Assassins of History- Transference Read online

  I dejectedly nodded in agreement.

  Captain Mosby quickly perked up and directed, “Come let me show you about the Colt pistols.” His instruction lasted about half an hour and included the intricate loading of the Navy Colts. He also gave me a few extra cylinders that I loaded under his tutelage. Then he showed me how to quickly change out spent cylinders with loaded ones. This could mean the difference between life and death in a fire fight.

  Finally, he asked me, “Where ya gonna sleep tonight?”

  I thought for a minute, scratched my head and uttered, “I don’t have a place to stay.”

  He informed me, “Well, there’s a bunk in tha back room of tha outpost that I normally use when on night duty. Yar welcome to it. Tonight I have a meeting with my commander in Harpers Ferry at 10:30 pm to go over my report. So, as soon as it’s ovah, I’ll be staying in town.”

  “In that case, I’ll take ya up on tha offer,” I said.

  The Captain had his orderly unsaddle Beau and bed him down for the night with the two other horses in the outpost stable.

  I bade the Captain goodnight, thanked him profusely and went to the back room. I undressed except for my underwear and hung up my clothes on wall pegs. Then lying down in the proffered bunk, I was so exhausted that I fell into a beleaguered stupor.

  

  The Dark Mage’s Log: Earth 3 Date: 18620919

  Using his cloaking device, Jargunn had approached the back of the Confederate outpost to listen to the dialogue of the imposter and the soldier, but horses in a nearby stable raised such a ruckus that he had to leave and couldn’t record any conversation. He subsequently reported his findings to Lord Dendaras who bade him to leave ‘Earth 3’ for the night.

  Lord Dendaras immediately went to the Imaging Room, ordered the staff to leave, engaged the Imaging Instrument for ‘Earth 3’ Date: 18620918 and walked into the projecting ray. He was immediately in Daphne Jane Newcomer’s room as a three dimensional hologram.

  Daphne was in her night clothes and lying on the bed crying. She rose with a start and was about to scream, when Lord Dendaras raised a hand and whispered, “It is only me, child.”

  Daphne put her hands together in a pleading gesture and extended them to Lord Dendaras. Her heart was palpitating so hard Dendaras swore he could hear it roaring in his ears.

  Lord Dendaras cooed, “Calm down child. Everything is alright.”

  Daphne took a deep breath and choked out, “Each time you appear, it is so sudden that it frightens me.” Then tearfully she stammered, “You promised that my husband would be a very learned man, loving and not like all tha violent people that surround me daily. It was such a shock to see such brutal violence erupt from Jim Hager. I just knew he was tha person ya had informed me to be on tha alert for, but when he broke Ahab’s arm, I knew I must have made a mistake.” Weeping uncontrollably, she croaked out, “I so wanted Jim to be tha man of my dreams.” She then buried her head in a pillow.

  Lord Dardanus could hear her muffled sobbing. He took pity on her and confessed, “Child, he is the man I promised, but he has a very dangerous mission to perform that will require him to be a man of action. We have spoken of this before. He will need your help in its execution.”

  Daphne abruptly stopped crying and looked up. “Really?” she exclaimed.

  “Yes, child,” Dendaras answered. “Tomorrow you need to find him and let him know you are still interested in him. You are still interested in him, aren’t you?” Lord Dendaras examined with a questioning tone of voice.

  “Oh, yes, Guiding Spirit. I will do what ya ask,” she promised.

  “Good. Now go to sleep. You will need rest for your quest,” murmured Lord Dendaras. He moved his hand in a clockwise and then a counterclockwise circular motion, while mouthing an ancient mantra. Daphne was instantaneously put in a restful trance. Hurriedly Lord Dendaras shut down the holograph on Axeylon 5.

  Jargunn arrived back on Axeylon 5 and found that Lord Dendaras had ejected the crew from the Imaging Room and taken it over for his own purposes.

  Jargunn perceived, “It is time for me to find out what is going on.” He approached the abode of the Eternal Oracle, a grizzled old man in a hooded cloak, who perpetually sat behind a desk rocking and humming to himself in a room the size of a closet.

