Written in Time

by Jerry Ahern

  “That’s a good idea,” Jack enthused.

  Neither his son nor his nephew volunteered anything else and Jack fell silent as well. Today the ride seemed interminable; indeed, observations of the time-transfer base were so regularly made, Jack felt almost as if he were commuting to and from a job.

  A short stop to rest and water the horses behind them, they rode on, at last stopping where they would hide the horses. Ellen and Lizzie had made sandwiches with Ellen’s freshly baked bread, and Jack and his son and nephew consumed them in relative silence.

  Clarence carried his own rifle and David’s shotgun as the three started toward their observation point, making their way slowly.

  David already had the video camera running and was whispering into a small microphone connected by a cord leading into the camcorder. “We’re climbing up into a rocky overlook my father has told us is a good place to hide and check out what’s happening at the Lakewood Industries time-transfer base. We’re being very careful because these guys—the guards—are reportedly very well armed and probably wouldn’t hesitate to kill any or all of us. If something should happen to us and this tape is found—”

  “And?” Jack queried, interrupting his son’s narration. “Who would know what it was, the camcorder, or how to turn it on?”

  “Your father’s got a point, David. If anything goes down, your Dad and I’ll hold ‘em off while you get that videotape outa here and find a way to get it to Teddy Roosevelt.”

  “If anything goes bad on us,” David announced, his voice resolute-sounding, “the three of us stick together and we all get out of here or nobody gets out.”

  Occasionally, Jack reflected, his son really pissed him off; then there were times that his son filled him with pride. As he thought about it, Jack smiled; such an analysis could probably sum up most father-son relationships— the good ones, anyway.

  Positioning themselves in the nest of flat rocks above the metal fenced compound that was the heart of the time-transfer base, David—admirably—wasted no time, but began videotaping.

  There was a rumbling sound: the same “thunderclaps” that Jack and his wife had heard the night when Alan had time-transferred from 1996 on his way to an execution—his own. “Get this on tape, David. They’re doing a time-transfer, I think.”

  There was, in the next instant, a flash of light so blindingly bright that Jack, as he looked away, had floaters in his eyes. The sound, like thunder, rang through the mountains, echoing and reechoing among the rocks, the reverberations from it making the rock beneath them pulse.

  “Watch your eyes, but get this, David!” Jack hissed in a stage whisper he hoped could not be heard by anyone more than a few feet away.

  Just as when Jack had watched a time-transfer with his wife, there were halos of light, rainbowlike, but flickering maddeningly, dancing across all of the structures within the time-transfer base, most concentrated around the flat expanse that looked like a helipad.

  Something was happening at the center of the pad, an object materializing. Although not yet fully formed, it was clearly, obviously, the thing that looked like an old VW bus somehow frozen in the middle of mutating into a wheelless Airstream travel trailer.

  “That’s like the thing we came here in with the Suburban, only bigger,” Clarence said through clenched teeth.

  Bigger was the operative word. Much bigger than what Jack and Ellen had seen before.

  Taping all the while, David remarked, “They bringing an army here, or what?”

  Three white vans were being driven up from a far corner of the fenced perimeter. The vans stopped near the edge of the helipadlike surface.

  The electrical activity had ceased. Jack raised his binoculars, focusing on the object that had just appeared from 1996. A portal, so seamlessly a part of the time-transfer capsule’s skin that it was previously undetectable, folded open. Immediately, Jack observed not an army but a significant number of men begin exiting the pod. The men were all dressed in the same style, not that of the guards, who wore normal 1990s casual attire, nor like cowboys, but, instead, each man wore an example of decorous turnof-the-century business attire: uncomfortable-looking three-piece suits, celluloid collars, hats of various descriptions. Each carried a small carpetbag, a folded-over leather briefcase and what appeared to be a mochilla.

  “What are those things, like big saddlebags or something?” Clarence asked.

