OverTime 03: Slipping (First 70 Chapters)

Chapter 13: Sleep and Other Deprivations (Lillabit)

Just in case it was the last thing I ever said to him.

Instead of smiling back, he looked worried.

At least constructing the dog-tent gave me a new focus, to help stay awake. Amos had a far easier time erecting it, without the gale-force winds. He stomped down some of the more uneven areas, where Benj had indicated, and kicked away rocks that might gouge a sleeper in the back. I kicked two rocks away, too. Amos staked down a tarpaulin, like the ones that went under the cowboy bedrolls during damp weather. Then he laid out the two halves of the off-white tent--which he had not bundled tightly this morning, so that they could dry-- and started buttoning them together

I insisted on helping, because his gnarled, arthritic hands looked so painful.

I was so tired, he still did it faster than I could.

After the buttoning, Amos staked the corners of the tent down, then lifted the middle with posts at either end, creating not a teepee-style cone but the military-looking long, low triangle, like a Toblerone candy bar.

I missed candy bars.

"I am safe and happy in 1878," I whispered a few more times.

The tent sat just high enough for Jacob to sit up along its center peak, assuming he meant to share. Because, you know, we wouldn't be behaving that way on the drive. It had flaps of canvas on each end for privacy, but Amos pulled the flaps back to let air and the dregs of the afternoon sun in.

I shuffled over to the chuck wagon, collected mine and Jacob's bedrolls from the ground, and threw them into the tent. Then I crawled in after them, petticoats be damned. My plan was to unroll our antique sleeping bags and escape back into the bustle of camp activities. But Jacob's bedroll looked so soft, and familiar--it had served as my first bed in 1878, though not with him in it--that I let myself lean on it.

For just a minute, you know.

It smelled like him -- of earth and horse, of leather and grass. The shade of the tent sheltered me from the unending sun of August's late afternoon.

Birds sang.

A light breeze blew, making the sides of the tent gently puff and then contract, like a breathing thing....

And that, as they say, was all she wrote.

Except that I'm here to write more.

I did not vanish. Instead, I slept almost as deeply as poor Dave Murphy, twelve miles back... with only a few exceptions.

First: I had a vague awareness of Jacob's growl, somewhere beyond the tent, and of Benj talking back, all against a background of the smell of dinner cooking. My stomach growled faintly, but that wasn't enough to draw me back into the world of the living.

Especially not since someone had lowered the tent's end flaps, to block the sunset and a little of the noise of camp.

Second: I moaned half-awake to someone gently tugging on my foot, in the deep, cricket-serenaded dark. I could smell the campfire's smoke from outside, and its familiarity soothed me.

"Pardon," whispered my husband, from somewhere near my knees.

I liked his hands on my legs. I liked the smell of him -- horses and cattle and campfire smoke, as well as fresh water-and-soap. I realized he was removing my boots for me, since I'd fallen asleep fully dressed.

I tried to protest--something like, "I can do that"--but apparently I couldn't do that, because again, I was out.

Third? A distant scream cut through the night.