Dream Of Echoes

by Karen C. Webb

  She started the fire while I gathered firewood before we realized those two Indian boys were gone. They had crept away in the night like a couple of, well…Indians, I guess. I saw Kate’s eyes getting misty when she realized they were gone, but then she turned her back for a bit, getting coffee and breakfast going on the fire.

  I was helping her hitch up the team, when all of a sudden the horse I was holding—Tuck—I think, reared straight up in the air, letting out a squeal that curled the hair on the back of my neck. He yanked the reins from my hands and took off like a shot. Kate grabbed her horse’s rein and led him in circles, trying to quiet him.

  Then a big mountain lion came over the hill about a hundred yards away from us, his eyes intent on the horse that had ran away.

  Kate handed me the reins of her horse and ran to the wagon, emerging with a rifle. It was an old musket variety and it looked too big for her to handle. The barrel was so long it looked like she could hardly hold it. I looked toward the river where the panicked horse was running straight toward it, with the mountain lion closing the distance. It seemed too far for a shot, but I heard her rifle boom and the other horse almost ripped the reins from my hand. Sure enough, the kick from that big, long rifle set her right down on her ass. As the report of the rifle echoed off the river and surrounding hills, I saw first the mountain lion fall, then the horse went head over hills, stirring up dust as the huge body landed, half in and half out of the water. Had her bullet went through the mountain lion and into the horse?

  Chapter 6

  Kate had scrambled to her feet and was running down the hill toward the river, damn near as fast as the horse had, her skirts swishing around her legs until I thought they would trip her. A couple of Indian men from the village had already come over, they were kneeling over the horse and shaking their heads. The horse lifted his head to look at them, but didn’t try to rise.

  Kate reached the horse and dropped to her knees, flinging the rifle to the ground as I made my way down the hill, leading the other horse slowly along with me.

  Before I could reach her, I saw her lift the rifle, aim it at the horse’s head and pull the trigger. I stopped, the horse yanking back, almost ripping the reins from my hand again. I reached Kate finally and saw her put her head down on the horse’s neck as she cried.

  The two Indian men had turned away from her and went discreetly back to their village.

  I squatted on the ground beside her and put my arm haltingly around her. She turned and put her head into my chest and I wrapped both arms around her and held her as she cried. I knew what it was like to lose an animal you loved. My dog Skip was around for most of my childhood. Losing him had been like losing a family member and a best friend at the same time.

  “His leg was broken, I had to do it,” she said between sobs.

  “I know,” I whispered into her hair. I rested my chin on top of her head as I held her. Her slim body shook with sobs against my chest.

  Before long, the Indians returned with help. There were about six men altogether from their village. Kate backed away, turning her back at wiping at her eyes. I jumped in too as the men grabbed the horse’s forelegs and drug it from the water. We thanked them for their help, then with a final look at her friend Tuck, Kate started slowly back up the hill.

  Now we had a heavy wagon and only one horse. We stood there staring at it, neither of us speaking. “Maybe we can trade with the Indian’s for another horse,” I finally suggested.

  “Sure, except the only thing I have left worth trading would be the wagon itself.” She stared at the wagon, lost in thought. “I think my father left a packsaddle in there.” She climbed into the wagon and I heard her rummaging around, mumbling to herself.

  She emerged a few minutes later with an old wooden packsaddle. I held the horse while she strapped it on, then she went back into the wagon and started tossing things out.

  “Food and clothes, that’s all we will be able to carry,” she said as she climbed out and stood amidst the bundles she’d thrown out. “Not that there’s much more in there, we left my mother’s bureau by the trail in Kansas because the wagon was too heavy to ford a river. Then her trunk was smashed when the wagon overturned with my late husband. All I really have left is my mother’s jewelry box. I wonder if I should try to trade it to the Indians?”

  “No,” I told her. “Bring it,” I told her. “You never know if you might still need to trade it later on. And besides, it’s not that far to the mission is it?”

