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Redtail

6 Schrödinger’s Cat

I HAVE A GIRLFRIEND. I mean, besides Mary Beth. Sweet girl who found me my freshman year of college and stuck to me like a cocklebur. There was not much I could do to shake her. Well, I didn’t try very hard. Like I said, Ashley is a sweet girl and she appeals to me in a strange way. I lived on campus, even though it was only thirty-five miles home. I went home most weekends and trained Bolt into a fine working horse. I was looking forward to riding him on the range in the summer. But during the week, I stayed in a dormitory in Laramie at the University of Wyoming. I studied agri-business. The world was changing and our ranch was going to have to change, too. The damned recession that caught Dad by surprise had damaged a lot of ranchers in our area and their land was being grabbed as fast as they went under.

Okay, Ashley. We met. We studied. We dated. But it was a lot more than that. I joined Alpha Gamma Rho during fraternity rush week. Before you start thinking Animal House and all, AGR is also called Agro. We’re the agricultural fraternity. Let’s face it. I’ve always known I was going to be a rancher. I just didn’t figure it would happen this soon. So, there’s no pledge process. You join or you don’t. I did. We’re pretty active on campus, but our focus is on the agricultural and ranching business. The UW sports teams are The Cowboys. The brothers of Agro are the real thing.

Sigma Alpha is our sister sorority. These are girls who love the country and plan to stay there. Look at the promo pictures of all the sororities on campus. You have all these cute girls in short skirts or off-the-shoulder evening gowns, the Kappas, the Tri-Delts. Then you get to the Sigma Alpha girls all posing in their best blue jeans. Let me tell you, they do as much for blue jeans the way they pack them as any Tri-Delt ever did for a mini-skirt. I know the stereotype is loose sororities full of beautiful girls, but really—did you ever meet a college girl who wasn’t beautiful? Sororities or not, just walking across campus while the weather is still warm will give a guy a boner.

By the time I got to college, I already knew the two women who could be the love of my life were equally unattainable. Shit! One was my first cousin and she’d lectured me soundly that I couldn’t be pining for her this year when I got to college. Izzy had been fun, but Mary Beth was convinced that I needed to be looking for the woman who would share my home and ranch. I guess a guy will agree to anything when he’s about to come in a beautiful, tight pussy under a moonlit sky. I agreed that when I met a girl this time, I wouldn’t bring up Mary Beth right away. I’d focus more just on the relationship.

The other love of my life lived 100 years ago. How unattainable is that? There were days when I’d just go out riding through the high plains hoping I’d see a redtail hawk. But it seems they’ve gotten rarer as our little bit of wilderness becomes more urbanized. No matter how much I wished and prayed to be taken back to 1892, there was no answer.

Roped and Tied

I adjusted to campus life pretty quick-like. There were a lot of hands-on classes where we were working on the school ranch as a professor taught us about grading beef. I got a couple of used textbooks and I swear one had smudges of cow manure on the pages. I sure know it did after I was done with it. There was a class on accounting and finance that I really dug into. I’d been around the cows and horses my whole life, but I never got my hands on the ranch books until Dad and I had our little conversation.

While I was studying for my classes, I had the chance to do some independent research. All I knew about Joe Teini was that he showed up in a Corvette and stole my girlfriend when I was a junior in high school. There were times when I still had a pang of missing her if I let myself think about it. Things were working out well for her though. She graduated from high school without getting pregnant and was going to technical school this fall, but I didn’t know what she was studying. That was pretty much the last I’d heard about Joe until Dad said he was offering to buy property in our valley.

Finding information about him was no real problem. He graduated from the same high school I did, but six years before. Mary Beth might remember him, but they only overlapped a year. According to all the things I read, he was dirt poor growing up in Laramie. His pa was a ranch-hand on one of the big spreads east of town and his ma took in sewing. School records were locked, of course, so I couldn’t find out how he’d done. I looked through the yearbooks from the high school, though, and he looked like a nobody. There was never a picture of him with a girl. He wasn’t listed as a member of any of the school clubs. And the day after graduation, he hopped a train out East. Nobody expected him to come back again.

Then three years ago, he shows up in a flashy car with a big bank account. Said he’d gone to stock brokers’ school and had done well in the markets. First thing he did was buy the ranch where his dad worked and move into the big house. Alone. His parents still lived in the hired hands shack on the property and his dad now worked for him. It looked like Joe Teini had an axe to grind and was set on paying everyone back for what they’d done—or not done. Joe kept an office in Laramie and was brokering for some of the big-shots in town. Not bad for a 26-year-old former nobody. I was getting pretty suspicious.

Those suspicions turned to near panic when it was announced that our County Sheriff was in bad health and there would be an off-year election in November. Joe Teini announced his candidacy.

I looked at his picture in the newspaper with a new Stetson perched on his head and I swore I was looking at a younger version of Sheriff Cal Despain.

Of course, all that was taking place in my “spare time.” My focus had to be on my studies and on training my horse. And on fraternity obligations. The first obligation was to show up at the Fall Cotillion sponsored by our sisters in Sigma Alpha. Sigma Alpha’s big fall dance in early October was really just a mixer for the two organizations to get to know each other. But we were expected to dress our best and dance with a young lady. The dance was Western Formal. I had a pretty good suit with a Western cut jacket and boot-cut slacks, and of course I had my good boots. The young ladies all dressed in party clothes that would have been appropriate back in my other timeline in the 1890s.

There were some couples who were automatically paired up with each other, but in order to keep the event from being a typical high school dance where all the women lined up on one side of the floor and all the men on the other side waiting for someone to get so embarrassed they made a run for it, Sigma Alpha had a different method. The singles were lined up on opposite sides of the room promptly at 8:00. A hostess who already had a date then took the list of names and paired us up for the first dance. Us guys were looking over the line of eligible women and more than a few of us had already taken a sip from our hip flasks. By the way the girls were giggling, I guessed they might have been hitting it a little, too.

I hardly noticed my name had been called when I saw this absolutely beautiful blonde detach herself from the crowd and walk to the center waiting. One of the guys gave me a shove toward her. My head was doing all kinds of flip-flops and my stomach decided to get in on the act as well. The girl facing me brought up memories of hours spent on a sitting room sofa, carefully not touching, and not saying much as we got to know each other. This was the girl Kyle was falling in love with: Kat Tangeman.

“Kat?” I said as I approached her. She looked a bit shocked but then giggled.

“Well sometimes I’m a pussy and I do scratch, but I’m just a kitten if you make me purr.”

“I’m sorry, Miss. I didn’t get your name when they announced it and you look so much like a girl I knew a long time ago that I thought you’d just grown up and come here to UW and then I was so shocked when they called my name I didn’t even realize I was supposed to come out and join you because you are without a doubt the most beautiful young woman at this dance and…”

“God! You do ramble! Are we going to dance?” she asked. Fortunately, they started with a nice medium-paced two-step and I was able to take the young woman in my arms and not make any more a fool of myself.

“Sorry. I really didn’t get your name. I’m Cole Alexander Bell and I’m pleased to meet you Miss…”

“Miss Ashley Kay Brewer at your service, Cole Alexander Bell. Does your name mean you are related to the famous Alexander Graham Bell?”

“No, Miss Brewer. Alexander was my mother’s maiden name. We Bells have been in Albany County for a long time. Where do you hail from?”

“Glenwood Springs, Colorado. And we Brewers have been around Garfield County for a long time.” She laughed, making fun of me. I didn’t mind. She was good company and beautiful and seemed to fit in my arms like she was made for it. I wracked my memory—or Kyle’s—to see if Kat Tangeman was like this. Of course, he’d never held her in his arms quite like I was holding Ashley. Things moved at a different pace in respectable society back then and Kat was a school teacher. I supposed that meant she was about 19 or 20—the same as Ashley and me—but if I figured the times correctly, Kyle wasn’t much more than 18 or 19. His timeline was moving at a different pace than mine.

“So, what does your family do out in Glenwood Springs that brings you to Laramie, Wyoming to study and become part of Future Ranch wives of America—I mean Sigma Alpha.”

“Watch it there, buddy. My specialty is making bulls into steers.” I laughed, a little nervously. My balls were tingling. “Seriously, we’ve been in the cattle business for years, but the past few years, we’ve been making more off of hay production than the cattle. My brother figures we could turn our remaining pastures into hay fields and not have either as much work or as much risk.”

“So, he wants to turn the ranch into a farm.”

“Right. That doesn’t match my goals. I’m studying Agricultural Education, but I may double with Agricultural Business. You a rancher?”

