"You're deep in thought," Dillinger said, startling her.
"You're awake."
He grunted.
"Do you feel better?"
"I didn't feel bad." He glanced down at the baby. "She sure does sleep peacefully when she sleeps."
The infant probably derived comfort from Dillinger's deep voice. Auburn turned her gaze back to the road, vowing not to allow the rearview mirror to continue to lure her to stare at the hunk in her backseat.
"What does it feel like?" Auburn asked.
"I'd like to pretend I don't know what you're talking about, but since I'm completely at a loss as to what's happening to me, I guess I'll just say it feels strange."
"Like you're having a hypoglycemic attack?"
"What's that?"
"Low blood sugar."
"I don't know what that is. Sorry, my medical knowledge ends around 1892."
She couldn't help it; she stared at him in the mirror. "Part of me believes that you really think you're from another place and time."
He just shook his head, and she went back to driving. "Listen, maybe you should see a doctor," she suggested worriedly.
"You mean you think I'm dangerous. That my mind is addled."
She refused to meet his gaze; she could feel him looking at her in the mirror. "I don't know what to think."
He sighed. "Where are we going?"
"To Christy River."
"I'm from Christmas River."
"Can't it be the same thing? Maybe the Google map has a misprint. It does that sometimes."
"Google map?"
"Never mind." She pulled into a Sonic drive-through, ordered a couple of burgers, and by the time they were finished—the cowboy wolfed his—Rose was awake and ready for her bottle. Together they managed the whole burp, diaper, comfort routine. Chilly as it was outside, Rose didn't mind being put back into her snug carrier for another nap.
"She's tired from traveling," Dillinger observed.
"Oh, traveling does that to everyone." Auburn got into the driver's seat and started the car.
"I meant, traveling through time."
She frowned. "Listen, let's play a little game, okay?"
"I don't really like games."
"Who was the most famous person of 1892?"
"I don't know." He shrugged. "Lord Tennyson died in October. I like his poems. Some of them had to do with the Knights of the Round Table. My wife enjoyed reading to me."
"Can you read?"
"Of course I can read!" He scowled at her. "It's a pleasure to have one's wife read aloud at fireside!"
"Sorry, sorry." Jeez, he could be sensitive about certain things. Auburn didn't know if Tennyson had died in 1892 or not, but Dillinger sounded pretty knowledgeable so she let it pass. "Who was the president?"
"Grover Cleveland was just reelected. Third term, though not consecutively. He came back to beat President Benjamin Harrison. Other than that, I didn't pay too much attention. We tend to set our own rules out West. Not sure what he knows about ranching, so I let him run the country and I run my ranch."
He could have studied 1892 and become well versed in the history. But why did he keep levitating?
What if he really was from another time? Auburn pulled out of the Sonic parking lot. She'd be a fool if she started believing this man's wild story, she told herself. She'd just discovered how painful it was when someone you trusted lied to you, and she had her guard up. Planned on keeping it up.
"So what really happened to your wife?"
Dillinger's heart clenched with familiar pain at the topic. He didn't want to talk about it. Still, he sensed genuine curiosity not borne from meanness in Auburn's question. "She died of pneumonia. I couldn't get the doctor out to our ranch fast enough. Don't know what he could have done, anyway. All those tinctures they give seem pretty useless to me. It started out as a cold, though I kept the house warm as toast. I never left her side." He shuddered, remembering the fever that had swept through Polly. He'd kept her wrapped, made sure not a draft entered the house. Tried to feed her soup he made himself.
Nothing had helped.
"I'm so sorry," Auburn said. "I can tell you miss her."
"I don't miss her so much that I'm unhinged, if that's what you're thinking."
"I didn't think that at all!"
"Sure you did," Dillinger said.
Auburn's eyes met his in the mirror, but he looked away before he could see the pity there. "She was an angel," he said, "and now she's with the angels. I really couldn't have kept her long. I realize that now."
"But now you have Rose," Auburn said.
"But for how long?" Dillinger asked, gently touching the soft, fine hairs on the baby's head. He was getting awfully attached to a child that wasn't his. He didn't even know why her mother had left her with him. No doubt the people of Christmas River would say he'd stolen her, the same way they'd accused him of murdering Polly.
"I hope she'll stay with me," he said quietly. "She's all I've got right now."
"Where would she go?" Auburn asked. "It's not like she can walk away."
Dillinger shook his head. Auburn couldn't possibly understand the demons that drove him, and why this little angel was his only connection to the world he knew.