  “No. I don’t think so. It’s hard to remember exactly. The wagon train moved so slowly, and the days just seem to run together after so long on the trail.”

  She turned away and climbed back into the wagon, coming back out after a minute with a bundle of rawhide strips in her hand.

  “What’re those for?”

  “We can use them for tying our bedrolls on the packsaddles. I don’t have any rope so…you never know, they may come in handy.”

  We packed the food into the panniers that hung from the packsaddle. I helped her roll the clothes and her jewelry box into our sleeping blankets and we tied them onto the saddle with the rawhide strips and started on our way, leading the horse behind us.

  “You know,” I said as a thought occurred to me, “those Indians down there might want your wagon. Maybe they’ll be willing to trade.”

  The wagon was still standing at our campsite, not far off the trail.

  “Hmm,” Kate stopped as she thought about it. “I guess it wouldn’t hurt to ask.”

  We led Nip back down to the Indian village and asked around until we found a man who spoke some English. Kate offered him a trade of the wagon and he translated to the other men standing around him. The men went through their village and came back with an assortment of trade goods. One man brought a haunch of venison, one brought needles and thread and a small pouch of black powder for Kate’s rifle and another had what I thought was potatoes, but Kate said was Camas bulbs.

  The Indian man nodded and smiled at me. “Camas,” he said, “roast in coals.”

  “Okay.” I nodded my thanks to him, wondering what the hell was a Camas bulb?

  We gathered up the goods she’d traded for and added them to the packsaddle while the men went up the hill. Those Indian men grabbed the tongue of that wagon and pulled it down to that village themselves. Damn, but these people were tough. I mean, it probably didn’t weigh as much as a car, but they also didn’t have nice, smooth pavement to drag it over.

  We only made a few miles that day. The horse, Nip, had sore feet. He limped along as if he were in pain, and I felt bad for him. Hell, I felt his pain—my feet hurt, too. His front hooves looked like they worn down to the quick from the almost two thousand mile journey he’d made.

  “He needs shoes,” I told Kate. “At least on the front.”

  “I know,” she hung her head as if ashamed. “They were never supposed to pull that wagon,” she said angrily. “If my father had any idea what this journey is like, I’m sure he would never have made the decision to come.”

  “I’m sorry you’ve lost so much.” I said awkwardly. I put my hand on her arm as I said it and she brought her hand up into mine. We continued on silently for a bit, her small hand warm in mine. I thought about what it must have been like to make the journey she’d made, walking and riding in a rough wagon. No air conditioning, no running water. Maybe I would have paid more attention in school, if they had showed more of what it was really like then—back now—instead of just stating dates and facts.

  When we stopped to make camp, I realized Nip wasn’t the only one with sore feet. When I tried to pull those oversize boots off, I realized I had blisters on both feet. I sucked in a breath as I pulled each one off. It felt like someone was holding a lit match to my feet. Kate brought some sort of salve from one of her packs and applied to both my feet. I leaned back on my elbows and relaxed as she worked on them. Her touch was so gentle and tender, I think I drifted off to sleep.

  I woke up
shivering a while later, the cold, damp ground had seeped through my whole body. It had grown dark while I dozed and I saw Kate sitting by the fire, stirring a pot bubbling over it.

  “Oh, you’re awake,” she said. “Come and have some soup.”

  I crawled slowly to my feet, every muscle in my body stiff and complaining. I was used to sitting behind the wheel of a truck all day, not walking for hours in the wilderness and chasing after runaway horses. I saw she had wrapped pieces of cloth around my sore feet.

  “Thank you for that,” I told her, pointing at my feet.

  “You’re very welcome, John Baker.”

  I slipped my feet gingerly back into the over-large boots, keeping the cloth in place. I tried a few steps, slowly at first, then quicker as I realized the pain was almost gone.

  “You worked miracles,” I told her happily as I sat down beside her.

