The Empire Read online

  Gun smoke wafted out of the barrel of the man’s Colt 45 pistol as he scanned the room.

  “We gonna have any more trouble, Sweringen?” he asked.

  Sweringen glared at the man for a moment, then spat on the floor below the balcony. “No trouble here, Sheriff.”

  The man reached to help Margaret off the floor, keeping his pistol and eyes raised.

  “Miss,” he said, taking Margaret’s hand.

  “Sheriff Seth Bullock,” the man said, introducing himself to Kyle while keeping a close eye on the interior of the Gem. “I recommend you find yourself another drinking hole, Colonel.”

  Kyle and Margaret exited the Gem. Bullock followed them, backing out of the saloon doors before holstering his pistol.

  Kyle extended his hand. Bullock shook it. “Much obliged, Sheriff,” he said.

  “Just doin’ my job, Colonel,” said Bullock.

  Pete saw the commotion at the Gem, arriving at the door just as Kyle, Margaret, and Sheriff Bullock were exiting.

  “You all right, Colonel?”

  “I’m fine,” said Kyle. “Thanks to the sheriff.”

  Pete grinned at Margaret and tipped his hat. “Howdy, Miss Margaret!”

  “Pete,” Margaret said curtly, reluctantly acknowledging their professional relationship.

  Pete turned to Kyle. “We’re all hitched up and ready to skedaddle!”

  Kyle turned to the sheriff. “Sheriff, there’s a train from Deadwood south to Rapid City, right?”

  “Yes sir,” the sheriff replied. He pulled a pocket watch out of his vest. “The 3:30 leaves in 15 minutes.”

  “Can I trust you to get Margaret safely on that train?”

  “It would be my privilege,” said the sheriff.

  “Wait!” said Margaret to Kyle. “I’m coming with you!”

  Kyle unzipped his pack and pulled out a stack of bills—$10,000—a small portion of his bank line of credit. In 2008 dollars, the currency was worth nearly a quarter of a million dollars.

  “Put this in your bag,” Kyle told Margaret.

  “No!” said Margaret. “Don’t leave without me!”

  “It’s not safe where I’m going.”

  “It’s not safe here! Al will kill me!”

  “No one’s going to hurt you, ma’am,” said the sheriff.

  “Listen to me,” Kyle said. “Your life only gets better from here. You take this money, get on that train, and don’t look back. Put a thousand miles between you and this place. Buy yourself the life you deserve.”

  Margaret gasped. She struggled to grasp her world as it turned inside out with incomprehensible speed. A chance meeting. A waltz. A new life. It was as though a hand had been placed on the Earth, stopping its rotation and giving it a swift spin in the opposite direction. She was flying off her planet, hurdling toward another.

  “We need to hurry if we’re gonna catch that train,” said the sheriff.

  Kyle and Margaret stared at each other, anxious, wishing there was more time.

  Margaret began to cry.

  “Thank you,” she said, “for saving my life.”

  “May I ask one favor?” asked Kyle.

  “Anything,” Margaret said.

  “When you settle, wherever that place is, use a little of that money and take out an advertisement in the local newspaper to let me know that you’re OK,” he said.

  “I don’t understand,” said Margaret. “You won’t know where I’ll be. How will you see the advertisement?”

  “You remember you said you might believe anything I told you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Believe me when I tell you that I will see it.”

  Margaret looked into Kyle’s eyes. She could see he knew something—some enchantment that would permit him to watch over her. It comforted her.

  “I believe you,” Margaret said, wiping tears from her face with her hands. “Does this mean that I’ll see you again someday?”

  Kyle shook his head. “Probably not.”

  Margaret put her hands on Kyle’s cheeks, then kissed him. Her soft lips warmed his. He returned her kiss, pulling her close.

  “Goodbye, Margaret,” he said, pulling away.

  Sheriff Bullock took Margaret’s arm and began to escort her away. “You have my love—always,” she said as they hurried away to the train station.

