Dawn was shocked that she had said that, even suggested it.
She pushed her plate of pancakes away. “If that were Duster in there, would you leave him?”
Bonnie nodded. “Now, I would, yes. When we first started coming back into the past, no, I would not have left him.”
Bonnie stood and moved her plate over to the sink. “Let me go talk with Craig and Susan and see if they have any news from the valley that will give us an idea what happened to Duster.”
Dawn nodded, staring into her food, not in the slightest interested in eating it.
Bonnie put on her dark rain slicker, tall boots over her shoes, a dark hood over her head, and then grabbed the rifle by the door. With the hood up and pulled forward over her face, Dawn was surprised that Bonnie looked more like a man than a woman.
She put on thin dark gloves, then said simply, “I’ll be back as quick as I can and we’ll figure out what we’re going to do.”
Then for the first time since Duster had left, one of them stepped outside.
Dawn blocked the door after she left and then with a rifle in one hand went to check on Madison and give him his drugs for the morning.
He was starting to smell really sour and Dawn had no doubt the leg was infected beyond saving. Neither her nor Bonnie had even opened the bandage and splints up to look at it. There was just no point.
How had such a fantastic summer turned so ugly so quickly?
But Dawn knew the answer. She studied history. She knew how rough life was in this time period, especially in the mining towns.
But knowing it from her comfortable office in 2014 and actually experiencing it in 1902 were different things completely.
She moved back out to the kitchen and with the rifle leaning against the counter beside her, she cleaned up the kitchen and then started the preparations on the venison roast they had planned to have that evening if they were still here.
Thirty minutes later Dawn heard steps on the front porch and then Bonnie said, “It’s me.”
Dawn unblocked the door and let in Bonnie, who was dripping wet and her boots were covered with mud.
She peeled off everything, hanging the hat and coat on the hook and slipping out of her boots.
Then she moved toward her bedroom to change her pants. As she did she tossed the Idaho Statesman newspaper on the table and pointed to it without a word. The Statesman was the major newspaper in the state out of Boise, and they usually got it up here about three days delayed.
Dawn opened the paper and on the front page read the headlines about the train wreck and the thirty dead. The train had been derailed and two passenger cars had dropped into the Payette River. There wasn’t a list of the dead.
He stomach twisted and feeling sick, Dawn quickly scanned for the date. It had happened the day after Duster left.
She sat at the table, just staring at the newspaper.
Bonnie came out of the back room in dry pants and wearing slippers.
“Would he have been on that train?” Dawn asked, pointing at the headline.
“Yup, a day’s hard ride to the rail head, then another day to Caldwell on the train, then a day from there into the mountains and up to the mine on the fourth day. That’s how he would have gone.”
“Oh,” Dawn said, staring at the paper. How could Duster be dead? How was that even possible?
“Now it’s up to us to rescue both of them,” Bonnie said, shaking her head and sitting across the table from Dawn. “Damn men.”
“Resetting will bring him back to life?” Dawn asked, remembering the conversation with Bonnie about dying of consumption in another man’s arms, but needing to ask anyway.
“Yup, as annoyingly handsome and alive as ever,” Bonnie said. “Remember, only two minutes and fifteen seconds will have passed, no matter what happens back here. We are all still alive and healthy in our original time line.”
“Wow, that is so damn hard to believe sometimes,” Dawn said, shaking her head.
She wasn’t really believing it, but she had to.
Somehow.
“Impossible early on,” Bonnie said. “In one of our early trips back I died in a freak accident with a stagecoach and Duster damn near went crazy. When he finally got back to the mine and reset us, he wouldn’t leave my side for the next three hundred years.”
“Death makes you a little clingy, huh?” Dawn asked, actually trying to smile.
“For the first few times it sure does,” Bonnie said, smiling in return.
Then she got very serious. “So Duster is more than likely dead and Madison is on death’s door. Hell of a summer vacation to write home about huh?”
Dawn just shook her head. “Who would believe it?”
“Yeah, good point there,” Bonnie said.
Dawn refused to think of the man she had fallen in love with dying on her. But she had no idea how to stop it.
“So,” Bonnie said, “one or both of us needs to make a run for Silver City before the snow flies out there. It feels like it’s getting colder by the minute.”
Dawn looked at Bonnie. She couldn’t leave Madison, she just couldn’t.
Bonnie nodded without saying a word. “Let’s get that roast in and have a nice dinner and get me packed for the ride. As soon as the weather clears some, I’ll make the ride to the mine. And I won’t take the train, I promise.”
Dawn nodded. “Thanks.”
Bonnie smiled. “It’s amazing what we’ll do for the men in our lives, that’s for sure.”
Dawn just hoped that Madison would continue to be the man in her life. She couldn’t completely believe it, but she had to because she had no other choice but to believe.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
IT KEPT RAINING for the next three days and then finally it cleared, lifting Dawn’s mood some. The towering peaks climbing up into clouds really made the valley seem closed in when it rained. The air was bitterly cold and even the sun hitting the valley floor didn’t help.
And everything looked like it had turned to mud. Monumental Creek was running high and brown.
