The snow was still only about eight inches deep on the valley floor, so the walking was easy She knew it would get a lot deeper before the winter was through. It was still only early October.
She followed the trail around the center part of town and down the valley toward the cemetery. Madison’s grave was still a fresh scar on the hillside, the dirt covered with only an inch or so of fresh snow.
She brushed the snow off the rock and sat down.
“I miss you,” she said to the grave. “I didn’t know you very long, but I miss you more than I can say.”
Around her the beautiful mountains and the valley were silent.
“I sure hope Bonnie and Duster were right,” she said to the grave. “Because more than anything I want to kiss you again.”
Silence as her voice drifted off on the cool breeze.
She just sat there, thinking about all the good times she and Madison had had together, from the hot springs over the Snake River to the wonderful nights cuddling in his featherbed.
And the image that burned clearly in her mind was his handsome face turning to look at her in the parking lot that first morning.
And the surprised and stunned look when he saw her.
That memory made her smile.
That had been real.
She had felt the same way seeing him.
All of this had been real.
She had to believe that and hold that close over the coming winter months.
She always considered herself a survivor. Now she really had to prove that to herself in one of the most hostile places on the entire planet.
She sat for another ten minutes, then told Madison she would see him soon and headed back up the valley toward the town.
She again kept her eyes down and made it around the side of town and to Craig and Susan’s general store without anyone even taking a second look at her.
As she walked in, Susan looked up and smiled. Craig turned and also smiled.
Susan had her brown hair down around her face and she looked beautiful and radiant. She had dark green eyes and seemed to be slightly taller than Dawn had remembered her.
Craig looked younger than she remembered as well, even though he was going slightly bald. His brown hair swept back long and his smile lit up his face and his dark eyes.
Their store felt wonderful, and even though it was winter, the shelves seemed to be packed with supplies. There was sawdust on the wooden floor to help soak up moisture and mud and two mats for customers to wipe their feet on.
Someone had just cooked fresh bread, so the air felt thick, warm and inviting.
“Great to see you up and around, Doctor Edwards,” Craig said.
It took Dawn two more steps into the wonderful-smelling general store before she realized what Craig had said.
“Did Madison or Duster tell you something about me?” she asked, trying to act normal.
“Oh, heaven’s no,” Craig said, smiling.
“It’s your book on this area and this town and this time that made us want to come back here and start this store.”
Dawn was feeling the room spinning slightly and she took off her hat. “My book?”
Susan smiled. “Thunder Mountain: The Brutal Magic of America’s Last Gold Rush. I did my thesis at Stanford last year real time on this area because of your book.”
“I don’t understand,” Dawn said, leaning against the counter to try to catch her breath.”
She hadn’t written anything like that yet. But she had come up with the title the day after Madison died.
Craig poured Dawn a glass of water from a pitcher and handed it to her.
She took a drink of the ice-cold water and that cleared her head a little.
Then she looked up at Craig and Susan’s smiling faces.
“Just because you and Madison were the first time travelers that Duster and Bonnie took with them,” Craig said, “you don’t think you will be the only ones, do you?”
“Even as bad as this first trip turned out for you and Madison,” Susan said.
Craig stepped forward and extended his hand. “Doctor Steven Conklin, University of California, Berkley, history department.”
Dawn pulled her glove off and shook the man’s firm hand, not having any idea what to think.
He then indicated Susan. “Doctor Janice Franks, Stanford Cultural Studies Program.”
“It is an honor to meet you, Doctor Edwards,” Susan, or Janice said, extending her hand. “I’ve studied your work for years and then that last book about this area just stunned me. And from what Duster tells us, you were responsible for him thinking of telling us about that incredible cavern and the ability to come back here to do research.”
“When exactly does he do that?” Dawn asked, then managed to take another drink of the cold water.
“2015,” Janice/Susan said.
“And did he and Bonnie know you were here this time?”
“No, remember they don’t know us yet in the future, and they can’t until 2015,” Craig/Steven said, smiling. “We’re trusting that you can keep a secret until then. That’s why we used fake names, just in case Duster remembered us here.”
“This time travel stuff gives me a headache,” Dawn said, trying to let herself believe that the cavern was real and that she wasn’t alone here for the winter.”
“It made us crazy as well,” Janice said, “for the first few hundred years back in the past.”
“Okay,” Dawn said, shaking her head. “Now I really, really need to sit down.”
Then, taking the glass with her, she just sat down on the floor of the general store, her back against the front counter.
Her hands were shaking so hard, she was spilling the water.
Both Steven and Janice came running around the counter to see if she were all right.
“So, you are telling me Madison isn’t dead?” Dawn asked as they approached her.
