Chapter 7: To Be or Not To Be

Of course, I read Shakespeare in Senior English Lit in high school. Who didn’t? I just suddenly found myself identifying with the melancholy prince. A father killed. A usurper on the throne. What’s a prince to do?

I was convinced my dad had been murdered and I was ready to lay it at the feet of Joe Teini. The bastard actually came to the funeral on Labor Day and when he went through the receiving line he offered my mom two million in cash for the ranch. At the fucking goddamned funeral! The bastard.

“Mom doesn’t actually own the ranch now,” I said, stepping between them. I kept my attention on Mom and avoided looking him in the eye. There was a chance he could recognize a time traveler just by looking him in the eye. “I’ll be sure to let you know if the owners ever want to sell.”

“Just thought I could make things better,” Joe sneered. “I wouldn’t want anyone else to end up like your dad.”

The son of a bitch! He was as much as threatening my family. This was going to stop. I was going to cut off his source of funds or his balls or both.

I wasn’t sure yet, but I had a feeling that it was going to happen soon. Things in the western part of the county were looking bleak for everybody and I figured I needed to get my act together pretty soon or everything was going to hell.

Just let me bury my dad first. Okay?

Family Bible

We used the backhoe to scrape out Dad’s grave up on the promontory with the other Bell family members. When I helped lower the casket in the hole, I wondered about all the other ancestors who were buried there and how long the ranch had been in our hands. I was pretty sure Laramie’s ranch had not been far from here, but the landscape had changed enough that I couldn’t identify things. I’d only found the site of the hut because of the thermal spring. I’d kept hoping that I’d discover that we had another neighbor who was maybe a descendent of our child, Kaylene. But whatever happened, I didn’t find anything.

That just wasn’t what I was focusing on. I had people who were depending on me in two timelines. I needed to figure out how best to protect both of them and it was all coming down to getting rid of Joe Teini.

Folks finally left after the carry-in dinner and after our refrigerator was filled with food we only needed to warm up for the next few days. Mom looked up when she saw that Mary Beth and Ashley were both still there.

“Oh. I suppose you’re waiting for Cole to take you home,” Mom said.

“Mom,” I said as gently as I could. “Ashley and Mary Beth are staying here tonight. With me.”

“Oh. Well the guest room...”

“Mom. With me. Ashley is my girlfriend and if she will consent to be my wife I will marry her before Christmas.” Ashley rushed to me and kissed me deeply, right in front of my mom. I wasn’t embarrassed by it at all. I held out my hand and Mary Beth took it. “Mary Beth is my cousin and I love her with all my heart. She will live with me and with Ashley for as long as she wishes and holds us in her heart like she does now. Mom, we’re going to be one family and while we don’t want to advertise things to all the neighbors, we’re not hiding it from our families.”

“Oh. I suppose I knew all that. Your father did. Both your fathers. I just thought that when you got serious about a girl she would be the only one. I can see, though that you are all three in love. I don’t understand these things, but I’ll just go to bed now.” Mom hugged each of the three of us and it really did feel like she loved and accepted us. “Cole, will you write it in the Bible? I got it down yesterday, but I just couldn’t open it.”

“What Bible, Mom?” Well sure I had a Bible. We all had Bibles even if we didn’t go to church much. But I wasn’t sure what she wanted written in what Bible.

“The Bell Family Bible,” Mom answered. “I got it down last night and put it on the desk, but I couldn’t write your father’s death in it. It’s really your responsibility as head of the household now.” I didn’t even know we had a family Bible. It was common enough for each family to have a record of their family in a Bible. I’d looked at enough of them at the Family History Library. Apparently, the last event that had been written in ours was my birth. I kissed Ashley and Mary Beth goodnight and told them I’d be up in a bit. Then I headed toward the office and my dad’s desk. I suppose it was going to be my desk from now on.

