Chapter 3
CHAPTER 3
Max waited until the third man—Evil Prince Hugo—had ridden away to the south, then he turned in the direction the young woman had gone and started walking.
He probably should have stayed where he was. Clearly, he was suffering from hallucinations. Clearly, he’d hit his head on something in the river, or had swallowed too much water, or mud. He’d never hallucinated Evil Prince Hugo before.
And Nelson would already have mounted an all-hands search for him the instant it was clear Max had been washed downriver.
But a chivalrous impulse drove him to warn the young woman, and to provide her assistance against the men his ancestor had sent after her.
His ancestor.
He shook his head. It sounded insane. Perhaps he was unconscious, in an unlikely dream. How else would Hugo be there?
And perhaps Hugo’s presence in this dream was not so unlikely. Max had reread the old stories about his evil ancestor before he’d flown to Wyoming for the dedication. He hadn’t wanted to be blindsided by some local townsperson or some blogger with taunts about the Evil Prince.
The morning grew hotter as he walked, the sun moving higher in the sky, Max’s stiff, wet jeans steaming a bit as they dried. The mud on his skin dried, too, contracting as it did, mud dropping in clods from his T-shirt and arms, every step through the long grass that covered the hillsides a squishing affair in the new cowboy boots he’d bought for the dedication.
Max had dealt with worse. Much worse.
And truly, the land was a beauty. Birds sang. The pine scent was strong in the fresh air. The rocky, hilly terrain became more and more challenging the farther north he went, just the kind of challenge he liked, and after a while, he realized the walk had cleared his head. The dizziness had faded.
An hour later—at least, it was an hour according to his watch, but the watch had been as flood-drenched as the rest of him, and he wasn’t quite sure he could trust it—the beautiful young woman—Miss Calliope Victoria James of the House of Sky Top—came into view again astride her magnificent black stallion.
He was crossing a high, flat stretch of land when he saw her, the area sparsely wooded, with patches of shade here and there among a few pine trees and the aspen indigenous to the area. Scrubby brush fought with patches of pink flowers for the shade, the ground otherwise rock and dirt, the grassy hills left behind a quarter mile back. Small animals—a rabbit, for one—had skittered among the brush as he’d crossed the stretch.
A half mile away, the immense rock wall he’d seen from the hilltop above the flooded valley stood like a skinny butte, or a rock formation more familiar to the landscapes of Monument Valley, the wall facing south and at least two hundred feet high and a quarter mile long, with the craggy surface that rock climbers cherished.
And everything was as dry as a bone, including Max’s mouth.
He’d recognized the thud of horse hooves before she’d come into view, and by the time she came racing around the immense rock wall, he’d tucked himself among a patch of trees. His chest tightened at the sight of her, his gaze searching for the two cowboys his ancestor in his dream had sent after her. The Evil Prince wasn’t called evil for nothing.
But this time she was accompanied by ten armed men, one of them leading a saddled, riderless horse, every man looking straight out of an American movie of the Old West—rough denim trousers, long-sleeved shirts, leather vests despite the heat, bandanas in varying shades, leather chaps, cowboy hats, and scuffed, dusty boots.
“That’s him,” she called out as the group neared, spying Max among the trees. She pointed him out to the tall, blond man riding beside her, the man atop a palomino stallion every bit as impressive as her black one.
Another member of the James family? His body tensing, Max stepped from the sheltering trees to an old pine log on the edge of the sun, unsure of his reception, given what he’d learned that morning of the past history between his family and theirs.
If what Deputy Henderson and Sheriff Larson had told him was true, no wonder the Jameses of the Sky Top Ranch had refused to negotiate with him.
The blond man halted his small group a good distance from Max, scrutinizing him with narrowed eyes. Horse scent filled the air, the horses breathing fast, their hooves restless on the hot, flat, rocky ground beyond Max’s patch of trees, a nervous tension all around that had them as jittery as the men facing him.
