But she loved Madison more.
It was clear that Janice didn’t really want to leave either.
“We can come right back,” Steven said, reaching over and touching his wife’s hand. “I love it here as well.”
“We leave tomorrow?” Dawn asked.
Steven nodded. “Tomorrow, at sunrise, if the weather breaks clear. We’ll go up over Monumental and down the supply road into Stibnite and Yellow Pine. But we need to get up to the summit before the sun hits that trail and loosens the snow.”
Janice and Dawn both nodded in agreement.
And the next morning the weather broke clear and as beautiful as Dawn could remember seeing.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
DAWN HAD SPENT most of April and the first part of May everyday riding her horse up and down in the valley. Often Janice and Craig came with her. With a long ride from central Idaho to southwestern Idaho ahead of them, it was better they all get used to riding again.
She often rode past Madison’s grave where a white wooden cross marked the spot. It had a light covering of grass and weeds and a few small trees were trying to take root nearby.
She believed Madison would still be alive when she disconnected the crystal. So the grave seemed somehow off and now out of place.
Mostly, over the winter, she had just put away everything to do with his death, deciding that she would deal with it later, when she wasn’t snowed into a valley with no place to go.
And with him holding her and telling her it was all right.
She had mostly packed the night before, and had cooked one last solid breakfast in the wonderful kitchen that morning in the dark.
Then, with only one look back at the cabin that had been her shelter all winter, they rode up the trail just as first light colored the sky.
“I’m going to get the plans from Duster and build that place again,” she said to Janice who rode behind her.
“I don’t blame you there,” Janice said. “Amazingly comfortable.”
“That it was,” Dawn said.
The air was biting cold, but not as bad as it had been through most of the winter, so it actually felt fairly comfortable. Around them the sounds of men sawing logs and hammering and building echoed in the early morning.
The trail up the side of the mountain was cut down into the snow and at times she couldn’t see over the edge of the drifts as the horses seemed to walk up through a trough.
That made that part of the climb so much better and less terror-filled.
Once they met a large pack train, but they were close enough to the top that they managed to edge over into some deep snow uphill and let the twenty horses and mules go past with their heavy loads.
They rested in the trees on Monumental Summit and Dawn told Janice and Steven about the legend of the hotel up here.
“We’ve heard of it as well,” Janice said, “but in all the timelines we’ve been back here, it’s never been built.”
“So information sometimes flows through timelines?” Dawn asked.
“Got to check with Bonnie and Duster about that,” Steven said. “They are the mathematicians. I’m just a history professor.”
“I asked them once about that,” Janice said. “They said it did because history is always a fluid thing because of the nature of different timelines branching off of every decision.”
“And nothing is determined,” Dawn said. “Right?”
“That’s right,” Janice said. “I slipped on one trip and fell in Monumental Creek. Caught a nasty cold that turned into much worse and I died in our cabin.”
“I’m very glad you went back,” Dawn said.
“Didn’t even think anything about not going back,” Janice said.
“But she’s awful careful around that creek,” Steven said, smiling at his wife.
“Well, duh,” Janice said.
They camped that night near Yellow Pine and the next day made it out and all the way to the railhead above Emmett where they asked about Bonnie.
No one there remembered seeing her, but when she came out the train was still not running because of the slide that had killed Duster.
The three of them decided that they would try to trace the path Bonnie would have taken instead of taking the train, since they were in no hurry.
In the small mill town of Emmett they checked out some of the local stores and a small hospital there, but no one had seen her and the papers had no record of anything happening to a woman last fall.
Dawn was glad that there were three of them doing the search. She was learning all sorts of tricks about researching in the past, tricks that they had already learned.
And along the way she kept adding more notes to her journal. In fact, around the campfire on a ridge above the Boise River that night, they all sat in silence scribbling in their journals.
Three historians traveling through history together.
She and Madison would most definitely need to travel with them at some point.
Then she realized what she had been thinking. She was making a lot of plans for her and Madison and he might not feel the same way.
She mentioned that to Janice and she just laughed. “Madison is going to remember going back to the cabin with Duster and the next thing is standing in the crystal cavern without pants. He’s going to be in as much love with you as he was the day of his accident. You are the one who has had almost a year without him.”
Steven nodded, glancing up from his journal. “The key is do you feel the same way after watching him die and burying him?”
“More so,” Dawn said. “More so. When I see him I’m going to hug him so hard, I might break his ribs.”
“Might want to let him put on some pants first,” Steven said, laughing.
“Sure wish we could see that,” Janice said.
Dawn was about to ask why not, then she realized why not. Janice and Steven didn’t leave the crystal cavern until a year in the future real time.
Damn.
She had lost Madison for the winter. Now she was going to lose her two new friends for a year.
She didn’t like that one bit.
