They had carefully removed the floorboards and now Kelli was using an old blanket to contain the dirt that Jesse was managing to break out of the ground with a pick and shovel. They were going to have to put all this back so for a year no one could tell they had done anything to the floor.
They had closed the store early and outside it was snowing hard, so no one was going to venture out or disturb them in any way. There were still less than a hundred people in the entire valley, and Jesse and Kelli knew the patterns of them all.
At first, when the first snows closed the valley, Kelli thought she was going to hate being trapped in such a deep, dark, cold place for eight months. But their cabin was comfortable, the people friendly, and she and Jesse had come to love each other even more.
Amazing how being that close day and night could really strengthen a relationship. Either that or kill it. But they had been lucky and the time alone together had made their relationship stronger by a long ways. They had enjoyed every minute of being together. And she had no doubt they were going to be together off into the future.
And a lot more trips into the past as well.
Jesse seemed to pace himself just fine as he dug, resting often and declining Kelli’s offer to help. They had decided that they needed to get the Season Medals out of the ground before there was any chance of anyone coming in over the pass.
They planned on leaving the bag in the ground to be found in 2019 by the dive expedition. Only with no medals in it, just some metal pans to help with metal detectors doing the searching.
They had not decided what to do with the Season Medals yet. But both of them wanted time to look at them before deciding.
One solution that Jesse had suggested was that they bury them next spring in the path of the landslide that came in across the valley and created Roosevelt Lake. That way the medals would be under a hundred feet of rock and mud and by 2019 a huge forest grew on the mudslide.
That was a decent idea, but she hated doing that.
And Jesse had said he did as well. But at the moment it was the best solution they had talked about.
After almost an hour, Jesse finally got to the bag and worked it loose from the frozen ground, putting it on the blanket next to the dirt he had shoveled out.
Then he stood and took a drink of water from a cup on the counter and nodded to Kelli.
“Unwrap them.”
“You think they are actually in this bag?” Kelli asked,
Jesse laughed. “After what has happened this trip so far, I’m making no bets.”
He hadn’t told her about his visit from the holographic Duster. He figured that was just better left between him and Duster years from now.
She took the frozen saddlebag to the big sink in the back room of the store and slowly poured hot water that she had been heating on the stove in pots over the bag.
It took three pots of hot water before she could finally open the bag and another full pot before she could pull out the first clump of medals.
She dropped them into another pot of lukewarm water to both clean and thaw them slowly.
After about five minutes, she held up one to show it to Jesse.
It was a medal quite a bit larger than a silver dollar and had very little wear on it. It shone bright, sparkling silver in the lamplight because it was wet.
On one side of the medal were stamped words surrounded by an olive branch on the left and maple leaves on the right. The reverse side of the medal showed a farmer sowing crops in a field.
“We can’t destroy these,” Kelli said. “These are the Season Medals. Only just over three hundred were originally made and almost none survive.”
“And we can’t let the world know they exist, either,” Jesse said. “If Bryant is correct. At least not for some years of real time.”
Kelli nodded. The wonderful medals in her hands were major parts of history. As a researcher of history, her job was not to destroy history, but to find the truth and document it.
She would be willing to end her book on a simple statement after the lake dive expedition came up empty.
“With luck, the great lost treasure of the Season Medals will someday be found.”
But she couldn’t make herself guarantee they would never be found. Ever.
Jesse put his arms around her, looking at the medals. “Remember that Bushnell said no one but us originals even knew where the mine and crystal cavern are located.”
“You thinking we take them back to the cavern and leave them in there?” Kelli asked, turning in Jesse’s arms and looking into his eyes. The idea excited her more than she wanted to admit. At least there they would be safe for a very long time.
“I do,” he said, smiling at her. “We just got to get them out of this valley and to the cavern without telling anyone what we are doing.”
She kissed him, loving the idea and loving him. Then she looked up at him again. “Do we tell anyone when we get back to the cavern?”
“No,” Jesse said. “At least not for a decade or more. But I’m betting Duster will guess because we’ll need his help a little. While you keep everyone else entertained, I’m going to take the medals and stash them. I know a perfect spot.”
She nodded again and kissed him again. Then she pushed him back slightly before they got too hot. “Thank you for honoring the past.”
“It seems,” Jesse said, “since we are going to be living and working in the past a great deal, it’s the least I can do.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
June 8th, 1908
Roosevelt, Idaho
JESSE STOOD NEXT to Duster and Madison and Kelli on one of the board sidewalks of Roosevelt that ran from the general store on down to some saloons that were banging out piano music that sounded desperate.
The town was dying. Of that there was no doubt. Most of the mines had played out or never found color at all, and one of the big mills hadn’t bothered to even bring in the big boilers to start up the place, even though it was built and lumber was cut for the fires.
A number of stores were boarded up and the town’s only lawyer had not come back for the summer.