  The Oracle looked up and questioned, “What may I do for you my son?”

  Jargunn requested, “I need to see any files for ‘Earth 3’ on a Newcomer family during the 19th century in western Virginia.”

  The Oracle’s eyes glazed over as he looked at Jargunn. Then he uttered, “Those files are for the eyes of Lord Dendaras only.” Immediately he went back to his incessant rocking and humming.

  Jargunn understood he had been dismissed. As he retraced his steps to Lord Dendaras’s throne room he thought, “Interesting.”

  

  I really didn’t know how tired I had been until I was aroused out of my coma at about 7:00 a.m. by the Captain’s Adjutant. He asked me, “Ya want some coffee?” I readily accepted.

  I covered up my pistols, which I had put under the flimsy pillow on the bunk, before following him in a catatonic shuffle to the campfire at the back of the outpost. The Adjutant poured me some of a black brew into a tin cup from a pot suspended over the fire. It scalded my tongue, which brought me wide awake, and the taste was somewhere between cod liver oil and blackstrap molasses. It was excellent for getting the morning ablutions started.

  Once I had gotten all my gear together, tucked the pistols into my belt under my coat and procured Beau from the stable, I began my trip back to Shepherdstown using the River Road.

  Beau and I wandered the byway stopping once by a small stream that meandered to the Potomac. I let Beau eat some of the grass that had sprung up alongside the roadway, while I ate some stale bread the Captain’s Adjutant had so kindly supplied.

  About two hours into the easy ride, I came to the farm house of the Widow Throckmorton. I didn’t see her or either of her sons near the house or in the fields out back. But I did hear a woman’s muffled scream and men cursing from their barn.

  I quickly dismounted Beau, walked him over and tied his reins to a tree in front of the house out of sight of the barn. Carefully, I took out my pistols, cocked the hammers and skirted the right side of the house. Coming to the back of the house, I saw there were about eight apple trees in a row from the house to the right side of the barn. I jumped to the first tree and then progressed from tree to tree until I was within ten feet of the barn’s front entrance. The barn door was almost shut, but I clearly heard a gruff voice yell, “Tell us whar tha family cash and silver’s buried or I’ll hit one of yar boys agin.”

  The lady pled, “Please don’t hurt my boys anymore.”

  A groggy voice rasped, “Don’t tell him Ma.”

  I heard a smack and then the woman screamed.

  All the years of being bullied in grade school, of being unable to fight back except in football practice, of being the butt of jokes because of social ineptness, of being in this weird time travel situation and now men hitting a defenseless woman welled up in me to the point that all reason was thrown to the winds. I cared not for my safety or survival. All my angst was focused on avenging myself and the injustice the people in that barn were experiencing.

  I suddenly rushed forward to the barn door, slid through the small opening, brought both pistols up in front of me and yelled, “What’s going on in here?” Regrettably, I couldn’t see very well in the dark gloom of the barn.

  Two figures in black turned toward me. I had taken them totally by surprise. As my vision became accustomed to the darkness, I could see the Throckmortons tied up to the fencing of a horse stall. One of the boys was sagging forward as if he were unconscious. I felt overpowering hatred for these terrorists, for these oppressors, for these cowards. Hot anger like I had never known flashed through me like white hot lava.

  The two men initially looked at me with mouths agape, but quickly recovered and b
egan to draw their pistols.

  All I wanted to do was to hurt them. No! What I wanted to do was kill them. In a fit of rage I pulled the triggers of the Navy Colts I had pointed at them. There were tremendous simultaneous explosions and my hearing was temporarily muted due to the loud reports. In addition, the recoils from the weapons almost wrenched them from my grip, but I was able to hold on to the smoking revolvers.

  In almost slow motion, I witnessed one of the men hurled backwards and the other spun around. The gunman who was spun around faced me with a useless right arm, which was hanging down to his side. He screamed in rage, “Ya agin. Ya ain’t getting away this time.” He pulled one of his pistols from his belt with his left hand, pointed it at me and fired.