  “Called a mochilla. Pony Express riders used to use things like them. The pockets and everything provide storage, and you drop it over the saddle, the saddle horn sticking up through it. Instant baggage change. These guys are planning on riding fast. It’ll be saddle-sore city if they’re not experienced,” Jack added, recalling his own riding experiences when they had first come here.

  “Why the business suits?” David asked, still taping.

  Whether or not it was something that David said, Jack suddenly realized why these men were dressed as they were. “You’re the salesman of the bunch, Davey. Why are they dressed that way? Think about it.”

  An instant later, David, his voice curiously somber, volunteered, “They’re representing Lakewood Industries to the nations this Kaminsky bitch wants to pitch her 1990s technology to.”

  “Give that man a cigar!” Clarence declared.

  “Right you are,” Jack agreed, watching as the men filed into the three white vans. “They’ll be riding to the nearest railhead that will take them East.”

  “And we can’t stop more than a few of them at a time,” David warned.

  “They won’t all stay together.” There were, by Jack’s rough count, sixteen men. “They’ll probably travel in groups of two, or otherwise they might attract too much attention. They’ll be going to Carson City and catch their trains there.”

  “We try and bag some of them?” Clarence asked.

  Casing his binoculars, Jack told his son and nephew, “I want to learn as much as I can about the offer this Kaminsky woman is planning to make. If we take out too many of these guys, she’ll just send more teams and more after that. We want one group that we can stop, one two-man group. She’s got backup groups, apparently, hence sixteen men for four countries. She’s probably pretty certain we’ve rescued Alan and that he might be alive. So she’ll figure that there’s an extremely high probability that Alan has told us everything he knows about her intentions. She’ll have anticipated that we’d try to stop her teams from getting through, but couldn’t stop all of them.”

  “There’s dynamite at the store,” David suggested. “We could blow up the time-transfer base and go after the guys and—”

  “Execute them? That’d be the only option. Couldn’t have them arrested, because there’s nothing to charge them with. My telegram listing Teddy Roosevelt’s campaign stops should be coming, I hope. We get a sample of the sales materials these guys are carrying—that should clinch Mr. Roosevelt believing us.”

  Jack Naile started crawling back from the edge of the overlook. “We make like highwaymen and rob a pair of these guys once they’ve switched to horses and split up. That’s the best that we can do for now. Let’s go,” he said.

  They entered through the back door of Jack Naile— General Merchandise. A sandy-haired, white-aproned young clerk came from the front of the store into the storeroom with a Schofield revolver in his hand. “Oh! I’m sorry, Mr. Naile, David. I heard noise back here and—”

  “Just picking up some emergency supplies, Billy,” David told him. “I’ll be up front in a minute.” The clerk smiled, lowered the muzzle of the revolver and closed the storeroom door. David turned to his father. “What do we need?”

  He still liked the idea of the dynamite. His father was against it. “I can get the stuff, and you can help Clarence get fresh horses.”

  “Good idea. Okay. Each of us needs a duster, a different hat and a bandanna,” his father told him. “And don’t get me some goofy assed hat, okay? A regular Stetson. Remember. I have a big head.”

  “You’re tellin
g me.” David laughed. “Go on. I’ll get what we need.”

  As his father exited through the back door into what passed for an alley, where Clarence waited with the horses, David took off his hat, patted his clothes to shed what trail dust that he could and entered the store proper. There were three customers at the moment: two women— apparently shopping together—and a man, who looked like he was wearing Clayton Moore’s old prospector disguise. The man was standing just past the pickle barrel, hunched over and ogling the glass fronted case where revolvers, derringers and the new C-96 Mauser samples were kept.

  “Hey, sonny! Ya da head honcho heah?”

  David looked away from the old man, searching for Billy. Billy was placing canned fruit on a shelf. “Ahh, Billy. We have a customer who needs some assistance in firearms.” David turned back to the old man. “Billy will be able to assist you with any purchase you might care to make.”

  “Wha’s this heah?” He stabbed a very dirty right index finger toward the C-96.

