by Bess McBride
Jeremiah’s chin tightened. He searched the road ahead for dust but saw none. He estimated that the kidnappers would reach Tombstone in an hour at the trot he had witnessed. Richard and his men galloped at more than twice the speed, and Jeremiah fervently hoped they would soon overtake the kidnappers, hopefully before they reached Tombstone and vanished in the city streets or beyond to any number of roads leading east, west or south.
The ride seemed interminable, and Jeremiah’s heart dropped to his stomach when he saw the first sign for Tombstone, five miles ahead. A cloud of dust wafted up to the sky in the near distance, and he urged his horse forward.
“There! Something is going on there!” he yelled.
Elias caught up with him, and together they raced forward.
The reverberation of gunshots sounded even over the animals’ hooves, and Elias shouted. “Hold up!”
“No! No!” Jeremiah yelled back. Dust flew everywhere now, blocking out any view of what was occurring.
“Sarah!” he shouted.
He found his horse slowed and Elias grabbing at the horse’s bridle.
“Stop, Mr. Stone! You can’t ride into what you can’t see. Do you want to get her killed? Stop!”
Jeremiah pulled up on the reins. The sound of gunfire terrified him for Sarah’s safety. What if she had already been shot?
“Get off your horse. Come on!” Elias said, no longer shouting.
They dismounted and led their animals forward.
“There ain’t nowhere to hide out here,” Elias said, now keeping his voice low.
Shots rang out sporadically, each one possibly killing Sarah. Jeremiah wished he hadn’t asked for help but knew he needed the help to save Sarah.
Dust continued to block their view, and Jeremiah had no idea what was happening. It seemed likely that Richard and his men fired upon the kidnappers, but in what direction and where exactly, he could not tell.
“If she’s been shot—” Jeremiah muttered.
“Don’t think that,” Elias said. “Let’s just keep moving forward.”
“Give up now and save your rotten lives!” a voice rang out from somewhere in front.
Jeremiah thought it might have been Richard’s voice.
“No chance,” someone else yelled from another direction. They seemed to be on opposite sides of the road.
“Hold up, Mr. Stone,” Elias said. “We don’t want to walk right into the middle of that.”
Two more shots rang out, and Jeremiah and Elias instinctively ducked their heads, though Jeremiah still could not tell in which direction the bullets were fired. He didn’t think anyone could see them since he couldn’t see anything in the dust, but he worried that stray rounds would hit the horse and mule.
“Get her!” a voice rang out. “Get her, Del!”
“Sounds like Miss Chilton’s got away,” Elias hissed.
“Where is she?” Jeremiah asked, fear gripping him.
Out of the dust, a figure with her skirts hitched high ran, looking over her shoulder. Beyond, a man chased her. Jeremiah recognized him as one of the robbers.
Jeremiah reacted instinctively, jumping onto his horse and racing forward. He passed Sarah’s stunned face and rammed his horse into Del, knocking him onto his back. He reined in the horse and waited, but Del didn’t get up.
“Del is down!” he yelled into the dust, hoping Richard would hear.
“You hear that! Give up!” someone shouted.
Jeremiah turned his horse around and rode back to where Sarah huddled against Elias. He slid off the horse and pulled Sarah into his arms.
“You’re alive!” he murmured against her hair. “You’re alive!”
Sarah started sobbing, the first time he had ever seen her cry.
Another shot rang out.
“That got him,” a voice yelled. “Go get the other one.”
“Hush, my love. You’re safe now. You’re safe.”
“How?” Sarah sobbed. “How could I ever be safe here? How can anyone?” She sagged, and Jeremiah held her upright.
“I am so sorry,” he whispered. “You will leave soon,”
Rather than stop crying, Sarah sobbed even harder. Over her head, Jeremiah saw two of the ranch hands grab up a still-unconscious Del and haul him off. The dust cloud thinned, and he saw horses milling as Richard and his men tied up both kidnappers and threw them over the backs of their horses. It seemed Larry had probably survived being shot, a fact that Jeremiah didn’t care about at all.