Chapter Five
They got out of the car in Christy River just a few hours later. Dillinger shook his head. "This isn't it."
Auburn was disappointed. "Are you sure?"
"Yes." Even if everything wasn't much more modern, changed over and new, he would recognize his hometown. "The topography isn't even the same."
She held Rose tucked to her chest, surveying the road where they'd stopped. He liked watching her care for the baby, but he couldn't get over the astonishing sight of hundreds of cars flying along the highway. "We rode horses over land like this," he murmured.
She smiled at him. "You're an old-fashioned guy."
"I think I'm fairly progressive."
"What made you become a gunslinger?" she asked softly, and he forced himself to consider the question and give her an honest answer, even if he really didn't want to talk about a way of life he'd given up for Polly.
"I met one man who didn't believe in peaceful solutions," he said. "After that, it seemed I was offered plenty of jobs the law couldn't handle—or didn't want to handle—on their own. And the pay was good." He shrugged. "Let's get one of those burger things, on my nickel. Being a new father is making me hungry. I want to eat like Rose does, every three hours."
"We can grab something at that McDonald's," Auburn suggested, getting in the car. "It's pretty non-nutritious food, but I do love their French fries."
He got in the car, made sure Rose was secure in her seat.
"Would you ever tell me about how you did your job?" Auburn asked as their eyes met over Rose's carrier.
"No," he said quietly. "Some stories aren't good in the retelling."
She didn't believe he was from 1892. How could she understand anything about his life? Dillinger let Rose grab his finger, smiling when she held on to it with determination. "She's a tough little girl," he said. "A survivor."
Auburn started the car and pulled into traffic. He was surprised by how comfortable he was, letting her drive him around. Where he was from, the man usually handled the team of horses, drove the buckboard. He couldn't remember Polly driving anything, although she'd been an excellent horsewoman. Polly had been more delicate than Auburn. It was strange how Auburn had changed since she'd left her employment at the theater; she was softer, more feminine. He wondered about her family, why they didn't seem concerned about her being off on her own.
A sudden shrill ringing startled him and Rose.
"Sorry," Auburn said, "I have to take this. It's my sister, Cherie."
He watched, astonished, as she pulled a small black box from her purse and began talking into it. She listened, laughed, then talked some more. It was amazing. Everything one wanted to say could be done instantly, not in a letter or handwritten
message.
She put the object away. "She's telling everyone I've gone to Florida to think things over."
"Can I look at that thing?"
"This? It's an iPhone," she said, handing it to him. "Don't you have a cell phone?"
"No." He stared at it, amazed by all the strange markings. "And you can talk to someone on this."
"Anywhere in the world."
He blinked. "Anywhere?"
"Yes."
He handed it back to her. "How do you know how to reach someone?"
"Usually you know their number and have it in your phone list. If not, you can look it up in a phone book or on the Internet. There are maps of everything, anything you want to know at all, right here."
He considered that. "So, if there was such a thing as Christmas River, that phone would show it."
"Right. And there's nothing listed. I checked."
So the town name had changed. He was going to have to find out what the new name was, or be forever lost. "I have to know what happened to my town," he told her.
Auburn's gaze met his in the mirror. "Yeah. About that. I don't know how we will. Google didn't pick up anything when I looked it up. There's a San Christmas River in California."
"Texas," he stated, and she sighed.
"I'm sorry. It's not referenced."
There was no way a town suddenly never existed. "That doesn't make sense."
She pulled into the restaurant parking lot. "What do you want?"
"Nothing," he said slowly, and she turned around to look at him.
"You said you were famished, cowboy!"
"I was." Now he felt somewhat empty. Tired. This Christy River wasn't his home. He might never get back there. If it didn't exist now, no one would believe it had existed then.
He glared at Auburn, noticing her sympathetic expression. "Get some of those French fries you love and quit staring at me with that 'clearly he's crazy' look."
"Confused. Not crazy." She ordered two Cokes, two fries and a few burgers. "You said you traveled a lot—"
"Before I married Polly. After that, we stayed on the ranch together. I didn't travel so much that I forgot where I lived."
"Okay, okay." She handed him back food he didn't want, yet the grumbling of his stomach made him grab one of the French fry things she bragged about. "This is weird food."
"Yeah, well. Road treats." Auburn pulled away from the drive-through window. He couldn't believe someone would actually hand food through a window for a person to eat. When he was away from home, he ate at diners or homes where people served food for money. No one ever shoved it at him in a bag through a window.
"We could have used something like this on cattle drives."
"I don't know where to go now," Auburn murmured. "I was so sure I was onto something."
