by Jerry Ahern
Despite a chasm of differences between the two girls— and, sometimes, Ellen imagined, to Helen’s mother’s consternation—Lizzie and Helen were pals, buddies, and Lizzie, Ellen aiding in the conspiracy as often as she could, was regularly and conscientiously planting the seeds of independence in Helen’s life, the idea that in order to have a free will and the intelligence to use it, testicles were not required.
Clarence’s wife, Peggy, a medical doctor possessing knowledge of which the finest doctors in the age had not the slightest inkling, would be considered an oddity, nearly a freak, merely because of her sex. So far, at least, Peggy had hidden her skills; Ellen doubted Peggy could perpetuate so distasteful a charade.
That Lizzie would someday move to a large city, where a woman’s role could be less constrained if she had the brains and the talent, was obvious to Ellen. Lizzie would still only be in her thirties in the 1920s, when skirts shortened and minds broadened—at least a bit.
But the thought of Lizzie moving off sometime was very depressing, would leave a hole in her own heart and in Jack’s.
Ellen buttoned her blouse, rolled up her sleeves, cursed her hemline and left the storeroom.
Soon, David and Clarence would be off to San Francisco, “sin city” with its enticing Barbary Coast brothels, its ruthless press gangs shanghaiing the unwitting and its vile opium dens where a night on the pipe was some men’s glimpse of paradise—their only glimpse. David’s and Clarence’s mission was to convert a modest quantity of the family diamonds into coin of the realm, the remodeling of the store and the completion of their house having seriously depleted the family’s cash reserves.
However, there was a plus to David and Clarence being gone; she would be so worried about them she wouldn’t have much time to fret over Lizzie moving away someday and how lonely Jack and she would be.
And, in it all, Ellen found herself unable not to smile. Jack, ever the fan of Richard Boone’s immortal black-clad gunfighter, had instructed David and Clarence, “Whatever you do, if there really is a Hotel Carlton in San Francisco, get me a piece of hotel stationery or something. Okay, guys?”
David and Clarence, who had once obtained a Texas Ranger badge made from a Mexican peso and framed it with fake Texas Ranger identity papers as a gift for Jack, enthusiastically agreed to humor him this time as well.
Titus Blake swung down off the same big chestnut mare on which he’d ridden into Atlas when he’d come to assume the job of town marshal. Ellen remembered that day very well; Blake’s arrival had meant that Jack would no longer be filling in as the only peace officer in Atlas. She had never been fond of the idea of Jack being a cop (although Jack and she had several good friends in law enforcement in the future they’d left behind); Jack being the town marshal—a cop by another name—had been fraught with the potential to shatter their life together.
When Titus Blake rode down Atlas’ wide, dusty Main Street that first time, there’d been little gear on his saddle, merely a canteen, a rifle scabbard and a pair of saddle bags that had looked all but empty. The second horse he’d had in tow wore a pack saddle with what, she’d assumed at the time, were all of Titus Blake’s worldly possessions.
This time there was no packhorse. Blake’s saddlebags bulged, and a bedroll covered by a faded yellow slicker was lashed to the saddle as well. The rifle scabbard was there, its mouth just beneath the right saddlebag, the butt of a lever-action Winchester poking out from inside it. A shotgun with double barrels and exposed hammers was secured in a second scabbard on the left side of the saddle, near the horn. Ellen remembered Jack calling such a firearm a “Greener.”
Titus Blake looked ready for a gunfight and not some showdown at high noon with a lone gunman. But for the moment, all he did was remove his high-crowned, broad-brimmed gray Stetson and ask, “Miz Naile, Jack home?”
Ellen Naile inquired, “What seems to be the problem, marshal?”
“Ain’t for no woman’s ears, ma’am, lessen your husband thinks it’s proper. But I can say this. I need his help.”
“Come inside,” Ellen said without further hesitation.
“Ma’am?”
“Yes?” She turned around and looked at Titus Blake. “What is it?”
“Reckon I should remove my spurs?”
Ellen Naile could never remember the names for different styles of spurs, whether they were “jingle bobs” or whatever, but the marshal’s spurs had big rowels with spikes. “If you’re careful, Marshal, I don’t think they’ll be a problem.”
“If you say so, Miz Naile.”
Ellen forced herself to smile. Exaggerated politeness to women generally pissed her off. Ellen Naile opened the front door and went inside, Titus Blake’s spurs jingling after her. “You can leave your hat on that table, if you’d like.”
“Thank you kindly, ma’am.”
Ellen led him into the parlor off to the left of the short entrance hallway, the civilized side of the hearth to her right. The hearth in the kitchen, on the other side of the wall, shared a common chimney with this one. Sometimes, pleasant kitchen smells wafted their way into the room and imparted a cozy atmosphere she would have never thought she would enjoy, but did.
“Would you care for a drink, Marshal?”
“Right kind of you, Miz Naile, but I ain’t got a lot of time.”
Ellen took that as meaning he wished she’d shut up and go get her husband. “Please, take that chair by window. It’s quite comfortable.”
“Standin’ is just fine, Miz Naile.”
She nodded to Marshal Blake, gathered her skirts and walked out of the room and down the side hall, stopping at the door on her right. Very faintly, she could hear something that sounded like a car chase, punctuated by gunfire. She opened the door quite quickly and just wide enough to slip through, closing it even more rapidly behind her. Jack was listening to a CD, but wearing headphones while cleaning a revolver partially disassembled on the smallish table in front of him. It was the audio from the Mel Gibson videotape that Lizzie was watching on television that Ellen was afraid Marshal Blake might hear. How could she ever explain the sounds of gunfire, incidental music and high-speed “horseless carriages” coming from inside her house? Ellen had never thought that she would ever utter such words, but she said, “Turn off that Mel Gibson movie, Lizzie! Now!” Her daughter’s eyes registered naked shock.
Jack stood in front of the cold hearth, his right arm outstretched along its mantle, his right foot on the hearth’s elevated brick apron, his knee bent. He smoked a cigarette he’d just rolled.
Titus Blake, hands resting on the butts of the Colts at his hips, cleared his throat as if about to make a school recitation. His prominent but tiny Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. “I need a man who’s got a good hand with a gun and a cool head, Jack. There’s gonna be killin’, I reckon. You sure it’s all right for Miz Naile and Miss Lizzie to hear this?”
Ellen was sometimes very proud of Jack. “You said that time was of the essence—very important, Titus. If you feel uncomfortable talking about this in front of my wife and daughter, it’ll just take that much longer if I help you, because I’ll have to take the time to repeat to them everything you’ve told me. Ellen’s a grown-up. So’s Lizzie. We have no secrets around this house.”
“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 roc
ker; 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?”