Redtail
7 To Be or Not To Be
OF COURSE, I read Shakespeare in Senior English Lit in high school. Who didn’t? I just suddenly found myself identifying with the melancholy prince. A father killed. A usurper on the throne. What’s a prince to do?
I was convinced my dad had been murdered and I was ready to lay it at the feet of Joe Teini. The bastard actually came to the funeral on Labor Day and when he went through the receiving line he offered my mom two million in cash for the ranch. At the fucking goddamned funeral! The bastard.
“Mom doesn’t actually own the ranch now,” I said, stepping between them. I kept my attention on Mom and avoided looking him in the eye. There was a chance he could recognize a time traveler just by looking him in the eye. “I’ll be sure to let you know if the owners ever want to sell.”
“Just thought I could make things better,” Joe sneered. “I wouldn’t want anyone else to end up like your dad.”
The son of a bitch! He was as much as threatening my family. This was going to stop. I was going to cut off his source of funds or his balls or both.
I wasn’t sure yet, but I had a feeling that it was going to happen soon. Things in the western part of the county were looking bleak for everybody and I figured I needed to get my act together pretty soon or everything was going to hell.
Just let me bury my dad first. Okay?
Family Bible
We used the backhoe to scrape out Dad’s grave up on the promontory with the other Bell family members. When I helped lower the casket in the hole, I wondered about all the other ancestors who were buried there and how long the ranch had been in our hands. I was pretty sure Laramie’s ranch had not been far from here, but the landscape had changed enough that I couldn’t identify things. I’d only found the site of the hut because of the thermal spring. I’d kept hoping that I’d discover that we had another neighbor who was maybe a descendent of our child, Kaylene. But whatever happened, I didn’t find anything.
That just wasn’t what I was focusing on. I had people who were depending on me in two timelines. I needed to figure out how best to protect both of them and it was all coming down to getting rid of Joe Teini.
Folks finally left after the carry-in dinner and after our refrigerator was filled with food we only needed to warm up for the next few days. Mom looked up when she saw that Mary Beth and Ashley were both still there.
“Oh. I suppose you’re waiting for Cole to take you home,” Mom said.
“Mom,” I said as gently as I could. “Ashley and Mary Beth are staying here tonight. With me.”
“Oh. Well the guest room…”
“Mom. With me. Ashley is my girlfriend and if she will consent to be my wife I will marry her before Christmas.” Ashley rushed to me and kissed me deeply, right in front of my mom. I wasn’t embarrassed by it at all. I held out my hand and Mary Beth took it. “Mary Beth is my cousin and I love her with all my heart. She will live with me and with Ashley for as long as she wishes and holds us in her heart like she does now. Mom, we’re going to be one family and while we don’t want to advertise things to all the neighbors, we’re not hiding it from our families.”
“Oh. I suppose I knew all that. Your father did. Both your fathers. I just thought that when you got serious about a girl she would be the only one. I can see, though that you are all three in love. I don’t understand these things, but I’ll just go to bed now.” Mom hugged each of the three of us and it really did feel like she loved and accepted us. “Cole, will you write it in the Bible? I got it down yesterday, but I just couldn’t open it.”
“What Bible, Mom?” Well sure I had a Bible. We all had Bibles even if we didn’t go to church much. But I wasn’t sure what she wanted written in what Bible.
“The Bell Family Bible,” Mom answered. “I got it down last night and put it on the desk, but I couldn’t write your father’s death in it. It’s really your responsibility as head of the household now.” I didn’t even know we had a family Bible. It was common enough for each family to have a record of their family in a Bible. I’d looked at enough of them at the Family History Library. Apparently, the last event that had been written in ours was my birth. I kissed Ashley and Mary Beth goodnight and told them I’d be up in a bit. Then I headed toward the office and my dad’s desk. I suppose it was going to be my desk from now on.
I must have seen the big book sometime in the past, probably when I was a little kid, because it looked sort of familiar. There was a marker in the middle of it and it opened to the page where my Dad’s information had been recorded. It was pretty complete information. It started with his full name and birth date. Below that were his date of graduation from Laramie High School. Then his dates of service in the United States Army, 1973-1975. Next came his marriage to Mom and her birth information and parents. A number of lines below that had the caption children, but only my name appeared. I was surprised to see a line above mine marked with the simple words, “Infant girl. Stillborn. March 10, 1974.” I never knew I had a big sister. It made me remember my own baby who was buried somewhere in the infant field at Greenhill. At the bottom of the page was space where the single initial “d.” indicated where I was to place his death information. The next page started with my name at the top and my birth date. I wrote the date and place of Dad’s death, but it seemed that there was a lot of space left and I wondered what I was supposed to write there.
I turned back a page to see if my Grandmother’s entry was there. It was. Mildred Arlene Bell, b. 5/10/1925. At the bottom of the page were the words, “d. 12/5/1955 She loved a soldier who was taken to war and did not return. When she had delivered their infant son and she knew he was safe, she hurried to join her love.” The only child was Earl Thomas Bell, my dad, born August 7, 1955.
