Avalanche Creek Read online

  Table of Contents

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-one

  Chapter Forty-two

  Chapter Forty-three

  Chapter Forty-four

  Chapter Forty-five

  Chapter Forty-six

  Chapter Forty-seven

  Chapter Forty-eight

  About the Author

  Other Titles from Dean Wesley Smith

  Copyright Information

  Start Reading

  Table of Contents

  About the Author

  More Books by Dean Wesley Smith

  Copyright Information

  For Robert and Florence Smith,

  my dearly missed grandparents.

  They taught me to love Idaho and the wilderness of Monumental Creek.

  He worked the mines and she cooked in the mining camps.

  Together they survived the winters and the fires and the floods and the avalanches.

  Thanks for giving your grandson a real appreciation of the wilderness.

  CHAPTER ONE

  July 7th, 2016

  Brice’s Timeline

  BRICE HENRY LINCOLN sat in a padded deck chair, his feet up on the wooden railing, staring out over the fantastic beauty that was the Idaho Primitive Area.

  As far as he could see there was nothing but range after range of high mountain peaks and incredibly steep-walled valleys. All were covered in deep green pine or brown rock faces. The summer sky was a deep, dark blue and there wasn’t the slightest sign of a cloud.

  He could tell that it would end up being a warm day. The hot, dry smell of high-mountain pine trees was already filling the air, a summer smell he had grown to love his entire life, from his early family days camping every summer on the shores of McCall Lake to his hikes in the Boise National Forest when he was home in Boise.

  That smell and the feel of the hot, dry mountain air told him he belonged here.

  Brice sipped at his Diet Coke. He had finished a wonderful breakfast of ham and eggs and hash browns a half hour ago and was just waiting. He was dressed in a long-sleeved blue dress shirt with his sleeves rolled up, Levis, and New Balance tennis shoes. He had no doubt that if he spent too much time out in the high-mountain sun today, he would burn, even though he had a pretty good tan from running for exercise every morning back in Boise.

  At twenty-eight, he spent far too much time in front of a computer, so he also made sure he got a set amount of exercise every day.

  And a nap.

  He flat loved naps. Twenty minutes and he was ready to go again.

  Where he was sitting on the deck of the Monumental Lodge, he was at over eight thousand feet in elevation. The sun was far more intense up here and the air a lot thinner.

  He had spent the night in one of the fantastic rooms of the Monumental Summit Lodge, sleeping on a real, old-fashioned featherbed under a soft quilt. He had kept one window open letting in the cool night air, and he couldn’t ever remember getting such a wonderful night’s rest. He could sure get used to being up here in these mountains, of that there was no doubt.

  The only sounds as he sipped his Diet Coke were a few birds in the trees, a slight wind through the needles of the pines, and some faint rattling of breakfast dishes behind him.

  There was no one else but him on the huge, open wooden deck that ran along the east side of the lodge. The lodge was a massive log structure straddling this high mountain saddle. It had steep shake roofs, massive logs polished to a shine by time and weather, and forty guest rooms. Only for six or so months in the late spring, summer, and early fall were those rooms full.

  The road up here was closed in the winter and only the owners stayed on. But when the narrow, winding road up the side of the mountain opened in the spring, the lodge seemed to always be full.

  The massive main room inside the lodge behind him was a jaw-dropping sight, with the towering ceiling and massive polished logs. The dining area filled a corner of the huge room, serving food on what seemed to be fine china.

  The furniture in the main area and lounge looked like it was right out of the late 1890s and every detail stayed consistent with that period. He had no idea how anyone had managed to build this place back over a hundred years before.

  And maintaining it in the brutal winters of this area had to be an ongoing fight of epic proportions. It had to take real money to do that.

  In front of him, down over a thousand feet, was one of the great tourist attractions of the state.

  And absolutely the hardest place in the state to get to.

  Back in 1909, just a few years after this hotel was finished, the entire mining town of Roosevelt was flooded out of existence by a massive landslide that blocked the canyon and backed water up over the town.

  From the pictures he had seen, some log buildings could still be seen down through the crystal clear lake water, and the logs from the broken buildings had jammed the area where the stream had finally gone over the mudslide.

  Brice had talked to a lot of people who had seen the place and all of them were awed by it. He had also heard rumors that on clear nights you could still hear the pianos playing from the old saloons. He didn’t believe in ghosts, but he knew enough history of the place to almost believe that.

  Finally, today he was going down to see that town. Except for not looking forward to the drive down the narrow road across the cliff face to get down into the valley, the adventure ahead had him excited. Since he had always heard about this place, but it was so remote, he had just never made the time to come here.

