Page 93 of My Heart Will Find You

On the coffee table were some books written by Henry. He opened one to a watercolor of a cowboy on a bucking horse. In the lower right corner was the same H.F. signature.

“But your last name is Logan. Where’s theL?”

He shrugged. “I came up with that mark when I was quite young. I thought the H.F. was cool, and I never changed it.”

She was staring at him. “Henry, haveyoudreamed of that time? Wereyouthere?”

“No,” he said. “Not like you. But I think I must have been. On some level, Zack is reuniting with his past love, and I seem to remember things too.”

“I want to go back,” she said. “Like I want to live, I want to return to Max and Alice and all of them. I want to have babies and cook and...and do all those things. I want—” She quit talking and went to sit on the floor by Henry. She needed to be close to someone who knew and understood.

“I think you will return,” he said. “There’s a reason behind all of this, and I don’t think it’s finished.”

“Yeah?” She had hope in her voice. “But when?”

“When you find out that reason, I think you’ll go back.”

They both looked at Henry’s bookcases. Was the answer in there? Did those books hold the key that would open the past again? Was something in them that would take her back? “Where do I begin?”

“Look at people. Marshal Earp was the catalyst the last time, so find someone else who’s missing.”

“That will be my quest.” The use of Max’s word almost made her cry, but she didn’t allow herself to break. She grabbed a book at random and began to read.

It was late on the third search day, and she and Henry were reading. When she saw him grow pale, she jumped up. “What do you need?”

“I’m fine. How about some gin and tonics?”

“That’s a joke, right?”

“No gin for me but lots for you. You’re so jumpy I can’t concentrate.”

“Sorry,” she said, and a drink did sound good. In the kitchen, squeezing the limes made her remember the dinner party with Bert and Cornelia and Alice and—She made herself stop. Henry would say she was being impatient, but she was losing hope of ever seeing Max again. She’d started having flashes ofWhat am I going to do with my life?Before Max she’d been happy. Well, maybe a little lonely after Alicia, Phillip and Nola moved out, but she wasn’t unhappy. She had a good job and friends and her father and... Everything.

Now all she saw was what was missing in her life.

She took the drinks in to Henry and they sipped them slowly. Etta was reading yet another book about Old West bad guys and gals, and people who’d done things that formed the country. It was frustrating that she couldn’t find anything or anyone who was missing.

When her drink was finished and she was relaxed, Henry handed her a book opened to chapter twelve. He’d stuck a marker at a paragraph about the Cheyenne Raid of 1868. It said that the battle was considered so insignificant that it was rarely mentioned in any history book. The Cheyenne had declared that they were going to “clean out the Kaws.” About a hundred warriors, a third of them Arapahos, paraded through Council Grove in full, glorious regalia, on their way to the attack. Some accounts said the nearby settlers hid in fear, and some said they watched from a distance. Whichever, there was a magnificent display of horsemanship accompanied by war cries and volleys of bullets and arrows. After four hours, the Cheyenne took a few Kanza horses and the local merchants gave out sugar and coffee, then everyone went home.

In the end, two warriors, one Kanza, one Cheyenne, were wounded, but no one was killed.

She handed the book back, and looked hard at him. His face was solemn. “What else do you want me to see?”

He handed her another book, again with a passage flagged. There was an almost verbatim repeat of the 1868 conflict, but this one added another incident to it. It said that the Cheyenne were angry that the Kaws had taken too many buffalo on their last hunt. On Sunday, May 14, 1871, they returned to finish the job of “cleaning them out.” But this time, they were successful. They killed all the Kanza in that one camp, including the chief and his family. Afterward, the Kanzas, already depleted by smallpox, pneumonia, and lack of food and medicine, were on their way to extinction. The 1871 massacre almost eradicated the entire tribe.

She looked at the cover of the book, then at Henry. “That wasn’t in there before. I read this whole book and scanned through it yesterday. There was no mention of a massacre in 1871.”

“It’s only a few sentences. It’s easy to miss.” He gave her a hard stare. “It’s history. It doesn’t change.”

Etta stood up. “I have proven that history is liquid. It can be changed.Ichanged it by putting Wyatt Earp back into the world.”

When Henry hesitated in replying, Etta’s lips tightened. “You don’t believe me because you don’t remember telling me that you’d never heard of the marshal. But youdidsay it. And my father told me the same thing. He texted me even though it’s gone now.” Her eyes widened. “Googlehad never heard of him.”

“In that case it has to be true.”

She glared at him. “You’re laughing at me.”

“I can assure you that I’m not.”

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