The report of a sighting of Nolan Jeffers turned into a young mother’s identifying of an elderly, rather reclusive neighbor as the man she’d seen. A short, rather plump gentleman he bore little resemblance to Jeffers other than being in his early seventies.
Having apologized to the ‘suspect,’ a man he’d known all his life who probably had never gotten as much as a traffic ticket and hardly ventured from his house these days because of ill health, he thanked the young woman for her vigilance in calling the sheriff’s office. “We’ve anxious to find Mr. Jeffers,” he said, “both for the sake of the public and his own.”
She wrapped her arms around her little son, while another clung to her leg. “I’m afraid to let the boys play outside,” she said. “Mountainside isn’t used to having a criminal loose right here in town.”
Tired and his patience stretched, Alistair almost told her that several such lived in her midst, but of course they were drug dealers, wife beaters, and drunken drivers, not known murderers. He owed it to the community under his care to bring in the escaped prisoner. Only he didn’t know how.
He would have guessed nobody could hide out long in Wichita, or for that matter, in nearby Mountainside. With most prisoners, he would have supposed they’d gone to ground with friends out in the county.
But Jeffers had no friends. He’d been locked away for too much of his life.
Not until after he’d gone by his office and made sure everything was being worked, including the continuing search for Nolan Jeffers, he decided it was time to take a few hours off. The last thing he wanted was to have to face some major problem, the kind that could come up anytime in a sheriff’s day, when he was mentally and physically exhausted.
Barely casting a glancing thought to going home for a nap, he headed northeast. He needed to pay a visit to Rainy Mountain and his own long buried past.
Chapter Eleven
Even though for the first time she had been able to control which time frame she would exist in, at least after a few frightening moments, the tug from her own past was almost irresistible.
She’d insisted on taking the back seat in Serena’s plush rental car, leaving Bobbi seated up front with her grandmother. Closing her eyes, she could feel the world of old Medicine Stick and the little house where she’d grown up, building around her, beckoning.
But when she opened them, she was right here, Hart Benson Redhawk, in a car with Serena Hudson and Bobbi Lawrence, headed for the lodge where she hoped to get a room.
In a way, she thought with bemusement, she felt like a woman in bad need of a bathroom and afraid she would wet herself embarrassingly at any minute, but determined to hang on a few more minutes.
She had to hang on. She couldn’t pass out here in the car with Serena. Her niece, Helen’s daughter, would no doubt call for an ambulance as soon as she realized Hart couldn’t be awakened. She would not understand as had Bobbi, but would think she was dealing with a medical emergency.
And Alistair would be called. He would be convinced more than ever that something was wrong with her and would rush her back to the doctors and confinement in Oklahoma City.
She couldn’t really blame him. All the symptoms were there. She kept blanking out, she’d confessed to hearing voices and being convinced she was another person, not Hart. He simply wanted her to be treated and get well, which was impossible since she wasn’t sick in the first place.
No, she couldn’t allow that world that kept peering over her shoulder to take over until she was safely alone. As soon as she’d gotten to the lodge, checked into her room and told Serena and Bobbi she was tired and wanted to rest for a while, then she could let down her guard and let the past swallow her up again.
Though he often drove by the low mountain that set out in the prairie some miles from his home, only infrequently did he give it more than a cursory glance. He associated it with his Kiowa grandfather, who had talked in such a low voice that he had to tune up his hearing to comprehend about the mountain and its history.
He supposed, in a way, he’d filed away those stories when Granddad died. The death of Jon Redhawk had been the first significant loss of his young life and it had hit him so hard that he’d had to store memory of the relationship away. Without Granddad, he’d felt lost and abandoned. Nobody had understood him the way his grandfather had and for a while he didn’t know how to go on.
His mother, who had never approved of his native American grandfather had discouraged any spoken memories, brushing them aside in terms that he now knew would be considered insensitive. She’d found the Indians and the way they clung to the old life hard to understand. Why couldn’t they just settle down and be good American citizens like everybody else? She hadn’t much approved of western Oklahoma either and had a definite distaste for farming and ranching. She’d been delighted when she’d finally managed to persuade her husband to retire in sunny, sensible Florida and still complained about her son choosing to hang on to the old place.
As for Dad, he and his father had always stood in opposition, almost willfully choosing to misunderstand each other. He’d found his family name mildly embarrassing and even talked about going to court and having it changed to something more ‘American,’ though he never had. But after his father’s death and his own eventual move out of state, though he’d sold most of the ranch property, he’d kept the house and the immediate acres for his son. He’d said it was what Jon Redhawk would have wanted.
Now he pulled to a stop along the roadside and rolled down the car’s windows before turning off the engine. Not many people around, a cow grazed here and there, an occasional car drove by, a driver glancing at the officer in the official car, probably thinking he was setting up a speed trap.
But mostly the day was silent and he was alone, too tired to get out of the automobile for a walk, his eyes fixed on the low mountain where he’d come so often with his grandfather, touching base with other Kiowa and hearing their stories.