Giving a quiet instruction to the men that Max couldn’t hear, the blond man rode forward from the others, stopping ten feet from Max. Two pistols were holstered on the gun belt slung over his denim-covered hips like in the old days of the Wild West. A rifle—a very old-model rifle—was aimed at Max’s own jittery heart. “I hear you’re from the year 2019,” the man said in a low tone that Max doubted the others could hear, the man’s voice not harsh, but it wasn’t all that welcoming.
Nor did the man sound or look crazy—though his words sure did, as crazy as when Calliope had said them.
“Who are you?” Max said, his voice hoarse in his parched throat, his gaze shifting to Calliope as she separated from the rifle-toting pack and rode up next to the blond man.
“Bart James,” the blond man said. His Western shirt was the same dark blue as Calliope’s riding skirt. His cowboy hat, leather vest, chaps, and boots were black, a band of round stamped silver disks—conchas, Max believed they were called—on his hatband, and Max wondered how he was related to the young woman. “From the Sky Top Ranch.”
Excellent. These people were one of the reasons Max had come to Wyoming. Not only to dedicate the wildlife sanctuary, but to convince the Sky Top family to lease their water rights to his Crown of the West Ranch.
They may have refused to meet with him previously, but they were right in front of him now. He straightened his torn, mud-encrusted shirt as best he could, the mud caked in chunks to the cotton, and stood as tall as his battered body allowed. “I, sir, am Prince Maximilian Alphonse Frederick George of the Kingdom of Zalgravia.”
“From the year 2019.” Mr. James looked unnecessarily grave, more than the inane statement warranted.
Max’s own eyes narrowed every bit as much as the other man’s had. Was this more of his crazy dream? He’d been sure the fresh air had cleared his dizzy head.
Was he being punked? Were paparazzi around the corner to get his reaction to all of this nonsense? “When else?” he said, his voice relaying a bit of his suspicions.
“You might be surprised, stranger.” Propping his rifle—still aimed at Max—on his thigh, Mr. James reached with his other hand beneath his black leather vest and took a piece of folded paper from the pocket of his shirt. “Tell me, Prince Maximilian” —he shook out the paper’s folds and glanced down at it— “what’s a television?”
“You’re joking, right?” Max’s head began to ache again—now that he’d stopped walking, his whole body seemed to ache, from being tumbled around among logs and boulders during the flood, from being struck by lightning. Perhaps he’d been struck harder than he’d thought. Perhaps that explained this crazy dream.
Perhaps some news rag had had a Hollywood makeup artist transform an actor to play the Evil Prince.
“You have one of those smartphones with you?” Mr. James said.
“I did,” Max said, silently cursing the loss. He could have called Nelson, been rescued from this farce by now. “I lost it in the flood.” He glanced at Calliope, who watched him with intent eyes. “I do have a smartwatch,” he said, raising his mud-flecked wrist, feeling as if it somehow made a difference to her that he had one.
“You ever been in an airplane?” Mr. James said.
Max frowned. “Of course.”
“How about a jet?”
Max rolled his eyes, blaming the lovely Calliope for his putting up with such absurdity. “Is this some kind of television show?” He glanced around. “Okay, where are the cameras? I’m being punked, right?”
Mr. James stared at him for a long moment. “Who is your father?”
Max’s annoyance swiftly cooled, and he looked around at all the armed men, his blood chilling. Was this a kidnapping attempt? They’d happened before. He’d spent his lifetime avoiding such a fate. Royalty, particularly princes, were vulnerable to those seeking large ransoms. “King Frederick,” he said, his voice turning hard.
“Who’s the queen of England?”
“Elizabeth II, and that’s the last question I’m go?—”
“And who’s the host of the Royalty Watch blog?”
Anger rushed through him, Max remembering the blog’s last post on him, telling the world of a six-years-past indiscretion when he was a young twenty-year-old man about town who’d thought it would be fun to steal his security team’s vehicle and drive it into the sea.
Now he knew he was being punked. “That damned Vivian Dee,” he said, and at the sound of his raised voice, the other nine men raised their rifles toward him. “Did she put you up to this?”
Ignoring the question, Mr. James turned his gaze to Max’s hands. Most of the mud had fallen off his fingers, the redness on the ones that had held the trophy cup slowly fading. “Lightning?” Mr. James said in a low tone.
