Forever Angels Page 3

  The little boy must be an actor, thoroughly immersed in his role. Hadn't she read somewhere that the really good actors — the one who won Academy Awards — sometimes had trouble returning to reality after a demanding movie role? Wasn't he awfully young to have learned that immersion technique, though? But then, what did she know about acting?

  A blackout. She must have hit her head when she fell — had a blackout, like she'd heard alcoholics have at times — or amnesia? Somehow, she had wandered away from the mountain afterwards.

  She remembered falling, though, just like it was a minute or so ago. She remembered who she was — and the only pain was in her ankle, not her head. But maybe she had indeed blacked out — hopped a train — or a plane — and ended up here in....Where the hell was she?

  "Rain, what day is it?"

  "Saturday," Rain said promptly. "Flower and I don't have to take classes from Pa on Saturday and Sunday, just during the week."

  Good. Or was it? It had been Saturday morning when she started up the hiking trail. If it was still Saturday, and from the looks of the sun, still just early in the afternoon, how had she travelled this far? Had she been in the depths of the blackout for a week?

  "What...what date is it, Rain?"

  "July thirty-first. In white man's time. Flower and I tell time in Indian, too."

  The same day!

  "Uh...uh...what year is it?" Tess forced out around a gulp. "In...in white man's time?"

  "Gee, you sure ask dumb questions."

  "Please, Rain," Tess whispered.

  "I'm sorry." Rain ducked his head. "Pa says we're never supposed to say something like that to our elders. Saying they're dumb, I mean. And I said it twice. You've got a right to be mad at me. Grandfather would punish me, too, if he heard me."

  "Please, what year?" Tess repeated.

  "1893. In Cherokee it's the year of...."

  "Rain, say that again. Slowly. Please."

  Rain frowned at her. She sure was pretty, but she sure talked funny and seemed a little slow in understanding things. And it didn't seem like she could hear very well.

  "1893," he said a little louder.

  "Not...not 1993?"

  "Heck, no. That's a hundred years from now. Flower and I are good in arithmetic, too."

  "Where's your brother, Flower?" Stone asked as he walked up to the clothesline.

  "Where do you suppose?" Flower said with a grin.

  "Hunting, of course," Stone said, returning her smile. "You're not supposed to be working today, either. Just your regular chores. There's time enough for washing and cleaning during the week."

  "I just did this one load. We didn't have any clean sheets."

  "The beds don't need changed until Monday."

  "Oh, you never know. What if company drops by?"

  "About the only overnight company we have out here is someone from your tribe, Flower. And they bring their own bedding with them. Fact is, they even bring a tipi to sleep in, except for Silver Eagle. He leaves a tipi in our barn to sleep in when he comes. But they'd all be insulted if you offered them clean sheets."

  "That's true," Flower said with an enigmatic smile.

  "Honey, you're only twelve. You need a couple days rest each week, just like Rain. Why don't you go for a ride? Rain and I'll help you with the wash Monday, like always."

  "Come with me, Pa. Let's both go. We haven't been riding together all summer. Let's ride up the hill and see if Rain managed to get us any fresh meat for Sunday dinner."

  Stone studied his daughter closely. That dress was a mile too short, and when had she started budding out on top? Damn, had he been that busy all summer — too busy to notice Flower growing up right under his nose? He'd promised himself that he'd never let that happen — never let his son and daughter grow up neglected. It was definitely time to ride over to the Widow Brown's place and have her make Flower some new clothing.

  "Rain'll have a fit if we ride up there and scare off his game."

  "No, he won't. He'll be glad of an excuse to hunt some more. Anyway, we'll be careful."

  "I suppose if Rain doesn't get anything, you're going to insist that I chop the chicken's head off again."

  "Uh huh. I don't mind cooking the game you and Rain get, but I'm can't stand to kill anything, Pa. You know that."

  "I know, Flower. And I'll kill you a chicken, if you promise to make dumplings. But I think it would be a better idea for us to ride over to Widow Brown's. I brought a couple bolts of material out from town that last trip...."

