Plus, they had one more problem area Duster had warned them about. They had to cross Shannon Creek just below the future site of the town.
Sophie was not looking forward to that at all. And when she had said that to Wade, he had smiled. “I got a couple ideas on that. Depends on how the crossing looks.”
She just smiled at him and let it go because she was starting to realize quickly that Wade was very good at improvising ways to keep them safe. It seemed that dying during the last attempt at this valley had really gotten to him.
It hadn’t exactly helped her confidence, either. But what it had done was given her a very healthy respect for how dangerous these mountains really were.
And how the pioneers into these areas never got a “Do Over” chance like they had gotten.
THIRTY-FOUR
May 29th, 1887
Central Idaho Mountains
JUST AS THE sun was filling the narrow canyon below the town site of Grapevine Springs, they reached the second problem area that Duster had warned them about.
The steep walls on their side of the valley pinched down to rock cliffs and there was no way for them to go forward without crossing to the other side of the valley, over Shannon Creek.
Duster had assured them that the creek wouldn’t be running as high in this area, and that he crossed about a hundred paces below the cliff.
But from what Wade could tell, the drop in elevation and tightness of the streambed and the volume of water made the creek even rougher here.
“That’s not possible,” Sophie said, standing beside him and staring at the raging water twenty feet below them, right about the point where Duster had said he crossed.
Wade laughed. “No wonder no one found this valley before now. It’s damn near impossible to get to.”
“Got that right,” Sophie said.
Wade couldn’t even begin to see any way they could get themselves and horses across. The other side of the valley from where they stood seemed almost shallow and would be easy riding if they could get over there.
“When do the history books say we found this valley?” Sophie asked. “I’ve lost track of the days.”
“Tomorrow,” Wade said. “But we might just have to camp and wait for the water to go down and change history.”
“I honestly don’t mind the sound of that,” she said.
Wade nodded. “I don’t either.”
The stood there for a moment together, watching the crashing water below them.
Finally Wade said, “Let’s back up and find a spot to camp, then explore along the creek to see if there is any place that might be possible to cross at this high-water level.”
He had just trusted Duster to be right about the flow being smaller the higher up they went. It might be, but nowhere near small enough. That water was a nasty death to them or any of their horses. He had no doubt about that.
The went back for about ten minutes until they found a flat area sheltered in some trees, took care of the horses, set up camp, got some lunch, and then went for a hike.
“So what are we looking for exactly?” Sophie asked.
“First off,” Wade said, “we look for any place that has calm flow, that water isn’t crashing over rocks like an out-of-control washing machine.”
She laughed. “Had one of those once. Not fun.”
They walked upstream, stopping and checking the creek below them just about every hundred paces.
Nothing.
Every time they looked, the water was churning and tumbling over rocks. But about five hundred paces upstream, Sophie pointed to the other side. “Look at the high water mark there. It’s still wet.”
“That means the water is dropping fast,” Wade said, feeling encouraged.
“So how about tomorrow we go back to the cliff area, climb up a little to see into the valley, and that way we won’t be lying about when we saw it for the first time.”
Wade liked that idea a lot. “Then we camp right where we are and wait.”
She nodded. “That seems like what true pioneers with only one life to spend would do.”
He laughed. She had that right. And he had no intention of spending another of either of their lives on this craziness. Patience was something he had to learn.
Being in a hurry in the Old West would get them killed. He had no doubt about that.
THIRTY-FIVE
May 30th, 1887
Central Idaho Mountains
THE SCRAMBLED UP the steep slope the next day high enough to see beyond the cliff and into part of the valley beyond. Sophie instantly knew she would love it. She could feel that.
“That’s a beautiful place,” Wade said, standing just below her and staring into the meadows and trees of the valley beyond.
“Want to live some lifetimes with me there?” Sophie asked, looking down at him, something she seldom did since he was a lot taller than she was.
He looked up at her with those wonderful green eyes. “I’m looking forward to every lifetime with you.”
Damn he sure knew the right thing to say at exactly the right time.
They stood there for a few moments staring at their future home, then started back down the steep, rocky slow.
That’s when things turned sour once again.
Wade was looking up at her more than he was watching his own footing and suddenly there was a rattling.
Nasty, angry rattling that could be heard over the sounds of the water.
She froze.
Wade froze.
He slowly turned to look down at where his boot was within a half foot of a rattlesnake on a wide, flat rock.
The snake was curled and clearly angry.
Sophie was stunned that Wade hadn’t stepped on the snake.
She wasn’t that afraid of snakes and they had killed a couple of snakes already on this trip. But on the steep slope, there was nowhere for Wade to go quickly.