  Kyle knew that if he ever made it back to the Time Tunnel, every word of every newspaper ever printed would be accessible via the tunnel’s nexus to the databases in this timeline. All that would remain of Margaret—her advertisement, as well as her obituary—would be rendered to a few sentences in a digital warehouse.

  Pete led Pegasus to Kyle. Hoover trailed behind. Kyle took the reins and mounted his horse. He looked once more at Margaret and the sheriff as they sped down Main Street.

  “Let’s go,” he said to Pete as he turned Pegasus to leave.

  Grand River

  Standing Rock Reservation

  South Dakota

  September 23, 1890

  08:15 hours

  Timeline 003

  Padma walked along the grassy bank of the Grand River. She headed upstream, away from the village, to find a private spot to bathe. The morning sun was at her back, casting her shadow in her path. The stiff grass and brush crunched under her moccasins. In one hand was her orange Hermès toiletry bag. She shook her head at the absurdity of her situation, wearing a beaded Lakota doeskin dress while clutching a haute couture bag on her way to a cold bath in a frontier river.

  In her other hand, she held an unopened bar of Ivory soap in its blue and white paper wrapper. Takoda had caused the soap to magically appear after Padma complained about being forced to bathe without it. The soap had been included among some of the rations meted out by the government.

  Padma looked at Procter & Gamble’s logo on the wrapper—the man in the crescent moon gazing at a midnight blue sky of 13 stars. Padma hadn’t seen the old logo in years. Religious fundamentalists had forced Procter & Gamble to remove the logo in 1985, claiming that it was a satanic symbol. The company cowed to the extremists, replacing the beautiful classic art with a simple “P&G”—guaranteed not to offend anyone, with the possible exception of those who had grown up with the majestic man in the moon.

  A nineteenth-century manufacturing accident had resulted in an abnormally high air-to-soap ratio, causing Ivory soap to float. The defect was instantly recognized as a feature, and “It Floats!” became an Ivory trademark. Floating soap would come in handy for a bath in a murky river.

  Padma worried about Kyle. He had been gone for a week and a half.

  A few weeks earlier, in 2008, Padma could have instantly spoken with almost anyone, anywhere on the planet. She had instinctively reached for her iPhone more than once since arriving in the past. It was strange and uncomfortable for her that the scope of her world was now restricted to those within earshot. It pained her that Kyle’s voice was disconnected.

  Though Padma did not look forward to her river bath, she relished the time alone. Since her miraculous resurrection, the crowds following her had grown to over 1,000 people. Members of neighboring tribes on the 3,600 square mile reservation poured into Sitting Bull’s village, swelling its ranks to nearly 3,000. Over Takoda’s vehement objections, Padma ordered him to misdirect the multitudes so that she could take her bath in privacy.

  “I swore an oath to Red Star to protect you!” he said. “I cannot allow any harm to come to you.”

  Padma saw the pained concern in Takoda’s face. It was plain to Padma that his worry was driven by more than duty to Kyle. She placed her hand on his cheek.

  “Please,” she said. “I can’t bathe with a thousand people watching me. I’ll just go up river a little ways. I’ll be OK.”<
br />
  “Anyway,” she added as she inserted a finger into the charred bullet hole in her dress, “I’m bulletproof, remember?”

  Takoda looked away.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Padma.

  “I cannot look at it” Takoda replied.

  “Why not?”

  “It is a fearsome magic,” said Takoda.

  Padma placed her hand on Takoda’s cheek, “I’m not fearsome.”

  Takoda smiled and walked away.

  • • •

  Padma thought about Takoda as she walked upstream to her bathing spot. She could not deny her growing feelings for the handsome and devoted Lakota brave. It was difficult for her to parse her feelings. The fact that she found the young man physically attractive was beyond doubt. She did not know whether what she felt was affection for an unconditionally caring man, or something else—a chamber of her heart reserved exclusively for Kyle.

  Is it possible to have two soul mates? she thought.

  She instantly chased the thought out of her head, feeling a pang of guilt for entertaining it, even for a second.

