Please Remember This Read Free

Midwestern features. His light brown hair was sun-streaked, and his eyebrows were darker than his hair. He was wearing rumpled khakis and a polo shirt, and he had an alert, intelligent look about him.
    “You have been very gracious,” she said firmly. “I appreciate it.”
    With that, the conversation was over. She nodded farewell, and he did likewise.
    She was ready to leave. Her car was not at the fairgrounds, whose lot had been full when she had arrived. A uniformed Boy Scout had directed her to park in the Kmart south of town. A school bus was shuttling people between locations.
    The bus had let passengers out at the fairgrounds’ front gate, but the driver had warned everyone that after two o’clock he would be picking people up by the livestock entrance. Tess had no idea where the livestock gate was. She wasn’t even sure she knew what a livestock gate was.
    Whom should she ask? The people around here, while knowing every bend in the fictional Ghyfist River, would probably have no idea how to catch the real-life parking shuttle.
    The information table at the main gate was surrounded by people dressed in green elfin garb. They seemed to have no intention of moving. A hand-lettered sign behind the table did say that the parking shuttle was leaving from the livestock gate. An arrow pointed heavenward. Tess did not find that helpful.
    She picked her way back through the crowd, assuming that the livestock gate might be on the other side of the fairgrounds. More and more people were sitting on the ground, and it was sometimes hard to move around them. She was starting to lose her bearings when she saw the man whose drink she had spilled. He was obviously manning a table, but noone was in front of it, so he was leaning back against a tree, his hands in his pockets, looking very sane and normal.
    Gratefully she went up to him. “You don’t have to be afraid of me. I won’t hurt you, and even if I do, I swear I won’t apologize. But could you tell me where the livestock gate is? I’m supposed to meet the parking bus there.”
    “You can apologize all you want,” he said. “But do you really need to leave? I’d be willing to bet that you haven’t had any cotton candy yet … although you’re too late if you want the pink. They’re out of that. You’d have to settle for the blue.”
    He was urging her to stay longer. “Thank you, but I don’t think even the pink would tempt me.”
    “Do you have a long trip home?”
    “Actually, yes. I’m from California.”
    “Oh.” He shrugged, acknowledging that there wasn’t much point in getting better acquainted. “In that case, the livestock gate is easy to find. Do you know where Sierra’s table is? It’s right in back of her.”
    “That doesn’t help me.” Tess didn’t know whether Sierra was a person, a character in one of Nina Lane’s books, or a mountain range.
    “Do you see the water tower? You may have to stand on your toes.”
    Tess looked at where he was pointing. “I see it.”
    “Then just go in that direction. You’ll have to zig and zag around the buildings, but if you keep heading in that direction, you’ll hit the livestock gate.”
    “I can do that.” Tess thanked him. “It would probably be easier if I were a crow, but I can do it.”
    “Lots of things would be easier if we were crows, but we’re not. Here, let me give you one of these. It’s still dry.”
    It was his brochure. Tess supposed that he was selling something. She looked at it. In large, scrolling typeface were the words
“Western Settler.”
Tess had heard of it. “That’s the riverboat, the one that sank, isn’t it?”
    He nodded. “I’m going to dig it up.”
    The
Western Settler
was a pre-Civil War steamboat. In 1857, while the boat was en route from St. Louis to Nebraska Territory, an underwater log had pierced her bow, and she had sunk into the Missouri River. Everyone on board had survived, but all the cargo, the personal belongings of the passengers, the