  I was still in shock from firing my artillery and was amazed the wounded man reacted so quickly. I felt the bullet barely nick my right ear. The pain jolted me out of my stupor. Pure fear and the survival instinct took over now. I cocked both my Colts and again pulled the triggers simultaneously. The man was lifted off his feet and thrown backwards. He came to rest on his back and didn’t move. The other man I had hit never stirred.

  The widow Throckmorton began crying and repeating over and over, “Praise God for our deliverance. Praise God for our deliverance.”

  Caleb in a quaking voice asked, “Could ya untie me and help tend ta Joshua?”

  I nodded, stuck my smoking revolvers in my belt and began to release the terrorized family. Somewhere in the process I heard Sampson’s familiar whinny from his stall in the recesses of the barn. He seemed to be adding his ‘thank you’ for the rescue of his owners.

  Once all three of the family members were untied, we examined Joshua. He was hurt pretty bad. It took all three of us to transport him to the house. We put Joshua in his bed and the widow Throckmorton began tending to his injuries. His face was so puffy that both his eyes were closed. His nose was broken and still bleeding. He was unconscious, but after a few moments of his mother’s labors, he stirred and moaned.

  Caleb said, “Thank God for that.” He looked at me and solemnly declared, “Thank ya for saving us. I believed they’d a killed us if ya hadn’t showed up. By tha way, yar ableeding,” he added as he pointed to my right ear.

  I felt of my ear and winced. When I pulled my hand away and looked at it, there was a small amount of blood on my thumb. That had been a close call. The spike in adrenaline was wearing off and I was starting to shake. I just looked at Caleb and nodded. I didn’t trust myself to try and speak.

  Caleb looked at the barn, shivered, sighed and in a low voice said, “Well, I ‘speck I bettah go see who those blackhearts are.”

  I stammered, “I’ll go with ya.”

  Caleb looked at his mother and asked, “Will ya be okay staying with Joshua?”

  With tears running down her checks, she replied, “Yes, I’ll be alright, but I think we need to get Joshua to tha Doc in Harpers Ferry.”

  Caleb reassured her, “We won’t take long.”

  We rapidly retraced our steps and opened the barn doors wide, allowing as much daylight as possible to illuminate the crime scene. Then we surveyed my handy work. The two men were quite dead. The first man to go down had been hit square in the heart and must have died instantly. The second man had been hit in the right shoulder and there were also two bullets in his chest from my second volley. After the brief examination, I was surprised that I felt nothing for these men I had killed. It was as if I had exterminated rabid dogs. I began to wonder if I had really been a closet sociopath all my life, but was too afraid to react violently to any injustice for fear of legal reprisal. For some reason, I knew that these killings wouldn’t precipitate much of an official inquiry in this 19th century.

  Although the dead men’s hats had come off their heads in the melee, they still wore neckerchiefs employed to hide their faces. To try and identify the first man I had killed I pulled his neckerchief off, but I didn’t recognize him. However, when I pulled down the neckerchief of the last man I shot, I actually jumped back, gasped in amazement and uttered, “Oh, my lord.” The dead man had a white streak in his facial hair.

  I startled Caleb when I jumped back, which made him lurch back too. He stammered, “What?”

  I pointed at the dead man with the white streak in his beard and asked, “Don’t ya know who that is?”

  He just shook his head and said, “No.”

  “It’s Jones Gill,” I replied.

  He shifted his gaze to the dead man, and then with a skeptical look at me, interrogated, “Are ya sure?”

  “Yes,” I rebutted. “He and his brother tried to jump me in Harpers Ferry night before last.”

  “How ya knowd it’s him?” He rejoined.

  “Cause of tha white streak in his beard,” I answered. “And I bet tha other man is his brother, Seaborne, but I can’t be for sure cause he was behind me when they grabbed me,” I explained.

  “Well, don’t that beat all? Ya done kilt Jones Gill and his brother. Getting rid of them will make a whole lots of people feel safer. I wonder if they’s a reward. I bet ya gonna to be a rich man,” he expressed with a bit of glee in his voice.

  I just shook my head and muttered, “Two down and one to go.” Caleb looked at me quizzically, but he didn’t ask the reason for my utterance.