  "We can go over there tomorrow," Flower interrupted, ignoring Stone's frown at her lack of manners. "Let's ride up and look for Rain. Please, Pa? It's my free time, too, and I'd rather go up the hill."

  "You act like there's something more up there than just maybe a dead deer for us to help Rain drag home."

  "You never know, Pa. You never know."

  ***

  Chapter 3

  "Stop!" Tess said with a squeak.

  "Shhhh." Rain laid a finger on his lips, then slowly brought the rifle to his shoulder.

  The loud blast so close to her ear was the last sound Tess heard for several, everlasting seconds. Finally the wall of silence receded, and she glared at Rain.

  "What the hell do you think you're doing?"

  "Pa says ladies shouldn't cuss. He threatened to wash Flower's mouth out with soap one day when he heard her use a bad word."

  "Oh, and little boy's are allowed to cuss, huh?"

  "Nope," Rain denied. "At least, not until we get older."

  "Where are you going?"

  "I've gotta bleed the deer. If I don't, the meat will spoil. I'll be back in a few minutes."

  "I keep telling you, it's not hunting season!"

  "You didn't say that. You just said that I shouldn't be hunting here, but I don't know why not. It's Pa's land. And there's no season on hunting. It's just whenever you run out of meat."

  "Animal's have young in the summer. What if that deer you shot had a baby somewhere?"

  "It was a buck, not a doe."

  Tess couldn't refute that, since she'd been too darned scared to look where Rain was aiming.

  "I gotta get over there now, Miss Foster. Oh, you're probably thirsty, since it's so hot. There's a canteen in my pack." Rain removed the pack he used to carry extra supplies when he hunted from around his waist and handed it to Tess. "Don't worry. I'll be right back."

  "Rain, don't leave me, please! I can't walk...."

  But Tess found herself calling to Rain's retreating back as he scrambled across the hillside. Gritting her teeth, she shut her mouth and laid the boy's pack down in order to concentrate on removing her boot.

  She tugged the left leg of her denims up past the swollen ankle and groaned in dismay. Already the leg was discolored and swollen, protruding out over the top of the boot. She should have removed the boot the first thing, instead of sitting there talking to a boy who insisted it was a hundred years earlier than it actually was.

  She glanced around her again. It darned sure wasn't Saddleback Mountain. But she would be just as crazy as that poor little boy appeared to be if she let herself even start to believe it could possibly be 1893!

  She licked at a drop of sweat dribbling down her cheek. The salty taste lingered on her tongue, and she glanced at Rain's pack. A drink of water would taste awfully good right now. She didn't bother carrying water in her own pack, since there were water pumps at the various camp sites in the Adirondacks.

  Picking up the pack again, Tess untied the flap and spread the opening. There was the canteen. She pulled it out and unscrewed the top. After wiping the spout with her shirt cuff, she drank several swallows of surprisingly cool water. The boy must have filled the canteen recently.

  As Tess started to replace the canteen in the pack, she automatically scanned the other contents. Several extra shells — some rope — a tattered comic book. She lifted the comic out and read the title, The Adventures of Wild Bill Hickock, with a smile. Rain evidently lik
ed to read as he whiled away the hours watching for game.

  Tess's hand rustled against a newspaper when she stuck the comic back in the pack. Probably Rain carried it to clean game on, she guessed, recalling that her own brothers had sometimes spent entire days out hunting. They would clean the game at times and roast it over a fire for meals.

  A newspaper. No, damn it, she was not going to look at that paper, for the very same reason she had refused to open the comic and see when it had been printed.

  Tess spread the paper out, but closed her eyes tightly. She couldn't seem to stop herself, though, from crinkling a corner in her fingers and listening to the crisp crackle of fairly new paper.

  Oh shoot. She slit her eyes and stared down at the date on the paper. July 17, 1893. Before she could make an even bigger fool of herself, Tess rapidly recreased the paper and shoved it back into the pack.

  A movie set. It had to be a movie set. But they'd sure gone to a hell of a lot of trouble to make everything on it authentic!

