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  “No hard feelings,” she assured him. “Now, would you mind giving me back my dog? He gets nervous around strangers.”

  Ruckert St. Cloud swept her from head to foot with a look to indicate he thought her far too smart for her britches. Shelby grabbed her pooch, turned her back on him and tried to forget he was there. It was like trying to forget there was a bull standing in her china closet.

  She waved the letter at Rose. “This is dated eighteen eighty-six. C’mon, now. Did Michael put you all up to this? I’m gonna kill that Michael,” she muttered under her breath. “This has to be a joke, but it’s not funny. Not anymore.”

  “But, ma’am, what else would it be dated, if not eighteen eighty-six?” Wylie asked, but his mother waved him off.

  “This is no foolery, Miss McCoy,” Rose said.

  Shelby’s convictions wavered under the woman’s unflinching stare. “You mean to tell me, you all are from the Flying Eagle, but you don’t know Caitlin and Michael Ketchum? How can that be?”

  “Sorry, but no one by the name of Ketchum has a homestead in this area. If they have one someplace else . . . well, I’ve never heard of it. Our ranch covers a couple thousand acres, and my husband and the boys have occasion to meet folks from all over the Wyoming Territory. But they’ve never mentioned a Ketchum, not that I can recall, and no Ketchum ever stayed at our ranch.”

  “And a good thing, too,” muttered Wylie. “‘Cause she aims to kill him.”

  “Hush,” Rose told her son. Her grave expression softened as she offered Shelby a sympathetic smile. “Were those the folks you were expecting to meet, dear?”

  At Shelby’s nod, she continued, “You know, Miss McCoy.” She smiled and amended, “Shelby. If we’re going to be friends, why don’t you call me Rose? There’s no need to feel obliged to come work for us. We wouldn’t have given Cookie the time off if we couldn’t manage without him. You’re welcome to stay at the Flying Eagle as our guest. We’d be pleased to have you. And if you’re fond of riding, I can guarantee you a seat on one of the finest horses in the country. I’m sure Ruckert wouldn’t mind taking you for a ride. He could show you some of the prettiest kinds of sights.”

  Shelby didn’t turn around to catch the big cowboy’s reaction to his mother’s invitation, but she thought she saw a suspicious wink in Rose’s eye.

  “Of course, if you’d rather return home,” Rose offered, “we’d be happy to put you back on the train. Or the stage. No hard feelings. It’s up to you.”

  The train! The stage! Shelby fought an onslaught of hysteria. Her voice took on a pleading tone as she said, “But I didn’t take the stage. There are no stage coaches. I drove my car. If one of you could just help me fix the flat, I’d be on my way and never trouble you again. It’s just down the road a bit.”

  They all turned in the direction she pointed, but there was nothing to see but a narrow, washed-out strip of dirt road littered with rocks, rolling green grass and endless blue sky. No Highway WYO 130, no pavement, no road signs, no telephone poles, no mailbox, and certainly no white Toyota RAV4. The view of the road extended for a mile or more, and Shelby knew she hadn’t walked that far.

  Seeing was believing, or so the expression went. In this instance, Shelby saw, but still, she could not believe. Her mind did the only thing it could do under the circumstances and remain sane. It simply refused to accept that the landscape had transformed itself.

  Somewhere back there was her SUV, along with the highway, and if she could only get to them, she could turn around and drive the heck out of this time warp.

  Shelby felt an arm go around her shoulders, then a reassuring pat. She turned and found herself staring into the soft green eyes of Rose St. Cloud, the same beautiful eyes she had passed on to her eldest son.

  A wind blew, whistling down the barren road.

  Wylie cleared his throat. “Excuse me, ma’am, but would you mind repeating for me again what it is we’re looking for?”

  “A car.”

  Surprisingly, this came from Ruckert. He had returned to his horse, and with his back to the front of the animal, he stuck a boot in the stirrup and swung himself up, over and into the saddle with a natural grace that impressed Shelby, given his size.

  A seed of hope sprouted to life within her. The nightmare was over. Ruckert was going to come clean. He was going to own up to the fact they’d been putting her on. They’d all have a chuckle, and then he’d take her to see Caitlin and Michael. She felt so elated, she could kiss him.

