OverTime 04: Settling [THE NEW EDIT]

Prologue: Wyoming Territory

I need you to understand that I didn't want what happened next. If I can't tell Jacob--at least not now, though hopefully someday--at least I can explain it here.

I did it for our son, and for my unborn baby. Had it just been me...? I dunno. As much as I'd like to be some kind of kick-ass warrior woman, I don't know that I would have had the nerve, just to save myself.

A fleeting glance over the mountain ledge, into the gorge beside me, showed an awfully long, rocky drop. Clumps of stubborn grass and some bouncing, falling pebbles measured just how far down the bottom lay. But the outlaw who had dragged me here—dragged me and little Thaddeas—meant to kill us anyway. I had no doubt of that.

Seth had already held a revolver to my ten-year-old stepson's head, to force our cooperation.

He'd punched me in the gut, hard, before throwing me onto a bareback horse. That and the grueling ride had done nothing good for my second-trimester pregnancy.

Now, worse, we'd stopped.

Shivering on that stony overhang in the Bighorn Mountains, Thaddeas and I huddled between the steep drop and a barely existent trail among tall, lodgepole pines that wore unmelted white skirts from the last snowfall. Not so far overhead, a hawk screamed. 

Seth was unsaddling the horses, which couldn't be good. He even turned his back to us, twice. But with my hands tied so painfully tight, I had trouble thinking of great options. 

"Mama?" Thaddeas, also bound, pressed against me for comfort as much as for warmth. His whisper wavered from more than the cold. "Mama, there's blood on your skirt."

I glanced down to where the wrinkled drape of my petticoats showed a dark smear. No. Oh, no. The Old West isn't exactly known for its stellar prenatal facilities.

I looked quickly up at the gray, November sky, but I was kidding myself if I thought I'd learned to tell time from it. Late afternoon was as close as I could guess. The cold of night crept closer and closer. Worse, Seth had only kept Thad alive to control me. Now that he'd gotten us away from the ranch...?

Normally, the frontier is a far more polite place than most westerns give it credit. Seth's violent hatred wasn't normal, though. He'd chosen this ledge as an inescapable cage, the deadly drop-off to one side and his armed self blocking the rocky, tree-shadowed mountainside to the other. But Seth didn't know something very important.

Something that just might save my life. Thad's life.

Maybe even the life of my unborn baby, although....

Blood. And my lower back had been hurting for awhile. Now my innards cramped. A contraction?

At four months?!

I would have asked, what did I have to lose? But that's the problem. I had too much to lose, including my own damned happily-ever-after. Everything lay on the line.

"Thaddeas," I whispered. "Remember the book we were reading yesterday?"

"About Alice?"

I nodded. "And her adventures in Wonderland. Something really, um, weird is about to happen. I'm..." I took a deep, biting breath of mountain air, and almost laughed. That's how impossible this suddenly seemed. "Let's just say, I'm going to go down the rabbit hole, and I may not get back right away."

There's blood on your skirt.

"So you can't waste any time looking for me, okay?" I insisted. "As soon as I'm gone, you grab a bridle, jump on that mare, and ride for home without me. Do you promise?"