Authors note

There seem to be a lot of Wild West stories floating around ... this one is a romantic fantasy, with an oddly singular and tongue in cheek look to a version of the Wild West. Enjoy.

*****

Chapter 1

Caroline Bagshaw rested her head on the leather-covered steering wheel and wept. Her dream life, apparently so perfect two years previously, with a loving husband and two successful children. Now she was alone, and dealing with the funeral of Pop, her beloved father.

The wrong side of fifty, she had been betrayed by her faithless husband and disappointed in her two boys, who saw nothing wrong in what their father had done. In fact they followed his example; with both their marriages wrecked on the rocks of serial infidelity.

She was suspicious when Patience Cranshaw and Missy Peach, two of the most boring of her main five friends who she tended to see in twos and threes at various clubs, and other activities, who were trying to keep her at the country club on a particularly cold and wet day when all she wanted to do was go home and long soak in a hot bath. So she ordered all three lunch in the restaurant, before running off to the loo and kept on going, out to the car park and the 15 minute drive home. Patty and Missy must've just realised and tipped the other girls off, as she pulled into her drive, full of three cars and her husband's new Merc, her friends were running to their cars in various states of undress.

Caroline discovered that her wealthy husband had affairs with many of her so-called friends, who covered for him as he regularly shared his remarkable sexual prowess between them. They were very much HIS friends not hers.

Now, a year after the divorce, her father, Sam Pinner, had passed away the week before and the funeral was held that day. All the guests had departed, leaving her alone in his cold, dark terraced house, with his old car parked in the front garden, surrounded by a dark laurel hedge that hadn't been trimmed in years.

Her eldest son, Adam, was curt. "You're clearing Pop's house after the funeral, Mum, at least you could've dumped this old wreck before everyone came back to the house."

"That 'old wreck' you are talking about, was your grandfather's dream car. Just before your grandma passed away in 1980, she spent all the money she'd scrimped and saved all her life to buy this secondhand Jaguar XJ12. A lot of love was poured into that car from them both."

"Yeah, but he never even drove it, Mum!" Adam scoffed, "This car's a joke!" Adam's younger brother Robert Junior joined in the laughter, adding, "I know a guy with a low-loader who could've cleared this eyesore away in a trice."

Their grandfather had a stroke immediately after his loving wife, their grandmother, died and was left paralysed down one side, so tragically he never drove the car, a gift she had arranged for him virtually on her death bed. He was so proud of that car that he could never part with it. Caroline was ashamed at the callous attitude of her offspring.

That's why, after all her grandfather's friends from the Wakefield and District Cowboy Re-enactment Society left, that Caroline sat quietly in her father's dream car once more before finally shutting the house up.

The car's original colour had once been a deep maroon, the paint now dull and faded; rust showed through the wings and door panels and all four tyres were flat to the ground. That car was going nowhere, and hadn't been anywhere for more than thirty-odd years.

Caroline unlocked the driver's side door, which opened on surprisingly well-greased hinges. The internal courtesy light failed to come on, of course, the battery must've gone flat years before. She slid into the front seat, smelling of freshly polished leather. Despite the wreck it looked, inside the polished walnut and tan hide leather inlay shone fresh and dust free. Beside her, on the passenger seat, was her father's old Stetson. She smiled, fingering the soft leather hat, recalling her parents' love of line dancing and dressing up in Western-style clothing; how her father engaged in quick-draw contests with his Wild West enthusiast friends that she knew as ridiculous but sweet "uncles" and "aunts" as a small girl.

She cried, rested her forehead on the steering wheel and closed her eyes.

Next thing she knew, the car seat was bucking, throwing Caroline around wildly. She opened her eyes.

"Don't you cry, now Ma'am, them pesky injuns'll scatter once our lead flies among 'em!" yelled a large, sweating, bald man sitting in a seat opposite to her. She was in a stagecoach! He pulled out a six-gun that had been tucked in his straining leather belt, and pointed his weapon out of the open stagecoach window. "We're only a spit away from Sweetwater Valley. We'll be safe there, Ma'am, don't ya worry yer pretty head about that!"

The noise from the gun was deafening, and the stagecoach filled with acrid smoke. The motion of the coach was wild, like driving over a dried-up river in a four-poster bed. Other gunshots could be heard above her, outside the carriage, and a feathered arrow thwacked into the back of the empty seat opposite her. Caroline's corpulent companion fired off round after deafening round, his unshaven purple face set in a determined grimace.

Suddenly there was a distant fusillade of shots, then another volley, followed by a ragged number of random shots.

"Them varmints is a-running!" yelled the large man in triumph, slapping his thigh with his free hand, "Looks like a posse from town have rid out tah greet us."

He beamed at Caroline and stuck out a large horny hand, "Forgive me mah manners, Ma'am, but yo'll wus fast asleep when I got aboard at Carson. The driver said ya'd come all the ways from Back East and wus plum tuckered out, so I never disturbed yah till that war party welcomed us into the territ'ry. Mah name's Judge Justice Makepeace — yeah, I know, mah Pappy was also a hangin' judge afore me an' I guess he had a weird sense o'humor!"

"Pleased to meet you, Judge, I'm—" Caroline was almost tumbled out of her seat as the stagecoach shuddered to a halt, the man caught her hand and held on, wrapping her in his other arm and whipping her safely into the seat next to him.

"The whole territ'ry knows who you is Ma'am. An' I kin tell from the softness of yar hand that ya're a lady of some quality, worthy of respect, like ya Pa wus before ya," the Judge winked as he held her in his arms, the coach still rocking on its springs, "I'm on mah way now to hang the three gunmen what shot down yah Pa in cold blood."

When Caroline's eyebrow's shot up in surprise at this development, the Judge added, scratching his grey whiskers, "There'll be a proper trial, mind, Ma'am, I'll hold court till I've smoked a four-inch cee-gar all the way down ta the butt, afore I hangs the lot of 'em. Folk cain't say fairer than that!"

He threw open the carriage door and squeezed his bulk through, turning to hand Caroline down to the dusty Main Street. All the wooden buildings were bleached white in the blinding noon sunshine, and the heat hit her like a solid wall.

Looking down at her feet, she saw her sensible-heeled shoes, that she wore for the funeral, had somehow become calf-hugging leather boots and her sombre knee-length skirt had transformed into a black ankle-length silk dress, with a figure-hugging bodice, pearl-buttoned up to the neck. Somehow, the thirty pounds of comfort eating that she'd put on since the divorce, had magically disappeared.

The coach was surrounded by tall, grinning men, all sporting a variety of still-smoking guns, some still holding the reins of their steaming horses. The tallest of them stepped forward, removing his tall hat. He was a handsome young man with long, shoulder-length black hair. Under the bushiest moustache Caroline had ever seen, his blinding white teeth stood out from his deeply-tanned face. He wore a white silk shirt with a neatly-knotted string necktie. His long black coat was speckled with the red dust which hung in the air. A silver star gleamed from his coat lapel, as did the pair of pearl-handled revolvers stuffed into leather belted holsters pinched about his narrow waist. He held out his enormous hand.

"Ah'm Marshal Tom Denton, Ma'am. Yah late father said yah'll'd be the prettiest widder in the territ'ry and, upon mah word, Ah never heard him swear the more honest truth."

As his warm, hard, dry hand engulfed her tiny damp one, Caroline was speechless, conscious that she might've fluttered her eyelids, feeling feint. Before she knew what was happening, the gorgeous Marshal swept her up in his arms as if she was nothing but a duckdown pillow. She rested her head on his broad shoulder.

"Forgive mah manners, Miss Bagshaw, yah father always kept a set of rooms here at the Hotel, where yah trunks that arrived by the noon stage yesterday ha' been stowed."

"Sorry, Marshal, I was overcome there for a moment—"

"Perfectly understandable, Ma'am, yah maid Alice came up from yah late Pa's Lazy-C Ranch this mornin' and is presently in yah rooms drawin' a hot bath fer yah."

"Alice?"

"She's mah niece, mah Sister's young'st. She's onny 14, but she's smart as paint for a' that. Mah Sis thought it'd be good to have a maid that wus closer to yah own age."

"Why, how old do you think I am, Marshal?" Caroline asked coyly, recovering her senses in this bewildering dreamworld.

The Marshal dropped his voice, "Why, Ah have it on high authority that yah're least five years younger than Ah am, an' Ah'm 30 next month. Yah father did say yorn husband was a beast an' yah well shot o' him. Ah fer one don't think yah should be holden to wear them widder's weeds on his account any longer, an' yah father said yah'd brighten up our town no end. Ah ain't about to argue with anyone on that point, if yah beg mah pardon fer bein' fo'ard, Ma'am."

"No offence taken, Marshal," Caroline smiled, "I think I should be able to walk now."

"We're here," he laughed, "The noon stage al'ays stops by the Grand Hotel. At least allow me the pleasure to convey yah up to yah rooms."

"All right, Marshal." It was all Caroline could do to refrain from giggling like the little girl she suddenly felt. Not only that, but for the first time in more than a year, she felt an itch between her legs that she felt an urge to scratch.

Now Alice was a pretty bright and attentive girl, who helped Caroline out of the complicated layers of clothing that she had magically acquired between rotting motorcar and wooden stagecoach, and into her hot bath, fed by buckets of water brought up the stairs by a couple of sturdy girls that looked like they handle anything the Wild West threw at them.

Meanwhile Alice chattering away about the town, its dreamboat Marshal and the newly arrived Dentist who, according to the maid, was another "dish served in heaven". After her bath, Caroline was tucked comfortably onto the chaise longue and, fatigued by all the excitement, was soon fast asleep.

Caroline woke with a start, sitting in that old Jaguar. She shook the sleep from her head as she stepped from the car and slammed the door, with a near silent click. What a strange and vivid dream! She was about to walk back to the house when a smile spread across her face, the first smile that she could remember wearing in a long while.

She spun on her heels, pulled the car door open and slid back inside...

***

"Why, Miss Caroline, Ah declare yo' ain't slept more'n a couple hours, are yo' sure yo're rested enough after yo' journey? Especially after the shock of that Injun attack."

"I'm fine, Alice, it's just that I'd like to get a look at my Daddy's ranch, as soon as possible, how far away is it?"

"About an hour's ride, ma'am, but Ah'd need to rustle up the ranch gig, a driver and a coupla outriders, and we on'y have a coupla hours afore nightfall, there'd be no time fer us to get back into town."

"Could we not stay there the night? How comfortable is the ranch?"

"Why, it's the grandest ranch house in the whole county, ma'am, an' young Samuel helped me get yo' suite there ready for yo' arrival, soon as we heard ya wus comin'."

"Young Samuel?" Caroline asked, her eyebrows raised, her father's little-used first name being Samuel, "who's Young Samuel?"

"Why, yer younger brother, the ranch foreman. He's only fifteen, near sixteen, but he can ride, rope an' brand better'n any whole white man!"

"Whoa, Alice," Caroline cried, "my father rarely wrote to me about his life here and when he did he told me nothing about the ranch or who lived with him. You better tell me everything."

"Okay, yo' get washed up an' ready to git dressed, Miss Bagshawh, an' Ah'll go organise the men an' the gig, an' Ah'll get back to help yo'."

She was only gone a couple of minutes.

"Ma'am, I got Clint go round up the boys, they be hands from the ranch that brung me here this mornin'. I reckon we got maybe ten minutes afore they's saddled up an' ready to go. Let me help yo' on with that dress. Why, yo'll don't even need no stays, Miss Bagshawh, yo's as skinny as a rail!"

"Rail? Have you got the railway running through here then, Alice?"

"No ma'am, least not yet a'ways, but it mus' be comin' soon, the railways company wus a'doin' surveys here on'y las' year."

"So, young Samuel Pinner, huh? Is his mother at the ranch?"

"She was 'til yesterday, ma'am, but Miss Dove Feather high-tailed it back to the Reservation as soon as she heard yo'll was a'comin'."

"She's an Indian?"

"Pure-blood Injun is Miss Dove Feather Pinner, Ma'am Bagshawh."

"Please call me Caroline, Alice," Caroline said, but seeing Alice recoil in shock, continued, "or Miss Caroline if you insist."

"Yes, Miss Caroline, ma'am, pure Injun, Miss Pinner is."

"What kind of Indian, what tribe?"

"Just Injun, there's only one kinda Injun, ain't there? Well, round here, anyways."

"How odd. So, I have a brother, what's he like?"

Alice squirmed and went bright red, "Well, Ah guess yo'd say he wus kinda cute an'all."

Caroline smiled, "Are you sweet on my brother, Alice?"

"Well," the girl straightened up and stuck out her jaw, "Samuel's a fine-lookin' boy, but he kin be downright ornery mos' times, Miss Caroline, an' he's had a fly up the back of his britches evah since he heard yo'll wus a'coming from Back East."

Caroline laughed, but just then a knock on the outer door interrupted them.

"Ma'am, yer gig's ready fer yah, do ya want me ter carry anything dahn?" asked a tall lean cowboy, who had removed his hat, revealing thin sandy hair and a dropping moustache, his face deeply sunburned to polished mahogany. Caroline thought he was 'kinda cute' too, thought it wouldn't do to 'do' the hired help.

"No, Clint," Alice answered for her, "we've everythin' we need at the ranch, an' we'll be with yo', directly."

"Okay, Ah'll wait out front."

"Miss Dove Feather'n yo's about the same size," Alice whispered as Clint turned and left, "an' she told me afore she skedaddled that yo'll could have any clothes yo' want as she only needed to teke her buckskins."

The ride out to the ranch was pleasant enough in the cool late afternoon, leading into a short and rather sudden twilight, when two lamps were lit on the back of the smart, well sprung two seater gig. Clint, a tall young man, drove the two-wheel cart, with Caroline sitting up front alongside and Alice sat on the floor in the back, where there was room for a few parcels, her feet stretched under the seat. Two outriders rode along behind, "for Injuns," Clint explained, "just a few uppity bucks, mind, who needs a good whippin'."

"This is beautiful country," Caroline marvelled at the ranch, perched on the top of a rise, with spectacular views all around. The barns and corrals made the place look well cared for and prosperous, reached by a stout wooden bridge over a crystal clear meandering river.

"Best spread in the county, Ma'am," Clint boasted, "this is the centre of Sweetwater Valley and yah spread goes all the ways up to the mountains in that direction and to the edge of the Injun Reservation thataways."

By the time they pulled up to the house, a fine two storied building made of white painted wood, the house staff and ranch hands were there to greet her. The staff lined up and stood to attention, while the hands stood casually in irregular groups. Caroline counted around ten staff and up to thirty hands. One of the hands moved forward to hold the horses' reins, while Clint dismounted, and helped Caroline down.

One of the domestics stepped forward, a large red-faced woman with red hair.

Alice whispered, "It's Mrs Duggan, Miss Caroline, she's the cook an' the one in charge."

"Is my brother here?" Caroline quietly asked the girl.

"No, ma'am," she whispered back, "he ain't nowhere ter be seen."

Caroline stepped forward, "Good evening, Mrs Duggan, my apologies for arriving unannounced at this late hour. I hope I have not inconvenienced you excessively. Is the er, is the lady of the house in?"

Clearly taken aback by Caroline's directness, Mrs Duggan soon recovered, saying in an Irish accent, "Why, to be sure you are the Lady of ta House now, Ma'am, to be sure. Now, Miss Pinner she rode outta here tis marnin'."

"Is my brother here, then?"

"He's in ta stables, saddlin' his horse," she said, "I packed him a meat pie for his supper to eat on the hoof."

"Can someone fetch him, before he rides off? I wish to speak to him urgently."

"I kin fetch 'im, to be sure, Ma'am." She turned to a boy, smart in his livery, despite tugging unconsciously at his starched collar, and sent him off running, before she turned back to Caroline.

"We have a rude supper of beef stew an' dumplin's, Ma'am, simple fare for ta staff an' chow for ta ranch hands, to be sure we wasn't expecting yus until tomorrer."

"That will do fine, Mrs Duggan, is there anywhere I can freshen up?"

"Aye, Ma'am, Alice can take yer to yer rooms, I'll have someone bring up hot water an' towels, I must get get back to Me kitchen."

"Of course."

Caroline was barely in her private sitting room, removing her hat, when there was a knock on the door, which Alice smartly answered. A tall, gangling youth stepped into the room, holding his hat in his hands, Caroline swore his face was the spitting image of her brother David, who died in an accident when he was 10, when she herself was only half his age. She didn't think he looked Indian at all.

"I'm Samuel, ma'am, I have told Jesse Young that he's the Ranch Foreman now and I've already run him through his list of duties, so I can head out to the Reservation before it gets too dark."

"I'm sorry to hear that you want to leave, Samuel, so soon after my arrival. Don't you want to be Foreman here any more?"

"I er -"

"Alice tells me you're the best man for the job on this ranch. Are you a better Foreman than this Jesse?"

"Yeah, ma'am, but he'll pick it up soon enough."

"I would rather you stayed on here as Foreman, Samuel, would you like to stay on?"

"Well..." the kid shuffled his feet, screwing up his hat and staring at the floor.

"Well, I would like you to stay on, Sam, it would be a great help to me, but only if you want to."

"I, I guess I could do."

"That's great, Sam, maybe you can tell me all about the ranch over supper. I am impressed by what I've seen so far."

"Thank you ma'am. Well, if I'm staying on as Foreman, I'll probably be late for supper, I'll be moving the rest of my stuff out to the bunkhouse."

"Why?"

"Well, you won't want a half-breed in the house, ma'am."

"Mmm, tell me, Samuel, are you really my father's son?"

"Of course I am."

"And you perfectly understand that I am my father's daughter?"

"I figure that's so."

"So, if you and I have the same father, that makes us brother and sister, Sam, yes?"
"Half brother and sister," he muttered.

"OK. But still brother and sister, right?"

"I reckon."

"So you're sleeping in your father's house tonight, every night, in our house, your house. I won't have my brother sleeping in the bunkhouse. Is that all right with you, Sam?"

"Er, I guess that would be all right, Ma'am."

"Good, that's settled then, now come here give your big sister, Caroline, not 'Ma'am', a big hug," said Caroline, "and at first light, we're going to go find your mother."

***

Puttering around the kitchen, at her father's old semi-detached house, washing up the sherry and wine glasses and popping them back in the boxes they were supplied in, Caroline reflected on what was definitely the strangest day of her entire life. It was dark outside and she could see her reflection in the blackness of the kitchen window. She shook her head in disbelief. What dreams! But unlike any sleeping dream she'd ever experienced before, she could remember every vivid detail of it. She wasn't an only child bearing the loss of her father alone any more, she had a nearly full grown brother! All right, a half-brother, but a brother nonetheless.

As she folded over and tucked in the lids of the cardboard glass boxes, she remembered her older brother David, or as much of David as she could recall. A sickly boy, five years Caroline's senior, he died when he was about ten, in a road accident, playing outside in the street, in a council estate of Wakefield, so her actual memories of him were fleeting. In the sitting room she pulled out the old photo albums, where there were several pages devoted to the poor boy. He had contracted polio as an infant, wore a calliper on one of his legs and was deaf in one ear, he never saw or heard that fatal car coming. She realised with a start that it was only these photos she really remembered, any real life memories of David had disappeared long ago and she hadn't given him a single thought since her boys' christening, when she had momentarily regretted not having him around as their possible godfather.

Yet the memories of those few moments of being with the half-breed Samuel Pinner Junior were vivid. She compared those recent images to a faded black and white snap of her father, as a young man in naval rating's uniform from his National Service days, along with his wedding photos a few years later. Yes, Sam Junior, the half-injun cowboy, was his father's son all right.

She woke with a start, still sitting the armchair by the fire, the photo album fallen to the floor, open at a posed portrait of her mother, a raven-haired beauty at the time it was taken, sometime before her marriage. Caroline had borne the brunt of her mother's passing, the boys inconsolable at the loss of their Gran, and her father Sam so shocked by his loss that he suffered a stroke. The luxury Jaguar car was purchased by Caroline's mum, virtually from her deathbed, using money she had scrimped and saved from her housekeeping and evening cleaning jobs.

That car was the key to Caroline's two vivid dreams today. Pulling a blanket around her against the cold, she ventured out, unlocked the car, which opened silently on oiled hinges, and sat in the driving seat, pulling the door shut behind her with a soft click.

"You fool!" she muttered, more in exasperation than anything else, "it was all an illusion while you were so full of grief, so what do you think you are doing now?" before she put on the Stetson and closed her eyes.

Chapter 2

When she opened them, she was sitting up in bed in a sunny bedroom, a dawn chorus of a proud cock cheerfully crowing through the open window, through which she could clearly see from her high bed, the rolling hills of the prairie ranch set against a dramatic backdrop of snow-capped grey mountains on the horizon.

"Ah, ye're awake, ma'am, tat's guud," said the housekeeper, Mrs Duggan from the doorway, "I brung ye yer coffee. Shall I send Alice up to attend ta ye?"

She put the steaming enamel mug on the washstand. Caroline noted it was black coffee.

"Good morning, Mrs Duggan. Do you have any cream, by any chance?"

"Aye, we've not all beef cows here, ye knows, we do have a few milch cows, I'll send Alice up wi' a jug."

Caroline was up and part dressed by the time Alice bounced in with the jug of cream.

"What are you so chipper about?" Caroline asked, amused by the girl's excitement. She took the cream and poured some in her coffee, it was delicious.

"Well, Ma,am, Ah's never been to the Injun Reservation afore!" she exclaimed, "Ah'm both a feared an' excited, all at the same time!"

Alice was breathless, bouncing around the room collecting together the clothes her mistress would need, which included a pair of comfortable suede riding britches. Looking in the mirror, even without the hat Caroline felt she looked rather like Annie Oakley. Caroline wondered if she could still remember how to shoot, either a handgun or a rifle, she hadn't tried either since she last went to the Wild West Enthusiasts' summer camp when she was about 18 or 19. Mind you, looking in the mirror she looked to be in her mid-twenties, rather than her true fifties, and she felt young, energetic and eager for today's adventure.

"How far is the ride to the Reservation?" she asked Alice.

"Oh, it would be half a day if'n we used the gig, 'cause the road goes around the hills, but on horseback over the mountain trails I reckon it'll be 'bout half the morning."

Her new brother Samuel was quite cheerful during the huge breakfast that Mrs Duggan had set out for the pair of them, insisting her new mistress eat more than she put on her plate, as she said Caroline looked as though she normally ate like a bird.

"Them 'ills can be cold this early in the spring Ma'am, so ye need to fill up on vittles an' I packed ye some beef pie to eat on te way there, an' plen'y for te way back, so you don't 'ave to eat none o' tere Injun stuff. Lord knows what tey eats!"

When Caroline got to the stables, the little piebald mare that Sam had picked out for her was already saddled with a much lighter saddle compared with the big Western ones with all the ropes hanging off that the others used.

"Pa had this English saddle made for you years ago, ma- Caroline, hoping you'd come by at some stage. He said when you was little you rode a man's horse like a rodeo princess an' could outshoot any deputy lawman!"

"I think your Pa was inclined to exaggerate my talents, it's been years since I've been on a horse or done any shooting. If I don't fall off three times in the first half hour I'll be surprised!" She saw Samuel smile at that, "And if I stay on all morning, I probably won't be able to walk for a week!"