I must have seen the big book sometime in the past, probably when I was a little kid, because it looked sort of familiar. There was a marker in the middle of it and it opened to the page where my Dad’s information had been recorded. It was pretty complete information. It started with his full name and birth date. Below that were his date of graduation from Laramie High School. Then his dates of service in the United States Army, 1973-1975. Next came his marriage to Mom and her birth information and parents. A number of lines below that had the caption children, but only my name appeared. I was surprised to see a line above mine marked with the simple words, “Infant girl. Stillborn. March 10, 1974.” I never knew I had a big sister. It made me remember my own baby who was buried somewhere in the infant field at Greenhill. At the bottom of the page was space where the single initial “d.” indicated where I was to place his death information. The next page started with my name at the top and my birth date. I wrote the date and place of Dad’s death, but it seemed that there was a lot of space left and I wondered what I was supposed to write there.

I turned back a page to see if my Grandmother’s entry was there. It was. Mildred Arlene Bell, b. 5/10/1925. At the bottom of the page were the words, “d. 12/5/1955 She loved a soldier who was taken to war and did not return. When she had delivered their infant son and she knew he was safe, she hurried to join her love.” The only child was Earl Thomas Bell, my dad, born August 7, 1955.

I turned back to Dad’s page and thought about what I should write. My handwriting was certainly nothing like the flowing script on the previous page and I wondered who had written that. I thought and then wrote. “Earl Thomas Bell, faithful husband, respected father, cherished friend. All those who knew him miss him.” I got it now. That’s why the stones in our family plot were blank. Our stories were in this book. I wondered how my story would be filled out.

I turned back a page to Mildred’s information and read it through completely before looking at the previous entry. The writing was more difficult to read, but I stared at it long after I’d read it.

“Kaylene Redtail Bell, born March 10, 1889. Lived with Robert Hood, 1925 by consent. Died October 5, 1945. No church heard their vows, but they loved each other and brought a beautiful daughter into the world.”

It couldn’t be. It had to all be coincidence. Still I knew what I’d find when I turned the page. I had opened Schrödinger’s box.

“Laramie Wyoming Bell, born summer of 1873. Beloved of Kyle Redtail, 1889. Mother of Kaylene Redtail Bell. Died December 24, 1929. To the very end she listened for the cry of the redtail hawk.”

Oh God! I was hyperventilating. Laramie Wyoming Bell was my great-great grandmother. I was my own great-great grandfather. I stumbled out of the study and ran out the back door of the house with the Bible clutched against my chest. Before I reached the family plot I heard it slam again and a flashlight flicked across me as I ran to my father’s grave. I didn’t understand when we laid him to rest what the meaning of the short rows were. Here were the generations of my family. My father and baby sister. My grandmother Mildred and her soldier lover. My great-grandmother—my daughter—and her common law husband. And three stones together. Laramie Wyoming Bell, the child we lost ... and me. Above us, a single stone. Theresa Ranae Bell who ran off to marry a Cheyenne brave named White Horse.

I lay down on that stone that I was sure was my Laramie and screamed into the night. Hands were on my shoulders and I looked up into the eyes of my lovers—into other eyes a hundred years ago—and cried.

My cry was answered by the call of Redtail.

Traveling: Passing

The lips I was kissing were sweet. The release of my balls made me cry out in a mix of joy and agony—a little death in which I was joined by my beloved ... Kat Tangeman.

I wanted to jerk Kyle away and rush him to Laramie’s bed, but I couldn’t do that. It wasn’t Kyle’s fault that he fell in love with Kat while I loved Laramie. The truth was, I loved Kat, too. I’d given up trying to figure out how I could love so many women so completely. When I looked into Kat’s eyes, I saw Ashley and there was no question I was in love with that girl. I was anxious to get to Laramie, but now that I was here and was suddenly sure I’d be with Laramie until we died, I didn’t mind relaxing in the back of Kyle’s mind while he made love to Kat.