  She giggled. “Not miracles really, but I’m happy it helps.”

  She hadn’t brought much for dishes so we shared the soup straight from the pot. She had broken up pieces of jerky, potatoes and onions into her soup and she brought out a couple of cold, hard biscuits. I was starving and the food tasted wonderful.

  She said they had traded the Indians at Grande Ronde for peas, onions and potatoes. “Although there’s not much left now,” she finished.

  “Well, it’s delicious,” I answered.

  She had also roasted some of the Camas bulbs and they were wonderful and steaming hot when she pulled them from the coals. They tasted much like a baked sweet potato, only a little stringier.

  “If we had anything worth trading for, we could have got some more horses at Grande Ronde. Their Cayuse ponies were some of the fattest, prettiest horses I’ve ever seen.”

  “Mmm. Were there a lot of native Americans there?” She gave me a confused look. “Indians,” I said.

  “Oh…yes. The Indian women were trading their beadwork with the women, while the men traded horses and oxen and supplies.”

  I thought about all the signs I had read along the highway over the years, depicting the journey these folks had made. I had never given it much thought when I stopped into different rest areas across Oregon, but I certainly did now. It was unbelievable to be looking at it firsthand now. Well…more than looking at it. I guess I was living it, too.

  When I finished eating, I leaned back against a log with my cup of coffee. The hot soup was bringing some life back to my tired body.

  “Where are you from, John?”

  I looked up at her across the fire and when our eyes met, she blushed and lowered her gaze. Her face glowed orange in the flames and she looked just beautiful.

  “I’m sorry, I hope I’m not being too forward. I was only curious,” she said.

  “No, not at all. I grew up in the Yakima Valley and now I live in Seattle.”

  “What do you do there? For a living, I mean.”

  “I drive a truck.” Shit! It had slipped out before I realized it. I must be tired, or else I had been distracted, thinking how pretty she looked in the flames.

  “You drive a what? A team?”

  My mind was racing now. Do I tell her the truth or make something up? I stared at her across the fire for a long minute, and then I just started talking. “I’m from the year 2010. I jumped off a bridge the other night when the autumn time change began and I landed here.”

  I watched her face go from shock to horror to disbelief.

  “I don’t believe you,” she said, beginning to look angry.

  Hell, I can’t say that I blamed her. I didn’t believe me, either.

  “I swear it’s the truth,” I told her. “I was angry and hurt and confused and I jumped in my car and drove until I saw that bridge. Then I jumped. Or let go and fell backwards, to be exact.”

  “What did you say? A caa...r?” She stretched the word out, as if she needed to get a feel for it. Her face had softened, but only a little. “Is this why you speak a little strangely at times and say words I don’t understand?”

  “Yeah, I’m sure it is,” I laughed softly now as I saw comprehension sinking into her face. I fished around in my pants pocket and found the change I still had there. “There you go.” I held up a shiny quarter. It was one of the new ones with the name of a state on the back.

  She held it up by the light of the fire, turning it this way and that until she had read every bit of it. “It says 2009,” her voice was now filled with wonder, she sounded young, almost childlike with awe. When she’d finished perusing it, she looked back over at me. “I can’t believe this is really happening. We must not tell anyone of this. Most people are afraid of what they don’t understand.”

  “Are you afraid?” She stared at me and our gazes locked, her blue eyes had an amused and excited sparkle, but I didn’t see fear.

  “No. You won’t hurt me, John Baker. I can see it in your eyes. The kind of man you are. Or at least the kind of man you would like to be.”

  As I stared into her eyes, I was pretty sure this was one of the defining moments of my life. Jumping off a bridge and falling back through time hadn’t affected me the way this girl had. Stacey? Stacey who? My brokenhearted past seemed like a hundred years ago.

  “Two thousand and ten,” she was saying. “One hundred and fifty-seven years into the future. Can you describe it for me?”