  And his parents could never afford a room in this lodge. They could barely afford the time off to pitch tents on the shoreline of McCall Lake for a week.

  And during all his years of college, he had no chance, time or money to get up here. But now, his bosses, Bonnie and Duster Kendal had wanted him to see this lodge and the lost town under the lake. He sure hadn’t turned them down when they offered. He had no idea how they got rooms here in the peak of the tourist season, but somehow they had managed.

  Bonnie and Duster were two of the greatest mathematicians working today. Both had graduated, as he had, with doctors’ degrees in higher theoretical mathematics. He had come out of Harvard, they both had gone through Stanford.

  But they didn’t teach and do research as he had been headed to do until they had hired him. They worked theory, on their own dime, writing papers and letting their discoveries out for all to have and work from.

&
nbsp; And some of their work was so far out on the edges of modern mathematical theory, even he had a hard time grasping it. Which kept him very challenged.

  And he loved a mathematical challenge. Far more, he was sure, than he would have loved teaching.

  Not only were Bonnie and Duster two of the great mathematical minds on the planet, they were two of the nicest and most beautiful people Brice had ever met. Bonnie looked to be about thirty and was tall, with long brown hair she always kept pulled back. When she walked into a room, heads turned.

  Duster was tall, even taller than Brice’s six-foot. Duster had short brown hair and piercing dark eyes. He seemed to always be wearing expensive long-sleeve shirts tucked into Levis and cowboy boots. He also often wore a long oilcloth duster and cowboy hat that made him look like he had stepped out of a western pulp novel.

  Once in a while Bonnie even called him Marshal. Brice had never asked why.

  Bonnie and Duster both seemed far, far, far older than their early thirties age. Around them, Brice often felt like a child, even though he was only five years behind them.

  But they were fantastic bosses. And they liked to laugh more than anything, which he appreciated more than he wanted to admit.

  They had hired him, moved him back to his home town of Boise, given him more money than he could ever imagine making doing research for some university, set him up in a large office overlooking the Boise River, and said he had an unlimited budget to hire assistants when the job required it.

  Brice had no idea where they got their money and he didn’t ask, but they sure never worried about it. That seemed below them.

  After he had gotten set up in the office, they gave him the most challenging work he could have ever imagined. His job for the last year had been working in the theory and the mathematics of alternate timelines.

  He had finally been starting to grasp some of the concepts Bonnie and Duster were working at just in the last two months, and both of them seemed very happy with that.

  Now clearly, he was helping them move forward in their research and they seemed overjoyed. And they had no problem letting him take credit where and when he wanted to.

  He actually never cared for credit, so on that score he was like them.

  This was a dream job and he kept hoping it wouldn’t end soon.

  He sat back, sipped his Diet Coke, and stared out over the beautiful mountains he loved so much. After Bonnie and Duster finished their breakfast, the three of them would pile into Duster’s big Cadillac SUV and head down to see the lost town of Roosevelt, Idaho.

  Something Brice had wanted to do since he was a kid.

  So right now the excitement of the coming day was making him feel like a kid again.

  CHAPTER TWO

  July 7th, 2016

  Dixie’s Timeline

  WINIFRED DIXIE SMITH held on tight and stared out the window of the back seat of the big Cadillac SUV as Duster Kendal expertly worked it down the steep road along the cliff face and into the Monumental Valley.

  A thousand feet below her, she could see the tops of the tall pine trees and the start of Monumental Creek. One slight miss, or if something happened to the road, the fall would wipe out three of the great minds in mathematics in one tragic accident.

  Normally, she wasn’t afraid of heights at all. But with the edge of the road and the thousand foot drop seemingly only inches from her, she now wished she had sat on the passenger side of the back seat so all she could see would be the side of the cliff face and the wonderful view ahead of the steep-walled valley.

  Dixie never used her real first name and was often called a “pixie” by friends because she stood barely five-four. She had bright red long hair and large, round, brown eyes. To make the pixie resemblance even stronger, her skin was light, with a lot of freckles. She had slathered on more sunscreen today than she ever had before, and at this high altitude, she was going to be lucky to escape only with a slight burn.

  The pixie look had served her well in school, especially in some of her graduate level mathematics classes. It caused people to underestimate her and she often left someone who did that flatfooted. Now, this high in the air, for the first time she wished she was an actual pixie because if she remembered right, they had wings and could fly, just in case Duster missed a turn.

  She was fairly certain the big Cadillac SUV couldn’t fly.

  She had been excited about seeing the submerged town of Roosevelt, Idaho, since she had heard about it for the first time last year after moving from Phoenix to Boise. But she had also heard about how bad this road was going in.

