Smith's Monthly #27 Read online

Grapevine Creek Valley, Idaho

  DUSTER KENDAL SPENT a week exploring the wonderful, hidden valley. He caught large rainbow trout from the stream and ate trout for both lunch and dinner. He never got tired of fresh rainbow trout cooked in butter so that the meat fell off the bones.

  This valley was so peaceful, he might have to come back here more often, at least in the summer. He knew for a fact that the winters in this area were brutal and the snow deep.

  In the future, he had watched skiers on the mountain right above him.

  Then on the third day, he had decided to do a little gold panning himself.

  It had turned out amazingly simple to pull color on a pan.

  He hit ten different areas of the stream for a mile upstream and a couple miles downstream from his campsite, finding gold every time.

  A lot of it.

  There was no doubt there were some rich veins in this valley somewhere.

  This area really should have been found, and how it hadn’t been, he had no idea. More than likely the area was just far too remote.

  For him to get here, he had had to go up to Edwardsburg and then over to the main Salmon River on the south side. He followed the trail down the river to Campbell’s Ferry and crossed there, then went up the drainage of a side creek, going North, working his way without much more than game trails until he found the valley.

  So after a week of camping in the Grapevine Valley, it was clear something was very wrong.

  Very wrong.

  No town by the name of Grapevine Springs ever had existed here.

  Now he needed to get back to 2018 and find out why this fake had been played.

  It took him a good two weeks to make his way to the Monumental Lodge, and he stayed there until just before the first snowfall in late September before heading back to Boise and the Historical Institute.

  The institute had been started by him and Bonnie and twelve others who knew about timeline jumping to help historians in their research. Most of the historians working there at the institute knew nothing about being able to actually jump into the past of an almost identical timeline to do hands-on research.

  And since each jump into another timeline only lasted two minutes and fifteen seconds, a person could stay in that other timeline, live a full life, even die, and find themselves having only a few minutes pass in their real life.

  That was how he and Bonnie had lived so long.

  Twenty-two others now knew about the massive hidden caverns under the main institute building and had jumped back into the past of another timeline at different points. He and Bonnie and the other twelve founders of the institute were very selective in who they chose.

  When he finally reached Boise in late September, the year was 1910. He and others from 2018 had gone back into the past to 1880 and built this institute so that through all periods of time, they would have a place as a base.

  He got his horse settled in the stable behind the main mansion, patted her a goodbye, and went in through a hidden door in the stable that took him directly to the caverns under the mansion.

  He quickly dropped off the gold he had panned in the regular safe, left his saddlebags in the preparation cavern, and, with only the map from the future in his hand, jumped back to 2018 by unplugging a wire from a machine he and Bonnie had invented.

  The machine was simple. It was hooked to a crystal that looked like a glowing quartz crystal. The machine allowed a person touching it to step into the past of the timeline held in that crystal.

  Every time a decision was made, a new timeline was formed.

  An infinite number of timelines for almost all major decisions.

  By Duster simply being in the past of that timeline, he had caused millions of new timelines to be formed in the Nexus, the place where all energy, matter, and time combine into gigantic caverns full of crystals, each crystal holding a unique timeline.

  A person could go back and alter a past, just not their own past. Only the past in another timeline.

  The thousands of crystals brought to the institute in Boise from the Nexus were all timelines virtually identical to their own. And every year or so 2018 time, all the crystals that had been used were returned to the Nexus and new ones brought out to replace them.

  Now, by removing that simple wire, he had returned to 2018. August 4th, actually.

  TEN

  August 4th, 2018

  Boise, Idaho

  SOPHIE SAT IN Brooks Garden Restaurant, in the same wooden booth she and Wade had sat in last night. She figured Wade would find her easier there than anywhere in this plant-filled place.

  She had on jeans, a light blouse, and a thin dress jacket to keep the sun off her arms. She had picked a different wide-brimmed hat today, one that had a style more like the type women wore in the Old West and matched the blue in her blouse. She had found the hat in a vintage clothing store and just loved it because of its distinctive weave pattern around the top.

  She was sipping on her coffee and studying some information about the old mining town of Grapevine Springs on her tablet. She had spent a few hours earlier this morning in her office in the institute library digging up information about the town that Wade had mentioned.

  And the more she dug into it, the more she liked the idea of studying it and the families and people who had lived there. It was a perfect sample of the Old West mining towns. A contained sample because of the remote nature of the valley.

  The town had had a newspaper for ten years called the Grapevine Gazette, and also much of its news was also printed in the Grangeville paper, a larger farming town to the north.

  The society page in the town’s paper was larger than most mining town papers, which allowed her some basic start on the residents. Amazing what she could find by combining census data with the social pages and obituaries.

  She had no doubt she was going to also need to go into the valley in person and check out the old cemetery and the historical museum that existed there now.

