Chapter 43
CHAPTER 43
Max relegated his security team to the backup SUV that had accompanied him and the mayor to the event. There were too many things to say to Cally and the Hendersons that Max’s team couldn’t hear, and Max didn’t want to wait to say them.
“I reckon there’s something I don’t know that you folks are keepin’ from me,” Cally said, climbing through the side door into the back seat of Max’s SUV, her hand running over the shiny exterior of the vehicle first, then the interior, seeming to explore every bit of this new world. Zeb and Melody were getting into the front, Zeb driving, their baby having been given into the care of Melody’s parents. “I reckon I can guess what that was.”
Max climbed in beside Cally, the head of his security team closing the door behind him with a disapproving frown, and Zeb started up the SUV, Cally making a small sound of surprise at the sudden roar of the engine. “When I first arrived here this morning,” Max told her, showing her how to fasten her seat belt—good God, this morning , and his head went a little dizzy at the thought, “there was a crowd of people protesting my presence. Mostly because of my ancestor Hugo.”
“The Evil Prince,” Cally said.
Zeb and Melody each gave a startled laugh, Zeb steering them out of the parking lot, Max’s security team right behind.
“Right,” Max said, taking her hand in his, Cally turning sideways to face him. The two of them had changed into clean, dry clothes before departing, thanks to an extra supply of Prairie Days T-shirts, plus spare jeans in Max’s suitcase stored in the back, the jeans Cally wore held up by a belt, the stink of the mud from the flood only faint now. “It seems he didn’t leave a very good reputation behind when he left Wyoming. As you can attest.”
She nodded.
“Before I was struck by lightning and sent to your time, Deputy Henderson here kindly told me Hugo was suspected of killing someone right before he fled back to Zalgravia. A local someone. Deputy Henderson was quite angry about that. He told me the someone’s name.”
Cally’s rosy cheeks had gone white. Her hand gripped his tighter. “My name.”
Max nodded.
She glanced at Zeb in the front seat, then back at Max. “So when you met me in my time…”
“I knew I had to stay close. I knew what kind of man Hugo was from my own family’s history. Not a murderer, I didn’t know that part, but he’d done just about everything else that was dishonorable.” He kissed her palm. “I didn’t expect to fall in love.”
Cally touched his cheek with gentle fingers.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Melody softly smile.
After a long moment, Cally turned to Zeb. “Now tell me,” she said to her old friend, Max putting his arm around her sweet body and tucking her against his chest, “all about the Sky Top.”
Cally was still asking Zeb questions about the Sky Top when the marvelous vehicle made of metal arrived in Mule Stop, traveling along a wide, smooth, black-surfaced road at a speed that, at first, had had her clinging to Max. But after a bit, she’d begun to enjoy the speed, and before she could blink her eyes, they’d reached the outskirts of town, faster than it would have taken in her century to ride a horse just to the Fielding house from her own.
The future was more of a shock down here in Mule Stop than up in the mountains and hills. The rutted dirt road that in her century was Main Street was now as smooth as the road they’d traveled in the mountains and filled with more horseless vehicles. The buildings—except for a handful of blocks that Zeb told her was called ‘Old Town,’ something Livie had once mentioned to Cally—covered more miles than Cally could ever have imagined, spreading out north, east, and west from the town she’d grown up with.
Everywhere she looked, there was something new to goggle at.
Cally had wanted to head straight for the Sky Top when they left the wildlife sanctuary, to see what her home looked like these days—just like it had when she’d left, she hoped—but Zeb had overruled her, acting as much like an older brother as Bart could possibly have. He and Miss Melody—Mrs. Henderson, that is, who insisted Cally call her Melody—had insisted on taking them to the hospital in town first, an immense multistory building made of huge panes of glass and smooth gray concrete, for ‘tests’ to make sure Cally and Max had no broken bones or head wounds or any other injuries from the lightning strike and flash flood.
Zeb had told her Bart and her ma would have wanted it that way.
At last, with the doctor’s approval, they were headed back into the mountains in Max’s astonishing vehicle with Melody and Zeb to the Hendersons’ house at the Bar-H Ranch, away from the ‘paparazzi’ and other ‘press’ that wanted ‘a story.’
The Bar-H, as familiar to Cally as her own land, was just over a set of ridges from the Sky Top. The ranch house looked almost the same as in her time, making her feel right at home, though she longed to borrow a horse and race over to the Sky Top, her real home. But Melody and Zeb said things needed to be worked out with Bart’s and Kit’s descendants, who owned the Sky Top now.
Cally settled for a hot ‘shower,’ marveling at the sleek glass-and-tile enclosure, marveling at how it felt like being out in the rain, only hotter. Melody loaned her clothes: denim trousers that fit rather scandalously, a short-sleeved, fitted blouse in blue that was made of something stretchy, and a pair of white lace-up ‘tennis shoes’ that Cally bounced around in, enjoying the lift they gave her.
Lured by the scent of food, she found Max in the sun-filled dining room, where Zeb had set out a meal family style on the long oak table for them all.
Max had ‘showered,’ too, and was dressed in beige-colored cotton trousers and a long-sleeved white shirt from the suitcase his friend Nelson had retrieved from Max’s bulletproof— bulletproof !—‘SUV’ before setting up a ‘security perimeter’ around the ranch house. He looked right handsome, his trousers and shirt fitted and tailored to his strong body in a mighty fine way. His dark hair was combed back from his handsome face, neither he nor Cally seeming worse for wear, despite being struck by lightning and caught up in a flood.
