Duster and Bonnie both nodded.
“At least the four of us from another timeline,” Bonnie said. “We can’t go back into our own timeline. We are blocked from that, even if we could find which crystal is this timeline. And we are blocked from going back into any timeline when we are alive in that timeline, so we can’t go back and talk with ourselves.”
“So we can’t just go back five years,” Kelli said.
Duster and Bonnie nodded.
Jesse glanced at the silver bracelet he was wearing. “That’s why I can be wearing this bracelet in the picture.”
Again Bonnie and Duster nodded.
“So how much time have you spent in the past of other timelines?” Kelli asked.
Jesse looked up from his wrist at the silence.
Both Bonnie and Duster were looking at each other and Dawn and Bonnie had their backs turned and were working on lunch. Jesse had no doubt that question was a hard one to answer.
Finally, Duster started off the answer. “The mathematics of all this allow us to only be gone from this timeline for exactly two minutes and fifteen seconds.”
“It took us ten minutes to get out there and freeze our asses,” Jesse said. So the two minute number made no sense.
“We spent ten minutes or so in that timeline,” Bonnie said. “But in this timeline you only aged just over two minutes.”
“So why two minutes and fifteen seconds?” Kelli asked.
“It’s the math of how that works,” Bonnie said. “Very complex, but it never varies.”
“So how did we get to Roosevelt in 1908?” Jesse asked and suddenly Kelli was nodding in agreement to his question.
“We rode horseback,” Duster said. “Takes about four days from here.”
Jesse stared at Duster, then glanced at Kelli, who was staring at Duster with her mouth open.
Bonnie smiled. “Let me be clear. We can go into another timeline, be part of that timeline, age in that timeline, even grow old or die, or be killed in that timeline, and when we are done, only two minutes and fifteen seconds have passed here.”
Silence filled the cavern. Jesse had no idea what to say to that.
“So answer my first question,” Kelli said to Duster and Bonnie. “How much time have you spent in the past?”
Duster shrugged and glanced at Bonnie.
“It adds up fast,” Bonnie said. “I stopped counting after the first few thousand years.”
Dawn put a salad on the table. “I’m still counting. We have known about this place for a couple years now real time, as we call it. And because of the weather, we can only come up here in the summer. We have spent just over seventeen hundred years in the past.”
“And died in the past?” Jesse asked, trying to get his mind around any of this.
“I died on my first major trip back,” Madison said. “Maybe four other times since, once of old age.”
“And you end up back here, alive, with only just over two minutes passed?”
Dawn and Duster and Bonnie all nodded.
“Holy shit,” Jesse said.
It was the only damn thing he could think to say.
CHAPTER TWENTY
July 15th, 2016
Above the ghost town of Silver City, Idaho
KELLI WORKED AT a wonderful ham sandwich with cheese spread with a mustard that had a bite to it. The idea that she could live a long time in the past without aging just had stunned her into silence.
So finally, after halfway through lunch, Duster brought up the Season Medals she had been trying to track.
“We tend to always go back on the first trips with everyone,” Duster said. “Show you the ropes of living and existing in the past.”
Kelli nodded.
“So you up for doing some research on the Season Medals,” Duster asked, “and the guy Bushnell, with us tagging along?”
That stunned her. She almost asked about the helicopter coming back at four when she realized that with each trip only taking two minutes, she could spend hundreds and hundreds of years in the past and they could still catch that flight back to Boise.
She flat didn’t know what to say. She really couldn’t grasp the idea that if she went back into the past, she could live and grow old in another timeline and just have two minutes pass here.
But beside her Jesse seemed to be doing a little better in getting his feet under him after all this.
“Kelli,” he said, looking at her. “I would love to help on the investigation of the crime. I’m a trained investigator and pretty good at my job. I might be able to help you as well.”
She looked up into those wonderful green eyes of his and realized that she wanted him to help. She wanted to get to know him a lot better.
And she really wanted to understand this gift Duster and Bonnie were offering her out of nowhere. If what they were saying even came close to being on target, the value to her research and her books would be off the charts.
But she needed to know a couple more details.
“Is it possible to change the past?”
“In another timeline,” Duster said, “sure.”
“When we go back into another timeline, we are part of that timeline,” Bonnie said. “If you had kids in that timeline, they would still be there if you came back here. Your actions change that timeline.”
“But how can you go back if you have lived that long in the past?” Jesse asked. “There are only so many years available back there if you can’t be in the same timeline at the same time.”
“That’s correct,” Duster said. “Say we jumped to 1908. Bonnie and I have lived through 1908 more times than I care to think about. But if we jumped back there now, we would just arrive in a timeline where we had not been before.”
“Remember,” Bonnie said, “there are more billions of timelines than we can imagine, all basically identical to this one, and by us picking a date to go back, we split off a new timeline at the moment we arrive by the very choice.”
“Oh,” was all Jesse said.
