Thunder Mountain

by Smith, Dean Wesley

  Behind the buildings were more buildings filling the area up to the rock walls of the valley on both sides. A few of the buildings on the left side of the valley actually straddled Monumental Creek.

  Right below the town the valley choked down tight. To the right side was a second wide valley where the wagon road turned and went up. That was Mule Creek. It was from that valley that the avalanche of mud and trees would come down and block both Mule Creek and Monumental and cover this town in a hundred feet of clear, cold water.

  They all four moved off to one side of the road to let a wagon full of supplies go past. They stopped, staring at the bustling town ahead of them. The music was even louder here, even though they were still a ways above the main part of the town.

  Dawn sat on her horse between Bonnie and Madison, just staring and smiling.

  Finally she glanced over at Madison, who was also smiling.

  “I really love old mining towns,” Duster said. “They had so much life and energy and promise.”

  “And dreams,” Bonnie said, staring at the town spread out ahead and slightly below them. “I love them because everyone here has a dream of one sort or another.”

  “I think this is a dream,” Dawn said. “I can’t begin to thank you enough for bringing me here.”

  “I second that completely,” Madison said.

  “You are more than welcome,” Bonnie said, smiling. “I imagine both your books will be richer for the adventure.”

  Dawn just stared at the buildings and all the motion in front of her. She’d think about her book later.

  “So we have a whole summer to explore this town and everything around it and meet some of these people,” Duster said. “What do you say we get settled in first?”

  “And where exactly might that be, dear?” Bonnie asked, shaking her head at her husband.

  Duster turned in his saddle and pointed back up the road along the creek. Built on a slight ridgeline coming off the hill was a log cabin that looked bigger and more expensive than the standard log cabins going up along the valley floor.

  Many of the small cabins they had passed from the outside looked like they were built too low for anyone to actually walk upright in them. Actually, Dawn knew that the ground inside had been dug out because it was easier to dig down than build up. And the buildings lasted longer in the heavy snow loads of the winter.

  Dawn could see that the cabin that Duster had pointed to was built almost to modern standards. And it had a front porch that would look out over the valley and the town below. It also had a place along one side for the horses. It even had curtains in the windows and a large stone fireplace chimney in the center of the steep roof.

  “You’re kidding me?” Bonnie asked, looking at the big home and then back at her husband. “How did you manage that in one year?”

  Dawn was so stunned, she didn’t know what to say.

  “Last summer I bought the land while in Boise.”

  Dawn suddenly remembered that even though it seemed like only a second, Duster had come back a year earlier than they had. She had forgotten that.

  “I figured that if we were coming in here as rich landowners, we might as well act the part,” Duster said. “So I hired three men that I knew were trustworthy in other timelines, assuming they would be in this one, to spend the winter in here building the cabin and then furnishing it and stocking it. I still owe them a little money for the work and supplies, but I promised to give them each a placer claim along the creek if they got it done. Looks like they did.”

  “How big is that?” Madison asked, clearly as stunned as Bonnie was feeling.

  “Three bedrooms,” Duster said, “an outhouse just outside the back door a few steps up the hill, plus a living and cooking and dining area. I figured if we were going to spend a summer here, we might as well all be comfortable. Especially on your first trip back.”

  Bonnie looked at her husband, then reached over and pulled him toward her in his saddle and kissed him.

  “Thank you.”

  He smiled at her. “You are more than welcome.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  MADISON COULD NOT BELIEVE he was seeing an actual mining town spread out down the valley in front of him. In all his years of research, it was this time in each town that fascinated him the most. And now he was going to get a chance, an entire summer, to talk with miners, understand them better, figure out what really drove them through the hardships, besides the promise of riches.

  And now Duster was leading them back up to this huge log cabin built on the edge of the valley above Monumental Creek that he said he had built.

  Or actually had built.

  The idea that Duster had been back here in the past for a year ahead of them had just never really sunk in. Sure, he had the horses bought and supplies in place, but Madison was having a hard time grasping the idea of spending an entire year back here just to get ready for the three of them to come through.

  Yet Duster had thought nothing of it.

  No doubt it was going to take some time for Madison to get used to this time travel stuff.

  And it was really going to be difficult to grasp that no matter how long they were here in this valley, only two minutes and fifteen seconds will have passed back at the crystal cavern in 2014.

  In reality, it was still the same day that he met Dawn, not much after two in the afternoon on that first day, actually.

  He pushed that thought away as he dismounted and tied up his horse in front of the big, new cabin and followed Duster and Bonnie up the three stairs to the wide front porch.

  “This is wonderful,” Dawn said, getting to the porch and looking down the valley at the main part of Roosevelt, the smoking fireplaces and the fighting music from pianos making it an amazing sight to behold and listen to.

  Duster pushed open the door and Madison turned to follow him and Bonnie into the cabin.

  Which actually wasn’t a cabin by any means.

  The insides felt more like a mansion.

