Smith's Monthly #4

by Smith, Dean Wesley

  “Here’s what I am thinking,” Ryan said. “Duster has hired me for a summer to design this huge lodge out of the natural materials up here on this ridge. He has paid me more money than I care to think about to do that. With bonus payments if I finish the design within two months.”

  April nodded. “I also am getting paid a huge amount. In fact, Duster bought the design firm I worked for and said if he and Bonnie were satisfied with my work on the interior of the lodge, as a bonus he would give me the design firm when the project was finished.”

  “So basically,” Ryan said, “we can consider this a job where we are working for eccentrics. And just ignore all the time-travel craziness for now.”

  April knew she could do that. In her line of remodeling old buildings, it was rare when a client wasn’t an eccentric weirdo in one fashion or another.

  “I can do that,” she said after a moment. “Can you?”

  “I’ve worked with far crazier people than those four,” Ryan said, laughing.

  She really liked his laugh and it sounded wonderful and almost relaxing echoing in the dark trees around them.

  They reached a point where the road sloped down dramatically and both of them stopped.

  She turned to look into his eyes. The light made them glow and she laughed.

  “What?” he asked. “I got lettuce in my teeth?”

  “Your eyes are glowing in this light,” she said, shaking her head and laughing again.

  “So are yours,” he said, smiling at her. “And has anyone ever told you that you have a wonderful laugh.”

  She was sure she blushed like a silly schoolgirl. “Thanks.”

  They stood there on the road for a moment. She had to know if Ryan was available and at this age, playing games to find out was just annoying.

  “I have a couple questions to ask you, since we will be working closely on this project.”

  “Fire away,” he said.

  She took a deep breath of the cold night air. “Do you have a girlfriend, wife, or married, or living in a committed relationship?”

  He smiled. “No girlfriend, but I’ve had a number over the years, but I was always too busy for them. And they hated camping with me.”

  Her heart actually skipped a beat and she made herself take another deep breath.

  “Sorry, just needed to ask,” she said.

  “Same question back at you,” he said. “Do you have a boyfriend, husband, or married or in a committed relationship?”

  “Had boyfriends over the years,” she said, “but they hated my job as well and they hated that I loved to spend so much time hiking in the mountains.”

  “You are serious?” he asked. “You lost boyfriends because you liked to hike too much?”

  She nodded. “I’ve summited all but the three highest peaks in Colorado in the last five years. I thrive outdoors. Not in that kind of luxury,” she waved her hand back in the direction of the camp. “But in hiking-with-everything-on-my-back luxury.”

  He just shook his head and looked at her with his glowing eyes. Finally he said, “I think we’re going to work just great together.”

  “As long as every time you come back up here, you bring me with you,” she said.

  “Deal,” he said, laughing.

  “Deal,” she said.

  She so wanted to extend her hand and shake his, but she didn’t. If she had, she was afraid this might go too far on just the first night together.

  They turned and walked slowly back toward camp, talking about some of their various hikes they had done over the years. She loved the fact that he wanted to explore the mountains around them right here. And had been trying to hike these mountains for years.

  With luck, they could explore some of them together.

  And when they got back to camp, she realized that not one word on the way back had been spoken about the crazy time-travel story.

  And for that, she was grateful.

  CHAPTER SIX

  May 23, 2015

  THE NEXT MORNING broke beautiful and clear and calm, with the sky the darkest blue that April could remember seeing a sky. April had relaxed some from the craziness of the night before. Ryan’s comments about how he had worked for very strange clients before reminded her of a few of her “unusual” past clients as well.

  She had worked for one rich woman in her nineties who had insisted that if April made her big mansion parlor look exactly as it had when the woman was young and met her husband in that parlor, she would get “gentlemen callers” again.

  Using old pictures, April had done as the woman asked and that project had landed her a number of jobs after that. She had no idea if the woman actually did get any “gentlemen callers.”

  So designing the interior of an entire lodge in the Idaho Mountains with only supplies that existed in 1900 would land her even more jobs. And if Duster actually kept his word, she might even get a business out of it.

  She could put up with a lot of craziness for that kind of payoff.

  Ryan also seemed very relaxed and the two of them stayed close to each other through breakfast, something she sure didn’t mind at all. He made her laugh easily and his smile seemed infectious.

  She wasn’t sure how she could be so attracted to one guy so quickly. But she was to him. And when she woke up this morning, lying there under her comfortable quilt in her tent, she figured that the attraction to Ryan wasn’t something she was going to let worry her. If something came from it, great.

  She sure hoped it would, but she wouldn’t push it.

  On the other side, she wouldn’t hold herself back either.

  And then during breakfast, she realized she was really coming to like all four of her bosses. They just all seemed to be very, very nice people.

  And they all seemed very mature and relaxed about everything, including her and Ryan not believing their crazy story. They just accepted that and it didn’t bother anything.