The valley itself felt almost empty now and the sounds of construction had mostly stopped. Even the piano music sounded distant and weak in the cold air.
Madison had seemed to stabilize some, and Bonnie had helped Dawn change his bedding and nightclothes on the day the rain finally stopped. There was still almost two weeks of pain medications left to keep him completely knocked out, but Bonnie said she didn’t think he would last that long.
Dawn hadn’t said anything to that. She knew Madison dying was more than likely right, but she wanted to stay in denial if she could for now.
Bonnie had said that once she got started toward Silver City, it would take her five or six days to get to the crystal cavern and pull the connection to this timeline. Then they would all be back healthy and together in 2014.
Over the three days of rain, they had talked about what would happen to the house when they left?
Dawn had been surprised that nothing would happen to it until Bonnie again explained the timeline. For some reason Dawn had thought that when they all went back to the future, everything they had done and everyone they met would just forget them.
Bonnie explained that they were actually here, in this timeline.
Living and dying as the case might be.
Duster had the house built here, in this timeline, and more than likely in millions of other timelines Duster had built the house for them as well.
The house will just remain, as will the record of Duster dying in that train wreck. And the record and memories of us being here and then just vanishing.
“It’s like we will step through a window and just vanish to this timeline.”
“Will Duster’s body vanish as well?”
“Yes, it will,” Bonnie said, nodding.
“But in our timeline we aren’t back here?” Dawn asked, slowly starting to understand at a level a little deeper than she had before.
“That
’s right,” Bonnie said. “Remember, in many timelines, millions and millions, you and Madison decided to not come with us. And in millions of timelines, Madison wasn’t in that accident and Duster wasn’t killed trying to get us out of here.”
“And in our real time, we started this trip and it will only take a few minutes?” Dawn asked, doing her best to get everything clear in her mind before Bonnie left her alone.
“It’s only about two in the afternoon that first day, the day we had breakfast in Murphy,” Bonnie said, smiling. “It’s hot outside the mine and the Cadillac is parked in the trees.”
Dawn just shook her head and Bonnie laughed. “You come back into the past enough, you get used to the idea of all this.”
Dawn wasn’t sure about another trip. Right now she wanted Madison to survive this one. She just wanted to hug him again and make love to him again and enjoy his laugh.
The next morning, September 7th, Bonnie gave Dawn a hug just as the darkness of the valley started to fade with the rising sun, then with her rain slicker on and a cowboy hat with her hair pulled up under the hat, she got ready to ride.
Her breath was clear frosty white in front of her, and Dawn was stunned at how cold it felt.
Dressed the way she was, Bonnie just looked like any other man on the trail. Someone would have to get pretty close to her to know she was a woman.
“Good luck,” Dawn said, as Bonnie turned and headed up the road toward Monumental Summit.
Dawn went inside, blocked the door closed, and then with a rifle across her lap, went and sat beside the man she loved.
Never in all her life had she felt so alone.
And so scared.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
DAWN MUST HAVE DOZED because the light was fading from the valley, the sun low behind the high ridges, when someone pounded on the door.
She leapt out of her chair, her heart pounding like it might explode from her dress. Madison hadn’t moved, but he was still breathing.
She did a quick check of her clothing to make sure she looked appropriate for the year, and then with the rifle in her hand, she headed toward the front room.
“Dawn, it’s me,” Bonnie shouted from the front porch.
Dawn got the door unblocked and open and let Bonnie come staggering in. Her face was red and she was shaking from the cold. She seemed to be completely soaked.
Dawn closed the door and immediately worked to help Bonnie from her wet coat and the jacket under that, then went to warm up the stove and get water boiling for tea while Bonnie stoked the fire in the fireplace to warm the big room up.
Bonnie’s teeth were chattering and she was shaking. Her nose had been running and had caked to her face.
Dawn got the water on and went over to help Bonnie with the fire, motioning for her to sit down and pull a blanket over herself. Then Dawn used a second blanket and covered Bonnie with that as well.
“What happened?” Dawn finally asked as the fire came roaring up.
“Pass is snowed in already,” Bonnie said. “Two people died yesterday trying to go over it.”
“Oh, no,” Dawn said, standing to go get the hot water and make Bonnie some hot tea.
She felt stunned by that news.
Stunned.
Could they really be trapped in this valley she loved so much? Was that possible so soon in the year?
She made herself calm down and make both of them a cup of tea. Then she started water for soup to get it boiling for dinner.
Then she took Bonnie her cup and warned her to sip it because it was so hot.
Bonnie seemed to be looking a little better, but her face was almost burnt from the cold.
Dawn sat her cup on an end table and went to get a towel and washcloth.
Then she poured a little of the warming soup water over the washcloth and took it back for Bonnie to use.
Bonnie thanked her and pressed the warm towel to her face for a moment, before working to clean herself up a little.
“I haven’t been that cold in a few hundred years,” Bonnie said, her voice cracking slightly. “Not since I tried going over Lolo Pass in December. Froze to death that night. Literally.”
Dawn started to open her mouth to ask a question, then realized what Bonnie had said and just stayed silent, letting Bonnie sip her tea.
