How appropriate, that Jacob and I set out for our married future by riding together.
That's how we'd met, after all.
The creak of leather, the slow beat of hooves. The smell of horses and of clear, high-plains air. Nebraska spread out from us in endless waves of low hills, sometimes broken with broad expanses of rock, scattered with spiky pom-poms of yucca, gray-green sagebrush, and the occasional, shaggy cedar trees, which kind of resembled Christmas trees who'd really let themselves go.
Not a lot of trees, though. This was open country. Big sky. All we needed was a cinematic soundtrack to complete the experience.
I have to say, I'd come to dearly love horseback riding--even the sidesaddle had grown on me. The horns on a sidesaddle curve, so that a good grip with your thighs can help you stay on if the horse pitches or bucks, not that Valley Boy did either. As my mount rocked easily beneath me, occasionally lunging forward on an incline or stepping off-beat to maneuver a tricky bit of ground, I felt glad for all the practice I'd recently gotten, back before I'd known I was pregnant.
My fellow time traveler Maddie, a doctor I'd left in Julesburg, had assured me that although riding was on the list of pregnancy Don'ts in our time, it was more of a 19th century necessity--probably safer than riding in a bumpy old wagon without springs. In contrast, Valley Boy had an amazingly smooth gait. I just had to be extra careful not to get thrown.
Go figure. I tried to avoid that already.
The only problem was... well, our long ride gave me a lot of quiet time during which the full immensity of what I'd done began to lick at my toes. Yesterday had been filled with goodbyes from my fellow castaways, and a train trip, and marrying Jacob, and shopping for supplies, and honeymooning. Solid distractions, every one of them.
Today, my whole future spread out at my feet, wide as the choppy Nebraska prairie and even less familiar.
What had I done?
For a while, I fled the thought, distracting myself with humming or even singing quietly. I was accustomed to my car radio and playlists--to a musical background for everything from grocery shopping to sitting on hold.
It didn't seem to bother my new husband. But I was careful about what songs I chose, anyway, so as not to shock him. The old show tunes that my grandparents had enjoyed seemed safe bets. Sometimes.
"Oh What a Beautiful Morning?" Surprisingly welcome choice.
"I'm Just a Girl Who Can't Say No?" I gave that one a pass.
But I had to rest my voice sometimes, had to notice the August breeze on my face, the smell of fresh horse-droppings when Jacob's mare lifted her tail in that funny, stiff way horses do without even stopping. Not that horse poop smells particularly bad, not like the cattle, but I was so not in modern-day Chicago anymore.
And here came my future, now in waves up to my knees. In marrying my trail boss, I'd made a decision as drastic, as life-changing and dangerous as... as an astronaut agreeing to blast off to the moon. Or a one-way trip to Mars! Maybe even more drastic, because at least astronauts have training, and support teams in Houston who care if they have a problem!
I'd chosen against the information age. I would never Google anything again. Ever. Not how to sew clothing, or cook dinner, or what to expect while I expected my baby. No GPS or Yahoo Maps. Hell, depending on where we ended up in Wyoming, it could be decades before I had access to a library!
I'd chosen against modern medicine. No corner drugstores. No X-rays or MRIs. No emergency rooms or ambulance service, antibiotics or aspirin.
I'd chosen against flush toilets.
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OverTime 03: Slipping (First 70 Chapters)
Romance"And they lived happily ever--uh oh." Time traveler Elizabeth, aka "Lillabit," hardly expects miracles from her 19th-century marriage. But abandoning her modern world for love of an 1870s trail boss is hard enough without stampedes. And storms. A...
