Chapter 3

Author’s note:[ and ] delineate mind-to-mind dialog.

I rolled the woman onto her back and carefully rearranged her legs so that I could work on the broken one, her left one. I removed my right boot and sock and pulled her skirt aside so that I could put my foot against her pussy. I pulled gently, but firmly, with Replicator playing his yellow light over the site of the break.

I could feel the break re-seat and held her leg while Replicator applied a splint. [Replicator, how long with it take her leg to heal if we do nothing more?]

“Susan, while we are waiting for your mama to wake up, I am going to use some magic on you to heal anything that might be about to make you sick.”

“Okay, I do not feel sick, but go ahead. I guess that it would not hurt anything.”

[Both females have a bad case of hookworms. I can fix that in a few seconds. They will excrete the dead parasites the next time they have a bowel movement.]

We let Miss Horton sleep for about 90 minutes before she woke up. During that time, I got a lot of information from Susan. Like all children, she loved to have the undivided attention of an adult, and she told me many things that her mother would never have mentioned.

One of the things I found out was that her mother’s first name was Julia, and she had never been married. Susan didn’t tell me directly, but it was obvious that her mother had been raped when she was 13 by the town bully, and he was Susan’s father. Julia’s older brother had shot the bully, but that did nothing to salvage Julia’s reputation. At the time, any woman who was raped was accused of having seduced the man. Dammit, there are some customs that I absolutely hate!

Susan and her mother were living with the Hortons because no man would consider marrying Julia because of the rape. She was considered damaged merchandise and socially unacceptable. They had gone into Willow Run to visit the only doctor in the vicinity because of some belly pains that they were both having. It was my guess that the pains were caused by the hookworms.

It was about five miles to the town where the Hortons lived, and the carriage was a total loss. Besides, they now did not have a horse to pull it. It looked like I was going to have to provide the transportation home.

I discussed the problem with Replicator, and we decided to convert the flush toilet to use water from a barrel. However, we had to remove the shower. When that was done, and it only took a few seconds, the wagon again looked like a wagon used by a bachelor very conscious of his creature comforts. Replicator hung a storage chest to the underside of the wagon that could have been used to store food and other supplies.

I fetched the wagon to pick up the new passengers. With Replicator’s help, I carried Julia to the bed in the wagon. The only thing I did was to remove her boots, which I was sure that she would approve of. Susan joined me in the driver’s box, and we started toward the Hortons’ home.

It took us on the order of 90 minutes to reach the house, and Julia had joined us in the driver’s box by then. The three of us had a very pleasant conversation on the way, and I thought that I got to know both of them very well by the time we reached our destination.

When we pulled into the yard, Mr. Horton came to meet us. Susan was out of the wagon in a flash and running to greet her grandfather. He called Mrs. Horton out to meet me, and we adjourned to the front veranda. We spent over an hour in general conversation. Man, that was a nice way to spend some time. Even Susan seemed to enjoy it.

James Horton did ask me about my strange accent. I told him that I was from Leominster, Massachusetts, and I was here to do some historical research for a book I planned to write about the war with the Comanches. They were all suitably impressed by my fib, and I learned some more about the history of what happened when Whites first moved into this territory. Hell, maybe I would write that book after all.

I spent so much time with the Hortons that it was getting toward supper time. I tried to excuse myself “to go find a restaurant,” but I was almost shouted down by Susan. She wanted me to spend the night. All of the other Hortons wanted me to stay for supper and to spend the night. The excuse was that they needed some way to show me how much they appreciated the way I had helped Julia and Susan. There was no way I could turn them down.

I drove the mule and wagon to the back yard and put the robot in the barn. That solved a lot of problems for the moment, but I was afraid that it was just putting off the inevitable. While I was in the barn, Julia’s younger brother, John showed up for supper. He was still living at home. Her older brother Sam, the town marshal, was married and had his own home.

The supper was a first rate meal, and I knew if I ate like that all of the time, especially with the quantity that I consumed, I was going to get fat. Sarah, Julia’s mother, blushed when I said that out loud.

John had not heard the story, so Susan related the afternoon’s adventure, and I thought that she gave much too much credit to me. I was impressed, though, by the fact that she did not mention my magic. Maybe the child was more mature than I had predicted.

Of course, I agreed to stay the night. The house was quite large, and there were several unused bedrooms, so I was not putting anyone out of his or her normal bedroom. The bed was a bit too soft for me, so I had Replicator make some adjustments. The changes could be reversed the next morning.

Julia seemed to be much taken with me—I certainly was with her. Anyway, Julia wanted me to meet her other brother, Sam, the Clear Wells town marshal. Hell, why not—it just meant more time that I could spend with Julia. The Hortons had another carriage, so that was not a problem, but they were short a horse until the one that had run away from the carriage accident could be found. In a flash, I offered my mule if Julia would not be embarrassed to be seen with a mule pulling her around Clear Wells.

She laughed and said that she could manage to live with the mule. Thank God, I had escaped a tight situation. I had never driven a horse before, and I really did not know what to do. Dammit, I was going to have to learn, and quickly at that.

However, I would have no problem with my robot mule, so I was saved by having it pull the carriage. Otherwise, Julia would have had to drive, and no self respecting man of the time would have let a woman drive him in public. I could fake it well enough with the mule, so I quit worrying about it.

Susan wanted to go along, too, so she “supervised” me hitching the mule to the carriage, and we set out to visit the marshal. Susan sat between Julia and me and was the epitome of a back seat driver. I didn’t complain—it was novel and fun. However, Julia eventually shut her up, and I never had a chance to become annoyed.