Version 1.0 dtd 040700 PRAIRIE SUN By Edward Bryant Stillness. Except for the boy, nothing moved on the prairie. The hawks did not hunt this morning. Not even the vultures circled in the empty sky. The birds evidently were waiting until Micah Taverner made his kill. The heat hung like a heavy curtain over the world. All motion seemed suspended. The thought entered Micah's mind that on these plains, anything at all could happen. His was a sudden and early maturity, and not one he relished. Thirteen-year-old Micah moved quietly-perhaps not so silently as an Indian, but still disturbing the saw-toothed grass with less noise than most others in the company. He balanced his father's long muzzle-loader carefully, thumb ready to take the hammer off half-cock. A small antelope would be welcome. A young deer would be better. A rabbit would suffice. To Micah's right the River Platte wound slowly east by south, the direction from which the company had come. At this point the road followed a straighter path than the river. The boy's present course took him up a gentle rise so that he had now attained an elevation of a hundred yards above the river. Within a rod of the Platte, all was lush and green. The grass and the trees grew luxuriantly. Beyond them the world turned to shades of brown and tan and yellow. The world seemed to contain little more than the river and the prairie. And the road. Had he wished to stand in the ruts, they would have taken the boy in up to his waist. Micah heard a sound in the dead air. He froze, waiting. He heard something again. Glass breaking. The mutter of words. The sounds came from beyond the low rise ahead. Tivo voices. Whoever were speaking, they were close by the trail. The boy slowly cocked the hammer of the rifle. It seemed to him the click echoed out across the parched land like the gunshot itself. Again he heard words too distant and indistinct to understand. But the tone did not sound alarmed. White men? he thought. Pawnee! had been the first word in his mind. Or Sioux. Or Blackfeet. He had heard the tales of slaughter and torture from the talkers around the fire. He had listened then with eyes wide and the breath catching in his throat, even though his father had laughed and suggested wryly that the red tribes were no more monsters than were the men of the company. And after all, men of other companies had given deadlier gifts than bullets to the Indians. Micah gripped his father's rifle tighter and stealthily approached the summit. Sounds again-this time a rattle as though iron articles and wood were being placed together in a bag. Outcroppings of porous stone afforded the boy some cover as he reached the hill's crest. White! At least the strangers were not red men, though they appeared odd to Micah's eyes. There were two of them, and they were poking through the heaps of discards beside the trail. The road was lined with all manner of belongings thrown away by the exhausted, overburdened men and women barely halfway along their arduous journey. The wagons, the oxen, the horses and mules, the people-all could carry only so much across the months and the thousands of miles demanded. Micah had seen the jettisoned tools and household goods start to appear beside the wagon ruts not long after Fort Phil Kearney, many miles even before reaching the ford of the South Platte. Before the sickness began, his father had tried keeping a running tally of what he saw for just a mile or two. "There must be ten thousand dollars worth of goods there," he had said. "All for the picking had one the time or the desire." But few struggling toward California or Oregon, of course, had the time or the desire. So the prized New England heirloom furniture, the discarded barrels of flour and sacks of white beans, the Franklin stoves and the printing presses, all lay rotting beneath the prairie sun. And now Micah saw the two strange white men rooting like hogs among the once-prized belongings scattered beside the road. Their backs were to him, so for a while he watched without their knowledge. Both men were tall, each easily attaining a height of over six feet. Though one had dark hair and the other was a towhead with hair as light as the dried grass, they seemed much alike in appearance. The pair wore similar clothing: plaid shirts with braces, brown cloth trousers, and thick-soled boots. The towhead's shirt was red; the darker man's was green. But Micah saw there was something not quite right about the clothing. For one thing, the cloth was slick and it gleamed under the direct sun. For another, he abruptly realized as the men flexed to pick up objects that each man's outfit was all of one piece of material. It was as though each were wearing a set of long-johns colored to appear as real clothing. The towhead was showing the other a New England hooked rug much like the treasure Micah's mother still packed deep in the wagon after adamantly refusing to discard it at the Platte River