  The town even had an unusual share of photos from a couple of the most famous western photographers of the time, Jackson and Watkins. Plus numbers of other uncredited photographs.

  Perfect for her research.

  The entire idea had her excited.

  “Morning,” Wade said as he slid into the booth across from her.

  She looked up into his wonderful green eyes and smiling face and that just made her stomach flutter like a high school girl on a first date.

  He looked to be a little flushed from his walk.

  “Getting warm out there?”

  “It’s starting to,” he said, taking a drink from a glass of water on the table.

  “You look refreshed this morning,” she said, smiling back and him. “Get some sleep?”

  “Solid for almost eight hours,” he said, shaking his head. “I never sleep that long normally. And I already have a list of things I need for my place and a list of things I want to bring up here with me from my place in LA.”

  “Wow, you got some stuff done already,” she said, laughing. “I’m impressed.”

  “Feels like I have only scratched the surface.”

  “I still feel that way and I’ve been here since May.”

  At that moment the waitress in jeans, a white blouse, a red apron and bright red hair brought them both menus and asked if Wade would like coffee by holding up the coffee pot in her hand after she refreshed Sophie’s cup.

  “Please,” Wade said.

  He took a sip almost immediately, looking almost relieved.

  For some reason the fact that Wade drank coffee black the way that she did pleased her far more than it should. She pushed the thought away of breakfasts regularly with him.

  At least for now.

  “So what are you working on?” Wade asked, indicating her tablet, “If you don’t mind telling me.”

  She laughed. “No trade secrets around here that I know of. I got interested in learning more about Grapevine Springs after you mentioned it last ni
ght.”

  “What do you think?”

  “I actually think it’s perfect for both of our areas of research,” she said. “I downloaded a bunch of pictures from it as well.”

  She slid her tablet toward him and he took it, looking at the images while she enjoyed watching his face and his wonderful hands as he slid one picture after another aside.

  Then suddenly he stopped and stared at a picture, frowning.

  He was even handsome frowning. How was that possible?

  “What did you find?” she asked.

  “You got family from the Old West?” he asked, glancing up at her and then back at the picture on her tablet.

  She actually laughed at that. “Silverman. New Jersey.” She said the state name with her deepest New Jersey accent, something she had trained out years before.

  “You sure?” he asked, still frowning and staring at a picture on her tablet.

  “My family is all from Europe, both sides, moved over in the thirties ahead of the Second World War. Not the type to go beyond sight of the Atlantic Ocean. I think it was pathological.”

  “Wow,” he said, shaking his head and sliding her tablet back to her. “You had a twin back in Grapevine Springs.”

  She looked at the picture. It was of the wooden sidewalk in front of three buildings. One was a general store, another a lawyer’s office and barbershop with the candy-cane pole and the third building was a saloon with its doors propped open.

  Five people stood on the boardwalk in a group, clearly not realizing they were having their picture taken. One was a short woman in riding clothes of the time. She was facing the camera and her face was clear under the hat.

  It did look exactly like her.

  And then Sophie noticed the hat the woman was wearing and got chills down her spine.

  Then she looked at the other four people in the group. One of the men in a long oilcloth-style coat she recognized from dozens of photos around the west. His name was Duster Kendal and he was often a town’s marshal.

  And the man standing beside him, wearing a dress shirt, dress coat, and jeans, with his back to the camera looked exactly like Wade.

  She took a deep breath and laughed.

  “That’s very strange,” she said. “Take a look at this?”

  She slid the tablet back to Wade and then reached down on the booth beside her and pulled up the hat and put it on.

  He looked at her, then down at the picture, then back at her. “Now that’s creepy. Same hat as well.”

  “Take a look at the guy beside the woman with his back to the camera,” she said.

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “That looks exactly like you from the back,” she said.

  “It does?” he asked, staring at the picture more.

  “Your hair is just like that from the back,” she said. “And besides, after watching you yesterday, I would recognize that nice butt of yours anywhere.”

  He laughed and looked up, blushing.

  And she had no doubt she was blushing as well.

  He pointed to the picture. “I have a hunch this guy’s butt is pretty bony by now.”

  “Then I guess I’ll just have to stare at yours some more.”

  With that they both laughed and she blushed even more. She had never been that forward before. No idea what had gotten into her this morning.

  Thankfully the waitress saved them from even more embarrassment by coming to take their order.

  ELEVEN

  August 4th, 2018

  Boise, Idaho

  AFTER BREAKFAST, WADE and Sophie walked back along the river to the institute library. Sophie wore her hat, the same one that was in the picture, and when he mentioned that as being weird, she suddenly stopped, letting him go a few steps ahead.

  “Yup, same butt as in the picture,” she said, smiling at him. “But nothing at all weird about that.”

  He laughed and just shook his head. He was really, really falling for this wonderful, smart woman. More than he wanted to even admit to himself.