Sam laughed, "You'll be alright, I guess, we're gonna ride real slow an' easy like, anyways. On'y a fool rides off half-cocked into Injun Territory. You needs to let 'em see you comin' peaceful an' quiet from a long ways off." He wore a mischievous grin as he added, "An' if you do fall off, they'd be laughin' so much that if they starts shootin' they wouldn't be able to hit the bunkhouse wall!"

Caroline was pleased that Samuel seemed to be more relaxed around her this morning, and felt that they'd get along fine now the ice was broken. She introduced herself to her horse, that Sam had called Bonny, with a cube of hard sugar furnished by Mrs Duggan, before she stood on an upturned bucket left for the purpose and climbed up into the saddle. She soon felt comfortable and was able to check out Alice, who had insisted on getting Sam to help her up into the enormous sidesaddle that her pony had been fitted with.

They set out then, with three outriders, Billy, Tex and Pat, who cheerfully introduced themselves to their new second Boss. They were all older men, with ruddy suntanned faces, the colour of oak. From their conversation, they appeared glad of this little excursion, to have an easy day of it, compared to roping and branding cows, or whatever they normally did on the ranch.

"We ain't afraid o' no injuns, Ma'am," they'd assured her.

Caroline felt comfortable on horseback, even as she climbed the rocky hills en route, as the sure-footed pony ploughed steadily upward. With her growing confidence on the ride, Caroline began taking more interest in her surroundings, looking down on the spread behind her and seeing the huge number of cattle feeding on the lush grass by the broad river. Despite the continuous sunshine, it did get cold in the hills so she was glad of the warm coats, gloves and broad-brimmed hats that Mrs Duggan had insisted she and Alice wore.

On the other side of the mountain, there was a wood ahead of them, the trees so thick that there was little undergrowth except in the patches where odd trees had fallen. Sam called the group to a halt before the wood and they got off the horses and stretched their legs while one of the men started a fire and put the coffee pot on to boil. Sam explained why they had stopped.

"Them Injun patrols already know we's comin', they'd have seen us come down the path from the hills. Stoppin' here gives 'em time to check with an elder to decide on whether to leave us alone or attack us."

Caroline felt compelled to ask, "What is the likelihood of attack?"

"None, Caroline," Samuel grinned, "it'd be different if we just rode straight into camp, as they might jus' shoot before they ask questions. Our Pa was always fair with the Injuns. Hell, he even married one of 'em, and we give 'em a few cows each winter, and even more cows in the bad winters, so they know us, an' know that we ain't enemies. We'll be alright."

Once refreshed by the coffee and the stretching of their limbs, they remounted and road on down through the trees in single file and out onto the flat prairie again. Samuel and Caroline rode next to each other for a while.

"So, Sam, did you grow up on the Reservation or the ranch?"

He grinned, "The ranch, where I was born and raised. I only goes back to the Reservation every few weeks to visit Gramps, he's the medicine man there."

"So tell me about your mother."

"Oh, not much to say, she's pretty quiet most of the time. She, well she sees things, so the Injuns reckon she is a Holy Woman, I guess she gets that from Gramps."

"Well, you don't really look half Indian at all, what's your mother look like?"

"Oh, Ma don't look much Injun either, so I guess there'd bin some white blood there in the past on my Grandma's side. I never knew my Grandma, she'd passed when Ma was young. You'll find that Gramps ain't easy to git along with, mind, he's one cantankerous old Injun!"

"I'll bear that in mind. Anything I need to know about how to act when we get there? I don't want to cause any offence."

"Jus' follow my lead, they'll let us be as guests. When they wants to be, them Injuns can be right hospitable. I guess Ma's expectin' us an' I've bin catching sights of young Braves around us for the last half-hour."

"I never saw anything."

"No, you're not supposed to see nuthin', sneaky lot, these Injuns."

"So, what do you consider yourself to be Sam, Paleface or Indian?"

"I guess it depends on where I am, Caroline. At the ranch I guess I'm half-Injun, in town I'm whole Injun, but in the village I'm a Paleface playin' at bein' an Injun. I guess I don't fit in nowheres."

Caroline reached across and squeezed his arm, "You're my only brother, Sam, you're the son of your loving mother and you are a rancher, the half-owner of the best ranch in the county. I think that makes you a pretty good fit anywhere you want to go."

"Thanks Caroline, it's bin swell havin' you come to the ranch. You know Pa talked about you all the time, so proud he was of you."

"Yet he never told me much about this life, or about you and your mother."

"Yeah, Ma's said as much. I don't think Pa was ashamed of us, at least with Sweetwater folk, but maybe he wasn't sure how you'd take it."

"I'm fine with it, it's great having a brother again. Did your Pa tell you about David?"

"Yeah, once or twice. Ma must've been told too, as she knew a lot more 'bout him than I do. She has this second sight and saw you comin', so she skedaddled back to the village, 'cause she didn't think you'd wanna see her at our Pa's place."

"You were both a big part of Dad's life and I want you to be part of my life as well, we are family. If your mother doesn't want to know me or live with us, then fair enough, but she's family too."

"Oh, I'm sure she wants to meet you, Caroline, she's always said that it would happen one day."

"So why would she run?"

"Probably wants to meet you on her own ground. That's why she took all your letters that you sent to Pa with her."

"My letters?"

"Yeah. Pa kept 'em all, I think, he'd read out bits to me sometimes, because I can't read."

"You never learned?"

"Nah, Pa tried to teach me when I was little but he never had no patience with it, and I guess I was too fidgety bein' taken away from the horses and cows."

"But there's a schoolhouse in the town, at the end of the Main Street, isn't there? I'm sure Alice pointed it out as we passed it when we left the hotel."

"Yeah, we got a schoolhouse but we ain't never had no schoolmarm," Sam replied, then pulled his horse up short, holding his hand up so they all stopped, "here comes the war party, just stand still everyone, they may still be a mite wild and excited."

Sure enough, half a dozen war-painted Braves rode up on their painted ponies, whooping and screeching, brandishing be-feathered spears and strung bows, corralling the paleface intruders into a tight bunch. Then an older Indian rode up carrying a long spear, covered from end to end in outstretched feathers. He tapped this spear on the ground, rattling bells attached to it, which brought the Braves up short and silent in respect. The older Indian nodded to Sam, who nodded back, without exchanging a word. The older Indian wheeled his horse around and trotted off the way he came and Sam urged his horse forward. The rest followed, with the quietened Braves bringing up the rear.

They rode along in silence. Caroline noticed that Alice still looked frightened, so she dropped back to ride next to her, patting her hand and smiling.

Caroline shook her head. 'There was nothing to be afraid of, was there?' she thought to herself. 'This is just a dream and I'll wake up shivering with the cold in Dad's old car any minute.'

From atop a bluff, the village of teepee tents came into view, on a bend in a meandering river. Soon they were splashing across the shallow water, the hooves muddying the sparkling clear water, still refreshingly cold after flowing down from the distant mountains. Then they were up the bank on the other side and into the village, surrounded by noisy squaws and children, all dressed in a riot of natural colours, decorated in shiny beads and flowing tassels. Mostly they were smiling, with hands waving to Samuel, who they clearly knew well.

Alice cheered up too, in the face of the smiling crowd, realising her worse fears that they would eat her alive were unfounded.

They all dismounted in front of a large tent. The flap opened and a lean and tall, elderly Indian with long white hair down to his shoulders emerged. He embraced Samuel, scowled at the rest of the arrivals and stomped off.

"That's Gramps," grinned Sam to Caroline, "his bite is worse than his bark!" He laughed at his own joke. "Go in, Caroline, Ma is expecting you."

Tentatively, Caroline pulled open the flap of the teepee and glanced inside. Compared to the bright sunny plain she had ridden through, the inside was dark, gloomy, smokey. She could see nothing except points of brightness where the light came in through gaps in the teepee's construction and the smokey embers of a fire in the centre. She stepped inside, took a couple of steps, and stopped, allowing her eyes to adjust to the interior. A woman with her back to her, squatting by the open fire, poked at the embers, stirring the fire into life, slightly brightening the gloom. She stood up, her long black hair, with hints of silver, braided all the way down her back, and turned.

"Mum!" Caroline gasped in recognition.

"Carrie, dear, I have been waiting for you for so long, I'm glad you could join us at last."

She stepped forward and hugged her only daughter, who she hadn't seen in many years.

"But -" Caroline stuttered, her eyes brimming with tears.

"Welcome to my world, Carrie lass, we're going to have so much fun here. Tell me about the world outside, and news of my ungrateful grandchildren, but first, I hope you brought some tea bags, I'm absolutely parched, sweetheart!"

***

Robert Bagshaw's mobile rang early the next morning while he was driving to work at Dad's store. He saw from the caller ID that it was his mother.

"Hi, Mum," he said, "You feel better this morning? You were really down yesterday."

"Oh, I've never felt better, Robbie. It's about that guy you know who has the low-loader, have you got his number?"

"Yeah, I'll text it to you. Finally getting rid of that old car, huh?"

"Of course not, Rob, I'm taking it home. It was your grandfather's dream car and now ... it's mine."

Chapter 3

Caroline Bagshaw was doing her Christmas shopping in the Ye Olde Christmas Fayre in Market Square at the end of the High Street on the first of December. The place was crowded, heaving with locals and outsiders, all searching for seasonal bargains. Then a double decker bus passing by splashed her coat, and a dozen others, in a spray of muddy water.

It was wet and cold, the skies overcast and raining, with heavier rain forecast to come. The cloud cover kept the temperatures just above freezing, but the windchill factor made it feel far colder.

'Brr!' she thought to herself as she dabbed at her dripping nose, 'Right now I wish I was back in Sweetwater Valley!'

No, first she had to get the Christmas shopping out of the way, including presents for her two boys, Adam and Robert Junior, not that they were boys any longer. And no grandchildren on the horizon, yet from either of them. Both boys had failed marriages, but being still in their early 30s they each had time on their side. She had no other family, no work colleagues and no friends either, to a woman her old friends had all let her down while her family fell apart last year, ending in divorce.

But she did have some strange new friends and family to buy presents for, but some of those were already packed in her late father's old car, safely parked in her garage at home.

As soon as she got home to her tiny drab little semi-detached house in the suburbs, all she could afford in the divorce settlement, she parked her car on her driveway, close up to the securely locked garage.

Indoors, on the kitchen table, she wrapped the boys' presents in bright paper, labelled them and left them in the kitchen until she returned. She packed up her last minute purchases in a couple of bags and had a final look around. No decorations up, no Christmas tree, no Christmas food in the refrigerator. Where she was going, she would have a different kind of Christmas. She locked up the house and carried her bags through to the garage.

There the old car stood, the thirty-odd year old Jaguar XJ12, its maroon paint dulled by age and neglect, spotted with rust, the windows smeared with grime, moss and mildew tussling it out for supremacy in one corner of the glass, and all four tyres flat to the ground. She opened the passenger door, which creaked in protest, to place her new bags next to the others already in the foot well.

'I must get some WD40 on that,' Caroline reminded herself again, before slamming that rarely used door.

The driver's door opened silently, smoothly on well oiled hinges, which reminded her of her late father, Samuel Jeremiah 'Jed' Pinner, who loved this car, but never actually drove it, suffering a stroke which paralysed him a week before the car, ordered by his late wife, was delivered. She eased herself into the lovingly polished leather seat, pulled the door shut behind her with a smooth click and closed her eyes for a moment's reflection.
She opened them again. It was decidedly chilly in the garage and her breathing was starting to mist up the inside of the glass.

'Enough of this,' she thought, 'I must get moving, so much to do to get ready for Christmas in Sweetwater.'

She reached over to the passenger seat, where her father's old Stetson lay. She put it on, leaned back comfortably in the bucket seat and closed her eyes...

When Caroline opened her eyes she was sitting on the hard but now familiar wooden seat in the old stagecoach. It was twilight, somewhen between night and dawn, but then the stagecoach between Sweetwater and Carson always ends up in this twilight zone, a buffer between fantasy and reality.

Her bags of Christmas presents from the car came with her and nestled on the bench seat next to her. Everything in the front two seats of the Jaguar XJ12, her Pop's Dream Car, always goes with her to Sweetwater if she used the Stagecoach service. Anything in the back seat or in the boot remained in the car. Which reminded her, she needed to speak to her mother about the contents of the car boot. She felt sure that she would know what to do with them.

The only other thing that never comes with her to Sweetwater, is Pop's Stetson. It must be an essential link that takes her back to reality, she supposed. Something else to discuss with Dove Feather, when she next saw her at the Injun Reservation. So many mysteries in Sweetwater Valley to think about and find solutions to!

The Stagecoach to Carson comes back to Sweetwater each day, usually arriving about noon, but sometimes earlier if there is a full moon for the early ride. Chuck and Dale are the drivers of the four-horse stagecoach. They all sleep just off the edge of the fantasy grid and wake up in time to return, fully refreshed as if nothing has happened. Sometime they bring goods back, sometimes passengers, and they drop off passengers heading to Carson, too, who disappear into nothingness, beyond the fantasy grid.

Chuck was holding the reins in his leathery hands, his sweat-stained ten gallon hat jammed over his head, his chin resting on his chest. Next to him, Dale had his Winchester across his lap, his head lolling back, and snoring almost loud enough to wake the horses. The team of four horses were at rest, ready to awaken on the crack of a whip or a barked command of "Giddy up!"

Caroline climbed a step up, noticing that her comfortable Ugg boots had changed themselves into polished brown leather riding boots, while her size 16 woollen plaid skirt and man-made fibre blouse was now an ankle length silk bottle green dress with a pinched 22-inch waist, full bustle at the back and the front buttoned up to the neck with tiny pearl buttons. The transformation never ceased to amaze her, even though she should have become used to it by now. She gently shook the stagecoach driver's arm.

"Who? What? Why, howdy there, Miss Bagshawh, I must've dozed off for a moment. Dale! Dale! Wake up ya damn lazy good fer nothin' varmint! Ya're asleep on the job agin, I should have ya bullwhipped!"

"What are ya bein' so ornery fer, Chuck? Yu wus a sleepin' an' mekin' a noise like that damned steam buzz saw, that that there carpenter from Carson used ter build the School House the Fall before last, long afore I — oh, Miss Bagshawh, I never seen ya there. I must apologise fer ma lang—"

"Don't you worry, Dale, I am in no hurry. How long do you think it will take to get to town?"

Chuck and Dale peered forward into the gloom. Not for the first time, thought Caroline, they never look back into nothingness, they only really see Sweetwater Valley.

"Why, ma'am, we're at Wet Patch Gulch, where we always water the horses and rest. The township of Sweetwater is on'y the other side o' the ridge. We'll have ya'll outside the Grand Hotel in no time at all!"

The team of horses shook themselves awake and snorted, eager to get moving again. Soon the Stagecoach was over the ridge and flying down the dusty track towards the one horse frontier town of Sweetwater, a place that Caroline now regarded as home.

All around the valley, the mountains were topped with snow, and Caroline knew the high pastures of the Lazy C Ranch would be under snow by now and getting to them would involve skilled horsemanship and endurance. She rubbed her hands together. She was looking forward to this, her first winter in the high sierras above Sweetwater.

It was so early in the morning when the Stagecoach rumbled into the town from the East that no one yet appeared to be awake. Nobody stirred at first anyway. A lone coyote at the end of the Main Street looked up lazily from whatever dead creature it was scavenging flesh from, turned and lollopped away out of town and up the trail westward.

A few frozen patches of moisture nestled in the dirt street, and traces of wind blown ice crystals gathered in quiet corners, showed that it had been cold, but the air here was too dry for frost, the sky above clear of clouds, as it usually was in the Township of Sweetwater.

The stagecoach pulled up in front of the Sweetwater Grand Hotel, the horses breathing out steam into the cold air. A lamp glowed dimly in the lobby, but no one came out to greet them.

Dale opened the door for Caroline to step down to the boardwalk, while Chuck collected her shopping bags from the other door and carried them up the steps through to the hotel lobby.

"Thank you boys," Caroline said, ferreting around in her purse and, next to some £1 and 20p coins, found a couple of more-than-acceptable two-cent coins, with which she thanked them for their assistance.

Once in the hotel, she put down her case next to the shopping bags, took off her bonnet and banged her palm down once on the brass bell on the counter. In the back office Caroline smiled as she fancied she heard someone fall off a chair.

"Who's there?" stepped out old Henry, the night clerk, spluttering at the intrusion, "well, howdy Miss Bagshawh, I wus jus' catchin' up on some ... paperwork. What can I help you with at—" he glanced at the grand clock on the wall, designed, it appeared, more for a railway station terminus concourse rather than the lobby of a provincial hotel — "at a quarter before six in the morning? ... Oh, of course, I was forgetting, you had your Pa Jed's rooms, ain't ya?"

Old Henry must be in his seventies, yet he had more jobs than anyone else in town, thought Caroline. As well as night porter at the hotel, he daily swept out the Saloon just a block down the street, and on Saturday night he played honky tonk on the old piano at Ma Goodden's Good Time Hall on the east end of Main Street, as well as twice a week he cleaned the office and surgery of the mysterious Dentist/Doctor G Hollywell. Again, she had wondered what the 'G' stood for but didn't want anyone to know that she wanted to know.

Mysterious, thought Caroline, because they hadn't crossed paths yet. When Caroline first came to Sweetwater a couple of months ago, she moved straight out to the Lazy C for a couple of weeks to settle affairs with her half-brother and mother. By the time she returned to the Hotel, just before her recent three-week trip "Back East, via Carson", the good Doctor had already gone Back East himself, on a family emergency. One of the mysteries she needed to speak to her mother about was the apparent independence of action that all these fantasy characters seemed to have. The dreamworld wasn't managed quite as well as she would have liked. Old Henry shook her from her thoughts.

"Let me help ya'll with them bags, Miss Bagshawh. Young Alice arrived from her Ma's yesterday afore noon, so I s'pose she's got it spick 'n' span an'all fer ya. I'm sure last night she said we wus expectin' ya on the noon stage."

As they climbed the creaky staircase, he added, "Marshall's bin having trouble with rustlers over at Alice's Ma, the Marshal's sister's place, Cottonwood Pines, ma'am. They damn well took a mess o' their steers an' he ain't caught up with the varmints yet, cos the snow fell thick enough an' covered up their tracks."

"Have we had much snow since I left, Henry?"

"Not here, ma'am, not in the last three weeks, but Ma Wells and her hands wus snowed in last week an', when they dug 'emselves out, they found some outlaws had cut out a bunch o' their stock."

That was worrying, Caroline thought, she had believed that rustlers rarely operated that close to town.

"They wus takin' advantage o' a widder, ma'am," old Henry added, possibly appreciating her silence, "an' folks round 'ere won't put up wi' that, but that Marshal Denton, now, he'll string 'em up fer sure!"

She sorted out a half-cent tip for old Henry, and let herself into her suite. It had a large double fronted reception room in the front facing onto Main Street and two small bedrooms looking out over the quiet back of the hotel. The smaller of the two bedrooms was her maid Alice Wells' room and she was clearly still fast asleep.

Caroline thought, 'I keep telling myself that this Clearwater Valley is all a fantasy world, that right now I am really just sleeping in my Pop's mouldy old wreck of a car in my garage at home. This is a dream, albeit a really vivid one, in which my Pop lived a full and vigorous life, which helped him maintain a lively mind inside a half-paralysed shell in the real world, until two months ago when his heart finally gave out. In this dreamworld, he was gunned down by three desperadoes, two of whom were hanged, but one, an imbecile, received a prison sentence and shipped Back East to prison in Carson. Why would a dream fantasy have real gun fighters and real rustlers for? I need to get out to the Lazy C Ranch and as soon as possible I want to visit Dove Feather, my mother. She knows a lot more about this place than she's telling me!'

"Alice," she called through the bedroom door, it's me, I'm home and we need to get moving."

Chambermaid Alice Wells was pleased to see Caroline returned to Sweetwater, and squealed with delight as she bounced out of her room in the hotel suite.

"Ma swore you'd never ever come back, Miss Bradshawh. She said that once ya'll went Back East, that ya'd stay with all them fancy rich folk, an' leave us to dry up like sticks here on our own. An', without a Pinner in charge, Ma said that the Lazy C ranch would close up altogether or become just another part o' the Injun Reservation."

"But Sam was in charge of the ranch while I was away, and you said yourself, he was the best cowboy around."

"Yeah, Ah did, an' Ah do, but Ma says she don't consider no Injun no proper person, so he don't count."

"That isn't right, Alice, you know that. He's a man like everyone else. In fact he owns half that ranch, so he's richer than a lot of folk Back East. Anyway, I thought you really liked Sam?"

"Ah rightly do, ma'am, Ah like him right fine. He's the bestest an' nicest cowboy Ah know, and he'd realise Ah wus sweet on him if he ever got his damned head outta his britches!"

"Ha! Ha! You will soon learn in life, Alice, that all menfolk have their heads up their backsides most of the time, and Samuel Red Coyote Pinner is just a boy playing at being a man, same as all the rest. Keep working on him, though, the message'll get through to him eventually."

"So you ain't neither of you leaving Sweetwater soon, then ma'am?"

"Not ever. That would never happen, Alice, the more I come here, and stay here, the more I regard this as home," Caroline reassured her. "The ranch will carry on going all the while there is a Sweetwater Valley here. That much I am sure of. And you already know that the ranch means everything to Sam. That's why I thought it would be best to leave him in sole charge from the very first day I arrived, so he knows that I trust him, and I am sure he would have run the spread fine, while I was away."

"That's what Ah tried to tell Ma, but she kept on sayin' it so often while you wus away, that after a while, that's all Ah could think of, too."

"I know, Alice, I've had my fill of negative thoughts recently, too, and it needs something special to shake you out of that thinking. I think coming here helps me too."

"It's just that Ma's had it hard since Pa upped and left us, an' she don't trust nobody no more. She says that folk around here had better meke the most of it an' do just whatever they can do to get by."

"Well, let me assure you, that all the while I am living here, the Lazy C will still be raising cows with my brother Sam running the place. So, other than your Ma mouthing off about my family, what else has been going on since I went back East?"

"Aw, gosh! Ah don't know much myself, Miss Bradshawh. Ah only got back into town yesterdee, so I ain't heard that much news. I kin tell yah that my uncle the Marshal is out combing the whole territ'ry fer them damn rustlers. Oh, did you hear that we lost about fifty head o' cattle to them bushwackin' rustlers?"

"Yes, I heard from old Henry just now," Caroline said, "you were all safe in the ranch house?"

"Yes, ma'am, the butte at Cottonwood Pines always gets bad weather early, it ain't as pretty or well sheltered as the ranch house at the Lazy C. We had a bad snow fall a week ago, an' when we dug ourselves out a couple of days later, we noticed we wus short on cows. Our foreman checked on the herd and then me an' a couple of hands rode in to fetch Uncle Tom."

"You rode in?"

"Yeah, I bin practicin' using a man's saddle. It made ma butt as uncomfortable as hell, beggin' yah pardon Miss Caroline, at first, but I succeeded."

"Good for you, Alice!"

"So we rode ter ma Uncle the Marshal's office. He wus mighty vexed, Miss Bradshawh, I never heared him swear so much before!"