“Indeed. My family controls about 6,000 acres west of here. Most of it is good grazing for cattle, especially in the high country. We run at least three cuttings of hay in the bottom land a year, though. If it doesn’t snow too early, we’ll often get a fourth cutting. As you know, it’s a seasonal business. We run our own feedlot come winter and start shipping fat and healthy beef around mid-December.”

“How about horses?”

“Well, it’s not a business for us anymore. I hear in my great-grandma’s day they were raising more horses than cattle, but there was a little break in the chain some years ago and when Dad started running the ranch, it was all cattle.”

“Cole, I think I might like you. Now, keep in mind that’s a big ‘might.’ You’ll have to show me what kind of man you are before I make that definite.”

“Well, Miss Ashley, I might just like you, too. Right now, I sure like dancing with you and talking to you.”

And dance we did. I think we were the last ones on the dance floor when they called it quits at two o’clock in the morning. It had been a stimulating evening. We’d have a drink and catch our breath as we talked about everything from ranching to politics to economy to our love lives. Well, that last was a subject we tiptoed around a little bit. I did find out she was a year older than me and a sophomore. And when we danced those slow tunes, the cowboy was always at attention. Ashley never moved away from me though. The last dance was a slow one and Ashley pulled away from me just before we went into a clinch.

“Mr. Bell, before we go back to polishing your belt buckle, I need to know if there’s a woman already in your life.” I sighed. “Please, don’t tell me…”

“Miss Brewer, we’re going to get to know each other a lot better before we do more than polish the belt buckle and I’m looking forward to that. Let me say honestly that I’m single and free to make any commitments that I might wish. I will never lie to you about that, but I’m not ready to talk about everything that’s happened in my life.”

“Including your broken heart and the girl you’re still pining for,” she concluded for me. Well, that wasn’t exactly it, but it was as good a place to start as any. She came into my arms and laid her head against my chest. I could feel her bosom pressed against me and the cowboy responded appropriately. He might have got in the way of the belt buckle a little.

“Ashley, would you consent to see me again? I’d like to take you out someplace where we can talk and get to know each other better. Maybe dinner on Friday night?”

“Cole, I’d like that very much. I’ve had a wonderful time this evening and yes, you are going to get kissed before you leave. But I’d like to take it slow from there if you don’t mind. I hadn’t really thought of taking up with a boy so soon after school started this year. I sorta had my heart broke last year, too.”

“I think that’s fair. No strings and no commitments, just a simple invite to dinner.”

“Here’s a simple yes,” she said. She lifted her face to me and our lips made contact for the first time right in the middle of the dance floor. I’d never been that much into dancing, but I was beginning to think it could become a favorite pastime with a girl like Ashley. We kissed until that last number ended.

“Can I walk you home, Miss Brewer? Or drop you somewhere?”

“I live right here in the sorority house, Mr. Bell. I’ve had a wonderful evening, Cole. I know you came with a bunch of guys from AGR. Can you find your way back okay?”

“Thank you, Ashley. I look forward to Friday night.”

“As do I,” she said. Her smile and the sparkle of her eyes lit the room for me. Then she turned and went up the stairs. I watched her out of sight and then headed for the door my own self.

I had to leave thirty bucks with Mom for the telephone bill because I spent all night Saturday night on the phone with Mary Beth. Honest to God, this was the first girl besides Mary Beth to really ring my chimes in this timeline. I loved dating Geneive. Who wouldn’t love wild sex with a pretty girl like Geneive? She was so outrageous that it was hard not to fall for her. And Izzy had been the aggressor in our relationship, even to inviting Mary Beth to join. But Ashley made it hard to think of anything else. Mary Beth said she was happy and that I should see where it leads.

“Cole, will you want to… cool it with me so you can have a real relationship with Ashley?”

“Mary Beth! Please don’t pull back from me. Before I have any kind of relationship with a woman, or if I should ever get married, it will be to a woman who understands I love you and will always have you in my life. We don’t have to try to make things go three ways like we did with Izzy, but until you tell me to stop and go away, I will be with you, Mary Beth.”

“Well, find out if she’s the real deal before you go telling her all the details,” Mary Beth said. “We’ll deal with us after we figure out if you’re a couple.”

I discovered we had the same economics class when Ashley walked in on Monday morning. She spotted me and sashayed over to where I was sitting.

“Is this seat taken, sir?” she asked. Damn! I liked the way she filled out those jeans. Levi Strauss could have made a fortune just by showing her in his pants. Or something like that. Not that he didn’t make a fortune anyway. Hell, in 1891, Kyle had been wearing Levi’s.

“Hey, Ashely. Please sit here. I realized when I got home that I didn’t get your phone number or arrange when to pick you up on Friday. I was going to make a fool of myself and camp out on the sorority steps until I saw you.” We laughed but didn’t have time for any more chitchat because class was starting. I had to pay attention in this class. I understood accounting pretty well, but economics is more than just raising the price when demand is high.

“Government intervention in the marketplace. Good or bad?” Professor Saunders said. We’re a pretty conservative lot at UW. You could hear groans in the classroom. “Let’s take a look at the oil industry for this next example. Everybody loves to dig at the big oil monster. In 1985, oil hit sixty dollars a barrel. It was a thriving industry in the United States. Oil companies were hiring people left and right. There was huge pressure to deregulate the industry. Get government out of our business. But we hit a recession in the late 80s and by 1987, oil was going for ten dollars a barrel. Was that because there was no demand? Did people stop driving their cars and trucks? Did semis quit rolling down the Interstate?”

“Seems like people still needed gas,” somebody down front said.

“Exactly. But the Arabs got together and established OPEC to regulate the price of oil they were selling. Prior to that time, the various Arab oil producers were competing with each other. OPEC changed the game. Now they competed as a group directly with American oil producers. They dropped the price to get more of the market. What happened in America?”

“Layoffs,” Ashley said. “They couldn’t afford the payroll, so the oil companies started laying people off. The economy just got worse.”

“Bingo. Good old American competition, free economy, worked against our economic stability until the government stepped in and started placing tariffs on foreign oil. I’m not making a comment on whether that was good or bad. I just think it’s interesting that the big oil companies were all of a sudden asking the government for subsidies and protections. Most of you are studying agricultural business. So, let’s look at food. How much of the food you eat is imported from other countries?”

“Seems like all our vegetables in the winter come from Central America or Mexico,” another student volunteered.

“Exactly. In fact, 35% of produce consumed in the United States is imported from foreign countries. But it gets worse. 70% of seafood is imported. That’s a lot of sushi. Now, what happens if Mexico or Canada becomes the largest beef producer in the world and we start importing 70% of our beef from NAFTA countries. Even 35%?”

“We’re screwed,” the guy up front said. It wasn’t eloquent, but the point was well taken. Most people were scribbling down notes, but not many were talking. I was thinking mostly.

“Right now, the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association’s number one concern is to stop government intrusion into the marketplace. But if Canadian beef imports rose from the current level of around three percent to as much as five percent, it would have an adverse effect on what you would get per pound of beef on the hoof. What would the NCBA’s position be regarding government regulation then?”

“It would make sense that the NCBA would want the government to impose tariffs on imported beef to protect American beef producers,” Ashley volunteered.

“Now what does that tell us about economic theory?” Saunders posed. There was quiet. He didn’t volunteer an answer. I liked that about his classes. They really made you think.

“Are you saying a free marketplace only works in a closed system where the players are pretty much operating on an even footing? If someone from outside the system competes because they have lower production costs or government subsidies, then the entire marketplace is threatened,” I said. It got a nod from the professor.

“That’s economics,” he said.

It got me thinking about what Joe Teini was doing. For some reason, he wanted to buy up land in Albany County. Dad and Uncle Angus weren’t the only ones he’d made offers to. Now he was running for sheriff. If he was the other time traveler the old prospector had warned me about, as I’d begun to suspect, was his real goal simply to buy the county? It seemed like there was something else to it, but I couldn’t make the connection. The prospector had said it was simple greed, but that just wasn’t enough in my book. Now I was thinking about economics.

We moved into winter in earnest. Light snow started falling the first weekend in November.

I was making a trip out to the cemetery almost as often as I was having dates with Ashley. It was a short walk from my dormitory and just going to visit Caitlin’s grave gave me a connection back to the people I knew in that other time. And while Ashley and I hadn’t gone beyond some great making out, we were real close to calling each other boyfriend and girlfriend.

“Cole, are you going to be around Thanksgiving weekend? A couple of the girls and I were thinking about making a dinner at the house and I’d invite you if you want,” Ashley said the Saturday before Thanksgiving.