Janice kneeled beside Dawn, took the glass away and handed it to Steven, then took Dawn’s hand. Then she waited until Dawn looked her directly in her eyes.
“Madison is far, far from dead,” Janice said.
“He will be there,” Steven said, “standing beside you touching the machine in the crystal cavern, completely healthy, two minutes and fifteen seconds after you four left in 2014.”
“I assume you have one of these?” Janice asked, smiling, as she pulled out a skeleton key.
Dawn nodded, stunned at the sight of that key.
And with that Dawn finally let herself feel it all, let it all come flooding in.
The worry, the grief, the uncertainty, and now the relief.
Madison was alive.
And somehow, in some future, in her future, she survived all this.
PART FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
EVERY EVENING for the entire winter, Dawn cooked for Susan and Craig, or as they are known in the future, Steven and Janice. She felt she owed them that much and so much more.
So much.
She missed Madison almost every second of every day, but Janice and Steven kept her sane and looking forward.
They spent every evening talking history, talking various aspects of how Steven and Janice used time travel, and how they met.
They were careful to not tell Dawn much about her own future. And about the future of the world between 2014 and 2015. But since the three of them had so much in common with their studies and with their love of history, they had more than enough to talk about every evening.
If the weather allowed, Steven and Janice made their way back to their own cabin about a quarter of a mile from Dawn’s after dinner and conversation around the fire. But if the weather was rough, the snow blowing, they just crashed in Duster and Bonnie’s bed.
Again, the house felt alive to Dawn.
And she felt far from alone.
There were very few people wintering in the valley around the town of Roosevelt. Most of them were either up at the Dewey Mine, working th
e mine, or scattered between Thunder City down the valley and eight miles up the valley to the headwaters of Monumental Creek. Only one saloon stayed open over the winter and two working girls remained in town, staying in the back of the saloon. The saloon kept its doors closed so even if someone were playing the piano, it couldn’t be heard.
The valley was silent except for the rumbling storms that seemed to come out of nowhere and shake everything.
Steven helped her with the horses, showing her how to brush them down and care for them in the extreme cold. The three of them built the horses a better shelter against the side of the cabin and on a few of the really cold nights she even brought the two horses in the back and put them in Madison’s room, covering them with blankets.
She needed at least one of them to stay healthy until she headed back to Silver City next spring.
Besides, she was starting to like them and treat them like part of her family. She had named one John and the other Paul. She was going to miss them when she headed back to the future, especially Paul. He was a special horse to her.
On Christmas, the three of them put up a small tree and strung some popcorn as decorations. Janice had some Christmas decorations she had brought in with them on their first load to supply the store, and she surprised both Dawn and Steven by making the log cabin feel festive with the tin stars and colored paper decorations.
That Christmas Eve they sat in the living room around the fire just talking and feeling content with the world. Dawn had spent a lot of Christmas Eves alone. This one felt special.
She would rather have spent it with Madison, but she now believed that she would spend many Christmas Eves with him in the future.
And in other pasts.
At one point Steven raised a glass of bad eggnog they had tried to make and mostly failed. “To missing friends,” he said. “And to our quick reunion.”
Dawn drank to that, thinking how wonderful this evening would be if Madison were here sitting beside her.
Then she said, “And to learning how to make good eggnog in the past.”
“Do we have to drink to that?” Janice asked. “This stuff really sucks.”
And the wonderful Christmas Eve went on like that.
On a number of the conversations as the winter moved slowly past, Steven and Janice talked about how they had both died on different trips into the past.
“Always seems to be some freak accident or other,” Steven said, shaking his head.
They said that if it were sudden, or like Madison died, it was simply like falling asleep and then suddenly finding yourself standing in the cavern with no idea how you got there from where you died.
But as Bonnie and Duster told us, and you have discovered, dying back here in the Old West is not often pleasant.
And something to be avoided.
Dawn had no disagreement with that.
“Madison might be a tad embarrassed when he arrives back in the crystal cave,” Janice said.
“Why?” Dawn asked.
Janice smiled. “We didn’t put any pants on him, remember?”
Dawn didn’t think she would ever stop laughing at that.
A few evenings they also speculated about what had happened to Bonnie. It could have been anything. But nothing had appeared in the papers they had brought in before the valley shut down.
Dawn would find out the answer to that as well as soon as she disconnected the machine from the crystal wall.
The three of them spent one evening in early April talking about how Steven and Janice managed among the millions of timelines to hit the one Dawn was in.
“Well,” Steven said, smiling at Janice. “We sort of aimed at it.”
“And how do you do that?” Dawn asked. She wasn’t sure she would understand the answer, but she needed to ask.
“We always move the crystal connections around some on the wall when we come back,” Steven said. “So do Duster and Bonnie.”
Dawn nodded at that.
