The Time-Traveling Outlaw (12 page)

She didn’t bother getting Maisy out of the barn. That was too much trouble. Instead, she broke down the travois, hoping she wouldn’t need it again anytime soon, and dragged the constituent parts into the barn. The wagon would be fine sitting out front for now. Logan wanted to get to work now, and that was fine by her. She didn’t know what he had in mind, but Doctor Gleeson’s words echoed in her head: 

Don’t try to take on a man like Camden Sturgess. But if you do, make sure next time you have a plan. 

What else had he said? Oh yes:
He certainly will.

Sally hoped to God that Logan had a plan, because she surely didn’t. She hadn’t expected him to come back into her life, especially the way he had. 

Lying to Tommy Tanner had been easy, easier than she would have thought. She’d always strived to be honest. But now she was harboring an outlaw, and she had to admit that she felt a rush of excitement. The one part that had been the easiest was telling Tommy that Logan was long gone. The first day after the escape she thought be might come back, but each day after it became easier and easier to believe he was never going to.

She climbed the steps and went inside. Logan was sitting at the table, dressed in another pair of William’s jeans and a faded brown shirt. Will’s old work boots showed from under the legs of the jeans.

“Good job with Tommy,” he said. “I heard everything.”

“Thanks,” she said, internally beaming at the compliment, from one criminal to another. “It was Tommy, though. I doubt I could have put the Sheriff off the scent.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” he said. “Something tells me you can be quite persuasive when you want to.”

She walked to the table and sat across from him. “So?”

“Do you have any paper?” he asked. “And something to write with?”

Paper? That was the last thing she’d expected him to ask for. She was about to open her mouth and tell him no, she didn’t have any paper, when she remembered the plans for both the house and the barn that Will had drawn up before starting work. She could see them in her mind’s eye, rolled up tubes of light brown paper, sitting high on the top shelf of the workbench in the barn. 

“Actually, I do,” she said. “I’ll be right back.”

Inside the barn, she stopped briefly to stroke Maisy before heading for the bench. There the scrolls rested, just where she remembered. She reached up, pausing, suddenly overtaken by the memory of William. He would sit at this desk, hunched over, drawing, planning for their future together, a future that would now never be. She felt tears well up in her eyes and forced them back. Where had that come from? 

Well, you just made fierce love to another man in the house where you were going to live the rest of your life with William
, she thought. There would be times like these, she realized, times when the memory of him would sneak up on her unexpectedly, maybe for the rest of her life. And that was okay. She didn’t feel guilt. She didn’t feel like she’d betrayed his memory in any real way. Maybe that made her a bad person, but she didn’t think so. Mostly she just felt sad. She missed him. And this feeling was okay, because she was more afraid of forgetting him altogether. 

She wiped the tears from her eyes with the palm of her hand, then grabbed the papers down, sneezing at the dust that plumed up. She shook her head and turned to head back, before spotting the two pencils resting in a rusted can on the back corner of the bench. She snapped them up before leaving.

Back in the house, she handed the rolls of paper to Logan. He took the one on top and rolled it out. It was a blueprint of the barn, sketched out in clean lines, professionally done.

“Who made this?” Logan asked. “Did you hire someone?”

“No,” she said. “My husband Will did these.”

“Was he trained as an architect?”

She shook her head. “No. He taught himself.”

“He had talent,” Logan said, looking over the plans. She had almost forgotten that in the time he had come from, he had first been a soldier, then a man who oversaw the building of things. He’d likely seen many plans for buildings. She took some solace in the compliment from the man she now loved to the one that was gone, and the tears threatened to fall once more, but she took a deep breath.

Logan flipped the sheet to the other side, the curve of the paper keeping it from lying flat. She fetched four cups from the cupboard and used them to pin down the corners. 

“Is it all right if we write on this?” he asked. 

“Yes,” she said, her voice breaking a little. “It’s fine, really.”

“Good,” he said. “I want you to help me make a map of the town and the surrounding area. I need to know as much as I can, about what buildings are where, what’s in them, and which ones Sturgess owns.”