Her only thought was that the snake would strike at his boot. She knew rattlesnake bites were not deadly, but they sure made a person sick.
Wade slowly tried to move his boot away.
Slowly.
But the snake lunged and struck his pant leg, right above the top of the boot.
“Shit!” Wade said, jumping backward.
And when he did, he lost his footing on the steep rock slope.
He went over backwards before he had a chance to even try to catch himself.
Sophie watched, frozen, with nothing she could do to help him.
It was like a nightmare movie in slow motion.
He tumbled and tumbled.
Head over heels, going backwards.
He tried to grab anything he could to slow his momentum.
Nothing helped.
Then he smashed his back and head into a rock so hard, she heard the crack over the sounds of the stream.
He went limp at that point.
With three more tumbles, he hit the rough, angry water.
“Wade!” she screamed, moving as quickly as she could around the snake and down the hill.
By the time she got down to the game trail, his body was only flashing bits of blue color of his coat in the bouncing water.
A moment later he vanished downstream.
He didn’t seem to be moving at all.
Or fighting to get out of the water.
As fast as she dared, she ran along beside the stream, checking every hundred paces for any sign of him.
She did that for the next two hours, all the way back to one of the small talus slopes before she gave up and turned back toward where they had camped, still checking the banks along the way.
By the time she got back to their camp she knew one fact for certain.
Wade was dead.
There was no doubt at all.
Wade was dead.
In this timeline.
At this point in history.
But she had to believe that he wouldn’t be dead, that he would be standing beside her in the cavern
in 1902.
And that when she went back and unhooked that wire from the box they had been touching, she could hold him and kiss him again.
She had to know that.
She had to believe that. She couldn’t allow herself to believe anything else.
He was only dead in this timeline.
Just as they had both died in the other timeline.
She refused to let herself even grieve. They had talked about something like this happening to one or the other. The only plan they had was to get back to the institute.
Now she was alone in a wilderness that had already killed her once as well.
She had wanted to know how women of the west handled hardship. It seemed she was about to get a very real lesson.
THIRTY-SIX
May 31st, 1887
Central Idaho Mountains
SOPHIE TRIED TO sleep, but without Wade beside her in their bedding and their tent, every time she closed her eyes she heard noises.
And if she actually did manage to drift off, all she saw was Wade tumbling down that slope, frantically trying to catch himself.
That vision would haunt her for the rest of her life, she had no doubt.
Finally, in the middle of the night, she got up, made sure her fire was stoked full so that it illuminated the trees and underbrush around her. She then sat there with her saddle rifle across her lap and had a little talk with herself and with Wade.
“So what would you suggest I do next, Doctor?” she asked into the air, her voice carried away in the sounds of the stream below her and the crackling of the fire. “Besides get some sleep?”
She laughed. She knew Wade would tell her to just sleep.
“Not doing that,” she said, “until I have a plan.”
The moment she said that, she knew exactly what she had to do. She had to get back to Boise, back to the institute, and pull the plug on this timeline for her and Wade.
She had to get him at her side again.
She couldn’t believe how much she had come to love him in just their short months together. She felt empty without him.
For a woman who had prided herself on her independence, it was startling how much she had come to love having Wade as her partner.
Together they were stronger.
She knew that Bonnie and Duster and Dawn and Madison spent years and decades apart, but she wasn’t ready for that yet. She wanted to spend some decades with Wade first.
It was strange how they had talked about one of them getting injured or killed. If that happened, the other was to just head to Boise and pull the plug, hit the do-over switch.
But when they had that conversation, she figured she would be the one killed or hurt, not Wade.
They had made it sound so simple.
“So I know the goal,” she said out loud into the dark, cold night air.
The steam from her breath mixed with the smoke from the fire.
She glanced around in the direction of the four horses. She couldn’t just leave three of them or two of them here. They wouldn’t survive for long at all.
So she had to take them with her as far as she could. But leading a train of packhorses she knew was a skill.
Especially over the rough terrain.
“Jersey girl, looks like you had better learn that skill quickly,” she said into the darkness.
For the next hour she sat there, watching the fire, listening to the sounds of the creek below and the creaks and moans of the forest around her.
Finally, she felt like she might be able to sleep.
She crawled into the tent and the bedding inside, putting her rifle where she could reach it quickly.
Then she said out loud, “I love you Wade.”
Two hours later, at the first hint of light at the tops of the peaks above her, she was packing the tent and the bedding and leaving all of the provisions she didn’t think she would need to take along.