“That’s right,” Max said, wishing he had his own rifle.
“A thunderstorm that moved in real fast?”
Max’s eyes narrowed. “In the distance…”
Calliope leaned forward, toward Max. “A big dust devil swirling up from the ground an instant before the lightning?” she whispered.
How did she…? Watching the others closely, Max slowed his breath down, countering the adrenaline rushing through him at all the rifles pointed at him. All but Calliope’s. She’d put hers back into the scabbard on her saddle when he’d shown off his watch, and something about her expression told him she would never be a party to a kidnapping or a punk.
He dropped down on the log beside him, the log bedded in a patch of the pink flowers, and gave the James family a winning smile. “You mind telling me what the hell is going on?”
Sitting astride Apollo beside Bart, Cally stared at the prince, excitement bursting through her. According to her sister-in-law Livie, if the stranger answered the questions the way Livie had written down, then he’d for sure be from the future.
The future.
Cally had dreamed of the future, ever since she’d met Livie.
She leaned over to stare at the piece of paper Livie had written out for Bart. The prince had gotten every single question right, except the one about the jet, which he hadn’t bothered to answer. But Livie said if he was the man from the future she thought he might be, he’d get real angry at any mention of the Royalty Watch blog.
Livie hadn’t had time to explain what a blog was before Cally and the others had had to ride back to the prince. Bart had been in a hurry. ‘Wouldn’t do to have folks from the future wandering around the countryside,’ he’d said. Livie was from the future, and Bart did everything he could to protect her from folks giving her secret away—it wasn’t somethin’ he or Livie wanted others to know.
Bart frowned at the man sitting on the log, and Cally knew what he was thinking. The prince who’d recently bought the Crown of the West Ranch and was trying to encroach on his neighbors’ land could not, in any stretch of the imagination, have answered any of those questions correctly.
The question was, whose side was this new prince on?
Mighty suspicious they each claimed ownership of the Crown Ranch.
Mighty suspicious they each called the same place—the country of Zalgravia—home.
Wouldn’t do for this new one to meet Livie until Cally and Bart were sure it was safe.
“Don’t trust him, Bart,” Luke Wade called out from the men gathered a-ways behind her and her brother, Luke being the Sky Top assistant foreman and Bart’s friend since they were small. The other men murmured their assent. “I swear he looks like that damned new prince. It’s a trick somehow.”
Bart, like Cally, hadn’t met the new Zalgravian prince from their time—the time Queen Victoria ruled England, not someone named Queen Elizabeth II—so he, like she, had no way of comparing the two. But Cally would hand over all her championship checkers ribbons if this prince sitting in front of them was from anywhere but the future.
She tossed him a canteen. “It’s right hard to explain, stranger,” she said real quiet like. Luke and the others didn’t know about the time travel, and Cally and Bart aimed to keep it that way.
A glint of metal in the far distance to the south, toward the Crown Ranch, caught her attention. Looking closer, she saw a group of men—five, she reckoned—on horseback, moving fast, heading east to west.
She doubted they’d seen her and the others—they weren’t coming her way—and it wasn’t like she and the others were trespassin’ on the Crown, but still, she backed her horse into the shade cast by the lodgepole pine near her prince’s log. “Bart,” she warned in a low tone. They may not have met their new nineteenth-century prince neighbor yet, but they sure as heaven had heard about him. When her brother turned to her, she nodded toward the Crown. “By the old trail to the Porter place.”
Backing his own horse Zeus into the shelter of the shade, he raised his field glasses for a long moment, then glanced down with another frown at Cally’s prince, who’d stood and was peering in the same direction as they had. “Can you ride?” Bart said, still speakin’ real low.
Taking a big swallow from the canteen she’d tossed him, Cally’s prince nodded.
“Then mount up,” Bart told him and gestured to Luke to bring up the spare horse.
“No,” Max said, loud enough for the whole group to hear. “I want answers first.” Now that he knew Calliope was safe, he wanted to get to the bottom of this.
“No time,” the young woman said.
Was this some odd negotiating tactic? Perhaps a vigilante justice prank for deeds that had occurred over a hundred and twenty years ago?