Sally took one of the pencils in hand. She’d watched William sketch many times, but she’d never done it herself. But when the tip of the pencil touched the paper, something happened. She decided to start with downtown Lockdale, the main thoroughfare, and work her way outwards to the surrounding farms and ultimately her own property.

She drew a small, distinct rectangle representing Popper’s General Store, a decent enough place to start, as it was a hub of activity and commerce in the town, and one of the few businesses Sturgess didn’t own outright. As her hand guided the pencil across the page, she found she liked it.

The act of drawing something she knew from memory, rendering it with her own hand, was immensely satisfying. After the General Store, she drew the Sheriff’s office, then the doctor’s office, then the saloon, her hand moving quick and light across the page.

Logan didn’t say a word, sitting back with his arms folded and watching her work. Soon she became lost in the process, almost in a trance as the representation of downtown Lockdale began to emerge from nothing onto the paper. 

Soon she had the main street mapped out, and she was beginning to draw the stables when the tip became too blunt. 

“Here,” Logan said, holding out his hand. He’d taken a knife from a kitchen drawer. Sally looked up, as if in a dream. She hadn’t noticed him do that. What did he want with a knife? Then she realized.

She handed the pencil to him and watched him whittle the end sharp again. While he did, her palms felt itchy, wanting to get back to the drawing. Was this how it had been for Will? Why had she never asked to take the pencil in hand herself?

Logan handed it back, and she touched the freshly-sharp tip to the page and began again. She tried to draw from scale as best her memory served, realizing that she had already mapped out most of the area in her mind before starting, having done a pretty nice job of leaving room for the surrounding areas. She labeled each building in the perfect cursive she had learned in the one-room school when she was little, later refined under her mother’s tutelage. 

She occasionally took a few seconds to look up and survey the work as a whole, to see what she had done and what was left to do, and she marveled to herself. The map was good. No, it was better than good. How strange that she and the man she had married were talented in the same respect, though they had never known it. The thought made her a little melancholy, but the joy of making Lockdale come to life from a blank sheet offset her mood.

She was probably adding more detail than necessary, but she appreciated that Logan didn’t interrupt her to tell her he only needed the basics. He sat there watching her, surely able to tell she was enjoying herself. That made her appreciate him all the more.

Soon she had mapped out nearly all of the town, and she looked up, stunned to see that the sun was already low in the sky.

“How long have I been doing this?” she asked.

“Four or five hours, by my count,” Logan said.

“Really? Why didn’t you rein me in?” she asked. “I’m sorry I’m taking so long.”

He shook his head. “I couldn’t stop that,” he said, pointing at the huge sheet, now rich with a detailed schematic of the nearby town. “That’s a work of art.”

She let out a little laugh. “You think so?”

“No doubt about it. You’re a natural,” he said. “You want to take a break?”

Did she? “No,” she said. “I’d like to keep going. I want to finish, even if it takes all night.” Then she realized he might be hungry. “Oh, do you need something to eat?”

He laughed. “Tell you what,” he said. “You keep working. I’ll cook us some dinner.”

“I can’t let you do that,” she said.

He stood up, waving her back down into her seat. “In my time, things are a bit more egalitarian. Men do their share of the cooking and cleaning.”

“That sounds pretty nice, actually,” Sally said. 

“The future has its charms,” he said, looking around. “But so does the past. I mean, the present.”

She smiled up at him. How confusing it must be to travel through time.

“I like it here,” he said. “Though I can’t say I don’t miss air conditioning.”

“What’s that?”

“I’ll explain some other time,” he said, winking. “Go on and get back to work.” A simple gesture, but it made her stomach flutter all the same. 

She put her head down and kept drawing while Logan cooked them eggs.

After they ate, Sally kept right on working on the map. Logan kept right on watching her, but with a full belly, exhaustion overtook him and he fell asleep.

“I’m done,” she said. She was shaking him awake. He opened his eyes to her beautiful face, flush with excitement.

He shook his head to wake himself up. Sally took a step back. Logan leaned over the table, the lantern now lighting the map.

He let out a low whistle. He’d seen plenty of maps, and this one reminded him most of the kind you’d find in the opening pages of some thick fantasy novel, the kind of map drawn by an artist.