"Well, he seemed to have good reason, Alice, with your Mother trying to run the place and make a go of it on her own."

"It is hard, as they never left no tracks cos o' the snow. He ain't even raised no posse yet, cos Uncle Tom is still investigatin', just like them Pinkituns Agents, but he'll sniff 'em out 'n' lynch 'em soon fer sure!"

Caroline remembered, with some horror, the last public hanging, the first and only hanging she'd seen. The Judge had said that she being one of the leading landowners in the county, that it was important that she were present to see justice being done. She had attended the trial, and two of the men who gunned her father down in cold blood, were hardened criminals, implicated in a series of murders, stagecoach hold-ups and had even robbed the bank in a nearby township that she had never heard the name of before. It was all a fantasy, she had told herself; the trial seemed fair, the guilty all had their say, despite Judge Justice Makepeace's earlier declaration to her that he would hang them for sure. Well, the hanging wasn't clean and antiseptic, like she thought it would be. These men did not have their necks broken in the drop, no, they died together slowly by strangulation, kicking and struggling for breath for five full minutes. Those minutes seemed to take an hour for Caroline. She never wanted to see another hanging and was still unreconciled to that unnecessary part of the fantasy.

She knew that these people, Alice and old Henry included, weren't real, but she couldn't divorce her mind from thinking that they seemed so real, they felt real, so somehow they must be real. That this 'fantasy world' was just another kind of 'reality'.

The only difference between her real world, where she was 54, divorced, poor, friendless and was looked down on by her two children, was that here in Sweetwater Valley she was young and attractive, relatively wealthy, the half owner of the biggest and most successful ranch in the county, and had an interest in this hotel and other businesses, had a status of prime importance in this Western community, and had a loving half brother and mother who were always glad to see her. Even her maid Alice had delighted in welcoming her, and she had taken the time to clean and dust these rooms ready for her return; that red desert dust covered everything in a short space of time, but Alice had everything dusted and polished. Once again, it crossed her mind, would she prefer to stay in this place and never go back to her old reality?

Alice was still talking, as she bustled around Caroline's bedroom, looking out from the wardrobes, and spreading out on the bed, all the clothes they would need for the trip to the ranch.

"There's still no word from the Santa Fe & Colby railroad company, Miss Bradshawh, since they dun their surveyin' way back in the summer. An' Old Henry got a Pony Express letter from Doc Hollywell last week, he's bin delayed by his family business, so we cain't expect to see him 'til nigh on Christmas."

"That's most disappointing, Alice, I was looking forward to meeting him, and I wondered—" she almost asked that question that was there on the tip of her tongue, 'what does G stand for?', and changed what she was saying to, "I wonder what the weather has been like at the ranch?"

"I met with some o' the Lazy C ranch hands who were in town last night. They were in the eatin' house called Ma Turners, you know the one behind the Liberty Drug Store? Well, they said it was still cold but dry at the ranch. I knew you'd want to go to the Injun Reservation to see Miss Pinner soon, so I asked about the mountain trail and the other way around on the riverbank. They said the mountain wus already snowed in thicker than a buckboard seat is off the ground, so there's no way over there. But the riverside wus still free o' snow. I took the liberty of hirin' a pony an' light gig from the Liberty Livery Stables, which should be light enough fer either of us to handle, on the way to the ranch an' around to the Injun Reservation."

"Well, that was good thinking, Alice, let's both get dressed and we can be off."

"Yessiree, Ma'am!"

Chapter 4

Caroline and Alice rode out to the Lazy C ranch in that hired single-horse gig. Alice drove it confidently for the first twenty minutes or so, and they were well out of town before she handed the reins over to Caroline. The older woman took them hesitatingly at first, but relaxed once she realised the horse hadn't missed a stride in the changeover and was virtually driving itself.

"I guess Back East they have fancy Hansom cabs or sedan chairs to take you back and forth, huh, Ma'am? I seed them once in a book o' yah Pa's."

"Not quite, Alice, I think sedan chairs went out, probably, a hundred years ago."

"So you ain't seen no sedan chairs?"

"No, and I think they only had, er, have Hansom cabs in New York."

"Tell me about Back East, Miss Caroline, I bet it ain't nuthin' like Sweetwater."

"It is nothing like here, true. I can take a b— er omnibus into the town of 100,000 people to shop, eat and go home again, and not see or speak to anyone l know."

"Gee!" Alice's eyes were wide open, "Ah cain't walk to the drug store without twenty conversations 'long the way."

"Yes, I know! But Back East, there are all these people all crowded together in one place and so many are lonely and sad, and afraid. Here, everyone knows everyone else, and cares about them, and you only have to worry about a few Injuns, rustlers and gunslingers."

Alice remembered the reason for Miss Caroline coming out to Sweetwater, after her Pa was gunned down in the Main Street by three desperadoes. She put a hand on the back of Caroline's, "Your Pa loved it here an' he wouldn't have wanted to go out any other way, ya know."

"I know, Alice."

Caroline fell silent, thinking about her father. Her memories over the past thirty years was of a man who had lost his wife, then suffered a paralysing stroke almost immediately, when he was in his prime aged about 58, and after that was virtually housebound for the rest of his life. Yet he had a whole new life here in this fantasy world, during all that time. Here he had been a vigorous young man, maturing into a respected middle-aged entrepreneur, carving a living town and prosperous ranch out of a desert wilderness.
"I would have liked to have known more about him, his life here. I must speak to Dove Feather to find out more."

"Well, dang, Miss Caroline, I kin tell you a lot about Jed Pinner, cos my Uncle Tom was his deputy way back when all this wus wilderness, nuthin' hereabout but rattlesnakes an' Injuns."

"Deputy?"

"Yeah, there weren't no law here in the territ'ry then. There wus just a tradin' post fer the Injuns here, before the silver mines opened up on Silver Butte, about a mile south o' town. The town sure built up fast, made o' tents at first, before Old Man McCulloch's timber mill opened up an' the town got built. Your Pa wus one o' the first here, struck it rich and bought up the best spread in the county and named it after you."

"The Lazy C?"

"Dang! Ma'am, I never meant—"

"It's all right Alice, I know exactly what he meant, I settled for the wrong man in marriage. My father never approved of Robert."

"No, ma'am, it couldn't have been that. Let me think. Uncle Tom wus about 16 when he became deputy sheriff."

"You grow up quick around here!" Caroline laughed, "I was still in school at 16."

"Well, we never had no schoolin', only what we could pick up."

"We must do something about filling that school house."

"I think Mr Jed was hopin' ya'll 'ud come here an' learn us, if only he coulda git ya to come out West."

"I now wish he'd told me or, well, been more persuasive," Caroline said, "So, just an Injun trading post here to start with?"

"Yeah, so they say, tradin' buck hides mostly, according to Miss Dove Feather."

"She remembers the trading post?"

"Yeah, she wus just a nuncksquassis, but she had a medicine man fer a father, so folk paid her mind. She took me on to train as ya maid a year before ya came, Miss Caroline, so meybe she does has that second sight that folks whisper that she had."

"That wouldn't surprise me, one bit!"

"Well, it wus mah Grandpappy that came out here fust, fer the silver, but the big motherlode wus gone and his claim were all played out, but then yah Pa was Sheriff an' he needed help in the form of deputies, so mah Grandpappy joined him in the Sheriff's office. It wus a baptism o' fire, mah uncle tells me, with gunfights every night."

"How did he, did he survive?"

"No, he never did, Miss Caroline, but he lasted a few years as Deputy Sheriff. I never knew him, but he sent for his family from Back East and my Grandmammy, Ma and Uncle Tom arrived here, about five years before I wus born. Grandpappy wus cowardly ambushed an' gunned down, along with a couple o' other deputies, an' they wounded ya Pa, too. But my Uncle Tom was a deputy who stood up with yah Pa an' they plugged them bushwackers so good there wusn't no need fer any lynchin'!"

"So that's how your Uncle became Marshal?"

"He wus made Deputy Sheriff for a while an' he has lots of stories ta tell 'bout yer Pa, but when the valley became a Terri'try, the Sheriff became a Marshal, an' Jed Pinner decided ta step down to run the ranch full time, marry his new squaw Dove Feather, an' raise young Samuel."

They could see the five-bar gate to the Lazy C Ranch on the track ahead, but unusually, the gate was closed.

Caroline dropped down from the gig and opened the gate for Alice to drive through. As she moved the gate, a brass bell hanging from one of the posts rang out, and rang out again as Caroline closed the gate behind them. As Caroline walked around the back of the gig, she noticed a crate behind the seat full of dark green bottles. Each bottle was wrapped in a cloth to stop them rattling on the rough trail, which is why she hadn't noticed them before. Painted on the side of the crate in stencilled old-style Wild West lettering were the words "FIREWATER, Fer Injuns Only".

"What's this, Alice?"

"That's a box of firewater delivered from Carson on the Stagecoach, fust thing this mornin'," replied Alice easily. "Cain't stand the stuff meself, Miss Caroline, it fair burns ma throat. Far too strong fer me, in fact, all womenfolk round here don't touch it. I don't know how the men in that saloon kin sit an' drink it all night long!"

The bottles were corked, but only half the cork was in the neck, the other half poked out the top. Caroline pulled one of the bottles out of the crate and unwrapped it. Sure enough, the label pasted on it, in that curious Western type, was printed, "Carson Brewery's Patented FIREWATER Elixir Specially Formulated Fer The Injun Nation, Guaranteed To Make Any Ornery Injun See Red. Drink Responsibly Or Spend The Night In Jail."

She pulled the cork and sniffed at it, the smell was powerful, but not quite what she expected, so she tentatively sipped some. This "Firewater", she noted with some amusement, was ginger ale.

"This is ginger ale, Alice."

"Yeah ma'am ain't that the honest truth! That stuff really burns ma throat!"

As an amused Caroline climbed back in the gig, after replacing the cork, and rewrapping the bottle back in the crate, they could see a couple of riders heading towards them from the direction of the ranch house. One of them waved his hat in the air.

"That's Clint, Miss Caroline, I guess he's bin outriding the steers, worried about rustlers. But I guess too, that Sam wus expecting us to come this way as soon as ya'll arrived home."

Yes, thought Caroline, l'm almost home for Christmas.

Clint and his partner rode up to the girls in the gig, both Cowboys full of smiles.

"Howdy, Miss Bradshawh and Miss Alice. Did ya have a good trip Back East, ma'am?"

"I did, thank you Clint. You been out all night waiting for us?"

"No, ma'am," he chuckled, "we set out just after breakfast to relieve the cowboys doin' the night watch. Oh, mah pardner here is Seth, he wus one o' yah Pa's first hands. I think when you wus here last, Miss Bradshawh, he wus with the cattle drive to the railhead in Pertinence township, Chowtah Territ'try, the place where the railroad ends."

"Pleased ta meet yah, Ma'am, we all thought the world o' yah Pa, an' he talked about yah all the time, so we're all glad yah've come home an' we hopes yah stay."

"I hope so too." Caroline waved at the older cowboy and, not for the first time, wondered if all of these men on the ranch had skin made out of leather, tanned dark by the relentless sun. There were patches of powdery snow skulking in the shade of sagebrush and in gullies, but everywhere the warm winter sun touched, the snow had melted and the ground desiccated once more.

The two fell alongside the gig, one on each side. Alice said, "giddy up!" and the gig moved off down the track at a canter, the pony in anticipation of an end to the trip, a warm stable, a cool drink and a bag of oats.

"Are you on the look out for rustlers, Clint?"

"Yeah, Marshal Denton came by yest'day afternoon to see if we'd seen any signs. I think he suspects the Injuns, though we on'y just sent over a few head for their needs a week past. Anyhoo, Sam sent us out in pairs ta make a runnin' check on the stock. The Marshal wus still there this mornin' when the chow bell rang fer breakfast."

Within the hour, Caroline could see the two storied ranch house, made of white painted wood, perched on the top of a rise, with spectacular views all around. Off-white wood smoke rose from a number of stone-built chimneys, the plumes rising up like puffs of cotton candy against the azure sky. The outbuildings, barns and corrals were now familiar to her, and the stout wooden bridge over the meandering river welcomed her home with a crack and a few groans.

Her brother Samuel, the capable 16-year-old half owner of the ranch, greeted her and Alice, with a embrace for his sister and a squeezing touch on the shoulder for her pretty maid.

"It's great to see you back, my dearest sister Caroline, I trust you had a good trip East?" Sam said, "we must sit in the parlour and catch up with each other's news."

She slapped him lightly on the arm, "Not just your dearest, but your only sister, brother dear. We'll visit your mother tomorrow, will that be all right?"

"Yeah, 'course we will, though I find it hard that you two seem ta get on so well, almost like I'd imagine sisters would, I'd 'a' bin satisfied if you was only able to tolerate each other."

"Well, we both have you in common, dear brother, so we always have plenty of things to discuss!"

Marshal Tom Denton, tall, moustachioed, an authoritative figure, in his black coat and pearl handled pistols, appeared, to welcome his niece Alice, and to kiss the hand of his host's sister.

"I'd like ta accompany ya'll to the Injun village, Miss Caroline. I understand they already have enough cows fer their needs from ya brother's generosity, but I'd still like ta check the brands o' them steers fer myself."

"It'll be a pleasure to be in company with you, Marshal."

"Please call me, Tom, Miss Caroline, when we are in private, it is so much better to be in relaxed company."

"Indeed it is, Tom."

Caroline begged leave the party soon after supper, eager to go to bed and sleep.

"Of course, Sis, you have travelled much these past two days."

That was true, she had travelled further than anyone could imagine. Sleep came soon after her head touched the pillow.

Wakefulness, came even quicker, waking with her body refreshed, sitting in her father's mouldy old car, safe in her chilly garage.

'Brrr,' she shivered involuntarily, she was cold, so cold. She took off the Stetson and set it down carefully on the passenger seat. By her watch, she had been gone about an hour. An hour had passed in her Cotswold reality, while she had spent some fourteen hours in the Old Wild West, a fantasy that while she was there had seemed so real.

How the magic worked, always intrigued her. She transports to the fantasy world, after donning her father's hat in his old car. Her sleeping form remaining there in the car, while her imagination takes her into the fantasy, where she remains until she sleeps. Asleep in Sweetwater, she awakens back in the old car, where only a small proportion of the actual hours spent, have elapsed in the real world. Yet she always wakes up fully refreshed, however short the sleep.

When she returns by donning the Stetson, whether it was the next day or week later, the lapsed time in Sweetwater was the next significant disturbance in her sleep, usually dawn the next day. Although there was a case at the hotel, where a fire broke out in the hotel's livery stables, which roused the whole town at 3 am. Caroline awoke with the rest of the town, immediately after putting on the Stetson in her father's car and closing her eyes. It reassured her that she was physically safe in Sweetwater and wouldn't sleep through a disaster.

However, she thought, as she used the connecting door from the garage into her warm kitchen, the consideration of her comfort here, as the winter progressed, needed further consideration, possibly by installing a radiator in her garage.

While the kettle boiled for her tea, Caroline looked up a number in the local trades telephone directory and called a plumber. She was happy to agree to an early appointment in three days, due to a previous cancellation, but was informed that she needed to come to the shop in town first, to select a suitable radiator from their stock.

Caroline drove her small car towards the plumber's shop. How wet and windy it was, with the rain turning to sleet. In front of her, a sporty car accelerated to get through the traffic signals, as they changed from amber to red. He passed close to a young girl on a bicycle, his wing mirror clipping her so she fell off the bike into the gutter. The car drove off without stopping. Caroline stopped and jumped out of the car.

"Are you all right?"

"My arm," the girl cried, "and my knee!"

The girl was crying. Her parents were at work, she said, and the girl didn't know their numbers. So, Caroline drove her to Casualty, helped her sign in at the desk and waited with the distraught girl until a doctor became available. She called the office of one of the parents and was put through to the father. He worked too far away to come quickly, he said, but he would try and get his wife to go to the hospital, hopefully within an hour or so. Caroline happily offered to stay with the girl until the mother arrived. The nurse asked Caroline to come in with the girl, presumably thinking she was the mother.

In the cubicle, Caroline met Dr George, a kindly doctor, a rather elderly doctor, she thought, who dealt with the poor girl's injuries sensitively. Caroline smiled a lot in his company, he was charming, had a twinkle in his eye, and had a nice smile. His hair was grey, and it seemed odd that he should be working in casualty, as all the other doctors looked fresh out of medical college.

The girl was in the toilet, and Caroline was sitting quietly awaiting the arrival of the parent, when Dr George sat down next to her.

"Your daughter will be perfectly all right, you know," he said, "it must've been a shock, but there will be no lasting damage."

"Oh, she's not my daughter, I was just a witness to the accident. We chained up her bike and came straight here."

"A Good Samaritan then?" His eyes twinkled.

"Hardly," she replied, "anyone would have helped if they had been there."

"Not everyone, not in my experience."

"Talking of experience, I usually only see young doctors in Casualty."

"Ah, yes. Well, my wife met someone else and now she's my ex-wife. So I moved to this town, which I had fond memories of forty years ago as a young man. Now I'm waiting for my house to be altered ready for me to move into by the New Year." Dr George said, smiling, "I'm staying in a hotel at the moment and it is so boring and lonely there, that I am doing extra shifts in the hospital to pass the time, and I go where I am needed, usually Casualty."

"I see, where is your new house?"

"Coronation Road, do you know it?"

"Yes, we will be near neighbours, I live in Albert Crescent." Caroline smiled, "The houses in Coronation Road are grand Edwardian detached and semis. What work are you having done?"

"Reslating the roof," he started.

"Oh!" Caroline jumped in, "it must be the house on the corner by Charlotte Mews, isn't it?"

"That's the one," he grinned, "and, as well as the roof work, I am having it rewired and installing new radiators."

At that point, Caroline remembered the plumbers and realised it was too late to get the radiator sorted, that day.

Chapter 5

Dr George was called away to a Casualty cubicle, just as the injured girl returned from the toilet. At the same time the girl's mother arrived to collect her. It took a few minutes of embracing, accepting thanks, and spilling a whole bucket of tears, before Caroline was able to get away from the hospital.

The plumbers' supply shop, as expected, was shut, locked up tight for the night. Fetching the torch she kept in the car, she shone it through the plumbers' window, and picked out the radiator she preferred, identified it on a rough sketch she drew on the back of a handbill, added her address and telephone number, and popped it through their letterbox.

When she reached home, she felt quite hungry and tired, so she heated up some soup and, when finished, she put on her thick, warm coat and took a fleecy blanket out to the garage with her. She slipped into the driver's seat and made herself warm and comfortable, before saying goodbye to the Cotswolds, donning the Stetson and closing her eyes.

It was a cold but sunny dawn in Sweetwater Valley, on the Lazy C ranch, when Caroline awoke instantly and felt fully refreshed.

Mrs Duggan made sure that the party going to the Injun Reservation were filled up with a hearty breakfast and supplied them with extra packages of vittles because, "I ain't sure what them there varmints eat, but, to be sure, ev'ry Injun I ever sees is a skinny one!"

Caroline filled one of her saddlebags with sweet treats for the Injun children, that she had brought with them, plus a wrapped gift for Dove Feather, which she would keep back in her other saddlebag, if her mother agreed to come back for a family Christmas Celebration at the Lazy C.

It was a eager party of four that rode out along the river bank route to the Injun Reservation. When they mounted up, it was Sam who was the most surprised that Alice wasn't riding sidesaddle, as she had on their previous trip.

"When did you learn to ride like that?" he asked.

"At my Ma's at Cottonwood Butte. I had to try, after I see Miss Caroline ridin' so comfortable, I thought I'd learn."

Marshal Tom joined in with a booming laugh, "Mah sister wus none too pleased, she don't hold with no girls on horseback, no siree, Bob, she ain't never. She reckons all womenfolk should be driven everywhere by coach!"

They hadn't gone a couple of miles before Sam complimented Alice on her riding. Alice thought, with some conviction, that in order to compliment her, he must have been watching her. Caroline had never seen her smile so broadly before, and it seemed to sustain her throughout the long, tiring ride.

As they rode upstream, they climbed, and as they did so they found more snow had fallen, then, around the other side of the mountain, they found snow was falling steadily. They stopped for a break after about two hours, at a commonly used stopping point, where there was a rocky overhang to provide some shelter from the falling snow.

Caroline asked Marshal Tom about how his investigations were proceeding into the rustlers.

"Well, Miss Caroline, Ah couldn't find no trace o' tracks over at Cottonwood Butte. They had a big fall o' snow that week, that snowed in the ranch house fer a few days. It's built in a gulch below a bluff, which shelters them from the prevailin' hot southerly wind in the summer, but this storm came in from the north. They had a foot o' snow fall in a day, but it wus blown some three feet deep in the drifts. The rustlers must have struck at the start of the storm an' cut out fifty steers, gettin' clean away."

"How many Cowboys would that take to move and control fifty cows in the driving snow, Sam?"

"In good conditions," Sam answered, "two men would be fine. If it was snowing that hard, I would venture at least three or four. I would drive them south with the wind behind, so everyone could see better, but the McReady's sheep farm lies in that direction."

"Yeah, that's what Ah figured," the Marshall agreed, "Ah rode all around the ranch but Ah jus' couldn't find any sign of what direction they wus headin'."

"So you think it might be the ... Injuns?" Caroline asked, still having to give the word second thoughts before saying it here. They simply never used the word 'Indian', and didn't appear to know the word existed.

"I don't!" spoke up Sam, "They have no need to take the risk of stealing anyone's cows. They haven't needed to do that for years."

"Maybe so," the Marshal commented, "but I will investigate, Sam. I am not like the sheriffs and marshals of old frontier towns, like ya read in the pulp westerns. I ain't got no posse, no lynchin' mob, I ain't goin' in behind a wall o' lead. I jus' wanna look around fer evidence. If they ain't guilty, I will be the first to apologise to 'em. If they are guilty, then they will have to repay my Sis fer her loss, say work it off around the ranch, for instance."

Soon the Injun Reservation was evidentially nearby, as a band of young braves on painted ponies, suddenly and silently appeared, surrounding them, their bows charged with arrows. But they were full of non-threatening smiles.

"Caught you nappin', huh, Paleface Red Coyote!" one of them laughed. Red Coyote was Samuel Pinner's Injun name, his mother being an Injun squaw.

"I see'd ya comin' a mile off," Sam growled, "That's why I drew my six gun a while ago and have it under my poncho pointing at your heart, Yellow Snow!"
Yellow Snow looked down. Sure enough, the half-Paleface/half-Injun rancher had his six gun in hand, the barrel making a significant bulge in the poncho and pointing to the Injun's heart. "Ha! Sneakier than any full Injun, Red Coyote, I reckon we'll have to call this one even."

Yellow Snow laughed and all the other braves laughed with him, putting their arrows away back in their quivers. The whole party, white men, women and escorting Injuns, rode into the encampment as one.

Caroline's mother, Dove Feather, was waiting outside her teepee. Yet it was Red Coyote who jumped down first and greeted his mother in a warm embrace. Caroline and Dove Feather exchanged a more restrained welcome, in the form of light kisses on cheeks, as did Alice, who Dove Feather knew well and had trained to become Caroline's maid. Dove Feather and the Marshal merely nodded in greeting. Red Coyote was not aware yet that Caroline was a whole instead of a half sister. That was a conversation that would have to wait until the time was right and all three were alone.

