A bellowing roar made Earl jump. He dug his fingers into the jagged rock to keep from tumbling off the ledge, which overhung the obsidian pillars. The noise came from down there. He had heard the grating roar many times. Charming must have dropped her phone during the skirmish with the blob of evil.
The rift hadn’t reopened, and she hadn’t returned. He’d have to figure out a way to track and go after her. He couldn’t leave her out there.
The day had dawned as bright as any and with a sky as blue and cloudless as perfection. The sun didn’t chase away the chill or the bite of winter, however, winter wouldn’t give up its place to summer easily. It never did.
Earl climbed down off the overhang and returned to the clearing inside a copse of pine trees. The gateway never opened during the day, and it only became active between the summer solstice and fall equinox. Usually. Opening three days early twisted as a warning in his bowels. Of what?
Charming had told him the rules of the rift when needing to unload some of her other pressing secrets. Earl didn’t know what to do with all of her confidences, but he knew some should never be thought of, let alone spoken.
The roar of a T-Rex disturbed the quiet of the woods again. Charming had played a movie with that exact bellow for Earl on many occasions. It was her favorite and Earl didn’t mind. He loved any movie and anything allowing him to spend time with her. In the 1880s he never imagined the existence of motion pictures and certainly not stories that made him feel as if he stood in a make believe world. He wondered if film makers knew of the rift. Did they know its stories?
He scanned the area around the obsidian pillars and the juniper tree, finding mostly pine needles and rocks. The sun shifted, its beams reflecting off Charming’s glasses into his eyes. He went to pick them up and cringed at the crusted blood. Did she still live? If so, would Cerin keep her safe?
Beside her eyeglasses sat the crystal disc the size of his palm. The disc was encased in coils and had a crank on the side. Had it let Charming into the rift or had Cerin? Earl would keep the device until he found out, pocketing it and her fractured eyeglasses.
The dinosaur shattered the quiet morning once more. Earl homed in on it, discovering the phone stuck on the rough bark of the juniper. He plucked it off. Charming’s sister’s icon lit up then went to voice mail. Charming had said her sister would arrive today and had been looking forward to it.
Earl had been too, until his girl disappeared. In what time did she find herself? In what place? The rift roiled with more mysteries than how he had ended up here. Why’d she have to go like this? He could have helped her make a better plan. Although he no longer appeared close to seventy, he had those years of experience to draw on. He rubbed at his face, relishing the feel of the younger skin, skin that had yet to know a wrinkle. The crunch of rock on rock spun him on his heels.
There stood Culver Swit with a swagger suggesting he intended to draw pistols. If a cap and ball ever fired at him, he’d piss himself. All the blustering pretend cowboys around here would.
“Morning, Earl.” Culver’s thin dark mustache twitched with his words. If things had started differently, if Earl hadn’t traveled through the portal, they might have been friends. For a man yet to hit thirty, Culver had done all right for himself. He had two businesses besides playing postman. “Weren’t you wearing that yesterday?”
Winning this particular duel didn’t matter. Earl had to keep his wits to be the victor in the overall war. What war, he didn’t know, but the rift was a threat and the rules of its battles weren’t so clear, not compared to the big war he’d been in, the one that pitted brothers against one another. None of the greenhorns around Settler knew anything about that kind of death. Certainly not the sneering postman.
Culver distrusted everything arriving through the rift, hunting it, sending it back from where it came. Earl had defied Culver’s attempts to send him off, pitting them on opposite sides. A private war.
Yet Earl didn’t see the point in denying the obvious. He didn’t hide his like of fine clothes and fine living. He never had and never would. He owned a better business than Culver’s two combined. Blackes Ranch Resort and Spa attracted tourists with money. Tourism was how Settler kept itself alive.
“Just looks the same with the outdoor gear on.” It was true enough, besides before Earl greeted Charming’s sister, he would change into something dapper. He didn’t want to make the wrong impression, although compared to his neighbors that’d be hard to do.
Flicking Charming’s phone onto vibrate, he slipped it in his pocket where her eyeglasses and the crystal device were safely tucked away. Then his fingers smoothed the close-cropped beard and mustache framing his jaw. The idea of being bare faced appalled him, but he had nothing against the trimmer fashions of this era. “You’re off track for delivering my mail, Culver. My box is over that way, and I told you I’d come pick it up from now on. Save you the trip out here.”
Whatever else happened, Earl had to keep Charming’s whereabouts a secret from Culver and his cohorts for as long as possible. Her entering the rift broke the rules. Despite Culver calling her friend, he’d have to enforce the rules and dub her outlaw or enemy or whatever the term was Culver’s ilk used.
“I don’t mind the work.” Dressed in blue with a worn USPS badge on his chest, Culver also wore a pair of aviator goggles from a time after Earl’s but long before this one. They glowed purple, powered by coils rimming the lenses, the same type of coils as on the crystal disc.
“Reports came in you were busy out here last night. You know I have to check it out.” Culver raked those glowing lenses over Earl.
Earl shrugged, twisting his face away from the goggles. He worried they would reveal his age as it had been before he traveled through the rift. “Just be sure to stay on forest land and off mine.” Half the clearing belonged to Earl’s ranch, the other half to the Volcanic National Forest. “Don’t want your screwbird doings scaring off my guests.”
“Imaginary guests? Or will your guests this summer sense I was here now? You’re a crusty thing for a man yet to meet thirty.” Culver pulled a rectangular device out of his mail pouch. Bulky and having heft to it, the device had a handle and buttons on one end. The center of it glowed purple and green as he moved about the clearing. “The rift didn’t open for long. What came through? Did you see?” Jaw flapping, he panned his purple covered eyes at the pillars and the juniper tree. A faint image of the gray thing flitted on the lenses. “Something wicked.” He pulled the goggles down so they hung around his neck.
“Don’t know what you’re talking about. Just came out to check the trails. I’ve guests booked this weekend.”
“Don’t play the idiot with me. That kind of stink doesn’t cling to you. The stench of lying does.” Culver sniffed and wrinkled his nose. “Weird time for folks to come. Ski season is done, and summer hasn’t started. Did you tell them?”
Earl didn’t blink. “I have nothing worth lying to you about.” He fingered the crystal disc in his pocket. “The cooler weather in spring is better for rock hounds. Most of the back country roads should be cleared up by the weekend.”
Switching off the boxy device, Culver set it in his mail pouch. “Maybe I believe you. However, the Paleo Institute’s office has been empty all week. Won’t that ruin the Settler experience for your guests?”
That meant the strangebloods in town wouldn’t miss Charming for a few days, which would help Earl out a lot. He’d keep her secrets. In his pocket her phone vibrated, reminding him of another promise.
hapter 