In The Service Of The Queen (The Gunsmith Book 1)

by C. K. Crigger

  “Nothing’s wrong with the lights. Come on, sugar, up you go.”

  “There is too something wrong.” Was he blind? “They keep flashing off and on.”

  He caught me as my knees buckled.

  The next thing I knew I was lying in my own bed, with the lights blazing steadily overhead and my head aching. Caleb had just finished pouring disinfectant over my mangled hand.

  I yelped.

  “Oh, barf,” I said. I felt rather faint again.

  “Don’t be such a baby.” He stripped off soiled latex gloves. A bloody fishhook shaped needle and a used syringe were on my nightstand.

  “I don’t much like needles, especially the ones someone pokes in me. My hand doesn’t hurt at all.” I tried waggling my fingers to show how far I’d progressed.

  “It’s numb. Believe me, you’ll know it’s there when the anesthetic wears off.” Caleb smiled crookedly at me. He must have been remembering the rough and ready surgery I’d performed on him in time past.

  He was right. I guess I am a baby. I know I sniveled like one for the next couple of minutes. I’d carried the weight of my magic forward, only to find the working exacted a greater price than I expected.

  Demanded payment in blood. So I paid—and Caleb didn’t have to. It had been worth of every drop to work the magic. And worth my tears, too, so I wept in relief that things turned out all right.

  “Feel better now?” He felt for the pulse in my wrist, pretending not to notice my red eyes and streaky face.

  “Sure.” I waited until he was satisfied with his count. “Really, it was no big deal. Passing out, I mean. I think I just got up too fast after being still for so long.”

  He laughed. “More than that, I think. And what do you mean,

  ‘being still for so long?’ That sounds crazy in view of the distinct memories I have of moving around plenty. The only times we sat still were the times we…” He paused, then asked, almost diffidently, “Do you have the same memories I have, I wonder, of the times we were supposedly sitting still?”

  I knew I did. Oh God, I thought, what if he regrets making love with me? I already seemed to feel the agony of his indifference.

  I clenched my teeth, afraid to look at him, concentrating instead, on pulling a loose thread from the stitching in my comforter. “I believe we both…participated on the same level.”

  “Participated on the same level? That’s a pretty cold attitude.” He sounded offended.

  “Plunged may be a better word,” I conceded, daring to meet his eyes. “More like diving off the edge of the world.”

  “Or like jumping into the heart of a whirlwind.”

  His tone made shivers run up my spine.

  “Yes,” I whispered, ready to confess that I loved him. I could hardly see because of the stars in front of my eyes. Caleb’s lips hovered a scant inch above mine. “Caleb…”

  I could have killed Scott when, with his usual sense of timing, he came to snatch Caleb away. “Come with me, Doc,” he demanded. “Dad wants a report and you’re the only one he’ll believe.”

  He winked at me from behind Caleb’s back so I knew he’d noticed the position we’d been in. I made a face at him, sure I hadn’t heard the last of it.

  Caleb came back later to tell me good night.

  “Don’t go,” I begged, when he would have given me a farewell wave from the doorway. “Stay the night.”

  He quirked his brow. “I don’t think your father would approve.

  Technically, we’ve only just met, you know.”

  “He…I…” I floundered to a stop. “How odd. I feel as if I’ve known you forever, yet when you come right down to it, I don’t know anything about you—about Caleb Deane. I don’t know what you like to eat, what kind of movies you watch, or the kind of music you listen to.”

  “Are those things important? I don’t know if the questions are even germane.” He entered the room and came over to the bed, picked up my hand, and peeked under the dressing. My whole hand throbbed to beat the devil.

  “Probably not.” I tugged at him until he sat beside me on the bed. It was an old bed, saggy and his weight pulled me up against him. “Not when I’ve cut you open. Not when you’ve sewn me up.”

  He gave a subdued murmur of laughter and hooked me closer with an arm around my waist. “That’s the important stuff.”

  “Well, yes, I think so.” I gave him a haughty stare.

  “If you insist.” His laughter died. “You know, this has been quite a trip. Who would ever have thought my old blunderbuss had a history like the one you’ve shown me?”

  “Did you get what you wanted out of it?” I asked. I hoped he wasn’t disappointed.

  “More than I ever expected.” His eyes danced. “More than I bargained for, to tell you the truth.”

  I knew he meant me.

  Caleb lifted me onto his lap and tilted my head up. “There’s just one thing…”

  “What?” I asked, mesmerized by the look in his green eyes.

  “This…”

  He kissed me, very thoroughly, until my toes curled and I found myself trying to melt into him. The yearning I felt for him was no different now than it had been in that other time, whether then the response had come from Belle’s body or mine. Belle’s heart or mine.

  Finally he laughed, just a little, took a deep breath, and set me aside as we heard my father walk down the hall to the bathroom.