  A large wooden dining table filled one area of the main room with a cloth tablecloth and a candlestick centerpiece. Huge overstuffed couches and chairs filled a living room area formed by two large windows that looked out over the valley. A giant stone fireplace dominated one wall of the living room with chairs and couches facing it as well.

  A kitchen with sink, large wood stove, large counters and an icebox occupied yet another side of the large front area of the home.

  Cut wood for both the stove and the fireplace were stacked perfectly beside both. Unlit lanterns were everywhere and there were pegs to hang coats and hats near the front door.

  The entire place had a wonderful smell of freshly cut pine and wood smoke.

  The ceilings were high and the logs of the walls and rafters were stained golden. The chinking between the logs seemed to be a light brown as well, matching the logs. There were area carpets over the smooth wood-planked floors under the living area and the dining area.

  A hallway with a carpet runner down the center went straight through the center of the back half of the building. Madison could see three doors leading off the hallway, two on one side, one on the other.

  This wasn’t a log cabin, this was a home that just shouted rich. More than likely it was the largest home in the entire valley.

  “Wow,” Bonnie said, laughing. “This is what I call roughing it.”

  She then turned and gave Duster the longest and most passionate thank-you kiss Madison had seen in a long time.

  For a couple that had lived thousands of years, they sure hadn’t let the passion die off. That was wonderful to see.

  He smiled at Dawn who was watching as well and also smiling.

  Madison took Dawn’s hand and the two of them went down the hallway, checking out the bedrooms. In the large one there were two dressers and hanging rods for clothes built across corners. The featherbed was huge and had a carved wooden headboard. The two smaller bedrooms had large featherbeds in both of them as
well, plus a dresser and hanging rods in each, along with the standard washbasins and pitchers.

  “Front or back?” Madison asked Dawn.

  She smiled. “Front.” Then she reached up and kissed him and whispered. “But we’ll spend the nights in yours if you don’t mind the company.”

  “Never will I mind,” he whispered back.

  And he meant that.

  She kissed him again and they headed back out to help bring in their clothes and supplies from the saddlebags and the packhorses.

  As they got back to the living room they could hear Duster talking with some men outside.

  Bonnie was on the porch, standing near the door.

  Madison went past her and down the steps. As he neared the conversation, Duster turned and smiled. “Ah, this is Madison Rogers,” Duster said. “He’s an expert in certain types of mining and will be studying miners in this area for a book he will be writing back east.”

  Duster then introduced the three men who had built the home over the winter and early spring and Duster shook each man’s hand.

  Then Duster turned to Bonnie and Dawn standing on the porch.

  “This is my wife, Bonnie, and Miss Dawn Edwards.”

  Madison watched as both of them bowed slightly as they should for this time period and all three men took off their hats and nodded their hellos. None of them spoke.

  “So, gentlemen,” Duster said, “shall we go into town and get accounts settled?”

  All three of the men nodded their goodbyes to Bonnie and Dawn, then said they were glad to meet Madison, and turned and walked off toward the downtown area of Roosevelt, the closest a half-step behind Duster.

  Madison watched them go, amazed at how Duster just commanded them without even trying. He was in charge and all three of them knew it and didn’t question it. It might have something to do with the Colt revolvers on his hips, but more than likely it was just how he carried himself.

  It was going to take Madison some time to even get close to that, if he ever did.

  Now he understood why Duster liked it so much back here in the west.

  Everywhere he went, he was in charge.

  Even when not a person knew who he was.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  DAWN SAT in a large overstuffed chair in the living room of the fantastic cabin just above Roosevelt, Idaho. Madison had built a crackling fire and she and Bonnie had cooked a combination of fresh trout caught a few miles down Monumental Creek by a local merchant and potato salad spiced by dried onions and carrots.

  The place smelled of newly-cut logs, a campfire, and the sweet smell of dinner.

  Now, sitting around the fire, the drapes drawn, they were sipping small glasses of a sweet sherry.

  “I’ve died and gone to heaven,” Dawn said, smiling at Madison, who tipped his glass at her in agreement. She had not felt this relaxed in a very, very long time.

  And excited.

  Outside the windows the sounds of the pianos from seven saloons and two dancehalls filled the valley. No tune came through clear, just a distant wave of music that promised a new world to explore tomorrow.

  “I am so glad you thought of building this,” Bonnie said, smiling at her husband. “It had been a while since I had spent an entire summer in a tent, sleeping on the ground.”

  “How long ago?” Duster asked, smiling fondly at his wife.

  “I could figure it out if you really want to know,” she said, a twinkle in her eye.

  “Will it make me feel old?” Duster asked.

  “Very,” Bonnie said.

  “Then please don’t,” Duster said, laughing. “I wasn’t relishing the idea of spending the summer on the ground either. So I figured this place would be the best solution and give us good cover among the people here.”

  “Cover?” Madison asked a moment before Dawn could. That use of the word bothered her as well. Why in the world would they need cover in Roosevelt?

  “All winter the people of this valley knew that four rich people were coming into the valley. Not even Colonel Dewey has a place this nice in here. And he owns the biggest mining claim.”

