OverTime 03: Slipping (First 70 Chapters)

Chapter 41: Money Trouble (Lillabit)

I got why Benj took a second horse. A horse without a rider can travel longer, faster, and farther, so when his gelding got tired, he would swap his saddle onto Lady Billie Holiday and keep going. Less downtime, that way.

Anything that got him to Julesburg, and to Maddie, the fastest met with my approval.

It still left for a pretty awkward trip back to the herd with just the high-loaded pack mule following me and Jacob, riding double. Especially me sitting with my legs sideways, twisting at the waist to face forward. I had to keep my arms around him just to stay on, at the exact time that I didn't want to touch him at all.

He really wasn't going to release me from my promise.

I really wasn't going to help Maddie.

I felt like a terrible friend more than I felt like a bad wife.

Saying goodbye to civilization in the form of Fort Laramie saddened me. Goodbye, telegraph office. Goodbye, post trader store. Goodbye, hospital and hotel and sturdy arched bridge over the North Platte.

Hello, future I felt a lot less enthusiastic about. Despite the August heat, autumn stretched ahead of me with few if any telegrams, stores, hospitals, hotels, or bridges.

Or friends.

It occurred to me that Maddie, Mitch, and Ted had given me permission to stop resisting my modern side quite so much. Yes, things would go more smoothly for me and Jacob both if I kept making some effort to fit in. But wishing I had electricity, or singing a Taylor Swift song, felt less likely to zap me abruptly home.

Probably.

As the fort vanished behind scrubby hills, and even the well-trod paths toward the fort vanished into unmarked, wild grass, I asked, "Could we stop a moment?"

I was about to add Please, but then decided not to. Not everything had to be a favor, granted to me by my husband. In fact, I kind of wished I'd phrased my request as a demand.

The way he always did.

"Ho," Jacob said to his buckskin--and, probably, to the pack-laden mule who followed behind us on a lead rope.

She took longer to stop. Then she made that unique, honking bray, and turned her big ears like satellite dishes searching for a signal.

Determined, I tugged and yanked at my skirts and petticoats, pulling them high enough to free my legs. Then--holding onto Jacob for support--I swung my right leg over his buckskin's dark tail and settled myself back onto her, now sitting straddle. That meant showing my stockinged legs from the knees down, but the hell with modesty.

My friends were in danger, I was doing nothing to help them, and we were in the middle of freaking nowhere!

Jacob looked over his shoulder, saw what I'd done, and scowled. But I guess he was tired of fighting, because he made no comment. Instead, as I put my arms back around him--not having to hold on so tight, with my more secure seat--he simply clucked us back into motion.

I felt a little better now, physically and emotionally.

"Make yerself decent afore camp," he warned, after stewing awhile. You'll notice that his request wasn't even a request. It was a command, with no please.

I said, "Yessir, Boss, sir."

"Ain't yer boss," he said.

"Could have fooled me," I said.

And that was that for our conversation.

We reached the herd well after lunch, but I made no mention of eating, and neither did Jacob. We both knew I had food in the wife cart--canned tomatoes, canned sardines, etc. As it turned out, Schmidty had a cloth bundle beside him, on the seat of the chuck wagon, that turned out to be sandwiches, so maybe he and Jacob had found some kind of truce.