I turned back to Dad’s page and thought about what I should write. My handwriting was certainly nothing like the flowing script on the previous page and I wondered who had written that. I thought and then wrote. “Earl Thomas Bell, faithful husband, respected father, cherished friend. All those who knew him miss him.” I got it now. That’s why the stones in our family plot were blank. Our stories were in this book. I wondered how my story would be filled out.
I turned back a page to Mildred’s information and read it through completely before looking at the previous entry. The writing was more difficult to read, but I stared at it long after I’d read it.
“Kaylene Redtail Bell, born March 10, 1889. Lived with Robert Hood, 1925 by consent. Died October 5, 1945. No church heard their vows, but they loved each other and brought a beautiful daughter into the world.”
It couldn’t be. It had to all be coincidence. Still I knew what I’d find when I turned the page. I had opened Schrödinger’s box.
“Laramie Wyoming Bell, born summer of 1873. Beloved of Kyle Redtail, 1889. Mother of Kaylene Redtail Bell. Died December 24, 1929. To the very end she listened for the cry of the redtail hawk.”
Oh God! I was hyperventilating. Laramie Wyoming Bell was my great-great grandmother. I was my own great-great grandfather. I stumbled out of the study and ran out the back door of the house with the Bible clutched against my chest. Before I reached the family plot I heard it slam again and a flashlight flicked across me as I ran to my father’s grave. I didn’t understand when we laid him to rest what the meaning of the short rows were. Here were the generations of my family. My father and baby sister. My grandmother Mildred and her soldier lover. My great-grandmother—my daughter—and her common law husband. And three stones together. Laramie Wyoming Bell, the child we lost… and me. Above us, a single stone. Theresa Ranae Bell who ran off to marry a Cheyenne brave named White Horse.
I lay down on that stone that I was sure was my Laramie and screamed into the night. Hands were on my shoulders and I looked up into the eyes of my lovers—into other eyes a hundred years ago—and cried.
My cry was answered by the call of Redtail.
Traveling: Passing
The lips I was kissing were sweet. The release of my balls made me cry out in a mix of joy and agony—a little death in which I was joined by my beloved… Kat Tangeman.
I wanted to jerk Kyle away and rush him to Laramie’s bed, but I couldn’t do that. It wasn’t Kyle’s fault that he fell in love with Kat while I loved Laramie. The truth was, I loved Kat, too. I’d given up trying to figure out how I could love so many women so completely. When I looked into Kat’s eyes, I saw Ashley and there was no question I was in love with that girl. I was anxious to get to Laramie, but now that I was here and was suddenly sure I’d be with Laramie until we died, I didn’t mind relaxing in the back of Kyle’s mind while he made love to Kat.
I looked through his memories to find that it was only a day after I’d been sucked out of Kyle’s body the last time. I wondered what it meant that the time was so close. My whole experience had been over just three years in 1889-1892, but in my own timeline, over four years had passed. I was happy that I would continue my own story so soon after I had left. While Kyle feasted on Kat’s fat, round nipples and rose to excitement again inside her, I let the exquisite feelings flow over me as I thought out how to manage the two relationships in downtime. Somehow, Kat would need to be let in on the fact that he/I was also involved with Laramie. I think she suspected it already, though I’d been discreet. If Kyle and Kat lived in the foreman’s house on our ranch, then his body would be convenient for me to visit Laramie and live with her. We could work that out as we progressed.
What was more important was that Sheriff Cal Despain had to disappear. I’d looked him up in the City history and there was precious little about him. He was an almost non-entity sheriff in Laramie for ten years. At the end of his tenure, he rode out of town and was never heard of again. If that were the case, it was a safe bet that Joe Teini had moved the treasures from his cave and then found a way to dispose of Despain. I’d been to the cave three times and there was more treasure there than I could let Joe Teini have in the twentieth century. He had the resources to ruin and buy out every man woman and child in Albany County, include the 30,000 plus citizens of Laramie, Wyoming.
Having given Cal a rich treasure without the controlling influence of Joe, I may have inadvertently opened a crisis situation. And if I was arriving back in Kyle more quickly, Joe could be arriving back in Cal more frequently as well. I had to make sure that Joe didn’t find what he wanted when he opened the box.
“Kyle, are you listening to me?” Kyle was still dreamily reliving his last orgasm deep in the pussy of his beloved. I’d been drifting. I jerked Kyle around to make him pay attention.
“Kat, love, I was so overwhelmed that time that it took me a minute to come back to you. You do things to me I’ve never experienced before.”
“Don’t you lie to me, Kyle Wardlaw. I know very well that you have done more things than most men dream of. I know where you lived for the past nineteen years, and I don’t hold it against you.”
“My love, it ain’t the physical things you do to me that I’m talking about. You do something inside me that I can’t even say.” Kyle was emotional and I was glad. He’d turned out to be a good, if slightly slow, man.
