CHAPTER 1

I started dreaming about a hand reaching into water right around the same time Caleb Deane began talking about buying a horse. Started, I say, because during the space of two weeks the dreams became a regular feature of the night. Of course, I didn't know the two things–horses and the hand–were connected. How could I? But something did tell me I should fight Caleb's latest fancy with every ounce of persuasiveness I could muster. The thing is, Caleb can be almost as stubborn and pigheaded as my brother Scott.

I'm Boothenay Irons, a gunsmith with a specialty in antique weapons. Scott and I keep shop in an old brick building in the little town of Millwood, Washington, which is surrounded by, but separate from the greater city of Spokane Valley. The gunsmithy has been handed down in my family for generations, so we have an established history connected with guns.

A gunsmith isn't quite all I am, by the way, and pigheaded is not all that Caleb is, either. Among other things, he is my heart-mate, my one true love, in this life and in every other. Oh, yes. There are others, as you will see, which ties in with some of my other talents. But more on that later.

Anyway, after a week's worth of hostile customers–my lot–and unappreciative if not actively threatening patients–that's Caleb's, who is a PA-C in a clinic on Spokane's seamy side–we climbed into his F-250 one hot July morning, whereupon he pointed the hood toward the mountains. It felt fine, the air conditioner humming and me sitting close to Caleb, just keeping in touch. We headed north on Highway 2. The direction didn't especially matter, or so I thought. We were together, the sun was shining, and since it was Sunday, the usual summer road construction didn't slow us down. Until we stopped in Usk for a hamburger, I didn't realize Caleb had a concrete destination in mind.

Inside the restaurant, country music blared from speakers hanging precariously above our heads. A herd of stuffed jackalope decorated one wood-paneled wall; two clumsily executed oil paintings of deer and elk, mountains and water were opposite. The booth's red vinyl seat was torn, the tears mended with aluminum-colored duct tape. The whole place smelled of old cooking oil.

Now, I don't ordinarily mind country music as long as it's in small quantities; jackalopes are kind of cute; and I will even admire amateur paintings in their place. Cracked vinyl offends me, and old oil makes me sick–things I was willing to overlook just to be with my honey. And then he dropped his bombshell.

He spoke over the top of the Dixie Chicks, his North Carolina accent a quiet drawl. "Sugar, as long as we're in the neighborhood, how would you like to visit a horse ranch?"

"About as much as I'd like my stomach pumped–if I were stupid enough to eat all this hamburger," I said. I pushed the unwanted half to the side of my plate and chomped on a greasy french fry instead.

Normally I'd tell him I'd visit hell, if that were where he wanted to go. But the dream I mentioned, the one that had waked me out of a sound sleep so many nights running, had left me a little cranky. All it took was talk of horses to push me over the edge.

Caleb grinned, his grass-green eyes glinting as he helped himself to my discarded burger. "Sam says you loved horses when you were a kid. That you rode every chance you got–and were a damned good rider. What happened, Boothenay? Get thrown? He didn't say why you changed."

Sam is my dad, retired now from the gun business, but tireless in his efforts to keep me in line. He and I live above the gun shop, which gives us a little more togetherness than either of us quite like.

"Ask him," I said. "He seems to have plenty to say."

Caleb turned serious. "I did ask him. He said he didn't know, or only that it was soon after you–" He trailed off and glanced around the restaurant, as though to be sure no one could overhear him. "–came into your powers."

Ah, yes. My powers.

Something I suddenly acquired when I was about thirteen. I used to try and talk with my dad about this mysterious ability I have that gives me access into particular gun's history. I met Caleb that way last year, through a connection instilled within an 1810 blunderbuss he inherited, handed down in his family for several generations. As it happened, the blunderbuss wasn't all he inherited, but that's a different story. Suffice it to say, he found power of his own.

Anyway, Dad doesn't want to hear about this ability of mine. He hates all mention of power; not only because of the danger it sometimes puts me in, but because my mother had talent, too, stronger than mine. He always thought the power came first with her, their life together sacrificed on its altar.

I don't know, but sometimes I think he almost hates me. I'm a genetic freak, I guess. The magic I inherited from my mother; the gunsmithing ability from my dad. Put them together and it was no wonder certain guns keyed a power that allowed–no, insisted–I go back in time to interact within their history. Unfortunately, I have yet to find a history that doesn't include fear, pain, and danger. Just once, I'd like to blunder into a story that is also a comedy.

All of which doesn't explain my acquired aversion to horses when once I'd loved them so much. And frankly, I didn't feel like dragging my nightmares into the open now, so all I said to Caleb was, "I think Dad is getting a little forgetful lately. Have you noticed?"

"I've noticed you're changing the gist of this conversation." He swallowed the other half of my burger in two bites.

"Yes, I am." I sat back and slurped a huckleberry milkshake rich and thick enough to make up for the lousy hamburger. What the heck? Nobody could hear me anyway over the Chicks. I must have vented some of my crabbiness in the slurping, for when the song ended, I went back to Caleb's first question. "Why do you want to visit a horse ranch? Do you have a patient from there?" I was hoping.

Caleb finally unrolled the magazine he was carrying so I could see the genre. It was a locally published news mag–Horse Previews Magazine to be exact–dealing with horses and other livestock for sale in our area. I nearly groaned out loud, already sure I knew what he was going to say.

Copyright © 2004 by Carol Crigger