  “Can it wait til morning?” the long walk and the heat of the fire was putting me to sleep. My eyes felt like they had sand in them and I didn’t think I could keep them open much longer. Besides, where would I begin? The differences in her time and mine were just too great. I imagined for her, it would be like hearing about a different world, a different galaxy even.

  “Okay, John Baker,” she said. “But tomorrow, tell me everything.”

  “You got it,” I mumbled. I was about to fall asleep right there on the cold, damp ground.

  We added an extra log on the fire and made our beds beside it. The temperature had dipped and I told her it was probably snowing up in the Cascades. We didn’t have the wagon for shelter now; if it rained or snowed, we would be exposed to the elements. I pulled the heavy blanket over me and immediately drifted off.

  I woke up shivering sometime late in the night; the fire had gone out, the moon had set, and it was pitch black out there. I jumped and damned near peed my pants when I felt the blanket lift and a warm body slide in next to mine. Then I heard Kate giggle.

  “I’m sorry, John, but I’m freezing.” She was shivering uncontrollably.

  I sat up and pulled her blankets over us too, then lay back down on my side and wrapped my arms around her, pulling her against my chest. I rested my chin on top of her head and slept contentedly until the sun woke us, shining in our eyes.

  “Close the blinds and come back to bed,” I said sleepily before I realized where I was.

  Kate giggled and sat up, throwing the covers off me. “Are you really from the future?” She still had the quarter in her hand, she must have slept with the damn thing. Now she was holding it up in the early morning light, studying it closely.

  “No, I’m from the present and I traveled back to the past,” I told her. “That means you are from the past.”

  She looked at me, her blue eyes dancing happily. “Now you’re in my present, which means you’re from the future. It’s like a riddle.”

  I chuckled at her as I started the fire and made coffee. Had this little vixen actually crawled into my bed or had I dreamed that? Now, I was wondering if I had slept through an opportunity. Damn it, why did I have to be so tired last night?

  “How did you get here?” she was asking, holding the steaming coffee cup I had given her near her face, tendrils of steam drifting up around her.

  “I really don’t know,” I told her. “Like I said, I jumped off the bridge and woke up here.”

  She stared at me with a serious look to her blue eyes, as if she was still trying to figure out if I was being honest.

  “I swear it’s the truth,” I told her. “I’
m as confused by it as you.”

  “Then it’s not something that happens a lot in your time?”

  “No. As far as I know, time travel has always been proven to be impossible.”

  “Well, if it is true, then I guess that theory has been proven false.”

  We chewed on some cold jerky with our coffee, then loaded up her sore-footed horse. He was some better, but still moving gingerly on his front feet, taking small, painful steps.

  “I have an idea,” I said. “Do you have more of the cloth you used on my feet?”

  “Yes, there’s an old sheet.” She pulled it from her blankets and handed it over. I tore strips from it and wrapped Nip’s front hooves, tying the sheet in a small knot just above the hoof. The horse stood patiently while I worked, then he took a few awkward steps, lifting each foot high like he was prancing, until he began to get used to his bandages. The stones in the trail were easier for him to negotiate and soon he was walking at a more normal pace.

  “What gave you that idea? I never would have thought of putting cloth on a horse’s feet.” Kate asked curiously.

  “Saw it on a TV show,” I answered without thinking.

  “What’s a TV show?”

  “How can I describe it? Um… a TV is a box with moving pictures in it.”

  She was staring at me, unbelieving.

  “Of course, you gave me the idea also.”

  Kate’s brow wrinkled as she looked at me.

  “My feet feel so much better with the cloth you wrapped them in.”

  “Aah…” She seemed placated.

  “We also have machines that have replaced the horse for transportation,” I told her.

  “Really? Are they any faster?” She still seemed to be having trouble believing me.

  “How many miles a day did you make coming across this trail from back east?”

  “Usually between ten and twenty.”

  “Well, I usually make five or six hundred miles a day in my big truck.”