Max’s family had their own long memories of injustices and incursions perpetrated against them and their country. “Then I’m staying here,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest. Surely Nelson would have the search parties out by now.
The old-fashioned rifles cocked, every damned one of them, except Calliope’s.
“It’s us or that other prince from your country,” Mr. James—Bart, rather; given the circumstances, Max felt formality was wasted—said in that low tone the other men couldn’t hear. “Your choice.”
That other prince. The man’s words only confirmed the prank. How else could these people know Max was ‘hallucinating’ about his ancestor?
He glanced back at the group of men in the far distance—five men, riding in the sun. Another foreboding washed through him.
Minutes later, he was riding a well-mannered sorrel horse, surrounded by the cowboys from the Sky Top Ranch, Max a seemingly unwelcome addition to the party. Bart and Calliope may have reluctantly welcomed him once he’d passed their quiz, but the others were downright hostile.
He tried again to contact Nelson with his smartwatch, but the screen was still flashing ‘Out of service range,’ which meant either he really was outside the range of a cellular network, or his watch’s ability to connect to a network had died in the river flood.
“Do you have a phone?” he said, turning to the man behind him, and received a rancorous, uncomprehending stare in return.
“Heard about Fred Jenkins,” the man said in reply in a loud voice as the group slowed for a steep trail along one side of the immense ridge that resembled a wall, horse hooves clattering against rocks in their path. Midheight and weathered-looking, the man was dressed in a worn plaid Western shirt, topped by a tan leather vest, work gloves—leather, too—on his hands.
“I beg your pardon?” Max said, tightening his knees to the sturdy Western saddle as his horse lunged up the hillside, the saddle creaking.
“You sure as hell should,” the man said, his voice rising even louder, his expression looking like he wanted to kill Max. “Fred Jenkins is my cousin.”
“Arnold,” Bart called out from behind them, the man named Luke taking the lead at the front. “You’re barking up the wrong tree. This man isn’t the one who bought the Crown.”
Max had the sinking feeling that the Evil Prince of whatever this was, hallucination or dream or prank, was every bit as bad as the actual man’s storied reputation, and that he’d wasted no time in making his new neighbors miserable.
“Then who the hell is he?” Arnold called back, with a nod at Max.
“A countryman of your new neighbor,” Max said loudly to them all, not wanting to claim any closer kinship to the hated Hugo. “Sent by the king of our country Zalgravia to make amends.” It was close enough to the truth; it had been Max, not his father the king, who’d decided—having taken on the management of the Crown of the West Ranch six months ago—to restore as much of the ranch as possible to its natural state, and carve out a chunk of it for the wildlife sanctuary for the local populace to enjoy.
Arnold’s grizzled face lit up. “Amends? You mean, pay my cousin for the cattle your countryman stole?”
“Would that be amenable to your cousin?” Max said.
“Amena…Amena…”
“Would your cousin cotton to acceptin’ money to pay for the cattle he lost?” Calliope called out from the back of the pack, where she had been speaking in low tones to Bart as the group worked its way up the wide, switchbacked trail. Max glanced over his shoulder at her, then at Bart. Surely they were brother and sister. Bart was somewhere around thirty, too young to be her father. And there’d been a strong resemblance in their blue eyes when they’d confronted Max away from the others, Bart’s eyes a stronger, masculine version of Calliope’s.
“Why, he shore would,” Arnold said, turning from Calliope back to Max. “Your king got that kind of money?”
“Yes,” Max said, though he’d need to get to a telephone to call his father.
Once this dream was over.
Of course, once this dream was over, there’d be no need to intervene on Arnold’s cousin’s behalf.
And it really must be a dream. For one thing, he’d realized in a moment of obvious insight, no one could have predicted the flash flood. For another, it was difficult to imagine anyone going to these lengths for a prank.
Anyone except for Royalty Watch and its owner Vivian Dee. She’d been out to get him ever since he’d refused to dance with her at a royal ball two years ago. Max had refused to dance with anyone at the ball, due to a sprained ankle incurred during military exercises. But Vivian, a fourth cousin on his mother’s side, and therefore well placed to dig up any dirt to be found on anyone in their extended family, had felt personally spurned.