“Ashley! It never crossed my mind that you wouldn’t go home to be with your family for Thanksgiving.”

“Glenwood Springs isn’t that easy to commute to for a long weekend. I’ll go home for Christmas.”

“Well, why don’t you join me and my family then? I know for a fact that Mom and Dad would love to meet you and I’d like you to meet my Aunt and Uncle and cousin, too. If you’re uncomfortable about staying at the ranch for the weekend, I’ll run you back to the house after dinner, but we’ve got plenty of room if you’d like to stay and I’d love to introduce you to my horses.”

“You live that close that you’d run me back after dinner?”

“It’s about thirty-five miles from campus out to our place. That’s why I go home most weekends to work with my horses.” The answer I got was a huge kiss. I guessed I was having company for Turkey Day dinner. I called Mary Beth the next morning.

The day came and when I pulled up in front of Sigma Alpha House on Thursday morning, Ashley came running out with a small suitcase in hand.

“I didn’t know for sure if the invitation to stay for a day was still open, and then I thought that if we’re going to work with horses I needed a change of clothes anyway, so I tossed some things in a bag, just in case, you know?” Ashley was looking at me with those big brown eyes that I loved. How could I resist. I pulled her in for a smooch.

“The invite is open for as long as you want to stay, sweetie. If you meet my family and get freaked out, I’ll bring you right back. If you want to stay all weekend, I promise to be as much a gentleman as you want me to be.” I grinned and she punched me in the arm. Under her heavy coat she was wearing a skirt and I glanced over at her legs. I took a deep breath. “Ashley, I also promise that if you want the whole story that I promised to tell you before we got serious, I’ll tell you this weekend. I’m damned close to being serious right now and I need to tell you this stuff.”

“Don’t worry about it,” she said. “What’s past is past.” I didn’t respond. “Oh shit. It isn’t past, is it? Maybe this isn’t such a good idea.”

“Ashley, please let me tell you about it before you decide that. I really want you to meet all my family first.”

“Okay. You promised to be straight with me and the least I can do is listen to the story. Cole, please tell me my heart ain’t gonna be broken.”

“Ashley, honey, I will never intentionally do or say anything to hurt you. But if that interferes with my pledge to be honest with you, I have to choose honesty.”

She leaned against me with both hands wrapped around my right arm the rest of the way home. I love the big bench seats in a pickup with a center seatbelt.

Thanksgiving turned out to be fine. In fact, more than fine. I got dragged to the den with the men-folk where we chewed on cigars and watched the football games until the women yelled for us and the kids to come to the table. We professed our thanks for the hands that fed us and paused to consider the land, and then settled into a big yummy meal.

After dinner, the menfolk headed to the kitchen to do the clean-up. It’s a family tradition. The women get the den, have sherry, and sometimes smoke. It’s about the only time Mom allows smoking in the house. The men get the kitchen. We thanked God for the hands that prepared the food; they thanked God for the hands that cleaned it up.

When we were all finished, we went to the den to see what the score was. One glance around the room and I wondered exactly what the score was. Mom, Aunt Lily, Sally Ann, Brenda, and their kids on the floor. No Mary Beth and no Ashley.

“Um… Where’s Mary Beth and Ashley?” I bravely asked.

“Hmm. Girl-talk, I think,” Mom said. “Mary Beth said she wanted to tell Ashley all about you. They went to the barn to see your horses.”

“Oh hell,” I muttered.

“MB did say you should come out when you were done with the men’s work,” Aunt Lily said. “They’re probably getting cold out there by now. They’ve been gone half an hour.”

“Well, I’ll just go tend to Bolt,” I said. Damn!

It wasn’t hard to find them. They were sitting on a bale of hay just outside of Bolt’s stall talking intently. I involuntarily flinched when I thought about the fact Mary Beth and I had made love on that very spot on my graduation day. Well, it was a different bale of hay, but it was right there.

Ashley looked up at me with a curious expression on her face as I approached.

“Hey. What do you think of Bolt?” I asked, not asking anything I wanted to ask. What the hell are you talking about?

Before Ashley could speak, Mary Beth stood up and gave me a solid, for real kiss.

“I’ll go in the house, hon. I’m cold and you and Ashley have a lot to talk about.” She headed toward the barn door and I turned back toward Ashley. She had a little moisture in her eye, but I couldn’t tell if it was just starting or just ending.

“Ashley…” She held up her hand and bit her lip. I braced myself for getting smacked.

“I knew,” she said. “I knew it would be something like that. I had visions of it being your kid whose mother had deserted you, or a crippled sister you were committed to care for, or God! Just about anything. It wasn’t what I expected, but I figured that it was going to involve some getting adjusted to.”

“It’s nothing either of us ever intended,” I said. “But we’re committed. We just can’t be the couple that either of us would like to be. In fact, both of us want to have a happy normal life, but neither of us can imagine it without the other.”

“Yeah. I understand that. Intellectually. Emotionally, I’m still a little adrift. But I ain’t quitting. Not yet. Tell me, Cole, is there any chance that you could ever love me like you love her?”

“You mean the exact same way?” I already knew that I didn’t love Mary Beth the same way I loved Laramie. That wasn’t like I loved Caitlin and I’d hardly known the fiery redhead. “No.” I said it with finality, but Ashley kept looking at me and waiting. “Ash, I’ve been in love a few times. Some that Mary Beth doesn’t even know about. There isn’t any two that have been the same.”

“Yes, but…”

“No. Wait. There’s more. I wouldn’t want to love you like I love Mary Beth. I can tell I’m falling for you. I mean, really thinking you could be the woman I want to spend the rest of my life with. I know that sounds awful rushed. We’ve only known each other for a couple months. But there’s something special about you. And…” I cut myself off. How could I tell her that my other self, Kyle, was falling in love with her other self, Kat? Kat probably wasn’t even her other self, any more than Laramie was Mary Beth’s other self. The fact that I had parallels going in a different time period only needed to confuse me, not everybody.

“There’s more, isn’t there, Cole? There’s something hidden deep down inside that you haven’t even told Mary Beth. I can see it in your eyes. I can see it when you go out and put flowers on Caitlin’s grave.”

“What? You… you know?”

“I wasn’t spying on you, honest. I saw you go into the cemetery a week ago and thought I’d catch up and walk with you. I lost track of you, though, and when I finally saw you, it was in the really old section and you’d cleared the snow off her stone and left flowers. I was going to ask you why you were leaving flowers for someone who died 100 years ago but I never really had an opportunity. I decided I was really in the wrong place and I shouldn’t invade your privacy.”

I let it rest, hoping that we could move on to another topic—maybe back to Ashley and me.

“Oh my God!” she screamed and then clapped her hand over her mouth. “You aren’t like one of those immortals like in that movie—what was it?—Highlander, who outlive their first love and go back to the grave hundreds of years later, are you? Please tell me that can’t be so?” Christ! This was getting worse. I didn’t make it better.

“She wasn’t the first,” I said softly then caught myself. “I’m not immortal. It’s nothing at all like Highlander. Nobody is out looking for my head—at least that I know of. It’s just… something different.”

“Okay. That settles it then.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I won’t push you about your mysterious relationship with a girl who died 100 years ago. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that you have a very real relationship with your cousin right now. What matters is that you’re asking me if I can put up with that and maybe even be a part of it. And what matters is that I’ve fallen in love with you. So, the answer is yes.”

“Yes?”

“Yes, Cole. I’m freezing my ass off out here in the barn right now, so I’m not going to strip off my clothes and fuck you. But sometime this weekend, sweetheart. Sometime, we’re going to find time to love each other. And I’m betting that Mary Beth is going to be right there with us.”

Ashley crushed herself to me and kissed me with more passion than I could remember her showing since we started going out. It was breath-taking. We held hands as we went up to the house.

Friday after Thanksgiving isn’t that big a deal for us on the ranch. The idea of Black Friday means something different to us than it does to the retail industry. So, after I’d helped with the feeding and made sure the water tanks were open in the feedlot, Ashley joined me in the corral to work with Bolt. As soon as she came out, the big stud on the lunge line ignored me and stopped to look at her. Usually, I’d give him a tickle with the long whip to get him back on his pace, but this time I just broke down laughing.

“Some big stud you are,” I laughed, gathering the lunge line in my hands as I walked toward the fence. “You see a pretty face and you forget all about what you were supposed to be doing.”

“He’s beautiful!” Ashley said. “I was watching for a few minutes before I came out to join you. I’m sorry I messed up his training.”

