Thunder Mountain

by Smith, Dean Wesley

  And more than likely this would feel warm compared to temperatures later in the winter. This area of high mountains was known for its brutal weather and extreme cold temperatures.

  Bonnie wore extra layers and had two layers of gloves on and a hat that pulled down over most of her face. She said if the pass wasn’t open, but looked like it might tomorrow, she would camp at the base and try early in the morning.

  If it looked like that pass would remain closed, she would come back and try going over and down Marble Creek the next day.

  Dawn stood on the porch of the big log house and watched her ride away, trying to tamp down the fear she felt. She wasn’t so much afraid for herself at the moment. She would be fine if she remained sensible in her actions over the next week.

  Now she felt terrified for Bonnie.

  She sat with Madison most of the day. He was stirring a little more and she worked to keep him sedated and comfortable. But the smell of the infection in his leg sometimes just forced her out of the room.

  Bonnie did not return that evening, so Dawn decided to start a journal and make sure she was touching it at all times to record exactly what happened over the next seven or eight days while Bonnie made her way to the mine and the crystal cavern above Silver City.

  It was like carrying their supplies through when they came back. If she had the journal on her, it would transport back to the future and her timeline with her.

  Or at least that was what Bonnie had told her in one of their conversations.

  She hadn’t bothered with taking many notes this summer, figuring she would just get them all down when she got back.

  But now she felt like she needed to really write it all down. Everything. The good times, and the bad of the last few weeks.

  And all the emotions.

  She was known for writing about the human element of the Old West. Now she was living it and she better get it right.

  She put on an apron with two large pockets in the front and kept the journal in one pocket and a light pair of gloves in the other for minor tasks.

  With the thin mountain air turning cold, her hands seemed to never want to warm up.

  It turned out that now that she was alone, she had time to record everything.

  The focus of that task helped her pass the time, make her feel like she was back at work.

  Bonnie didn’t return on the second day either, and the weather broke clear and sunny again.

  It felt like the air was warming up, actually.

  Numbers of people were leaving town, headed for the passes, which told Dawn that at the moment they were back open.

  Only one saloon with one piano remained now, filling the night with its sound. If Dawn remembered her research right, less than two hundred of the seven thousand people who had filled the valley this summer remained over the winter. And fifty of those were housed in the dorm up at the Dewey mine and would never come down into Roosevelt because of the snow.

  Craig and Susan had said they would winter in the valley and try their best to keep the Roosevelt General Store open.

  Grace, the wife of William Armstrong, the owner of the other general store on the other end of town had died few weeks before, right before Madison’s accident. She was buried next to her husband up in the cemetery, something that Dawn found surprising that wasn’t on the plaque in 2014. Fifty people had come to the gathering near the cemetery, so someone should have remembered that Mrs. Armstrong had died.

  Unless in Dawn’s timeline, she hadn’t died.

  On the third morning, it warmed up enough that Dawn opened the window in Madison’s room to try to clear out the smell from the infection. He was getting feverish, so she increased his dose of antibiotics and kept cool towels on his forehead. All she had to do was nurse him through the next four or five days and all would be fine.

  She had to believe that.

  She just had to.

  The alternative she refused to think about.

  She spent most of days four and five working to keep Madison’s fever under control and recording her thoughts in her journal, holding it on her lap while she wrote, and then putting it back in the pocket of her apron when finished.

  She couldn’t believe how much she loved that man in the other room. And how much she missed talking with him, hearing his laugh, hearing his thoughts.

  Even as sick as he was, she still loved him and loved caring for him.

  In the evenings, after a light dinner, she sat in his room just telling him about her fears, about how much she still loved this valley, and about how much she wanted to spend her future with him.

  Any future. She didn’t care, as long as there was a future.

  On day six it rained again, but stayed fairly warm, as if the valley were having a late summer.

  Bonnie clearly had made it out of the valley. Dawn felt with each passing hour the sense of anticipation that one moment she would be here, the next she would be standing in the crystal cave with Madison beside her.

  Day seven the morning turned cold and she woke up to the first snow on the valley floor. She stepped out onto the front porch to look at it and was struck by the silence.

  When they had arrived here in May, the place had been a beehive of activity. Noise of construction and the pianos and shouting from the saloons constantly rebounded off the high mountain slopes, giving the valley a sense of being alive.

  Now it was completely silent through the light snow.

  Not even Monumental Creek was running enough to make any noise, more than likely already frozen solid.

  The weight of all the mountains around her came crushing down on her and suddenly she felt so alone.

  More so than she could ever remember.

  She tried to shake off the feeling, staring at the beautiful scene spread out in front of her. She took a couple of deep breaths of the crisp, fresh, cold air. Then she reminded herself that she liked being alone.

  But this was very, very different.

  Her wonderful office at the University seemed to be a long, long ways away, like she had dreamed it only.