Would she take the trouble of hiring an actor to play the Evil Prince, in order to publicize her blog posts about Max and his ancestor?
Would she go to all the expense to hire all these other actors and have them convince Max he’d traveled through time? Because that , he’d realized, was what this prank—if it was a prank—must be about. The sighting of ‘Hugo, the Evil Prince’ from the nineteenth century. The little quiz Bart James had given him.
The emphasis Bart and Calliope had made on what year it was.
If so, if this was a prank, then what role did the James family play?
Max turned and glanced up at the sky behind him to see if any rescue helicopters were in the distance.
The sky was a brilliant, sun-bright blue, no clouds. No planes.
No rescue helicopters.
Damn it, there should be rescue helicopters. Nelson would never have deserted him. They’d been friends, and military buddies, for years.
And why the hell would the James family take the time and trouble to ride cross-country like this to escort him to their ranch, either as a negotiating tactic or long-delayed justice? The Evil Prince may have been awful, but he wasn’t worth these people’s time.
And the land…
The land was what he’d envisioned the Crown of the West could become, once he’d freed it from the fences and buildings and roads built on it over the decades, starting with the Evil Prince. It was the lack of man-made presence on this land, right here, right now, a lack of man-made presence on everything in his sight, that sent his mind circling back to the notion this must be a dream or hallucination. Max hadn’t seen a modern anything since the flood.
The men around him certainly looked straight out of the Old West. Their rifles…Max shook his head. He’d only seen rifles that old in the military museum back home.
Where the inspiration for Calliope in this dream had come from, he had no idea.
Figuring he was out cold from the flash flood and the lightning, and letting his eyes half-close, his attention partly on the horse, partly on any more forebodings that might pop up, Max relaxed his aching body into his dream.
A pregnant woman dressed in a long, old-fashioned pink dress greeted Max and the others when they rode up to a large, sprawling, one-story log ranch house at the end of a long, shady, tree-lined gravel drive, the woman standing on a wide, covered front porch furnished with a picnic table, two wood rocking chairs, and a white-painted porch swing. It was an attractive house, rustic but prosperous looking in an understated way, with a homey vibe, similar to what Max wanted to build for himself at the Crown Ranch, to replace the monstrosity his ancestor had built.
The whole ranch—at least, what he’d seen so far—was similar to what Max wanted to create at the Crown.
Similar, except for the lack of vehicles. None were parked out front, he realized with a frown, the gravel drive giving way to packed dirt in a large circular sweep at the front of the house. No vehicles were anywhere at all that he could see, only horses in a large wood-railed corral in the near distance on the other side of the drive, beside an immense red-painted barn and other outbuildings as rustic as the house, though everything appeared well kept.
Following Bart and Calliope’s example, he dismounted his sorrel horse at the foot of the porch, his soggy cowboy boots hitting the dirt drive with a quiet thud. His body, aching and stiff from the flood, felt even stiffer after the long ride, belying any idea this could be a hallucination or dream. Yet how could it not be a dream? They’d neither crossed nor traveled along any roads. Not a helicopter nor plane had sounded in the air.
Even here at the Sky Top, a supposedly thriving, modern ranch, there wasn’t a bit of asphalt or paving to be found, at least, not what he could see, the land itself seeming as rustic as the buildings. A river rushed on the far side of the house, the sound sending a tiny shudder over his skin. Birds sang from the full, leafy trees between the house and river, the trees growing from the top of the high riverbank down a long, gentle slope to the water. A colorful, sweetly fragrant flower garden bloomed on this side of the trees, carpeting the ground in front of the house all the way up to the porch.
Dogs barked from over by the barn.
“This way, feller,” Calliope said with a glance at Max over her shoulder, the young woman and Bart having insisted Max not mention to the others that he was a prince. She thudded fast in her cowgirl boots up the handful of steps to the pregnant woman, her long legs graceful despite the noise her feet made. A vitality unique to her lit her blue eyes, an excitement in her face.