And Caroline and Dove Feather would have to wait until the pair of them were alone before they could discuss pressing matters.

"Hi, Mum," Caroline said later as she entered the teepee, "I wasn't sure I'd be able to catch you on your own before I fell asleep."

"That would have been inconvenient, dear," Dove Feather smiled, "come here, Carrie dear, give your old Mum a cuddle."

It felt so good, so many years of hurt melting away.

"Tell me about David, Mum, and Samuel. You died, so how did you end up here?"

"I didn't die, I left that body behind and came here, I stayed here permanently and that old body of mine was dying anyway and eventually died of my neglect. I poured every ounce of my life force that I could spare to build this fantasy world for your father and me to live in. I started it all off at home but my strength there ran out of time and I had to do the rest of it from here."

"But Dad died here at the same time as back home. How was it you died at home but live here?"

"Are you sure that those two events are related?"

"What am I supposed to think?"

"I know, Carrie sweetheart, it is difficult to get a complete handle on it, but I assure you that it is better that you work it out for yourself, I can only give you the barest hints and answer those questions that are really easy."

"But why? Honestly, Mum is becom—"

Just then the tent flap flew open and Hiding Fox walked in, and stood still when he saw the two women in conversation.

"Oh, father, would you mind?" Dove Feather said, "but Miss Caroline and I have some things to discuss in private, Red Coyote being one of them."

The old medicine man nodded and turned to go, before he paused and asked, "How long do you need?"

"Say two walks around the camp, maybe three?"

The old man nodded to them both in turn, "Daughter, Miss Caroline," and left, dropping the flap of the teepee closed behind him.

"Did you teach him English?" Caroline asked.

"Ha! Ha!" Dove Feather laughed and slapped her thigh, she was almost bent double with laughter. "Caroline, how long have you been here and how many Injuns have you spoken to?"

"This is my third trip to this camp, and I have heard four or five braves talk, like Yellow Snow this afternoon. They all speak surprisingly good English."

"Of course they do. How could they possibly speak Commanche or Apache, when neither your father or I can?"

"Of course, they are what your vision of the Old West was, from your re-enactment society days?"

"And using as references those supporting Western films from the times of our youth, black and white repeats on Saturday morning pictures, and pulp novels."

"So all these 'Injuns' are just pretend red indians, like Caucasian extras and actors!"

"Exactly!" Dove Feather smiled. "I started out with the tribe, I came here as a little girl, maybe aged about six years old and was taken in by my adopted mother Honey Bear, and medicine man father Hiding Fox. They didn't have a child of their own. I wandered into camp pretending I had no idea where I was from. They kept me hidden from white men while I grew up, afraid they might claim me for my rightful parents. And one day, when I was about 16, a white man rode into the village with a string of cows, to buy me. It was your father."

"How did he take so long?"

"The one thing I didn't foresee was your Dad's stroke, which he had just after I died back there. He didn't see any of the clues I left him, because he was confined to the wheelchair, he couldn't go upstairs. He told me later that his Dream Car was delivered shortly after he got home from hospital, but he was too upset at my loss to bear to even look at it. It was covered by a tarpaulin for a long while."

"We all begged him to sell it, Mum, my husband most of all, but Dad refused to budge."

"I know, he was always stubborn. But then, after about five years of it parked behind that laurel hedge, he got a really good offer from a collector who said he passed by regularly and offered a good price, which Sam accepted."

"Accepted? But he would never have—"

"He did, but it was an extremely good offer. He told the caller that he had to sort out the paperwork, and could the guy come back in a couple of days. Then, while no one was around, he wheeled himself around to the car, parked behind that thick hedge. With great difficulty, he managed to sit in the driver's seat. He shut the door, looked around and saw a Stetson hat."

"And Dad being Dad, he couldn't resist putting it on."

"He couldn't, and that's how he first came into Sweetwater township on the stagecoach. Boy! Was it the Wild West then!"

"But how did did he manage with his wheelchair and his being paralized down one side?"

"He was fit and well on this side, and a vigorous man in his thirties, and fast with a gun."

"I heard from Alice that Dad struck it rich at the silver mines and used the money to build the town," Caroline said.

"He certainly did!" Dove Feather smiled. "I guess I was about 12 when the Elders wanted to go on the warpath because Jed pulled down the old trading post."

"Ha! No more firewater, huh?"

"Yes, I thought you'd like that little touch!"

"I did, Mum, was this dream world just one big playground, for you and Dad?"

"Yes, it is, sweetheart, and it could be yours too, if you want it, or you could start up your own."

"What?!"

"My Granny D had a Victorian world, that was more to her taste and she wanted me to join her. I didn't like it much, and then when I met your Dad—"

"Wait, Mum, this isn't the only fantasy world in the family?"

"No, there must be many, but they are closed to me now, because I chose your Dad's, and there's no going back, not at our level, anyway," Dove Feather smiled, "This can be your world, if you choose to stay, or you can go and create your own."

"How do I do that?"

"I can't tell you how."

"There are rules?"

"There are always rules, sweetheart, but stay here a while, or come and go as you please. Get used to it. Imagine what changes you would like, and then see if you can conjure up new characters to ride into town."

"I could do that?"

"Maybe, I hope so. I was able to. It is in our genes, dear. As you know, your Dad always called me Mo, and I was born Maureen Dival. My grandmother Charlotte Dival, usually called Lottie, never married, and was in service all her life. She felt terribly lost when the great houses couldn't keep their servants any more. She had my mother when she was about 16, and was retired before I started courting your Dad."

"I hardly knew Granny D. I remember her being very strict, and strait laced, though. I think she must've died when I was about eight."

"Yes, she went to a better place, her Victorian world, where she lived life as a flirty young chambermaid."

"No!"

"Yes. Definitely wasn't the place for me."

"Mum, can anyone do this? Why can you, Granny D and possibly me?"

"Our family name, Dival is a clue. It has been spelt many different ways, but it was historically the d'Evil family of witches. Most of us were wiped out in the witch purges, three or four hundred years ago, but our tiny branch quietly survived."

"And Granny D was your only living relative?"

"Yes, she was. I don't think her Mum was married either. One thing we world builders learn early is that we cannot use this ... skill, magic, or whatever you want to call it, to help our real lives. If we are born poor, we stay poor, but we can escape to a new world. Your Dad and I used to collect silver ornaments, quite cheaply, when we went on holiday, as mementoes. He melted them down and brought them here, using the silver mines as cover. You can buy a lot with Wild West dollars."

"Mum, I want to ask about the ashes in the boot, why are yours there?"

"Just my ashes, dear?"

"No, the cowboy re-enacting club that Dad belonged to, he left them his ashes in his Will and they brought them around to me the day after the funeral. I didn't know what to do with them, either. I thought maybe they belonged in Dad's dream car, so I popped the boot, and found your urn there."

"You have Jed's ashes? Bring them on the Stagecoach next time you use it. Now hush, dear, I hear Hiding Fox coming."

Chapter 6

Caroline's head was spinning after her talk with her mother, Dove Feather. She lay under the beautiful Injun-patterned woollen blanket, and was almost getting warm, but sleep wouldn't come immediately. Their conversation had been interrupted by Hiding Fox's return, leaving so many unanswered questions.

So, it appeared that she could determine to stay here in this Wild West setting if she wanted to, but she did not yet know the means to do so, and her mother was reticent on the way how to manage it, hinting that there were certain rules to this game. Presumably she had to cut off her ties with reality by dying, as her mother had, but it couldn't possibly be as simple as that; her father's death in his sleep in the stark reality of his Yorkshire home town, where he had lived all his natural life, coincided with his violent death in the fantasy world of Sweetwater Valley. Were the two events unrelated or not?

She was aware that she could only stay here in this world while she was awake here and asleep at home. It seemed that she couldn't be awake in both places at once. As soon as she fell sleep here in Sweetwater, she knew she would wake up in her Dad's old car. There were rules to this fantasy world and some of those rules were becoming clear. She needed the full picture, though, before she made up her mind about where her future lay.

At home she had lost all her friends when her marriage went sour, her ex-husband had abused her marriage and her two sons had revealed themselves as being no better than their father. There was nothing to hold her there any more in that reality.

What was worrying, though, it seemed as though the 'people' populating this fantasy world had free will and could become rustlers or gun fighters, bank robbers, and bandits, if they wanted to. Recently, three of them, dangerous people indeed, were able to pick a fight with her father and, outnumbering him, shot and killed him in cold blood and cared little for the fact they were witnessed doing so. In turn, Caroline had seen two of them hanged, showing that life was cheap here in Sweetwater. So this fantasy was not a vision of perfect paradise all the way.

Could she live here in this violent place, she wanted to know, where law could be lax enough for murder to take place, yet be so terrible in revenge? Her mother had found that she couldn't live in the Victorian underclass fantasy world that her own grandmother created, so what kind of world could Caroline invent for herself, if she had indeed inherited the ability that her mother had hinted?

It was all right for her parents. Together, they had all their lives shared an overwhelming interest in Wild West play acting, that they had tried to make appear more grown up by calling it 'Reenactment'. Somehow, through this ancient art of witchcraft, plain old Mrs Maureen Pinner from Harrogate, had indeed created their dream world. It seemed so real, too.

Of course it wasn't really real, even this Injun village was a joke for a start. 'Firewater' was actually ginger ale, and the 'Injuns' were white people, just like the extras in old Wild West films, only these fantasy Indians appeared to think that they were Injuns. In fact, those blue eyes and the smile with perfect teeth of the young brave Yellow Snow, reminded her of Old Mr Snodgrass from Pontefract, who once kept a string of ponies and was one of her Dad's old friends. And the cute dimples on that little girl Jumping Rabbit, was similar to ... a lovely Mary Somebody-or-other, she remembered, who taught her how to weave wampum beads at that summer camp on the Moors that her parents took her to when she was about nine. Did her mother use her memories of these old friends to build and populate this world?

If she was going to spend time in any dream world, Caroline believed she had no real enthusiasm for any other era or setting other than this. Here, despite the dangers and the violence, she felt at home here. She had to admit to herself that she had really enjoyed the weekends and summer camps playing Cowboys and Indians as a young girl, but had excused herself from the activities once reaching her late teens brought a degree of autonomy to her weekend activities and her friends and contemporaries considered the whole act of being pretend Cowboys all a bit silly. But now she was enjoying being here more than anything, much more than being at her lonely home in the Cotswolds, where she had been relegated by the divorce and her tight income to become an anonymous nobody. Even just laying here in this warm teepee, the smoke from the embers of a fire drifting upward, the gentle breathing of the devoted Alice lying close next to her and the occasional snuffle of some of the other single Injun women spread around the comforting shelter of the tent, was somehow comforting and relaxing. And with that ... she fell asleep.

Caroline shivered and woke up in the dream car in her garage. The blanket had fallen away from her shoulders and she felt chilled and stiff. Yet, as she exited the car, she no longer felt sleepy. The heating was on in the house, so she soon began to warm up. She suddenly felt hunger pangs and knew there was little food in the house. She hadn't done any food shopping yesterday because of the car accident...

She suddenly laughed. That accident wasn't 'yesterday', it was only a matter of a few hours ago. Although she had spent all day riding to the camp and enjoyed a barbecue with a prime rib steak from a cow born and raised on her own ranch in Sweetwater, and eaten just a couple of hours ago, that was in the Wild West. Here in the Cotswolds she hadn't actually eaten all day. What with the time spent in the hospital, and the trip to the plumbers, she had missed most of her meals. Food. She needed to shop and the nearest supermarket was open until eight at night, giving her another ninety minutes before it closed. She put together a quick list and ventured out into the winter rain.

It had been chilly in that Sweetwater reservation teepee, but even where there was snow, the skies were bright and clear and the air desiccatingly cold; while in England it was wet with fine drizzle, windy and with low cloud and poor visibility.

Her mind was still turning over the concept of being some kind of a witch with fantasy world-creating powers, when her shopping trolley gently bumped into another.

"Sorry," she said automatically, "I wasn't looking where I was going."

"I know," he said, "I've been watching you for a couple of minutes and you were clearly miles away. Somewhere nice and warm with a sandy beach, I hope."

"Doctor George!"

"The very same, although when I am not wearing my stethoscope around my neck, I usually answer to plain Peter," he chuckled, "How's young Olivia?"

"Oh, the little girl? To be honest, I don't know, I handed her over to her mother and dashed off to the plumbers, hoping to catch them, but they'd closed up for the night."

"I remember now, you were the Good Samaritan who brought her in after a road accident."

"Yes, an accelerating car's wing mirror caught the poor girl's elbow and knocked her off her bike. The driver didn't stop. I think Olivia was more shocked than hurt, so I had to take her to Casualty."

"So you were unable to do your shopping until now?"

"Something like that. You just finished your shift?"

"Yes, well, a couple of hours ago. I have been up to the house to check on what the builders were doing. They'd gone by the time I got there. I couldn't help but notice they'd eaten all the biscuits and virtually run out of coffee, tea, milk and sugar. Got to keep the workers happy, so I'm here getting in a few supplies."

"How is the house? You were having quite a lot of work done on it, weren't you?"

"Yes, they have almost completely gutted the inside and are working on repairing the roof and cracks in the chimney. It's coming along and should be ready sometime in late January, early February. The builders are having about three weeks off over Christmas, otherwise it could have been a little more convenient."

"I suppose it will be nice to finally move in and get settled."

"Yes it will. Er, look, I just need to visit the biscuit aisle and then I'm done. Would you like to join me in a cup of coffee or tea before you go?"

"Normally, I would, but," she could see from his face that he was disappointed at his invitation being rejected. She thought he was a kindly man and, having only recently moved back to the area after a forty year absence, not knowing anyone around here. He sounded, from his accent, as though he had spent the intervening years in London or the South East. She supposed all his hospital colleagues were youngsters in their twenties and thirties who had little in common with him.

"I need to get back, I'm afraid," Caroline said while giving him a warm but apologetic smile, "with things to do, it being a busy time at Christmas, but perhaps next week or the coming weekend?"

"It's Friday night already, Mrs er..."

"Bradshaw, but please, call me Caroline. Look, I live at Number 14 Albert Crescent. It's just round the corner from your house. Would you like to come to Sunday tea, say at 3 o'clock?"

"I would like that, er, the Christmas lights in the town are being switched on tonight, but perhaps we could go look at them after tea on Sunday. It'll be a lot less crowded at that time."

"Yes, I would like that, Peter, thank you." Caroline smiled, "I will see you Sunday."

***

It was cold but sunny at the Injun Reservation, nestling in the bend in the Sweetwater River the opposite side of the mountain from the Lazy C Ranch. Most of the single Injun women who slept in this particular teepee were already up and about. Alice was also absent when Caroline awoke.

Caroline had retired fully dressed, still in her riding buckskins, so it didn't take her long to shake out her blanket and fold it up ready to go outside.

"Good morning, Miss Caroline," came Alice's voice from the tent opening, where she was carrying a small black iron cauldron suspended from a wire handle, with a thick cloth wrapped around it, "did you sleep well?"

"I did, Alice, thank you. What about yourself?"

"Dandy, ma'am. Ah got some vittles here that the Injuns cooked up, some kind of cereal, like buckwheat with cow's milk. Would ya like some?"

"Why not, the Injuns seem to look well fed on whatever it is they eat."

"Well it don't look like they ate any o' ma Ma's cows, that's fer a fact. Uncle Tom has a face sourer than week old milk, cos he ain't found no 'eveedence' that these Injuns are the rustlers he's lookin' fer."
"It is probably just as well, Alice, because we'd be completely surrounded by Injuns if he tried to arrest them!" Caroline smiled at the thought.

"Ah never thought o' that Miss Caroline, but then Ah never thought it wus the Injuns in the fust place, Cottonwood Pines is too far away from here. If any Injun wus hungry enough to rustle cows, he would have tried the Lazy C first, or Old Man Pickles' Reclining Bee spread, which is just to the south, or teke mutton from Wick Chandlers' sheep farm to the north. I mean, it's only just over the ridge, and it's easier to bundle up and disguise wool in pillows or lining the inside o' tepees than it is ta hide cow hides, which have to be scrapped and stretched out in the open air fer all ter see."

"So who do you think stole the fifty cows, it was fifty wasn't it?"

"Yeh, Ma said it was exactly fifty cows. It took a few days ta git that number cos the drifts were so high. It started at a dozen an' grew from there. Ah reckon them rustlers, well they have to be from outside the territ'ry, an' they would a driven them directly ta the railhead at Colby Flats. But Ah don't think that Uncle Tom ever gave that thought any due consideration, Ma'am."

Mmm, that gave Caroline something to think about while she ate the porridge, at least that's what the Injun breakfast tasted like. After breakfast, she sought out her mother again.

Alice was being shown around the camp and nearby places of interest by Sam and his grandfather Hiding Fox, who seemed to approve of the girl, although his expression never seemed to change much, either just grumpy or a little less grumpy. They strode off to explore together, leaving Caroline and Dove Feather behind.

"We'll ride out of the camp and talk," Dove Feather said, seeing the determined look on Caroline's face and knowing she wanted some answers.

Caroline saddled up her pony, while her mother leapt onto a painted pony with just a blanket thrown on its back rather than a saddle. Once a little way out of the Indian village, they dismounted and gently walked the horses along the river bank.

"Tell me about moving here permanently, Mum." Caroline opened, "What do I have to do?"

"First of all you have to be certain in your mind that you want to leave the world you know behind, because you cannot be conscious in both at the same time."

"There's nothing keeping me there, Mum, nothing."

"Nothing? Are you sure? What about your boys?"

"They think I am a joke. They don't seem to like me much. I mean, for years they used me as a bank, simple a source of free funds, until their father Robert cut me off without much spare money. Now I hardly ever see them. Robert made them partners in the business, then made it appear on the books as though he was semi-retired. He'd ferreted money abroad over the years, and remortgaged our house, so when the house was sold and the mortgage repaid, I had barely enough to buy a tiny place of my own with my half-share. I was left as an ex-housewife with no qualifications or work experience and very little money in the divorce settlement. The boys just laughed at me when I said I was the one who now needed their help."

"Surely, those boys can't have been that bad."

"You don't even know them, Mum, Adam was only two when you died and I was still carrying Robert junior."

"Jed told me a bit about the boys over the years. They seemed fine as youngsters but in the past five years Jed thought they'd changed for the worse. But they are still your boys. What about their future lives? They may settle down and make you a grandmother yet."

"And pigs might fly, Mum."

"Hey, look, Carrie, there's the Marshal, poking about by that bluff canyon."

"He's probably checking it out for cattle, while nobody's looking."

"Huh! Carrie, my dear we're in Injun country, and there's nobody sneakier or nosier than an Injun. The Marshal's got Limping Whippet checking him out from behind that stunted tree by the entrance to the bluff, while Cross Eyed Eagle is on top of the canyon wall on the right, just by that overhang."

"Yes, I can see them now you've pointed them out. Shall we go over and see what he's up to?"

"Why not?"

"Well, Marshal, have you snooped around long enough?" Caroline smiled at the tall, handsome Marshal.

"Yeah, Miss Caroline, Ah've looked all over, but there ain't no sign of ma sister's steers, hereabouts anyways. Ah might ride off when we leave camp an' check some o' the canyons on the other side o' the river, see if'n Ah kin find some tracks."

"Well, good luck with that, Marshal."

***

Back at the Lazy C, Caroline reflected on some of the things that Dove Feather had said, particularly about reconnecting with her boys back home in the real world. As much as she felt they had cut her off, maybe it was true that she had consciously distanced herself from them. She resolved that she should give them another chance, especially at this time of year, being Christmas.

And the name of the ranch, was this a pointed message from her father? Was she the Lazy Caroline, that had allowed life to flow by her, leaving her too dependant on the others in her life? Did she marry so young because it was a way of avoiding working at a career, settling early for being a housewife and mother; then when the kids left school enjoying the leisure of shopping, coffee mornings and playing golf with her so-called friends, who were keeping her occupied while they were taking it in turns to have affairs with her oversexed husband? How they must have laughed at her behind her back! Was she any better here in Sweetwater Valley, still living an idle and pointless life, off the wealth of her father, and now the hard work of her 16-year-old brother?

It wasn't right. She wasn't totally happy with either of her twin existences, either in fantasy or reality. As Dove Feather had whispered in her ear as they said their goodbyes at the Injun Reservation, "Don't forget the empty schoolhouse".

Her father had built that schoolhouse in Sweetwater township two years ago, probably at a time when his health was failing at home, perhaps knowing that his life in reality was coming to an end. Did he build that schoolhouse to provide her with a purpose in life, at least in this fantasy life?

If she brought her children, Adam and Robert, here on the Stagecoach, would they arrive as small boys, who could be explained away as the children of the marriage ended by widowhood, that the folk of Sweetwater believed she had 'Back East'? Would she have to get both of them magic Stetsons, or would they get left behind in the dream car? So many questions, that her mother was leaving unanswered for her to figure out for herself.

She could still come here as regular as she could manage to get away to Sweetwater Valley in the meantime and, while she slept here, try and rebuild those broken bridges back at home. Perhaps even confront Robert Senior and find out if their marriage failure was really her fault. She laughed, here in Sweetwater, for the present and foreseeable future at any rate, she couldn't even sleep on these considerations without waking up in the dream car.

"Sam," she asked after supper, "do you know what Dad's plans for building the schoolhouse were?"

A pained expression momentarily crossed his open face.

"Pa told me only to mention this if you asked about it, Caroline," he said slowly. "He wasn't expecting you to run it, but he dang sure hoped that you would. I thought at the outset that it was because he wanted all his family living here in Sweetwater together, but now I think it was more to do with him having a premonition of his life here coming to an end."

She gave her brother a long comforting hug. It's hard enough losing a parent at any time, it comes hardest when you're a kid trying your utmost to be a grown up rancher all on your own in the Wild West.

Caroline retired to bed, her mind chock full of thoughts for the coming days.

***

Saturday morning shopping this close to Christmas, Caroline determined, was an absolute nightmare. Every single parking space was full, Caroline was convinced, even though the blasted car park entry machine had raised the barrier and let her in. She had been driving up and down ramps for twenty minutes. She would see a space on another level and by the time she got there, someone was reversing in or already parked and putting coats on their kids ready to take on the Christmas crowds.

'I've already got all my Christmas shopping. I did it early in order to avoid all this!' she muttered to herself, as she gripped the wheel, following a couple of early birds who were wheeling a full trolley back towards their car. She drummed the steering wheel with her fingers as she waited for the couple to finish loading up their car, trying to get a quart into a pint-sized hatchback, while a queue of cars formed up behind her, one car continually tooting his horn at her in protest. The thought cross her mind that it was a good thing that the front seat of the Dream Car to Stagecoach was just one way for goods and presents, otherwise she might have been tempted to bring back a pair of pearl-handled Navy Colt revolvers, for just such an occasion as this!

Caroline parked up once the couple drove off and glared pointedly at the horn hooter as he drove past, although he stared straight ahead to avoid eye contact. Then she marched off to catch her sons at work in their store. It wasn't quite high noon yet, but she was more than ready for that showdown.