I looked through his memories to find that it was only a day after I’d been sucked out of Kyle’s body the last time. I wondered what it meant that the time was so close. My whole experience had been over just three years in 1889-1892, but in my own timeline, over four years had passed. I was happy that I would continue my own story so soon after I had left. While Kyle feasted on Kat’s fat, round nipples and rose to excitement again inside her, I let the exquisite feelings flow over me as I thought out how to manage the two relationships in downtime. Somehow, Kat would need to be let in on the fact that he/I was also involved with Laramie. I think she suspected it already, though I’d been discreet. If Kyle and Kat lived in the foreman’s house on our ranch, then his body would be convenient for me to visit Laramie and live with her. We could work that out as we progressed.

What was more important was that Sheriff Cal Despain had to disappear. I’d looked him up in the City history and there was precious little about him. He was an almost non-entity sheriff in Laramie for ten years. At the end of his tenure, he rode out of town and was never heard of again. If that were the case, it was a safe bet that Joe Teini had moved the treasures from his cave and then found a way to dispose of Despain. I’d been to the cave three times and there was more treasure there than I could let Joe Teini have in the twentieth century. He had the resources to ruin and buy out every man woman and child in Albany County, include the 30,000 plus citizens of Laramie, Wyoming.

Having given Cal a rich treasure without the controlling influence of Joe, I may have inadvertently opened a crisis situation. And if I was arriving back in Kyle more quickly, Joe could be arriving back in Cal more frequently as well. I had to make sure that Joe didn’t find what he wanted when he opened the box.

“Kyle, are you listening to me?” Kyle was still dreamily reliving his last orgasm deep in the pussy of his beloved. I’d been drifting. I jerked Kyle around to make him pay attention.

“Kat, love, I was so overwhelmed that time that it took me a minute to come back to you. You do things to me I’ve never experienced before.”

“Don’t you lie to me, Kyle Wardlaw. I know very well that you have done more things than most men dream of. I know where you lived for the past nineteen years, and I don’t hold it against you.”

“My love, it ain’t the physical things you do to me that I’m talking about. You do something inside me that I can’t even say.” Kyle was emotional and I was glad. He’d turned out to be a good, if slightly slow, man.

“Well, here’s something else that I’m going to do to you. Kyle I’m going to have your baby. You were gone for two months and I haven’t bled in all that time. I’m sure I’m pregnant.”

“And it’s mine?” Kyle asked. I mentally slapped him upside the head.

“What do you think, Kyle Wardlaw? Do you think I’m a whore who doesn’t know the father of her baby?”

“No! No, Kat, you took me so much by surprise,” I said, taking over. “That’s wonderful news. We need to get married. Right away. We’ll ask the preacher to say the vows Sunday after church. Kat, you make me so happy. I love you and I want to take you to Centennial and have a whole bunch of children with you. Please say you’ll marry me, Kat.”

The answer I got was a tongue almost all the way down my throat. When either of us could speak again, Kat said, “Oh yes, Kyle. You know I’ll marry you. Sunday is good. I’ll see the preacher and make arrangements. I love you, Kyle. I’ll always love you!”

“I’ll always love you, Kat Tangeman.”

On Monday morning Kyle and I rode hell-bent for leather back to Centennial and out to Laramie’s cabin. She knew as soon as she saw us on the trail to her that I was back. She came running out in her buckskins and threw herself into my arms as I dismounted.

“Kyle, you’re back!” she said. In answer, I buried my face in her hair and kissed my way up her neck and to her lips. The other workers were already at work on the barn and scarcely glanced toward us. I held her close to me and looked at all the progress that had been made. Laramie showed me the root cellar and pointed to the new barbed wire fencing.

“It hasn’t been finished yet,” she said. “I hired a crew to set posts and stretch the wire around the 160-acre homestead. They have about four hundred yards yet to stretch and we can turn the horses loose in here. They’ll have the barn to winter in and look at that windmill! A dowser came out and found the perfect spot for our well.”