  “It’s called a Mauser, sir. It’s a brand new type of handgun that fires ten rounds as rapidly as you can pull the trigger.”

  “Fotty-fie o’ fotty-fo?”

  It took David a beat to catch the fellow’s meaning. “Forty-five or forty-four? Neither. It fires a very special cartridge called the seven point six three millimeter Mauser. Very accurate and quite effective.”

  “Thet don’ soun’ right, sonny.”

  Mercifully, Billy arrived. “Billy, show this gentleman the C-96 Mauser.” David turned to the old man, and pasted a smile on his face as he suggested, “If you think you might be interested in purchasing the pistol, we have a demonstrator model. My assistant here can take you out back behind the store and let you fire a few rounds through it. Have a nice day.”

  And David was gone, grabbing three tan dusters off the rack. With them over his left arm, he scooped up three large bandannas in assorted colors, stuffing them into the pocket of one of the dusters.

  David didn’t know Clarence’s hat size, but figured that it was close to his own. He grabbed a gray hat and a white hat. His father’s head size was seven and three-quarters. There wasn’t that much of a selection, but he found a broad-brimmed black Stetson with a high crown that already had what his father had always referred to as a Tom Mix crease. In 1900, it was still called a Carlsbad crease. He remembered his father watching Hopalong Cassidy movies, and this hat was identical to the one worn by William F. Boyd.

  With all three hats, the dusters and the bandannas, David went into his office. He jotted down a note to list the clothing as “free samples to customers” and left his office as quickly as he’d entered.

  He exited the selling floor, entered the storeroom, passed through it, opened the back door and stepped into the alley. As he was locking the back door, he heard the sound of hooves and turned. His father and Clarence had returned with fresh horses from the livery stable. David took the bandannas from the pocket of the top duster as Clarence called out, “You can bring these back and get our own horses next time you come to town, David.”

  David didn’t bother telling his father and Clarence “Thanks a lot.” Instead, he handed them their hats and dusters and bandannas, otherwise known as western desperado disguise kits. Time was wasting. He grabbed his saddle horn and swung up onto the back of the big gray mare.

  Cutting cross country was the only way to keep up with the three white vans. Certain of their approximate destination, and with fresh horses under them and Jack, his son and nephew rode with abandon. David’s horse slipped and fell, but didn’t come up lame. David’s right shoulder would bruise, but wasn’t otherwise damaged. Checking the horse more thoroughly than he checked his son, Jack announced, “Let’s keep going!” and climbed up into the saddle.

  Using the vans this far away from the time-transfer base was asking for discovery and myriad unanswerable questions; the stagecoach road leading to Carson City was well-travelled. Yet, it was obvious why the vans were being used: in order to save time.

  Distant gunshots, fired too rapidly and for too great duration to be from weapons of the period, filtered up into the high rocks through which Jack, David and Clarence forced their mounts. “The afternoon stage, I bet,” Clarence shouted over the thrumming of their horses’ hooves. “Probably killed the driver and any passengers. Can’t leave witnesses. The bastards.”

  “Good point to remember,” Jack called back.

  An hour and a half later, their lathered horses rubbed down, grained and watered—but sparsely, lest they bloat— Jack stood in a mountain meadow, smoking a cigarette.

  Clarence was on watch. Equipped with binoculars, he was posted a little over a quarter mile away, keeping a vigil over the stagecoach road. Both Jack and his son watched for Clarence to flash the signal mirror, alerting them that riders were coming.

  Two miles farther out on the stagecoach road, the tracks of the vans had turned off, then traveled on for over a mile before the anachronistic transports parked in a narrow canyon. A corral had been built there; horses were saddled and waiting for the occupants of the vans. Jack had crawled close enough to observe in some detail, while David and Clarence stood watch with the horses. The “salesmen” were, as predicted, breaking up into groups of two. Each man was equipped with a gun belt complete with a revolver and a sheath knife, and each pair of men was issued a lever-action rifle.