Chapter 7

Caroline's ex-husband owned a hardware store, selling pretty well everything for do-it-yourself enthusiasts and household goods, including cookery hardware, gardening tools, camping equipment and outdoor wear. It had long been a successful business, after a shaky start nearly forty years earlier, but her ex-husband Robert Bradshaw had recently sold half the store's shares to a private company he had formed abroad, based in a tax haven, about which Caroline was unable to get any information. Then he had split the other half with Caroline's two boys, making it appear that he had retired on a modest pension, with few actual assets to his name. This affected Caroline's divorce settlement, which was significantly reduced from her earlier expectations.

The boys' connivance with their father hadn't helped relationships with their mother. She had been too demoralised, powerless, timid even, to put much fight into clawing anything back. But that wasn't the concern here. Today she wanted to build bridges to see if there was any chance of either improving her relationship with her boys in her life here, or possibly taking them with her to a new life in Sweetwater Valley.

Determinedly, she marched into the store. As soon as she entered and looked around at the staff in their distinctive uniform tops, she realised with a start that the staff would hardly recognise her. She had rarely stepped into her ex-husband's place of business in recent years, even while they were still married. Before, she had always been intimidated by the macho atmosphere of power tools, nuts and bolts, ladders, consumables and spare parts. Now there soft furnishings, curtains, summer room furniture, and carpets.

She had to laugh at herself. Here she was in what she used to regard as an intimidating male domain, while she was considering a permanent move to a ranch, dominated by cowboys who roped monstrous steers and branded them, close by Injuns who had attacked her stagecoach, a town that had just had a double hanging, and had occasional gunfights, with a Town Marshal who was trying to track down and hang a gang of cattle rustlers!

She was actually chuckling to herself when she bumped into her youngest son, Robert Junior. He was looking more and more like his father every time she saw him: overweight, losing his hair to the point where he now shaved it all off. He had a sour, harassed look, in a store packed to overflowing with shoppers.

"What are you doing here, Mum?"

"A mother can't speak to one of her children when she needs to, Robbie?"

"Not when it's the busiest shopping weekend of the year, Mum. Why don't you come in Tuesday?"

"I've got the plumbers coming on Tuesday."

"You got a leak? Adam's boys could've fixed that."

Caroline remembered that Adam had followed his father into the plumbing trade, but that was long after Robert Senior had opened the store all those years ago. It had certainly branched out and grown since then.

"Not had a leak or anything, just having some additional work done. I wanted to talk to you and Adam today, if possible, as I may not be around at Christmas."

"What?!" he spluttered, "but you always do our Christmas dinner, with all the trimmings!"

"That was last year, dear, remember? That was when I had a proper kitchen to cook festive meals in. You've seen the galley I've got in my little house. The nearest thing to a turkey dinner I can cook in there is a Spanish Omelette!"

"But I've got a fantastic fitted kitchen in my place, that the boys from our kitchen fitters here put in last spring."

"I didn't know you could cook, Robbie?"

"I can't, but you could come over and—"

"Oh, no, I'm not cooking Christmas turkey this year, at least I don't think so. No, I will most probably be having roast beef rib."

"Beef's my favourite, Mum, better than dried up old turkey, any day."

"Are you saying that my turkey was—"

"No, Mum, look, let's continue this conversation in the office, shall we? Hey, Kyle, can you take over this till for me? ... Thanks. OK, Mum, let's go."

The offices were in a portacabin in the yard out the back of the store, surrounded by stacks of fencing panels and stacked pallets of bags of garden compost. They walked quickly across the yard to the offices in the far corner of the back yard, as it had started raining hard again.

In the open plan half of the offices, a couple of female clerks were beavering away at whatever they were working on, while Caroline's oldest son Adam was sitting at his otherwise empty desk, drinking coffee and reading an opened tabloid newspaper.

"What are you doing here, Mum?" Adam asked, looking up, "You never come to the store."

"Exactly what I said," Robert Junior said, "and Mum says she's not cooking Christmas dinner this year."

"What? But you always cook Christmas dinner! What are we going to do? My new girlfriend Tanya could burn a boiled egg! At home we either eat out or it all comes in hot and steaming, delivered in a box."

"Mum says she hasn't got a decent kitchen in that pokey little house."

"But Mum, Robbie's got a fabulous kitchen —"

"I've tried that, but she's thinking of going away for Christmas."

"But you never go away other than visit Pops, and now he's gone..."

"Look, I'm not here to have an argument with you boys, I just want to talk to you about your recent attitude towards me."

The door leading into the final third of the cabin opened up and her ex-husband Robert joined in the conversation."

"I thought I could hear your voice, Carrie. What the hell are you doing here?"

"If only I had a pound for every time I was asked that!" Caroline laughed, "I just wanted a word with my sons to find out where we went wrong in our relationships and whether we could rebuild bridges. It is that time of year, you know, Christmas."

"OK, Denise, Jackie," Robert Senior said to the two office staff, "can you leave us for a few minutes while we have a family discussion—"

"Ex-family!" Caroline said, somewhat surprised that she said it with a smile on her face.

"Yes, but we still have the boys, Carrie, where we can meet halfway."

"We never met halfway, it was always YOUR way, Robert. You cheated and lied through our marriage and robbed me of the fruits of it ... and I guess I just let it happen."

"Yes, you did. A few home truths, Carrie, you never helped me with this business, you were too busy spending my money to bother to help me make it, so I was damned if I was going to share any of this with you."

Robert stormed off purple with rage, the boys taking his side.

"He's right, Mum," Adam said, "you never took part in what we were doing."

"No, I only kept house for you and saw that you all had clean clothes on your backs and good food inside you. I took you to school and collected you, I took you to all the extra activities, like football, scouts, swimming and days out entertaining you, while your father never lifted a finger to help. Even as adults and you had your own places, in between wives and girlfriends, you were always coming home for food —"

Her mobile phone chirped with an oncoming call. She answered it, observing with a little satisfaction that both boys looked somewhat chastened by her words.

"Hello ... Yes, hello Mr Jones? ... You want to come round and measure ... Yes, I can be home in twenty minutes ... see you then."

She turned back to the boys. "That was a message from my plumbers, so I must be off. I'll sort out something on Wednesday and leave you a message about when and where we should meet."

She turned on her heels and bustled out of the offices and headed home, but not before she heard Adam ask his brother, "Her plumbers?"

It was early afternoon when she got home. Mr Jones from the plumbers agreed that what she wanted was a simple job, and that they could take the hot water feed from the bathroom, but advised putting the radiator on the inner rather than the outer wall to reduce the pipe work. He recommended fitting a carbon monoxide detector and thought that her wish to fit adequate insulation to the garage door, would be effective in evening out the temperature variations in the garage during summer and winter. He priced it up then and there, and Caroline agreed to the having the work done, even though it would blow most of her savings. They could work their way around the old car, Mr Jones said, and they would be back on Tuesday 8 am, with a plumber to do the radiator and another chap to insulate the door.

It was Saturday afternoon by the time Mr Jones left, and Caroline was still upset about the unresolved issues with her selfish boys. Time to wrap up warm and put on the Stetson, she thought. She moved the urn containing her father's ashes, from the boot into the front seat, although she thought she would probably need to leave on the stagecoach to fetch them from "Back East".

It occurred to her that she should visit Jed's plot in the Sweetwater graveyard, not that she knew where that was, yet. She felt no guilt over not visiting her fantasy father's grave, after all she had never even met him in that place.

All her memories of her father, her real father, were based in England, in Yorkshire. Perhaps the reason he left his ashes to his friends at the Wild West reenactment society was to preserve them. He had belonged to the Society all those years, even after his stroke and could no longer participate in something he had clearly enjoyed so much. Caroline spoke to some of those old cowboys during the funeral, finding that he had not only stayed in contact with them right up to the end, but they used to collect him and take him to all the monthly meetings. He had served as an active and useful President for many years and had only recently stepped down to become a life Vice President.

Her Mum wanted the ashes, so Mum and Dad had probably discussed what to do with them. By involving the Society, rather than leave them directly to her, Caroline wouldn't have been able to scatter them in the garden of remembrance.

Presumably, her Mum wanted to scatter them in Sweetwater, the place where for so many years, they had made their happy new home together.

***

Caroline wasn't too upset that her father's ashes didn't transfer with her to Sweetwater Valley while she slept. She woke up in her bed on the Lazy C Ranch wearing the nineteenth century bedclothes that she had retired in the night before. No man-made fibres, no blanket against the cold of the garage, and no Stetson. She had now accepted that she needed to leave Sweetwater on the Stagecoach, out to the very edge of this fantasy world, in order to bring anything on the passenger seat of the dream car back with her. That wasn't a problem, she thought, the Stagecoach runs daily, she could do that later today or tomorrow.
Her sons' futures were still a thorn in her side. She wasn't sure if she would ever persuade them to come, especially after yesterday's arguments in the shop, but would animate subjects transfer intact to the stagecoach seat like all inanimate objects she had brought? She had to ask herself, if it was possible, why he had not asked her along, even if it was only a one off? Pops has used that Stagecoach to "visit Back East", she found out from Mrs Duggan the housekeeper, for regular trips over the previous 20 years.

There was only one magic Stetson. Maybe that was a problem? She resolved to buy a goldfish or pet rat to pop on that front seat and see what happened next time.

She was first down for breakfast, while Mrs Duggan was still brewing the first of the many pots of coffee they seemed to consume at the ranch. That coffee had to come from somewhere, who arranged for and controlled the goods coming in? She knew the Stagecoach brought in lighter stuff, like the Injun "Firewater", but how was the general store kept stocked with goods? If the railroad was ever built, that would add another dimension, perhaps even through traffic to further West. At the moment there was no 'West', only 'Back East'. Complex thing, this fantasy world building and it was still all too new to her. And Mum, Dove Feather, was really no help; all this talk about 'Rules'. How could she make sense of this world if no one will teach her about it? Back to thinking about teaching again. That, at least, she thought, she would be doing something useful while she was in Sweetwater.

"Top o' da mornin' Miss Caroline, you're sure all-fired early now!" Mrs Duggan greeted her, "Can I getcha a nice wee cup o' tea?"

"That would be great, Mrs Duggan, is Sam up and about?"

"Aye, sure ma'am, he was out at first light, checkin' on the pickets agin for them pesky rustlers, an' he'll be back fer 'is breakfast directly. And also the Marshal rode in at first light, dusty an' weary from his investigatin'. He's out back washin' 'isself fit fer civilised company."

As soon as the rancher came in for a quick breakfast, and before he rode out again to check another part of the ranch, Caroline talked to Sam about her plan to take up some basic teaching of the townfolks' children at the school, starting straight after Christmas.

"That would be marvellous, Caroline! I think Pa would be so proud. Now the town ain't got no town hall or mayor, since the first mayor was gunned down on Election Day a couple of years ago, so there ain't no town funds for the school. But Pa has made allowances of as much as twelve dollars a year paid into the School account at the Sweetwater Bank, must be over fifty dollars in there by now. I swear you could buy the kids gold plated pencils with that kind of cash. I will get the account signed over to you directly, so you can order all the supplies you need."

He gave her a big hug.

"I'll write that letter to the bank as soon as I get back for noon vittles. You know why I am happy, Big Sis? I am altogether in favour of you running the school, because it means that you will be staying here and you're all the family I have outside of the Injun Reservation."

Marshal Tom Denton, sitting at the breakfast table, was also pleased about the opening up of the schoolhouse, because, as he said, "Maybe Ah would be pleased ta be able to see more of ya around town, Miss Caroline, if ya'll fergive me fer bein' forward in mah manners."

"Why, Marshal, are you saying you might have designs on little old me?"

"Well, Ma'am, Ah cain't think of any finer lady in this here rude community of ours that Ah would rather tip mah hat to, and that ain't no 'zaggeration. I reckon if'n you wus ta offer grown-up folk learning classes, there'd be a whole mess o' folk wanting ta learn readin' an' writin' off o' yah."

So Caroline resolved to go Back East for a couple of days to see about scholastic supplies, exercise books, and, private thoughts to herself, an online course to learn how to teach. That would give her an opportunity to fetch her Pop's ashes for Dove Feather.

Mrs Duggan said she was sorry to see her go, "sure, ye are a breath of fresh air an' ye'll be sorely missed round here, so ye will."

"Maybe I could catch the noon Stagecoach going East?"

"Not today, Miss Caroline," Alice said, "it's Sunday, there ain't no stagecoach runnin' on Sunday. Will you want me to go back with you, cos Ah ain't never bin Back East? In fact I ain't bin nowheres."

"I will take the gig back to town this afternoon, Alice, to stay at the Hotel. Then I'll catch the Stagecoach tomorrow. One day, I may be able to take you Back East, but right now I really want you to stay here, Alice. I will only be gone a couple of days at most anyway, so on no account are you to go home to your mother's. I want you to stay on here at the Lazy C and keep an eye on young Samuel. Sam really needs someone to keep an eye on him, or he'll work himself into the ground. He's had to take on everything around here since my Dad died."

Her eyes lit up, "Well, I'll sure try Miss Caroline, but your brother, he's more stubborn than a hungry horsefly with a family to feed."

Chapter 8

It was late afternoon when Caroline drove the single horse gig into Sweetwater township and all the way through to the livery stables on the western edge of Main Street, where Alice said she had hired the rig. Caroline had never been to the Liberty Livery Stables before, although she knew from going through the ranch's books with Sam, in her first few days out at the ranch, that her father Jed had a 50/50 stake in the business with Jerome Maclean, who ran the stables. The wooden building was fairly new, as was most of the town, although the original orange paint was almost sunbleached white on three sides of the building. It was a substantial stable, Caroline later noting it had room inside for thirty horses, plus a corral in the open out back. On the western side of the plot there were a couple of large carts parked up, painted on the side, 'Joshua Matthews & Sons, Hauliers, Sweetwater Valley'. And beyond that, a dirt road that appeared to be going South. Well, that answered her question about how bulk goods got into the valley.

"Howdy, Miss Bradshawh," said Jerome, a grizzled old character who only had one tooth in his lower jaw, just to the left of centre, which wobbled as if it was about to be spat out as he spoke. Caroline had conversed with him twice before, once in the store and once in the Hotel dining room, and knew that her eyes would be inexorably drawn to that tooth like a magnet, she just couldn't help herself. "Have any trouble with Dotty here?"

"Hi there, Mr Matthews," she replied as she checked the brake was full on before accepting Jerome's hand to step down, "no trouble at all, Dotty would have got me here safely, even if I was asleep the whole way!"

"Yeah, she be a sweet mare, is Dotty. How's yorn Miss Wells, now, she's one fine filly!"

"She's fine, I left her at the ranch. I was worried about her running around, with rustlers about."

Caroline looked at this old man Jerome, wondering why he was so free with his sexist remark about Alice, maybe it was just a sign of the times. A male-dominated place like this. The old man was busy unharnessing the mare, and seemed lost in his own thoughts.

"That mother o' hers. Damn! She wus a wild 'un in her day, Ma'am. Pretty, mind, like Alice is now, but that whole fam'ly, the Dentons, wus as poor as dirt when they fust came here. I mean," he said as he lead the pony away, Caroline following. "The Marshal ain't done so bad fer hisself, an' your young Alice has got her head put on straight, but her Grandpa wus one o' them silver miners, an' they alwise wus trouble."

"What was the town like in those days?" asked Caroline, "did you know my father well?"

"Know yer Pa? Oh yeah, yah Pa wus the best thing ter happen ter this town. Back in them days there wus more whore houses, if yah beg mah pardon, ma'am, than saloons, and there wus more saloons than quills on a full-growed porcupine. The town wus all tents in them days, too, cos there wusn't no decent timber hereabouts. I started a haulage business bringin' in tent poles before we ever had the Stagecoach running. I wus runnin' out of a barn at the back o' the old injun tradin' post. That wus knocked adown when theys builded the Sweetwater Valley Bank & Loans Company, an' they went an' knocked that old barn I used down too!"

He chuckled away to himself, a raft of memories flooding back through his ancient mind.

"So, the place has changed a lot since you've been here?"

"Yup, an' it's all down ta yah Pa, Jed Pinner. He weren't like none o' them other miners. I mean, he wus lucky an' struck the silver motherlode within the fust few spadefuls o' dirt an' quit when he reckoned he had dug out enough. It wus a murderin' place round 'ere back then, an' he had ta gunfight his way through every day to stop his claim bein' jumped. He wus so quick on the draw, that the folk here in town offered him the job as Sheriff, an' he took it. Sure cleaned up the town real quick. He bought mah Haulage company off me an' bought up the wagons an' mules off o' them what came here ta settle, an's sellin' 'em back as they left when the silver ran out. I bought this land here an' ya Pa paid teamsters ta haul lumber up here tah start buildin'. By the time the timber got here, he had marked out the lumber yard an' a saw pit an' he started on buildin' mah barn fust and the the Main Street of the town"

"How long did it take to build the town?"

"'Bout five year I reckon. By the time he'd done, we had the buildin's an' sidewalks, piped water from the mountains an' proper outhouses out the back fer all."

"So when did he start the Lazy C Ranch?"

"It wus the Wavy Zee in them early days, run by Zachary Buckie. Boy, was he one hot headed cowboy! He had trouble with the Injuns, who wud come through the pass in winter an' teke a few cows. He rounded up a posse o' local ranchers and rode into their camp, all guns ablazin' an' findin' all the Injuns had gone."

"Gone?"

"Yup, not a one single Injun there!" He grinned, "Them Injuns could hear Zachary comin' as soon as he left his ranch, which weren't nothin' but a log cabin then. So them cowboys rode out of camp a lot slower than they went in, with their guns empty, an' the horses blowin' fit ter bust. An' then them sneaky Injuns popped out of cover where they'd bin hidin' and shot every one o' them."

"Yeah, Buckie's widder wanted out, as do some of the widowed neighbours, but no one desired that spread cos o' them Injuns, so yah Pa bought it fer a song an' the Widder went back East, happy ta git anything fer her old man's spread. Then Judge Makepeace came up by Stagecoach, cos the service wus up an' runnin' bah then, an' he judged it wus self defence on behalf o' the Injuns for the attack on Buckie and friends, and drew up a full pardon which yah Pa took to the Chief. We wus still Injun country before then, but with the Peace Treaty yah Pah signed with the Injuns, the Judge declared this place a Territ'ry an' appointed yah Pa as the Marshal."

"How long ago was that?"

"Well Ma'am," he cackled, "I had five teeth back then an' I reckon I lose one ev'ry five years, so I reckon it wus high on twen'y years ago. I remember a delegation came up from the Injun village, the fust we'd seen since the old Injun tradin' post closed a couple o' years before. In that party was young Sam's mother, a pretty young squaw she wus then. Boy, I ain't never seen a man so smitten before, like ya Pa wus. It sure put a burr under Kitty Malone's saddle, I kin tell yah!"

"Kitty Malone?"

"Well I ain't one tah tittle tattle, but she wus the Madame of the Kitty Kat Klub House across the street from the Marshal's office—"

"The Courthouse?"

"Yeah, that's what it is now. Those two women fought over Jed in the middle o' Main Street, there ain't bin nothin', not one gunfight, tah match that cat fight."

"I take it Dove Feather won?"

"Yup! Real sneaky them Injuns! She went an' beat the livin' daylights out o' her, like it wus the other way around, that she were tryin' ta keep hold on her man, yet ev'ryone knew it wus Kitty what had her claws into ya Pa. So Kitty was run out o' town with her tail between her legs an' Justice Makepeace joined the happy couple together in holy matrimony, seein' as how we ain't never got around ta employing a minister an' building a church hereabouts! Dang, Miss Bradshawh, things wus a mite more excitin' round here than they has bin fer many a year!"

Later that day, Caroline spoke with Haulier Joshua Matthews, who ran once a week to the railhead at Colby, taking out wool and cow hides, and bringing dry goods, fashions, and even more ginger "firewater" for the saloon. The wagons leave in convoys, three days to the railhead and three days back, with a rest on Sunday. He was given a list of scholastic supplies to fetch and in turn she was promised no problem for delivery the week after next.

She slept at the Hotel that night and caught the Stagecoach at noon, which traveled along the road for a couple of hours away from the town through the cold desert, until it reached the end of the line, where the stagecoach driver and guard just stopped and fell asleep. Caroline tried to fight the sleep, to see what happened, but it came on her anyway and she woke up in the dream car in her garage. She removed the Stetson, feeling refreshed and went into the house.

Caroline checked the calendar. It was Sunday and she has noted that she had invited Dr Peter George round to Sunday tea, at 3 o'clock. And, of course, she had nothing in the house to eat. She checked her bank account on line, which was actually quite healthy, she had hardly spent anything on food for the last month and she had lost so much weight, that she was almost as slim as her Sweetwater self. She dashed around to the supermarket for bread, ham, eggs, scones, jam, double cream and milk.

At home she bathed, washed her hair and found, to her delight, that she could fit into some of the clothes that she couldn't get into six months earlier.

She made the sandwiches and cut and buttered the scones, laying out the table ready. She put the kettle on at one minute to 3 o'clock and, sure enough, the door bell rang, right on the dot.

"Hello, Peter, you are right on time, come on in," she smiled as she stood to one side of the door.

"Thank you, Caroline, it is a pleasure to be here," he smiled and slightly bowed his head. He was casually dressed in black jeans and an open necked shirt with a sweater and waterproof jacket, and, to some amusement on her part, a wide brimmed leather hat, not too dissimilar to her Pop's Stetson.

"I like your hat," she said, "it seems to suit you."

"Well, it has been raining most of the morning, and it helps keep me dry. The rain has almost stopped, so I am hoping it will be a fine, clear, if rather cool, evening to check out the Christmas illuminations."

"Yes, I am looking forward to seeing them. I used to take my boys every year when they were small but I haven't seen the lights at all in recent years."

"And did you used to see the lights with your husband?"

"No, never. My ex-husband was always too busy at work, or entertaining in connection with his business. He was always too busy to do anything with the boys. I am surprised they have anything to do with him any more, let alone be his business partners. Anyway, come on through to the lounge."

"Wow! That is a fantastic spread you have put on here."

"Well, I did wonder if I had put out too many sandwiches, Peter, but I can always eat the leftovers during the week."

"Well, I have got quite an appetite, I have been looking over the house and checking up on the work. I have been climbing ladders and stumbling over obstacles since lunchtime. I feel quite shabby compared to your smart outfit, Caroline."

"Why thank you, but you needn't have worried, you look fine, except for the plaster dust on your right thigh."

"Oh damn!" he said, looking at the offending dust, "I must have leaned against something."

"I've got a clothes brush in this cupboard, I'll give you a brush down, won't take a jiffy."

Almost as soon as she had brushed away the offending plaster dust, the whistle from the galley kitchen signalled the water had boiled for their tea.

***

Caroline felt tired but exhilarated by the time she prepared to leave the house and sit in the dream car for her trip back to Sweetwater.

The afternoon and evening with Doctor George, or Peter as she was becoming to know him, was the most fun she had had from being out with a man since her courting days with her ex-husband Robert. Peter was lively, charming, funny and a perfect gentleman throughout their "date". By the time she had calmed her initial nerves about the meeting, and relaxed in his company, she felt more like the young widow woman of Sweetwater, who was in her late twenties, than the sad, lonely divorcee approaching her sixties, that she appeared in the real world.

