Pablo’s doleful face brightened.
Helen’s eyes sent icy daggers at Rafe.
“Maybe not,” he added wisely.
“One wrong move and I weel take care of your blister, Senor Angel,” Ignacio threatened. “With a bullet in its center. Do you understand?”
Rafe nodded.
“Try to escape, and I weel shoot off your balls.”
“Enough already!” Rafe grumbled as Sancho finally released his bindings. “I got the message. Loud and clear.”
Helen was getting increasingly nervous about this whole outlaw scenario. At first, she had viewed them as bumbling idiots. Now, she was starting to get scared.
“Rafe, we have to talk,” she whispered as soon as the bandits stepped away. She’d just put a gauze bandage over his boil after treating it. “Something weird is going on. I think… I think we really have traveled back in time.”
“Huh?” Rafe said, assessing her like an escapee from an asylum. “You swallow that blade of grass? Maybe it was loco weed.” He paused in the process of tucking in his shirt and zipping up his pants.
“Listen, this trail we followed today is very familiar to me. I hike in these hills all the time. This is not 1996.”
“You hike?”
She made a clucking sound of disgust at his irrelevant question. “Focus, will you? We’re heading toward Sacramento, but we should have passed several towns by now. And the area is entirely too thick with trees and wildlife. It hasn’t looked this way in… well, one hundred fifty years.”
Rafe’s brow wrinkled, and he bit his bottom lip thoughtfully. “Actually, I’ve had some weird feelings, too.” His eyes met hers and held. “Let’s be honest here, Helen. Do you or do you not know these yahoos? Is this a military setup?”
“Of course not,” she said indignantly. Then she asked, “As long as we’re being honest, do you swear these men aren’t friends of yours? Or someone you hired to play a prank?”
“You’re obviously not playing with a full deck if you could think that. Why would I hire someone to shoot at me, kick me, tie me up, and force me to ride a monster horse till I get a blister on my butt? I mean, do you really think I’m having fun here?” Rafe braced his fists on his hips and glowered at her with exasperation.
“Then that must mean… Oh, Lord! Do you really think time travel is possible?”
“Maybe it’s just a dream,” he suggested.
“Would we both be having the same dream?”
“How the hell do I know? Nah, it’s not a dream. If it were a dream, I know exactly what I’d be doing, and who would be doing it with me.” He gave her a swift, smoldering once-over that needed no explanation.
“You are certifiable.”
“Bet you wish you had your clipboard, don’tcha, babe?” He favored her with one of his devastating grins.
She inhaled to gather patience. “Could we concentrate on the subject here, Captain? Time travel, remember?”
“Are we back to this military rank crap again?” When she refused to answer, he forced a somber expression on his face. “Okay, if it’s not a military maneuver, and it’s not a dream, we must be dead.”
“And this is…?”
“Hell. Definitely hell.”
“Shhh,” she cautioned, pointing to Pablo, who glanced up from where he was stirring something in a kettle over the cook fire. Sancho had his back to them, tending to the other picketed horses. Ignacio sat with his back against a tree, one pistol laid over his lap. Although his sombrero tilted forward over his face, almost covering his slitted eyes, Helen was sure he was watching them closely. “I don’t think they suspect anything about our coming from the future. But we’d better be careful.”
“Let’s move over toward the creek,” Rafe suggested. “Maybe we’ll find an opportunity to escape.”
“Do you have a plan?”
He shook his head. “We have to keep our eyes open for the right opportunity. There’s no way I can take on all three of them, and we’ll never get away unless we take their guns and horses first.”
“I agree. Timing is everything. The first rule of every good soldier.”
He snorted rudely. “Rules be damned. We’ve got to make our own rules here.” Before she could respond, he yelled over to Ignacio, “Hey, buddy, do you mind if I take a bath?”