“Well, here’s something else that I’m going to do to you. Kyle I’m going to have your baby. You were gone for two months and I haven’t bled in all that time. I’m sure I’m pregnant.”
“And it’s mine?” Kyle asked. I mentally slapped him upside the head.
“What do you think, Kyle Wardlaw? Do you think I’m a whore who doesn’t know the father of her baby?”
“No! No, Kat, you took me so much by surprise,” I said, taking over. “That’s wonderful news. We need to get married. Right away. We’ll ask the preacher to say the vows Sunday after church. Kat, you make me so happy. I love you and I want to take you to Centennial and have a whole bunch of children with you. Please say you’ll marry me, Kat.”
The answer I got was a tongue almost all the way down my throat. When either of us could speak again, Kat said, “Oh yes, Kyle. You know I’ll marry you. Sunday is good. I’ll see the preacher and make arrangements. I love you, Kyle. I’ll always love you!”
“I’ll always love you, Kat Tangeman.”
On Monday morning Kyle and I rode hell-bent for leather back to Centennial and out to Laramie’s cabin. She knew as soon as she saw us on the trail to her that I was back. She came running out in her buckskins and threw herself into my arms as I dismounted.
“Kyle, you’re back!” she said. In answer, I buried my face in her hair and kissed my way up her neck and to her lips. The other workers were already at work on the barn and scarcely glanced toward us. I held her close to me and looked at all the progress that had been made. Laramie showed me the root cellar and pointed to the new barbed wire fencing.
“It hasn’t been finished yet,” she said. “I hired a crew to set posts and stretch the wire around the 160-acre homestead. They have about four hundred yards yet to stretch and we can turn the horses loose in here. They’ll have the barn to winter in and look at that windmill! A dowser came out and found the perfect spot for our well.”
“You have been busy the last two months.”
“I wanted you to be proud, Kyle,” she said. “Even if you came back as Kyle Wardlaw instead of Kyle Redtail, I wanted you to be proud.”
“It wouldn’t be a hardship for you to live with him, would it, Laramie?”
“I’d always be waiting for you to return. But he’s a good man, Kyle. He’s been a hard worker and I’m fond of him even when you aren’t here.”
“Well, we’ve got a bit of a problem,” I said. “Kyle just asked Kat Tangeman to marry him next Sunday.”
“I like Kat. I told you that. It isn’t uncommon among my father’s people for a man to have two wives. Men die in battle and in the hunt. Women have adjusted to the need to share a man.”
“Well, I don’t know if Kat will be as willing as you, but it is something we need to deal with. There is something else even more important that we need to talk about, though.”
“Can we do it on the sleeping furs? My beloved, I have missed you.”
I saw nothing wrong with having our discussion on the sleeping furs when Theresa took Kaylene out to ride the new fence. I looked at my little girl and giggled. “Hello great-grandma,” I whispered.
The cute little girl giggled and said, “Papa.” I was stunned and when I set her down, she ran off to ride with her grandma. Laramie and I settled down in the cabin and it was only a few minutes before we were skin-to-skin in a lovers’ embrace. I pushed the thought of the cold stone on the promontory out of my mind before tears could flow. I was here and Laramie was here. Here we would stay. Seeing that stone had given me new confidence. If I left, I would be back. We would grow old together and die together. Our stones were together on the hill.
I kissed my way down her dark skin paying special attention to the soft roundness of her belly. She was still lean, but two pregnancies had stretched her middle. Her tits, dry from the milk she no longer fed Kaylene, had softened as well. They would never be the firm round globes of a sixteen-year-old again, but they were attached to the woman I loved—the woman of my dreams—and so were perfect. When I reached the junction of her thighs she sighed and let her legs part for me. There was no taste I craved more than the fluids of her pussy. I didn’t think cunnilingus was all that common in the 1890s, but we both sure enjoyed it. She cried out softly, muffling her voice with her shirt held closely to her mouth. She pulled at me when I would have gone on again and begged me to enter her and give her another child. I was all too willing to do so.
My cowboy was up for the occasion and penetration was easy. Loving was even better. I could feel Kyle in the back of my mind, curious as to how he could feel so much for two such different women and wondering how he could manage to satisfy both of them. At least for the time being he didn’t need to worry about that.
I lay there, stroking Laramie’s soft skin, and letting her presence overwhelm my senses. I inhaled deeply of the scent of her body and hair. Hygiene was different when you lived in the wilderness. Not bad, but less stringent than in uptime. Laramie’s scent was earthier. Natural. Arousing.
“Love, we have to run an errand. I’m going to tell you things that will help you on the ranch now, but you have to be very careful of them. You have to never let anyone know you are a rich woman.”
“People already think mother is rich because of all we have bought.”
“There was a reason for the kind of wealth you have shown. You were simply turning a farm in Iowa into a ranch in Wyoming. But this is more money than anyone living can imagine.”