  But he leaned forward in the saddle, and to his horse, he said, “Chongo hoss, you fancy you know everything, but I bet you don’t know what a ‘car’ is.” Head alert and held high, Chongo pricked his ears, then rotated one ear back in sensitive response to his rider’s voice. “Well, I’ll tell you. It’s a little buggy with two wheels called a Jaunting Car. They originated in Ireland. I reckon we’ll go find it and fix Miss McCoy’s broke tire.”

  Shelby’s hopes dashed. Jaunting Car? Ugh! And what was his problem? Did she repel him? Is that why he wouldn’t look at her, wouldn’t address her like a normal human being instead of talking to his horse? Her dog?

  As a teen, she’d been overweight. The pounds had come off long ago and a slim figure emerged, but every now and then Shelby felt a resurgence of the old insecurity. Like now. Here she was a forty-year-old woman, and Ruckert St. Cloud made her feel like a fat, unattractive adolescent.

  She didn’t know why she persisted in trying to carry on a rational conversation with him. But it had become vital to her state of mind that somebody besides herself admit this was not the nineteenth century. “No, not a Jaunting Car—a RAV4. Not a buggy—an automobile. There are no four-legged horses to pull it. It runs all by itself on four-cylinders and a hundred-and-sixty-six horsepower engine. Get it?” What she really wanted was to stick her tongue out at him, he made her so crazy.

  Ruckert returned the lady’s glare with one of his own.

  She shut up real quick when she saw she’d made him mad.

  What a sassy mouth on her, he thought. Horsepower engine? Could she be claiming she owned the sort of horseless machine engineers had recently been experimenting with in Germany? He’d heard talk of them three-wheeled vehicles. They ran on gasoline and could reach from eight to ten miles an hour, but the power of a hundred and sixty-six horses?

  Ruckert didn’t like entertaining unpleasant thoughts about a lady, and especially this one, being Cookie’s niece and all, but he was beginning to believe Miss McCoy was a loco blossom.

  Chapter Three

  They’d been traveling three hours with no sign of her RAV4, and Shelby could feel her initial state of frenzy give way to despair. Sitting beside Rose in the wagon while Wylie drove the team, she braced her feet across a board that ran the width of the floor and tried to keep Jorge reasonably steady in her lap. The ride was bumpy, her butt sore, her legs tired and her general disposition, to say the least, cranky.

  It was finally beginning to sink in that it was not her sports utility vehicle, the paved highways or Laramie’s telephone communication system that were lost.

  It was she and Jorge.

  She had settled on this fantastical theory after much mental agonizing, and even now was still wrestling with the compulsion to deny it. But the fact remained, she had not taught young adults for twelve years in a state proud of its heritage and rich with historical evidence to document it, nor frequented area antique shops with her well-informed sister, without learning a thing or two about late nineteenth-century Wyoming life.

  From all observations, the St. Clouds were walking, talking relics of this bygone era. She’d been eyeing Rose, as discreetly as possible, if ogling the woman from the top of her linen sunbonnet to the soles of her kid leather, ankle-high, laced shoes could be considered discreet. No zippers, Velcro, snaps or polyester blends had been used anywhere on the woman’s costume, nothing but natural materials.

  Shelby was pretty certain Ruckert’s navy pullover shirt was the same dar
k blue, wool flannel used to make army shirts in 1883, a shirt which later became popular with Wyoming cowboys. She knew this because it was the same style Caitlin had once searched antique pattern catalogs for. Eventually, Caitlin did find the pattern, and when last they spoke, she told Shelby she had sewn shirts for Michael and the trail guides. Her aim was to give the guest ranch the flavor of the old West, and of course, knowing Cat, she had to be historically accurate.

  And speaking of historical accuracy, contemporary saddles had only one cinch, but in the late eighteen-hundreds, Wyoming cowboys used what was known as the double-rigged saddle. These were saddles with two cinches—the first located somewhere beneath the pommel, the other beneath the cantle—exactly like the one on Ruckert’s horse.