  After breakfast, all six of them climbed all over the ridge area, talking about certain views and where elements of the lodge could be put.

  They all agreed that a huge deck and the main dining room should look out over the fantastic view of the Monumental Valley and the mountains of central Idaho.

  And April knew of some perfect furniture that was being produced out of Chicago in the late 1890s that would be perfect for the deck and easy to move inside and store during the winter.

  That view looked northeast between the two major peaks and over the Salmon River drainage toward Montana. On the other side of the ridge the view would be just as spectacular when pine trees were removed.

  At one point up on a ridge, looking west, Ryan pointed down and to the north. “See that giant valley between those steep mountains?”

  She could see it clearly and nodded.

  “That’s the main Salmon River coming in from where we can see it on the other side of the ridge. The river eventually flows into the Snake River. That canyon there is what is called “The River of No Return.”

  She just stared at it.

  “See the slash in the mountains way off to the west?” Ryan asked, pointing directly out from the ridge.

  Again she nodded.

  “That’s the Snake River in Hell’s Canyon, the deepest canyon in the country. If you follow it along to the north, you can see where the Snake River eventually joins the Salmon. Way off in the distance there to the north is where both of them flow into the Columbia.”

  This ridge really, really was an amazing site to build anything. It seemed to almost be the top of the world, especially on a clear, beautiful day as today. But as Ryan had said, this was all Forest Service land, protected from any construction of any kind.

  For the entire morning, not one car had come up the road. So April asked Duster how many people actually came up to this ridge and then on down into the ghost towns in the valley below.

  “The people in Yellow Pine say it’s less than two hundred people a summer leave Yellow Pine in this direction,�
�� Duster said. “I imagine many of them don’t make it past Stibnite. So more than likely under a hundred people a summer see this ridge.”

  “This area is one of the great secrets of the west,” Madison said.

  April smiled at Dawn. “After that great book of yours, it’s less a secret.”

  Dawn laughed. “Won’t change the number of people who dare to make this trip. That’s one nasty road up that mountain.”

  April couldn’t argue with that. Very few of her friends even wanted to get out of the Denver area with her for an easy hike, let alone go back into wilderness like this.

  The six of them worked for another two hours, seemingly not missing a detail of the ridge. Both Ryan and April were taking notes. Ryan a lot more than April.

  Finally Madison called time for lunch. She was getting hungry, even after the large breakfast he had served them all of eggs, sweet ham, hand-made hash browns, and orange juice.

  As they turned to go the short distance back to the camp, Duster turned to Ryan. “See a location for a helicopter pad up here somewhere?”

  That stopped all of them cold in their tracks.

  Bonnie was looking at her husband with a puzzled expression and Madison and Dawn just looked stunned.

  Ryan looked surprised as well. But he nodded and pointed back toward camp. “Below the ridgeline rocks on that side of camp, above where the road comes in, there is an area large enough, if cleared and leveled, to bring a helicopter in. And it would be sheltered from what I figure are some pretty intense winds up here at times.”

  Duster nodded and turned to keep going back toward camp.

  “I thought we were building this lodge in 1900?” Bonnie asked, following slightly behind her husband.

  “We are,” Duster said. “But I figure Ryan is going to build this to last.”

  Duster glanced back at Ryan. “Right?”

  Ryan nodded.

  And Duster looked at Madison and Dawn. “I figure you two will keep it maintained so it doesn’t crumble to ruin over the century, right?”

  They both nodded.

  Duster shrugged and turned back toward camp and kept walking. “I sure don’t see why one of the main ways for rich guests to get here would be by helicopter flight in from Cascade starting around 1970 or so. Just wanted to know if that was possible.”

  Madison just shook his head and took Dawn’s hand and followed Bonnie and Duster through the trees.

  April looked over at Ryan who was standing there just smiling and shaking his head as he watched the other four walk away.

  “What’s wrong?” April whispered as she moved over close to him.

  “My old friend Duster is either the craziest man I have ever met,” Ryan said. “Or just maybe he and his wife have invented time travel.”

  “I just don’t believe that,” April said. And she didn’t and refused at the moment to even buy into the crazy game.

  “I don’t either,” Ryan said. “But you have to admit, the four of them believe it.”

  He was right. They did.

  And that bothered her more than she wanted to admit.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  May 24, 2015

  RYAN HAD REALLY ENJOYED the company of the five of them for the entire second day on the ridge. But he was mostly coming to enjoy being with April. She was smart and funny and could make him laugh with a sideways look and a raised eyebrow.

  And she clearly loved the mountains and camping.

  Of course, the way they were camping now, it was more like staying in a hotel, especially with Madison’s fantastic cooking. But considering that some of Ryan’s old girlfriends would have complained about even this, he liked that April was finding it as wonderful and special as he was finding it.

  And he was getting more and more excited about the challenge of building the big lodge with only 1900’s technology. That was the most amazing challenge he had ever been offered. The more he thought about it and worked over the building site, the more challenged he got by the project.