  “Yup.” His voice trembled. “Your magic still works.”

  My magic? I felt like a feather ready to float away.

  “But isn’t there something odd about how I took Ethan Delaney’s part through the whole thing?” he asked. “Oh, I know it makes sense being as he was on scene all the time. I just can’t help thinking he ought to have been my ancestor instead of Jon Harriman. Somehow I find old Jonathan a bit less sympathetic of a character than his history seems to deserve.”

  “Jonathan Harriman? What are you talking about?” Caleb missed the quick, astonished look I sent him.

  “It just seems like I should’ve been the character of Jon Harriman, that’s all.”

  Didn’t he know, really? How could he not? He must have been so steeped in the accepted family genealogy that even now, with all he’d been through, he didn’t question the veracity of the old story.

  I hoped he was in for a pleasant surprise.

  “Not so odd,” I replied. “What makes you think Jonathan Harriman is your ancestor?”

  He started. “What do you mean? Of course he is. Tradition says so.

  The old family Bible says so. The guns came down from him.” After a second, he shook his head. “That’s stupid. Of course they didn’t. I know the guns were Ethan’s. So how did Jonathan end up with them?”

  “The right of survivorship?” I suggested.

  “Why would Ethan leave them to Jon?”

  “Perhaps he had no voice in the matter.”

  Caleb was quiet for a space of fifteen seconds or so. “Are saying Ethan died there? Is that why I can’t remember escaping?”

  I couldn’t answer, which was answer enough in itself.

  “Christ, Boothenay! Cutting it a little close, don’t you think? That’s why your hand is all torn up, isn’t it? Because you needed more blood—in a hurry.”

  I shrugged, hating to put into words just how negligent I’d been.

  How woefully full of shortcomings.

  “Anyway, if you’re telling me Ethan died there, then he can’t have been my ancestor. You can’t have it both ways.”

  “You’re forgetting someone,” I said softly. “You’re forgetting Belle.”

  He went very still. After a while he said, “Jesus,” with as great a reverence as if he were praying.

  Now he was catching on. “I don’t remember using any birth control, do you? The thought never even crossed my mind, as if I never knew such a thing existed. In all honesty, I think this one act was the sole object of the magical interface. I think I was there so Belle could
reach Ethan through my link with the guns. And you were there, because there is a part of Ethan in you.”

  “But why? Why put herself through such pain? Why put us through it?”

  “She failed to save him the first time. She wanted one more chance.” I understood her motivation.

  “Which failed again.”

  “Yes,” I said sadly. “I guess so.”

  His arms closed around me until nothing could have wormed a way between us. After a while I said, “I lied to you, you know. I told you you’d have fun.”

  He rubbed his cheek against mine. “Half-lied,” he corrected.

  “Maybe someday I’ll get around to thinking it was fun. You also said it would be interesting. And so it was.”

  Moonlight reflected off the snow outside. Moonlight bright enough to light my way across the shop after I locked the door behind Caleb.

  The room was cold—cold and silent.

  Caleb’s heirloom guns lay where we’d left them, nothing more than old metal and wood. The blunderbuss was dry, I found, when I touched the barrel with the tip of a finger on my undamaged hand. Inert, without even a trace of residual magic. Just another gun.

  Power lingered in the pistols, but this time I knew the source. I won’t have to go back in time to discover its history. Why should I?

  It’s indelibly printed on my own memory.

  This time, the power is my story.

  Mine and Caleb’s.

  A Look at Black Crossing by C.K. Crigger

  A woman's revenge and a man's honor meet on a collision course.

  Isaac Gilpatrick witnesses the killing of old Marshall Blodgett, and when his mother Ione is threatened with death - or worse - he is intimidated into remaining silent. But the guilt he carries wears at Isaac's nerves, until he can bear it no longer and vows to put the information into the new marshal's hands.

  Unfortunately, Marshal TJ Osgood arrives in town too late. He finds Isaac silenced for good after a crooked judge ordered him hanged. Now, with an under-aged deputy and a hound dog as his only allies, Osgood must sort out the truth, protect the bereaved Ione Gilpatrick, and bring a rough bunch of backwoods timber thieves to justice. That is, if Ione doesn't beat him to it....

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  C.K. Crigger

  About the Author

  C.K. Crigger was born and raised in North Idaho on the Coeur d’Alene Indian Reservation, and currently lives with her husband, three feisty little dogs and an uppity Persian cat in Spokane Valley, Washington.

  Imbued with an abiding love of western traditions and wide-open spaces, Crigger writes of free-spirited people who break from their standard roles.

  Her short story, Aldy Neal’s Ghost, was a 2007 Spur finalist. Black Crossing, won the 2008 EPIC Award in the historical/western category. Letter of the Law was a 2009 Spur finalist in the audio category.

  Find C.K. Crigger Online At:

  citylightspress.com/authors/c-k-crigger/