These regular visits over the past month to Sweetwater Valley had given her back a vigorous energy and an inner vitality that she had long lost in her real life. Perhaps Robert's roving eye and straying was partly her fault, that she had become tired of her marriage, along with his long absences, both in body and mind, and she hadn't put enough effort into the married relationship as in years past. She said as much to Peter late in the evening, without mentioning Sweetwater Valley, of course!

Peter hadn't want to dwell on his failed marriage too much; he admitted that his wife had snared a new and younger man and there was nothing he could offer to persuade his ex-wife to change her course of action. He had therefore moved back to the Cotswolds, he explained, because he had lived here as a young man, although he was no longer aware that he had any relatives still living in the area. Before his marriage collapsed, he had already considered retiring back to the area in five years' time anyway. He was working partly at the hospital and filling in as a locum at a local medical centre and was considering joining one of several available general practices in the area.

"I am in no hurry, at my time of life," he had said, "to sign up for the sort of private general practice commitment that I have done over the last thirty odd years. Perhaps that is why my marriage failed, I hadn't noticed any telltale signs until Sandra handed me the papers by way of a fait accompli. Now I want to follow more leisure pursuits, take time to walk places with a haversack on my back containing a package of sandwiches, bottle of water and a compass, and simply explore."

They were having a drink in the 'Admiral and Anchor Inn' at the end of the High Street, after looking at the town's Christmas illuminations. With a mischievous smile, which she couldn't keep off her face, she suggested, "Perhaps you should take up horse riding, there are lots of bridleways criss crossing the area."

"It's the hat isn't it?" Peter had laughed, "this leather hat makes me look like a bit of a cowboy!"

"Yes," she had laughed, but admitted to herself, 'he would look good in that hat, seated in a Western saddle on a tall horse.'

She opened the rusty maroon door of the thirty year old Jaguar XJ12. It swung silently and effortlessly on well oiled hinges. It always made her smile, bringing to mind an engaging image of her ageing father right up into his late eighties, and paralysed down one side, somehow getting into this car as often as he could, to visit the Sweetwater Valley and the Lazy C Ranch he clearly loved. Was this her fate that she would follow in his footsteps until her very own sad and bitter end, dying of old age in England, while in the prime of life on the open prairie?
She had to laugh, after saying goodbye to Peter, when she signed for a modular based online teaching course at an American University, whilst sitting at her lounge diner table over a cup of drinking chocolate!

She checked that her father's ashes were resting on the seat beside her, put her father's old Stetson on and closed her eyes, to awake blinking but refreshed in the Sweetwater Valley Stagecoach. Since she had gone, the vehicle was somehow turned around, now pointing towards Sweetwater instead of away. The driver and the shotgun rider were slumped sleeping, exactly as she remembered them as she tried in vain to stay awake. She knew that as soon as Chuck and Dale awoke, they would move off towards the Valley without ever looking back behind them in the direction of Carson, where there was simply an empty nothingness.

This time she gave them time to wake up naturally, which only took a few minutes, giving her time to put the small urn of Pop's ashes into a valise she had left the Sweetwater Hotel with and remained where she left it on the hard wooden stagecoach seat. It would have looked odd if she was going away for two days without carrying a small bag.

When she climbed down off the Stagecoach in front of the Grand Hotel at High Noon, she noticed a number of trunks on the top of the stagecoach, marked with the owner's name, 'Holywell, MD".

"Hey, Chuck, where's the Doc?" she asked. "We didn't leave him behind when perhaps he wandered off for a break at Wet Patch Gulch?

"No, Ma'am," Chuck laughed, which Dale joined in, "them trunks wus waitin' in the Stagecoach office in Carson. They'd bin left there an' we wus asked ter bring 'em in the next empty coach. You, Ma'am wus sleepin' like a baby, when we loaded up them trunks."

"Least ways," Dale said, scratching his week-old chin whiskers, "Ah assume ya wus asleep cos we never heard no peep from ya and we wus a mite reluctant ter disturb ya'll."

"Where will you store them?"

"We'll teke 'em straight down ter his rooms, above Hoo Wang's laundry."

"Do you have a key to his offices?"

"Dang, no, Ma'am, there ain't a single lock on any door in Sweetwater, 'ceptin' the jailhouse an' the Courtroom!"

Chapter 9

Caroline watched Chuck and Dale carry the Doctor's trunk towards Doc Holywell's offices, above the Chinese laundry. She was curious about the Doctor, but didn't feel it prudent for a lady, of some considerable standing in these parts, to display her curiosity.

"Howdy, Miss Caroline, how are yah today?"

She turned to see that Marshal Tom Denton had walked down from his office to meet her as she arrived on the Stagecoach.

"I am very well, thank you, Marshal. What about you?"

"Why Ah'm fine, considerin' Ah wus out on the range fer more'n a week, tryin' ta track down them pesky rustlers."

"Poor man, you must be exhausted. Did you make any progress with your investigations?"

"Ah'm a mite bit tired, but that comes with the job, Ah guess. Kin Ah have a quiet word with ya Miss Caroline?" the Marshal bowed his head, leaned in and whispered, "in mah office where we cain't be overheard?"

"Why of course, Marshal," she smiled, "lead the way and I'll surely follow."

She held out her arm for him and the Marshal took it before they moved off towards the Marshal's office.

Their boots clumped crisply upon the wooden sidewalk, the Marshal's silver spurs jangling in addition. She had to take two steps for his every one, but he slowed the progress of his stride to a funereal pace, so she did not have to increase her normal walking pace. She had already noticed how well suited he was turned out, as usual, in his official capacity as the lawman and peacekeeper in the Sweetwater Valley territory. Tall and lean, the Marshal was resplendent in his dress, from his polished black boots up to his tall black hat and silver band, with silver-buckled gun belt and twin pearl handled Colt 45s, black string tie, white starched collar shirt, grey waistcoat with watch and chain, and long black coat. Caroline thought that he looked every inch the township's protector of the peace, a catch for any self-respecting woman looking to carving a life out of a growing community on the very edge of civilisation.

The Marshal turned the handle and swung the door open to usher the lady into his office. She had never been in here before. It looked quite typical, the unpainted wooden walls the same as all the walls in town were. There were a few wanted posters on one wall, a map of Sweetwater Valley Territory on another wall. An ornate wooden desk, clearly shipped in from Back East, with a captains chair on castors behind it and a couple of plain wooden chairs set in front. A few drawers behind the desk and against the wall, were no doubt for file storage. A closed door on the back wall must lead through to the single cell in the jail. She remembered Judge Justice Makepeace saying that Sweetwater was too small for much of a jail, so it was impossible to lock the three desperadoes who gunned down her father separately; it gave them opportunities to agree their stories before questioning and again before the actual trial.

"Would yah like ta take a seat, Miss Caroline?" The Marshal asked, scraping back a chair and indicating that she take a seat. The words shook her out of her momentary reverie.

"Thank, you, Marshal," she sat in the chair, while he moved around to the other side of the desk, while throwing his black hat onto the hatstand in the corner.

"Please call me Tom, when we are on our own, Miss Caroline, like ya'll did a couple o' times last week back at the Lazy C. Ah would like us ta be friendly."

"All right, Tom. Now, what is it you wanted to speak to me about?"

He eased himself into his chair, "Ya half-brother, now, Samuel "Red Coyote" Pinner Junior, do ya know how often he visits the Injun Reservation?"

"No, not exactly, maybe a couple of times a week?"

"Don't ya think that that's excessive, fer someone with a huge ranch to run?"

"Well, other then the mountain being in the way, they are the ranch's closest neighbours, and both his mother and grandfather live there. I would have thought it natural to maintain contact with his family. Other than myself, they are all the family he has. So what are you getting at, with this line of conversation, Tom?"

"Ah believe that Sam is involved in this rustlin' business, replacing the cows he's given to the Injuns with cows from other ranches. The Lazy C has so many cows he can easily hide fifty more on the ranch."

"You can't be serious, Tom, Sam has plenty of cows as you know, he loves the ranch and he wouldn't do anything to—"

"Yeah, a ranch that he would've expected to have bin all his outright, if'n it weren't fer ya'll comin' here from Back East."

"He's my brother. As far as I am concerned he could have the whole ranch. He's worked all his life for my father and he's earned every penny that the ranch is worth. I have done nothing to deserve a penny. Now, if we're talking Marshal business here about my family members, then I'm back to calling you Marshal. Now what grounds do you have for these scurrilous suspicions?"

"Why, ain't it obvious?" the Marshal spat, "it's because he ain't nothin' more than a damned Injun!"

Caroline was fuming as she stomped from Marshal Tom Denton's office. 'How dare he cast such accusations on my brother,' she thought, 'all based on the Marshal's prejudices against Native Americans. And, as for our Injuns, they're not even proper Indians!'

Gripping her valise tightly, she stormed down the sidewalk, but being early afternoon, and the Stagecoach no doubt bringing back packages for various citizens, as well as the good Doctor's trunks, the sidewalk was crowded with townsfolk, and she was forced to slow down.

Then everyone was being so polite to her, nodding their heads to her, or doffing caps, smiling nervously at her, that her foul mood couldn't help but change for the better. Her frown unfurled and this made her more approachable. One lady, who Caroline didn't know, asked her if the rumours about the school house opening up were true. Caroline stopped to reply.

"I hope so, ma'am. My father built that school house to be used and, until we can find a qualified teacher, I will be holding classes for children from five through to thirteen."

The woman began crying and, with all the other women around, took it in turns to embrace Caroline. Soon a crowd of women and children thronged around her, introducing themselves and their children. The general storekeeper came out onto the sidewalk too, holding a two page list, covered in names scrawled in pencil, which he handed to Caroline.

"It's a list o' children who want ta come ter study in yah school, Miss Bradshawh," said Baker, the shopkeeper, "folk have bin askin' 'bout it all week, an' a few of the common folk would like ta learn ta read'n'write, too."

"I will post on the door of the school house, the date when I will be starting classes," asserted Caroline, "we'll probably start next week."

"Straight after Christmas, then!" they all chorused.

"Yes! Straight after Christmas!" Caroline agreed, to more cheers.

Her next call was the Liberty Livery Stables and Jerome Maclean, who ran the stables.

"Howdy, Miss Bradshawh," said Jerome, "I take it ya'll want Dotty an' the gig agin?"

"Please, Mr Maclean."

"Joshua an' his boys, they should be back in Sweetwater Valley by the end o' the week, in plen'y o' time fer the start o' school lessons."

Caroline shook her head and laughed, "Does everyone know my business?"

"Ain't nothin' else ta talk about round here, Miss Bradshawh," he laughed, which only made the very last tooth in his jaw wobble even more.

"Mr Maclean, I've hired Dotty and the gig three times now, and Alice arranged it once, yet you haven't asked me for any money yet," Caroline asked, "nor has Joshua for the scholastic supplies, he told me that everything would be taken care of. Will you be sending me an account?"

"Oh, don't ya'll worry about the account, Ah does the monthly account fer the Lazy C at the end of the month, an' usually Clint or one o' the other boys collects it from me. Same applies ter Josh's haulage account. We all keeps accounts, so's we knows who owes what. But money on'y changes hands round here after the big drive to Colby in the spring. Besides, with Sam an' you owning half mah business, Ah always owes you at the end of the month."

"And you're happy with that?"

"Sure, if Ah ever bought you an' young Samuel out, you'd maybe open up another livery stable, an' Ah'd be out o' business."

"I'm sure Sam wouldn't do that!"

"An' Ah'm purty sure too, but Ah'm more'n happy with the arrangement, the Lazy C ain't never let me down."

In the gig, with Dotty leading the way, Caroline reached the Lazy C ranch gates by the middle of the afternoon. It was colder than the week before and there was a smattering of snow on the ground. She opened the gate and rang that bell as loud as she could. She felt on passing through those gates that she was home at last.

Within a few minutes' ride into the ranch, a single rider came over the rise and waved his hat in the air.

"Hello, Clint, has my brother had you continually riding this range waiting for me this last week?"

"Hell, no, ma'am, Ah've had mah fair share o' bunkhouse shuteye, an' that's a fact. But bein' out here in the wide open range with the sky as big as this." He waved his hat in all directions, "Well, there ain't nothin' better than this job of bein' a cowboy, other than being a cowboy on this here ranch."

Caroline smiled, "I agree, it is lovely out here. Do you want to tie up your horse to the gig and ride with me, Clint, so we can talk?"

"Sure, Miss Caroline. Do you want me to take the reins from yah?"

"No, I can handle it, Dotty's a sweet mare who seems to know the way."

"So, what do ya want to talk to me about, Miss Caroline?"

"Firstly, how long you worked here on this ranch, Clint?"

"Nearly twenty-five years. Your Pa gave me, wet behind the ears, a chance, an' Seth trained me ter do a better job at cow pokin'. An' at $20 dollars a month all in, and double pay on a drive to market a couple o' times a year, Ah reckon Ah've ended up in clover an' that's no mistake. Ah tell ya'll straight up, Ma'am, on'y don't tell Sam, but Ah'd do this job fer nuthin'."

"So where is Seth? I thought you usually ride in pairs."

"Yes Ma'am, Sam always insists on it, fer our own safety, jus' like yah Pa allus did. Your Sam's a real chip off the old block all right."

"He's so young, is he really a good boss?"

"The best, an' not only me thinks that, Seth and all the boys do. Ah left Seth's watching the herd to keep the wolves away till Ah got back. An' he does that because he loves this place, we all do."

"You said wolves?"

"Yeah. They come down hungry from the hills, but on'y at this time o' year."

"Will he be all right on his own?"

"Yeah, the wolves'll smell the horse before the rider an' they've learned to associate the smell o' horse with hot lead."

"Sounds as though you could just leave the horses out there while you sleep in a warm bunkhouse."

"Well," he laughed, "that may well work for a night, mebee two, but them wolves ain't dumb and when they get real hungry ... well, let's just say that in the morning all we'd find is a horse's bridle and four horseshoes!"

"Now, about this rustling business, is there anywhere on the Lazy C that you could keep fifty head of stolen cattle, where nobody could see them?"

"Plenty o' places, it's a big spread. I kin think o' three or four little dips an' canyons right now off the top o' mah head. What'yr gittin' at, Miss Caroline?"

"This morning Marshal Denton asked me into his office for a quiet word, and told me he suspected Sam had stolen his sister's cows. I think he might be trying to frame Sam for rustling."

"Mmm, Ah don't think we better say nuthin' ter Sam 'bout this. Ah'll quietly round up a few o' the boys an' head out ta check them places out, as soon as we get ter the ranch house."

"So, you think there might be something in this, Clint? I mean what would the Marshal have to gain?"

"I dunno. But they is all crooked, them Dentons, ceptin' young Alice, o' course, she's a sweet child that Miss Pinner virtually adopted an' bin a good influence on her. Ah know the Marshal appears ter be the perfect lawman, but his Pappy were a murderin' killer with a badge. When he was deputy sheriff, before we ever had any real law here, he gunned down more cowboys or gunmen than most. An' he robbed them bodies, too, Ah heared, cos none o' 'em ever had any money on 'em, 'ccordin' to the warrants. His daughter, Connie Denton that was, well Ah reckons she murdered her husband a few years ago. No way he woulda run off. The Marshal sure never made no fuss back then. Ah know she told everyone that her Frank Wells ran off an' left her, but well, Ah guess anything could happen as she sure has a hot temper."

"Poor Alice!"

"Yeah, she's a sweet gal all right. Miss Pinner saw that in her right enough and took her on when she wus twelve, mebee thirteen. Brung her ter the ranch house an' taught her readin'n'writin' an' how ta serve a lady right properly."

"She is a sweet girl, and she's certainly sweet on Sam."

"Yeah, and he don't knowed it yet, but she'll reel him in some time, sooner than later, like as not. Ah reckon if Alice weren't about Sam'd miss her."

"So, you wouldn't have a problem working here if she was the mistress of the Lazy C?"

"No, ma'am! An' she's a mite sweeter than that Miss Duggan!" Clint laughed. "But serious now, Miss Caroline, things is comin' ta a head, Ah reckon, over this rustlin' business, an' that usually ends up with plenty o' flyin' lead. Now your Pa always said with pride that his daughter was the finest shot with a pistol or a Winchester that he'd ever seed, when ya wus Back East."

"And I am equally convinced that father's always exaggerate when it comes to the supposed accomplishments of their sons and daughters. Besides, it's been years since I fired a pistol or a rifle."

"When you have a talent, yah never loses it completely. Stop the gig."

He leapt to the ground before the gig had completely stopped and ran round the other side to hand her down to the ground.

She held the Winchester rifle in her hands, in her young Sweetwater hands, and it was as if all the years since she was a teenager just melted away. She felt comfortable with the weapon, the weight and balance just seemed so familiar, so right.

"So, Clint, you got any firewater bottles you can line up for me to shoot at?"

"Better than that, Miss Caroline," he put his hand in his pocket and pulled it out, his fist wrapped around something in his hand, "you ready?"

She set the gun stock firmly into her shoulder, "I'm ready!"

He threw a bright shiny object almost vertically in the air and she aimed and fired, she heard the two objects collide in mid air and drop to the ground about ten feet away. Clint fetched it back. It was a US Silver Dollar, with a hole in it, plumb in the middle of the coin.

Chapter 10

"I assumed it was a nickel you threw in the air, Clint, I am so sorry, I will get Sam to replace it as soon—"

Clint laughed, "Don't you fret none about that Miss Caroline, Ah told yah before, Ah ain't jus' workin' here fer the money, Ah love this life and wouldn't want to spent mah time doin' nothin' else. No, when the time is right, Ah'll show this ta mah kids an' grandkids an' tell 'em that even after layin' off shootin' fer thirty years, she plugged this dollar with her fust shot!"

"Thirty years?"

"Ah beg yah pardon, Miss Caroline, it mus' be on'y ten years since yah fired a Winchester repeatin' rifle, when ya wus a bitty kid. Ah dunno what Ah wus thinkin', Ah bin out on this range so long, countin' cows in thirties an' fifties, that Ah've lost the ability ta count numbers, Ah reckon. Mebee Ah should inroll in yah school like mah kids."

"Your children live here?"

"They live with mah wife in Sweetwater township at Ma Baldwin's boardin' house in Cross Street, that's why Sam sends me into town regular so Ah kin get see 'em all. Ah got 'em put on that there Charlie Baker's list soon as he put it up in the gen'ral store!"

"Well, I look forward to meeting them, Clint."

"In the meantime, Miss Caroline, we won't say nuthin' 'bout yah shootin' ability, because Ah reckon things are comin' to a head, an' any edge we got is worth kept hid 'til we needs it."

***

That night Caroline fell asleep at the Lazy C ranch house, having not had a chance to speak to Samuel about her conversation with the Marshal and his suspicions about Sam rustling cattle from Alice's mother. With the value of the ranch and his involvement in virtually every business in Sweetwater, she knew that Sam would have no reason to steal from anyone. He was generous in helping the Indians eat through the winter, and Caroline had long ago told him she had no opposition to any decision he made where the ranch's interest was concerned.

She woke up in her familiar garage. It was Monday morning. Time to give one more chance to her kids, thinking that, if they came with her they would probably be young boys. She loses some thirty years off her age back in Sweetwater, so if they came back with her, the boys may be too young to attend school like Clint's children. Curious, that in the thirty-odd years since she last fired a Winchester at the Western Enactment Society, she had been 19 or 20, single and still living at home. Counting back, it must have been thirty-three years ago, so Clint's saying she hadn't fired a gun in thirty years hadn't been far out!

While she was waiting for the pot to boil for a cup of tea, the doorbell rang. A bouquet of flowers was waiting for her at the door, delivered by a local florists, with a message from Peter thanking her for Sunday tea. She smiled broadly all through the unwrapping and putting in a vase of water, then called him, but her call went to voicemail.
"Hi Peter," she spoke into the recording machine, "I just got the flowers, thank you, they are lovely. I'll text you."

He was probably working in the hospital. She sent him a text thanking him, including a message that they should do it again and ending with 'call me'.

Then, with so many pleasant thoughts of the time spent with Peter and the invigorating hope of more, she didn't really feel like arguing with the boys, or face the hassle of running into her ex-husband again. Determinedly, she switched off the kettle, grabbed her warm blanket and headed for the garage.

***

"I'm just going to have a word with Sam," Caroline said to Alice, as she urged her mount Daisy to leave her position riding to the Injun Reservation next to Alice Wells, to take up position next to Sam.

"Hi Sis," he grinned, "you don't know how great that sounds to me. Before, when Pa talked about you with that faraway look in his eye, somehow you were a mite unreal. To finally meet you and have you treat me like a brother is ... well, it means more to me than any fancy words that I can find."

"Me too, brother," she reached across and squeezed his hand, "I'm not alone in the world any more having you as my brother... Sam, I wanted to speak to you privately about a conversation I had yesterday with the Marshal."

"He thinks I'm the rustler."

"Yes, he does. Are you?"

"Nope. No reason to be. I reckon he spent too much of his so-called investigating time checking out the Lazy C and the Injun village, that I think he was looking for places to move those cows from Cottonwood Pines to Lazy C because the Injuns would spot him miles before reaching the Reservation."

"You think they are still on Connie Wells' ranch?"

"They were last week, I'm sure, and I'm even surer that by now they are already on our land somewhere, so that's why I never said nothing when Clint rode out at first light this morning with all the hands that are supposed to be on a rest day."

"I suppose nothing much that goes on misses the best rancher in the county, huh?"

"Not much, Sis, 'specially when I'm half-Injun!" he laughed.

"Sorry I kept that from you, I was hoping to save you from what might have been more stress."

"I won't hold it against you, Caroline, I notice a lot of things and work out in my head the explanations to my satisfaction, but I ain't yet figured out why you and my mother seem to get along like sisters. Don't tell me yet, though, I don't have much to do on this ranch except figure things out."

"Well, my dear, smart brother," Caroline laughed, "you let me know when you figure it all out."

"Well, I will, but first, it looks like we have a welcoming committee, Cross Eyed Eagle and Basking Beaver are ahead of us and it looks like they want to parley."

"Parley?"

"Yes, they've set up a small camp and lit a fire, so we need to sit down and make peace. They normally know we're coming and just escort us in, but not this time. Probably spooked by the Marshal last time we were here."

"So, do we pass round a peace pipe or something?"

"No pipe of peace, Pa told be that some Injuns do that. Here, we just share round a pot of jelly babies. Pa gave 'em a set of moulds years ago, long before I was born."

***

At the Injun Reservation, Caroline tried to engage Hiding Fox in conversation, while Dove Feather and Sam exchanged their usual warm greetings between mother and son, but the wily Injun wouldn't look her in the face, muttered something unintelligible about fetching something, and disappeared under the teepee at the back. Caroline shook her head from side to side. Slippery Injun, that Hiding Fox.

Sam finished greeting his mother and collected Alice, who wanted to look at a spectacular waterfall she'd heard about on one of the streams that run down the mountain.

"Sam looks a little piqued today, Carrie dear," Dove Feather commented as soon as Caroline embraced her, "is anything bothering him?"

"I think the Marshal is trying to frame him for rustling those cows supposedly taken from Alice's mother, that's why he was snooping over here a week ago. He seemed happy that you are only getting Lazy C cows to eat, but Clint is searching any hiding places, in case the Marshal has planted actual cows or evidence, like hides on the Lazy C."