“Oh, he knows what he’s supposed to do and what he’s doing. This big boy is smarter than I am.”

“Hmm. I think I’ll remind you of that sometime. When do you plan to ride him?”

“I could probably get on now. I put my weight on him sometimes. I work over and around him. But right now, I’m working on the gaits and cuts he’ll need to work cattle. I don’t really expect to sit in the saddle until early spring.”

“Is it hard to know he’s ready and not get in the saddle?” I looked at Ashley. There was a twinkle in her eye and a lift of her brow that let me know she was making references to more than one thing.

“Well, there’s no question I’d like to get in the saddle if I truly knew he was ready. It’s hard.”

“Yeah. Poor horse is smart, but he can’t actually come out and say, ‘I’m ready.’ Not like I can.”

“Are you ready, Ash?”

“Scared, but ready.”

I leaned over the fence and she caught my face in both hands so she could control how soft and gentle this kiss was. She let it gradually heat up and I was reaching through the fence to hold her waist when there was a blast of hot air on our faces and we turned to see Bolt snuffling at us. We laughed.

“Looks like this fella needs to finish his workout before he’ll let me have mine,” I said. “Watch him turn and cut.” I led the stud back into the ring and damned if he didn’t show off. Every little command I gave him to cut, turn, and jump, he went at with gusto. When we finished his workout in half an hour, we were both blowing steam as we puffed. Ashley applauded.

I led Bolt into the barn and Ashley joined me in his stall to brush him and cool him down. He just basked in our attention, eating a handful of oats that Ashley offered him. I didn’t feed him much oats because it makes a horse hot. Still, in the winter he needed a few to supplement the hay. Ashley and I ducked out of the stall and she was immediately in my arms.

We kissed and for the first time, I let my hand drift down and grasp her butt cheek and pull her to me. She didn’t resist and ground herself against me. Ashley is a nice height. She’s a little shorter than Mary Beth, maybe five-six or -seven, which to my six-three is still perfect. I just hugged her to me and tried desperately to figure out where to go that we’d be comfortable for our first time together. When we came up for air, Ashley turned away from me and pointed up the ladder to the hayloft. She started to climb and I gladly followed that shapely ass up the ladder. God, I love tight jeans! She sure seemed to know where she was headed.

When I finally pulled myself through the trap into the loft, I was greeted by two young women with an arm around each other, holding out a hand for me to join them. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. They weren’t holding each other like lovers, but like friends who were about to share a meal. I guess I was the main course.

“Honey, Ashley invited me to be with you two. Is that okay?”

“Mary Beth, you know I always want you with me. Is it really okay with you, Ashley?”

“Cole, I’ve never done this before. I mean being with a guy who has another girlfriend. Together. Mary Beth and I talked, a lot, last night. And again this morning. Turns out, neither one of us is really into girls that much. But I don’t mind company. Especially when I know we’re both in love with the same man.”

From that point on, there was more touching and kissing than there was talking. I was having a little trouble keeping my present-day mind separate from my 1890s memories. God, Ashley was so sweet and I knew exactly how hard Kyle was falling for Kat. And here I was with Mary Beth who was as close to a soul-mate as I was ever going to find in this life, but just like with Laramie, there was this huge gulf between us that we couldn’t cross. Oh, we crossed it physically plenty, but we couldn’t cross it socially. With Laramie, I couldn’t just go and be with her, no matter how much I wanted to.

And that was something I needed to take care of, too. Someplace along the line I was going to have to tell both of them about my “other life.” Even though my months spent in that other timeline translated to mere minutes or at most hours in my real life, I had months of memories. I was there. I’d made love to Laramie and to Caitlin. I killed a man. I’d hidden money that I came back to find this summer. It was all real and I needed to tell them.

But not right now.

Right now, I was busy learning about Ashley’s beautiful body. She was a little shy about undressing, but I suppose we were all a little awkward. Mary Beth was just going to lie back beside us and watch, but she took a hand and undressed to encourage Ashley.

“Kiss me, Cole. Please kiss me and show me that you mean it. I’m not asking for a lifetime commitment or a wedding ring. I’m just asking you to show me that you love me at least a little right now.”

“Ka… Ashley, I don’t say words like that lightly. You know I had two other girlfriends while I was in high school and I might have said ‘love ya’ to them, but no matter how intimate we got I never said, ‘I love you’ to anybody but Mary Beth because I knew it wasn’t completely true. I might not be as in love with you as I will be, but there’s no question in my mind that I am in love with you. I love you, Ash. I really think I love you.”

I kissed her. I tried to tell her everything I had in my heart with that kiss. I tried to tell her that she’d be with me forever and that I’d always take care of her and love her and that we’d raise our kids on the ranch and everything would be fine. I tried to tell her all that with one kiss.

I don’t know how successful I was, but we were lying together—the three of us—without a stitch of clothing among us. It was pretty chilly in the barn but Ashley and I weren’t noticing it as the perspiration began to collect between our bodies and we kissed some more. I rolled us over so she was between Mary Beth and me. I knew Mary Beth would keep her backside warm while I continued to heat the front. That little extra contact, sandwiching Ashley between us, raised her temperature in more ways than one. We loved. We kissed. We were lost in our passion for each other and when I reached a hand over Ashley to caress Mary Beth, I found Ashley’s hand already there. The three of us clasped our hands together as I entered Ashley for the first time.

If you’ve got any experience in such things, you will know there is nothing that compares to the feeling you get when a girl takes her shirt off in front of you for the first time. There is nothing you will remember more than the first time you kiss her naked skin. But the sensations are so intense, there is no way in hell you will be able to describe the first time your cock made its way into her pussy. It’s the closest thing a man can get to complete sensory overload. My world reduced to a single point of contact. I felt every inch of me slide into her and felt her contracting around me as she came from the pressure I placed against her clit. And as her lips sought mine to muffle her cry, I came. The first time in this life I’d ever come in a woman unprotected.

I didn’t care. This one was for keeps.

With that being the highlight of my freshman year, there isn’t a whole lot more to say. I fell in love with Ashley, deeper every day. On our different spring breaks, Ashley and I went to Boulder and Mary Beth came to us in Laramie.

With the breathing room that an extra $400,000 gave Dad and Angus, they bought another two hundred yearling calves and we had the biggest herd ever to drive up to the high range as the snow started to melt. Ashley had her horse, a nice buckskin mare that looked good next to Bolt, shipped up from Colorado and I hired her to ride the range with me over the summer. Dad had a straight talk with me about keeping my mind on the job, but he was okay with it. He and Angus transferred the two ranches over to the new Alexander Bell Cattle Company as part of our giving them the gold and Mary Beth and I signing a note. All kinds of details had to be worked out, like ensuring Mom and Dad, as well as Angus and Lily, had a great retirement. We also had to be sure Mary Beth’s sisters were cared for and got their fair share of the inheritance. The Bell property was close to three times the size of the Alexander property, but Dad had a lawyer work up a contract for deed for the two ranches. For all intents and purposes, Mary Beth and I became land-owners.

I wasn’t even the boss up on the ridge. George did a great job of keeping the hands scheduled and things quiet while we rode. I took a tent that was a little larger than the tiny tents we usually slept in up on the range. I also got an air mattress that filled the bottom of the tent.

Ashley and I had ridden up to the high pastures already when Mary Beth got home from college. She graduated with honors. What a woman! Then she shocked both our families by calling them together and announcing her plan to ride up to the high pasture and join Ashley and me. She told them all they could call the place Sinners’ Paradise for all she cared. She was going to spend at least one summer with the man she loved. And the woman who loved him.

Nobody blinked an eye. She saddled her roan gelding, threw her pack on the back and rode out. Was I ever surprised to see her! And delighted. Ashley didn’t seem surprised at all as they stowed MB’s gear in our tent. Mary Beth wasn’t working the range for pay, so she just worked the same shift as we did and we rode and talked like forever. We made love in some combination pretty much every night we weren’t in the saddle all summer long.

And eventually that summer, I told them about my “dreams.”

I started, just telling tales, like I did when Mary Beth and I were up in the Big Horn. But the tales got more and more detailed and specific and then one day I took them over the ridge and showed them the old Douglas Fir. Both girls looked at me kind of funny and stepped away.

“It all really happened, didn’t it, Cole?” Mary Beth asked.

“Caitlin,” Ashley whispered.

I just stood there and nodded my head and busted out crying. It all really happened and I missed Laramie.

Before I could explain anything about how it happened, I saw a flicker of a shadow and that old hawk cried.