Elias climbed onto Fester and rode into the scene of the earlier gunfight.
“Sarah?” Jeremiah asked. “You can leave tomorrow, and you’ll be safe, if not in your time, then at least in a civilized city.”
“Stop talking to me,” Sarah sobbed against his jacket.
Jeremiah obeyed, unsure what he could say. Clearly, he had to let her go. She did not belong in his time. She was miserably unhappy, and rightly so. He could name upward of a dozen women who had not been robbed, chased through a dark desert or been kidnapped. In fact, he knew no other woman who had undergone such.
Elias rode back to them. “That Larry fellow is still alive. They’re going to take them straight down to Tombstone. They were going to end up there anyway.”
“Good,” Jeremiah said. “Let me get Sarah up on the horse.”
“No, no, no,” Sarah cried. “Not another horse.”
“But, Sarah, we have to get you back. You cannot walk.”
“Will she ride Fester?” Elias asked. “She liked Sadie pretty well.”
“Fester, yes, Fester,” Sarah said. “I’m sorry. I’m so sore.”
“I understand, my love,” Jeremiah said.
“Do you want to swap and ride Fester?” Elias asked Jeremiah.
Jeremiah looked down at Sarah’s swollen face.
“No,” she said simply, as if answering for him.
Jeremiah swallowed hard as he spoke to Elias. “No, that won’t be necessary.”
Elias maneuvered Fester close, and Jeremiah lifted Sarah by the waist up to the mule’s back, behind Elias. She wrapped her arms around the skinny man and laid her face against his back.
And so Jeremiah rode five hours back to Benson, watching the love of his life sleeping on the back of another man.
Chapter Nineteen
“Time to climb down, Sarah,” Jeremiah said.
Sarah lifted her eyelids with effort to see Jeremiah standing by her leg, reaching up for her. She lifted her face, wet from sweat, and looked at Elias.
“Hello there,” she said groggily. “I don’t know how I didn’t fall off.”
“I held on to you, miss,” he said. His lined face looked exhausted.
“Thank you for everything,” she said, reaching for Jeremiah’s shoulders as he helped her slide down in front of the hotel.
Thankfully, Jeremiah hung on to her or she would have slumped down to the ground. Her knees were weak, and she was exhausted. She didn’t know how long they had traveled, but it seemed as if they had all arrived back to Benson in one piece.
“Thank you,” she said to Jeremiah.
Elias took Fester and Jeremiah’s horse and moved off, probably toward the stables, leaving Sarah an unfettered view of the train station. When Jeremiah would lead her into the hotel, she hesitated.
“I have to get some money from the safe,” Jeremiah said in a gruff voice.
Sarah looked up at him, searching his face, his eyes
“You called me ‘my love,’” she said.
He pressed his lips together and looked over her head toward the train station. “You are,” he said simply.
Though Jeremiah kept an arm around her waist, she swayed at his words.
“I love you,” he said. “I will always love you, no matter where you go, no matter where you are.”
She struggled to breathe. “Really?”
“Really,” he said. “I know I have to let you go, but I think it might just kill me.”
Passersby stared at them,
but Sarah ignored them, focusing on Jeremiah’s glittering dark eyes.
“I don’t want you to die,” she whispered, a smile playing at the corner of her lips. She had to lighten the moment. It was far too intense for the health of her heart.
“I don’t want to laugh,” Jeremiah said, “so I won’t join you.”
“I’m not laughing at you, Jeremiah, or me. I just think my own heart will stop if I don’t break the intensity of this moment.”
“I do not want it to break.”
“That’s not what I meant,” she said hastily. “I can’t breathe.”
Jeremiah shifted his arm around her waist, but he didn’t release her. “Is that better?”
“No,” she said, tears running down her face.
A look of horror crossed his face. “Are you in pain, my love?”
Sarah wiped at her face. “Yes, but it’s emotional.”
Jeremiah nodded.
“If you find you cannot travel forward in time, please telegraph me immediately, and I will come for you.”
“I know you will,” Sarah said.