  I am Kyle Mason’s wife...or, rather, I am the wife of one Kyle Mason and the widow of the other.

  She shook her head at the complete madness of the situation—walking to take a bath in a river in 1890, clutching her twenty-first-century Hermès toiletry bag, and thinking about her living and dead husbands who were the same person.

  I am completely mental, she thought. I am not wearing a Lakota dress in nineteenth-century South Dakota—I am wearing a straitjacket in a twenty-first-century psych ward at Bellevue.

  She looked apprehensively at the cool dark water.

  “If I’m in a psych ward, I sure wish they’d give me better drugs,” she sighed.

  Hundreds of little conveniences she’d taken for granted in her former life were now impossibilities. There were no toilets or toilet paper. There were no corner groceries with food and coffee. There were no paper towels. There was no toothpaste. There were no tampons. Water, something that formerly came from ubiquitous plastic bottles, now came from a river, a bucket, or a buffalo bladder.

  For years, she had slept in an ample bed, made every day with crisp, fresh sheets. Now, she didn’t have a bed—ample or otherwise. Even with blankets for padding, sleeping on the ground was uncomfortable, yielding a fitful sleep. She awoke in the morning sore and exhausted, her eyes puffy.

  While dozens of amenities of twenty-first-century life competed for the title of most missed, Padma would have traded most for a hot bath. Hiking to her bath in the bracing waters of the Grand River was a march toward an unjust punishment. The only thing worse than the frontier bath was skipping a day and allowing the prairie dirt and grime to cling to her face and body and hair. Though she’d never required most of the trappings of the “Empress of America,” she had never expected that she would be deprived a hot shower, a comfy bed, food, and toilet paper. If she ever got out of this mess, she swore she would never take those things for granted again.

  Padma paused at a sandy bank in a narrow stretch of the river, split in two by a sand bar. She set her Hermès bag down on a rock and looked around to make sure she was alone. She then removed the blue beaded yoke, untied her Concho belt, and pulled her doeskin dress over her head, draping it on a boulder. She pulled apart the Velcro fasteners that held her Kevlar vest in place and pulled it off, then tipped off her moccasins next to the boulder. She unbraided her long black hair, then unwrapped the bar of Ivory soap. She walked to the edge of the water and stepped in up to her knees. She felt the sandy river bottom on the soles of her feet. The sand mixed between her toes. She stood for a moment, bracing herself as she watched the gradual eddies of the slow river current.

  She gingerly touched the purple and black welt between her breasts. It fired pain through her chest, forcing a gasp. She thought about the irony of Kyle leaving her behind for her protection.

  I hate this part, she thought.

  Padma took a breath and sank beneath the surface, clutching her soap. The weight of the cold water pressed against her cracked sternum, firing pain from the center of her chest.

  She surfaced, gasping.

  Padma stood in the shallow water and lathered quickly. Covered in soap, she immersed herself in the water to rinse. She surfaced a second time and walked to the bank to dress. Another essential she was missing in 1890 was a bath towel. She stood on the bank, dripping on the sand, trying her best to squeegee her wet skin with her hands.

  As she picked her dress off the rock, she startled. On the bank, 100 feet downstream, a man sat on the riverbank, watching her. He was a young man in his twenties, wearing a navy cavalry shirt with cadet blue pants held up by suspenders. Dark riding boots ascended to his knees. He wore a gray hat with the rim turned up at the forehead. Around his waist was a cartridge belt, with a butt-forward revolver holster on his left hip and a knife sheath on the right. The man had a long blond mustache.

  Padma and the man eyed each other. After a few moments, the man stood up and began to walk toward her. Padma clutched her dress to her chest. She began walking backwards, preparing to turn and run.

  She bumped into something behind her. She turned—it was another man, a cavalry scout in his forties, with a bushy brown beard and a grotesque smile of yellow teeth.

  “Mornin’!” the scout said.

  A third cavalry soldier, in his thirties with black wavy hair and a mustache, approached from behind.