In a few years, if the town had been left alone, it would have been a ghost town, Jesse had no doubt. But the town didn’t even have that long to live.
A huge mudslide would come down the nearby Mule Creek and fill the entire valley to the depth of over a hundred feet, backing up the spring runoff behind it and forming a lake over Roosevelt.
The lake would be named Lake Roosevelt.
Jesse and Duster and everyone else had no desire to stay another winter and watch the destruction. It was about time to leave, head back to Boise, and then after a few months, back to the mine and then the future.
Their real present.
Kelli and Jesse had their winter home here locked up and the extra supplies were on two packhorses. Next spring the home would go under water as well.
Duster and Madison had come down from the lodge to help them get up the trail.
Kelli and Jesse had the medals in money belts strapped under their clothes and in secret pockets in their saddlebags. There was no way to tell that they were carrying thirty-one rare medals between them. To Jesse, he liked the feel of them against him.
It felt as if he was doing something special, something important.
And from what he gathered about his job going forward, and he and Duster creating the Institute, his work would continue to be important.
The four of them had just come out of Janice and Steven’s general store after saying goodbye. The sun was warm, the day about as good as it got in this remote and deep valley.
They had all stopped, standing in the sun, sort of taking in the almost dead town one last time. Kelli leaned around behind Madison and said, “Cameraman on the wagon.”
Jesse laughed as he looked up.
It was clear the photographer had just taken the photo that would start all this between him and Kelli.
The photographer wore a d
ark suit with a narrow-brimmed hat. He had his camera set up on a four-legged tripod in the back of a rough supply wagon to get it up off the ground. He had the wheels of the wagon locked into place and the wagon bed braced with logs to keep it from even slightly moving.
The reason Kelli had her back slightly to the camera in the photo was because she had leaned back to tell Jesse about the camera.
“Let’s get going,” Duster said, laughing, “before he gets more pictures that will get us all in more trouble.”
Kelli moved over and kissed Jesse.
“Wouldn’t it have been something if I had found a picture of us doing that?” she asked.
“I think it worked out just fine the way it was,” Jesse said.
“I completely agree,” she said. “And when we get back, I’m framing that picture and hanging it on a wall in our home.
“We’re going to have a home?” he asked. “I’ve only known you for a day.”
“Damn right we are, mister,” she said, laughing. “And as I keep telling you, I’ve had quicker.”
With that, they all mounted up and turned their back on Roosevelt, Idaho, headed up the valley toward the Monumental Summit Lodge.
Jesse had no doubt he would be back here at some point. He had no idea what this past, or any past in his future held.
He glanced over his shoulder and for a moment he thought he could see Lake Roosevelt, beautiful and clear and bright blue, covering the town like a mirage in the sun.
Then the image shifted and the dying mining town returned.
At least for a short time.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
July 15th, 2016
Above the ghost town of Silver City, Idaho
KELLI AND JESSE and Bonnie and Dawn were all sitting in Bonnie’s big kitchen in Boise waiting. Madison and Duster had left yesterday for Silver City to pull the plug on this trip into the past.
April and Ryan were in their home waiting in their kitchen.
For the past hour, she and Jesse had their saddlebags on their laps with her notebooks, his research stuff on past crimes, and the hidden Season Medals.
Not a person had asked what they had done with them.
And they had told no one about Bushnell being a traveler or that they had met a traveler from a far distant future.
Bonnie and Duster knew the plan for the medals being under Janice and Steven’s general store. That was fine for now.
No one else needed to know the rest of the details.
One thing for certain, there was nothing about the Season Medals that had been boring.
And because of them, she had met the love of her life.
Bonnie and Duster’s big mansion around them was dark and closed up. Horses were all sold off and a caretaker had been hired to watch the house and clean a few times a week.
Dawn and Madison were planning on coming back to this point in time in this timeline in a month, so their house was closed up, but not as tightly as this house. Kelli wasn’t sure how that would work, but Bonnie assured her it would.
Dawn and Madison wanted to spend more of a lifetime in the lodge. Then they would return and join the others for lunch in the mine.
Kelli was once again having trouble understanding that she and Jesse had spent all this time, these years, in the past and only just over two minutes had really elapsed. And Dawn and Madison could come back and spend another forty or fifty years and for them only another two minutes would pass.
The idea of it all just made her mind go numb.
She wasn’t sure if she would ever get used to the idea. But she certainly planned on taking advantage of it many, many times.
Bonnie glanced at her gold pocket watch and tucked it back in her pocket. “It’s nine a.m. They should be in the mine by now. Everyone get ready.”
Kelli put her saddlebag over her shoulder at the same time as Jesse did.
Bonnie and Dawn also put saddlebags over their shoulders, holding onto them with one hand.
A moment later they were all standing with one hand on the wooden box in the crystal cavern.
