Chapter 17
CHAPTER 17
Max and the others descended the hill on its east side, still hiding their presence from the Crown, and crossed over a wide, well-used wagon trail that ran along the southern border of Robert Porter’s place, a wagon trail that led into the Crown in one direction, and which connected with the main trail into town in the other. Thirty minutes later, avoiding the trail, they were entering the steep, sharp ridges that made up the Crown’s own southern border, the ridges as inhospitable as any ‘Keep Out’ sign.
“Nearly impassable,” Bart said of the steep terrain in a low tone to Max, his words nearly drowned out by the loud trill of a yellow bird, “unless you know the way.”
The way was a narrow, barely there horse path that crossed shale and rock among thick pine that filled the hot air with its cleansing scent.
Max had vague memories of this part of the ranch; it was the most remote spot on the Crown, and as a child, he’d been forbidden to explore among these ridges, which had assured his making a beeline straight for them. But he’d found them much less interesting than the Walford River and its fishing hole, and the stables full of high-bred horses.
But Bart and the others had lived in this area, most, if not all, of their lives, and an old trail too faint for Max to discern—but known by heart by the others—became their entrée to the Crown. An entrée likely none of the Zalgravians Hugo employed, nor Hugo himself, knew anything about.
They rode in silence, the silence broken only by the clop of horse hooves, until they stopped on the last ridge before a large, green valley that swept north from their position.
This , Max knew. It was Walford Valley, at the heart of the Crown, one of his favorite places in the world. Bordered by the tall Horace Hill to the east, and lower hills to the north, it was home to the large, tumbling Walford River, which fed the buffalo grass that covered most of the ground, and nourished the animals abundant in the area.
Peace seemed to shimmer over the valley. Cottonwood trees—he could recognize them now, thanks to Miss Calliope—grew along the water here and there. The only thing that looked out of place was the ridiculous, newly constructed mini-castle built in the nineteenth-century Zalgravian style that sat atop a rise at the northwest end of the valley.
There was nothing like European turrets and towers and battlements to enhance a Wyoming ranch.
Creede pointed to the right, to where the rutted, dirt wagon trail to town made its appearance, crossing from the southeast corner of the valley catty-corner to the castle. “That’s where we’ll first show ourselves,” he told Max. “Anyone seeing us coming” —they’d all agreed Hugo would likely have sentries, now that Kuthbert was being sought for shooting Robert Porter— “will think we came from town.” He gave Max a grim smile. “Best we not let them know about our actual route.”
Max nodded, liking the idea of secret ways onto the Crown. If he was going to have to protect Miss Calliope from his ancestor, he wanted every advantage he could get.
Bart pointed to the left, where the steep ridges continued on for several miles. “You and I will stay on this horse path two miles to the edge of that big rock formation that looks like a bear, then I’ll backtrack to join Sam and the others.”
There had been concerns Max would get lost if left on his own. But he had his map, and a compass loaned to him by Bart, and was adept at using both. Getting lost was unlikely.
What was likely was his taking too long to get to where he was going, by not knowing the fastest route, and he wished he had more recent memories of the ranch than the vague, joyful ones from when he was ten.
“A narrow horse path branches off from this one on the other side of those rocks,” Bart said. “It will lead you straight to that ridge behind Prince Hugo’s castle.”
Max nodded again. “You keep Hugo busy,” he said to the others. “I’ll do the rest. He’ll deny everything you accuse him of, but make him work to get rid of you. The harder he has to work, the more of his employees he’ll call to assist him, and you can get a good look at them.” He pierced Creede with his gaze. “Just don’t shoot him. Swear on it.”
“I won’t swear on it, but I’ll be real careful,” Creede said, and Max had to be satisfied with that.
Max and Bart had ridden swiftly in silence the first half of the way to the big rock formation, the horse path nearly invisible to Max’s eyes, when Bart cleared his throat. “About that kiss you gave Cally,” he said, the trees and rocks and ridges around them drowsy with afternoon sun.