  All of that had been accurate and not exaggerated in the slightest. There was no real good way to actually describe how remote this was and how truly frightening this road was.

  The road seemed to be no wider than the car and at times she swore Duster almost scraped dirt on the inside hill. The road was dirt and had some pretty nasty bumps in it that made Dixie very glad she was strapped down tight and holding on for dear life.

  Bonnie Kendal sat in the front passenger seat, not seeming to be concerned in the slightest about the road. And her husband, Duster, was an expert driver, clearly, and was only using one hand on the wheel to take the SUV down the cliff road. If Dixie had been driving, she would have inched along with both hands glued to the steering wheel and sweat rolling down her face.

  On second thought, there was no amount of money that could have made her drive this road period. A person had to know her limits and driving this road was one of those limits.

  “How was your stay last night in the lodge?” Bonnie asked, turning slightly to talk with Dixie as if they were just driving a freeway.

  Thank heavens the question hadn’t been a mathematical one, because Dixie had no doubt her brain would not have been able to deal with that while worrying about falling a thousand feet.

  “It was wonderful,” Dixie said. “Thank you again for showing me that fantastic place.”

  And it had been something out of a dream. The Monumental Summit Lodge had no comparison she had ever seen. The entire place was made out of logs and the ceilings in the main room towered overhead. The stone fireplace, even in the summer, had a fire going, and the furniture was straight out of the 1890s and stunning. When she had walked in the huge front door of the place, she had felt she had been transported back in time to 1890.

  Even the plates and cups in the dining room were period china.

  And considering the mathematical theory she had been working on with Bonnie and Duster over the last year, she found that almost funny. They had been working on the mathematics of time travel and alternate time lines. And they had been making progress.

  Bonnie and Duster had hired her right out of Princeton, after she finished her doctorate. She had been living in Phoenix with her parents until she landed a research and teaching job at a major university. But since Bonnie and Duster were known as two of the great minds of mathematics, and had offered her an obscene amount of money to go to Boise to work for them, she had accepted.

  And hadn’t regretted a moment of it so far.

  Of course, if this Cadillac slipped off this road and fell a thousand feet down the cliff, she was sure she would regret the decision for a few seconds.

  “You like the featherbed?” Bonnie asked, smiling.

  “I got lost in it and the wonderful quilt,” Dixie said, smiling. “Never slept so well in my life. That lodge is amazing. Who built it?”

  Bonnie smiled. “Now that’s a long story that we’ll tell you over lunch.”

  Duster just laughed.

  Dixie had no idea what was so funny about the construction of the lodge, but clearly they both were close to it since they had been able to get two rooms in the lodge at the height of the tourist season up here.

  Bonnie turned back around to watch ahead and Dixie forced herself to look out at the mountains and the fantastic view and not look down.

  Fifteen minutes later Duster bounced the big Cadillac over a bridge
and across the valley floor. And for the first time in thirty minutes, Dixie actually allowed herself to take a full breath.

  She had never been one for carnival rides and being scared. She was more a hiking and camping girl. And about as high as she ever wanted to be was on the back of a good horse.

  “Is there another road out of here?” she asked.

  “Nope,” Duster said. “Nothing but hiking trails out of here. This is primitive area. The only reason this road is here at all is because of a patented mining claim that allowed the road to be grandfathered in when they changed this to a primitive area.”

  “It’s not as bad going back up,” Bonnie said, not turning around. “Besides, we have dinner and room reservations back in the lodge tonight and we can’t miss that.”

  Dixie only nodded to herself and put the drive back up that cliff out of her mind. She would enjoy this beautiful valley on this fantastic summer day and take the road when it came.

  CHAPTER THREE

  July 7th, 2016

  Brice’s Timeline

  BRICE REALLY ENJOYED the ride along the smooth dirt road on the valley floor. Even though the valley was very narrow in places between the towering slopes of trees and rocks, it still seemed a magical place as the big Cadillac wound through the tall pine trees.

  At one point, Duster had taken the Cadillac around a corner and straight ahead was a ruin of a huge mill tucked against one side of the valley. It was nothing more now than a massive pile of tan and weathered boards, twisted and fallen. Brice was shocked at how large it had been as the road passed the ruins within ten feet.

  “That mill never got started,” Duster said. “They built the building, but the actual stamp mill never got brought in before the mine ran dry, so they chopped all that wood and never used any of it.

  Duster pointed to long piles of logs cut about four feet long and neatly stacked about head high winding through the trees in all directions. The top layers were nothing more than decayed wood, and some of the piles had huge trees growing out of the middle of them.