“Why do we need this wealth, Kyle? Is our home not enough?”
“It is. But this wealth must be guarded so that no one can use it to harm others. It is a sacred trust to our family.”
“Then we will bury it and leave it.”
“Yes. But first we must move it to a place that only we know about.”
“Where is this wealth?”
“Not more than a day’s ride from here. There is a place on our ridge where we can hide it and forget about it.”
“We will leave in the morning, my love.”
“Late tonight. I do not want the workers or the people of Centennial to know we have gone.”
After dinner, we told Theresa that we were riding out and would be gone three days. I just hoped that I got to the stash before Sheriff Despain, or more especially Joe Teini got there.
I hitched the six draft horses to the Conestoga and tied the two mules behind. Laramie and I sat on the big seat and she leaned against me as we drove off into the night. These wagons were made to haul two tons of household gear—furniture, clothing, plows, tools, stoves. Everything went into the wagon when people moved west. Running empty the Morgans scarcely noticed the weight.
“Is there so much?” Laramie asked. I just nodded.
We traveled overland. Most of the range was still open and there were wagon tracks that we could follow north toward Medicine Bow and then east along the ridge. No one would ever know that just a few hundred yards from this track lay a fortune that would make Midas jealous.
When we pulled the wagons into a copse of trees, there was no sign that anything had been disturbed. It took me a minute to get my bearings, but Kyle nudged me over to the right spot. I detected that he’d decided that this wealth should not belong to Sheriff Despain either and was happy that I was hiding it and not planning to use it. He was fine with getting enough money to live on and not disturbing anything else. He was a good man.
It took all day to load the Conestoga with the chests of gold and jewels and whatever else was there. There was no telling what was in some of the suitcases and trunks that had been stowed. Mostly they were lighter weight and probably contained some poor traveler’s clothing. But we moved everything. It looked like we were carting a wagon of household goods like any other settler. Even with the big Conestoga, we couldn’t clear the cave completely. We left suitcases and lighter items in the cave, assuming they would have less value. We couldn’t pull out in the dark, so we made camp to spend the night. I was wrapped in the arms of my lover and soul mate again.
“Well looky what we got here,” I heard behind me as I was tying the mules to the back of the wagon in the morning. We’d used them to help move things from the cave to the wagon and their packs were full. I turned to see Cal Despain holding a rifle. “Why is it that the cave is almost empty and you got a full wagon?”
I wasn’t too surprised to see the Sheriff, though I had hoped to be clean away from here before I had to deal with him. The fact that he was holding the rifle at an unwavering point to my chest, though, was unnerving. Laramie was unarmed and behind the Conestoga. Maybe she hadn’t been seen yet. My Winchester was under the seat.
“Sheriff, two riders were scouting this area last time I was out here. You told me to move things over below Rawlins about five miles where there’s a cave nobody knows about. You even gived me a map.”
“You are full of more shit than a prize bull, boy. You know the order was bring it here and don’t come back. Looks like you decided you needed a wedding present. Or are you fooling around with that squaw you work for. She’s a little red, but I bet she’s got a prime cunt.”
I was getting pretty pissed and Kyle was ahead of me. Without realizing it, I’d loosened the safety strap on my right gun where Despain couldn’t see my hand.
“Stand straight and turn toward me, boy!” the Sheriff snapped. I did as ordered. I wanted to be in this position anyway. I now had my hand and my gun where I needed them. “Drop them gun belts!” I wore a gun on each hip, but each had its own belt. As a result, I could loosen my left gun and still have the right ready to draw. I kept watch on Despain as I felt the buckle loosen. I saw his eyes flick to the side as I tossed the belt to my left. My right flashed to my side and I fired before my mind had caught up with the action. I felt the sting in my gut. The Sheriff was falling backward, a hole in his chest as I was falling forward with my guts spilling out.
“I’m sorry, Kyle,” I whispered. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this.”
Laramie ran from her cover with my Winchester and put another round in the Sheriff’s head before she knelt beside me. I was fading fast.
“Kyle. Kyle, don’t die. I need you, Kyle,” she cried as she held me.
“Honey, listen. I ain’t got much time. I love you. I love you, but you gotta drag that son-of-a-bitch back into the farthest corner of the cave. His saddle, too. Set his horse free on the back range. I showed you where all this treasure has to go. You gotta take it there and never let anybody know about it. Do that for me Laramie honey. Our children and grandchildren depend on it. I love you.”
“Don’t go Kyle. I love you. I love you.”
I didn’t know what happened if you were time-traveling and your host died. The old prospector hadn’t known either. It looked like I was about to find out. I found myself pulling away from Kyle’s body and heard his voice one more time.
“Please. Tell Kat I love her.” Then Kyle was gone.
There was no hawk’s cry heralding my departure from Kyle’s body. The pain in my gut ceased and the last thing I felt was Laramie’s hot tears falling on my face.
But I was still there.
