Tag Against Time by Helen Hughes Vick Read Free Book Online

questions and remarks. Tag sat on the hard seat; shoulders squared, trying to appear calm and confident. But his face was on fire, his stomach did double flips.
    What is keeping Sean? Is he in there telling everyone about me?
Tag stiffened with fear. Was Sean sending for the cops—sheriff or whatever they had in these days—to arrest him for being a runaway or something?
I’d better get out of here
. He started to climb out of the wagon.
    Sean came out of the store carrying a wooden box. “Thisis the last of it.” He slid the box next to the other boxes already loaded in the back of the wagon. “That should last us the week we’ll be at the canyon.” Sean climbed in next to Tag, untied the wagon reins and said to his horse, “Let’s go home, O’Riley.” The wagon jolted down the street.
    â€œOne thing I can’t tolerate is busy-bodies. Every man has a right to his own privacy, as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone else.” Sean flicked the reins. O’Riley picked up speed.
    Sean’s house was comfortably tidy. The kitchen and bedroom were more than enough for one person. The parlor, as Sean called it, served as his office. There was a small barn behind the house and an outhouse a few hundred feet beyond. Tag noticed a large tin washtub hanging on the side of the barn.
    â€œWould you have enough water to spare for a bath?” Tag set down the last box of supplies on the kitchen table.
    Sean hung his hat on a hook near the back door. “That I would, and enough for you to wash your clothes, too. Go get the tub. I’ll find you some clothes to wear.” He grinned. “And a comb.”
    Tag didn’t know which was more fun, trying to bathe in cold water with his knees scrunched almost up to his chin of using a scrubbing board to wash his clothes on. Combing his curly hair proved painful. “Six hundred years worth of snarls and rat nests,” Tag mumbled while pulling the comb through his thick tangles. “Mom would die—just die if she saw my hair like this.”
    Sean’s old denim pants were huge at the waist, three inches too long, but clean. Tag rolled a deep cuff in the legs. The long-sleeved blue cotton shirt was soft from usage.
    â€œYou look good in that shirt,” Sean said, as Tag cameback into the house after hanging his clothes up on the line outside. “The shirt is a might more practical to work in, too. Ready for dinner?”
    Later, with a full stomach, Tag crawled into the bedroll of thick quilts on the parlor floor. Exhausted, he had been barely able to finish the fried chicken and hash browns that Sean cooked. So tired that he hadn’t even asked the hundreds of questions he wanted to about the men from Washington.
    Who could they be?
Tag burrowed down into the hand-sewn nest. Apprehension swirled around his questions.
    Got to be careful—got to keep my mouth shut
.
    Sleep took his questions and worries into its warm darkness.

8

    Tag tossed and twisted. The bedroll’s quilts knotted around him like a mummy wrap. His dreams played themselves out in unrelenting black and gray shadows of reality.
    The rectangular limestone slabs of Great Owl’s house were a pile of rubble cascading down the steep canyon side. Yet the low, narrow T-shaped door stood like a skeleton under the deep overhang. Dark gray smoke drifted out of the doorway in lazy curlicues. Tag heard echoing voices in the smoke as it floated towards him, surrounding him in a hazy whirl.
    â€œI don’t want to leave our home!” Small Cub’s voice cried, turning the haze a bluish color. “I want to take my mug with me.”
    Dark blue smoke glided out of the doorway and strayed up the pathway. “You must choose whom you will follow; Gray Wolf or me . . .”
    â€œWalker, Walker,” Tag called. His throat burned and hiseyes watered from the thick smoke. He waved his hands trying to clear the air.