Max, half-lost at the moment in his memory of that very kiss, remarkably—and most ridiculously—felt his face heat. He supposed he could say it meant nothing. That it had been the impulse of the moment. But while it had been an impulse, it had most definitely meant something, something he was still trying to sort out. “I do apologize,” he said instead in a low tone that matched the quiet around them. “And beg your and Miss Calliope’s pardon.”
Bart, his head turned toward Max, frowned. “Livia says it’s different where you come from. Young men and women who are attracted to each other kiss each other with no harm to the young woman’s reputation. I don’t fault you for doing here what is acceptable in your century. But Cally is of this century, and her reputation is the most precious asset an unmarried young woman can have. She already has enough attributes against her, as far as society is concerned, her tomboy ways, her outspokenness, her stubborn insistence to have her own way. I’ll not have rumors of her kissing my butler cause her harm.”
“I understand,” Max said in a solemn tone. What else could he say? Her tomboy ways, her outspokenness, her charming and adorable vitality were all pluses as far as he was concerned, but it wasn’t for him to say. Miss Calliope had to live within this century’s rules, and the last thing he wanted to do was to cause her harm. “It won’t happen again.”
“Good,” Bart said, and they rode on.
Forty minutes later, Max and his horse were on their own, sticking to the thick trees beyond the west edge of Walford Valley, Max thinking half the time he might actually be on the nearly nonexistent trail Bart had pointed out to him, the other half just following his compass north, figuring that as long as he went in that direction, and kept his ears open, he’d find the castle before Hugo and his men found him .
Creede had wanted to give him a weapon, and Max had declined—until Roy pointed out he might run into the trigger-happy Kuthbert, who might shoot first and ask questions later. Max ended up accepting a handgun—a Colt six-shooter—not that Max intended to fire it. At least, not at a person. But he’d overheard Miss Calliope mention a shooting range at the Sky Top, and when he got back, he intended to practice with the weapons of this time, if only to be able to protect her from Hugo’s men.
The land rose the farther north he went. The trees grew thicker. Discerning a faint path branching off the nearly nonexistent trail, he followed it through the trees to the back side of the ridge that rose behind the castle. Stopping beside a rushing creek, he gave Ares a drink, and one for himself from his canteen, the two of them sweating in the heat, then he tethered the horse in the shade near the water, hoping the creek would drown out any noise Ares made.
Finding himself on more familiar territory, his memories as a ten-year-old clearer here, Max slipped through the pine to the ridge’s crest, stopping in a dense patch of the tall, skinny trees—lodgepole pine, Miss Calliope had told him on one of her nature tours on horseback of the flora and fauna of the area she so loved—and getting a good look at Hugo’s ‘castle.’
Three stories high, with two wings spreading out from a central section that on its own could house more than one large family, it boasted three towers, two turrets, and a battlement that might not have been purely for decoration. Situated on a flat rise, the front windows overlooked the Walford Valley and its river, with a good view of the wide wagon trail that cut a swath through the buffalo grass on its way up to the castle. Instead of being built of Zalgravian stone, it was of a wood construction, and remarkably complete after only two months, though Hugo would have the resources to hire as many workers as it would take, as long as his father the king provided the funds.
A wannabe castle for a wannabe king, and Max wondered if the relatively small building—the whole thing would fit into a tenth of one wing of the castle back home—was large enough to satisfy Hugo’s ego.
How it must grate on him that his neighbors were not in awe.
Why, Max wondered, not for the first time, had Hugo come to Wyoming? The need for his own fiefdom? His father was still a robust man. Was Hugo impatient for his chance to rule?
In the back, a series of outbuildings that housed what Max was learning were the essentials of this time covered even more land than the mini-castle—a large bunkhouse, an even larger barn, a separate building that looked like stable, a handful of small cabins, and other small miscellaneous buildings, all of wood and seemingly of sturdy construction. The castle itself was definitely sturdy. Not only was it still standing in Max’s time, it was still habitable, having been kept up by his family over the decades.
The main difference was that here, in 1897, it had the fresh look of the newly built.
He shook his head. The mini-castle had seemed silly enough in this setting in the twenty-first century. Here, brand spanking new, it was hideous, out of place, a testament to an arrogant man’s ego.