Jeremiah’s mouth worked, and she saw that he swallowed hard several times. He finally spoke. “I would provide you a good life here, Sarah. I would take care of you and do my best to keep you safe. I know I failed to protect you this time, but I have learned. You would want for nothing, and I would adore you.”
Sarah’s knees quivered, and she struggled for air. There was plenty of oxygen, but she couldn’t seem to get it into her lungs.
“Oh, Jeremiah. You’re breaking my heart.”
“And you are breaking mine.”
“What can we do?”
“I have given you the solution. Stay with me...forever.”
“I can’t,” Sarah repeated like a mantra.
“Why? Why must you leave?”
“I don’t know...I don’t know. I just know I have to.” She pulled from his embrace but still had to hold on to his arm for support.
“Why? Is life so much better in your time? Is it that you wish to live in Virginia? I will sell the hotel and move to Virginia with you.”
Sarah looked at the beautiful exterior facade of the hotel. “No! You can’t! You can’t let this hotel go. I know what happens to it. Please don’t abandon it. Maybe that’s why I was sent back in time. To tell you what happens to your beautiful building. Maybe it was my job to tell you to protect it, to leave it in trust to people who would always care for it.”
Jeremiah stared at her before turning to look at the hotel. “It is a building, Sarah. Nothing more. You were sent back for me to love. I am certain of that. Your presence here has nothing to do with a pile of sticks and bricks.”
Sarah turned to look at the train station. Henry had said he only had one ticket left for the following day. That had probably been sold. She had already accepted that she might have to wait a few more days. Jeremiah didn’t know that. What had happened to her acceptance?
“It is wrong of me to plead with you, certainly more than once,” Jeremiah said, “but I cannot help myself. I sense that you’re uncertain about leaving. How can I convince you that we are meant to be together?”
“Time,” Sarah said almost immediately. “The years that we might live together would be the only thing that would convince me we were meant to be together. I don’t even know you. You don’t know me. I’ve only been here a few days.”
“Then give us that time,” Jeremiah said. “Trains come and go. Another one will come by next week, next month, next year. Give us that time to know one another better. I don’t need more time to know that I love you though.”
Sarah looked toward the train station again. She couldn’t seem to let go of one idea and pick up another, as she had earlier. It seemed as if being robbed and kidnapped had added up to a lot of doubt. “Can I just go over to the train station? Can I just go over there and think about what I’m going to do?”
“Yes, of course,” Jeremiah said. “Do you want me to go with you?”
Sarah shook her head.
“Let me go get some money,” he said. “Come, lean against the wall.”
“I’m okay. I have to walk over there anyway. I can manage.”
“Very well. I will return.”
Sarah wobbled a bit when he left but waited on the boardwalk, staring over at the train station. Jumbled chaotic thoughts ran through her mind, but she tried to focus on the station, just the station. What if Henry still had a ticket? What if he didn’t? What should she do?
Time travel was for the adventurous. That wasn’t her. She was a staid, stay-at-home quiet sort of gal. Except for the train trip. That had been a spur-of-the-moment thing that surprised even her. Someone else should have the opportunity to travel in time, to live in the past. Maybe a history buff or an Old West aficionado. None of those fit her. She worked on her reasons for leaving until Jeremiah returned.
Jeremiah...real, warm, handsome, kind, spunky, brave—her nineteenth-century man. He was real. He wasn’t some historical figure. He was alive and well, and she was privileged to have him love her.
Jeremiah handed her fifty dollars. “I will wait here for you.”
“Here?” Sara asked, looking around at the boardwalk. “I’m sure you want to go inside and take a bath, don’t you?” Sarah said. “Before you go over and see the doctor? Which you need to do after what you’ve been through.”
Jeremiah smiled, and the look of yearning was unmistakable in his eyes. No man had ever looked at her like that before.
“I will wait here for you,” he repeated.
She still had time to tell him that there might be a chance she couldn’t get a ticket. Why didn’t she tell him? She didn’t know. She did the next thing she could do. She stepped off the boardwalk to cross the street. Negotiating a few wagons, she reached the other side of the road and looked over her shoulder to see Jeremiah leaning against the wall, waiting for her. She waved, made her way toward the station door and entered.