Traveling: Courting Kat

I’d just turned twenty in my real life. The Kyle I was thrown into had just turned nineteen. He was as serious and hard-working a man as I’d ever seen. He seemed to have outgrown his whoring and killing days. I’d learned on a visit some while ago not to distract him when I popped in. Not distracting him now was a good thing as he was helping lift a log into place, but his eyes involuntarily flicked up toward the hawk circling above. The log thudded into place about the same time I was tackled from behind by a five-and-a-half-foot tall Indian beauty.

“Kyle! You’re back!” Laramie yelled. She hung on me and kissed me and I could see a couple other men look over with puzzled expressions.

“You men just get back to you work,” Theresa Ranae snapped as she got down from the wagon that had just pulled up and lifted down my daughter. “You didn’t see nothing.”

I’d taken over Kyle’s body before her lips hit mine and in that instant, I was a transformed man. I was at peace. I grabbed as many memories as I could from Kyle while I kissed my lover and discovered that Theresa had hired him to manage the building of their cabin on her new property. It wasn’t that much, but it dwarfed what they’d lived in up over the ridge. Forty head of horses were running in a fenced pasture nearby.

“You did it!” I said proudly. “You got your land and you’re building your home. Laramie, Theresa, I’m so proud of you both.” I gave them another hug and picked up Kaylene. She was almost two years old and I’d missed her growing. I hugged and tickled the little girl until she giggled and hugged me back. “Where’s our baby?” I asked Laramie. Her face fell.

“I’m so sorry, Kyle. I forgot you didn’t know. There was a bad influenza went through town soon after you left last time. I got so sick I lost the baby. Oh, Kyle, our little baby is dead.” I had a feeling Laramie had been holding in the tears the whole time until I got back. She couldn’t hold them any longer and neither could I. I held her and wept for the innocent life I’d never met.

A mule trudged by hauling a good-sized log and I knew Kyle’s responsibility was to build a house. I broke away from Laramie, helped smear the mud caulking, and joined the others in hoisting the lintel log over the doorway. We worked all afternoon as I managed to get caught up with Laramie between raising logs for the cabin. Soon—maybe tomorrow—we’d put up beams for the roof. Kyle had organized things well and had all the materials for the cabin prepared before the men started building. I knew these logs had come from the upper slopes, dragged down a trail to the building site on this promontory. Down below me, I could see the Little Laramie River and the rich bottom lands.

“How much did you get?”

“We managed to get over 3,000 acres purchased and 160 acres right here as a homestead. We have to build the cabin and occupy it for five years. We want the house over yonder where the barn will be, but that piece isn’t on the homestead, so we have to build this temporary cabin.”

“That’s good. Even if you make nothing from the ranch, I can get you more money. You’ll need some crops, though. It’s too late to plant this season.”

“We have a garden down near the river. The next thing the men have to do is dig a root cellar and then they’ll start on the barn and corral.”

“Sounds like you’ve got everything under control.”

“Kyle does. He’s really very good and kind.”

When the day was done, the hired men headed back to Centennial where Laramie had put them up in a boarding house. They had moved out to Centennial when the building began so the men would only have a couple miles to ride to work. Otherwise they’d have been camped in tents on the homestead. Laramie had been busy as well. She and Theresa had left earlier, but Laramie rode her horse back out to the homestead late in the afternoon. The paint she loved so much, of course, had been sold before she and Theresa became ‘Midwestern ladies’. Now she rode a roan mare that reminded me of Mary Beth’s gelding. She’d changed clothes, too, and instead of the proper dress, she was now in buckskins.

“We will spend our first night in our new cabin,” she announced, “and still be under the stars. Will you make me feel the things that I miss so much, Kyle? It is sometimes so hard to have you so near and it not be you.”

“And you can tell. You certainly knew when I got here.”

“I saw the hawk circling while we were still half a mile away. I drove the horses hard to reach you.”

“Laramie, I love you. Even when I am not in Kyle I think of you every day and dream of you every night. I miss you.” We settled onto our bedrolls and kissed. I loved the feeling I got when I slipped my hand under her buckskin shirt and let it find her tender breast. “You changed out of your dress.”

“There are too many clothes and layers. Why do white women wear them with their husbands?”

I laughed. The question was a good one. I was certainly happier when there was just this one buckskin shirt to pass over her head and have her pressed naked against me.

We made love well into the night, stopping only long enough to eat the vittles she’d brought with her. We built a little campfire in the middle of the cabin and ate and talked.

“Some things have changed, Kyle,” Laramie said as we held each other close. “You will want to go to the city Saturday night. Kyle always does.”

“Well, he doesn’t need to go whoring when I’m around.”

“It is not that,” Laramie said. “Kyle is courting a school teacher and he wants to build a cabin near ours so he can bring her out here to live and both of them work on my ranch.”

“Kat Tangeman!” I said.

“Yes. There is considerable competition for her affection. We roomed next to each other at the boarding house in Laramie. She was so helpful and sympathetic when I was sick and lost the baby. She is a very proper lady, but also very passionate. She prefers Kyle because he is young, but a wealthy older man is also courting her. I think Kyle must act soon.”

“You are all right with this? Knowing that it is really me going to court her?”

“You will know how to win her for Kyle, love. It will make him happy and you will be near when you arrive. He has been very good to mother and me and brought us more money when we needed it. He cannot show himself to be a wealthy man unless he leaves here and he will not leave. So, he works hard and has the men well-organized.”

“I hate to go into town. I could get sent out by that sheriff.”

“It is always a risk. Kyle has organized the men so they know exactly what to do and they are reliable as long as their wages are paid on Saturday.”

I sighed. Everything she said made sense. It especially made sense now that I was with both Mary Beth and Ashley in my own time. The thought of courting Kat was not unpleasant. And Kyle had been good to Laramie. He deserved his corner of happiness.

We worked on the cabin for three more days and by the time work ended Saturday at noon, the roof was on and the men had put a door on hinges at the opening. Theresa planned to order glass windows for the two openings on the sides and another man was coming on Monday to close in the firebox and build a stone chimney. Laramie, Theresa, and Kaylene would have a snug home for the winter.

It was also well-known among the laborers and town folk that if anything untoward happened to the family, Kyle would mete out justice where it was due. Laramie was secure.

Saturday afternoon, I joined four other riders on our way to Laramie City. I let Kyle take over.

“City” was a good word for Laramie. Since Statehood, the population had grown to nearly 7,000 people. It was still a rough place, but much more than a street of brothels and bars. The town was being cleaned up. Kyle went straight to a barber and got a hot bath and shave. His blond hair was pulled back in a tie behind his neck and fell to nearly his shoulder blades. He even washed his mouth before he headed toward the boarding house where Kat lived.

She met me at the door with a chaste kiss and led me to the sitting room. An old woman sat in a rocking chair next to the fireplace, even though in the July weather no fire was laid. We sat on a settee that was anything but comfortable, but was narrower than the big sofa on the other side of the room. The old woman would have to turn her head to look at us.

“I’ve missed you, Kyle. How were things at work on the ranch?” It was normal old married folk talk. I told her about the progress on the cabin and she told me about the new brick school and the number of teachers and children there will be, with a separate teacher for nearly every grade. “Let us take a walk, Kyle,” she said at last.

I gladly offered my arm, thankful to be out from under the baleful gaze of the old lady. We walked up Second Street and down Main before she turned to me.

“Kyle, when will you take me to be your own? If you ask, I will say yes. I inquired and can teach in Centennial. They have only a dozen children and I will teach them whatever they need to know. But Kyle, my maidenhead is anxious to be gone. She would fly hither and be free. That blood that she leaves behind will be the only troth you need if you will leave your seed in exchange.” Kyle was having a little trouble following that, but the fact that she wanted him to fuck her came through. He was baffled, though. He couldn’t take her back to Centennial without a place for her, and in Laramie he’d moved into a single room over Mackenzie’s Dry Goods. True, the stairs to his room were in the alley and they might be able to go there undetected, but he was self-conscious about bringing her to the lowly room.

“My room isn’t very nice,” he said, finally, “or I would take you there this instant.” She took his arm and began to lead him to the alley where he lived. He was surprised that she knew the way.

“Any room with you in my arms will be a palace,” she said as she hurried him along. Now that Kyle had agreed, she was wasting no time getting him there. When they arrived, Kyle stood in shock as he looked at the spotlessly clean room, fresh linens on the bed, and even a trimmed wick in his lamp. “Please do not be angry with me dearest. I went to Mrs. Mackenzie and convinced her that you’d hired me to clean your room while you were gone since I had no employment for the summer.”