I was present, but I didn’t have any way to really be there. I no longer had Kyle’s eyes to see with nor Kyle’s ears to hear with. My senses were cut off, but I could still sense what was going on. I knew Laramie held Kyle for a long time and then managed to hoist him up into the wagon and cover him. She was a big strong girl, but I’d just given her a task that was near impossible. Still, she managed to drag the body of Cal Despain back into the cave where the treasures had been hidden. It was a deep cave and she shoved the body into a crevice head first. She found his horse on the other side of the cave and stripped the saddle, blanket, and bridle from it and dumped it all in the back of the cave with the Sheriff. His saddle bags she hoisted into the wagon with my body. It took her a few hours. I could feel her sense of satisfaction, though, when she’d smoothed out the ground around the cave and erased all signs of our camp and the track to the cave. She led the Sheriff’s horse and tied him by a lead rope with the mules and climbed aboard the Conestoga. She whipped the horses to life. When she reached the point where she could join an established, if ill-used, trail, she backtracked and erased the signs of the heavy wagon coming down from the ridge. It felt like it was late at night by the time she was satisfied. But she didn’t let up. Under the heavy load, the horses moved slowly, but they kept the pace until dawn. She was near the Divide when she pulled away from the road, erased her tracks, and watered the stock.
Then Laramie wept.
Her pain was a palpable thorn in the side I no longer had. I was drawn to her. I loved her and I reached out my mind to comfort her. I just said over and over, “I’m here. I love you.” I don’t know that I had any effect, but eventually her sobs quieted and she slept soundly.
When you are traveling with a heavily loaded wagon, seven horses, and two mules, it takes a while to get camped and to break camp. All the animals have to be cared for before you get food. It takes a good hour when you are alone to get them all hitched and ready to pull. And neither horses nor mules are particularly fond of traveling through the mountains at night. Laramie knew the way, and gathered all the reins in her small hands and got them moving. I think she knew the mountains better than either Kyle or me. Well, she’d lived and hunted on Centennial Ridge for years. She knew a different trail, down on the west side of the ridge and then back up toward the peak. The horses plodded slowly through the night, stopping only for water that Laramie carried to them. I imagined in my mind what it must look like for six black horses pulling a Conestoga with a dirty and blackened canvas through the night on the ridge, followed by two mules and a riderless horse. I would guess ghost stories would flourish.
She pushed on at daybreak and two hours later came to the site where years ago I’d found her hut. What Laramie had to do next took days. If I’d been there in body to help her we could have finished in maybe two days, but it took Laramie a week. She unhitched the wagon and hobbled the horses. Cal’s horse she led down the western slopes until he was in a wooded area and set him free. It was pretty unlikely he’d ever get back toward Laramie. There were closer barns on the west slope in Carbon County and horses are prone to find the easy way to food. She dressed the mules in their side packs and then emptied one box at a time into the packs to take down the trail to Kyle’s hiding place. There, she stacked the boxes and reloaded them before returning up the hill to get the next load.
When she’d finished her task and cleared the area of any further evidence of a path, she re-hitched all the teams and headed back down to the small town of Centennial. Her wagon creaked through town in the middle of the night, returning home the same way we had left.
She headed the mules toward the barn.
When Laramie pulled the wagon up to the cabin, her mother and daughter came out to greet her. So did Kat Tangeman. After Laramie had hugged our daughter, she looked at Kat and opened her arms. There must have been words that passed between them, but the communication was between their hearts. Together, the three women and child drove the wagon up to the promontory I now knew as the family plot. They took turns digging in the hard ground but eventually had a hole suitable for a grave. They lowered Kyle’s body into the ground without removing the canvas he was wrapped in.
I wondered what was going to happen to me now. Everywhere I’d been since the shooting was in the company of Kyle’s body. Now that he was in the ground, would I be stuck here, haunting this plot forever? Would I have to wait until the soulless body of Cole Alexander Bell was laid to rest before my spirit would find peace?
I followed Kat, Theresa, Laramie, and Kaylene back to the cabin that Kyle had built for them. I understood what they talked about, even though I could hear no words. I knew Kat was distraught. She was carrying my child. I reached out to her with my mind and, as I had done with Laramie, kept repeating, “I’m here. I love you.” Kat calmed. Perhaps I had some effect after all.
Laramie was not only a strong woman, she was a smart woman. What she couldn’t figure out, her mother could. They were a formidable pair. I understood their plan. Laramie simply told Kat that Kyle had been working for land and that the 1500 acres next to the Bell ranch would be placed in Kat’s name. With that, she was to go see her other suitor and ask him to marry her. It was a bold move, but both Laramie and Theresa were confident that Arthur would overlook the short term of Kat’s baby in exchange for the lush ranch she had just inherited. I wondered who the man was and reached back into Kyle’s memories that I still carried. Arthur. Kat’s other suitor was Arthur Alexander. They would live on the ranch next to the Bell ranch. He would treat Kat’s son as his own, even naming him after himself. In a sudden insight, I realized that I had once again become my own great-great-grandfather.