  Well, so what? The St. Clouds could have had access to these items as actors of some reenactment group, but then what would they want with her? Unless they’d decided to kidnap a schoolmarm for their company and were now bringing her back to their camp?

  Her humor was growing lamer by the minute, due, Shelby suspected, to a feeling of impending doom. She had chosen to ignore the transformation of the landscape and had just explained away the St. Clouds’ historical attire. How could she ever expect to account for this?

  She first noticed it from across the plains—a large colony of unpainted wood-framed buildings nestled just below the foothills of the Laramie Mountains. The Laramie River streamed down from the southwest, its waters shining silver in the sun as it threaded its way across the grasslands like a big, winding ribbon. Railroad tracks ran east to west along the outskirts of the community, and a water tank hovered above the rooftops. Here was beauty to marvel at, except that with each mile the wagon rolled closer, it became more and more glaringly obvious they were headed straight for a nineteenth-century western town.

  Jorge turned to peer up at her with round, saucer-like eyes, demonstrating that amazing perceptivity all dogs seemed to possess. He searched her eyes, his own at first quizzical, then softening into dark pools of sympathy.

  They drove into the midst of a thriving city built on wood and prairie. Streets came to life with the bustle of horses and buggies, the clattering of loaded buckboards, all kicking up dust to the steel chink of a blacksmith’s hammer somewhere in the distance.

  It was all so bizarre, so foreign, and yet vaguely familiar.

  Cowboys rode down wide unpaved streets, converged on wooden sidewalks and hitched their horses to rails along store fronts.

  The scene was unlike anything she’d ever viewed on a late night TV western. For unlike Hollywood actors, these were ordinary men, going about their business in ordinary ways. And save for the revolvers hanging from gun belts strapped around their waists, they bore little resemblance to those wild characters portrayed on the silver screen. Their appearance was surprisingly orderly, despite being a little more dusty, more wind-blown and weathered perhaps than the average guy, and certainly more bowlegged.

  What Caitlin wouldn’t give to see this, Shelby thought. And what she wouldn’t give to see Caitlin. A longing for her sister welled up inside. Her heart gave a squeeze, and she mourned the world she’d been taking for granted until a flat tire on Highway WYO 130 snatched it away.

  Poor Cat must’ve been frantic with worry when Shelby hadn’t shown up this morning. They had planned their day on the phone last night. After getting Shelby settled in her room, then a grand tour to show off the ranch’s final restorations, they’d been looking forward to a girl’s lunch of Cat’s famous tuna melt sandwiches washed down with her own concoction of non-alcoholic Mojito iced tea.

  Cat also promised a surprise, but she’d refused to give up any details until Shelby’s arrival.

  And now Shelby might never know, stranded as she was in the middle of who knew where, hired out as ranch cook by a dead ancestor.

  No . . . no, she would not cry. There had to be a reason she was riding in a wagon through the twilight zone, circa 1886, instead of eating tuna melts with her sister.

  The letter. She pulled it from the pocket of her batik-print, faux jean jacket, unfolded the stationery and reread, “Believe me when I tell you, this experience is going to benefit her as much as it will help you and yours.”

  Was it possible for a departed soul to send her living relative into an age long past? What could be so important it could only be learned in 1886?

  Ruckert. His name plunked into her consciousness like a fat raindrop on top of her head. All across the Laramie Plains, he had ridden ahead of the wagon, presenting Shelby with an unobstructed view of the breadth of his shoulders. The rhythms of his body he surrendered to the movements of his horse, and they glided along as one, as though riding were as natural to Ruckert St. Cloud as walking was to his Chongo horse.

  He must have sensed her silent regard, for more than once he turned in the saddle to glance behind, although he never uttered a single word.

  He’d made no comment on the fact they hadn’t found her vehicle, although she knew he had to be curious. They all had to be curious. And either they were being polite, or, if this really was 1886—and Shelby still clung to the hope that what she was experiencing could not possibly be real—then they probably had her pegged for a fruit loop.

  Ha, that was a laugh. Ruckert St. Cloud, Wyoming’s own Doctor Doolittle, thinking she was a nutcase. At any rate, he probably didn’t want to encourage her about something he didn’t believe existed, something he couldn’t believe existed because it hadn’t yet been invented.