Relinquishing his horse to Arnold, Max stretched his shoulders, then back, the rest of the men who’d accompanied them to the ranch already across the drive and through the tall, narrow juniper trees that lined the far side of the sweep, towing Calliope’s black stallion and Bart’s palomino, the quiet jingle of their bridles fading. Following Calliope up the steps at a stiffer pace, he paused for a moment at the top, assessing the inviting whitewashed porch swing to his left. Straight ahead was a sturdy-looking front door and, presumably, air-conditioning inside, against the growing heat.
Ignoring both, Calliope headed to the right across the wood planks, past the two rocking chairs to the large picnic table where the pregnant woman stood in the shade beside one of the table’s wood benches, this one along the house’s front wall.
Bart—having bypassed the steps—stood beside the woman, his shoulder protectively blocking her from Max.
“This here is Livie,” Calliope said as Max came up beside her, Calliope practically dancing with her excitement. “Bart’s?—”
“My wife,” Bart said, his voice still neutral, but Max caught an undertone that told him he wasn’t welcome at the Sky Top, that he’d been brought there as a necessity, not out of kindness. “Mrs. James.”
Tall, with a figure lush with pregnancy and a gold wedding band on her finger, Mrs. James looked to Max to be in her late twenties, her dress one of those nineteenth-century ones with tiny yellow flowers printed all over the pink fabric. Her dark hair was gathered in a bun at her nape. Her eyes, a rather extraordinary lavender color, scanned his face, then his dirty green T-shirt, then slowly, meditatively, her gaze moved back to his, and she frowned, as if he were familiar to her. As if the sight of him was something to cause concern.
As if…
He leaned closer. Was that fear in her pretty face?
Was that tension in her husband’s? Those two pistols still holstered in Bart’s gun belt, like in the days of the Old West, abruptly made Max nervous.
“Livia,” Bart said in a low tone to his wife, though the men they’d ridden with were already a hundred yards away, trotting their horses across the immense, wide, open field between the drive and barn and which was covered with the long grass that was so prevalent in this area. The men had been sworn to secrecy about Max’s presence on the ranch—and in the area—on pain of losing their employment at the Sky Top, a pain that—from the gravity in the men’s demeanor when they’d made their oath—would be great. “This is Prince Maximilian…” Bart raised an expectant eyebrow at Max.
Max bowed low to Mrs. James, getting a big grin from Calliope in return. “Prince Maximilian Alphonse Frederick George,” he said, his mouth, still carrying a hint of the taste of mud, along with an undertone of char that had grown stronger as the mud had waned, watering at the sight of the glass pitcher on the table filled with a pale drink with lemon slices floating on the top. “Of the Kingdom of Zalgravia.” Two serving plates, one of sandwiches, the other of sweets, sat on a silver tray beside the pitcher, calling to his stomach.
It must be nearing noon, he thought, and he was starving.
“Right,” Mrs. James said from beside the table. “Prince Max.” Her gaze dropped again to his T-shirt, a gaze that turned into a long, distracted stare, as if she were somewhere else. Somewhere else that made her apprehensive, and a new foreboding, a different kind but no less disturbing, rattled his hungry stomach.
“Ma’am?” Max said.
“Sorry,” she said, shaking her head as if to clear it, her voice sounding more like a Bostonian than a denizen of the West. “I’m just trying to figure out why you’re here.”
“The dedication of the Elkhorn River Bridge and the new wildlife sanctuary,” he said quietly, treading carefully. His sister Anna was as advanced in her pregnancy as Mrs. James, and he’d had firsthand experience in her surging, oscillating emotions.
Calliope gave an outraged gasp. “ Bridge ?”
Damn. Until he made contact with Nelson and his security staff, it wouldn’t do to upset the James family. “The one at the Crown of the West Ranch,” he said, still in that quiet tone.
“Yes, of course,” Mrs. James said, ignoring Calliope’s outrage. “At that Crown of the West.” She looked around the packed-dirt sweep in front of the house, as if to make sure all the ranch hands had gone. “What I’m trying to figure out,” she told him, “is what the Prince of Partydom is doing in 1897.”