Mary Beth would get a kick out of the fact that I was her great-great-grandfather. Of course, I was dead, so that might put a damper on her sense of humor.
It was close to a week later that Laramie, Kat, and Theresa moved a flat slab of limestone over Kyle’s grave. Next to it, they placed a smaller marker and I knew it was to be a memorial to the baby Laramie had lost, though there was no body. The three women and my little daughter, my unborn son in Kat’s womb, stood at the grave and Theresa wrote the words in the Bell Family Bible beneath Laramie’s name. “Beloved of Kyle Redtail.”
They stood in silence as a shadow flicked across the grave and Redtail called my name.
Natural Resources
I awoke with a cold compress on my forehead, feeling as though my fever was breaking.
“Cole! You’re awake. Oh, darling, I was so worried,” Ashley said. “Mary Beth!” I heard footsteps in the hall and both Mary Beth and my mother charged into the room. “He’s awake.”
“Honey, you had us all so worried. How are you feeling?” Mary Beth asked as she snuggled next to me. I was in my own bed with the two women I love most in this life at my side. My mother sat at the foot and placed a hand on my leg.
“It’s a fool thing to do going out in the middle of the night and catching your death,” Mom said.
“I’m sorry I worried you all,” I managed to croak. Mary Beth held a glass of water to my lips and I drank greedily. “How long have I been sick?”
“All night after the funeral, all day today. It’s after three now,” Mary Beth said.
“Wow. I’m hungry. Can I eat?”
“Sure. Are you strong enough to stand or should we bring you something in bed,” Mom asked. I shook my head and tested my limbs.
“I feel fine. Just hungry. I’ll come down.”
I was just fine. I ate and went out to check on the stock. I was really going to have to do something about that soon. We were in the same situation as the rest of the ranchers. No winter feed and over three thousand head, including steers, heifers, and calves, in our pasture. I knew what I was going to have to do. I just wasn’t sure I was up to it. I knew for sure, though, that I’d cut off Joe Teini’s unending treasure and his access to going back in time. I was sure he hadn’t been in Cal Despain when I killed him. Oh, there was still some treasure left in that cave, but it wasn’t the billions he thought he’d have.
That night, I cuddled with my cousin and my fiancée in my big bed. There was slow gentle loving aplenty. I held them both and assured them that I was all right. They’d heard the screech of the hawk in the night when I collapsed on Laramie’s tomb and knew I’d been taken back in time. They had made themselves my keeper and kept Mom from calling in a doctor. They made up all kinds of stories about how this flu bug was knocking people out in town and I must have picked it up visiting the hospital and it would be best to stay away from there so the illness didn’t get worse. They admitted that if I hadn’t been awake by the next morning, they’d have had no choice but to call the doctor.
“So, what happened while you were away? You were gone a long time. Is it always going to be like that?” Ashley asked.
“I don’t think I’m going back,” I said softly. My eyes filled with tears for the loss of my sweet Laramie and my loving Kat. I choked them back.
“Cole, what is it, honey?” Mary Beth asked.
“I’m dead.”
I told them about what had happened and about the shoot-out with Cal Despain. I even explained why Despain had to die and the role Joe Teini had in everything. The only thing I didn’t tell them was that I’d moved a treasure onto our property and that Laramie had hidden it.
“Wait. Ashley, get the Bible,” Mary Beth said. I watched my lover’s bare ass as she popped out of bed and ran to my dresser to get the big family Bible. When she returned and I saw her pretty tits and waiting pussy, my cowboy sprang back to life. It hadn’t been that long since he’d been buried between those thighs, but I was ready again. Mary Beth felt the movement under the sheets and wrapped her hand around my cock. “You are way too sexy, girlfriend,” Mary Beth said to Ashley. “You’ve got him all riled again.”
“Well here, then,” Ashley said. “You hold the Bible and I’ll hold the cowboy.” Ashley crawled over the top of me and settled down onto my cock. “Now what’s in the Bible that you wanted to see? Are you going to marry us here on the spot?” I jerked inside Ashley. “Cole likes that idea. And so do I. Do we have to wait till December to get married, Cole?”
“Sweetheart, I’ll marry you right now in this very bed. Mary Beth, tell us the vows.”
“I think all I have to do is write it here under your name, cousin. But this is what I wanted to read. ‘Laramie Wyoming Bell, born summer of 1873. Beloved of Kyle Redtail, 1889. Mother of Kaylene Redtail Bell. Died December 24, 1929. To the very end she listened for the cry of the redtail hawk.’ Cole, are you Kyle Redtail?”
I nodded my head. Ashley sat back on my cock and drove it as deeply into her as she could. She held still.
“Does that mean you are your own great grandfather?” she asked.
“Great-great-grandfather,” I said.
“And Laramie… Oh god, Cole. What year did Kyle die?”