  The first two pairs of riders set out at once, not seeming terribly skilled as horsemen.

  Crawling back until it was safe to crouch, then moving in a crouch as rapidly as he could until it was safe to stand, Jack Naile made his way back to David and Clarence. “I just saw riders, four men heading back toward the stagecoach road,” David announced. “Do we chase them?”

  “No. The groups will pace each other a little. Let’s find a spot up ahead where we can rest the horses and ourselves. We’ll let the next four go past, too. We’ll try for the third set of riders. That way, if we miss them, we’ve still got one more chance.”

  They’d urged their weary animals—animals at least as exhausted as their riders—away from the mouth of the canyon, then along the stagecoach road until they’d found a suitable spot. There were broad rocks, just high enough to shield the hat of a mounted man waiting on the other side. Up a little distance from the road, concealed from the view of any riders coming from the canyon, lay the meadow.

  An hour passed before four men in period business suits, all identically equipped, rode past the rocks. David had stood the watch, Clarence replacing him.

  Assuming hour intervals, by the black face of his Rolex, Jack announced to David, “It’s just about time, if they keep to regular intervals.”

  Jack and his son and nephew had already changed into the dusters, replacing their own hats with the ones from the store. Jack noted to David, “I approve of the selection, by the way. The same style I’ve seen Tom Selleck use, as a matter of fact.” Jack Naile thought he caught a smile flicker across his son’s face, but thought nothing more of it. Their own hats were wrapped in a blanket and hidden behind an easily identified fir tree. Jack checked his saddle and set to tightening his cinch strap.

  All three of them crouched in their saddles, just in case the angle of the road was steep enough that the crown of a hat might be visible to the four riders.

  Jack told them, “Clarence, you’ve watched a lot of westerns. David, you haven’t. Follow our lead.” Looking at Clarence, he said, “Just like the classic thing you’d see on television back in the fifties. We’re the three outlaws, hiding behind the rocks beside the stage road. That gave the effect of a robbery without having to go to the expense of filming a chase scene. Instead of springing out when the stagecoach carrying the mine payroll is passing, we’re going after four men. If we can avoid it, no chase scene, because I don’t want a shot fired, but don’t take any chances.

  “David—I want you to be the last man out from behind the rocks. I’m first, cutting them off, then Clarence on their left flank. You cro
ss behind them and take their right flank. We want, in order of importance, the mochillas, then anything else they’ve got. We get them to hand over their weapons, which is what I’d prefer; it’s probably safer. These guys may know nothing about older firearms and have loaded rounds under the hammers. They fling the guns down, we could have an A-D, and the noise from an accidental discharge is going to attract just as much attention as a shot being fired intentionally. The people with those vans may have automatic weapons, and we don’t, so a gunfight with the Lakewood Industries guys back in the canyon is the last thing we want.”

  It was difficult getting used to his father as a field commander, a general, the leader of a gang. Maybe a family was, in a way, a gang, or at least a small tribe. David’s only experience with his father in a leadership function beyond the scope of normal family activity was as a scout leader back when he—David—was about eight or ten years old.

  So far, David had to admit, his Dad seemed to be doing okay.

  Their high-crowned cowboy hats were pulled down low over their eyes, bandannas covering their faces below the eyes—his father’s, of course, was black. And long tan dusters covered their clothes from the neck and shoulders to well below their knees. It would have been hard for even someone who knew them—let alone total strangers—to identify them as part of the Naile family.

  David drew the three-inch-barreled Colt revolver from beneath his duster. The gun might be recognizable, but there were a decent number of these stubby Colts available. Theoretically, anyone could have had one.

  His father had borrowed the ‘97 Winchester pump and tromboned the action, holding the weapon in his right hand, the reins to his horse in the left. Clarence drew his revolver.

  There was the sound of hoofbeats from several horses.

  “Let me do all of the talking,” David’s father cautioned. “And, Clarence, especially you, for God’s sake, don’t laugh.”

  “Why not laugh? What?”

  “Later.”