“You have been busy the last two months.”

“I wanted you to be proud, Kyle,” she said. “Even if you came back as Kyle Wardlaw instead of Kyle Redtail, I wanted you to be proud.”

“It wouldn’t be a hardship for you to live with him, would it, Laramie?”

“I’d always be waiting for you to return. But he’s a good man, Kyle. He’s been a hard worker and I’m fond of him even when you aren’t here.”

“Well, we’ve got a bit of a problem,” I said. “Kyle just asked Kat Tangeman to marry him next Sunday.”

“I like Kat. I told you that. It isn’t uncommon among my father’s people for a man to have two wives. Men die in battle and in the hunt. Women have adjusted to the need to share a man.”

“Well, I don’t know if Kat will be as willing as you, but it is something we need to deal with. There is something else even more important that we need to talk about, though.”

“Can we do it on the sleeping furs? My beloved, I have missed you.”

I saw nothing wrong with having our discussion on the sleeping furs when Theresa took Kaylene out to ride the new fence. I looked at my little girl and giggled. “Hello great-grandma,” I whispered.

The cute little girl giggled and said, “Papa.” I was stunned and when I set her down, she ran off to ride with her grandma. Laramie and I settled down in the cabin and it was only a few minutes before we were skin-to-skin in a lovers’ embrace. I pushed the thought of the cold stone on the promontory out of my mind before tears could flow. I was here and Laramie was here. Here we would stay. Seeing that stone had given me new confidence. If I left, I would be back. We would grow old together and die together. Our stones were together on the hill.

I kissed my way down her dark skin paying special attention to the soft roundness of her belly. She was still lean, but two pregnancies had stretched her middle. Her tits, dry from the milk she no longer fed Kaylene, had softened as well. They would never be the firm round globes of a sixteen-year-old again, but they were attached to the woman I loved—the woman of my dreams—and so were perfect. When I reached the junction of her thighs she sighed and let her legs part for me. There was no taste I craved more than the fluids of her pussy. I didn’t think cunnilingus was all that common in the 1890s, but we both sure enjoyed it. She cried out softly, muffling her voice with her shirt held closely to her mouth. She pulled at me when I would have gone on again and begged me to enter her and give her another child. I was all too willing to do so.

My cowboy was up for the occasion and penetration was easy. Loving was even better. I could feel Kyle in the back of my mind, curious as to how he could feel so much for two such different women and wondering how he could manage to satisfy both of them. At least for the time being he didn’t need to worry about that.

I lay there, stroking Laramie’s soft skin, and letting her presence overwhelm my senses. I inhaled deeply of the scent of her body and hair. Hygiene was different when you lived in the wilderness. Not bad, but less stringent than in uptime. Laramie’s scent was earthier. Natural. Arousing.

“Love, we have to run an errand. I’m going to tell you things that will help you on the ranch now, but you have to be very careful of them. You have to never let anyone know you are a rich woman.”

“People already think mother is rich because of all we have bought.”

“There was a reason for the kind of wealth you have shown. You were simply turning a farm in Iowa into a ranch in Wyoming. But this is more money than anyone living can imagine.”

“Why do we need this wealth, Kyle? Is our home not enough?”

“It is. But this wealth must be guarded so that no one can use it to harm others. It is a sacred trust to our family.”

“Then we will bury it and leave it.”

“Yes. But first we must move it to a place that only we know about.”

“Where is this wealth?”

“Not more than a day’s ride from here. There is a place on our ridge where we can hide it and forget about it.”

“We will leave in the morning, my love.”

“Late tonight. I do not want the workers or the people of Centennial to know we have gone.”

After dinner, we told Theresa that we were riding out and would be gone three days. I just hoped that I got to the stash before Sheriff Despain, or more especially Joe Teini got there.

