Bushedwhacked Groom (4 page)

For a moment all five children scowled at their fa
ther, then Matt spoke up. “Pa, you’re being unfair.”

“Too bad, then. You children want the land, you play
by the rules and win the game.”

“Well, I ain’t playing,” declared Matt, setting his jaw.

“Me neither,” added Zach.

“Well, I am,” declared Molly with a grin.

“What?”
her brothers cried in unison.

Molly shot to her feet, only to see her siblings staring murderously at her. “You four are nothing but a pack of
sissies,” she accused with a superior air. “It takes a real woman to win a tough fight, and I’m the lady who’s go
ing to do it.”

“You a lady?” jeered Matt.

“Yeah, what man is gonna want to wed a pistol like you?” added Vance.

Although dressed in jeans and a shirt, Molly
promptly simpered, doing her best imitation of a
blushing belle, complete with dimples and fluttering
eyelashes. “Hide and watch, fellas.”

Vance popped up. “Well, if you think we’re just
gonna sit here while baby sister tries to best us—”

“Yeah!” seconded Zach, following suit, with Matt and
Cory jumping up soon after to add their own affirma
tions.

“Well, well, good for the five of you,” pronounced
their smiling father. “Let the contest begin.”

“Yeah, bring on them great-grandbabies!” added Ma,
clapping her hands.

“Oh, brother,” groaned Jessica.

Molly grinned at her four brothers. Clearly the game
was on.

Chapter Two

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Perhaps one day her hero would come.

This was Molly Reklaw’s thought an hour later as she
sat on her palomino horse, Prissy, on a ridge overlooking the eastern edge of Haunted Gorge, ofttimes called
Reklaw Gorge in this region. Sanchez, ranch handy
man and Molly’s faithful escort, was perched on his
mount beside her.

After the scene in the parlor, Molly had grown weary
of bickering with her older brothers and had ridden away. It wasn’t easy being the youngest of the five
Reklaw children, not to mention the only girl, with
four unruly older brothers to bully her and boss her
around. Truth to tell, she and Cory had a special bond,
though it was fragile at times. He was the youngest
male, the sweet one, if boys could ever be called
sweet, but he lived in the shadow of his more strong-willed older brothers. As for Zach, Vance and Matt,
they could be real hornets at times. Why, just last week
the ruffians had thrown cattle chips at Molly and
chased her under the house, all because she’d claimed
she could outshoot them all. Well, she could! Her ma
had always told her a woman could do
anything
she set her mind to—certainly anything a man could do.
In fact, Molly had been named for Molly Brown—one
of her true heroines—and everyone knew that Molly was a humdinger.

Only problem was, this Molly was sorely outnum
bered.

Thus the only peace she knew was out here on the
range. For several years now she’d been periodically
watching this old Indian burial ground where spooky
things were known to happen, including the strange
events that had brought her parents together. Crazy
though it seemed, she was waiting for her own special
someone to appear.

This was a fanciful side to Molly’s nature that, so far,
only her mother really knew about. She’d tried to con
fide in Sanchez, but every time she spoke of her ma
traveling through time and her pa bushwhacking his
bride off Lila Lullaby’s old parlor wagon, the poor man
would start crossing himself and muttering to the
heavens. Being Molly’s guard, he had no choice but to
tolerate her eccentricities—but how her brothers
would laugh if they knew she was sitting here waiting
for a man to appear. Molly, the original hellcat, in
dulging in such romantic notions.

Molly wasn’t sure she believed in true love, but she
was a believer in destiny. Ever since her folks had told
her how they’d really met—with her ma traveling back
here from the future to meet her pa—the story had enthralled her. Along with the world her ma had cheer
fully left behind to be with her pa. Well, if
she
had lived in
an age of refrigerated houses, horseless carriages
faster than a
Rocky
Mountain
avalanche and rockets to
the moon, it would take more than dynamite or one of
those newfangled nuclear bomb blasts to banish her
from such a paradise.

Thus as a child Molly had woven a fantasy that
someday her hero would come and take her off to that fabulous world of the future, where women were no
longer chattel and men knew their places. That
prospect still held its appeal today, though she’d miss
Ma, Pa and Grandma—Cory, too, she supposed. And
actually, following the family powwow this morning, the idea of winning the lower five hundred in a contest
against her obnoxious brothers, besting them once
and for all and establishing a place of her own, where
she
was queen, was equally tempting.

For Molly had another dream. Though she had little
use for men, their seed was another matter. Tomboy though she was, she purely loved babies, and had all
her life. Her uncle Billy and aunt Dumpling were still
completing their brood, and only yesterday she’d
rocked their three-month-old twins out on the porch of
their house. She adored the babies’ smell, their soft
skin, the cooing sounds they made, the way their tiny arms wrapped around her neck . . . And the process of making those babies must not be half-bad, either, as
often as Billy and Dumpling seemed to do it.

Now all she needed was a suitable male of her own. Hopefully one of those fellows from the future that her
ma had described as “wimps,” a man who would let his
wife wear the pants in the family . . .

“S
eñorita
,
mira,
alli!” declared Sanchez at her side.

Her thoughts scattering, Molly frowned at her escort.
Whenever Sanchez became excited, he reverted to his
native Spanish. When she turned her head in the direction he had pointed, she became appalled and fas
cinated herself.

