Lou grabbed the satchel full of the Pony Express dispatches from the approaching rider and kicked Lightning into action. The horse bore her forward quick as his namesake.
No sooner than she rounded the first bend, she was surrounded by a brilliant cocoon of light. She began to feel disjointed and could not feel her body. Seconds passed, though she could no longer judge the passage of time; it could have been minutes, hours or even days for all she knew.
Then suddenly she could feel her body. And how! There was a sharp tingling pain in all parts of her anatomy. She tried with all her concentration to have her insides stay inside. Slowly, her sensations returned to normal and she gradually started to notice her surroundings.
She was in an antiseptically white room with a blinding light that seemed to come from all angles. The light came from everywhere and nowhere at the same time; it just was there, all around her.
From her peripheral vision, she noticed some motion. She whirled around to face it. At first blush, it appeared to be a disembodied head, clean-shaven, pale skin, chestnut hair and nondescript features. On further investigation, she could tell that it was a complete man; his body was in a white jumpsuit that blended in with the room.
"I mean you no harm," the headman stated calmly.
Lou's mind was racing. How had she gotten here and who was he? Panicking, she drew her side arm and in one motion cocked the hammer and pointed it between his eyes.
"Please, I mean you no harm. Put down your weapon."
"Send me back! I don't want to be here!"
"We will do just that, but first there is something we need from you."
He advanced on Lou tentatively and she shot him -- or at least she tried to. Nothing happened. She squeezed her trigger finger again, and again nothing.
"We beam you up on a ray of light and you think you can harm us with your primitive pea shooter?"
Lou returned the revolver to her holster and, in what seemed like the same motion, pulled her knife from its nearby sheath and sent it sailing across the room into his shoulder.
"Hey, that hurt!"
Lou grinned and pulled out another knife. She held it menacingly.
"Hey lady! Hear me out! Don't go crazy on me!"
"I'm a man!"
"What?"
"I'm a man, not a lady!"
A few minutes later when the man stopped laughing, he spoke again. "Okay, 'guy.' You are fooling no one. Even a moron can see you are a woman."
Lou pouted indignantly. "What do you want?"
"You have a dispatch in that mail bag there." He motioned carefully to her feet where indeed her Pony Express bag lay previously unnoticed. "The letter reveals the identity of one of our agents. We do not want that letter to reach its destination."
"No!" Lou said and menaced once again with the knife. "It is my duty to see that all my packages get to their destination. If you remove that letter I could get fired."
"This is not a request! We will take it!"
"What are you going to do if I refuse?"
The man nodded over his shoulder and the light incredibly began to increase. She started to feel drowsy. She fought to keep her wits, but it was no use; the white light once more became her universe. She slipped into nothingness. As she did, she faintly heard, "you will be repaid." Or did she?
*****
She woke on the back of her mount, nearly falling off. She checked herself all over and felt fine. Was she dreaming?
She stopped her horse and pulled the mochila in front of her. He peered inside and she saw nothing amiss. Maybe it was a dream.
She returned the satchel to its place and put her hand in the pocket of her jacket. She noticed something that should not be there. She withdrew her hand and within it was exactly what she had been looking for her whole life. She quickly placed it back in her pocket for safe keeping.
They must have slipped it in her pocket at some point. This meant that it was all real! And how did they know what she was looking for?
As she rode off to the next station, she thought to herself, "This is going to change everything."
*****
* On my wife's advice, I will disclose what is in her pocket, a shiny new macguffin. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macguffin )