“Start reloading.” Sweat poured off his brow and ran into hard, focused eyes.
She placed a round between the empty magazine’s feed lips and followed with another, and another, loading bullets as fast as her clammy fingers could shove them into place. A bullet dropped, but she didn’t pick it up. Another dropped.
Concentrate, damn it.
Why hadn’t Frances’ journal mentioned the stampede?
Oh
. Below the entry mentioning the Murray’s missing baby were three words
buffalo scared me
. Frances did write about it, and there was one other identifiable word farther down on the page—
miracle.
The chamber clicked. Empty. Cullen yelled with a chilly demand. “Need another—”
She had a replacement mag ready before he ejected the used one. With surgical precision, he pushed the magazine up into the well and slapped upwards on the bottom to seat it. He aimed and let go a round of bullets, killing dozens of buffalo.
He paused, surveying the scene before him. He’d fired more than three hundred rounds. A layer of dust covered him. The muscles in his arm, visible beneath his sweat-soaked shirt, rippled under the strain of shooter fatigue.
“Fire your pistol. The herd’s splitting.” His commanding voice was barely a ripple over the roar.
She planted her feet shoulder-width apart and extended her left arm, its elbow slightly bent and the weapon at shoulder level. Gripping the shaking gun hand with her other hand, she fired. The gun discharged and something inside of Kit snapped. She found herself lost in the taste of blood and the fog of memories—of fear and anger.
Bang. Bang.
Bang.
Over and over and over.
Somewhere in the madness, Cullen yelled, “Cease firing.”
Her eyes cut a glance to the empty shell box at her side. Fear rose up her spine, caught on the calluses of her mended bones and threatened to re-break each one. “We’re out of bullets.” She didn’t recognize the cold steel tone in her voice.
He grasped her pistol and wiggled it from her frozen grip. “You don’t need more.”
“What if they come back?”
He lifted her chin with his finger and turned her face toward where the herd had been. She blinked and the blurriness cleared. A pile of carcasses stood twenty yards from the wagons.
Slowly, she slid to the ground, her clothes damp with sweat, her pulse racing more erratically than before. Reality broke through, and she emerged from the swamps of her festering soul, shivering. Words came slowly. “I wasn’t shooting the buffalo.”
He pulled her into his arms. His body shook against hers. “I know. It’s over now. You shot them all.”
AS SOON AS the dust settled, Cullen and Henry formed work crews to skin as many of the buffalo as possible. Henry sent riders to wagon trains trailing behind them to let folks know what happened and invited others to take what they needed.
Kit put her guns away and picked up every spent shell. She tried to diffuse the questions, saying the gun had been an experimental weapon belonging to her husband, and that she and Cullen were relieved it didn’t explode in their faces.
Just as things were quieting down, Braham’s galloping horse came to a sudden stop only a few feet from where she and Cullen were standing, stirring up the dust again.
Braham pointed off into the distance. “See those circling buzzards?”
Cullen raised a dirt-covered eyebrow. “Did you check it out?”
“Yep. Better get your horse. You too, Kit.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
KIT KNEW BEFORE she left MacKlenna Farm that she’d find dead people in South Pass. The same quiet tension she’d experienced as a paramedic racing through Lexington’s streets en route to an accident infused her with a concentrated focus. She always expected the worst. This time was no different.
The miasma of death hit her nostrils mere seconds before she saw ten bullet-ridden human corpses. Eight men, two women, no children. The site was a bloody crime scene. The victims had been gathered and massacred together. The savagery was incomprehensible. Kit’s stomach roiled at the huge pools of congealed blood. Her mind tried to compartmentalize. She needed to see the scene through her professional lens, only peripherally through a personal one. But that would take a minute or two or five or maybe not at all.
Was her birth mother one of the bloodied women? Her birth father one of the bloodied men? She inched her fingers inside her blouse and fondled the locket around her neck.
Why had some demented person stolen their dreams and robbed them of their hopes? She tried to piece the puzzle together, to get a clear picture in her mind, but the effort manifested in a whirl of confusion.