  “And we needed it known that we were coming why?” Dawn asked, still very puzzled.

  “By building here, especially so close to town and this early in the boom time,” Duster said, “we become one of them. They may not know us, but we won’t be treated as outsiders either. And considering some of the questions we might ask, better to be known as a valley insider than an outsider.”

  “Is that the way it worked in a lot of mining towns?” Madison asked.

  “It is,” Duster said. “If you were in first and built early, it was considered that you belonged.”

  “And thus protected,” Bonnie said, nodding. “I’ve seen that a lot as well. Very smart thinking, dear.”

  “Thanks,” Duster said, his feet up on a stool, his boots near the door. “And besides, this beats a tent any time.”

  Dawn had no argument on that statement at all.

  “I also set up that we will have a load of supplies coming in from Boise every week until I shut it off before we leave,” Duster said. “First load should arrive in two days.”

  “Perfect,” Bonnie said.

  “You really had this all thought through,” Madison said. “Thank you.”

  “You are welcome,” Duster said. “I came up with most of this while laid up in the hotel that first five-year attempt. I figured that if you two went back into the past often enough on research, you would have your rough times. This first one might as well be as comfortable and smooth as possible.”

  “You’re not going to mind that we use the time travel device to do research?” Dawn asked, stunned.

  “Of course not,” Bonnie laughed. “That’s what this is all about. Remember, even if you come back for fifty years, you are only using the machine in the cave for two minutes and fifteen seconds.”

  “Not going to be a traffic jam in the cavern,” Duster said, smiling.

  “And we’ll teach you all the tricks,” Duster said, “on how to get rich quickly while back in time, how to carry riches back with you, so most of the time you can live like this or better while you research.”

  “But not all trips will be smooth, and not all will end the way you want them to,” Bonnie said. “This is the west, after all, and if you go back to the 1878 period we like to start in, things are even rougher than they are now in 1902 for those of us used to modern ways of living.”

  “I don’t know,” Madison said. “This feels pretty darned modern to me.”

  “It does, doesn’t it?” Duster said, smiling.

  “Except for the fact that in less than seven years,” Dawn said, “we know this valley will be mostly abandoned and forgotten and that town down there will be nothing but floating timber and lost dreams.”

  “Will this cabin be under water as well?” Bonnie asked.

  “About five feet under here,” Dawn said, nodding. She had used some landmarks from her trip earlier in 2014 to figure that out before dinner.

  “That must be some landslide?” Duster said.

  “It traveled two miles from the mine at the top of Mule Creek, moving about as fast as a man could walk,” Dawn said. “It filled the entire valley just below the town to the level of one hundred and twenty-five feet. It took four days for the water to back up over Roosevelt and two weeks to fill the valley completely.”

  “What does it look like in 2014?” Madison asked.

  “A huge meadow and marsh stretches for about a mile back up the valley, just about to where we stopped on the way in,” Dawn said. “Monumental Creek has filled all that in over the hundred-plus years. The lake itself is now from right about where we are here to the landslide, and is slowly filling as well.”

  “The entire place will be a meadow in another hundred years,” Bonnie said, nodding.

  “And the landslide has one-hundred-year-old pine trees growing on it,” Dawn said. “You can’t even tell it was a sli
de unless you stand way back up the valley and look down at it.”

  “I can’t believe I have never been in here before,” Duster said, shaking his head and sipping his sherry.

  “It is amazing,” Bonnie said.

  “Magical,” Dawn said, smiling at Madison, the man she had fallen in love with.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  THE NEXT TWO MONTHS went so perfectly, Dawn had a hard time even believing on some days that she was experiencing it all.

  Every nice morning, when the weather didn’t look threatening, after a breakfast that one of them cooked, they dressed for a ride and went out into the valley. The first day, they decided that the ride would be through Roosevelt and up Mule Creek to the mine there, then back.

  She was so excited, Dawn almost couldn’t stay on the horse as she rode through the center of a town that in her lifetime had been submerged under water and completely forgotten for over a hundred years.

  Even before the sun hit the valley floor, the pianos were going in the saloons. Through the wide open doors, Dawn could see a number of men in the saloons, some sitting at tables, some playing cards to one side. There were very, very few women in town and the few that were anywhere near the saloons were working girls.

  Bonnie discretely pointed out the cribs to one side and against the rocks behind the saloons.

  And since this was 1902, Duster made a comment after they got on the other side of town and started up Mule Creek how surprising it was to not have a Chinese section of town.

  Dawn wasn’t surprised by that at all. Not one mention of any Chinese miners was in any report about this area. And of course, by this time in history, the backlash against the Chinese had been so strong, laws had been passed not allowing them to own, or even work in mines. Dawn knew that in a few of the older placer mining towns in northern Idaho, most of the population at this point was still Chinese.

  But not here, not in this new town.

  They took many trips up the wagon road beside Mule Creek over the two months as well as many trips downstream along Monumental Creek as well. That was only a trail, since the valley was so narrow and rocky at times.