crossing. Micah wondered if he should accost them or if it would be wiser simply to backtrack along the trail and forage in another direction. Then the darker man turned slightly, glanced up, and looked straight at Micah. He said something to his companion. Both of them stared at the boy. Finally one of them, the towhead, said, "Come on down here, young man." He put down the hooked rug and stood there quietly with empty hands. The other man slowly spread his hands, palms outward. Micah realized they were both looking at his father's muzzle-loader. He warily approached the pair, then looked beyond them. The muzzle of the rifle came up. "Don't-"said the darkhaired man. Whatever else he was going to say was interrupted by the black-powder explosion. Two yards of decapitated prairie rattler jerked and flopped in death throes close by their feet as each man yelled and leaped aside. They looked from the snake to Micah and back to the snake again. "Thank you, boy," said the towhead. "Mighty big one," said Micah. He felt very pleased with the shot and tried not to grin. He started to reload the rifle. Probably the biggest one I've seen." The men exchanged glances. "What's your name, son?" said the darker man. Micah told them. "Well now, Master Micah Taverner," said the towhead. "Please call me John. My friend here is Droos." Droos inclined his head. "We both of us truly do appreciate your eliminating the serpent." "It wasn't nothing," Micah said as he rammed wadding down the barrel. "Just glad to help." There was silence. The men seemed trying to communicate with each other by sharp looks. Micah paid attention only to the muzzle-loader. Finally John said, "I suppose you're wondering what the two of us are doing out here." "None of my business," said Micah. "Admirable," said Droos, turning away. "His mouth isn't as extraordinary loose as yours, John. Now let's get back to work and see if we can find any more East Middlebury bottles like the one you so carelessly dropped." But John seemed fascinated by the boy. "May I asked what you're doing out here?" he said. "I believe the last train passed by here nearly a week ago, and the next wagons aren't due for days." "My mother sent me to look for game," said Micah. "She believes that meat broth will soothe Annie's innards." "Who is Annie?" "My little sister. She is sick with the smallpox." Droos turned around from the wooden crates in which he was rummaging and stared. "Smallpox? We totally eradicated that more than a century ago." "In our time," said John. "Your time?" said Micah, confused now. "Never mind," said John. "It's a long story. Where's your wagon?" "That way." Micah pointed back along the river. "About three miles. We should have stayed in Fort Laramie, but Annie did not seem so ill then. The rest of the company said they would wait an extra day at Independence Rock. I fear by now they will have gone on." "But your family stayed alone." "Annie cries out when the wagon moves. She is too weak. My mother thought that the rest might help her." "Your mother," said John. "What about your father?" Micah stared at the ground. "He took ill and died of the cholera shortly before the crossing of the Platte." "God almighty," said Droos. "And so your mother and you have brought the wagon this far since?" said John. The boy nodded. "Some of the men of the company helped us. But they had their own wagons, and their families. And many of them were weak with cholera." "Unbelievable," Droos said. He unconsciously fondled a silver teapot. "Now we have seen the elephant," said Micah. Droos cocked an eyebrow. "Elephants? You actually found one here?" Micah looked equally quizzical. "It means only that we found far more on our path than we expected. We would return to Ross County, Ohio, but it is now just as far to go back as it is to go on. Perhaps we can catch up with the company when Annie is better. Before he rode on, the captain told us we would have to move soon, or we should all be caught by the winter in the Sierra Nevada." The two men stared at him, transfixed. "People truly used to live and die this way," Droos said bemusedly. "Micah," said John slowly. "Can you keep a secret?" "If it is an honorable secret." "What if I told you that we both were from the future?" The boy shook his head. "I do not understand." Droos opened his mouth as though to protest. John held up a restraining hand. "Droos and I are travelers, and we've come a great distance to be here. But we didn't make the sort of journey you might imagine. Not from England, not around the Horn; but instead, through time. What year is it, Micah?" "The year of our Lord, 1850." "Our world exists more than two centuries beyond that." Micah shook his head silently. Food meant something. Sickness meant something. But the future? His mind already reeled with too many burdens. John turned toward Droos, who was slowly stowing a silver tea service in a fabric pa...
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