“October 1892.”
“Poor Laramie. She listened for the call of the redtail hawk for… for thirty-seven years!” There were tears in both Mary Beth’s and Ashley’s eyes. I’d have wilted if it weren’t for the constant pulsing around my cock.
“That’s not all,” I said. Might as well get this in the open as well. “I’m your great-great-grandfather, too, Mary Beth.”
“What? Great-great… Arthur Alexander the first?” Mary Beth knew her family tree a lot better than I knew mine. Of course, there had been three Arthur Alexanders.
“Not exactly. Arthur’s wife, Kat Tangeman, was already pregnant with Kyle Wardlaw’s baby when she married Arthur.”
“You were Kyle Wardlaw, too?”
“Kyle Wardlaw was the body I kept being sent to. When I was there, Laramie called him Kyle Redtail. But when I wasn’t there, Kyle Wardlaw fell in love with Kat Tangeman. Unfortunately, I got us killed before they could get married. Arthur agreed to marry her and raise her son as if he was his own in exchange for a strip of 1,500 acres next to Laramie’s homestead.”
“The Alexander Ranch. It was part of your family’s home all along. We are going to put it back together, Cole. This is going to become one ranch again,” Mary Beth declared.
“This is so exciting,” Ashley squealed. We weren’t sure if she was talking about my revelation or the fact that she was now pounding down on my cock. Mary Beth leaned over and caught one of Ashley’s nipples in her teeth and Ashley flooded me with her juices as she belted out her orgasm. My juices just pushed more of hers out and down my balls.
“Mmm. I’m going to have another of those before this night is over,” Mary Beth said dreamily as she hugged Ashley and me together. We lay in a heap panting together. It was an odd time, but I just thought of something.
“Mary Beth, do you or your dad own an antique gold pocket watch?”
I wasn’t ready to open the box that Laramie had hidden, but there was adequate to save our herds in the stash under the Douglas. The next day we took two ATVs and a picnic lunch and headed up to the high range. I managed to navigate us all the way to the tree without a mishap.
“Laramie/Kyle,” Ashley said as she touched the initials carved in the tree. “Why was the brand changed?”
“I don’t know,” I said as I began to dig under the root. “The Bar-B has been our brand forever, it seems. Hmm. At least for cattle. Laramie started out raising horses. Maybe they changed it when they started on cattle.”
“What are we digging for?” Mary Beth asked.
“Buried treasure,” I said. “We have a couple ranches to save.”
It took about twenty minutes to uncover the box. The tree roots had grown around it. I knew I was damaging the root to get to the box, but it couldn’t be helped. And the truth was, there wasn’t much of a box there. Pretty stupid burying a wooden box under a tree. Once I hit something solid, I started clearing the dirt off with my hands. Then I started handing the bars of gold to Ashley.
“Is this gold?” Mary Beth asked as Ashley handed them to her one at a time.
“Genuine.” I worked at dislodging the bars and handing them out of the hole.
“How many are there?” Ashley asked.
“Count ’em.” I said as I came out of the hole with what I thought was the last one. “If there aren’t a hundred, I need to keep digging.” There were 100 two-pound bricks of gold.
“Cole, how much is this worth?” Mary Beth asked.
“Last I looked it should be around five million.”
“Dollars?” Ashley exclaimed.
“I could probably get a figure in Euros if you want.”
“She-it!”
“But how do we get rid of it or explain it?” Mary Beth asked again.
“We don’t have to. It’s gold. Dad got a dealer account set up last year when we sold ten bars.”
“So that’s how we all managed to pay down the debt and get the extra steers. And now it looks like those extras we bought are going to cost us a fortune if we have to put them down.”
“Wait. I get it,” Ashley said. I grinned at her and we all sat around the tree to eat our lunch before heading back down the ridge.
“Well, go on,” I said. “We took the same class.”
“Okay. So, if there was a foreign influence on the open market that suddenly drives the prices down to where all the ranchers are going broke, there’d be an outcry for government subsidy or tariffs on the imported beef. But the Beef Sellers don’t want the government to interfere in the open marketplace if it isn’t a foreign intervention. They figure the market will support what they want to sell without regulation. But they never anticipate that some circumstance would arise domestically that would deflate prices and threaten the livelihood of all the ranchers in the area.”
“That’s just what’s happened here,” Mary Beth said. “There’s no winter feed so all the ranchers are going to have to sell off their stock at a loss. We’re likely to have a panic and everyone will lose their ranches unless they’ve got a big enough bankroll to take the loss. And nobody does.”
“Nobody but Joe Teini,” I said. “Who has been offering to buy up every ranch in the county? The only ranch that’s outside his scope is the Boswell Ranch and that’s only because it’s on the National Register of Historic Places. Eventually he can probably get hold of it, too.”
“But all the acreage in the county—that would cost millions.”