  Around them the city seemed to be alive and there were already people floating by on the river. He was really starting to like this city and he didn’t even know that much about it. Most of that liking, he had a hunch, was because of Sophie.

  They spent two hours in the library with Sophie showing him all the details of the massive place and introducing him to some of the staff who were there to help the researchers. They all already seemed to know who he was and seemed genuinely glad to meet him.

  Feeling welcome didn’t even begin to describe all of this.

  From there they headed to the main institute building to check out a car. He had thought it would be a good idea to get a sense of Boise and Sophie had agreed on the condition that he drive. She didn’t much like driving and that was one of the reasons she hadn’t gone much past the area she could walk around the city.

  He had a hunch that driving in Boise would be a cakewalk compared to driving in LA.

  The car they checked out was identical to twenty other cars in the large garage that had been clearly converted from a barn. It was a white Cadillac SUV.

  “And they are all new this year,” Wade had said as they walked into the garage. “Does this place ever do anything cheaply?”

  “Sure doesn’t look like it, does it?” Sophie said, clearly as surprised as he was at seeing twenty brand new Cadillac SUVs just waiting to be used.

  The one they decided to take because it would be the easiest to back out had seven hundred total miles on it.

  “Never had a new car,” Sophie said, inhaling the new car smell and the smell of new leather like it was life-saving oxygen as she got in and buckled her belt.

  “Grew up poor, huh?” he asked. Then felt instantly bad about asking it in such a crass fashion.

  “Not poor,” she said. “Just working class. I got a scholarship to Harvard and got my doctorate at University of Massachusetts and liked it so much just stayed to teach and do research. Never needed a car there. How about you?”

  He seldom told anyone the truth about his background, but he felt he needed to tell Sophie and not dodge the question as he always did.

  “Parents were fairly well off from family money before them,” he said, not even glancing at her as he worked to get the car out of the large garage. “They managed to make the family money even bigger. They are divorced and when I finished my MD, they both wanted to help me, so they tossed a lot of money and property and investments my way. It seems a few of the properties I ended up with became very expensive and I made some nice money selling them last year. So I’m doing fine.”

  Sophie looked at him as they stopped in the driveway of the institute to turn onto Warm Springs Avenue. “Doing fine is what rich people say.”

  “Guilty I’m afraid,” he said, smiling at her. “Does that change the look of my butt?”

  She laughed. “Not in the slightest.”

  “Oh, good,” he said. “I was worried.”

  He felt amazingly lighter telling her about his money. Not sure why that was, but it felt great.

  For the next hour they explored the area around the downtown part of Boise, then stopped and got a quick lunch before heading to the west down a beautiful, tree-lined boulevard with old homes on both sides. The boulevard ended as the foothills started and the road went up toward the ski resort.

  He really wanted to see some of the resort in the summer and figured that up on the hill there might be a place to look at the entire valley. Turns out, there was.

  They had wound up the twisting road for fifteen minutes before he pulled over on a wide gravel area and stopped, facing out over the valley below them, leaving the car running to keep the air-conditioning on.

  “Wow,” Sophie said, “This place is beautiful.”

  He couldn’t agree more. Spread out below them was a lush, green valley full of trees and houses and businesses. In one area, the taller buildings of the downtown stuck up through the trees, but most of the buil
dings and roads were hidden by the lushness.

  They could see three major parks along the river and then the more suburban areas beyond the river and up on slight hills that stretched out toward the brown desert beyond. A freeway cut through that area and the airport was out there along the desert as well.

  The valley ended on their left not that far above where he figured the institute was, but it spread as far as they could see to the right.

  “They call this the Treasure Valley, I think,” Sophie said.

  “I can see why,” he said.

  They sat and stared for a while at the valley, trying to pick out some landmarks and get the feel of their new home. He had a good sense about this place. The air was clear, the water clean, the mountains and valleys beautiful.

  This made where he had come from in the heart of LA look very sad. It was really a hidden secret.

  After a time, they decided that their next stop would be on the other side of the city at the large old cemetery, just to get a sense of the history of the town. Cemeteries were a wonderful place for that.

  But just before he was about to put the car in reverse and get turned around on the two-lane road, Sophie said, “Hold on.”

  She unbuckled her seat belt, climbed up on her knees on the seat and reached over and kissed him.

  He was so surprised it took him a moment, but then he kissed her back.

  After a wonderful minute or so, she broke the kiss, sat back down and put her seatbelt back on.

  He was sure his face was flushed and he was breathing harder than normal.

  That kiss had been something special. Very special and he wanted to repeat it very soon.

  “There,” she said, looking forward out the window, her white skin slightly red as if she had a slight tan, “now I can say we parked and made out on our first date.”

  “This is a date?” he asked, laughing.

  “It is now that you took me up in the hills to go parking,” she said.

  Then she turned to him, smiled, and then laughed.

  All he could do was laugh along with her.

  And try to catch his breath from the kiss.