What the hell
. . .! As
Molly watched in amazement,
a decrepit horseless stagecoach materialized on a
high ledge opposite them. It came tumbling over the
ridge and went crashing down the zigzag line of dike into the valley below. Molly grimaced at the earsplit
ting sounds of wood shattering and metal screeching.
If she hadn’t seen it with her own two eyes, she never
would have believed it! Within twenty seconds the
crazed runaway had exploded at the bottom of the
gorge, and all that remained was a pile of splintered
wood and twisted metal, awash in a haze of rising
dust.

Molly’s mouth hung open. “I’ll be a horse’s . . . Did
you
see
that, Sanchez?”

The Mexican was busy crossing himself.
“
Madre de Dios
! A stagecoach with no horse or driver, flying like a
bird. It’s the haunted
coche!”

“The haunted . . . ?” Molly’s eyes grew huge. Sanchez
might not be the same believer in destiny that she was,
but he, like everyone in these parts, had heard the leg
end of Lila Lullaby and her hussy wagon. “You can’t
mean Lila Lullaby’s old parlor wagon? The same one that brought my ma and pa together?”

Sanchez gulped. “
Por
favor,
señorita, you are driving me mad with your
loco
talk.”

“But it makes perfect sense!” Molly continued in rising
excitement, her gaze fixed on the wreckage. “Here I
was, wishing for a bridegroom, and that old cat wagon
comes flying right along, just like it did for my pa.” She
peered over the rim. “The wood is faded, but even from here I can see a yellowish cast to it. How amazing. Wonder
if anyone’s inside?”

Sanchez was staring at her in disbelief. “
S
eñorita, no
one could have survived that fall.”

“Are you sure?” Molly grinned, her curiosity thor
oughly piqued. “Come on, quit being a stick-in-the-
mud. Let’s go investigate.”

With Sanchez protesting every step of the way, the
two guided their mounts down the steep mountain
side into the gorge, then galloped toward the pile of
debris. Molly was the first to dismount, eyeing the
heap of wood and metal from several angles. She dislodged a piece of faded wood with chipped yellow
paint, and spotted the washed-out monogram,
l.l.
“My God, it
is
Lila Lullaby’s old parlor wagon!”

“Caramba!”
muttered Sanchez, again crossing him
self.

Then Molly heard a moan from somewhere inside
the rubble. “Sanchez, did you hear that?”

He was backing away while violently shaking his
head.
“Santa Maria!
Es un espectro!”

Molly waved a hand. “For Pete’s sake. Of course it’s
not a ghost. Come on, you lazy saddle tramp, help me.
There’s someone trapped in there.”

Though his eyes were huge, Sanchez dutifully obeyed,
hunkering down beside Molly. The two hurriedly
pitched aside boards and metal, searching for the
source of the groans. Soon they uncovered the body of
a man.

“Well, I’ll be damned.” Molly stared down at the un
conscious stranger, who was quite handsome, with
thick, curly dark blond hair and a nicely drawn face that, except for the stubble of whiskers along the jaw, might have been almost too beauteous for a man. But he was
dressed in typical cowboy garb, a checked blue shirt, faded denims and dusty boots.

“Looks like some no-
account wrangler,” she muttered to Sanchez in obvious
disappointment. “Though he’s a comely one. ‘S'pose
he’s still alive?”

As if to answer, the stranger thrashed around a bit and grunted, though he still didn’t open his eyes.

Sanchez leaned over, retrieved an item from the rubble and handed it to Molly. “Señorita, look at this.”

Molly frowned at the odd-looking, thin leather wal
let. She flipped it open, only to gape at a strange collection of cards, made with some hard, smooth,
fantastical-looking and -feeling material. Some of the
cards were stamped with words and numbers, and
one small card held the cowboy’s image—like a tiny photograph, but all done up in colors!

Molly pulled it out and stared at it in stupefaction.
There was the stranger, grinning at her with his bright
blue eyes, straight nose and bold, sensual mouth. “Col
orado Driver License,” it said. It listed the man’s
name—”Lucky Lamont”—and his place of residence
in Buck Hollow, a town she’d never even heard of. Her
eyes froze on the date of his birth: January 15,1979.

1979! Could it be? That was almost seventy years in the future! Frantically digging further in the wallet, she
found a typewritten receipt for a pair of dress boots
with the date April 2, 2004.

2004! Oh, God, did this mean
. . .? But
what if the
items were faked?

Not likely, she quickly realized. For who could have
created that amazing photograph and those cards
made of that slick, astounding material? Flipping through the rest of the wallet’s contents, she found
stubs for rodeo tickets—also dated April of 2004—and
outlandish-looking paper money, ten- and twenty-
dollar bills labeled with “Series 2001” and “Series 2004.”

At last she realized only one explanation made sense.

“Great Jumping Jehoshaphat!” Molly cried, staring
from the receipt to the man. “He’s not some no-
account saddle tramp! He’s from the future—the year
twenty-aught-four—and he came across time in Lila
Lullaby’s hussy wagon, just like my ma did for my pa.”

“
S
eñorita
,
por favor,”
pleaded Sanchez.
“You are talk
ing out of your head.”

“No, don’t you understand?” she cried. “He has to be
from the future. It’s like history repeating itself, Lila’s
stagecoach bringing me a man just like it brought my
pa his woman—”

But then Molly became distracted by a bellow of
pain. She glanced downward just as the stranger
opened his gorgeous dark blue eyes and scowled up at
her. He shook his head as if to clear it, then stared at
her harder, speaking in a deep, though hoarse, voice.
“What in hell is going on here?”

Molly laughed, totally delighted with herself. “You
should know that, mister. My hero has arrived. And
you’re going to win me the lower five hundred.”