“Kat, I ain’t a great catch. I don’t know why you want me instead of that rich guy who’s been a’courtin’ you, but I promise on my knee that I will love and cherish you for the rest of my life. Will you bed with me and let me show you how much I love you?”

“Oh Kyle! That’s the prettiest speech you ever made. I’m a little scared, so please go slow and tell me what I must do to show you how much I love you.”

“I don’t have a wedding band for you, but I will get one as soon as I can and we’ll have the preacher announce our marriage. As my pledge to you, let me give you this.” He pulled the watch the old prospector had given him and handed it to her. Shit! I was supposed to find that. If he gave it away, how was I supposed to ever find it? I jumped in. “My dearest, let this token be forever passed to our eldest child and his to show our unbroken line for all generations,” I said. She looked at the watch and then fell into my arms to kiss me.

I stayed out of the rest of it for the most part. I slowed Kyle down a bit at one point, reminding him how it had been when he deflowered Laramie. Aside from that, he was a tender lover and I thought of Ashley as he and Kat became a real couple. He got no sleep that night and Kat slipped back into her boarding house, creeping up the stairs before dawn.

Kyle went back to his mattress and went to sleep instantly, but sprang awake when I nudged him as the church bells chimed on Sunday morning. He had promised to escort Kat to church and I wasn’t going to let him miss his entire first day of wedded bliss. Even I had trouble staying awake through the two hours of praying and preaching. Kat nudged me and I tried to keep Kyle awake. With the two of us working on it, we somehow survived the morning. I suggested that we have dinner in the hotel dining room and Kat agreed. Just before we reached the fancy hotel in the middle of town, an urchin rushed up and blocked our progress.

“Kyle Wardlaw, Sheriff Cal said to tell you to get your ass into his office right now. He’s been looking for you all morning.” Then the kid was gone.

“Oh, Kyle. I know you do work for the Sheriff sometimes, just like you work for Miss Theresa and her daughter, but does it have to be on Sunday afternoon?” Kyle sighed.

“I have to go. Sheriff Despain is a tough man. I don’t want him mad.”

“You go ahead then, dear. I will be here waiting for you. Please come home soon and let us be off to our new home together.”

“As soon as I can,” he said. He kissed her. It was scandalous. They were in the middle of town with respectable people passing by and neither cared for anything but that kiss. “I love you, Kat Tangeman,” he said.

“I love you, Kyle Wardlaw.”

I headed for the Sheriff’s office. I figured that I’d better sit back and ride and let Kyle manage this meeting. If Joe was riding in the Sheriff, I didn’t want him to look me in the eyes and see me there. I didn’t need to worry. Both Sheriff Despain and Joe Teini held Kyle in complete disdain. They thought of him as ‘simple’ and gave him no credit for craftiness. Despain laid the map we’d taken from the prospector on the table.

“Are you sure this was all the old man had on him?”

“Yessir,” Kyle answered. “You told me what to look for and as soon as I found it, I took it and rode like hell to get out of those mountains.”

“Then I must have sent you to get it.”

“I beg your pardon, sir?”

“I said, I’m sending you to get it. Bring whatever is in this hiding place back here and get moving so you can get back before snow flies this time.”

I groaned and so did Kyle. I didn’t have to answer.

“But sir, do I have to go now. I’m about to get married next weekend.”

“Ride hard and you can get married in three or four weeks.”

We rode hard. First to see Kat and explain that we had to get on the road right away if we were going to get back before snow fell in the mountains. It was the end of July, but we’d been known to have snow on that pass as early as September. Kat was sad, but I kissed her with meaning and then rode hard for Centennial. I reached Laramie’s room and ran in without even knocking. She was rocking our little toddler in a chair and singing her some native song that I took to be a lullaby.

“Laramie!”

“Shh, Kyle. Kaylene just went to sleep.” She laid the child on the bed and turned to me. “Oh dear, Kyle, what is it?” I explained that I was being sent west of the mountains and that I had to ride hard to get back before snow flies. “Oh no, Kyle. You just got here and I want more of your sweet loving.”

“Oh, I do, too, sweetheart. I want to make another little baby in your womb and be with you to raise them on our ranch. But in order to do that, I need to get out of here and get back. I love you, Laramie. You are the light of my soul. I ache every day we are parted.”

“Come back to me, Kyle. Just come back to me.”

“You should know, Kyle proposed to Kat and we are to be married as soon as I return. She will teach at the new little school here.”

“That is wonderful. We may have to explain to her… whatever we can explain. I don’t know what it is, but I love you.”

With a kiss that threatened to disturb our daughter on the bed, I took my leave and went to the stable to get my mule. I had supplies at the ready and I headed for the mountains.

There wasn’t much for me to do. Kyle knew the way and I just sat back and contemplated what Joe Teini was up to, in this time and in ours. Here, he was accumulating wealth. In uptime, he was making a grab for power and land. I had to figure out how to stop him. I didn’t think it was necessary for one man to try to own a county. What then? The whole state? The country? I supposed that with unlimited money you could about do anything you wanted. Unless somebody with more money stopped you.

It was nearly four weeks making the thousand miles from Laramie to Oregon where we’d picked up the map. Bolt might have made it faster, but a mule is smarter than a horse and when it’s gone far enough for a day, it stops. We used the mule’s good sense to break up the trip. And while Kyle controlled the journey, I sat back and studied our problem. It seemed that Cal Despain was more trouble than he was worth. It would be a whole lot easier on us if Joe Teini could no longer just drop into the past.

I won’t say that I contemplated killing Despain. All I’d done was think about how we’d all be better off if he wasn’t around.

It took most of another week to find the plot where the prospector had buried his stash. It wasn’t that much. There was a chest, like the old man said. We already knew what was there, but I didn’t understand Teini’s haste in getting it right now. It was mostly filled with double-eagles and two hefty pouches of jewels. We didn’t wait or look around for more. We split the loot between the mule’s side bags and headed back east.

I was worried about making the Teton Pass before it was closed in. It was already the second week of September and there was definitely snow on the high peaks. Kyle turned south to head for the old Cherokee Trail that crossed Bridger Pass nearer to Laramie. Just before we turned north of Salt Lake City, I got the idea to take the train across the rest of the way. The Transcontinental ran from Salt Lake City right to Laramie. We booked passage and got our stock loaded. I decided to camp out in the stock car instead of taking a seat. If it was good enough for the horse and mule, it was good enough for me. Besides, I was transporting twenty thousand dollars in gold coins and a bunch of jewels. It seemed better to stick with it.

We weren’t the only ones who traveled with their stock, and I was glad we were there. I was pretty sure any one of these hombres would slit my throat and steal my horse. It was only the fact that there was never just one other in the car and that I was always awake, even when Kyle slept, that kept us alive. If one of those strangers so much as stretched in the night, I woke Kyle up. I was finding that it was easier and easier for me to stretch my senses—what, my intuition?—when Kyle was asleep so I was aware of our surroundings without using his eyes or ears.

I’d always been limited by what his body could do. If Kyle’s eyes weren’t open, I couldn’t see. If he was asleep, I could listen and smell things, but they were faint and I had to nudge him awake in order to do anything. On that train, I was beginning to expand my awareness. Maybe I couldn’t exactly see, but I could sense more of what was around me—even where we were.

One thing had puzzled me. Despain/Teini didn’t want us to bring the treasure back on our first trip out to get the map. Why did he decide to send us out now? I had to put myself in the shoes of the puppet master. What could have happened in 1996 that drove Joe Teini to feel he needed Kyle to get the old man’s treasure right away? I kept coming back to Schrödinger’s Cat.

The famous theory was that if you placed a cat in a sealed box with a chemical drip that had a fifty percent chance of combining to create a toxic gas and a fifty percent chance of remaining benign, then as long as you kept the box sealed, the cat was both dead and alive. It was only when the box was opened that history branched and there was either a dead cat or a live cat.

What if Joe Teini had opened the box and found it empty?

I’d opened a box when I’d lifted the rock and brought ten gold bars down from the mountain. But I’d put those bars there myself. For whatever reason, Joe Teini chose to work through other people. I didn’t think Cal Despain had actually ever been to see the treasures Kyle had piled up in the Medicine Bow. Teini had undoubtedly opened a box somewhere along the line in order to have the money he was already throwing around to buy the sheriff’s office and the ranches he had. But he assumed the mother lode of treasure was what the old prospector had collected. There was a lot more treasure lost in the 1840-60 range than in the 1880-1900 range. So, if Joe had just memorized the map and gone to search for the treasure in uptime and it wasn’t there, he had to assume someone already moved it. Best to send your own agent out to move the treasure, then.

