearby towns to the west continued to glow—too many lights to be 1881.
Gingerly, she climbed out of the cave and stood to survey the valley. The rear taillights of a single car drove west along the highway, as if away from Tombstone. The air was still quite cool, but the wind of the previous night had died down.
Hilly licked her dry lips but failed to moisten them. She needed water. She was dehydrated. She turned to look toward the cave entrance. Clint wasn’t coming. He wasn’t here, and he wasn’t coming. She swallowed the hard knot in her throat and turned toward the road. She would walk back to Tombstone. It couldn’t possibly take more than a few hours.
As she climbed down from the hill, she tried to formulate a plan for her future, but few rational thoughts presented themselves. She knew she wouldn’t be able to return to Seattle and resume the life she had once known. It wouldn’t be possible. Not only did she know something that she felt few, if any, people did—that time travel was possible—she was forever changed by Clint and her love for him. Nothing would ever be the same. She imagined she would look for him as long as she lived.
She reached the road, now smoothly paved, and turned in the direction of Tombstone. The sun now peeped out just over the mountains to the east. She had walked only twenty minutes when she heard the sound of an approaching car behind her. She stepped over to the side, and the vehicle slowed. She turned to loo
k at it—an old beat up truck in shades of yellow and brown.
“Need a ride, Miss?” A grizzled fellow, sporting a well-worn cowboy hat and large gray mustache, eyed her with a half smile. If he hadn’t been sitting in a pickup truck, Hilly would have thought the year was 1881. He reminded her of George. Through the open truck window she could see he wore an old dusty shirt and an even dustier scarf around his neck under a faded vest that had once been dark.
Hilly hesitated, but not for long. The all-too-familiar stomach cramps told her she really needed water.
“Yes, sure, thanks,” she said as she reached for the door handle, hoping he wasn’t some sort of serial killer. She climbed in the truck, no cleaner on the inside than it was on the outside, and located the tattered seat buckle which the driver did not bother with.
“Whatcha doin’ way out here at this early hour?” he asked as he set the truck in gear and rolled down the road.
The truck, a loud and noisy mess of clanking metal, made it hard to speak or hear, so Hilly raised her voice. She hadn’t really thought of what to say when she did encounter people, so she winged something.
“Oh, I was out hiking and got myself lost.”
He tilted his head and threw her a skeptical look—or maybe he looked at her as if he thought she was dumb. She couldn’t tell.
“Hiking? Did you get stuck out there all night? You didn’t go hiking in the dark this morning, did you? Well, it takes all kinds, that’s for sure. Did you bring any water with you? You look parched.”
Hilly shook her head. Let him think what he would. “No, I forgot,” she said with a shrug. She clutched Clint’s pail tighter in her hands.
“What’s that? Looks like an old miner’s pail. Did you find that out there?” He nodded in the direction of the desert.
Hilly nodded. “I did.” The less said the better, she thought.
“That’s a nice find. Most of that stuff has been rounded up long ago. Did you have to dig to find it?” he said.
“Well, I actually found it in a cave, an old miner’s shaft.” Hilly hoped she wasn’t giving up the secret of Clint’s cave. She didn’t want people pouring all over it looking for old treasures, nothing which could prevent Clint from coming back to her—or her getting back to him, though that possibility seemed remote.
He nodded. “It’s dangerous climbing into those old mine shafts. I’m surprised it wasn’t blocked off. Most of them have been mined out now around here. Some of the mines paid real big back in the old days. Let’s see...there was the Toughnut claim, Grand Central, Contention, Hilly, and a bunch of others. They all paid off pretty good in silver.”
Hilly, on the point of introducing herself, froze. “Did you say ‘Hilly’?”
“Oh, yeah, that one was located right about where I picked you up. Yup, fella named Clint Woodrow made a fortune on that one, named it Hilly. I think for some woman, I’m not sure.”
Stars danced across Hilly’s vision, and her forehead broke out in a sweat. She felt faint.
“My name’s Gil Brewster,” he said, reaching out a tanned, roughened hand. Hilly automatically took it in hers. Hilly. A mine named Hilly. Clint had done well. He had struck it rich like he wanted. She licked her dry lips again, trying to stay conscious. But in striking it rich, he could not have traveled forward in time to come to her. Though the words I’ve lost him forever played over and over in her mind like some horrible chant, she tried to block them.
“What’s your name?” Gil asked.
Hilly turned a blank stare on him, not really seeing him.
“Hildegard Creighton.” She was cognizant enough not to give him her nickname.
“Well, Miss Creighton, we’re coming into town now. Where can I drop you?”
Into a cave!
Hilly wiped the sweat from her forehead and upper lip and tried to think. Clint had stayed in the past. She would never see him again. The hotel. Where was her rental car? She would never see Clint again.
“The Sunrise Inn on Fremont Street,” she said. “Thanks.”
“Are you all right, Miss Creighton? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
Hilly nodded. “I’m fine. Just too much sun, I think.”
“Well, you be sure and drink some water. I know. I go too long without water during the shows myself and I pay for it. I work at the O.K. Corral gunfight show. Gets mighty hot in the summertime. Had their anniversary show yesterday at the corral, October 26, 2014. A hundred and thirty three years ago.”