  A bolt of terror shot through Padma. She ran toward the river, attempting to dive in. The scout caught her left arm. As she struggled to break free, the blond soldier grabbed her right arm. As they struggled in the shallows, Padma’s dress was stripped loose. As the men dragged her out of the water, she watched her beautiful dress and the Ivory soap bar drift away in the current.

  The men dragged her to the riverbank and threw her on her back. Padma rolled over and scrambled on all fours to get away. The blond soldier tackled her. The impact drove lightning pain through her chest. She screamed.

  The soldier wrapped his arm around Padma’s neck and turned her over, holding her tight against him on the ground. He drew his knife with the other hand, holding the blade against her throat.

  “Where ya’ goin’, purdy injun lady?” the soldier asked. “This ball’s just gettin’ started!”

  The soldier let out a whoop.

  Padma’s mind tried to speak to her terror. She knew she was about to be raped. Her best possible outcome was that she would not be shot or stabbed to death in the process.

  The scout approached Padma, looking down at her. Unlike the other two soldiers, the scout was wearing fringed buckskin pants in place of the standard Army-issued trousers.

  The scout tucked his gloved thumbs in his trousers, examining the naked native woman on the ground before him. “I ain’t never seen a squaw like this before,” he said. “They’re all so short and wrinkled and ugly. I never seen one so tall and purdy.”

  “Me neither!” said the blond soldier. “Hurry up and poke her so we can have our turn!”

  The blond soldier holding Padma noticed the purple and black mark between her breasts.

  “What’d you do?” he asked. “Didja hurt yourself?”

  The soldier grabbed Padma’s long hair and wrapped it tight around his left fist. With his knife hand, he pressed on Padma’s sternum with the butt of his knife. She screamed in pain. The soldier laughed.

  “Hey! Lookee what I can do!” he said as he ground the knife butt down on her sternum again. Padma let out another blood-curdling scream.

  “Darlin’, this is nothin’,” he said. “Just you wait—you’ll see!”

  The other soldier grabbed Padma’s left arm. The glint of her diamond ring caught his eye.

  “Lookee!” he said excitedly, holding up her hand
. “Where’d you steal this, squaw?”

  He began pulling her wedding ring off her finger as Padma clenched her fist. The blond soldier smacked her in the sternum with his knife butt. The pain caused Padma’s eyes to bulge as her mouth gaped wide, gasping with unbearable pain. She opened her hand, allowing the soldier to pull her wedding ring from her finger. It was the first time it had left her hand. The soldier stuffed it in his shirt pocket. Padma gasped for breath and sobbed.

  The scout at Padma’s feet began pulling off his boots, hopping on one foot as he hurriedly undressed. He slipped the suspenders off his shoulders, then pulled off his pants. The other two men laughed nervously.

  The scout was now clad only in dirty long johns that buttoned from his crotch to his neck. He unbuttoned his two crotch buttons and pulled out his erect penis. The man standing before her, in long johns with his upright penis, looked unbelievably absurd to Padma. Everything about the situation was unbelievable. It was not possible that she was in the nineteenth century, about to be raped by soldiers of the US cavalry.

  “Your johnson’s standin’ at attention!” said the blond soldier. “We better salute!”

  The three soldiers guffawed as the two men holding Padma saluted.

  “She don’t talk much,” observed the scout.

  “She’s a ig’rant injun!” said the blond soldier. “She don’t speak American. Go on and fuck her!”

  The scout knelt at Padma’s feet. She snapped up her knees and pressed them close together. The scout put his hands on her knees and struggled to pry her legs apart.

  “Fuckin’ cunt!” he shouted.

  The blond soldier tapped her sternum with the butt of his knife. “You want more of this, squaw?”

  Padma cried as she opened her legs, sickened to cooperate in any way in her own rape. She could not withstand another blow to her cracked chest.

  The scout crawled between Padma’s legs. Her heart pounded as the reality of what was about to happen overwhelmed her denial. In her mind, she shouted back at the terror. She had lost control over her body. Her mind was the only part of her she still governed.