CHAPTER FORTY
FOLLOWING THE TRAIL they thought Bonnie would have followed, the next day they stopped and asked around in Caldwell, Idaho, a small farming and railroad town about thirty miles to the west of Boise.
No one in the hotels or stores remembered seeing anyone of her description come through. It wasn’t until they checked with a blacksmith and described her horse that they found a lead.
The blacksmith remembered the horse because it had to be put down because it had shattered a leg. He seemed to remember something about the rider being taken to a hospital.
A hospital in 1903 wasn’t a place anyone wanted to be. Dawn knew that.
The blacksmith gave them directions to it and where it sat up on a slight ridge above the town.
The hospital was a wide wooden building on the top of a ridge overlooking a nearby cemetery. It was painted white, but the paint had pealed and the sign was barely standing. Just walking up toward the main door, Dawn could smell piss and human waste and death.
It was awful. So much so it gagged her before she even opened the front door.
Dawn could see through a window in the front door that the insides were one room with some curtains pulled to separate some of the patients.
Steven shook his head and declined to go inside.
“I’ll watch the horses,” he said and turned to move them a little more distance away from the building.
“Don’t touch anything in there,” Janice said, wrinkling her nose. “No wonder people thought for a long time that going to hospital meant you were going to die. You actually were.”
Dawn could only agree to that.
Janice and Dawn opened the front door and Dawn felt like she was wading into the smell.
The found a woman in a stained white nurse’s uniform sitting at a wooden desk to the right of the front door.
“You are her first visitors. Family or friends?”
“Family,” Dawn said, glancing at Janice, who nodded. She was looking as green and sick with the smell as Dawn was feeling.
The nurse nodded and took Dawn’s name, then pointed to the bed in the far back of the building near a window with curtains.
Both Dawn and Janice headed for the back of the room.
They had to pass at least thirty other patients along the way and Dawn refused to look at any of them. Luckily, it had been some time since she had eaten, or she might have thrown up right there from the smell.
Bonnie lay with her eyes closed, facing the light. Her long brown hair was brushed and she seemed moderately clean. But she was frighteningly thin.
Dawn knew at once that she was just wasting away.
“Remember, I’m Susan,” Janice whispered as they approached and Dawn nodded.
“Bonnie?” Dawn asked, her voice almost shaking to see the strong woman she had known laying here like this.
Bonnie stirred and turned her head, opening her eyes slowly.
Then her face brightened as she saw Dawn.
“Oh, my, God,” Bonnie said, her voice hoarse. “You made it?”
She reached out a frail hand, far, far too thin and Dawn took it carefully.
“I made it,” Dawn said. “You remember Susan from the store in Roosevelt?”
It clearly took Bonnie a moment, then she nodded and smiled at Susan.
Then Bonnie looked back at Dawn. “Did Madison die?”
“He did,” Dawn said, nodding. “About two weeks after you left. Susan and her husband helped me bury him.”
“I am so sorry,” Bonnie said.
“It’s fine,” Dawn said, lightly squeezing Bonnie’s hand. “What happened to you?”
“Following a trail down through a gulley,” Bonnie said. “Horse stumbled and next thing I know a farmer was hauling me in here. My back is broken they tell me.”
Dawn nodded. Then she glanced at Janice before going on.
“Susan and her husband are going to help me get up to Silver City. They are thinking of trying a little mining there. As soon as I get things settled there, I’ll come back for you.”
“Thank you,” Bonnie said, taking a deep breath. “I thought I was going to die in this bed.”
Dawn smiled and squeezed her hand. “Not if I can help it. See you soon.”
“Soon,” Bonnie said, smiling.
Dawn smiled at Bonnie and then she and Janice almost ran for the door.
Outside the three of them mounted up.
“Isn’t there a hot springs about ten miles from here?” Dawn asked, “If memory serves.”
It had been the second hot springs she and Madison had spent time in, and they had made love in it just as they had in the first one.
“There is,” Janice said.
“Good,” Dawn said. “Because I got to get this smell off of me. And then we got to get to the mine and get Bonnie out of there.”
“I second that,” Janice said.
“That bad?” Steven asked.
“Worse,” Janice said.
“Can I ride in the lead?” Steven asked, turning his horse. “I honestly don’t want to be downwind from either of you.”
With that they rode hard for the hot springs.
At the springs they stopped and had a late lunch while getting cleaned up. Then they rode hard until it was too dark to ride safely any more.
Then the next morning, as the sun was just starting to pretend to color the sky, they started off again.
In ten hours, if they rode hard, they would be in Silver City.
And then she would get Bonnie out of that nightmare. And bring back Duster and Madison.
And once again kiss the man of her dreams.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
THEY REACHED SILVER CITY by three in the afternoon. The snow still covered the hills and it was cold. Clouds filled the sky, but it didn’t look like it was going to storm hard. Dawn felt relieved at that. She was going to hate the idea that they would be stuck almost within sight of the mine by storms.
