Chapter 2
Chapter Two
The pull hit without warning.
One second, Holden Reed was standing in the line shack with Jeffers and Skeet, watching the fire settle to coals.
The next, heat gathered in his chest, alive and relentless. It built fast, rising until it felt like the light itself reached through him and took hold.
“Reed?” Jeffers’s voice came from far away, thin and distorted, as if through water. “Are you all right?”
Holden tried to answer, but the words jammed behind his teeth. The floor heaved, and his vision splintered.
Then came the light. Golden, fierce, and absolute. Tearing through the shack, through air and thought alike, stripping the world to nothing.
He was falling. Not through air. Not through time exactly. Through everything.
The same light came the day before. He witnessed Rhett Kelsey, his friend and fellow cowboy, vanish in it, along with a woman and a boy who appeared out of nowhere during the snowstorm.
One moment they were there, flesh and breath and confusion; the next, the light swallowed them whole and left only scorched boards behind.
Now he understood what the light did to them. It didn’t kill them; instead, it took them and carried them somewhere beyond this time and place.
Why me?
The thought didn’t have sound. It lived only in his mind as the light swallowed him whole.
The heat surged, pouring through muscle and bone. He couldn’t tell if he was moving or standing still. Couldn’t decipher if the ground was under him.
The brightness peaked, white at the center now, and a whoosh of sound then silence. His lungs seized; the breath he took felt like fire and ice all at once.
And then—
Solid ground.
The light vanished as if someone closed a door.
Holden staggered, his boots knocking against something solid. He reached out, caught hold of whatever was in front of him. He blinked hard, trying to find his vision, and the room sharpened.
A desk. Books. His stomach lurched.
The air carried a foreign scent. No smoke. No leather. No horses or coffee or earth. Where was he?
He lifted his head.
Lights overhead. Bright as noon, yet white and cold, and they didn’t flicker like a flame but burned from long white tubes set in the ceiling.
He’d never seen anything like it.
The walls were smooth. Painted. A window showed darkness and snow outside, but the glass was so clear it appeared as if nothing was there.
Was this where Rhett, Fiona, and the boy went? Forward in time?
A woman knelt on the floor. Red hair piled into a bun, with tendrils framing her face, wild and beautiful. Freckles dusted her pale skin, and her eyes, God help him, met his, huge and luminous.
The world stopped moving.
Everything else—books, walls, reason—fell away.
There was only her.
She stared at him like he was a ghost, and her mouth opened, but no sound came.
Concerned, Holden straightened. “Ma’am, you all right?”
She shook her head, jumped up, palms raised. “Stay away from me!”
“I ain’t here to hurt you.”
She looked terrified. “Wh-why are you here?”
“Well.” He lifted his hat and scratched his head. “I don’t rightly know.”
“W-what happened?”
He shrugged. “Dunno.”
She eyed him up and down, peered at something she held in her hand, and glanced back at him. “You’re Holden Reed.”
That took him by surprise. He raised his eyebrows and settled his hat back down on his head. “I am, but how do you know?”
She held up what she was holding, turning it for him to have a look.
It was a Christmas card with a painting of him on the front. He remembered that card. Jeb Ortega painted it last month when the older man helped out with the cattle for a short stint.
But how was it here… wherever here was… in the hands of this beautiful woman?
He pieced together as much as he could. He shot through time, like Rhett, Fiona, and her boy had. He didn’t understand how or why, but he was here, and it was up to him to cipher it out.
Pronto.
Holden tended to jump in, taking charge first and asking questions later. The trait had saved him many times. It also got him into a lot of trouble.
He started toward the woman.
She flinched back.
He stopped. Don’t loom over her. He crouched. “Didn’t mean to scare ya.”
“You didn’t.” She notched up her chin.
She was lying, but he let it pass. He didn’t blame her. “What’s your name?”
“Megan Collins.”
“Pleased to meet you.”
“This is impossible.” Her gaze locked tight on the painting of him.
“Yessum. But here I am.”
“You time-traveled through the card?” She met his gaze again.
“I reckon.” He slid his hat back off his forehead, hoping she could see his eyes better and understand he was not a threat.
“Okay, okay, okay.” She exhaled. “This is really happening?”
“Yessum.”
“I don’t know what to do.”
“Truthfully, ma’am, nor do I.”
“Did I… do you think I called you here?”
He shrugged. “Did you?”
“Kind of,” she said. “Without meaning to.”
He eased down onto his bottom.
She startled.
“Just getting comfortable,” he said. “My hip aches from time to time when I’m in one position too long. Got thrown from a horse a few months back, and I’m not fully healed.”
“Aren’t,” she said.
He blinked. “What?”
“You aren’t fully healed. Ain’t is grammatically incorrect.”
He glanced around at all the books again. “Oh, you’re a schoolmarm.”
“More than that,” she said, and for the first time offered a smile. “I’m in charge of all the schoolmarms. I’m the principal of Evergreen Springs Elementary School.”
She was proud of herself. He had to admit her confidence was impressive. A pretty lady like her in charge of everything.
“So this is still Evergreen Springs?” He raised an eyebrow.
“It is.”