Eight of them were crowded around the wooden box on the table. Bonnie and Duster and Ryan and April and Madison had left years earlier, but they had all come back together.
“Well, that was an interesting two minutes,” Duster said, stepping back out of the crowd as Madison put on a glove and only unhooked one wire from the machine, leaving the wires connected to the same crystal.
“I got the men’s shower first,” Duster said. He turned with a saddlebag over his shoulder and headed for the open door to the supply cavern.
Kelli had stepped back and just stared at the huge place. The beauty of the billions of crystals was almost too much for her mind to grasp.
“You all mind if I take the women’s shower?” Madison said after kissing Dawn. “Long dusty ride.”
“Be our guest,” Bonnie said.
Kelli just kept staring at the intense beauty of the crystal cavern towering over them.
Jesse was standing beside her and he reached over and took her hand.
“It’s real,” he said.
She nodded, just staring around at the billions of crystals and how the cavern seemed to disappear off into the distance.
“And only just over two minutes passed in all that time we spent back there,” Kelli said.
Jesse laughed. “I don’t think we spent it. As far as I’m concerned, we enjoyed it.”
She looked up into his handsome smiling face and squeezed his hand. “I agree and stand corrected.”
With that, they turned for the supply cavern following Dawn and Bonnie and April and Ryan.
At the door, Jesse pointed to the few hundred crystals stacked and glowing beside the door where the door had been cut into the cavern.
Kelli nodded. “It seems we have work to do right here in this timeline, don’t we?”
“That we do,” Jesse said.
They went to one of the big tables and worked at changing clothes into the modern clothes it seemed like they hadn’t worn in a very long time. To Kelli, the jeans and blouse felt normal, but the tennis shoes just felt strange after years of women’s shoes in the past and cowboy boots.
They were the last ones in the cavern when they moved all the medals to one saddlebag.
Kelli nodded to him and he smiled.
She was so thankful they were doing this.
“I want you with me when I hide these,” Jesse said.
Kelli glanced up at him. “What are you worried about?”
“Because if anything ever happened to me, these medals are far, far too valuable to be lost again.
She kissed him and he put the bag on the ground under one table.
Then the two of them headed for the kitchen area, arm-in-arm.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
July 15th, 2016
Above the ghost town of Silver City, Idaho
JESSE LET DAWN use the men’s showers and April went for the women’s showers while Bonnie started on something for them to eat with Ryan helping.
After Duster looked like he was settled, Jesse motioned for him. “We need to ask you a question or two if we could.”
Jesse, holding Kelli’s hand, turned and headed back into the supply cavern.
Duster followed and when Jesse got back to the table, he turned to face Duster. “We got one thing to deal with, and something major to talk about.”
Duster nodded, clearly looking worried as he glanced between the two.
“I need you to make sure I am not setting off any of your hidden alarms down the tunnel, but we would rather, at this point, you not come with us.”
“Going outside?” Duster asked, frowning.
“No,” Jesse said. He picked up the heavy saddlebag with the Season Medals in it. “We just need to hide something for a decade or two real time, and since so few of us know about this place, I figured this would be the best and safest place in the world.”
Duster smiled, nodded
, and moved over to where there was a hidden panel on the wall and flicked off three switches, showing Kelli and Jesse what they were.
“No cameras on?” Jesse asked.
“None,” Duster said, showing him the controls for those as well.
Jesse picked up a shovel from a stack of them and then holding Kelli’s hand, they headed down the tunnel, the heavy saddlebag over his shoulder.
“We’ll only be a minute,” Kelli said.
Duster nodded and turned his back.
They went down the tunnel and then turned into the side tunnel. From the looks of it, Duster had reinforced the dead-end fake tunnel for a good thirty paces to make it look like everything else.
Jesse checked the end of the tunnel to make sure it wasn’t a hologram, then he turned and walked ten paces back up the tunnel to about where Kelli stood looking nervous.
“Have I said how much I hate mine tunnels?” she asked.
He laughed and kissed her. “Almost done.”
He finally found an opening above one of the large timbers and under the dirt above it. He tucked the saddlebag up there on top of the huge beam, making sure it couldn’t be seen from either direction, pushing it back with the handle of the shovel.
He pointed back at the corner and Kelli followed his direction.
Then he silently counted the beams back to the one where the bag was hidden.
“Fourteen beams,” he said. “Same number as the originals who know about this place.”
“I can remember that,” she said, smiling.
They headed back up the tunnel and through the two hologram walls to where Duster waited. He still had his back to the tunnel when Jesse put the shovel back in the pile and then picked up a heavy pair of gloves from another table.
“That can’t be found for at least a decade or more,” Jesse said.
“I’m assuming there is something I missed,” Duster said, “about your adventure with Bushnell and the Season Medals.”
“Given time,” Jesse said, “We’ll tell you all about it. But first, we have something else to talk about.”
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