Cullen dismounted amidst a roar of flies. A blue vein pulsed in his temple. His hand caressed the handle of his holstered Colt canting over his hip. Eyes alert, searching. He looped Jasper’s reins through the spokes of a wheel on one of the six wagons chained together. The smashed grass indicated animals had been in the corral, but they were gone now.
Kit untied her neck scarf and wrapped it around her nose and mouth, filtering the omnipresent dust sticking to every surface, even her sweat covered body.
Look at their faces.
She swallowed hard, unsure of herself. There was an awkward tumble of her heartbeat as she dismounted and stepped toward
the dead people
. Until this moment, they were only words on a page she’d found in Frances’s journal. Now the scene unfolded, frame by frame, in a grotesque silent movie.
She smelled them. Saw them. Heard their phantom screams.
Then, one-by-one, she approached each male corpse and looked into the rictus of horror on his face and the pain in his terror-filled eyes.
No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No.
The man in the portrait miniature was not among them. Relief swarmed through her stinging every nerve with pinpoint precision. Why was she relieved? Now she’d never identify the man. But that seemed easier to accept than the fact he’d been rounded up and butchered like an animal.
A storm grew in her mind of hurricane proportions
.
She needed to go to work and let the hurricane stall out over the desert until later, until she got home and mixed the pain and trauma in with all the rest.
She gazed at Cullen. He caressed her briefly with eyes so blue they bordered on purple. She nodded, answering his unspoken question.
I’m okay
.
Kit swung her arms in an encompassing gesture. “Please don’t touch anything until I can get pictures. I want to document what happened here.”
“We don’t have time for you to sketch.” Cullen spoke without looking at her, his eyes intense with thought.
“I’m not.” She grabbed a digital camera from her saddlebag. “You told Braham about me, didn’t you?”
He swept his gloved hand across her cheek. “He knows.”
She stood frozen a moment, then shrugged.
Cullen pointed at her camera. “What's that?”
“I’ll explain later.” She took a discriminating turn around the crime scene, snapping pictures of scattered clothing and bedding, opened burlap bags, overturned furniture, flour dumped into white piles. The murderers had thoroughly searched the wagons, but for what? Pouches of gold nuggets? She tried to make sense of the senselessness.
“What do you suppose they were looking for?” Braham asked.
Cullen removed his hat and swiped his arm across his forehead. “The question is did they find it?”
“Let me get pictures inside the wagons then you can gather up Bibles, letters, journals, anything that might help identify them. Then we’ll bury them.”
The wagons were easy to photograph. But later, as each face came into the frame, the shock weighed her down. The camera became too heavy to hold, and the air too thick to breathe.
Kit closed her eyes, blocking out the scene, but she saw it all through closed lids. Ten weeks she’d spent in the nineteenth century and traveled a thousand miles to take one picture. She had dozens now. But not the
one
she had framed in her mind. Not the
one
she had set out to take.
Cullen and Braham proceeded through the crime scene, climbing in and out of the wagons and searching pockets. When they finished, she went back to each wagon and took more photographs. That’s when she spotted a cradle. Every muscle in her body fibrillated. She crossed her arms, held them close, and waited for the rapid twitching to stop.
After a few moments, her body relaxed but the mingled apprehension and bafflement remained. She poked her head around the corner of the wagon. “Cullen.” He shifted his gaze from the buzzards flying lazy circles in the sky. “There’s a cradle in this wagon but there’s no sign of a baby. Have you seen a grave?” She heard the waffle in her voice.
Cullen wore an expression of intense concentration. “No.”
“Where’s Braham? Maybe he found one.”
“He left a while ago to water the horses and put on some coffee. He thought we’d want to talk before we told the others what we found here.”
She glanced back at the cradle. It didn’t make sense. Both women had multiple chest wounds, as did the men. All ten would have died instantly. None of them could have wrapped a baby in a bloody shawl and sent the infant through time. So what did that mean?
“I’m through here. Are you?” Cullen asked.
“I’ve seen enough,” she said.