“And since there are billions of timelines in those crystals on that cavern wall,” Janice said, “we tried to figure out by watching the pattern Duster was using to move the connection about where he would have been on the wall a year before when you all took this trip.”
“Now that was sneaky,” Dawn said. “And you didn’t tell him what you were doing, did you?”
“Of course not,” Steven smiled.
“And since our decision to come back here was being made by us in millions of other timelines,” Janice said, “and not made in millions of others, and you being here also existed in millions of timelines, we had a very small chance of cross-over.”
“But a chance,” Steven said. “Besides, this valley is so small and set in such a limited set amount of time in history, we figured we might have a little more of a chance to overlap your famous first trip.”
“Took us ten tries here,” Susan said, “before we saw this cabin being built and heard that four rich people were coming into the valley and knew we had finally overlapped and hit a common timeline.”
“So what was the story of this trip here, with me living here without you two being here?”
Steven brushed that question away. “Other timelines now, for all of us. We are here in this timeline with you and in millions of others.”
Dawn just shook her head. “Have I said how much this time travel stuff gives me a headache?”
Both of them laughed.
Susan patted her hand across the table. “A couple dozen times.”
All of them laughed at that, something Dawn had not imagined she would be doing without Madison and Duster and Bonnie.
In fact, without Janice and Steven, she couldn’t imagine surviving this winter.
She would have, she was sure of that.
But this form of survival was at least pleasant.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
THE CLOSER THEY GOT to the first of May, the more excited Dawn got. She knew that the passes started to really open in early May. So the long winter was almost over.
A few lone miners had made it in with snowshoes, but the passes were still too deep and covered to be safe for anything else. But the excitement could almost be felt in the air.
Steven and Janice had decided to leave with her, go back to Silver City with her. And along the way they all planned on trying to figure out what happened to Bonnie as well.
“So you don’t remember from the future what happened to her?” Dawn asked Janice at one point while they were doing dishes after dinner. Outside the light still filled the valley since the days were getting longer and longer.
“Never thought to ask her,” Janice said. “Now we’re just more curious than anything else.”
“I’m real curious as well,” Dawn said, laughing.
“Besides,” Steven said from the table. “If three of the top historical researchers can’t track down what happened to her while we are actually in the history we research, we need to worry.”
“Real good point,” Dawn said.
Over the months she and Janice had become very close friends. Both their interests in history centered on the human side, the lives of everyday people of all types. That was why she and Steven had come back and set up a general store, to get a chance to meet the most number of people.
Dawn really liked that idea.
Since they were planning on leaving with her when the passes opened, they had already sold the store to one of the saloon owners who had wintered in the valley.
They had also sold their cabin and Dawn had sold the house as well for a lot less than what it had cost Duster to build it. The terms of the sale allowed her to live in it until she left.
Steven and Janice had moved in with her, letting their cabin go with the store.
Dawn was really going to miss the house. With three of them living in here, the place felt wonderful again.
Dawn had maintained her journal, and now it was mostly full. She kept it tucked into an apron pocket still and always
wore the apron over her clothes in the house and under her jacket when going out. No matter what happened, she was going to make sure that journal stayed with her into the future.
She had a great deal to tell Madison and she didn’t want to miss any of it. And on top of that, she had already started writing her book and she needed to get that work back with her as well, since it was that book that would influence Janice and Steven to come here.
One afternoon, Janice showed her how she kept her research journal tucked into a slot in a girdle that fit the time period. “I’ve lost a few journals over all the trips, but not many.”
Steven kept his small notebooks in a form of money belt, writing very small and in a form of shorthand that Janice said she didn’t really understand at all. And then he kept them wrapped in a waterproof cloth that he had brought with him from the future.
“Toward the end of any trip back,” Janice said, “when those books start getting full, we sleep with them on us.”
Dawn understood that. She slept with her apron on at all times and kept a string from around it tied to her wrist when she took a bath.
Finally, on May 6th, 1903, the first real signs that the passes had opened appeared in the valley in the form of a large pack train of horses and donkeys bringing in supplies for one of the saloons that had shut down all winter.
And as the weather stayed clear over the next few days, more and more people streamed into the valley until the silence of the long winter was pushed back by the sounds of construction again echoing off the high walls of the mountains.
They stayed for one more week, allowing all the trails to be completely open, then over dinner Steven looked at Janice and Dawn. “You two ready to head to Silver City?”
Dawn was surprised that she actually felt sad. She would have felt that after a long winter trapped in the snow and storms of a high mountain valley, she would have been ready to go.
But she really wasn’t. Sure, she wanted to get back and see Madison again. And Bonnie and Duster.
But she had come to love this valley. Even after all the tragedy last fall, the place still felt magical to her.
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