“Huh. So I changed times, but not locations.” He rubbed his hand over his beard. He grew one every winter to protect his face, but he preferred being clean-shaven.
She flipped the card over to the back that had his name and date on it. “So you came from 1878.”
“Yessum.”
“You’re from Evergreen Springs?”
“Not by birth, but I’ve been working for Captain Murray’s Cattle Company since he started it in 1870.
We’re wintering a small herd off the grasslands south of here.
We weren’t able to get ‘em down to Kansas in time, and it’s been a rough go, especially since we’ve been losing men.
” He could tell from the look on her face she didn’t know anything about the cattle trade, but why would she?
“You’ve been losing men?”
“Since December 1st. They’ve been disappearing one by one. First Wyatt, then Cade, now Rhett. We thought they ran away or died. Now I know the truth: that they’ve been coming here… to what year is this?”
Recognition dawned in her eyes. “All of them are from 1878?”
“You know my men?”
She nodded. “Wyatt is living at Foster’s Bakeshop with my friend Eliza.”
“Foster’s is still there?” He didn’t know why that cheered him up so much, but it sure did. The bakeshop was brand new in town, run by Dr. Sam Foster and his mail-order bride, Maggie. Men from his crew were here too. Maybe this place wasn’t so scary.
“It is. Cade is working with my friend Tessa at her mini horse ranch, and Rhett is staying with my friend Fiona.”
“So you know them all?”
“I do.”
“I’m flabbergasted.”
“You and me both.”
“The year?” he asked again, realizing his question had gotten lost in the conversational threads.
She stared at him for a long beat. “It’s 2025.”
The number stunned him. 2025. He couldn’t imagine it.
A hundred forty-seven years in the future. In this time, everyone he knew was long dead.
Well, except for Wyatt, Cade, and Rhett.
He fisted his hands against his thigh as his head spun with the logistics of what she told him. For the first time, he took note of the papers scattered around her.
The bold type on one page caught his eye.
LOCAL DROVER brAVES BLIZZARD TO SAVE EVERGREEN SPRINGS SETTLEMENT
He’d seen that write-up before. After he made his harrowing ride in the Blizzard of 1870 to get help for Evergreen Springs. That horrible year they lost most of the cattle and several townsfolk to the bitter cold and massive snowfall.
Evergreen Springs lauded him, even gave him fifty dollars in thanks. But he didn’t do it for the money or the praise. He’d done it because it needed doing and no one else could or would step up.
He was still a legend in 2025? Imagine that. “What’s all this?”
“My students are putting on a play, and this is the…” She paused and appeared to make some kind of internal decision. “Research.”
He let that sink in. Almost a hundred and fifty years in the future and the town still remembered him? “You’re putting on a play about my ride?”
“We have been doing it for decades.”
Humbled, he said, “That’s quite an honor.”
Guilt mixed with embarrassment crossed her face. “Not really.”
“What do you mean?”
“I just now found this in my mother’s things. She used to be the principal here, and she passed away last year on Christmas Day.” Pain leeched from her voice.
“I’m real sorry to hear about your ma.” Holden doffed his hat and held it across his heart.
“Thank you.” Her eyes softened, and he felt real bad for her.
“She was in charge of the pageant for the last thirty years, and now that I have her job, it falls on me. This is my first year putting it on, and tonight, I discovered something disturbing.” She picked up the piece of paper with the story about his ride on it.
“What was that?” he asked. She looked so distressed that he quelled an urge to reach out and put a hand on hers.
“See, all this time we’ve been lauding Captain William Murray as the hero who saved Evergreen Springs in the Christmas Blizzard of 1870.”
Holden frowned. The pieces tried to fit, but his head seemed full of wool. “What do you mean? Captain Murray didn’t ride out. I did.”
“I know that now. When I found these.” She swept a hand over the collection of things in front of her: the article about his ride, a letter on pink paper, a little black notebook, and the Christmas card with his picture on it.
She picked up the card and held it out to him. “I guess this belongs to you.”
He took it, stared down at his image captured in the painting. He slid it into his vest pocket, where it rested heavily against his chest.
Hand to her mouth, she whimpered. “My mother knew about you, but she still let Captain Murray take the credit. She kept teaching the lie.”
He stared at the papers. But why am I here? What does this have to do with me being pulled through time?
“Why?” he asked.
“Because it was easier than explaining the truth. Because she was protecting our family’s reputation.” Megan inhaled and latched onto his gaze like she needed something solid to cling to. “Because Captain William Murray is my three-times great-grandfather.”
Holden’s boss was her kin?
Captain Murray, who’d been there during the Great Blizzard. The man Holden worked for. The man who watched him wrap his horse’s hooves and ride out into that killing storm without ever offering to go himself? He took credit for Holden’s bravery?
He got up then and walked to the window. He stared out into the darkness, at his reflection in the too-perfect glass. Pale in that unnatural light.
“Holden?”
He turned back.
She looked forlorn, like a little dogie who lost its ma. “You must hate us. The Murrays.”
Why would he hate her? She didn’t have anything to do with it.
“But why am I here?”
“I guess,” she said, “because I conjured you.”