This had been a special place, a landmark for the Kiowa after their long journey ended in loss and tragedy on the southern plains. Before that they’d been up north in that harsh, cold climate, a warrior race that had moved down the plains over the generations, telling their stories of the origin of their people, taking part in the Sun Dance. Along with the Comanche, they had become a proud race of expert horsemen who dominated the region that was theirs.
His grandfather had been raised by the Kiowa, but he’d grown up into a world where the buffalo that sustained them had been wiped out and only a remnant of the people remained, drawn to this magic plain and their memories. He had lived mostly a white man’s life, though never forgetting the past of his people that had connected them to a mystical time when they had been free and wild, essential to a way of life that no longer existed.
Alistair leaned his face against the steering wheel, thinking that Jon Redhawk probably wouldn’t have found anything strange about Hart’s conviction that she visited in another time and shared a twin bonding with a woman who had given her life for her.
Greater love hath no man . . . Abruptly he thought what he was doing, bringing a quote from the Bible into unison with Kiowa history, and then thinking that it was true, that what pure love there was in sacrificing your own life for someone else’s, whether it was through death or by living a life of service.
Granddad has not cared for the white man’s authority, but Alistair felt that he would have understood that in his own way, his grandson had chosen life as a warrior, a life of risk and at the same time one of service. He wouldn’t tell anyone else for fear of being accused of sentimentality, but it was his job, in his own small way, to try to protect the young, the old, those who couldn’t look after themselves from the evil of this modern world.
Damn, but he must be getting old and foolish. Here he was trying to help the woman he loved find her way in the real world and he sat here drifting off into Indian legends. He turned his eyes away from the mountain, and starting his car with a roar, wheele
d about and went back to work.
The artificial scent of cleanliness in the room seemed pleasant to Hart as she locked and latched her door behind her and looked around at the familiar lodge room. Rustic with dark wood and original paintings of historical scenes done by students who came to the annual summer arts institute, the room didn’t look like a standard hotel room. It was more like being in a cabin in the woods, though she knew if she went over to open the drapes that covered the large window, she would look out on the lake which was beginning to fill up again after days of rain and runoff from the surrounding mountains.
Tempted to look out and see if the battered buildings from her long ago town were beginning to disappear once more under the water, instead she pushed her suitcase out of the way and sank down on the bed. The need to escape to the past overwhelmed her and she knew she would be safer if it happened when she was stretched out on the mattress.
Nearly sick with the sense that she must go back there or she would miss something important, something that mattered tremendously.
Almost immediately she felt herself drifting away. It was like sinking into sleep, except she was wide awake and knew the instant when everything changed and the bed she was lying on smelled of the lavender her mother favored and she was home again.
“Feeling better?” Mom asked from the doorway, her voice concerned. Her brood was largely healthy, but when one of them got sick, Mom tended to panic. No wonder, in her youth she’d lost two siblings as little children, a not uncommon experience in those pioneer days when medical care had been rare and often inexpert.
She sat up. “I’m fine,” she said and found it to be true.
“That’s good because our company will be here at any minute.”
That’s right. She’d forgotten that the reason for the special meal she’d come close to ruining was because her mother expected a couple of old friends to join them.
She hurried to help get the meal on the table, though she noticed that neither Helen or her mother seemed willing to trust her with anything spill-able.
The chicken, looking innocent of damage, rested on Mom’s second best platter in the middle of the table. The best platter, the one that had belonged to her grandmother, was in pieces in the trash bucket, she guessed guiltily.
The guests were Mom’s friend Oma Jeffers and her little boy Nolan. Nolan was six now and he’d brought his friend Terry Maxwell with him. Stacia knew of the Jeffers more from hearing her mother talk about them, then from actual acquaintance.
She knew Mrs. Jeffers was a single mom, her husband having been killed in the last years of the war, and that she struggled to earn a living for herself and her son.
Nolan, a cute little curly-haired boy who seemed to greet the world with a smile, provided a direct contrast to his friend. Terry was thin and pale and scared looking, he hardly said a word throughout the visit and waited without complaint, even though he’d been overlooked when the chicken was served. It wasn’t until Nolan mentioned this that he was handed a piece of meat.
Mom, who was a sucker for any child especially one who looked as frail and timid as this one, chose the drumstick for the little boy and saw that he had heaping helpings of mashed potatoes and green beans as well as an extra homemade roll.
“How sweet that Nolan tries to look after his friend,” she told Oma Jeffers.
Oma smiled at the compliment to her son. “He has a good heart,” she said. It wasn’t until the boys had finished their meal and been allowed to go outside to play that Stacia heard her whisper, “Terry’s dad is hard on him. Seems to have a grudge against the world, but I sure wish he wouldn’t take it out on the boy.”
“What about his mother?”
“Poor woman, she couldn’t stand up for herself, much less for the child.”
The two women then noticed that Helen and Stacia were taking in every word and rose to begin clearing the table, their talk drifting to the years when they’d been growing up together.