  Angela blinked her blue eyes once, then again. The image beside her on the cloud wavered, became clearer, then disappeared again.

  Well, she guessed Michael was learning time travel a lot faster than the other objectives she had tried to teach him. Or...she frowned slightly. Maybe he had a better teacher than her. Maybe that black-haired angel. What was her name?

  Serena. All right. She had known the other angel's name all along. And jealousy was definitely not a guardian angel trait. Angela quickly wiped the traitorous emotion from her mind.

  Oh, who was coming now? She didn't understand at all why the people living on earth so enjoyed watching movies and television — especially those things they called soap operas. Real life was so much more interesting.

  Hadn't Michael said something like that — about enjoying people? At least they had that in common.

  Stone wrapped his fingers tighter around the reins and pulled the gelding's head back against its chest.

  "Settle down, darn it!"

  "You should've brought Bay Boy instead of Silver Mane, Pa," Flower said with a giggle. "You aren't enjoying this ride very much on him."

  "Well, this one's got to be ridden if he's ever going to turn into a decent cow pony," Stone replied. "And you should have named him Hard Head, instead of Silver Mane. We can forget about not scaring off any of Rain's game while I'm riding this jughead."

  "I heard a shot while we were saddling up. I'll bet Rain's already got something."

  "Probably," Stone agreed. "He usually doesn't miss."

  Stone's horse rounded a bend in the trail, and he unconsciously jerked roughly on the reins. Silver Mane had had enough. The gelding objected to the rough treatment of its tender mouth the only way it knew — by rearing abruptly, then pounding its front feet back to earth and humping its back, lashing out with its hind legs.

  Stone flew over Silver Mane's head, cursing his unresponsive muscles and carrying an inconceivable vision in his mind. Rolling his body to lessen the impact, he tumbled several feet, then sat up a bare yard from a pair of astonished emerald eyes in a face that jolted his senses with its beauty.

  "Goddamn it to hell! Who the hell are you?"

  Angela clapped her hands over her ears. Oh, my word. This man's language was worse than Michael's!

  Flower quickly slid from her saddle and ran to Stone. "Are you hurt, Pa?"

  With a wrench, Stone tore his eyes away from the green ones. "Just my dignity, honey."

  But, despite the concern in Flower's voice, she wasn't looking at him. Brown eyes rounded in wonder and mouth agape, she stared at the woman on the trail.

  "Hello," Flower said in a soft voice.

  "H...hello," Tess replied. "Are you two part of the movie crew, too? Oh, please, tell me you're part of the movie crew."

  ***

  Chapter 4

  "What's a movie?" Flower asked.

  "Oh, no!" Tess groaned and bent her head, hiding her face from the too-near, craggy visage at her side. Somehow, though, her eyelids cracked open and she slid a look through her long lashes.

  Tess caught her bottom lip between her teeth to stifle the erupting giggle. Good heavens, he looked as astonished as she felt. And as helpless.

  His arms hung loosely from his broad shoulders, hands cradled in his lap. He'd landed in a sitting position beside her, his legs bent at the knees, crookedly cocked to either side of his slim hips. Oh! She had no business looking at that bulge in those tight denims!

  Tess quickly glanced back at his face, willing her eyelids not to open fully as she tried to hide her perusal.

  Lordy. Was this the Marlboro Man come to life? He'd lost his hat in the tumble, and that rather longish brown hair waved in soft fullness around his head. Here and there she even caught a hint of a reddish tint, but not quite as prevalent as in her own hair when the sun hit it. All he needed was a filter-tipped cigarette dangling from the corner of that full mouth to complete the picture. What color were that Marlboro Man's eyes...?

  "I asked you a damned question!" Those lips snarled now.

  Tess's head flew up and she glared at him in return. "I'm hurt! I think my ankle's broken."

  The brown eyes softened a little, lost just a hint of their glare.

  "Well, I'm sorry to hear that. But I asked what you were doing here on my land."

  "Boy, don't I wish like hell I knew," Tess breathed.