  We got Sampson hooked up to a wagon to transport Joshua and the bodies of the Gills to Harpers Ferry. I thought this was definitely a dreadful way to utilize such gallant horseflesh, but Beau was too light to pull the wagon and the Throckmorton’s other horses and mules were in a pasture. It would take too long to round them up.

  We had constructed a pallet for Caleb and his mother on one side of the wagon. After Caleb and I put Joshua in the bed of the wagon with his head in his mother’s lap, we stacked the Gill’s bodies on the other side, covered them with a blanket and began our trek to the doctor’s office in Harpers Ferry.

  

  The Dark Mage’s Log: Earth 3 Date: 18620919

  Jargunn had been following the imposter utilizing the ACV in the stealth mode since he left Harpers Ferry. It had, once again, turned into a most boring assignment since the imposter rode that slow-moving, putrid-looking, four-legged Earth animal. However, Jargunn looked forward to hopefully an uneventful and uninterrupted journey.

  Jargunn had to admit that this imposter had been full of surprises. He had gotten into a few dangerous situations both socially and confrontationally, but had extricated himself quite admirably. So it didn’t take Jargunn completely by surprise when he saw the imposter respond to noises coming from behind an isolated rural structure by dismounting, tying his worthless little animal to a tree, covertly approaching the subject building and quickly slipping inside.

  When multiple explosions erupted from the outbuilding, Jargunn quickly landed his ACV, sent it into orbit, implemented his cloaking mode and rushed toward the building to investigate what had happened. He stayed just outside the building’s door, but could hear all the conversations. He moved back behind a stand of trees and watched as a human threesome carried an unconscious male to the main house.

  Momentarily, the imposter and the unhurt male returned to the barn. From their dialogue and the previous conversations, Jargunn was able to ascertain who the dead antagonists were and what had actually occurred. Jargunn quietly muttered, “This imposter has more escapades than our Outlander Shengs at the galaxy core. Whether he can stay out of harm’s way in the future is anyone’s guess.”

  Once the imposter and the other male had entered the main living building again, Jargunn immediately retreated to his ACV and reported the particulars of the confrontation in the earth structure to Lord Dendaras.

  His Sire was quite excited by the news. He thanked Jargunn and told him, “Protect the imposter at all costs. Do not let him be harmed in any way.”

  “Yes, Sire, I will.” Jargunn answered.

  Jargunn was shocked by the Lord’s response to the imposter’s actions. Jargunn perceived that somehow the imposter
had clearly acquired more importance. He thought, “Could the Lord be considering the imposter for utilization in this time period? But how could that be if he hadn’t been recruited? Plus he has no restraints on his actions in this time period and he can’t be tracked, since his body has no tracking device installed. And who had Lord Dendaras contacted in the transporter room?”

  These questions welled up in Jargunn’s mind and he was determined to find the answers. Because, if he followed the orders of Lord Dendaras and they violated the Prime Meridian, he still could be sentenced to a slow death over a thousand kronos.

  

  It took about three hours to make it to the Doc’s office, but, by the time we got to the outskirts of town, people who saw Joshua’s predicament and the stacked bodies were asking what had happened. I let Caleb tell all the particulars of his family’s incarceration and rescue. People began asking me what my name was and where I was from. I finally just pulled my hat down low over my face and said I needed to talk with the marshal before giving out any information. Word quickly spread and, by the time we got to the Doc’s office, we had a crowd following us with the town marshal and his deputy joining the caravan.

  The doctor got some of the townsfolk from the crowd to take Joshua into his office. Mrs. Throckmorton followed in close attendance.

  As the town marshal and his deputy began purveying the bodies, the marshal actually gasped when he recognized one of the bodies was Jones Gill. He had members from the crowd carry the bodies of the Gill brothers to the undertaker’s parlor. The deputy was left in charge of coordinating the body identifications and burials with the mortician.

  The marshal looked shaken as he stared at the bodies being carried away. He finally turned and stared at me and Caleb for a long moment. Then he savagely beckoned us to follow him. Caleb and I got into the buckboard like two sheep being led to the slaughter and slowly walked Sampson behind the marshal as he strode toward his office.