He drank the fizzy liquid, wrinkling his nose. "That's terrible!"
"Really? You don't like cola?"
He shuddered. "I prefer water from the spring on my ranch."
She turned to stare at him. "If you had a spring, do you recall the name of it?"
"It was just a spring on my property."
"Do you recall the county you lived in? What city was next to Christmas River?"
"We lived in Montwest County. The closest town was Chapel, but that was a good day's journey by horseback. Of course there were no trains out there, not these things that you have now." He'd been fascinated by the DART transportation as they'd left Dallas.
"So you lived west of Chapel?"
"East." He ate the burger. It wasn't as good as what he'd get in a chop house or even on a trail drive, but it passed as food.
"We could head that way if you like."
After a moment, he shook his head. "No. Go on to where you need to go."
"I really have no place to be. I'm just…seeing the country."
"How long will you run from your problems?" he asked, curious. Everybody avoided things, some longer than others. But a bad engagement seemed like something easily fixed.
On the other hand, he was definitely on the outs with Polly's family. He guessed there were some situations that couldn't be fixed peacefully.
"I'd like to give it two more weeks." Auburn turned south on the highway. "Then I'll go home and tell everyone I can't be the answer to their problems."
"Do you have brothers, or just a sister?"
"No other siblings. It's just me and Cherie."
He caught the wistful tone in her voice. "You wanted a bigger family?"
"Don't you have family?"
It had been only him. His parents had died young. He'd been raised on cattle drives by sympathetic ranchers who took an interest in him. He'd learned how to shoot, how to hunt, how to be a man. "No," he said, "not everyone wants one."
That was the untruth of the century. He'd wanted one with Polly desperately, but he wasn't about to confide that to Auburn. She'd look at him with those sympathetic eyes, and he didn't want that.
"I don't think I'll ever marry," Auburn said, sounding very cheerful about it. "Men are quite needy."
"You're just put out right now because your man wasn't what you wanted. All women want a family."
Her gaze settled on him. "That's a sexist remark."
"A what?"
"A…Something you say when you don't think much of the other person, most particularly a person of the opposite sex."
"I think a lot of you." He frowned. It was true. She was strong, independent. Caring. He admired those things in a woman. "You seem like a nice lady. Just a bit down on your luck."
"Anyway," she said, "in this day and age, one doesn't say things like all women want marriage, or a woman should only stay home and take care of children."
He was shocked. "What else would she want to do? Other than the queen of England, who is an exception. Queen Victoria must rule her country, of course."
Auburn considered his argument. She had to know he was correct, but he sensed her marshaling a new line of debate. He wasn't disappointed when she asked, "Well, how would you feel if I said all men are cheats?"
"It has nothing to do with me, so I wouldn't take offense." He shrugged. "Still, I guess you don't like me to say you want a family. Even though you do, I won't say it anymore."
She rolled her eyes. "It's best not to sound pigheaded when you talk to ladies. You can get a purse upside your head for that. I mean, I understand you, at least a little, but someone else you meet might not take remarks like that in stride."
Polly had never called him pigheaded. He was surprised Auburn would. Dillinger didn't know what to think about that, so he pulled his hat low on his forehead—the universal signal for leave me alone, and hoped Shakespeare's girl would take the hint and cease her tirade on how a man should treat a woman.
He wasn't certain he liked this new breed of lady.
And yet he wasn't totally sure he didn't.
* * *
TWO HOURS LATER, when she was certain that Dillinger was hiding under his hat and not sleeping, and when she could tell that little Rose was about send up the feeding alarm, Auburn pulled over for gas. "We should make a plan for the night, Dillinger."
Panic seemed to flare in his eyes as he released Rose from her carrier and cradled her to his chest. "What do you suggest?"
"Well, there are hotels along the highway, any number of them. We could do a bed-and-breakfast, but we don't have a reservation and those might be full, since it's the Christmas season."
"It's up to you."
She eyed the horizon. "How about that Hilton?"
"It's better than the ground."
He made a bottle—he was getting good at that—and began to feed Rose. Auburn smiled. "You two are becoming a great team. She hardly even cries now." The baby had no reason to; if she let out so much as a squeak, Dillinger was right there to attend to her needs. He'd gotten the crying thing down quickly, hadn't had to be told twice. Rose's security level had gone up greatly, knowing that her needs would be addressed rapidly.
Auburn got back inside the car. "I'll get us two rooms, close together, and we can—"
"One," he said. "One room."
She turned to look at him. "Why one?"
The Cowboy from Christmas Past Page 4