  "Ladies shouldn't curse," the young girl said.

  Tess looked over at her and smiled. "You must be Rain's sister. And I apologize for cursing. Rain already told me I shouldn't do that. He said your dad might wash my mouth out with soap."

  "Where's my son?" Stone demanded, drawing her attention back to him.

  "He said something about going to bleed a deer — the one he shot."

  "Guess you won't have to kill a chicken after all, Pa."

  Stone scrambled to his feet and backed away from the woman, though he felt like he was struggling against invisible strands trying to hold him close to her. Damn, she was a beauty. Auburn hair and green eyes like Abigail, but there the resemblance stopped. Her hair curled wildly, tumbling unrestrained down her back. His long-ago love, Abby, always kept her hair in a knot on her head — or at least tied back.

  Abby had been little more than a girl at sixteen, though well old enough to wed. Her breasts would have filled out more after she had children — indeed, they had been fuller when he visited, not that he'd had any right to notice. They'd never gotten this full, though — and they weren't restrained, either. For God's sake, what happened to her corset?

  "Please! Watch your language!" Angela whispered loudly when she read his mind.

  "Sorry, honey," Stone murmured distractedly in Flower's direction.

  Tess frowned in confusion and looked at Flower. She hadn't heard Flower say a word. Flower shrugged her shoulders in reply to Tess's questioning look.

  "I hope you've got a dress in that pack! I don't allow my daughter to wear pants, and you won't either, if you expect us to help you out. What's that thing you've got wrapped around your foot?"

  Tess clenched her fists, fighting against the confirmation of Rain's insistence that this was indeed the year 1893. Shoot, no, she didn't have a dress in her pack. Who on earth would carry a dress on a backpacking trip? At least, in 1993! Soon enough, she'd have to tell him that, though. For now, how the heck was she going to explain an elastic bandage to a man born years before vulcanization was even invented?

  Suddenly it dawned on Tess that she believed it herself. Somehow — some way — somewhere — she had slipped through a time warp. Those books weren't completely fiction after all.

  "Uh...uh...the bandage is just something to support the muscles in my ankle until I can get the foot x-...I mean, until I can determine if it's broken. Is...is there a doctor anywhere near?"

  "Nope," Stone denied. "Not near, anyway. You better let me look at it and see if I can tell if it's broken, instead of just sprained."

  "No!" Tess gasped
in pain when she jerked her foot away from Stone's reaching fingers. "I...I mean...don't you think it would be better for me to leave it wrapped until I get off this hill? It's not as painful with the bandage on it. I can ride, if you'll help me on one of the horses."

  "Where's your horse?"

  "Mine?"

  "You sure didn't get clear out here just walking," Stone said. "I've heard of you women having some new-fangled ideas, but surely you've got sense enough not to travel around the country by yourself. Hell, even on horseback, that's a stupid idea."

  Holding back her fury took more gumption than Tess had left just then. "I suppose you're one of those chauvinistic pigs that think a woman's place is in the home! That we're just not as smart as a man! That we shouldn't be paid as much, because we just don't do as much work as a man!"

  Stone grabbed his hat from the ground and slapped it against his leg to knock off the dust. He plopped it on his head and tipped it back an inch, staring at her from under the brim.

  "Well, don't guess I've ever been called a pig before, and I don't have any idea what breed of pig you're talking about. But I'm darned well aware that Flower works just as hard as me at the ranch, so you can take that uncalled for opinion of my character and stuff...."

  Stone shook his head. What the hell was he doing, standing here arguing with a strange woman like he'd been married to her for ten years?

  "Look," he said in a more reasonable tone of voice. "All I want to do is help you out. Neighbors out here do that for each other."

  Tess's indignation diffused in a whoosh. Good grief, she was really going to have to watch what she said. But just how much was she going to have to say to explain how in the world she had shown up here?

  She glanced at the Marlboro Man to see him studying the ground behind her. "What...?" But she knew immediately what he was looking for. Her horse's hoof prints. And he darned sure wasn't going to see them.