  Wylie tightened the lines, bringing the wagon to a halt. In response, Ruckert swung his horse around and joined them. The sloped brim of his hat concealed his eyes so all that remained visible was the straight angle of his nose, a thick black mustache hiding his upper lip, and a jaw shadowed by the new growth of a heavy beard.

  Shelby gazed up at this raven-haired, gorgeous hunk of a crazy buckaroo, and asked herself, What have I to do with this handsome, mysterious and quiet stranger?

  He made her insane, attracting her in spite of his ability to amaze her with his weirdness. They had nothing in common. What was she doing here?

  But if Ruckert was in any way responsible for her supernatural plight, she wanted to know about it. She wanted answers. She wanted something in this whole crazy mess to make sense.

  Fortunately for her, not being able to look into his eyes made it that much easier to summon the courage to blurt, “Why do I get the impression there’s something you’d like to say to me?”

  The man had a presence to force chills down a truck driver’s spine, but at her simple question he tensed as though staring down the twin barrels of a sawed-off shotgun. Shelby even thought she saw him start, as though recoiling in fear, then decided no, she must have read him wrong.

  “Won’t you tell me what’s on your mind? You’ll speak to my dog, but not to me. Why? You don’t like me much, do you, Ruckert?” She waited until the silence grew unbearable, then prodded more assertively, “Go ahead, cowboy, speak your mind!”

  From Rose came a small, muffled squeak, brought on by amusement or incredulity, Shelby could not tell. She might have felt embarrassed over the likelihood of just having insulted either the woman or her son, but suddenly she noticed the street sign behind Ruckert’s head and what she saw stopped her cold.

  Thornburg Avenue. It couldn’t be.

  Oh, but it was. There stood the Wyoming Library and Literary Society over the post office, and farther down at the corner of First Street, the Union Pacific Hotel, set on a corner lot with gingerbread trim and wide verandas across the front and side.

  In Shelby’s lifetime, these establishments no longer existed, but the streets had survived. Thornburg Avenue became what was now Ivinson Avenue, named after bank owner Edward Ivinson, who bought a city block of land from the Union Pacific Railroad for his future home. His handsome Victorian mansion hadn’t been built until the year 1892, and today it housed the Laramie Plains Museum. Shelby had stopped there only this morning to pick up brochures for Ca
itlin, who wanted to have them on hand for interested guests.

  No wonder this place looked familiar. The times had changed but underneath it all, here were the same wide streets she had driven over this morning, only with muddy puddles in place of potholes.

  Her heart raced. “We’re in Laramie City, aren’t we?”

  “How is it, it took you so long to realize where we are?” Rose leaned closer to take her hand, her expression one of deep concern as she searched Shelby’s pale face. “What happened to you this morning, my dear?”

  Shelby remained at a loss as to how she should answer, and Rose didn’t press her, but squeezed her hand in a gesture of compassion, saying, “Never mind, we’ll talk about it later.”

  Ruckert urged his horse away from the wagon. He cleared his throat to get the attention of his younger brother, then jerked his head in a come-along motion.

  Wylie offered the lead reins to his mother. “You can handle the team, can’t you, Mother? Ruckert wants me to go with him.”

  Rose nodded, and as the boy jumped down off the buckboard, Shelby thought, They think I’m crazy. They can’t wait to get away from me.

  But Ruckert made no move to leave. Instead, he let the reins fall limp on Chongo’s neck and leaned over the saddle horn, causing the leather beneath his seat to creak. Chongo’s ears flickered and he swung his large brown head around, lifting his nose with its white snip at the tip.

  Ruckert told him, “The Indians believe words are to be used sparingly. And then, spoken only in truth and wisdom.” His voice was quiet and deep, like the man himself. Rich, yet varied in tone. Shelby imagined it had a soothing effect on the horse.

  “Too much talking causes a man’s power to leak away, they say, and pretty soon he becomes nothing but an unnecessary noise. I reckon I will tell Miss McCoy what I think of her when I feel the inclination to speak my mind. Until then, I’ll keep my mouth shut, for were I to speak now, I’d just be making a bunch of noise and none of it too flattering to either one of us.”