Dawn had been amazed at how Bonnie was calm about Duster and Madison. Now she was starting to understand. When dying became something that happened and you ended up back completely healthy, then you could face death better.
But Dawn still couldn’t believe it, no matter how hard she tried. She had lived her entire life just knowing death was the end of things.
Believing anything else, even intellectually, was going to take time.
“Is there another way out of here that’s better?” Bonnie asked after a moment.
Dawn knew this valley and history better than anyone in 2014. It was her specialty. But that didn’t mean she was an expert now, living here. It was one thing to read stories and diaries about how difficult the trip in and out was.
Another to sit here and plan a reality.
“Two other ways out,” Dawn said. “Down Monumental Creek, then down Big Creek to the tail up and over Elk Creek Summit and into Warren. It is the most deadly of all the ways in and out of here because of snow and mud slides, so that’s more than likely shut down to only snowshoes now. And mud makes that one really, really dangerous.”
“And the third way?” Bonnie asked, her voice gaining strength.
“Up Mule Creek and past the Dewey mine and then down the other side on Marble Creek to the Middle Fork of the Salmon River.”
“That would be passable, wouldn’t it?” Bonnie asked.
Dawn was doing her best to remember all the history. “A rough ride down Marble Creek. At least twenty-some miles on mostly rock and side-hill and the mud would make it dangerous. The trail would be easy along the Middle Fork. But then the trail leaves the river after about ten miles and goes up and over two summits and drops down onto the Payette River. From there it’s easy to get down into Boise.”
Bonnie nodded and sipped her tea.
Dawn went on. “The Marble Creek route is the way most packers come into here if they attempt it in the winter, usually on snowshoes. Suppliers brought in goods and food that way last winter to cover the food shortages. A few tried it over Elk Creek Summit as well. But it takes snowshoes and traveling in the snow or even mud is dangerous in these mountains and only one made it last winter.”
Bonnie just nodded again.
Then she set her empty tea mug down and pulled off the blankets. “Tomorrow, if the weather is clear, I’ll try again. If that doesn’t work, I’ll go up to the Dewey Mine and try to hook up with a packtrain going out. That way will take longer. Can you hold on?”
“I can,” Dawn said, now more scared for Bonnie than for herself.
This area was the last of the wild mining areas. Duster and Madison had been right to always stay with Bonnie and Dawn when they went out. Bonnie riding alone might just be suicide. Civilization in these mountains at this point in history was only a surface illusion.
A very thin surface at that.
Bonnie stood and headed for her bedroom. “I’ve got to get out of these clothes, then get the horse bedded down for the night.”
“I’ll check on Madison and get dinner started,” Dawn said. “Take your time.”
Madison seemed fine for the moment, but he was wasting away and the infection smell was getting worse by the day.
Dawn then checked their supplies, both the ones in the kitchen and in hidden stash Duster had built on the way out to the outhouse in the back. From what she could tell, if she and Bonnie managed to get some basic supplies regularly from the general store, they could hold out easily until next May and go out then.
She didn’t much like the idea of wintering here, basically trapped in this house, but that seemed to be the sensible thing to do unless the rest of this month really war
med up enough for the Monumental Summit pass to open.
So an hour later, over warm chicken soup and bread, Dawn brought up the idea to Bonnie.
“Don’t go,” she said simply.
Bonnie looked up at her.
“Unless the weather has a warm break over the next two weeks,” Bonnie said, “I think we should just hole up and stay here until spring thaw.”
Bonnie looked at her and then said simply, “We would bury Madison if we did that.”
Dawn looked down into her soup, doing her best to not think about that, but she knew that was going to happen.
“We’re all going to end up healthy back there in that crystal cavern, correct?” Dawn asked, twisting her spoon in her soup but not daring to lift it out of the broth for fear of her hand shaking.
“Yes,” Bonnie said, staring at her with a very worried expression. “But that does not mean that burying a man you have come to love will be any easier.”
“I know that,” Dawn said, trying her best to sound brave.
“I don’t think you really do,” Bonnie said, shaking her head. “If the weather is clear tomorrow, I’ll try Monumental Summit again. If that’s still closed off, I’ll go out Mule Creek the following day.”
“Why?” Dawn asked. “Why risk your life like that?”
“Because,” Bonnie said, “I know for a fact I can’t be permanently killed. But mostly I want Madison and you back healthy in that cavern before he dies and you have to live with that memory for a very long time.”
Dawn let the silence fill the room along with the faint crackling of the fire in the fireplace.
Then she looked at Bonnie who was working on her dinner, slowly, savoring each bite as if it were the best meal she had ever eaten.
“How many times?” Dawn asked.
“How many times what?” Bonnie asked, not looking up.
“How many times have you buried Duster?”
“Too many,” Bonnie said, not looking up, her voice soft. “Too God-damned many times.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
BEFORE SUNRISE THE NEXT MORNING, Bonnie rode off up the valley toward Monumental Summit without so much as a look back. The day looked like it was going to break clear, but Dawn was stunned how cold it was.
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