Henry, an iconic fixture in the station, looked up. “Miss Chilton!” he exclaimed, his improbably black mustache widening into a smile. “I heard what happened to you. Are you all right?”
“Yes, thank you,” Sarah said. “I have money. Do you still have a seat?” She waved the bills in the air as she crossed the perennially empty depot lobby to reach the counter.
“Well, that depends. Which way are you going?”
“East, Henry! To Virginia!”
“Then yes, I do still have one seat to Chicago,” he said. “You’ll transfer there. What was your final destination?”
“Richmond, Virginia. Tomorrow, right?”
“Yes, ma’am. As far as I know.”
“What do you mean ‘as far as’ you know?”
“Well, there are never any guarantees in life, right?” Henry asked.
Sarah shook her head. “In life? That sounds very philosophical. How about we just focus on the train?”
Henry smiled again. “Same thing. Trains are like life, aren’t they? They do fine sometimes. Sometimes they have problems—they’re on time, they’re late, they’re boring, they’re an adventure and—”
“Henry!” Sarah interrupted. “Are you going to sell me a train ticket to Virginia or not?”
“Sure, Miss Chilton. I heard the track should be repaired by tonight. Let me get my ticket book.”
Sarah relaxed and waited while Henry did his thing...which took much longer than Sarah thought it should. He seemed to take his sweet time looking for his ticket book and then writing out the ticket.
“That will be fifty-one dollars, Miss Chilton.”
“Fifty-one?” she exclaimed. “You said it was forty-two.”
“Did I?” he asked. “Got a telegram here this morning. Fares went up. Such a shame.”
“But I’ve only got fifty dollars!”
Henry raised a bushy gray brow. “Oh dear,” he said, an expression that didn’t sound promising.
“It’s only a dollar, Henry,” Sara
h pleaded.
“I know, but the fare is fifty-one dollars, Miss Chilton.”
Sarah eyed him in shock. “It’s only a dollar, Henry,” she repeated.
“A lot of money these days,” he said. “I’m very sorry. Maybe you could come back tomorrow morning? I’m closing up in a few minutes.”
“You’re always closing up, Henry!” Sarah snapped. “Can you just wait? Jeremiah is waiting across the street. He’ll give me another dollar.”
“I sure wish I could, Miss Chilton, but I’ve got to get home. The missus is waiting on me. We’re going to the hotel for dinner!”
The irony was not lost on Sarah. “I’ll be back in the morning, Henry. What time does the train leave again?”
“Ten a.m.”
“I’ll be back before that!”
“Station opens at nine thirty a.m. tomorrow.”
“Henry,” Sarah said, a whole lot of disappointment in her tone.
“Good afternoon, Miss Chilton.”
“Bye,” Sarah huffed and turned to stalk out of the station. She rounded the corner to see Jeremiah right where she had left him, leaning against the wall of his beautiful hotel.
She crossed the road again, and he straightened as she approached. He searched her hands, and she knew he was looking for the ticket. Hope sprang into his eyes, and Sarah marveled that his face was so expressive.
She shook her head. “The price of the ticket went up, seemingly overnight. Now, it’s fifty-one dollars. Do you mind loaning me another dollar? Henry wouldn’t sell me the ticket without the extra dollar.”
Jeremiah’s face fell, and his shoulders slumped. “Then you did try to purchase a ticket?”
Sarah nodded, though guilt felt like it would swallow her whole. “I did.”
“I see,” he said.
“I’m so sorry, Jeremiah,” Sarah said with a catch in her voice.
“Do not be,” he said. “Yes, of course I will give you the extra money.”
“Henry has closed the station yet again, so I won’t need it right away.”
“I think I will go bathe and rest for a bit,” Jeremiah said. He turned to enter the hotel.
“I’m so sorry, Jeremiah,” Sarah said again.
He shook his head and opened the door.
Sarah, on the point of following, heard her name.