Cassie's Cowboy. Diane Pershing

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      Chapter Three

      Frowning, Charlie watched Cassie drive away. Automobiles sure were wondrous things. Some of the newer characters in his world bragged about the inventions in “real” life, and he had to admit a car was convenient—though of course it couldn’t beat Felicity.

      So, go to a bank and deal with a mortgage, that was what he was supposed to do for Cassie, was it? Get her a thirty-day extension. Which meant she was short on money.

      It was a classic scenario, the little widow woman with child, the wolf, or mortgage holder, at the door, waiting to pounce. It could almost be one of Cassie’s stories. Starring him.

      What would she have him do, if this were one of her stories? A scene flashed through his mind involving heading into the bank and pointing his six guns at whoever handled mortgages there….

      No, he knew instinctively. They didn’t do things like that nowadays, he didn’t think, not without serious consequences. And besides, like Felicity, his bullets hadn’t made the trip through time and space, either.

      Still, he had to take action, and better now than later. First, though, he removed his spurs. They jangled too much and slowed him down. No horse to ride, no spurs necessary.

      He took both the spurs and the guns in their holster to the garage and left them there. Then, deep in thought, Charlie began to walk in the direction of the few tall buildings he could see in the distance. He figured those buildings would be the center of town. The business district, that was what it was called. The business district. He rolled the words over on his tongue. Formal sounding words, those.

      He walked on paved sidewalks—another first for him—and passed small, modest houses similar to Cassie’s. The lawns were so green, so even. And the houses were so close together, he marveled. You could look into each other’s windows and see all kinds of private acts, he figured. Back home you could get shot for doing that. But not, he assumed, here. Maybe neighbors didn’t look at neighbors? No, more than likely they did, but just pretended not to see.

      Where did the folks here have room to grow their vegetables? he wondered. And how could you breathe with your neighbor so close?

      First Yatesboro Savings, Cassie had said. He kept an eye out for the sign as he stopped at a cross street named Main. Funny, there was a Main Street back home. Did every town have a main street? It warmed him, this small connection. Maybe things weren’t that different here, after all.

      Small machines—cars—like Cassie’s but with different shapes and colors, passed him by. No horses, though. He didn’t see one, which made him kind of sad. Were there horses anymore in Cassie’s world?

      He was crossing Main to get to the other side, when he heard a loud screech and a man’s voice yelling, “Hey, cowboy! Can’t you see it’s red?” The car was right close to him and the driver looked pretty mad.

      Red? Charlie gazed around him, then up at the sky, and sure enough there was a box hanging in the middle of the street. It had three circles on it, and one of them was red. He watched as that color went out and the one at the bottom it turned green. Other folks joined him now crossing the road.

      “Sorry,” he called out to the irate driver. Another new rule to learn. Red meant you stopped and green meant you could go. And yellow must mean to pay attention, he told himself. This new way of thinking was slowly seeping in and part of it must come from Cassie’s belief that he knew about modern life.

      He began to notice the other folks now, probably because in this part of town there were a lot more of them. His gaze landed on a couple of women in real short skirts, their legs bare as a newborn, their hips swaying back and forth as they went. A right pleasant sight, Charlie thought with a smile. Did they work for the town madame he wondered, or were they what back home they’d call “independents”? He turned his gaze to the other side of the street; there were a lot of women dressed like those two, but a lot who weren’t. Some wore pants, just like men, although they didn’t look like men. No, sir.

      Now he passed a row of stores, some of them with familiar words on the windows, like Druggist and Bar, others with funny names like Computer Closet and Beanie Babies’ Barn. He didn’t know what computers or Beanie Babies were, but he figured it went along with modern times, and if he needed to know about it, he would.

      Up ahead a couple streets, it looked like the buildings just stopped. In the distance he could see a highway, fields, mountains rising tall into the sky. They looked a lot like his mountains, and Charlie experienced a sudden wave of yearning to be back home, back in his simple existence.

      He shook himself out of that one, right quick. He had a job to do, a woman to help. A woman he liked very much, as a matter of fact, and who didn’t exist back home. Not in any real sense, anyway.

      Pausing, he looked around him. Yes, he decided, for a modern town, it was a pretty little place, no doubt about it.

      And wouldn’t you know it, he had stopped right in front of the sign he’d been looking for: First Yatesboro Savings. He removed his hat and scratched his head. Here it was, the job he was supposed to do. Get that mortgage extended, give Cassie a little time to earn more wages.

      Or maybe he could do that for her. He would do more than buy her time, he’d come up with enough money to ease her burden. How, he didn’t know, but it would come to him. Squaring his shoulders, Cowboy Charlie headed into the bank.