Stacia, feeling that her mission was accomplished, at least for now, waited to be wafted back to the form that waited for her in a bed at Medicine Stick Lodge.
Helen gave her a gentle shove. “Don’t just stand there. Let’s do the dishes so Mom can visit with her friend.”
“Oh! All right,” Stacia agreed, surprised that she still seemed to be stuck in place. Logic told her that the lesson she’d been sent to learn had ended.
Nolan Jeffers and Terry Maxwell had been friends from childhood and Terry’s dad was a frightening man, abusive to his son as he had been to his late wife. No doubt what had happened later had grown from this root.
But she was still here and someone, most likely Alistair, was likely to demand entrance to her room at the lodge any minute now, and would find her once more unconscious.
The very thought made her anxious. She didn’t want to wake up once more in an Oklahoma City hospital with her husband more convinced than ever that she had some mental disorder.
Chapter Twelve
Alistair went home, but instead of going in the house to catch a few hours of much needed sleep, he strolled out into the pasture back of the house. He only owned a few hundred acres of what had once been his grandfather’s ranch, but that other land now belonged to friends and neighbors and he knew he was welcome to walk wherever he wished.
This afternoon he strode with some purpose in the direction of the canyons down by the river that had been chipped away by erosion, giving a peculiar kind of artist’s view of the land. It was easy to imagine old westerns being filmed by Hollywood crews down here, though as far as he knew that had never happened. The real west had occurred here where his Kiowa ancestors had come from the north to make their homes, only to be driven over time into smaller and smaller spaces, even as his grandfather’s ranch had shrunk from expansive acres to a house with some land surrounding it.
Once out of sight of the house, he could almost imagine himself back in those days when men on horseback dominated the plains, their homes built from buffalo skins and their food brought in by their hunters. They’d been a fiercely independent people and though their lives had been hard; they had been free in a world that seemed to have no boundaries.
Sometimes he envied them.
Bobbi Lawrence claimed she’d seen a warrior on horseback, a silent man of unknown strengths, who had haunted this land. He wished he could believe that, could believe that his grandfather still in some fashion could patrol this land he’d loved.
But he no more believed that than he could accept Stacia’s imaginings. Nope! He took as real what he could see with his own eyes, touch with his hands, smell in the air around him.
The past was gone and would never come back. He turned on his heels and headed back to the house. A message came in on his phone, telling him that Hart had lost her keys and left her car by the highway.
He found her extra keys hanging on a hook in the kitchen reserved for such use and, not having taken time to rest, called a deputy to tell him he’d be picking him up so they could get the car back home.
Granny stayed in the restaurant, drinking coffee and chatting with some people she’d met there. Bobbi, feeling a little concerned about Hart after what had happened in the car, went to her room and knocked on the door. “It’s me, Bobbi,” she called.
No answer.
Having knocked several times without response, she went to the desk and asked for a key card to ‘Aunt’ Hart’s room. Since they’d checked in together and most everybody here knew of their friendship, the girl behind the desk gave her the card without question.
She opened the door and calling softly, entered. The drapes were close and the room lay in evening darkness. Hart slept in the big bed, her dark hair fanned out around her face.
“Hart?” she called. Then she went over to give the sleeping woman’s shoulder a shake. She couldn’t get her to wake up.
Her heart beating faster, Bobbi leaned close to see the rise and fall of her chest as she breathed. For just a moment,
she’d been afraid . . .
It was like what had happened in the car. Hart had gone off somewhere to that place where she was Stacia. Bobbi didn’t quite understand how that happened since she knew well enough that the other one had died so that only the one she knew as Hart was left. But being a practical girl, she accepted the evidence of what she’d seen happen right before her eyes. She’d seen Hart leave and then come back. It would happen again.
She tiptoed out of the room again to go to Granny and tell her that Hart had asked her to spend the night in her room. They were going to watch a movie together and eat popcorn and chocolate bars. It would be like a sleepover.
Granny nodded, too absorbed in her new friends to mind. So Bobbi purchased some snacks from the cashier and got a soda from a machine, resources in case the night alone grew long, and then went quietly back into Hart’s room.
She turned on the TV to a movie Granny probably wouldn’t have approved—she could be so old-fashioned—turning the sound down low and making a comfortable spot for herself in the big chair and settled down to stand guard over Hart while she traveled who could know where. Somehow she felt Hart might need her help.
After the little boys and Oma Jeffers left, Stacia tried to relax, though she felt edgy from expecting every second to go back to Medicine Stick Lodge.
Instead she was stuck here at home with Mom and Helen, time she might have treasured if she hadn’t been so worried about what was going on while she was away.
She imagined Alistair arranging to have her locked away for her own protection, worried about poor Mr. Jeffers who could be in danger somewhere, and tried to wish herself back.
It didn’t work.
When Dad and the boys came in from doing their evening chores, her younger brother challenged her to a game of checkers and she agreed, feeling anything would be better than sitting here going out of her mind.
Wakening the Past: A Time Travel Romance (Medicine Stick Series Book 2) Page 7