Kelli was just trying to imagine investigating a crime in the past. She would have to back up anything she found in the past with modern references. But she could do that.
She turned to Jesse and looked into his green eyes. “You up for helping me with investigation into a possible murder in the past? And tracking some medals?”
He smiled. “I would love to.”
She turned to Bonnie and Duster. “When are we leaving?”
Both Bonnie and Duster were smiling.
“How about as soon as April and Ryan get here,” Duster said. “Which should be any moment now. They are driving in from Boise. They left before we arrived from Portland.”
“April and Ryan?” Kelli asked.
“April is a historical interior designer and Ryan is an architect,” Jesse said.
“We want to build the lodge again,” Madison said, laughing. “If we’re going to spend a decade or so in the Roosevelt area, we might as well be comfortable.”
Kelli looked at Dawn and Madison, then at Bonnie and Duster. “How often have you built the lodge?”
All of them but Dawn shrugged.
“This will be the twenty-second time,” Dawn said, smiling.
Duster laughed. “That means it exists in a hell of a lot of timelines now, that’s for sure.”
Kelli once again had nothing she could say.
PART THREE
The Trail
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
July 9th, 1906
Oregon Coast
JESSE NUDGED HIS horse up a slight rise in the wide trail that wound through thick old-growth pine above the rocks and pounding surf of the Pacific Ocean below him. The air was brisk with a slight wind coming off the waves a hundred feet below, bringing the wonderful surf smells and the feeling that the air was so fresh, it should be bottled.
Sometimes the trails that wound along the coast were downright scary as they skirted near cliff edges and up and down steep grades. The ground
along the ocean always seemed to be wet and muddy, even in the summer. This trail was just far enough into the shade of the old trees that it thankfully didn’t feel dangerous.
Jesse reached the top of the slight rise and glanced back as Kelli expertly climbed the trail on her horse. He might look like a cowboy more than she did, but she clearly was a better rider than he had become. Over the last year in the past, they had both become fine riders. She just seemed to have a natural talent for being in control of a horse.
He had on his standard jeans, thick cotton shirt, and long duster coat. His matching cowboy hat and worn leather boots completed his look.
Kelli had on women’s riding clothes of this time, with leather-like dark-brown pants, a blouse with a leather jacket-like tan vest, and a wide-brimmed tan hat that she kept tied to her head with a strap under her chin. Both of them had saddlebags and travel bags strapped behind them, plus saddle rifles in holsters near their right legs.
Over the last year they had both also become great shots, mostly for safety in chasing away animals they ran across. Neither of them had any desire at all to hunt or kill anything.
She also had started wearing cowboy boots and actually admitted she liked them after a year now in the past. “Not as good as my tennis shoes, but not bad.”
He stopped and eased his horse to the outside of a wide area in the trail to let her come up beside him.
“Can you imagine,” he said, “I was following you right about here just yesterday in 2016? And we hadn’t met yet.”
She shook her head, smiling at him. “I can’t seem to wrap my mind around the fact that this entire trip, all this time, this entire last year in the past, will only take just over two minutes in our timeline.”
He laughed. “I find it amazing that it has only been a day since we met.”
“Longest damn day I have ever spent,” she said.
“I hope that’s in a good way.”
She laughed. “Jury is still out on that.”
Then she eased her horse forward, moving on along the trail ahead of him. So once again he was following her into Whale Port, Oregon.
Could history repeat itself when the repeating came over a hundred years before the first event? Sometimes this time travel stuff just gave him a headache.
If he and Kelli had done their investigation correctly, John Simon Bushnell would be arriving in the small town overland sometime in the next two days. They wanted to be there to see him and follow him on to Roosevelt, Idaho.
Jesse stayed a few horse lengths behind Kelli along the trail as it turned inland away from the ocean and widened slightly. He vaguely remembered the future highway in 2016 doing the same thing at this point.
The day that Duster and Bonnie had shown them the mine had really been something. Even though they had taken him out into a snowstorm on the first jump into the past, Jesse just couldn’t imagine actually going and living in the past.
Then, after April and Ryan arrived at the cavern and were introduced around, they all started to work to pack. Bonnie helped Jesse and Kelli make sure they had what they would need. And Duster showed them both the stash of gold and money and got them both situated with enough money to survive in style in the past.
Duster had promised them both that later on he would teach them how to make money by going into the past. But he hadn’t done that yet in this first year.
Then, with all eight of them in the crystal cavern, which was even more mind-numbing the second time, Duster and Madison and Dawn and April and Ryan had all touched the box and vanished.
That had stunned Jesse down to his core. It was not every day you saw five people just vanish in front of you.
Kelli had just grabbed his hand for comfort.
With a glove on, Bonnie quickly adjusted the time on the machine and at the count of three, they all touched the wooden box with a bare hand, jumping into the past and into the same timeline as the other five had gone into less than fifteen seconds behind the others.