"A few hides is certainly less bulky than a small herd. But it's worth checking if Cottonwood Pines have changed their brand recently. Alice might know."

"Why would they do that, Mum?"

"Well, the brands I remember are very different, the Lazy C is a C reclining in a rocking chair —"

"You and Pops were really rubbing that into me as thick as treacle!"

"Sorry, sweetheart, but maybe you did settle down too early with Robert Bradshaw, the rat!"

"I suppose Pops told you all about our marriage breakdown?"

"And your ungrateful —"

"Mum! Leave the boys out of this. I am working on them, they are not a completely dead loss yet. Now, I have this for you."

Caroline reached into her valise and brought out her father's ashes urn, wrapped in a tea towel. She unwrapped the urn, inscribed "Mr Samuel Jeremiah Pinner" and his date of death, and handed it over to Dove Feather.

"I kept it hidden, as I didn't want to freak out anyone with the date. What do you want these ashes for anyway, Mum?" Caroline asked, "some sort of magic potion?"

"That would be telling, there are rules to using this place, as I have told you before, and you break them at your peril."

"Does that mean there's a dream world police?"

"Not quite, Carrie. Sort of police, but there are different kinds of agents about. One of the main rules is that while you can create all sorts of things for other people, you are not allowed to do anything for yourself. For instance, I cannot ask you to bring anything for myself."

"Something like this?" Caroline pulled another wrapped urn out of the valise and unwrapped it. It was a smaller, older urn, about thirty years old and contained the ashes of the late Mrs Maureen Pinner.

"Thank you dear, you are a treasure."

"Why didn't Dad bring it over? He must have kept it in the boot of that old car for years."

"Because we didn't need it, sweetheart, we were both alive here. But then he was murdered, gunned down in cold blood."

"But why? If you created this world, where did these gunmen come from?"

"There are rules, some I can tell you about, some I can't. It is like a computer game, apparently. I wouldn't know such things, but this is how it has been explained to me. Most things you simply have to find out for yourself, and you must do it quietly, otherwise you ruin the illusion for other users. As the creator of this world, I have certain privileges, but outside of Sweetwater Valley there are many worlds, and there is permitted movement between the worlds, by granting permissions to enter. Anyone I have let in can, in their turn, let their friends in, if they know how to do it. I limited the entry of people to the Stagecoach, so in any day we could only get a maximum of four to six people a day. And to maintain this world, the servers, taxes, licences, mortgage and loan repayments, we need those cattle drives in order to pay our way, and that link means that others can sneak in, like the three gunslingers, but it's a long hard journey from Colby that puts people off. Other worlds are made easier to enter because they want new people. We don't."

"This world wouldn't sustain many people though would it? Being near desert and mountains?"

"No, it wouldn't and that was a deliberate design factor on our part. But the Santa Fe and Colby Railroad Company, if they laid tracks into town, could set up a canning factory here, buy up all the cows and before you know where we were we'd be industrialised, with freezers, food processing and packaging. Many of the people here wouldn't want to cope with this."

"But you can't stop progress, Mum. I am even opening up the school next week."

"That's for the children, they need basic schooling even if we remain a frontier Western town. No, it's the Railroad that came sniffing round last year and wanted access into the town, hoping that big money offers would talk. Your Pops sent them away with a flea in their ear because we still own or half-own most of the land, except for isolated internal pockets that he couldn't buy, like Cottonwood Pines."

"Who owns the Railroad?"

"Huge inter-world conglomerates own everything, Carrie. Faceless, ruthless people they are. I believe it was the Railroad company that killed your Pops, because these other worlds want to open up Sweetwater Valley to tourists and exploitation of what we have built here. Once they've ruined us, they move onto another world."

"If they are committing murder, surely they are answerable to the police or these agents?"

"Maybe, if the agents know what's going on and are not already bribed to turn a blind eye."

"I was thinking of asking you how to bring the boys over. Now I am not so sure I want to, even if it is possible. I didn't want to bring them in on the passenger seat if it would hurt them."

"Oh, you can bring them over, all right. Just sit them both as best you can in the front of the car and hold hands with them when you put the Stetson on and all close your eyes. I think I can tell you that much. But the results may be mixed. What ages were you expecting them to be?"

"Well, I lost about thirty years coming, though Robert Junior could be cutting it fine because he was born just thirty years ago."

"It doesn't work quite like that. If they materialise as adults or children too old to be yours, you may have to pass them off as cousins. Most people usually come over in their prime. Take Jerome from the Liberty Livery, he was in his thirties when he left Harrogate to come here and arrived ten years older! He doesn't mind, he loved playing a grizzled old character in the Wild West reenactments, so that must've influenced his appearance."

Caroline rode back to the Lazy C, resolved to at least have one more chance of reconciliation with her boys, just as soon as she could get to bed and close her eyes.

Chapter 11

On Tuesday morning Caroline woke up in the dream car and checked her watch. It never failed to amaze her how that watch turned into a 19th century bracelet at Sweetwater and back into a digital watch when she returned to the 21st century, just as her clothes magically transformed to suit and changed back again when she returned.

'I have just enough time to get showered and changed before the plumbers arrived,' she thought. She moved her little car to park in the road, so that it was out of the plumbers' way when they arrived, and then she put the kettle on.

As soon as the kettle whistled, Mr Jones arrived first with Bob, the boiler-suited plumber who was going to be doing the job. Bob was a cheerful chap, rather more rotund than Mr Jones, who had thought the room the plumber had to work in next to the Jaguar more than adequate. Once Bob saw the space, he demonstrated beyond doubt that the old Jaguar had to be pushed out of the garage onto the drive.

Fortunately, Caroline had had the tyres pumped up again when she moved the car from her Pop's village, up on the Yorkshire moors, to her small town in the Cotswolds.

Mr Jones called for her to get inside and steer, while he and Bob pushed it out. Once safely on the drive, Mr Jones departed, promising that as soon as Bob finished, sometime in the afternoon, that Bob and the chap due later to insulate the garage door and entrance, would push the car back exactly where it was originally.

Bob cheerfully polished off three cups of tea and a full packet of chocolate digestives before the insulator arrived, a painfully thin young Polish man called Joss, who declined tea and Caroline's second packet of biscuits, custard creams, as he had brought a flask of green tea with him. By this time, Bob had connected all the pipe work into the central heating system, and only had to fit the new radiator to the wall, make the final piping connections and bleed the air bubbles out of the system. The taciturn Joss finished his insulation work about ten minutes after the plumber had finished his fifth cuppa and the last of the custard creams. It was three minutes past three in the afternoon when they departed. Caroline still had time to call on the boys today.

Christmas shopping, so close to the festive holiday, is a nightmare. Anyone will tell you, but still they leave it to the last minute. The multi-storey car park was full to overflowing, but the electronic sign on the bypass informed her that it wasn't worth the effort of trying it.

She felt guilty about it, but only a little bit; she had her late father's disabled parking permit that some of Pop's old friends from his local Cowboy Reenactment Society used when they gave him a lift anywhere, so she used it on her car and parked it in a Disabled Parking spot at a smaller car park. She removed a spare walking stick he had left in her car boot at some point, and she limped for a suitable distance before hooking the stick in a garden hedge to pick up on her return. The traffic was so busy that it was already well past four o'clock and starting to get dark.

She found Robert Junior straight away, and together located Adam in the loading bay, sorting out deliveries to residential houses that evening. Adam refused to see her until he finished what he was doing, "in about an hour" with Robbie's help, so she said she'd wait for them in their office. The brothers agreed, and went back to what they were working on, and she marched out the back to the portacabin office in the yard. By this time the store was virtually empty, and staff were putting their coats on to leave, as it was just gone five o'clock closing time.

Caroline entered the portacabin and proceeded through to the single back office without knocking, being confronted by her ex-husband in a romantic embrace with one of the office secretaries, both in a state of semi-undress.

"Don't you knock when you enter an office?" Robert Bradshaw shouted at Caroline, while the red-faced woman gathered up her clothes, and ran out of the office past Caroline in floods of tears.

"Didn't think I'd have to," Caroline snapped back, her arms folded and her face scornful, "even though you are no longer married, Robert, the last time I spoke to Mandy, she WAS very happily married to one of your drivers, probably the very one that Adam is sending out for deliveries for the next four hours."

"So what? You've no business poking your nose into my affairs!" Robert's face was even redder than Mandy has been, though in anger rather than embarrassment.

"Affairs being the operative word, eh Robert? To be honest, I don't want anything to do with your philandering affairs, I am much more interested in your financial affairs. I was told you were retired and handed over the business to the boys and were just doing occasional consultation work."

"Yeah, that's right, I was here today to give the boys some much needed advice," he smirked as he bent his knees and pulled up his trousers, closing the zip, "I get a modest annual retainer plus a token day by day rate, virtually just expenses."

"That's what you say here and now, but what will you say in court under oath, when I ask that our divorce settlement be reexamined?"

"Pah!" he laughed, tucking in his shirt, "you have no evidence, the court would never allow you to—"

"Tell me, Robert, when we sold the house two years ago, did you fill in a form for the Royal Mail to forward any mail to your home address?"

"I, I always left all the domestic stuff to you, as you well know, Caroline. Why?"

"Well, I did fill out the forms. And I accepted the divorce settlement out of dumb shame, I just wanted to get the sorry business over and done with. I was surprised to get so much junk mail addressed to you, that I set aside a kitchen drawer for it, and recently dedicated a second drawer."

"You better send on any mail then, if it belongs to me."

"I will, I'll bring it round in a couple of carrier bags, including the quarterly financial statements for this business."

"Don't think so, Caroline, you are definitely bluffing there. I get those figures by email direct from the auditors."

"No, Robert, you ALSO get them by email, but they send you a separate set of hard copies too."

"Well, they're mine, and they are private. I want them back!"

"You can have them. I don't need them, as I have already scanned and sent them to the divorce court, my lawyer and copies to the local newspaper."

"So?"

"So, this company has three directors, all named, including you. The directors' remuneration is disclosed as one big payment plus two equal but much smaller salaries."

"My boys are so crap at running the business that my consultation has been greater than expected, but it is still on a casual basis."

"Yes, you may be right. I'll concede that, Robert. So, why was it stated in the divorce settlement that the business was in such a poor state that you had to mortgage the house to the hilt to keep solvent and that you were also forced to sell a majority of shares in the company to an interested party abroad in desperation to keep it afloat and not lay off all those loyal staff."

"Absolutely, so I did. Everyone know that retail is a tough business—"

"So, if you have a majority foreign owner, why is it that he is not represented on the board, Robert?"

"Er," he stuttered, the beetroot redness of his face had extended to his neck.

"And why, in a hardware store which has a department for producing office door labels at the drop of a hat, you still have your name on the main office and the boys have their desks outside in the open office? I'm taking you for every penny you owe me!"

Robert wasn't breathing and clutched at his chest before keeling over onto the carpet.

Caroline pulled out her mobile and calmly called 999.

Chapter 12

Doctor Peter George was at the end of a long shift in Casualty. He had worked two hours beyond his normal finishing time and wasn't taking on another case. This last case had taken four hours of tests and was a man in his sixties, according to the med sheet, but he hadn't dinted himself smoking, eating and drinking like a much younger man, without even gentle exercise to mitigate the long-term abuse of his body. The gentleman concerned, Robert Bradshaw, was stable now, but the heart specialist was on his way in from home, to a likely triple heart bypass operation later tonight. Just the next of kin to speak to, George thought, and get the operation consent form filled in and signed.

"Mrs Bradshaw?" he asked after knocking on the door of the room set aside for these situations.

"Peter!" Caroline exclaimed, spinning round from her deep occupation in thought as she stared out of the window.

Mrs Bradshaw, the Caroline he enjoyed the company of on Sunday, was on her own, the Doctor noted, the medical admission notes having indicated that three people were present at the time the form was filled it and the patient admitted.

"How is Robert?" she asked, clearly concerned about his patient.

"Your husband will probably need a triple heart bypass operation, tonight if possible. A consultant in on his way in, he will mobilise an operating team if he agrees with my diagnosis. Can you sign the consent to operate form for me?"

"No, I cannot sign that, Peter. Robert is my ex-husband. I will ring one of our sons. They were here earlier but apparently they had other more pressing things to do rather than stay here awaiting the outcome."

"So you still see him, your ex-husband?"

"No, Peter, I don't 'see' him, as you seem to imply, certainly not intentionally. Our sons own the Bradshaw Home Improvements store in the town centre and Robert is supposed to be retired but he was there in the office today, when I called in to speak to the boys. We exchanged a few words, mostly about his cheating morals and lying about his assets and income, which was to the detriment of our divorce settlement. At the end of our jousty little chat, he collapsed clutching his chest, as you are aware. Do I care about him? Yes, I do, a little, he is after all the father of my sons. Do I want him to survive this illness? Yes, I do, because I have just sent my lawyer evidence of his perjury and I would rather he survived until after a fairer assessment of his ability to pay up what he owes me in our divorce settlement."
Dr Peter smiled, "So, do you think Santa will think you are naughty or nice over this incident?"

"Oh, naughty and nice, I hope." Caroline laughed. "I must call Adam and get him to come see you and sign the papers."

"Not me, I'm finished for the day, your ex- was my last case of this shift. The nurse on the front desk can deal with it until the consultant arrives. Do you need a lift, or will your son Adam take you home?"

"No, I have waited here long enough. I went to the store to mend bridges with my sons, as we discussed on Sunday, if you remember."

"I remember," he said.

"But that can wait now until after Christmas."

"I'll leave you to your phone call then, Caroline, and perhaps meet you in the main lobby, once I have signed off and changed, say in twenty minutes?"

"Thank you, Peter, I'll see you later."

***

Robert Junior was the first to reply to their mother's messages to her boys to call her urgently. She explained that one of them had to go in to the hospital and sign the consent forms. He complained that he had had a drink and couldn't drive.

"Then get a cab, Robbie, unless of course you don't think your father is worth the price of a cab fare?"

"All right, all right," he wined, "but why do I have to do everything while Adam gets away with blue murder?"

"Just do it Rob, if you have an issue with your brother, have it out with him, not me. Don't forget, I want to speak to you both about something important about our future. It will have to be after Christmas now, and you will have to come to my house, I'm not going to the store again."

"All right," he agreed quietly.

Caroline could see Peter coming towards her from the stairs. He had changed out of his green scrubs and white lab coat and wore a grey suit with long black overcoat. He carried his cowboy hat in his hand, too, she noted with a smile. Although his hair was almost white, he still cut a dashing figure.

"All arranged with your son?"

"Yes, Robert Junior, he's the youngest, is coming over to sort out the consent forms. The eldest, Adam, has a girlfriend Tanya, who can't cook, so they are probably dining out somewhere. His mobile went straight to voice mail and he hasn't yet replied to my message."

"Well, I haven't eaten anything all day," Peter said, "have you eaten?"

"No, I had the plumbers in for three quarters of the day, with the water going off and on, so I didn't have a chance to prepare anything. By the time they had finished, I just had time to get to the store. Oh my god! I just remembered, I parked in a disabled spot, limited to a two-hour waiting time. My car could be clamped, or towed!"

"Disabled parking space?" Doctor Peter asked, as he clicked the locking clicker, the lights flashing on his car.

"I know, I'm a really bad person, I used my Dad's disabled parking permit, because I was running so late."

"If the car has a permit, they are unlikely to clamp it, not in a disabled bay in a public car park. Where is it?"

"In Shepherd's Row, in the hill just above the library, do you know it?"

"Last time I used the library it was in a Victorian building near the station."

"That's been turned into the museum now. They built a new library on the old car park which were previously the animal pens for the agricultural market."

"Near St Mark's?"

"Yes, that's the one."

"I'll drop you off outside the Shepherd's Row car park and wait until you let me know you're all right to drive the car."

"Thanks, Peter, I appreciate it. Where were you thinking of eating?"

"The Moonlight Diner on the bypass? They serve meals until past midnight, and they get a lot of passing traffic, using the A road leading to the M40. It's not fancy but the food is reasonable and I find I eat there a lot when I work late."

"All right. I'll meet you up there."

***

Caroline was pleased the way the meeting went with Peter at The Moonlight Diner on the bypass. She didn't like to call it a 'date', because it was hardly that. She liked him and she would like them to be friends, but beyond that she was unclear. She was uncertain about what her future was or even where it lay, but she realised that in the real world she had been too trusting and docile. She could have made more of her life and she was only just beginning to assert herself, and that was all down to the confidence she was building from her preferred life in Sweetwater Valley.

After they had eaten, they parted in the car park with a friendly kiss on the cheek and a squeeze.

Then, she was keener than ever to return to Sweetwater. There she was asleep in her room at the Lazy C ranch. Whatever delayed her here, didn't matter as time went by at different speeds in her two worlds. She would return to her ranch bedroom in the morning of the day before Christmas, that was a fixed point in time.

Caroline smiled, the temperature set in the garage was a perfect 20 degrees. The door was insulated, but she had satisfied herself with the plumbing company that the two air bricks at the foot of the outside wall and through the eaves at the back of the garage, would provide adequate fresh air flow. She settled herself comfortably in the front seat of the dream car, pulled on the old Stetson and closed her eyes.

It was light and bright in Sheerwater and her unheated bedroom at the Lazy C ranch felt chilly once she ventured from under the bedcovers. She could hear raised voices outside the front bedroom's single glazed window. She hurriedly started dressing, before hearing a knock on the door.

"Come on in, I'm decent!" she called out.

"Oh, Miss Caroline, Ah come ter help yah git dressed, an' yer done near done a'ready!" Alice exclaimed.

"I heard the voices, Alice, come help me get my boots on."

"Sure. Here, lemmee teke that. Now, Ah hears Clint ride in ahead o' three men. They bin watching the front gate they says, an' they met with a message from Tom Baker, you know, the general store man?"

Caroline nodded.

"It seems mah Uncle Tom's raisin' a posse ter come here an' 'rest poor Samuel fer rustlin'. Ah never heard o' such a thing, darn it!"

"Do you think such a thing would ever be possible Alice?"

"Not least wise they'd bin some mistake. That's a hangin' offence, an' they'd lynch rustlers ter save a trial, least ways that's wut's bin done in the past. Ah know mah uncle fancies himself as this big Eastern Detectiffe, but really he's just a small town Marshal wot learnt peace-keepin' offa his Pappy and offa yah own Pappy, so he ain't gonna be right in his investigations all the time. Ah reckon Sam should stay outta that jail until the Judge comes a'callin', cos folks what goes into that jail, well, they don't allus come out agin!"

Down in the dining room, Caroline and Alice found Clint and Sam deep in conversation, pouring coffee and chewing on strips of bacon, that Mrs Duggan seemed to have a bottomless supply of.

"You better start from the beginning again, Clint, for Caroline's sake," Sam said.

"All righty Boss," Clint began, smiling at Caroline, "Mornin' Miss Caroline, mornin' Miss Alice. As Ah wus sayin' ter Mr Samuel here, we found ten head of scrawny cattle on the edge of the north range yesterday. They wus carryin' the Cottonwood Pines' brand all right. It's sweet meadow grass up there in spring, ma'am, but nuttin' but frozen tundra up there this time of year. Denton, yah uncle, Miss Alice, knows we'd have no reason ter go up there at this time o' year, cos it ain't good sense ter keep stock up that high in winter. Any wise, we drove them cattle across our fence through Jake Macready's high plain through to Cactus Gulch and penned them in using whatever rough scrub an' timber wus up there. While drivin' them north, I sent Bob an' Gene back to the barn here fer a pickup wagon full o' hay an' sacks o' oats, carrots an' apples from the store. Don't like ter see no animal suffer. There's no water anywhere up there this time o' year but enough snow fer 'em to chaw on fer now."

"That's good, well done Clint." Sam chipped in, "If the Marshal comes a calling, there's no evidence to see. That that gets us up to date,. Sorry about your uncle, Alice, but it looks bad for him."

"That's not all Boss," Clint continued, "when the boys picked up supplies from the general store, Mr Baker said he heard the Marshal wus ridin' round the smaller farms to get a posse together to arrest yah. Baker overheard him talking ter that Willy the Kid—"

"The one that shot my Pa?"

"The same, he's come back on the Stagecoach, with five mean hombres and they're said ter be packin' heat."

"Sorry, Sam," Caroline said, remembering her plea to the judge for clemency for the youngest of the three accused of murdering Jed Pinner, "I thought he was deaf and dumb, as well as simple minded."

"Baker thought it sounded like he wus talkin' to Denton like he wus the Marshal's boss," Clint said.

"Dove Feather thought the gunmen that shot our father worked for the railroad company," said Caroline, "that they want to open this territory up to travellers, tourists, and settlers."

"Nay, Miss Caroline," Clint said, slipping back into his native Yorkshire accent, "we ain't lettin' that happen, not after all t'time we spent building t'world."

"Clint?"

"Nay, lass, though I'm Clint here, I were Bert Appleby that was, I taught your Pops all he knew about the West. I were one o' t'first chaps from t'Cowboy Appreciation Society to visit this place through your Dad's Jag, and, as I died o' cancer back in 1993, I'm one of the oldest permanent members here."

"Did you know about this, Sam?"

"Not in detail, Sis, Ma thought it best that she told you everything, when the time was right."

"She never said anything about this, actual people here from my time and place. So, Running Fox, he avoids me, because he seems so familiar to me but I can't put my finger on it. Do you know who Running Fox is?"

"Yes, he's my grandfather, well, our grandfather, Caroline. Ma brought both of their ashes with her, only Grandma never took to it or something, and she died on her while Ma was still a young girl."

"So someone can come back using their ashes?"

"Aye," said Clint, "but it has to be the other world's ashes, once you are dead in your original world you can't be brought back there, only here."

"But Pops died both here and at home. He was gunned down."

"That were his dream version of him, Caroline," Clint continued, "a sort of clone, like. The rancher Jed Pinner was buried here and he cannot be brought back from that body or that body's ashes, lass. But he were never 'made' here, his ashes are from your world and, as that real version never existed here, he can be brought back to live here again, but would have to start out as a small child."

"Things are coming to a head, Caroline," Clint said, "I believe that all the Injuns and all the Lazy C hands are for Sam, as well as most of the town's folk but the some of them in town may well be for The Railroad. If Willy the Kid has brought automatic weapons with him, then it will mean that Chuck and Dale must be in the pay of the Railroad, knowing their business would die unless they work for them. Josh Matthews is Yorkshire through and through and doesn't want the place to change, this is where he is raising his kids, so we can still get Caroline to her own world through the Colby railhead, if it ain't too well secured. The Railroad company would be too certain of being successful and won't consider you escaping, and I think we should make a move now, before the shootin' starts."

It was at this point that the Injuns arrived at the ranch house, before Caroline had a chance to tell them in no uncertain manner that she could ride and shoot with the best of them and wasn't prepared to run home to the Cotswolds.

She welcomed her mother, Dove Feather, who was with the Injuns, and was squeezed by her grandfather, Hiding Fox, now there was no more need for secrecy on his part. Looking around at the grinning Injun faces, most nodding and acknowledging her, she finally recognised so many faces from her early days joining her parents with the Cowboy Reenactment Society, when there were always plenty of Injuns present.