Cal Despain was surprised to see me when I walked into his office the fifth of October. I looked into his eyes and could tell that Joe was not there, or he was hiding the way I was.

“What the hell are you doing here? Did you get it?” I nodded. “You took it to the cave?” I shook my head and hooked my thumb out toward my mule. “You brought it right here? You dumbass!”

“There’s just one box. It’s a good one, but didn’t seem like I needed to make a trip out there for this.”

Cal had me bring the mule around to his back door and the two of us hoisted the bags into the back office. We unloaded the coins and jewels and Cal looked like he’d never seen so much.

“Damn! This is good. Here, Kyle, have a handful. You earned ’em. Now go court your missus.”

I realized at that moment that Despain was nearly as simple-minded as Kyle was. Apparently, there is a limit to the intelligence of the person who gets occupied by a time-traveler. But this could create problems. If this was the first time Cal had actually seen the big payoff instead of just the few coins that he usually received, he might get curious. This was going to be tricky.

Kyle headed straight to see Kat and I let him go, but in the morning, we were headed to Laramie. Unfortunately, I never got that chance.

How many times does a redtail hawk swoop right down in the middle of a city and scream?

Thar’s Gold in Them Thar Hills

When I landed in my own body, I was cradled between two luscious breasts and hands were gently stroking my head. I thought for a minute I’d just jumped a little and Kyle was being cradled by Kat. Then I realized there were more hands than that. My eyes flickered open. The luscious breasts were Ashley’s. Her hands were holding mine. Mary Beth was stroking wet streaks off my cheeks and whispering, “There, there. It’s okay, honey. We’re here for you.”

“Did I… was I…?”

“You just cried yourself to sleep for a few minutes, baby,” Ashley said. “It’s okay. I… um… told Mary Beth about Caitlin. I mean her stone. I hope that’s okay.”

“Yeah.” My eyes started leaking again. “I gotta find another one out there. My wife lost our second baby while I was gone. She’s buried in the infant lot. There’s no stone. I just need to go there.”

“Your wife, Cole?” Both Ashley and Mary Beth hit it at the same time and I realized what I’d said.

“I guess we never got married. Never seemed to be time when I was there. Besides, my host is in love with someone else and it would be awkward for him to marry my love. God, it’s so confusing sometimes.”

“How many children do you have, Cole?”

“Just one I know of. I’ve got a funny feeling Kyle and Kat will be getting pregnant pretty soon, though. And who knows if anything caught with Laramie this time.”

“This time?” Mary Beth asked.

“Damn. Didn’t you hear the hawk?”

“Yeah. Funny thing. Screeched when you started crying and then circled around and came back a few minutes ago, just when you were waking up.”

“I don’t know why it is, but I figured out that it’s Redtail’s call that triggers me to switch places.”

“You mean you were there? In the 1890s? While we were holding you?” I nodded. “How long?” Mary Beth asked.

“Two, almost three months.”

“That’s a lot of lovin’. One of those girls ought to be pregnant.”

“That’s the problem. I don’t just spend my time with her—or them—when I’m there. This time I got sent on a trip to Oregon to recover a treasure. I dumped it in Laramie and Kyle was on his way to see Kat when I got called back.”

“Kat. And I look like Kat, don’t I? That’s why you called me Kat the first time we met,” Ashley said. I nodded. “Why do you suppose this happens?”

“Right. Why did you get sucked into all this?” Mary Beth added.

“Damned if I know. Don’t seem like I’m a very likely guy to go out and fight Joe Teini.”

“The Sheriff?”

“Yeah. He’s one, too.”

“Are there more?” Ashley asked.

“I met one other on my last trip. But his host died while we were there and I don’t know his name in either time. He could be alive, or maybe he died when his host did. I just don’t know. From what he said though, he wasn’t actually from this time. I just don’t know when.”

“So, I believe Joe Teini is a scumbag, based on what Dad’s been telling me,” Mary Beth said. “But what’s he up to? What’s he trying to do?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “So far, all I can see is that he wants to buy all the land in Albany County and become God.”

“That sucks. How are we going to stop him?” Ashley asked.

“We?”

“You’ve got Kyle, Laramie, and Kat in 1890 and Mary Beth and me now. The six of us ought to be able to come up with something.”

I smiled up at Ashley and turned my head enough to nip at her tit through her shirt. She and Mary Beth both started giggling.

“I think what ‘we’ are going to do right now involves at least two of us getting naked,” Mary Beth laughed. She reached to unsnap Ashley’s shirt.

“I think we should all three get naked,” I laughed, popping the snaps on Mary Beth’s front.

“Oh, I was thinking just Ashley and me,” Mary Beth said with her eyebrows raised. “Are you sure you’re up to it?” Ashley’s hand was in my crotch and I was definitely up. Mary Beth leaned across me and took Ashley’s face in her hands. “I know I said I prefer boys to girls, but Ash, I do love you.” The two girls kissed over the top of me and my cowboy went wild with anticipation.

I held my two naked lovers against my body. Mary Beth’s pussy was still pulsing around my cock and I was leaking the last drops of my second load. Ashley was holding my balls and had played with both of us all through our loving. The girls didn’t go down on each other, but they were active partners in turning me on and turning each other on. I turned my head and Ashley met my lips. Mary Beth snuggled her head against my chest and squeezed her pussy muscles on my cock as Ashley and I kissed.

We could just walk away from it all. We could sell the ranches to Joe, send our parents on an around the world cruise, and buy ourselves a big spread up in Montana—just with what I knew we were lying on under the roots of that big tree. Why should we fight a battle over land? If I cared to open Schrödinger’s box, I knew where there was a bunch more treasure, assuming nothing untoward happened in the 1890s. I’d come up here with the intent of opening one of those boxes today. We needed to make sure the ranches were safe for the winter, and that meant more money.

Ashley’s kiss became more intense. I heard a slurp and looked down to see Mary Beth nursing on Ashley’s nearest tit. There’s just something about a girl who’s wearing nothing but her neckerchief. Somehow, we’d never taken that red bandana off. The sun was low, even on this western side of the ridge. We had the early shift on the herd in the morning. I guessed I’d dig for buried treasure later.

Later didn’t come that week. I left Schrödinger’s box unopened.

We were close to the end of the month. Grass was getting scarce and the nights were cold. Some of us had to get back to school. We were planning to drive the cattle down to the lower pasture and start separating them out for early feedlot after the weekend but Friday, I got a radio message from home.

“Cole, your dad’s been in an accident,” George said when he caught up with me riding herd. “You need to get back down. Go out to the trailhead. Your mom is sending Jack up with the 4x4.”

“Let me grab Ash and MB,” I said. “I’m on my way.”

I rode uphill toward where my girls were and explained what was going on. I needed to get down to the house.

“I’m a hired hand,” Ashley said. “I can’t just take off and go with you. We’ll be down on Tuesday or Wednesday and I’ll see you then. I love you, Cole. I’m praying for your father while I’m riding herd.” God, I love that woman!

“Hon, I better stay here with Ashley,” Mary Beth said. “I trust the guys, but it’s just safer all around if there’s two of us girls up here. And it’s only a couple days. Go take care of your Mom and Dad and tell them I love them and we’re all praying for Uncle Earl and Aunt Sarah. I love you, Cole.”

“I love you, Mary Beth,” I said as I nudged Bolt over next to her roan and kissed her. I moved up next to Ashley and she practically threw herself out of her saddle reaching to kiss me. I looked at the two girls, turned my horse and headed for the trailhead.

Things were bad. Dad was in intensive care and was still listed in critical condition. His truck had gone off the road coming back from the co-op meeting late Thursday night. The ranchers had started complaining that winter food was going up in price and they were going to have to sell off their cattle before they could be fattened up. This was already driving the price of beef down. We were all expecting to get $2.00-2.25 a pound live weight, but the market price at the moment was down to $1.85. This was going to cause a massive sell-off before winter.

One of our neighbors north of Centennial had been traveling the Snowy Range Road a mile behind Dad when a dark car blew by him at close to a hundred miles an hour. It went so fast that our neighbor couldn’t even identify what kind of car it was other than small and fast. Its lights were off. Just at Porter Lake, he came upon Dad’s truck crashed through the guard rail. So far, we were all wondering if it was an accident or if he’d been run off the road deliberately. The Sheriff’s office just said they were investigating. I knew how hard they’d be looking into it if Joe Teini was behind this.

