OverTime 03: Slipping (First 70 Chapters)

Chapter 66: Prepared (Garrison)

Never having met this Callahan put Garrison at something of a disadvantage.

Any hunter of moderate sense would find cover from which he could watch Elizabeth without being seen himself. A quick, high Tennessee-warbler whistle, in answer to his own, reassured Garrison that Cooper had found and settled into a higher grove to do just that. But Garrison did not know if Callahan himself had sense.

Any predator would show little compunction about setting traps, backshooting, or even stranding them in the box canyon while blocking their way out. Garrison disliked having to count on a woman-killer to keep either his word or his appointments.

He could not account for every possibility that might face them. But he spent the rest of the afternoon, after their arrival at the great stone arch, preparing best he could for their midnight meeting.

He used a hatchet from his pack to cut down much of the nearby brush, giving his enemy fewer places to hide. Once he explained himself to Elizabeth, she helped by stripping leaves off some of the scrub trees.

But she actually spoke the words, "Poor trees."

"Trees is trees," he snapped.

"But it's not their fault that we're being extra safety conscious."

He shook his head and let Elizabeth be Elizabeth.

Little though he liked wearing guns during manual labor--leather straps rubbed when he sweated--he stayed fully armed. Made sure Elizabeth wore both her revolver and her carbine, too.

"He wants to talk to me," she reminded him, believing Callahan's story more than he would like. "Why would he attack us?"

"Someone means to attack you might lie."

She made a face that, if he read her correctly--and he had little faith in that--meant she accepted his point.

Before they lost too much light, he found a steep path to climb the massive rock arch. He waved Elizabeth back when she tried to follow him. The risk of her falling outweighed the risk of leaving her alone, if in sight.

The stone bridge had squatted here so many centuries, grass grew in clumps along the wide top and old, dark memories of ancient dirt streaked and stained its otherwise reddish sides. Sure enough, to judge by a broken twig here and a squashed weed there, someone had been up here recent.

He had a decent view of the valley from here. He also saw where he and Elizabeth could wait so that anybody with a mind to take higher ground would not be able to spot them right off.

Were he Callahan, he would take higher ground.

"Gather some of them pebbles," he called to Elizabeth's upturned face well below him, before making his precarious way back to the riverside himself. "Those," he better explained, pointing to the rocky shoal that bordered the water on their side.

"Why?" But at least Elizabeth did it, even as she questioned him yet again.

"Because." He couldn't blame her for wrinkling her nose at his flip response; it surprised him too. But he was the one had fought Indians and seen war, not her. Could she not even trust him...?

But she was trusting him. He felt on edge, was all, leaving the herd and meeting a man he would have no truck with but for her. Still, he attempted something like an apology by saying, "Obliged," when the wife brought him her first handfuls of wet rock.

"Anything for you, Mr. Garrison," she teased, which told him she weren't particularly hurt.

He filled his hat with pebbles, then filled hers, before climbing back to the top of the natural bridge. It took him a good twenty trips, afore he'd spread enough pebbles to likely give them warning. In fact, he kicked one himself, by accident, and felt some small satisfaction in how the clatter of it echoed from the overhang below.

With high canyon walls between them and the sunset, night dropped hard and fast. Garrison refused to pinpoint their location with a fire tonight. He and Elizabeth shared a dinner of tinned tomatoes and sardines, instead. She made a face at the salty fish, but admitted that "Maddie wanted me to eat them for the vitamins." Still he ate more than she did.

He did not bother asking what vitamins were, but he wondered if Cooper knew.

He wondered if Callahan knew.

He wondered what business Callahan truly had with his wife. He doubted they knew each other, beyond what she'd relayed about Dodge City. Elizabeth tended toward the truth. But he'd caught in the madman's letters a certain brashness, a casual over-familiarity, even a scattered way of thinking that reminded him of his wife, all the same.

Cooper and Elizabeth both would blame it on her and Callahan hailing from the same "future." But folks couldn't travel through time, no more than they could sprout wings and fly, or rise from the dead.

No matter what he had heard last night, or seen this morning.

Night slowly sapped the warmth from the rocks around them. The rushing creek carried cold past them, as well. They sat back to back, the better to keep watch, and he appreciated Elizabeth's warmth as much as he did her press and presence against his spine. After so many nights together, the sound of her breathing soothed him.

"Thank you for bringing me here," she whispered.

He didn't trust his ability at quiet enough to say that she was welcome--he weren't even sure she was. He just knew that if she'd determined to put herself into danger, his place had to be by her side.

Or, in this case, against her back.

However, he hoped she did not intend to make a habit of it.

Staying silent must have been torture on her, because after a while, she began to softly hum. He reckoned that, between the echoes under the nearby arch and off the rock walls, her mournful tunes could not draw Callahan to their exact location.

Also, he liked her songs.

He didn't know a one of them, but he liked them just fine.

And so passed the early stretch of night, his pulse speeding at every cry of a fox or flutter of an owl. Eventually, the moon rose high enough to shine directly into the narrow confines of the box canyon.

Not long now, he thought--just before a rattle of pebbles off the arch gave the newcomer away. Callahan had gone for high ground, at that. But with what must be a deliberate few kicks of the pebbles, he weren't trying to be stealthy about it.

In fact, he shouted, "I am Oz, the great and terrible! Why do you seek me?" Then, after his voice echoed into nothing, he added in a more casual tone, "I know you're there, Lil. I heard your greatest hits."

Garrison stood, shouldered his rifle, and slowly backed up--one careful step at a time--to the point where he could draw bead on the killer.

The silver moon lit the man bright as twilight.

And at the sight of him, for a brief moment, Garrison wondered if time travel weren't possible after all.