Full Summary:
Tierney Wheeler was riding her horse home from the library with her books, laptop, movies, CD's and IPod in her backpack. In the duffel bag she had her sweats, t-shirts, jeans, skirts, dresses, tank tops, boots, sandals, bras/underwear, toothbrush, bathroom necessities, batteries, headphones and CD/MP3 player, cans of fruits and vegetables, some candy, some bottles of water and pop and my pepper spray and mace. What happens when she's thrust back in time with all her modern gear?
Tierney Wheeler:
Hi, my name is Tierney Wheeler and I am from the future. I was riding Lobo home from the library when a 'freak' storm blew in. I looked for cover but noticed that the storm was only over my position. My father, a Park Ranger in the Badlands National Park in South Dakota, was always taking me out in the Park and teaching me how to track animals and how to take care of myself if I ever got lost or anything during all the seasons. My mother was never really in the picture and it was always me who made dinner for the two of us. Lobo, my Clydesdale, was the horse I used to Show in the local rodeo's and rode on the Badlands, making sure nobody was there that wasn't supposed to be there.
I was sixteen and I already had a job working with my father. Most kids my age would die for a job like this, getting to spend your afternoons every weekday on the back of a horse, riding the Badlands, looking for something that wasn't supposed to be there. I had always heard the Native Americans that worked with my father talk about those that had once lived here and I was always looking for any trace of them. I loved looking for ancient villages and arrowheads and stuff like that. I would always bring the objects back to the main cabin and show them to my father.
My father's partner, Matoskah, would always tell me the history of the objects and then let me take them home, to the collection I had made when I was a younger child. His daughter, Nahimana, was constantly over at my house, looking over the artifacts and running through the history with me. We would learn more about the Cheyenne History* from the artifacts that I collected on the Badlands than from any book that we read in class or at the library. Nahimana and I were supposed to go riding when I got home and after I did my chores. We both got paid for working at the National Park and we liked riding our horses wherever we went.
I would never make it home. The storm scared Lobo and she reared, sending me to the ground with all of my stuff on. I always kept my backpack and duffel bag with me and on my back at all times, no matter where I was going, because I never knew when I might need it. My head hit a rock and I knew no more. What I do remember is something that couldn't have happened. I remember waking up in something that couldn't be.
Lobo was still with me, only she was standing next to me, waiting for me to wake up. My head hurt and I was sure that someone had seen what had happened because I got the feeling that I was being watched. I touched the side of my head and I felt blood. I knew that I would need to get that cleaned up as soon as possible; I just needed to find a stream to clean myself in before venturing into either an Indian village or a local town. The only problem was, would they accept me for who I was and not send me out of there town, calling me a freak in the process.
[*Not true about where the Cheyenne population and I'm not sure that they were even in S. Dakota before the reservations. She will end up in Colorado Springs, though.]