The next thing she realized, Duster was pulling the big SUV into a rough graveled parking area and shutting off the car.
“Time for breakfast,” he said, his voice far, far too cheerful.
Cheerful in the morning was a shooting offense in Sherri’s book. Luckily she didn’t carry a gun.
She sat up and stretched. She felt run over by a herd of cattle and places ached she didn’t know could ache. In fact, some of those places she didn’t even know she had.
Plus she wasn’t sure if she had been drooling or snoring or both. At this point, she felt so bad, she had lost the will to care.
She managed to get out into the morning light. The sun was barely up, the air still had a bite to it, but it smelled of sagebrush and felt dry.
They were in front of a small-town diner with a sign so rusted, the name was gone from the front. The highway they had been on was no more than two lanes wide with a large yellow stripe down the middle.
“Where are we?” she asked as she staggered around to the front of the car where Bonnie and Dawn were both stretching. Both of them had on the same basic thing that Sherri had on—jeans, a cotton shirt with a sports bra under it, and tennis shoes. All of them had their long hair pulled back and tied out of the way.
“Murphy, Idaho,” Bonnie said. “Near the Snake River and the Oregon border. We have a horse ranch near here.”
With that Bonnie turned and followed Duster into the diner.
“A horse ranch?” Sherri asked Dawn.
“They are an amazing couple,” Dawn said.
“So why are we going to a horse ranch?” Sherri asked.
“We’re not,” Dawn said. “Come on, let’s get some breakfast.”
Sherri tried to stretch again, but it just hurt too much. What she really wanted was some cold water on her face, so she followed Dawn through the old screen door of the diner.
The door made an awful squeaking sound and banged shut behind her, startling her.
The diner smelled like coffee and bacon, but she couldn’t believe she was going to eat in here.
Sherri decided that she would have to remember to not take road trips with Duster again. She loved Bonnie and Duster, but for the first time she didn’t understand why Bonnie had married him. Being a morning person was grounds for divorce as far as Sherri was concerned.
Of course, so far she hadn’t yet met someone she liked enough to even consider marrying, morning person or not. But she knew for certain that when she did meet a man, he would have to hate mornings.
With a passion.
CHAPTER FOUR
May 30, 1902
Idanha Hotel, Boise, Idaho
Carson had spent a little longer than normal on the mile ride into town, just enjoying the wonderful late-spring evening, letting Sandy just sort of mosey along.
He checked Sandy with the stable behind the hotel just as the sun was finally setting over the distant mountains in the east and tipped the man a little extra to give her a good brushing.
Then he headed into the wonderful beauty of the new Idanha Hotel. The stone building was six stories tall and dominated the downtown area with its four corner towers.
Tall ceilings with large polished mahogany columns gave the main lobby a look of expensive vastness. Area carpets of varied colors covered the polished wood floors and were covered in overstuffed armchairs and couches that were as comfortable as they looked.
High windows ran from near the floor almost to the ceiling, framed by dark brown drapes, but not covered.
To the right of the main double mahogany and glass doors was the entrance to the dining area. He had had many a fine meal over the last two years in that dining room. It was one of his favorite in town. And maybe in a couple of hours he would take a break from the poker game and come up for a late dinner.
Directly in front of him as he entered the massive lobby space was the large front desk with over a hundred mailboxes behind it. Two men in suits and vests stood behind the desk helping a couple get checked in, from the looks of the large trunk and four leather suitcases piled to one side against a column.
To the left of the main desk was a grand staircase, painted white with mahogany trim and dark wooden stairs that swept up and to the left. Beside it was a metal cage with an elevator, the first in the entire state.
Carson felt it just flat looked dangerous, but the kids in town loved to ride it and the hotel let them in small groups after school twice a week, supervised, of course.
The staircase to the poker room was behind the grand staircase and Carson headed that way, making his way down the well-lit stairs into the smoke-filled large room at the bottom.
From what he could see, there were at least five games going with six men per table. Since it was still early in the evening, the haze of smoke wasn’t that thick yet, but later in the night it would be like a cloud hanging at chest high throughout the room.
There was an open seat on the second table on the right and Carson moved that way. He loved the feel of the room and a number of the regulars nodded hello to him.
As he walked, he took his coat and hat off. He was about to ask if he could join the game when the man sitting to the left of the empty seat glanced up.
Carson froze as the man nodded and looked back at his cards.
Duster Kendal.
Oh, shit!
How was that even possible?
And clearly Duster hadn’t recognized him.
So how was that possible?
Carson felt like his heart was going to pound out of his chest.
Bonnie and Duster had gotten him traveling in time for his research and books. They had gone with him the first few times in fact.
That had been just four months ago in 2017 time. Since that day, Carson had lived almost eight hundred years in the past, but the reality was that no way would Duster fail to recognize him.