He offered his arm. Maybe he noticed her trembling. Maybe he sensed it, but she knew she couldn’t walk without support. If he said anything else to her, she didn’t hear him. She heard only the sweep of their boots through the tall grass as they walked the short distance to Braham’s campfire and a cup of strong, black coffee.
The earth was quiet now. It no longer rumbled, but she imagined it did way down deep below the surface. She removed her scarf, eased to the ground, and sipped the coffee Braham handed her.
Cullen sat and placed a burlap sack of the items he and Braham had collected on the grass between them. Kit emptied it onto the ground and spread the contents out. There were four Bibles, three journals, and two stacks of letters tied with black ribbons. She took a shivery breath, opened a Bible, and read aloud from the dedication page. “Kenneth and Jean Murray married in Springfield, Illinois, February 16, 1851. Heather Marie Murray, born May 1, 1852.”
Kit closed the Bible, her hands cold and shaky. “Where is Heather now?”
Cullen removed his gloves and dusted his hands, then picked up a stack of letters and untied the ribbon. “Probably didn’t survive.”
“Why didn’t they enter her date of death?”
“Maybe the baby died yesterday. Maybe last week. We don’t know. Probably never will.”
Braham turned to them. “Why would someone murder these folks?”
Maybe they were looking for gold
. Kit had the sensation of scrambling for purchase on a rocky ledge, battered, bruised, and bloodied.
Hold on for a little while longer.
Cullen squeezed her hand. “I’m here, lass.” He gazed at her, but she avoided his eyes. After a moment, he tilted her chin, forcing her to look at him. “I’ve seen this look before. You know something about this, don’t you?”
She didn’t reply for a long moment. Then, she said, “It’s why I’m here.”
“Who’d you come to see?”
“The Murrays.”
“I’m sorry they’re dead, lass.”
She hooded her eyes. “I knew they would be.”
“You came here to find dead people?”
When she opened her mouth to answer, Cullen placed two fingers against her lips. “Tell me anything, but don’t tell me it’s complicated.”
She licked her lips and caught his finger in the sweep of her tongue. He dropped his hand.
What will he say when he finds out I came looking for him?
“A journal written by Frances Barrett—”
“John’s little girl?” Braham asked.
“Yes.” She followed her answer with a thin smile. “Frances’s journal was or will be discovered in Portland, Oregon. Most of it unreadable. But an entry dated June 16, 1852—”
“That’s today,” Cullen said.
She squeezed his hand. “The entry says—” Kit stopped and took a breath. “—June 16, 1852 South Pass. Mr. Montgomery found a bloody mess. All murdered on Murray wagon train. Murray baby girl missing.’”
Cullen’s jaw dropped. “You knew of me before we met? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Tell you what? That I came back in time to meet you so you’d take me to South Pass to find a wagon train full of dead people? What would you have done?”
“I might have been able to stop what happened.”
“No, you would’ve gotten yourself killed.”
“I don’t understand what this has to do with you?”
“I thought the Murrays might be my birth parents.” The idea suddenly seemed ludicrous. Had she put two-and-two together, come up with ten, and convinced herself it was four? She toyed with the portrait miniature hanging around her neck from a gilt chain.
Cullen sat motionless except for a stress tic in his jaw. Then, a chilly response: “Explain, please.”
“Based on the journal and other information I had, I believed there was a good possibility I was their baby.”
Braham stepped up to them. “I don’t need to be hornin’ in here—”
“Then don’t,” Cullen said, glaring at him. He turned to Kit. “What’s your evidence?”
“The letter from my father said that when he found me I had the brooch, a blood-splattered lace shawl with a monogrammed M, and a portrait miniature. At first, I thought the M stood for MacKlenna. After I read about the Murray’s missing baby, I thought it might stand for Murray. Since the Murrays were murdered, I assumed that’s how blood got on the shawl.”
“What else do you have?” Cullen asked.
“I made three assumptions. The bloody shawl belonged to my mother. My last name started with an M, and the man in the miniature portrait was my father.”