  She took an armful of firewood from the pile to the right of the porch and went back inside. She stoked up the fire, cooked herself a light breakfast, checked on Madison, checked on the two horses that remained with her, then sat on the couch, and worked on her journal.

  Waiting.

  Finally at dark she ate a cold dinner, set a damp towel on Madison’s forehead, and retreated back to the couch in front of the big fireplace to keep warm.

  Maybe tomorrow morning Bonnie would make it up to the mine and bring them all back.

  With the journal in her pocket of her apron and two blankets over her, Dawn slept on the couch until sunrise.

  Then she checked on Madison. He was still breathing.

  She went back to waiting in front of the fire as outside the snow drifted down, slowly building up deeper and deeper in the silence.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  FOUR DAYS LATER Dawn just had to admit to herself that something had happened to Bonnie.

  Maybe the weather in Silver City had slowed her down, or she had had an accident and was resting for a short time.

  But something had clearly happened.

  Or the entire idea of her returning to the future was just a cruel joke that Duster and Bonnie had played on them.

  Maybe time travel was just a one-way proposition for anyone but Duster and Bonnie.

  Dawn didn’t know what to believe any more.

  Madison was barely breathing when she checked on him after a light and cold dinner of jerky and hard bread. It was amazing to Dawn that he had held on as long as he had. He clearly was a very strong man with a very strong constitution.

  Something more for her to love about him.

  That night she kissed him on the forehead as she always did and then moved out to the couch in front of the big fireplace.

  The snow had stopped a few days before, leaving the valley coated with a beautiful layer o
f pure white. She had never expected to see this valley in the winter and had never even seen a picture of it.

  She thought this place magical in the summer warmth, it was even more so in the winter snow and cold.

  She wrote her thoughts about it in her journal, tucked the book back in her apron pocket, then curled up in the blankets to watch the fire in the huge stone fireplace.

  When she awoke, the sun was starting to light the tops of the mountains, the fire was mostly out, and the big house was getting colder by the minute.

  She built the fire back up until it was roaring, then went to check on Madison.

  He was dead.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  DAWN MOVED OUT to the couch and sat staring at the fire.

  Somehow she had to think.

  How could he be dead?

  But he was. Of that there was no doubt. The man she had come to love more than anything in her life in just a few short months was now dead.

  If she were going to survive just the next month, let alone the entire winter, she needed to think.

  She was alone, but she needed help.

  She forced herself to take a deep breath. She wanted to just lie on the couch and cry, but at the moment she didn’t dare. There would be more than enough time for that.

  She needed help.

  She could not deal with Madison alone.

  She didn’t want to even go back into that bedroom, but she knew that when the time came she would.

  Feeling like she was walking under a ton of blankets with gauze over her eyes, she dressed much like Bonnie had dressed to head out. She kept the journal in her heavy jacket pocket, put her hair up under one of Madison’s cowboy hats, put on heavy gloves and then put Madison’s long duster-like overcoat over everything.

  Then looking like a fairly thick man, she stepped out of the cabin and down into the snow.

  The air was biting cold, but the sun was going to shine on the valley floor at some point later in the afternoon. She went to the few wagon tracks showing in the road and walking in them, she headed down into the main part of town.

  This was the first time she had gone this way alone.

  At this point she was too numb to feel any fear or worry.

  Madison was dead and she needed help.

  Craig and Susan’s general store was the third wooden building on the right as she reached the main part of town. Most of the buildings looked boarded up, but smoke curled from a rock chimney in the store.

  She entered to the sound of a bell above the door and Craig glanced up from behind the counter, surprised.

  “What can I do for you, sir?” he asked, moving forward.

  Dawn pulled off the hat and Craig gasped. Then he turned and shouted to the back room. “Susan, I need you out here.”

  Dawn nodded her thanks and said nothing until Susan arrived.

  Then facing both of them she said simply, “Madison died.”

  She had not imagined that she would ever have to say those words to anyone. “I’m going to need some help getting him up to the cemetery and getting him buried.”

  “Of course, of course,” Susan said, coming around the counter and hugging Dawn.

  Dawn didn’t want to let herself cry. Not even for an instant.

  Not yet.

  “I can pay you for the help,” she said. Duster had left her and Bonnie with a lot of extra money and gold stashed in various places in the cabin.

  “There’s no need,” Craig said. “Duster has paid us more than enough already.”

  “Where is Bonnie?” Susan asked.

  “She went out a few weeks ago to see if she could find out exactly what happened to Duster,” Dawn said.

  “So you are here for the winter,” Craig said, nodding.

  “We can’t let anyone else know that,” Susan said. “This has turned out horribly, that’s for sure.”

  Craig nodded. “First things first,” he said, looking at his wife. “We need to give Madison a proper burial.”

  “Thank you,” Dawn said.