She saddled up her horse and put a light load on the packhorse she had led, then got the other two horses ready, leaving Wade’s saddle and gear behind.
It was going to be everything she could do to get out of this valley.
Everything a girl raised in modern New Jersey could imagine.
She loved researching the Old West and how women of this time dealt with the hardships. It seemed she might just have a chapter in a book if she made it out of here.
She looked around at the steep mountains still in blackness above her, the dark raging water below her, and the four horses. Scared didn’t even come close to describing how she felt.
Not even close.
Terrified would be more like it.
THIRTY-SEVEN
May 31st, 1887
Central Idaho Mountains
SOPHIE, WITH SOME adjustments on the lead lines to the three packhorses, managed to get back down the steep valley to the first small talus slope. It took her two hours with only one break.
The sun still wasn’t anywhere near the valley floor, but it was a beautiful day with bright blue sky overhead and she had a hunch it would be fairly warm eventually.
She tied the horses on one side of the forty-paces-wide rock slope, then worked her way across the loose rock slope with coils of rope over her shoulder.
On the other side of the slope, she tied the rope off around a tree trunk about thirty paces up the hill, then tied another end around her waist and went back across the slope, keeping the rope tight.
If she fell, the rope would keep her from going into the whitewater below the slope. She felt better having that safety line on.
She took her horse, made sure she had some supplies on the second horse in case her horse went down, and then went across the slope, going slowly, not allowing herself to hurry.
Then she went back three more times and eventually she had all four horses across safely.
From that point onward, she watched the banks of the water for Wade’s body as she moved forward and did the same routine with the second small talus slope.
She really didn’t want to see Wade’s body, but she knew it would help her if she found it.
She forced herself to rest finally and have a large lunch and extra water and some salty jerky to make sure she kept her head clear.
The sun had now hit the valley floor and the day was warming up so much, she could shed her heavy coat.
At the large slope that they had built the trail across, she simply led each horse across one at a time.
Then on the other side, she rested again in the shade of the trees.
She found herself thinking that she was proving to herself that this valley could be beat.
But she still was a ways from the mouth of the valley, so she killed that thought and focused on two things.
First, she had to be careful and keep the horses moving slowly, but steadily over the rough ground.
Second, she needed to watch the banks of the stream for any sign of Wade’s body.
She reached the original camping site at the mouth of the valley just as the light was vanishing from the tops of the peaks around her and the darkness was closing in.
There had been no sign of Wade’s body at all.
She quickly got a fire started and the horses taken care of for the night.
Then, in the light of the fire, she set up her tent and bedding.
Every bone in her body ached, and she felt more exhausted than she could ever remember feeling before.
But she had beaten the valley, alone, and on her own terms.
She made herself eat a little, then crawled into the bedding and with the rifle near her, she said into the night, “I hope you’ll be proud of me, Wade.”
She was very proud of herself, that was for sure.
And a moment later, she was asleep.
THIRTY-EIGHT
June 3rd, 1887
Boise, Idaho
SOPHIE HAD MANAGED to get all four horses down out of the mountains and sold three of them to a rancher and his wife near the small t
own of Grangeville for a very cheap price. The rancher had wanted to give her more, but she had insisted that she didn’t need the money, she just wanted to get the horses taken care of.
In exchange, the rancher and his wife fed her a solid meal and gave her some fresh jerky.
The days were warm and the lower she got out of the mountains, the warmer they got.
She had camped the second night near the ranch, then she had managed to make pretty good time along the wagon road for the next two days going south toward Boise. It was amazing how fast she could travel without having to deal with three other horses.
She had decided to go around the main area of Boise to get out to Warm Springs Avenue and the institute buildings. Duster and Bonnie had showed her and Wade how and she was surprised that she remembered the path.
She put her horse in the barn and gave her horse a good brushing and food and water and thanked her. She had been a wonderful horse and Sophie was surprised at that moment that she hadn’t even bothered to name her horse.
She went through the secret passage from the barn into the cavern under the main house, carrying her saddlebags.
There was no one there. And no fire going in the large fireplace.
She had to get a message to Duster who would be waiting for them in town. But she honestly didn’t know enough about the staff working this time period.
If she didn’t get word to Duster, he would travel up into the mountains looking for them again and she didn’t want that.
She decided to take a shower first and change into clean riding clothes and get something to eat.
She knew, had to believe, that Wade was only a few steps away through a cavern and would be there when she unplugged that wire, but she just couldn’t let Duster worry about them again.
And she wasn’t sure if Duster was sleeping here at the institute each night, or in one of the other buildings, or in town somewhere. Neither she nor Wade had thought to ask him.
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