I hitched the six draft horses to the Conestoga and tied the two mules behind. Laramie and I sat on the big seat and she leaned against me as we drove off into the night. These wagons were made to haul two tons of household gear—furniture, clothing, plows, tools, stoves. Everything went into the wagon when people moved west. Running empty the Morgans scarcely noticed the weight.

“Is there so much?” Laramie asked. I just nodded.

We traveled overland. Most of the range was still open and there were wagon tracks that we could follow north toward Medicine Bow and then east along the ridge. No one would ever know that just a few hundred yards from this track lay a fortune that would make Midas jealous.

When we pulled the wagons into a copse of trees, there was no sign that anything had been disturbed. It took me a minute to get my bearings, but Kyle nudged me over to the right spot. I detected that he’d decided that this wealth should not belong to Sheriff Despain either and was happy that I was hiding it and not planning to use it. He was fine with getting enough money to live on and not disturbing anything else. He was a good man.

It took all day to load the Conestoga with the chests of gold and jewels and whatever else was there. There was no telling what was in some of the suitcases and trunks that had been stowed. Mostly they were lighter weight and probably contained some poor traveler’s clothing. But we moved everything. It looked like we were carting a wagon of household goods like any other settler. Even with the big Conestoga, we couldn’t clear the cave completely. We left suitcases and lighter items in the cave, assuming they would have less value. We couldn’t pull out in the dark, so we made camp to spend the night. I was wrapped in the arms of my lover and soul mate again.

“Well looky what we got here,” I heard behind me as I was tying the mules to the back of the wagon in the morning. We’d used them to help move things from the cave to the wagon and their packs were full. I turned to see Cal Despain holding a rifle. “Why is it that the cave is almost empty and you got a full wagon?”

I wasn’t too surprised to see the Sheriff, though I had hoped to be clean away from here before I had to deal with him. The fact that he was holding the rifle at an unwavering point to my chest, though, was unnerving. Laramie was unarmed and behind the Conestoga. Maybe she hadn’t been seen yet. My Winchester was under the seat.

“Sheriff, two riders were scouting this area last time I was out here. You told me to move things over below Rawlins about five miles where there’s a cave nobody knows about. You even gived me a map.”

“You are full of more shit than a prize bull, boy. You know the order was bring it here and don’t come back. Looks like you decided you needed a wedding present. Or are you fooling around with that squaw you work for. She’s a little red, but I bet she’s got a prime cunt.”

I was getting pretty pissed and Kyle was ahead of me. Without realizing it, I’d loosened the safety strap on my right gun where Despain couldn’t see my hand.

“Stand straight and turn toward me, boy!” the Sheriff snapped. I did as ordered. I wanted to be in this position anyway. I now had my hand and my gun where I needed them. “Drop them gun belts!” I wore a gun on each hip, but each had its own belt. As a result, I could loosen my left gun and still have the right ready to draw. I kept watch on Despain as I felt the buckle loosen. I saw his eyes flick to the side as I tossed the belt to my left. My right flashed to my side and I fired before my mind had caught up with the action. I felt the sting in my gut. The Sheriff was falling backward, a hole in his chest as I was falling forward with my guts spilling out.

“I’m sorry, Kyle,” I whispered. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this.”

Laramie ran from her cover with my Winchester and put another round in the Sheriff’s head before she knelt beside me. I was fading fast.

“Kyle. Kyle, don’t die. I need you, Kyle,” she cried as she held me.

“Honey, listen. I ain’t got much time. I love you. I love you, but you gotta drag that son-of-a-bitch back into the farthest corner of the cave. His saddle, too. Set his horse free on the back range. I showed you where all this treasure has to go. You gotta take it there and never let anybody know about it. Do that for me Laramie honey. Our children and grandchildren depend on it. I love you.”

“Don’t go Kyle. I love you. I love you.”

I didn’t know what happened if you were time-traveling and your host died. The old prospector hadn’t known either. It looked like I was about to find out. I found myself pulling away from Kyle’s body and heard his voice one more time.