Carson also had been the only one in the mine when he had hooked up to the crystal and come back here from June 9th, 2017. Duster could not have arrived and jumped into the same timeline in the two minutes and fifteen seconds that were passing in the mine.
Carson stood for a moment watching the hand of cards, trying to catch his breath.
Duster again looked around at Carson, but again clearly didn’t show even the slightest hint of knowing Carson at all.
Something very strange was going on here and Carson needed to figure it out before he could ever get his mind on his cards. Especially sitting next to Duster.
Carson nodded to the dealer and turned and headed back to the stairs. It looked like he was going to have an early dinner instead of late one.
He had some thinking to do.
CHAPTER FIVE
September 20, 2016
Above the ghost town of Silver City, Idaho
Sherri stood on the flat top of the old mine tailings about halfway up a steep mountain above the old ghost town of Silver City. A mining shack with no windows, and boards so weathered they were gray streaked with brown, managed to stand to one side of the tailings. The shack looked like it was just about to give up the fight and fall down, and she didn’t blame it in the slightest.
Behind the shack, she could see rusted ore car tracks leading back into a boarded up mine face.
The mountain had collapsed in on the old mine, closing it off forever.
The air here was thin and getting warm. It smelled of sagebrush and pine. And it was still far too early in the morning for her tastes.
She didn’t want to think about how Duster had managed to bounce the big Cadillac SUV up what was no more than a few ruts to get within a hundred yards of this old mine. That had been the roughest ride she had ever remembered taking.
She planned on walking back down.
Between getting up early, greasy eggs and wonderful bacon, and a rough section of mountain climbing by car, Sherri was not impressed with this idea of a road trip. She had been kind of hoping for something with a spa involved and a long massage from a hands
ome Swedish guy with strong fingers to ease her tension about the ghost.
So far there was nothing about this trip that was easing any tension.
Sherri had her overnight bag in her hand, even though no one had explained why to her. She certainly didn’t plan on spending a night camping on this hill.
She pointed to the old mining shack. “So is the ghost of the mine going to come out and tell me how to get rid of my ghost?”
Duster laughed. “Don’t worry. We’ll meet your ghost.”
“I hope he sounds better than he does with me,” Sherri said, shaking her head. She was now convinced her friends had lost it.
“It’s clear,” Bonnie said to Duster.
He turned to Sherri with a serious expression. “We’re showing you this because we trust you. Only fourteen other people know about this. Can we ask that you keep this a secret, what we are about to show you?”
She glanced at Bonnie and Dawn, both of who were looking serious.
Sherri shrugged. “I see no reason I would ever tell anyone about whatever this is, unless you force me to get up this early in the morning again. Then all promises are off.”
Everyone laughed and Duster took what looked like an old skeleton key out of his pocket and twisted the head on it.
Silently a huge rock beside the caved-in mine tunnel slid open and then behind it a metal door slid silently aside.
“Wow,” Sherri said. “That’s nifty.”
“You ain’t seen nothing yet,” Dawn said, taking Sherri by the arm and leading her into the small room behind the rock. When all four of them were in, the door slid closed, plunging them into a moment of darkness before the lights came up and another door slid aside exposing the old mine tunnel.
Thick and clearly old wood timbers supported the rock above, and an oar car track went down the middle of the mine. Regular old low-watt light bulbs hung on a cord along the mine, giving the place a golden feel.
But as she looked closer, she realized the entire place had been supported and done in a way to hide the work.
Duster and Bonnie strode off down the tunnel and deeper into the mine. No way in hell she was going to be killed messing around in an old mine, even one clearly redone. Going into old mines had never been one of her interests and it sure wasn’t now.
Not even near her bucket list.
“Don’t worry,” Dawn said, taking her arm and pulling her forward. “The mine has all been redone to be completely safe. It just looks old in case someone manages to get in here. It’s made to discourage them.”
“Discourages me,” Sherri said, “and I could see it has been redone. So you want to tell me what we are doing in this death trap?”
Sherri’s stomach was more cramped up around the greasy breakfast than it had been on the ride up the hill. Not a bit of this made any sense, and if it wasn’t two of her closest friends acting as if this was normal, she would be running screaming down the mountainside, of that she had no doubt.
“We’re going to show you,” Dawn said, “Because you wouldn’t believe us if we told you.”
“Not real fond of the showing part either,” Sherri said, but she let Dawn lead her deeper into the mountain.
Suddenly, ahead of them, where the tunnel and the ore car tracks on the ground turned to the right, Duster walked right into the rough stone of the wall and vanished.
A moment later Bonnie did the same thing.
Sherri froze in her tracks, blinking to try to clear her mind from what she had just seen. What the hell was going on here?
“Hologram,” Dawn said, pulling her forward. “More security. Just close your eyes and I’ll get you through it.”
Sherri did as told because at this point she didn’t even have enough courage to turn and run. She had gotten used to the howling of the ghost in her mansion, but this was just too damn strange.