“We walk from here,” Steven said, pulling up at the hotel. “Get your saddle bags and everything else off the horses.”
For a moment Dawn was going to ask why, then she realized that they couldn’t vanish and leave the horses roaming around the mine. That would draw too many suspicions and maybe get someone searching the area around the mine.
None of them wanted that.
Dawn patted Paul goodbye, feeling very sad that she was going to be without the animal she had taken such care of all winter long. She was going to miss that horse.
Janice and Dawn went in and checked into the hotel, paying cash for two days, while Steven took the horses down to a blacksmith and basically sold them cheaply, telling the Smithy that he needed the money to buy equipment to work a mine that he and his sister and wife had bought up on War Eagle and were going to try to reopen.
The crystal cave wasn’t anywhere near War Eagle Mountain. It was across the valley on Florida Mountain, so if anyone actually noticed they were missing and started to search for them, they would be looking in the wrong place and on the wrong mountain.
Dawn was certain that Bonnie and Duster would have taught her and Madison these tricks if they were here. Thank heavens Janice and Steven were.
Dawn wasn’t certain, after being alone all winter in that cabin, if she would have thought of any of it.
The old hotel felt rundown and smelled musty and damp, rotting wood. They stayed in their rooms until dark, then started up the trail when no one was looking, going out the back door of the hotel and around on some side streets.
Silver City this early in the year and this late in its history, had very few people around. Only two saloons were even open and they sounded tired from what Dawn could hear.
And they didn’t even have pianos.
Roosevelt was at its peak. Silver City was twenty years past its top days and declining by the year.
They had to rest twice on the way up the hill carrying all their gear on a trail that thankfully had been packed down. They really didn’t need to take all their gear back with them, but they didn’t dare leave it in the hotel room either.
They needed to vanish without a trace. That was the key.
The trail turned on the ridge right about where the Cadillac would be parked in the future and went up the hill. The last hundred yards across that same open slope she had crossed in the heat was now covered in knee-deep snow. Dawn was afraid of it letting go, but somehow the snow held on the hillside and they made it across to the flat top of the mine tailing.
When they did finally reach the mine, it was snowing lightly. From the looks of it, the snow would cover their tracks easily in an hour or two. A large drift of snow had built up against one side of the old mining shack.
“Who gets to do the honors?” Steven asked as all three of them stood there in the dark and snow, panting from the climb.
Dawn held up the key that had been a major beacon over the winter for her.
“Let me,” she said, her hands shaking in the cold.
Both Janice and Steven nodded that she should go ahead.
Dawn turned to face the mine and then, as Duster had showed her what to do a lifetime ago, she twisted the head of the key.
The rock moved back silently.
“God, it worked,” Dawn said, her knees almost giving out from pure relief.
“That is does,” Janice said, easing Dawn forward.
All three of them entered the dark cave.
Steven hit the button and the door slid closed, plunging them into complete darkness before the light came up and Dawn could see the mine tunnel stretching out in front of her.
“Holy mother, it’s real,” she said breathlessly.
She felt like she wanted to just sit and cry. A large part of her had just not bel
ieved this place actually existed.
“It really is,” Janice said, holding Dawn’s arm as the three of them headed down the mine tunnel.
This time Dawn just walked through the holograms without closing her eyes.
And then they all went through the outer cavern and into the crystal cavern, still carrying all their stuff.
The fantastic cavern was as amazing as Dawn remembered it. Actually more so. All the walls glowed with a light of their own and the crystal where Duster had hooked up the machine earlier had grown into a huge cluster of crystals.
Dawn just stood and stared, her mouth open, not really believing this.
The room was real.
The machine sitting on the table was real.
And that both excited and scared Dawn more than she wanted to think about.
In just a moment she would be back in the future, in her own time, with the man she had come to love and then watched die.
Janice had assured her that Madison would love her as well.
And be very much alive.
But now Dawn would find out for sure.
It had been a very long winter since he died.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
“REMEMBER,” STEVEN SAID, “to not tell Duster and Bonnie about us.”
“Wow, that’s going to be hard to do,” Dawn said, frowning at her two new friends.
“At least not until we come back from this trip,” Janice said. “In one year. You can’t tell us that we know you either until we come back from this trip.”
“So I’m going to meet you before you meet me?” Dawn asked.
“We can’t say one way or the other,” Janice said, smiling. “Just remember that as far as this trip for you went, Craig and Susan helped you. And you left them in Silver City. Duster and Bonnie will understand completely in a year.”
“So when we unhook that wire, I’m going to go back to 2014,” Dawn said, “and you two will end your trip in 2015. Right?
Steven and Janice both nodded.
“What day exactly, and at what time?” Dawn asked.
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