Dove Feather readily agreed with Clint. "I reckon there may well be agents from the Railroad on your world, Caroline, the Sante Fe & Colby Railroad Company are all part of Interworld Conglomerates, they have fingers in every pie, including your world."

"So I have got to get back home?"

"Some of these big companies are laws among themselves. They have their own agents everywhere. They could suffocate you, set your house on fire, anything they can to get rid of you there so that you are trapped here and can't complain to the proper authorities. Has anyone new come into your life recently? Say a new neighbour or even a new postman, someone who could access your property without arousing yours or anyone's suspicions?"

"I had the plumbers in yesterday to put a radiator in the garage—"

"So they've seen the Dream Car?"

"Yes, they helped me push it out and back into the garage."

"Bugger! Did you leave it unlocked?"

"No, Mum, I never leave it unlocked."

"But it's unlocked now, though, isn't it? With you sitting in it, fast asleep?"

"Er... Yes, it is," she admitted.

"We'll escort you to the Corby road from the west edge of town," Sam said, "we'll go now. We dare not delay or you'll be trapped here."

"We'll come with you, Sam, you need to leave a few hands with here to protect the womenfolk."

Sam nodded.

Alice dug her heels in, tears in her eyes, "Ah've kept quiet 'til now, ashamed of mah uncle, and mah Ma, it looks like she were a part of this plan. Ah'm not stayin' here waitin' to find out if Sam's bin shot, or Miss Caroline ... It's mah job ter look after Miss Caroline an' Ah'm not going anywhere 'cept with her."

Caroline pulled the crying girl to her, "of course, Alice, you can come with us. Sam, I need a Winchester."

Sam looked at his mother, eyebrows raised. Dove Feather nodded.

"I'll strap a full one to Betsy right now, with a box o' shells in the saddle bags," Sam said. "All right, Joe, Bob and Chuck, you break out rifles and post yourselves around the ranch house to protect the womenfolk here."

"Sure, an' ya kin give me a rifle, too, Mr Samuel, and release another hand to go with yuh," Mrs Duggan said, sticking her chin out, her knuckles and muscled arms resting on her hips, "Mr Duggan, God bless his soul, fought off bushwackers an' Injuns many times, least ways, far as I remember."

"Joe'll sort a gun out for you Mrs Duggan," Sam grinned, "we'll get mounted up."

The Injuns whooped and hollered, Hiding Fox among them, and they were on their way, about sixty strong, bows, arrows, spears and a few ancient single shot guns. The Cowboys were soon mounted and bristling with arms, and soon caught the smaller painted ponies up before they reaching the ringing gate. Within a couple of hours, they were quietly approaching the town from the West and entered the yard of the Liberty Livery Stables.

Jerome hitched up Dotty to the gig as if his life depended on it, preparing to get Caroline down the Colby trail to the public terminal there that will direct her to her own world.

One of the lookout hands, Alan, rushed in to say that a posse of men were gathering at the other end of Main Street, but that there was also a single rider was approaching. It was Doc Holywell, recently arrived from Back East. He appeared unarmed, Alan said.

"Maybe he's one of 'em and they want a parley?" Sam suggested. "Let him come in, Alan."

"Rightho, Boss!"

Caroline sat in the gig, Alice gingerly handing up the Winchester and full box of shells, before she climbed in. Caroline was about to twitch the reins, when the good Doc Holywell rode into the yard and tipped her his cowboy hat.

"Howdy, Miss Caroline," the handsome sandy-haired Doctor said, "not planning on going anywhere are we?"

And suddenly, Caroline realised that she didn't have to ask what the Doctor's initial letter 'G' stood for, it was George, as in Doctor Peter George.

"Hello, Peter, fancy seeing you here. You are the last person I expected to see in Sweetwater."

Chapter 13

"So, Peter, are you with the Sante Fe & Colby Railroad Company or Interworld Conglomerates?"

"And what makes you think that, Caroline?" the urbane doctor, if he was ever even a doctor, offered a question instead of an answer.

"Well, everyone here knows you as the mysterious and elusive Doctor G Hollywell, who has been on a long trip Back East, while I know you as the charming Doctor Peter George from my home town. You're the first person I've met who, like me, occupies two different worlds. There must be a reason for that, and my guess is that you're up to no good."

"And are your reasons for being here ... good? I saw you ride in here on a pony and now you're in a gig. Going somewhere in a hurry are we?"

"Simply worried I might have left the gas on at home, you know how it is."

"I know." The Doctor dismounted and tied his horse up against a nearby hitching rail. "I was actually about to ride out to see you at the ranch, when the posse gathered together in town. Looks like they are becoming a lynching mob."

Caroline noticed as he dismounted, his long grey coat flapped open, revealing no visible gun around his waist, or holster strapped to either leg.

"Unarmed, Doctor?" Caroline asked, coolly.

"I am a man of medicine, as you well know, not war, Ma'am," he answered, with a dip of his head.

It was amazing, Caroline thought, this transition to this dream world of largely her mother's making from her own world. Doc Hollywell was fully thirty years younger than Doctor Peter George had appeared to be in her Cotswold town. Although he was clearly charming and carried himself with an inbuilt confidence in either setting.

"Rumour has it that Willy the Kid, pardoned as feeble minded in gunning down my father in cold blood, has returned with agents from the Railroad Company to force my brother and I to give up our ranch, therefore opening up the possibilities of the Railroad coming through."

"Those seem to be the facts of it or at least part of my interpretation. And do you believe, Ma'am, that I am a party to this impending range war over this world?"

"Well, it is said that it is breaking the rules of these worlds to introduce inappropriate technology. And I understand you recently had some large heavy trunks delivered."

"Ah, so you think there may be a way to screen containers in order to beat any contraband regulations?"

"It is always a possibility, Peter, George or whoever you are."

"Indeed, there may well be opportunities to misuse technology. You appear determined to always show me in a bad light,Caroline, and I am not entirely sure that is fair. I did after all believe you, when you explained the circumstances around being with your husband when he suffered his recent episode."

Before they could continue their exchange further, Sam interrupted them.

"The Posse are quickly moving down the street," Sam strode quickly up to his sister to say, "if you are going to Colby, you need to go now."

But then, the shooting started in earnest, and clearly some of the rounds being discharged were the distinctive sound of rapid fire automatic weapons.

The Injuns, who were already on the roofs of the buildings opposite the Liberty Livery Stables, started to fire arrows down the street. But a hail of bullets in their direction forced the Injuns to keep their heads down, and that had the effect of taking them all completely out of the game. Now the Cowboys from the Lazy C were heavily outnumbered and clearly outgunned. The Cowboys were firing from behind horse troughs and water butts but the automatic fire went right through them, leaving wounded men littering the street and leading to a general retreat from the murderous rain of lead, with their colleagues dragging the wounded with them.
"Fall back to t'stable, lads," Clint cried, blood soaking a wounded arm, "it's made o' solid timber, we'll make our last stand there."

"Alice, get down and take cover in the stable," Caroline ordered the terrified girl, "go right to the back."

The girl stepped down, "What yah gonna do, Miss Caroline?"

"I am going out there to shoot every single one of them gunmen stone dead!"

"She is too, Alice," grinned the Doctor as he climbed into the seat vacated by the girl, "well ma'am, let me take those reins so you can concentrating on your shooting."

With that, he grabbed the reins and yelled "Giddy up!"

The horse, and the gig it towed, lurched forward into Main Street and was steered to the right, heading down the dirt road straight into the jaws of the approaching gunfighters.

As soon as Caroline drew bead on each machine-gun carrier, she squeezed the trigger to send a single slug of lead through one forehead after another, the last being Willy the Kid, who started crying even before the lead projectile blew the top of his head off. The rest of the posse, made up of farmers and shopkeepers, turned tail and ran down the street, leaving just Marshal Tom Denton standing defiantly alone.

He had both pearl-handled pistols in his hand, pointed at the co-owner of the Lazy C ranch. He barely hesitated before firing both pistols simultaneously. Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!

The adrenalin coursing through Caroline gave her the impression of slowing time down, she was staring down those twin barrels and seeing the smoke puffs one after the other discharge and the deadly hail of lead coming towards her. Meanwhile she calmly used the Winchester Repeating Rifle's lever action to discharge the old cartridge and present a new one to the firing pin, and she drew a bead on the errant Marshal.

She could see that was now impossible: before she could squeeze that trigger and get a shot off, most of the six .45 slugs heading her way would hit her. She wouldn't even have time to blink before experiencing oblivion in this world. And who knew if she still lived in hew own world?

Then a beam of green light, maybe a couple of inches high, a couple of feet wide, and at a forty-five degree angle, played over the flying lead, melting each one until they vaporised before her eyes. Her finger inexorably squeezed the trigger of her Winchester repeating rifle, expelling a slug down the Main Street.

The green ray of light played over Marshal Denton, a diagonal line appeared across his torso, which stopped him in his tracks. A stripe of white ash appeared from hip to shoulder, imparting a look of shock to his face, until his eyes glazed over. The top of his torso slipped to his right, his pearl buttons no longer aligning, his right hand and left arm holding the heavy six-guns fell away, but then the top of Denton's skull blew off as Caroline's slug slammed into his forehead. The body crumpled in two parts onto the dirt of Main Street.

Caroline looked at Doctor Hollywell, who was pulling the gig to a complete stop with one hand, and holding what looked like a television remote in the other. The gig came to a halt just prior to the mess now laid on the ground. Looking around, the six desperadoes employed by the Sante Fe and Colby Railroad Company were all lying dead where they fell.

But a further look around showed the devastating effects the gunmen had had, wounded Injuns and Cowboys everywhere, smashed windows and bullet holes in the buildings.

"Code 17B, need at least six teams of medics and a full restoration squad, now!" said Doc Hollywell, "all seven perps taken out, only friendly natives left plus a few who may be deemed accessories. Need to freeze, reassess and rewind. Thanks. Out."

"So, who are you, Doc Hollywell?" Caroline asked, "because you don't seem to be a 19th century doctor, nor a 21st century doctor, for all that."

"No, you're right," the doctor smiled, "I'm not. I learned my medicine in the equivalent of the 25th century."

All around them, futuristic ambulances started materialising from thin air, medical teams emerging and running to the injured.

"I need you to put this on, Caroline, now," he held out a palm-sized pad in the shape of a solid figure 8, with two prongs at one end, "put the prongs in your nose."

He had a similar one in his other hand. He stuck the prongs up his nose, so she did exactly the same. The prongs expanded, blocking her nose entirely, while the bottom part of the pad shrink wrapped to her skin as if attracted to it like a magnet, and covered her mouth completely. Around them, Cowboys, Injuns, and emerging townsfolk dropped to the ground. The new arrivals, medical staff, all had similar masks, and started putting the uninjured into recovery positions, and loaded the injured ones onto floating stretchers and propelled them towards their vehicles, where nurses pulled them inside. The 'ambulances' didn't depart, so Caroline assumed they were operating theatres.

Caroline panicked, unsure if she could breathe. She tried a breath, and filtered air came through the nose plugs, fresh, sweetened with a hint of apple blossom. She looked back at the Doc, who was counting on his fingers, up to his fourth finger, he carried on the other hand, then through both hands again.

'Twenty?' Caroline thought, 'was he counting up to twenty?'

He ripped his mask off, so she ripped off hers. Once she tugged determinedly at one corner, it came away easily. The air she breathed was normal again.

"What's going on?" she asked, stepping out of the gig and surveying the carnage. Several more ambulances/theatres were arriving by simply materialising.

"I am an enforcement agent with IDEA, Caroline," the Doctor answered.

"IDEA? What is that?"

"Inter Dreamworld Enforcement Agency. There are thousands of these worlds in existence and new ones start up all the time. Although they start out as fantasies, they have to obey certain rules and they have to pay their fees and regular taxes, the same as everyone else. My agency and the Agents are paid for by those taxes and fees and we keep any undesired technology out of these primitive worlds."

"Like machine pistols?"

"Exactly. But also we protect and restrict access along the lines of the designers' wishes, I have full access to this world's files, the origins, the comings and goings, the occasional transgression that your mother has fallen foul of. For instance, your mother inherited the right to enter a dream world through her grandmother. When her grandmother died in your world, she was happy to live on in her rather sleazy Victorian world. Your mother was left the technology and the applications to start up Sweetwater Valley. She got advice and help initially from our agency and away she went. She arrived here in a near desert and conjured up her mother and father from the ashes she brought with her. It's quite a simple procedure. Let's go into my office, so we can keep out of the way while everyone works on putting this mess right."

Caroline followed him across the street. A number of the newcomers nodded to him as he passed, one or two saluted, he raised his hat in acknowledgement. When they reached the steps to his office above a store, he waved her up the stairs first. The office door was unlocked, so she walked into the waiting room of his surgery. There on the floor were the two trunks that she saw the Stagecoach had brought in, a week or so ago.

"Would you like a drink of water, or perhaps to sit in one of the chairs?"

"No, I'd rather stand."

"Fine," he smiled, he opened the first trunk, it contained a skeleton wrapped in a blanket, which he unwrapped sufficiently to show Caroline what it was. Around it were several rolled up posters. He unravelled one and showed her it was the respiratory system.

"I was going to put this one on that wall, and the one showing the muscles on that wall," he smiled, "the other trunk contains my clothes. No room for automatic weapons, as you can see." He opened the other trunk as he spoke, it was bulging with clothes suitable for a Victorian western town, most of which, she noted, would need a decent pressing before wearing.

"And your ... ray gun?"

"Agency issue." He showed her the remote control, turned it over, it was inscribed 'IDEA' inside a shield.

"So," Caroline said, looking at the trunk with the clothes, "you were intending on staying on here in Sweetwater for a while?"

"The agency likes us to have somewhere safe, where we are comfortable to retreat to when we sleep, especially when we are on tough undercover assignments. It helps keep us normal, sane, and happy. Happy agents are more effective agents. I like it here, so I thought I'd settle, but, who knows?"

"What about the Cotswolds? You thinking of settling there, too?"

"Not sure. Your world is overall too violent for my liking. It was part of my assignment to check that you were safe, but surprisingly found the area had possibilities."

"Me? You were checking that I was safe?"

"We had our suspicions about Interworld Conglomerates, they are huge and powerful, but we have been building a case against them for some time. Other agents have evidence that Willy the Kid and his men were IC employees, as was the Polish guy Joss."

"Joss?"

"The one that installed your garage insulation, Joss the Polish guy. He wasn't Polish at all of course and I caught him in your garage about to release a canister of carbon monoxide, so it would appear like you committed suicide at worse, death by misadventure at best."

"Mum thought I was under threat, that why I was riding to Colby."

"You would have been far too late, Caroline."

"Well, thank you. I suppose you killed Joss?"

"No, we are much more civilised than that. His memory has been wiped of IC and returned to his own world. By now, IC will have been disbanded and all memory of its existence removed from every world it has tried to infiltrate. That is civilised justice."

"So they would have opened this place up for tourism?"

"And gambling, prostitution, and it would have been allowed if they had managed to get at Dove Feather. You see the Rules are clear, you can start a world and you can maintain it, but it has to be paid for, partly through the cows your father raised but also by letting some other settlers in. Most are fine, they want the same simple life that your mother imagined, but some want make money from it and buy a bigger stake in this or another world. And once the conglomerates get a firm hold ... well, you only have to look at your own world!"

"So what happens now?"

"We restore what we can. Those who have been injured will be patched up good as new, those killed will be replaced by clones from their DNA—"

"Like Mum used the ashes?"

"Yes, but much more advanced than that, these medics and restoration teams are from the 51st century."

"Oh. What happens to me?"

"I will take you back to your dream car. Then you will need to stay away from here for two weeks. Enjoy your Christmas with the boys, Caroline, and visit that ex-husband of yours in hospital undergoing tests or he will probably be home by the time you wake up there. Build bridges at home and be happy."

"Will Robert be all right at home, he looked bad."

"Yes, he will. I er, pulled rank, and the consultant and his team that did his op are the ones in ambulance number three down in the street."

"Oh, is my world really that backward?"

"Well, it was somebody's dream world once, but it has got out of hand over the years."

"Can't you police it?"

"We can only police it according to the original spec, your world started out a mess and has remained so. In fact, it has turned out the biggest source of dreamers who create new worlds."

"So, what do I do after two weeks?"

"You can come back to Sweetwater. You will find that your Pops was never killed, and everyone's memories will only run up to that point just before the three gunmen showed up. They never will now. The only exception to the memory wipe is your mother, as she is the owner of this dream world, she has the final say."

"Ok, I'm ready, where do you keep your dream car?"

"I don't have a dream car, my transport is inbuilt. Just hold my hand and close your eyes."

***

Caroline thought she had put on a few pounds over Christmas. She looked herself in the mirror. She not only looked her age, she looked as though she had settled for a lonely life. She had cooked the Christmas dinner with all the trimmings for all the family, using Robbie's beautiful kitchen. She even invited Robert Senior, who had been sent home after an overnight stay in hospital after the doctors couldn't find anything at all wrong with him. The boys enjoyed the Christmas with them all together again, even if they would never be a whole family again. Robert's lawyers and Caroline's were getting together to agree a fairer divorce settlement. She thought about using the money to build a second garage for her other car.

The only other guest at Christmas dinner was Tanya, who barely ate a thing in case she put on any weight.

Caroline had contacted the hospital, moments after opening her eyes in the front seat of her father's dream car, but they couldn't remember a Doctor Peter George, or anyone answering her description, ever working there. The house in Coronation Road, that the builders had almost completed before taking their mid-winter seasonal break, had a 'for sale' sign up outside.

She crossed the days off the calendar with a heavy heart, feeling lonelier than ever before, and when she marked the fourteenth 'X' on the calendar, she locked up the house and entered the garage, pulled open the dream car door, sat, put on the Stetson and closed her eyes.

Next thing she knew, the car seat was bucking, throwing Caroline around wildly. She opened her eyes.

"Don't you cry, now Ma'am, them pesky injuns'll scatter once our lead flies among 'em!" yelled a large, sweating, bald man sitting in a seat opposite to her. She was in the stagecoach! "We're only a spit away from Sweetwater Valley. We'll be safe there, Ma'am, don't ya worry yer pretty head about that!"

He pulled out a six-gun that had been tucked in his straining leather belt, and pointed his weapon out of the open stagecoach window.

"Wait!" Caroline shouted, "my Ma's an Injun and I was expected them to meet us on the road into Sweetwater."

"Well, Ah must admit Ma'am, them varmints ain't started firin' yet anyways!" he said, uncocking his pistol.

They both poked their heads out of the unglazed window. They were surrounded by war-painted Injuns, but none of them was waving tomahawks or spears. They were all grinning and waving. At the head of them was Hiding Fox.

"Howdy Miss Caroline," he yelled, "and howdy, Paleface Judge."

"Howdy, Hiding Fox," she yelled back, "and hello Limping Whippet, Claggy Muck, Pussy Blanket. Oh and you're looking good, Yellow Snow, Jumping Rabbit, Cross Eyed Eagle and Basking Beaver." She waved furiously at the Injuns and they all waved back.

Even her companion waved weakly to the grinning Injuns.

Then, from the other direction they could hear gunfire. The two stagecoach passengers jerked their heads forward to see a posse of Cowboys riding from the township, firing their guns in the air.

The Injuns waved a final wave to Caroline in the coach and wheeled off towards a pass in the hills leading back to the Injun village.

"Holy cow!" yelled the large man in triumph, slapping his thigh with his free hand, "Looks like a posse from town have ridden out to greet us, too."

He beamed at Caroline and stuck out a large horny hand, "Forgive me mah manners, Ma'am, but yo'll wus fast asleep when I got aboard at Carson. The driver said ya'd come all the ways from Back East and wus plum tuckered out, so I never disturbed yah till that war party welcomed us into the territ'ry. Mah name's Judge Justice Makepeace — yeah, I know, mah Pappy was also a hangin' judge afore me an' I guess he had a weird sense o'humor!"

"Pleased to meet you, Judge, I'm—" Caroline was almost tumbled out of her seat as the stagecoach shuddered to a halt, the man caught her hand and held on, wrapping her in his other arm and whipping her safely into the seat next to him.

"The whole territ'ry knows who you is Ma'am. An' I kin tell from the softness of yar hand that ya're a lady of some quality, worthy of respect, like ya Pa is round these parts," the Judge winked as he held her in his arms, the coach still rocking on its springs, "I'm on my way now to the quarterly court sessions, but usually there ain't much to do other than jaw all day with yah Pa over a bottle o' ginger whiskey."

When Caroline's eyebrow's shot up in surprise, the Judge added, scratching his whiskers, "We try not ter overdo drinking strong liquor and I'll have smoked a four-inch cee-gar all the way down ta the butt, afore I decides to call it a night. You'll find we ain't as genteel as them folks Back East that yah'll mostly familiar with!"

He threw open the carriage door and squeezed his bulk through, turning to hand Caroline down to the dusty Main Street. All the wooden buildings were bleached white in the blinding noon sunshine, and the heat hit her like a solid wall.

Looking down at her feet, she saw her bedroom slippers she wore into the dream car garage had become calf-hugging boots and her housecoat had transformed into a black ankle-length silk dress, with a figure-hugging bodice. Somehow, the two or three pounds of Christmas eating that she'd put on in the last fortnight, had magically disappeared.

The coach was surrounded by tall, grinning men, all sporting a variety of still-smoking guns, some still holding the reins of their steaming horses. The tallest of them stepped forward, removing his tall hat. He was a handsome young man with long, shoulder-length black hair. Under the bushiest moustache Caroline had seen for a fortnight, his blinding white teeth stood out from his deeply-tanned face. He wore a white silk shirt with a neatly-knotted string necktie. His long black coat was speckled with the red dust which hung in the air. A silver star gleamed from his coat lapel, as did the pair of pearl-handled revolvers stuffed into leather belted holsters pinched about his narrow waist. He held out his enormous hand.

"Ah'm Marshal Tom Denton, Ma'am. Yah father alwus said yah'll'd be the prettiest widder in the territ'ry and, upon mah word, Ah never heard him swear the more honest truth."

As his warm, hard, dry hand engulfed her tiny damp one, Caroline was speechless, conscious that the last time she saw the Marshal, he was cut in half and lying dead at her feet. She might've fluttered her eyelids, feeling feint.

Before she knew what was happening, another man swept her up in his arms as if she was nothing but a duckdown pillow. She rested her head on his broad shoulder.

"Forgive me, Caroline, but in the medical opinion of Doctor Peter George Hollywell, I thought you appeared to be a little faint in all this excitement."

"Why, Peter, I wasn't expecting to see you ... until at least after I had cleaned up in my rooms at the Grand Hotel."

"Forgive my impetuosity, my dear Caroline, but your father and mother are awaiting out of this noon sun, at the Hotel, where your trunks that arrived by stagecoach yesterday have been stowed. And your new maid Alice too, who will assist you at the schoolhouse, is dying to meet you at last. I will carry you there directly, it is but a few steps away."

"Well, thank you, Peter, you are a sight for sore eyes—"

"Well, I am sure I have something for that in my medical bag..."

"I am sure you have," she laughed, then turned to the Marshal, standing there with a grin on his face, without an inkling of what happened to him and the town in the last few weeks, "Thank you for the welcoming party, Marshal."