But no less dangerous for all that. Thirty or so workers bustled about the back of the castle, many of them surprisingly armed. Consisting mostly of packed, leveled dirt, the back area contained not only the completed outbuildings, but two more large buildings under construction, plus a spring-fed pond beyond the side of the castle, and the start of a canal leading from the pond.
A moat? Was Hugo planning to make himself a moat?
He’d need one pretty soon, if he was going to keep attacking his neighbors.
Max raised the binoculars he had slung around his neck and searched the wagon trail for Creede and the others.
A large, flat-bed wagon was lumbering toward him along the rutted trail, the wagon carrying what looked like furniture. Hugo was still decorating, it seemed.
Four riders overtook the wagon, Creede, Bart, Roy, and Doc, heading fast for the castle, drawing the attention of those in the back area. The workers gathered near the pond, watching the newcomers as they neared the front.
A rush of excitement went through Max’s heart. Most people believed that he, in his twenty-first-century life, was living the dream, and in many ways he was, but this— this —was a true dream come true, chasing after outlaws and lawbreakers with Sheriff Sam Creede. Sneaking up on Jeremiah’s kidnappers, for where else would they have gone, but to the safety of the Crown?
Determined to nab them—this was rapidly becoming more than a matter of family honor—Max moved as fast down the ridge as he could without making a sound, keeping among the dense trees, the sun hot through the pine branches, the pretty rosewater scent of Miss Calliope faint on his shirt. Snippets of conversation floated up from Hugo’s employees. Unhappy snippets, from unhappy employees.
Hugo was not loved.
The sound of horse hooves neared out front. The smell of new lumber from the stacks of cut wood beside the half-constructed buildings wafted in the air.
Max was a hundred feet from the back of the large barn when two men dressed in cowboy clothes stepped out through a side door, nearly facing Max, the two men trail dusty and tossing angry accusations at each other. In Zalgravian.
The employees around the pond sent the two men looks of dislike.
But Max smiled. The two men were angry at each other for failing to kidnap Jeremiah.
“His Highness will be angry we are delayed in our return,” the stocky one in a striped shirt and light-brown hat said in that old-fashioned Zalgravian Max had a little trouble following, and even if Max hadn’t recognized him as Zimmer, one of Hugo’s four henchmen, his stiff bearing would have pegged him as a Zalgravian courtier.
The tall, lean one—Leopold, Max remembered—stopped abruptly, as if to turn and strike his companion, and scowled beneath his dark hat, both men sweating heavily, their voices rough with fatigue. “He was not the one who had to hide from the local lawmen. We were nearly captured , Zimmer.”
“It is your fault, Leopold,” Zimmer said in a fury, “for not snatching the boy before those lawmen arrived. You are too cautious. You will explain to His Highness your cowardice.”
Leopold, from the red flush in his face, either disagreed, or was fearful of facing His Highness Prince Hugo, or a combination of both. “You are the one who lost the way to the ranch house.”
“I was not to know the path up that steep hill ended in a cliff.”
“It is your job to know,” Leopold said. “We would have been gone with the child if you had known the proper path. You can explain that to His Highness.”
“I will tell him Evans directed me incorrectly.”
“His Highness will fire Evans.”
“I spare no thought for him,” Zimmer said. “He is a local man. There are plenty of others for hire. His Highness flashes his gold coins, and the men here flock to do his bidding.”
“They will not flock for long if His Highness continues to invade his neighbors.”
“What does His Highness care? He will bring in others from Laramie and Cheyenne if the local men turn their backs.”
A shiver went down Max’s spine at the thought of Hugo bringing in ‘others.’ He knew what those ‘others’ would be like: rough, dangerous, didn’t-give-a-damn men, just like Hugo.
Gripping his six-shooter, he crept through the last of the trees toward the two Zalgravians.
The men had just started walking again when a footman dressed in Hugo’s livery ran toward them across the dirt from a back door of the castle—a message, likely, from Hugo himself, that the law had arrived to arrest them. Max couldn’t hear the actual words, but once the message had been delivered, the footman hurried back toward the castle. Leopold and his buddy sprinted into the barn.
Moments later, they rode fast across the back courtyard to the trees to the north, away from the house.
Determined to catch them, Max slipped back up the ridge to his horse.