“Then we need billions to fight it. But our first step is to start subsidizing the local ranchers. We send to Omaha and Chicago for feed. Even Spokane. Buy up everything we can and have it shipped in. Some of the guys are already paying a premium to get feed from Carbon County and Laramie County, but it’s getting short there, too. We pay for the shipping and sell to the ranchers at normal market prices if they’ll give us a guaranteed option on their cattle at two dollars a pound live weight in January. If the market goes up, then we’ve got all the beef in the county for a profit.”
“And if the market goes down?” Ashley said. “If Joe Teini can keep the deflated prices going through the winter season? Then we lose everything. It would cost over $30 million to buy all the beef in the county and we’ve already spent most of our four million on winter feed. Cole, how much more of this do we—I mean do you have?”
“You had it right the first time, sweetheart. It’s we. The three of us. As to how much, I don’t rightly know. I haven’t opened the box.”
We headed down into the valley and made it back to the ranch just about dark. I got Dad’s army footlocker out of the attic and we loaded the gold and took it up to my room. Mom was on the phone when we came downstairs.
“Yes, Angus. They just came in. God knows where they’ve been all day. It’s a good thing we have George. The ranch would fall apart. As it is, I don’t know how we’ll make it through the winter.— Yes, Mary Beth is here, too.— Sure. Mary Beth, honey, your daddy wants to talk to you.” Mom handed the phone off to Mary Beth. We used the radios when we were on the ridge in the summer, but never thought to turn them on for our little afternoon adventure.
“Hi, Daddy.— Really?— Sure. We were going to grab a bite, but…— Okay. Ashley hasn’t had Mom’s meatloaf yet. We’ll be right over.”
“You’re invited, too, Aunt Sarah. Mom’s waiting dinner for us.”
We piled all four of us in the front of my truck and drove the half mile to Mary Beth’s home. Lily did, indeed, have a delicious meatloaf ready with mashed potatoes, green beans, and thick milky gravy. After dinner, Angus called the three of us into his office while Mom and Lily chatted in the kitchen.
“First of all, Cole, you know how I feel about your dad. I lost my brother when you lost your dad. I get choked up every time I think about it. I also know you got the money for us to pay off our debt last winter, and although it looks bleak again this year, I thank you for it. You need to know I’m going to retire now. I’m ten years older than your dad was and I want to take time with my wife before it’s too late.”
“Uncle Angus, you’re still a young man. What happened to Dad was a freak accident.”
“You and I both know that was no accident. I’m scared, Cole. Joe Teini offered to take all our cattle at $1.50 a pound. It wouldn’t begin to pay the debt, but the Wyoming Homestead Act would at least save the house and ten acres around it for Mary Beth. You should take his offer, Cole.”
“Dad,” Mary Beth began. She glanced at me and I nodded to her. However much she wanted to tell her dad was okay with me. He was family. “We’re not going to lose the ranch. Cole and I created the partnership and Ashley is joining it. We have both properties on contract for deed from you and Uncle Earl. If you want to call the contract, we’ll meet the offer price Joe Teini has made. You and Mom and Aunt Sarah are all taken care of and can live here as long as you want. I plan to live and die on this property or Cole’s and you might as well know that I’ll be sharing that life with Cole and Ashley.”
“Baby girl, Earl and I have known for a long time that you and Cole had something special and we figured you’d find a way to work it out. Ashley, everything I’ve heard about you tells me you’ll be a wonderful daughter-in-law or however you kids want us to refer to you. Earl and I already sold you the ranches on contract. We’d signed an agreement giving over management to Alexander Bell Cattle Company as a surprise for when you came down from the upper range. I don’t know where you’ll get the money for this, Cole, but your daddy said he knew you had more,” Angus said as he leaned back in his chair and bit a plug off his cigar. He chawed a little and then got right back to us.
“I’m worried about that Joe Teini. You kids are going to be targeted by him and he plays rough. Don’t tell me your daddy wasn’t killed by that Sheriff. He’s got bad blood. How does a boy who was raised without a cent to his name go to a big-name Ivy League school out East and come back so rich he can buy anybody out he wants? You kids gotta be careful.”
“We’ll be careful, Uncle Angus. But pretty soon it’s Joe Teini who’s going to realize he’s the target. I’m not going to let anyone run the ranchers out of Albany County,” I said. Angus nodded his head.
“Just be careful. Now, Missy, you asked me this morning about a watch. I reckon this is what you were looking for.” He reached in his desk and pulled out a cigar box and opened it. Inside was a simple gold watch with a leather fob. “As far as I’m concerned, it goes with the ranch. Always has. I reckon it’s yours now.” He handed the watch to Mary Beth. It was plain and didn’t look like much. Mary Beth looked at me and I nodded. I was sure that was the watch. The old prospector had shown it to me and Kyle had given it to Kat Tangeman. She reached for the cigar box and put it back in the protective handkerchief it had been wrapped in.
“Thank you, Daddy. I don’t know why, but it’s important. We’ll figure it out.”
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