  Somehow she managed to stay there, standing, leaning on the counter, as Craig and Susan both put on their coats and boots and hats.

  “I’ll get a couple men digging up in the cemetery,” he said.

  “Near the rock, if possible,” Dawn asked.

  “As close as possible,” Craig said. “The ground shouldn’t be too frozen too deep yet, thankfully.”

  “I’ll go with you to get Madison ready and on a sled,” Susan said.

  The next two hours seemed like a nightmare that Dawn thought she would never wake up from.

  They moved Madison with all the blankets from the bed out the back door to the cabin and into the snow. Dawn knew that the man they were working on wasn’t the man she loved, just his body.

  And if somehow, Bonnie was right, she would see him again when everything reset. But at the moment, this was very real and somehow she had to get through it.

  Susan seemed incredibly strong and between the two of them, they got the splint off of Madison’s infected leg and got him in a suit coat and a tie.

  Then they wrapped him up completely in the blankets and managed to drag him up onto the sled right before Craig showed up.

  Dawn had on her hat and Madison’s heavy coat and she tried to keep her head down and her eyes on where she was walking as the three of them drug the sled over the snow down the side street next to Monumental Creek and up the trail toward the cemetery.

  No one seemed to notice, since there were very few people left in the town and the three of them dragging the sled made almost no noise.

  As they neared the cemetery, it was clear the two men digging had managed a pretty good distance down into the dirt.

  Craig had them stop and he went ahead and paid the two men and thanked them.

  Dawn kept her head down and stood next to Madison on the sled.

  The two men walked by and Susan said, “Thank you, gentlemen.”

  Dawn didn’t look up. She didn’t want them knowing she was a woman.

  Craig came back and the three of them got the sled up near the narrow and fairly deep grave. Then they rolled Madison into the hole, blankets and all.

  Susan held Dawn’s arm as Craig said something over Madison that puzzled Dawn, but she didn’t think about it.

  Craig said simply, “Here is a great man, a great writer, a man ahead of his time.”

  Dawn just stood there staring down at the pile of blankets in the bottom of the deep hole.

  How could Madison be down there?

  She looked over at the rock that held the plaque and suddenly realized, for the first time there would be a Rogers on it.

  A Rogers with no first name.

  How could that be if they really were in separate timelines?

  Her knees felt like they wanted to give way. She felt like she wanted to tumble into that grave with the man she loved.

  But instead she stood next to the rock that in over a hundred years would carry the name of Rogers on it. A plaque she would feel a strong attraction to, just as she felt a strong attraction to this cemetery in 2014.

  How could any of this be happening?

  Craig said he would take care of filling up the grave and Susan turned Dawn away and walked her arm-in-arm through the beautiful snow back to the big empty house.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  THE NEXT WEEK Dawn somehow managed to feed herself, keep the doors locked, take care of the horses, and keep the fire stoked. But past that it felt like she was walking underwater.

  Duster was gone.

  Bonnie was gone.

  Madison was gone.

  At times she wondered if they ever had existed, if her entire life in the future had ever existed.

  Maybe she was just insane. She didn’t have pictures of them, just her memory of them.

  She really could be insane. That was very possible.

  She had closed all the bedroom doors and taken to sleeping on the big couch facing the lar
ge stone fireplace in the living room. She only went into her bedroom to get a change of clothes. She refused to open either Madison’s room or Duster and Bonnie’s.

  Her biggest chore of each day was to take care of the two remaining horses and make sure they had enough feed and fresh water. She had never been much of a horse person, but over the winter she would become one, she knew that. She didn’t want her horses dying on her as well.

  As each day went past, all the events seemed to be far away, distant, as if they had happened to her only in a bad dream.

  Finally, the morning of the eighth day after Madison died dawned bright and sunny. She figured it was time she went to thank Craig and Susan and get some more basic supplies to hole up.

  And pay them for their work and time and friendship. If she were going to make it through the coming winter, she was going to need that friendship at times.

  And some supplies.

  Next spring, after the passes cleared, she would make a ride for Silver City and the mine. She had to know if it were really there or if this were all just a bad dream and she had gone completely crazy.

  Most of the last seven days she would have bet on crazy.

  Only one small thing kept her somehow believing.

  She had an old key that Duster had given her. Actually two, and they were supposed to open the mine door.

  On the third day she started carrying the old skeleton key in a small pocket in the apron with her journal.

  And no matter what, she kept the journal on her at all times just in case Bonnie actually did make it to the mine and pulled them all back to the future.

  That journal had become her second touchstone to sanity.

  Since Dawn was going out, she again dressed as a man, using Madison’s hat and long coat over her own coat, and keeping the hat down low over her face and a scarf wrapped tight around her neck.

  The day was stunning, the sun almost too bright on the pure white snow that coated everything. In the future she would have pulled out her sunglasses. Today, she just kept the brim of the hat low on her forehead.