Again, the movement into the other timeline had been no event as far as Jesse was concerned. It felt like nothing had happened.
But supposedly the other five had gone back in the timeline to the spring of 1899 to build homes in Boise and get ready to build the big Lodge starting the summer of 1900. They planned on building the lodge and having it open by the spring of 1902.
In 1903 they were also going to build a home in Roosevelt down the valley from the lodge that they could all use at different times while there.
Kelli’s research on the Season Medals and Bushnell didn’t start until 1907, so they had decided that going back to the summer of 1906 would be enough time ahead for them.
Jesse couldn’t imagine that Duster and the others had lived for almost seven years at that point, but when Duster had greeted Bonnie and him and Kelli in the supply cavern, it was clear he had. He looked older and a little more worn.
And he was very happy to see Bonnie.
For him it had been seven years since he had seen his wife, but only fifteen seconds had passed for Jesse and Bonnie and Kelli.
Duster had brought them horses and supplies and they all headed slowly toward Boise.
It had taken both Jesse and Kelli some days to finally totally believe they were actually in 1906. And it took them those same days to get used to riding horses again. They had done a lot of walking early on.
Jesse and Kelli had spent that summer in a number of places. Sometimes they had been up at the wonderful Monumental Summit Lodge, enjoying the crystal clear air and night skies full of so many stars, it was hard to imagine. They had also spent a week down in the mining boomtown of Roosevelt to get used to the town. Then they had gone into Boise as the late summer weather started to change.
Jesse and Kelli then had spent the winter of 1906/1907 in Boise in Bonnie and Duster’s wonderful mansion there, in two guest rooms, mostly just learning how to be comfortable with living in the past and also planning the investigation the next year.
They had spent some time in the Boise library and in the archives of the Idaho Statesman pouring over past papers to find more information.
On about the sixth day in the past, while sitting on the deck overlooking the Monumental Valley, Jesse and Kelli had both acknowledged to each other their growing attraction and desire to have a relationship with each other. But they had both decided to just wait until the time was right to take it any farther.
At that point they both felt very out of place living in 1906 and any complication just seemed like too much.
Living in Bonnie and Duster’s home did not allow that time to be right at any point over the winter either. The flirting between the two of them had reached wonderful levels as far as Jesse was concerned. And they had spent many an evening walking hand-in-hand along the Boise River talking and getting to know each other better.
And they had talked about many different possible investigations they could do together. He loved the idea of using his investigative skills to unearth historical crimes and solve them and Kelli loved his help.
It had been a fantastic year.
And now they were finally on the Season Medals trail. As Kelli had said, “They were finally on the case.”
If they could actually discover what happened to Bushnell and what happened to the Season Medals he had acquired from the Native Americans, Kelli could write a fantastic book.
And if they did manage to figure out what happened to the medals and then recover them in 2016, they planned on giving them to museums and back to their tribes. Since neither of them needed money, that seemed like the best idea. Jesse flat loved that idea.
When they had told Bonnie and Duster about that idea over dinner one night, the two of them had just beamed. It seemed the idea of doing something like that was one of the reasons they helped historians.
Now, less than one actual real-time day since they had met, but a year in past time, they were again approaching Whale Port, Oregon.
But now, instead of i
n modern cars, they were on horseback.
And for Jesse, after a year in the past, that now just seemed natural.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
July 9th, 1906
Oregon Coast
AHEAD THROUGH THE trees, Kelli could see the small coast fishing village of Whale Port.
She glanced over her shoulder at Jesse. “Following me again?”
“I am,” he said, smiling at her with that wonderful smile she had grown to love. “And with pleasure.”
He had to be the most handsome man she had ever met. And smart and kind and gentle.
“Twice could be considered stalking you know,” she said.
“Not sure if that term is even used that way in this time period,” he said, laughing.
She got her horse down and through a stream coming off the side of the hill and headed toward the town. From what she could see, Whale Port hadn’t changed much in the hundred-plus years. The hotel sat majestically on a slight bluff looking out over the ocean. Unlike in 2016, no other buildings had yet been built next to it.
Painted bright white, the hotel had two round towers on the two front corners that made it seem larger and taller than its three stories. She hoped like hell she would see the view from those towers shortly.
She could also see the restaurant where she and Jesse had met. It still looked the same, only without a paved parking lot. A wooden boardwalk that ran about two blocks connected the shops and restaurant and hotel. Horse ties lined the boardwalk.
There were very few horses tied up at any point along the boardwalk.
The main road, that in the future would become the coast highway, was just a mud wagon road. The new cars that dotted Boise in 1906, and startled horses, had not made it over here yet. She doubted there was any way to get a car over the coast range and here.
There was also a general store, and on the side of town closest to where they were coming in was a stable. On the far side of town and out of sight, she knew a wide wagon road ran down to docks on the small inlet.
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