Joan Johnston - A Little Time In Texas

“Angel?”

As he stood staring down at her, he realized that he was in serious danger of stepping over some invisible boundary. He felt the threat. And the temptation.

He fought his inclination to succumb and managed to bring himself back to a more objective state of mind. She was just another victim he had rescued from the forces of evil, nothing more and nothing less. She meant nothing to him. No woman did. No woman ever would.

Still, he couldn’t shake his concern when she didn’t immediately regain consciousness. He quickly carried her to his pickup, and after one-handedly arranging a blanket, he lowered her onto the back seat of the extended cab of the truck. He smoothed the hair off her forehead, exposing a bruise.

When you dragged me into the cave it was 1864.

Either she was the best liar he’d ever met, or she’d hurt herself worse then either of them knew. It was impossible to think she had somehow crossed over a threshold from the past. Wasn’t it?

Right now he had to get her to a doctor as quickly as possible. As he slid behind the wheel and headed the pickup toward San Antonio, he realized he was in something of a dilemma. No doctor was going to believe Angel if she told him she was from the past. Most likely she’d end up committed to some mental institution. And if the doctor did believe her? She’d end up under a microscope in some top-secret government laboratory.

The possibility that Angel had come from the past seemed slight to nonexistent. The only thing in her favor was the quaint language she used. It had been in evidence long before there had been any discussion of where—or when—she had come from.

Unfortunately the cowboys who had surrounded Angel hadn’t looked much different from cowboys today. It was unusual that they’d been on horseback, but not entirely unlikely even in this day and age. Dallas tried to remember distinguishing features about the men who had held Angel at bay. It was hard because once he had caught sight of Angel, he hadn’t been able to drag his eyes off her.

Then he realized that there had been an usual yellow stripe down the outside seam of two of the men’s trousers. Gray trousers. Confederate trousers? His memory must be playing tricks on him. He realized that he wanted to believe her, because he didn’t want to contemplate the fact that she was really hurt or crazy.

It was too bad Angel had lost the rucksack he had seen her set down outside the cave. Maybe there would have been something in it either to prove or disprove her claim. Dallas hadn’t thought to check the pockets of her trousers, but he would have her do that—or do it himself—as soon as he got her home.

Home.

Dallas shoved a hand through his hair in agitation. Where had the idea come from to take her home with him instead of directly to San Antonio? He had no business even considering it. He made the turn to take him west to his ranch on the Frio River outside Uvalde, even as he told himself it was a dumb thing to do.

“Where am I?”

Dallas looked over his shoulder and felt relieved to see Angel sitting up.

“You’re in the back of my pickup—my truck,” he explained when she looked confused.

She winced as her fingertips found the wound on her forehead. “I wasn’t dreaming?”

He shook his head ruefully. “I’m afraid not, Angel.”

Angel’s attention had been focused on the man; now it shifted to her surroundings. Her jaw dropped in amazement. She swallowed hard and said, “We’re moving awfully fast.”

“No more than sixty miles an hour.”

“That isn’t possible! What’s making this…truck…go?”

“Nowadays the horses are under the hood,” Dallas said with a wry smile. He caught a glimpse of Angel’s horrified expression in the mirror. This was no time for an explanation of the internal combustion engine, so he said, “A mechanical contraption inside the front of the truck makes it go.”

Angel waved a hand at all the dials and knobs in front of him. “What do all those buttons do?”

Dallas punched a knob and a country and western tune started playing. “Radio,” he said.

Fascinated, Angel asked, “How does it work?”

“Don’t ask me,” Dallas said, shaking his head. “I don’t understand the innards of most of the modern conveniences I use.”

He punched another button and a blast of cool air hit Angel in the face.

“Air-conditioning,” he explained.

Another button made windshield wipers scrape across the bug-spattered glass; yet another sent water spraying up to clean off the bugs.

“Things have certainly changed a lot,” Angel said, in perhaps the understatement of the century.

“Lady, you don’t know the half of it. Why, we can fly across the entire country in a couple of hours.”

Angel’s cheeks flushed with anger. “Now you’re making fun of me. We both know men can’t fly.”

“Men can’t. Airplanes can.”

“Airplanes?”

“Another mechanical contraption, like a truck with wings, only it moves in the air.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“It’s the truth, whether you believe me or not. Stay around long enough and I’ll show you one. Hell, I’ll even take you up in one!”

“No, thanks,” Angel said vehemently.

“Whether you can accept it or not, there’s been a lot of progress in the past hundred and twenty-five or so years.”

“The clothes you’re wearing are the same,” she protested.

Dallas looked down at the chambray shirt, jeans, and boots he was wearing. “Maybe men’s fashions haven’t changed much. But women show a lot more skin than they used to. Come to think of it, that outfit you’re wearing doesn’t fit my image of what a woman in 1864 ought to have on.

“In Gone with the Wind Scarlett O’Hara was wearing something a little more feminine than that getup, as I recall.”

Angel wondered who Scarlett O’Hara was. She fingered the top button of the striped cotton, round-necked man’s shirt, its sleeves folded up to reveal her slender forearms. A hemp rope held up the too-large, patched wool trousers. On her feet she wore knee-high black boots. “I was traveling dressed as a man, so I wouldn’t be harassed on the road,” she explained.

Dallas glanced at the silvery blond hair that fell practically to her waist and said, “You’re not going to fool too many men with hair like that.”

“My hair was tucked up under a farmer’s hat. I had it off because I’d stopped for a drink of water at that pond near the cave opening. That’s when those piss-poor excuses for cowboys rode up and—” She shrugged. “You know the rest.”

“I guess the question now is, what am I going to do with you?” Dallas murmured to himself.

Angel bristled. “You don’t have to do anything with me. I can take care of myself.”

Dallas drove through a gate and across a cattle guard that led onto his property. “Maybe in 1864 you could have managed by yourself—although even that’s doubtful, considering the situation I found you in. Here in 1992, you’re as naive as a newborn. You wouldn’t last ten seconds on your own.” Dallas pursed his lips in disgust. “I guess I’m stuck with you, all right.”

“Stuck with me! Why of all the cabbage-headed, tom-doodle ideas I ever heard—”

Dallas hit the brakes and the truck fishtailed on gravel as it skidded to a stop. He half turned in the seat and grabbed Angel by the shoulders, drawing her toward him until they were nose to nose.

“Look, you—you nincompoop,” he flung at her, having searched for and found a word as quaint as any of hers. “I’m not any happier about this situation than you are. But let’s get one thing straight. I’m not a cabbage head, a tom-doodle or any of the other names you’ve called me since we had the misfortune to meet. In some convoluted way, I suppose I’m to blame for your predicament.”