It was all there, Lockdale, the surrounding farms, and just about every single detail you’d want to know, from creeks to small caves, to an estimate of how many cattle Old Man Jospers had grazing in his fields.

“You did all this from memory?” he asked, amazed.

“Yeah,” she said. “Is it all right?”

Is it all right
, he thought. More than all right. One thing being a soldier had taught him: Information won more battles than bullets or courage. He didn’t know what was going to be useful and what wasn’t, but knowing the terrain, knowing where the resources were, that was half the battle. 

He had to kill Sturgess to save Sam and his daughter. There was something else on his mind, too, something he hadn’t shared with Sally yet. If he could alter little things like tie colors and facial hair, then who knew what else he could change by killing the ancestor of Harken Sturgess? Maybe he could even save Natalie. 

He hadn’t mentioned that possibility to Sally because one, he wasn’t sure it even was a possibility. And two, he wasn’t sure that if he accomplished what he hoped to he might want to go back to that future, a future where he was still married to Natalie. He didn’t know what he wanted to do, because he had fallen in love with Sally. 

The thoughts of what were and what could be if he succeeded were too much, tying his mind up in knots. So he tried to focus on the mission at hand.

“What are these stars?” he said, pointing to a place on the map not far from her ranch labeled “Tin Mine.” There was a little star drawn near it, along with nearly every other building in Lockdale.

“Those are places owned by Sturgess,” she said. 

“God,” Logan said. “He owns damn near everything.”

“Yes,” she said. “I knew it on some level, but didn’t realize just how deep he had his hooks in this town until I drew everything out. Hell, in a lot of ways, he
is
this town.”

That’s what worried Logan. If he didn’t think he could change anything, he’d tell her to pack up right now. They’d run away, to California, maybe, start all over. That sounded damned fine, and the thought was tempting. But he owed a debt to the man who had given his life to send him back. And he owed Natalie.

Sally yawned, stretching her arms above her head. “If you want to study it, you can ask me more questions in the morning.” It already was the morning, but he didn’t say anything. “I’m going to bed.”

“Okay,” he said, looking from the map to her. She started to walk past him, and he caught her arm. He pulled her in close, cupping her jaw in his hand and drawing her in for a gentle kiss. “Thank you,” he said.

When she stood up, she looked dazed. She let out a little giggle. “I’m not completely sure you’re the one that should be doing the thanking,” she said. She leaned back in and kissed him again, soft and sweet. Then she turned and headed for the bed.

He hunched over the map and studied it for a little while, but he was tired as well. The realization of just how dumb he’d been just rolling up to Sturgess’s doorstep hit him. Like she had just said, the man
was
this town. 

He could try to sneak back in during the night, maybe hide somewhere. But now the Sheriff and his deputies knew his face. That was risky. So was getting caught by Sturgess in town. The map helped mitigate some of his advantage, but it wasn’t a silver bullet. 

Logan stood up and stretched. Then he walked into the bedroom. He took off his boots, his jeans, and his shirt. Sally was curled up in the bed, a light quilt squeezed under her chin with both hands. She was snoring softly. God, she was beautiful. Looking at her made him feel happy and sad at the same time. Thinking of sliding into bed beside her and taking her in his arms made him feel something else altogether, but he was too tired for that right now. Maybe when they woke up.

He got into bed, pressing his body close to hers, putting his arm around her.

She woke, taking a deep breath. “Did you figure out what we’re gonna do?” she asked in a thick voice. “Do we have a plan?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I think so. It’s dangerous, but so are all our other options. Go on to sleep. We’ll talk about it tomorrow.” He kissed her forehead, then nuzzled his nose against her neck. She let out a low “mmm” and pulled the blanket up to her chin again.

Soon they were both fast asleep.

Logan woke to a warm, wet sensation, a wonderful feeling like a part of him was enveloped by something loving and sexual at the same time. He opened his eyes to see Sally looking up from between his legs, her mouth down on him. Her bright amber eyes were wide with excitement. Her blond hair pooled around his upper legs, framing the act. She had the base of him in her hand, working her mouth up and down in slow, deliberate strokes.