Standing halfway down the table, beside a large tray of sandwiches, he smiled at her, not making any move in her direction except to hold out his hand, and she figured he’d realized she was feeling shy of him.
She wasn’t sure why she felt that way. They’d been through a lot together, the two of them. They’d pledged their love.
Maybe it was that, the pledging of their love, that had her feelin’ like this.
He took a step closer, Cally at the foot of the table, near the doorway to the kitchen. “When you ran down that last bit of the hill straight toward Hugo,” he said, his voice grave, “my heart nearly stopped.”
She took a step toward him, drawn by that bond that always seemed to be between them. “I reckoned it was the only way to break the standoff.” She shivered, though the cheery room was warm. “I reckoned it was the only way I could come here to the future with you.” She watched him take another step, then another, coming closer. “You shot the Evil Prince to save me.” Those darned tears that kept springing into her eyes came again. “I reckon the fact you’re here with me means he survived.”
Stopping in front of her, Max patted his body, somethin’ he’d been doing every few minutes or so, as if to reassure himself he was alive. “I reckon so,” he told her with a grin, then he caught her hand and kissed it. Held it close to his heart. “Miss Calico,” he whispered, then he pulled her into his arms and kissed her, a mighty fine kiss, the best she’d ever had, and she reckoned it was with all the love he had.
They had all settled down in the dining room for a midday meal that was more of a feast than a regular meal, the table loaded with four platters of sandwiches—ham, beef, cheese, and tuna—and five different salads—potato, fruit, macaroni, mixed greens, and chicken—everyone eatin’ with a good appetite while Cally told Zeb and Melody all the things that had happened since the Evil Prince had arrived in Mule Stop, when a quiet bell chimed from the front of the house.
“We invited a few folks,” Zeb said, standing from the head of the table and setting aside his napkin. “Folks I think you’ll be glad to see, Cally.” Coming back, he ushered an older couple into the room, Zeb the spitting image of the older man, the woman remarkably like Zeb’s Aunt Myra back home, both youthful and strong looking, just like Cally’s ma.
“Ma, Pa,” Zeb said. “I’d like you to meet Miss Calliope James, June and Bart Senior’s daughter.”
Shock ran through Cally. She’d heard the stories about how close Zeb’s parents had been to her own ma and pa. Stories about how they had disappeared one day when Zeb was ten, never to be seen or heard from again. “Howdy,” she said, standing up and shaking hands with the two of them. “My ma sure would be glad to know you folks are here with Zeb. I reckon I was born after you left your ranch to come here.”
“You look so much like your mother,” Zeb’s ma said, tears coming to her eyes.
Cally felt tears in hers. As exciting as bein’ in the future was, she already missed her ma, Livie, even Bart.
But worse, she missed Apollo.
Another quiet chime sounded.
Zeb returned from the front door with the sheriff, Uncle Bob, who was carryin’ letters forwarded on from his ancestor Doc Jannings: a yellowed, old-looking letter from Sheriff Sam that made Zeb and Melody real happy, though Melody cried as she read it; a second yellowed, old-looking letter Uncle Bob held onto for himself.
And a third old-looking letter, this one from Ma, tellin’ Cally to be happy in her new life, and that if Ma could have chosen any man for a husband for Cally, Prince Max was the one she would have picked.
Now Cally cried, Max holdin’ her in his strong arms, Cally happy and sad, but she reckoned she’d find her way in this time, with Max at her side, and love in their hearts.
When Max had dried Cally’s tears, and helped her back into her chair, and everyone was settled around the table, Uncle Bob turned to him, holding up the folded letter he’d kept for himself.
“You’re probably wondering what happened to your ancestor after you shot him,” Uncle Bob said. “Livia saved him in time, though it was touch and go. Your bullet just missed Prince Hugo’s heart. A good thing Bart arrived at the river moments after the flood hit and pulled him out of the mud. Livia was determined to save him to save you.”
Gratitude rushed through Max, memories of the third quest assigned to him by June and Livia filling his thoughts. Surely, he’d passed it: to keep Cally safe from Hugo, though at the time they’d charged him with the quest, they’d thought that meant sending Hugo back to Zalgravia as soon as possible.
“How are folks explaining my disappearance?” Cally asked.
“Tragically lost in a flash flood,” Uncle Bob said. “Along with Max Butler, employee of the Sky Top Ranch.”
“Not the Duke of Balmont?” Max said.
Uncle Bob smiled. “Seems June and Bart thought it better to leave the duke out of it.”
“And the trophy?” Max said.
Uncle Bob handed him the yellowed letter. “Bart found the trophy in the mud after you and Cally were washed away. He polished it up and made sure Prince Hugo had it in his luggage when he left Wyoming.”
More gratitude filled Max’s heart. Opening the letter, which was from Doc Jannings and addressed to Doc’s ‘descendants,’ he read that Livia, with Doc’s assistance, had doctored the Evil Prince day and night, everyone for miles around wondering why the blazes they would try to heal the horrible man. Hugo getting caught by the floodwaters had helped, the cold, icy water stanching the flow of blood long enough for Livia to stitch him up. Save his life.
Save Max’s life.
Max took a deep breath. What he owed her. What he owed Doc.
What he owed the whole James family.
He would spend the rest of his life paying it back to Cally.