  That evening, around the campfire, they all tossed ideas around about the lodge, including the very short construction season and the challenges that presented, especially in 1900.

  The next morning they had all agreed they would go down into the Monumental Valley and see the old ruins and the Roosevelt town site, now under the small lake called Roosevelt.

  In the spring of 1910, a landslide had dammed up the valley and backed water up over the town. Ryan understood from what little reading he had done about the area, the mines were about played out at that point and the destruction of Roosevelt pretty much killed the entire area.

  After that, this last major gold rush in the lower forty-eight states was forgotten to time.

  After another amazing breakfast, all six of them climbed into Duster’s large SUV Cadillac, leaving the camp up. They planned on returning before dark for dinner.

  Bonnie and Duster were in the front, Madison and Dawn in the second seat, and Ryan and April in the very back seats.

  Even from the back, he and April still had great views. And he really, really liked being so close to her.

  “This is going to be interesting to see all this,” Madison said as they started down the steep road. Duster was taking it very slowly, since the road was not much wider than the big SUV and there was a thousand-foot-drop on the driver side.

  “It will be,” Bonnie said, nodding, clearly not happy with the road.

  “Haven’t you been into the lake before?” April asked a half second before Ryan could.

  “I’m the only one that has seen this valley in modern times,” Dawn said.

  And she left it at that, which Ryan was glad she did.

  It took Duster a harrowing twenty minutes to ease the big car about a mile in distance and about a thousand feet down the side of that mountain until they finally reached the valley floor.

  Ryan was relieved, as was everyone in the car from what he could tell.

  “We are solidly in the Frank Church Primitive Area now,” Duster said.

  “I thought roads weren’t allowed in here,” Ryan said, “after the primitive area designation.”

  “There are patented mining claims still working,” Duster said as he took the big car down and through a pretty good stream. “They are allowed to keep and maintain roads into their claims.”

  That made sense to Ryan.

  After another quarter mile, Duster pulled the car over along the edge of a meadow edged with remaining snowdrifts.

  Everyone climbed out.

  The intense silence of the big mountains towering over them on both sides stunned Ryan. Only the sound of the stream rushing over rocks on the other side of the small meadow broke the silence.

  The sun had not climbed up in the sky enough to reach the valley floor. It had been sunny up on the ridge, but down in this deep valley, Ryan doubted if there was more than five or six hours of direct sun a day during the summer.

  The air still had a pretty good bite to it, which also surprised him.

  “That was some road,” April said, stretching as she looked at the road that cut through the side of the hill above them. “Not sure I want to go back up it.”

  “You can always hike up the old trail,” Duster said. “But it might be wiped away by slides in places.”

  He and Bonnie and Madison and Dawn had all moved over to the other side of the road and were studying the hillside there.

  As Ryan and April moved toward them, he could see what they were looking at. Like a slice moving up through the rock-covered slopes, a trail cut steadily upward back toward the ridge where they were camped.

  “Is that the old trail in here?” April asked.

  “One of three,” Dawn said. “No wagons could get in here, only pack animals. Everything in this valley was either built here or hauled in over trails like that one.”

  “I thought there were pianos in the Roosevelt saloons?” April asked, staring at the trail. “I remember that from your book.”<
br />
  “There were,” Dawn said, nodding. “Many of them.”

  “Playing night and day,” Madison said. “You couldn’t escape them even if you wanted to, since the saloons left their doors open in the summer.”

  “And everything echoes in this tight valley,” Dawn said. “All the pianos came in pieces over that trail or trails like it.”

  Ryan was just flat stunned.

  He looked up at the tall valley walls and the high peaks a couple thousand feet above him. He was now getting even more excited about this crazy project.

  And at the chance of exploring a part of forgotten western history.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  May 24, 2015

  APRIL HADN’T MUCH LIKED the scary ride down into the valley, but now that she was firmly on the valley floor, she was getting more and more excited about exploring.

  After stopping to see where the old trail reached the valley floor, they all piled back into the big SUV and Duster took them slowly down the road, working carefully through where streams had washed parts of the road away.

  The valley in places wasn’t much wider than a six-lane freeway, but then in other areas, it widened out between the steep hills to the size of a large mall parking lot.

  The valley floor was covered in pine trees and Monumental Creek looked like it was running pretty high from snowmelt.

  At one point, they came around a corner in the forest and Madison said, “You’re kidding me.”

  He pointed at piles and piles of cut lumber sitting among the trees. The piles were about five feet high and each cut piece was two feet or so long.

  It instantly gave April a creepy feeling as the piles went on and on and on.

  As far as she could see across the valley through the trees, the snakes of cut and piled lumber wound.

  “I thought this was strange-looking when all the trees were cut down and the lumber just stacked,” Duster said, shaking his head as he drove slowly, staring at all the piles of wood. “But with the trees grown back, this is downright weird.”