I joined Mom at the hospital in Laramie and just held her in my arms as we waited for news about Dad. We were allowed to go into ICU for just ten minutes at a time, once an hour. There was no change in Dad. He had tubes in his nose and mouth, tubes in his arms, and monitors connected to his chest. There was no change between our visits.

I finally got to talk to a doctor about dinner time.

“There’s really no change,” the doctor said. “We got him in about eleven last night and have done everything we can to patch him up, but he’s not showing signs of waking up yet. His head was pretty banged up and he broke several ribs when he went into the steering column. His left leg was snapped in three places from the impact with the guard rail. If he doesn’t show signs of regaining consciousness by morning, I’m going to have to say he’s entered a coma. Usually, I’d call that now, but there’s no difference in how we treat him. He’s staying in ICU and I’m not upgrading his condition. He’s critical because we’re actually supporting his life. Without that, he’d die. I’m sorry to put it so bluntly, but that’s the fact.”

“Thanks, Doctor,” I said, not knowing what I was thanking him for. There wasn’t anything in what he said to be thankful for. Except Dad was alive. I prayed hard that it was a good sign.

I stepped into managing the ranch in Dad’s absence the next morning. I was twenty and technically, Alexander Bell Cattle Company already owned the combined spread on a contract even though they were still managed separately by Dad and Angus. The important thing was to make sure we were ready to receive close to two thousand head of cattle when they came down from the high range. Between that and supporting Mom, I had my hands full. Uncle Angus and Aunt Lily took turns going up to the hospital to sit with Mom. I was a little surprised when he turned to me and told me that he and Dad had already signed papers handing the management of the combined ranches over to the Alexander Bell Cattle Company in anticipation of us coming down on Monday and that I should assume management of his part of the herd and not bother separating them out. Like the other ranchers, he figured we were going to take a big loss this year with the shortage of winter feed.

This was also part of ranching economics. It’s expensive to feed cattle over the winter in the best of times. When you bring them in from the range you can have strong healthy cows but they don’t have the quality fat marbling for Prime Grade beef. You have to fatten them up. From what I was seeing, we weren’t going to last longer than a month before we had to start selling cattle off to Midwestern feedlots. That meant shipping and lower wholesale prices. We might be lucky to get $1.25 a pound on the hoof net. Everyone in Albany County seemed to be in the same fix. Even Sheriff Teini had spoken up at the meeting about not having feed, though no one felt sorry for him.

I went back to the hospital every day and every day the news was the same. No change. Dad was existing there because they had him plugged in. They’d moved him into a private room where he could still be monitored, but because he was stable they no longer had him in ICU. Stable as a vegetable. I never let Mom see me weak, but I went home at night and cried. On Monday morning, I got the radio message that the herd was moving. George estimated it would be Wednesday midday before they arrived. I told him to bring them all in together. We weren’t cutting our cows from the Alexander’s. We’d just funnel half into their feedlot and half into ours. It wasn’t unexpected after Angus and Earl had ordered the fences removed from between our property early last spring.

What started worrying me, on top of having no feed for the cattle and Dad being a vegetable, was that school was supposed to start the following Monday. On Wednesday morning about the time I could see the herd clearly from the back steps, I called the admissions office at UW. I explained the situation and said I would not be able to enroll this fall. They made the appropriate sounds of sympathy and told me not to worry. I had protected admission and could take up to a year leave before coming back. I optimistically told them I hoped to be back for the winter term, but the truth was I knew better. Even if Dad started to recover, I was a twenty-year-old manager of a producing cattle ranch. If I got more schooling, it was going to be night school. I kind of regretted that, but I loved the ranch and I loved what I was doing. I’d make it work and hope Ashley would stick with me.

Wednesday afternoon, I was mounted when the herd started into the lower pastures. I rode with the hands and barely had a chance to get a quick kiss from Mary Beth and Ashley. I did switch to Bolt, though, and he performed like the stud he is. Uncle Angus and his lead hand, Bill, had joined Jack and me most of the morning, making sure there was water in all the tanks and that our hay was ready to move when needed. We’d only managed three cuttings that summer, but the lower pasture was still green and lush. Our thousand heifers and calves that hadn’t gone to the upper range could graze for at least two weeks on what was growing.

Usually Mom and Lily handled food for the crew when the cattle came in, but knowing the condition we were in with Dad in the hospital, a team of neighbor ladies showed up with chili, cornbread, and beer for all of us at about six. By eight, we were sweaty and dirty and hungry. Many of the neighbor men showed up as well. Mary Beth and Ashley were on best behavior because even though our hired hands and family knew how we lived on the range, none of the neighbors did.

I was surprised when three of the neighbor men cornered me with a beer.

“Cole, what are you going to do about selling off?” Obert Calhoun asked. He owned a spread east of us and was maybe fifteen or twenty years older than Dad. He grazed all summer in his own pastures and bought only the hay that was necessary to get them to market. He usually got a good price for his grass-fed beef.

“Little early for me to make that my decision, Obert. I’ve still got hopes that Dad will be here telling me what to do.”

“Don’t take this wrong, son. We all want your father back here and healthy. I’m proud to call him a friend for more than thirty years. But we also all know he’s been grooming you to take over. He even credited you with saving the farm last winter, though none of us know how you did that. Even if it was just giving him hope, it was the right thing to do.”

“Thanks, Obert. Give me a week to get my head around what I’m going to do here. I’ve already told UW I would be taking a year off to manage the ranch while Dad recovers. I know as well as you guys that it will take him a long time to get back to normal.”

“Well, I’m glad you’ve got a head on your shoulders. If I had to depend on my son, I’d already be bankrupt. What are the chances I could mate him up with that filly cousin of yours? At least then I’d know there was one brain in the family.”

“Well, who Mary Beth mates with is her business, but if you ask her about it like that, you should probably have a doctor present. One you trust because you’re likely to be in the bed next to Dad’s.” The guys all laughed and I breathed deeply so I didn’t give away any real feelings I have for my cousin. The laughter relieved a little of the tension and we just sat around jawing about some of the daily news.

When we’d all eaten our fill, the neighbors had left, and the guys had gone to get hot showers, the three of us went into the house. It was strange having the house to ourselves. Mom was staying in Laramie as long as Dad was in the hospital and I would go in early in the morning. It was way too late tonight. We enjoyed our showers and there wasn’t a drop of hot water left by the time we were through. I loved washing Ashley’s hair. Mary Beth got her hair washed by my girlfriend and we turned around and worked it the other way. Ashley got conditioner while I got shampooed. Then MB and I got conditioner at the hands of Ashley.

Sure, we played around a bit, but we saved most of that for bed. When I was about 15, I made a suggestive comment to one of the older guys in town, saying we missed something with not having horses and buggies when we were dating anymore. Not that I’d know. I said, “The horse knows the way…” and left it hang. The geezer—not any older than Dad—said, “Speaking as a man who’s been married fifteen years, I’d rather have 256 horses under the hood and a soft bed waiting at home.”

Well, my bed wasn’t standard since I’d reached my full height two years ago. Mom and Dad consented to get me a king size bed, so there was plenty of room now for me to crawl in the middle and hold each of my girls close beside me. I was planning to welcome them both home with some good loving, but they were so tired and so relaxed after their showers that they fell asleep on my shoulders before I could get something started.

I went to the hospital in the morning and stood beside my Dad as he passed away.

I know my dad wasn’t perfect. But let me tell you about my dad. His mother died before he could recognize who she was. He was taken by the neighbors and raised as one of their own while they managed both ranches and kept things solvent for twenty years. He married the girl he grew up with and her brother was like his brother. He served in the Army and survived Viet Nam. He did his duty for his country and came back with an honorable discharge from a grateful service. And then he got this ranch re-established as one of the leading cattle producers in the county and worked with his neighbor brother-in-law to rise above the tides of fortune.

Sometimes I regret giving him all that money, because I took away the opportunity for him to solve the problem himself like I know he could have. I opened Schrödinger’s box and that set the reality.

I’ve figured out that I can’t do anything in the past that changes anything that happened up to the present. All I can do is make the choices that affect what comes hereafter. Being in the past is just like being in the present that way. I couldn’t save the old prospector’s life. Nothing in known history changed. His body was found next to that of his faithful mule. There was nothing of value on his person or on his mule. I didn’t change anything. Joe Teini opened the box and discovered the prospector’s treasure wasn’t there. He acted to make sure the reason it wasn’t there was because he’d recovered it. Still no change in the outcome.

My dad made a difference. He created who I am. He changed the course of the future.

Why am I so upset, other than that my dad is dead?

Because right now, I’m trying to decide who else has to die.

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