CHAPTER FIVE

 

 

July 14th, 2016

Oregon Coast

 

KELLI WORKED AT the fantastic chicken fried steak, but her attention wasn’t on the steak as much as she would have liked. It was on Jesse Parks’ reaction to the photo.

At first he looked puzzled, then his handsome face turned white.

Completely white as he stared at the photo. Shocked white was not a good color on his rugged, handsome face.

Then, as she was taking another bite, he had glanced at her, then back at the photo.

“This has to be a fake,” Jesse said, pushing the laptop back to her as his plate full of chicken fried steak arrived.

“Besides the fact that you couldn’t be in 1908, why do you think that?” Kelli asked, smiling and glancing at the picture.

“Take a close look at the woman in the picture,” he said. “That’s you.”

Kelli started to open her mouth, then actually looked at the woman half turned in the photo and knew instantly he was right. It was her in period clothes.

“I know your books,” Jesse said. “Enjoyed them, actually. Someone must be pulling a publicity gag on you. Or trying to discredit your research in some way.”

“Wow,” Kelli said, staring at the photo. “That is some fine work because I have fifty other pictures of the man beside you in this photo from other times and places throughout the west. That’s part of what made me think this was legit. And the style of the photographer who took it as well.”

She started to close her laptop, shaking her head that she had made such a boneheaded research mistake when Jesse said, “Hold on, what do you mean you have other images of the other man?”

“A lot,” she said. “He pops up from about 1880 to 1930 as a marshal in many western towns. He was a real person and his identity is authenticated in numbers of ways. He never got any publicity and has never been investigated. But he was an interesting man, of that there was no doubt.”

Again the handsome Jesse Parks’ face had gone almost as white as the gravy on the chicken fried steak and he sat there, shaking his head. “Marshal Duster Kendal?” he asked.

She nodded.

“How many pictures would you say you have of him?” Jesse asked after a moment.

“Over fifty at least,” she said, frowning. “Maybe more. From a couple dozen different photographers and sources from all over the west. Duster Kendal was a major figure in the Old West. Why?”

Jesse just sat there, staring at his food.

“Give me a minute to try to explain,” he said. “Although I have no explanation for that picture. None.”

Then he dug into his chicken fried steak and the color came back to his face.

She went back to eating and they sat there in silence, not at all the way she had hoped this would end up.