Dawn guided her ten more steps forward before saying “Clear.”
Sherri looked back. She could see the mine tunnel and ore car tracks leading toward where they had entered. It had been a hologram. Wow, amazing.
Scary, flat scary, but amazing.
Dawn led her forward again as Duster and then Bonnie again disappeared through where the tunnel ahead looked like it ended. The wall looked so real, it was as if Bonnie and Duster were ghosts.
And she had had her fill of ghosts at this point.
“Let me guess,” Sherri said. “Another hologram.”
“This place has a ton of protections,” Dawn said. “You’ll understand why pretty soon.”
“I would think that just being at the top of that goat path of a road would be protection enough,” Sherri said.
“You would think,” Dawn said laughing, leading Sherri directly at the wall.
At the last moment Sherri closed her eyes again and put up a hand to make sure if there was something solid there, she would feel it before breaking her nose.
Nothing solid.
She looked back at the tunnel. No sign of the hologram looking back. Or even the projectors that built it.
Very, very top notch effects. She might have to talk to Duster about where he got those and how they worked later. She had some restoration projects a great well-placed hologram would really work for.
If she survived whatever they were going to show her.
Dawn let go of her arm and stepped forward toward where Bonnie and Duster stood at long wooden tables, working to pack saddlebags from the supplies around them.
Shelves and shelves of supplies seemed to fill every inch of the cavern walls around her. It looked more like a warehouse store than a cavern.
Lights illuminated the large cavern with high stone ceilings and shelves on all the walls. Old-style clothing hung from racks and there seemed to be a ton of different supplies from various eras of time stacked on rows of wooden tables.
Dawn motioned Sherri over to one table and started to help her take some of her clothes from her day bag and move it to hidden pockets in an old-looking leather saddle bag.
“What exactly are we doing in this cavern?” Sherri finally asked, the fear twisting at her starting to overwhelm her.
“We’re going to go meet your ghost,” Duster said. “Before he became a ghost.”
Bonnie smiled at Sherri from where she was working about ten feet away at a rack of old-style dresses. “Remember, we know math?”
Sherri nodded.
“Duster and I found a way to travel into the past.”
“Yeah, right,” Sherri said. She didn’t much like the fact that her friend Bonnie suddenly sounded totally crazy.
“They are not lying,” Dawn said. “It was how Madison and I met. On the way to Boise, I’ll tell you about our first trip back into the past. It was eventful, to say the least.”
Both Bonnie and Duster laughed at that, which did not make Sherri feel any better. Three of her closest friends were standing in a mine far under a mountain talking crazy-talk.
Not just crazy. Insane, flat insane, talk.
What had she gotten herself into?
“Just pack what Dawn helps you to pack and in a few minutes you’ll understand,” Bonnie said. “Trust us for a few more minutes.”
“You know how crazy you three sound right now?” Sherri asked. “I thought I had it bad with the damned ghost in my mansion.”
All three laughed.
“Trust me,” Dawn said. “First time they showed me this place, it was everything I could do to not scream and run.”
“Been thinking about it,” Sherri said.
Again all three laughed and Dawn hugged her around the shoulders. “Trust me, cousin, for a few more minutes is all.”
Sherri slowly nodded. She was already this far underground. What was a few more minutes going to hurt?
She really, really hoped she didn’t regret that thought.
CHAPTER SIX
May 30, 1902
Idanha Hotel, Boise, Idaho
The big dining room of the Idanha Hotel had the
same floor to ceiling high wooden-cased windows as the lobby. A large stone fireplace filled one corner, dominating that part of the room. In the winter, that fireplace kept this room smelling of a wood smoke and very toasty.
Right now the tops of the windows were open allowing in the fresh evening air. The smell of steak filled the room and made Carson’s mouth water. He must have been hungry after all.
Carson asked for a seat off to one side in a corner at a four-person table with a white tablecloth and a single wildflower in a vase in the center of the table. He sat with his back to the room and ordered an iced tea, with real ice, and a rib-eye steak with fried potatoes.
Then he asked the waiter for a paper and pen that he could use to make some notes.
After he got the paper, he started listing possible reasons that Duster Kendal was sitting in that poker room in this timeline. He could not have come through the same connection that Carson had come because he was not in the mine when Carson left.
And besides, if he had done that, Duster would have recognized Carson.
So that was out.
Which meant that Duster came through from another timeline.
And even if it was a Duster from another timeline, he would still know Carson, since the chances are, from what Carson understood about how the time travel to other timelines worked, Carson would also be in the other timelines as well.
Carson put the pen down and folded the notes as his steak dinner arrived.
None of this made sense.
He took a bite of the steak and savored the warm juices of the steak as he chewed it, thinking.
Then suddenly he knew the answer.
“Of course,” he said out loud.
Luckily no one was close enough to his table to notice him talking to himself.
That Duster in the poker room was from an earlier future time than Carson.
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