Hilly turned to look at him. He wore a holster with a revolver. His boots were dusty. In fact, other than his age and the mustache, he looked a lot like Clint when she had first seen him.
“Was that yesterday?” she murmured. Had Clint known the date when he took her to the mine? Had that been the day of the gunfight? “I missed it.”
“It wasn’t much different than any other day at the show,” Gil said. He didn’t realize that Hilly was talking about 1881.
“So, you’re an actor,” she said, wondering what the odds were of encountering two men who acted in the same show. Had he known Clint? Her heart thumped. “Do you...did you know a Clint Woodrow?”
“The fella who made a mint off the silver mine back there?” Gil gave her his you are seriously dumb look. “Well, now how could I know him? That was back in the late 1800s. I’m not that old!”
“Oh, I’m sorry, I meant someone working at the gunfight show named Clint.”
Gil eased his expression of hopeless despair at her lack of comprehension.
“Oh! That Clint! Was that his last name?” He shook his head. “No, I never met him. I just started with the show about a month ago, needed some extra money. He’d left by then. Folks liked him but said he disappeared without a word. Did you know him?”
Hilly shook her head. “Oh, no. Someone mentioned him to me, that’s all. A friend of his said I should look him up when I got to town. I’d forgotten until I met you.”
“Well, like I said, he appears to be long gone. Funny about the name though. I don’t think I knew his last name—same as that guy with the mine. Must be a common name.”
He pulled the truck up to her motel which looked exactly as it had when she left. She had no idea what she was going to say when she entered the hotel, but she had new confidence that she would dream something up. Lying was getting easier by the moment.
“Goodbye, Mr. Brewster. Thank you for the ride.”
“You take care now, young lady. And don’t go on any more hikes alone.” He waved and drove off.
Hilly eyed the motel entrance, looked down at her dusty old-fashioned clothing, and tucked Clint’s pail resolutely under her arm. She would come up with something.
She stepped inside the empty lobby and approached the desk.
“May I help you?” the fifty-something female desk clerk asked.
“Yes. I-I was...am staying here, and I’ve been away for awhile.” She took a breath, trying to think of what to say. She longed to say she’d been taken by aliens and had just now been returned. It certainly felt that way.
“Your name?” The silver-haired woman focused her attention on her computer, paying little attention to Hilly’s appearance.
“Hildegard Creighton.”
The desk clerk tapped away at her keyboard for a moment before raising narrowed eyes to Hilly.
“Miss Creighton, you’ve been gone for almost a month! The police have been looking for you. Your brother called them when you disappeared and he came down to pay your bill and get your luggage. They found your rental car down on the highway. We didn’t know what happened to you. Where have you been?”
Aliens abducted me.
“Well, I went out for a hike, and I fell down in a mine shaft. I must have suffered a concussion and some memory loss because I couldn’t remember my name or where I was staying. Anyway, some nice hikers found me and took me to a hospital in a nearby town—I can’t remember the name of the town. My memory is still spotty. But I did remember I’d been stayi
ng here, so here I am.”
The older woman eyed Hilly skeptically, and Hilly wondered if she was related to Gil Brewster. They seemed to wear the same expression.
“That’s where I’ve been,” Hilly repeated. She nodded her head up and down.
“You should call the police and your brother, Miss Creighton. We can put you up in a room if you want. Do you have a credit card?”
Hilly shook her head. “You would have my credit card on file, right?”
“Just a minute. Let me look.” The clerk tapped at her keyboard and nodded. “Yes, we do. Would you like to pay for your room with that card?”
“Yes, please, thank you. And I’ll call my brother and the police, just as soon as I get to the room.”
Hilly took the key and made her way to her room, the same one she’d had before. If only Rob hadn’t come down to get her things, she might have had a change of clothes. Didn’t motels keep luggage hostage until someone paid the bill? But the clerk said Rob had paid the bill.
Inside, Hilly sank down on the edge of the bed and sighed. She wasn’t calling anyone right now. What she needed most of all was a shower...and to hear from Clint. She looked at the lunch pail cradled in her arms, and beyond it to the layer of dust she had deposited on the beige duvet cover. She jumped up hastily and smacked at the bed to remove the dust.
She set the pail down by the bed and headed for the bathroom to shed her clothes and step into the shower. A strong hot shower was certainly something she never thought she’d experience again in the nineteenth century. She washed her hair four times and scrubbed every part of her body vigorously with the standard motel abrasive washcloth.
Clint’s name was never far from her thoughts. So, Clint had struck it rich. Clint had found his silver. Clint had named the mine after her. He had lived on in the nineteenth century—and died. Hilly gritted her teeth and blocked the last thought.
She dried off, wrapped a towel around her and returned to the bedroom, unwilling to put the same filthy clothes back on. She eyed the telephone wondering what she could do with it. Could someone deliver clothing? From a store? Like a pizza? She still had to call her brother and the police. The call to her brother would be easier. The police would be harder to fool, but she had committed no crime, so they would have to accept her word for her disappearance—if she could remember what she’d told the clerk. She picked up the phone.