Smith's Monthly #27 Page 9

  “I’m sure Carrie can make that happen,” Chief Craig said. “And thanks.”

  “Thank you for honoring the tragic death of a young woman by following her wishes,” Pilgrim said, “even as strange as they were.”

  The chief nodded. “I just wish you two had taken another ten minutes.”

  Pilgrim laughed.

  “Why?” Donna asked.

  “I had thirty-one minutes in the office pool.”

  “Who had twenty-one minutes?” Donna asked.

  “Let me guess,” Pilgrim said. “Daniels.”

  “Got it in one,” the chief said, laughing. He handed Donna back his empty water bottle.

  “Thanks again for the donations. Very kind of you. Now I got to go make sure Deep gets back to where she needs to go to be cremated.”

  The chief started to climb out into the warm air. Then he turned back and said, “Thanks also for keeping the blue jokes under control. The Blue family were really nice people and Deep was a wonderful woman. All gone far too soon.”

  He left and closed the door.

  Donna took a long drink of cold water, then asked, “Back to the office, Boss?”

  “Let’s go get some lunch first and let Carrie wonder for a while how we reacted to all this,” Pilgrim said, smiling. “Your choice.”

  She nodded and climbed out to move up to the driver’s seat. He had a hunch he knew exactly where they would be eating. The Blue Diamond Grill. It was close and had great sandwiches.

  He was right about that, but surprised when Donna ordered the Blue Plate Special and they actually had one. Who knew?

  Could the entire history of an Old West mining town be false?

  Did Grapevine Springs ever really exist?

  Duster Kendal wants to know the answer to that question. But to get the answer, he must turn for help from two top researchers who must risk everything, including their lives, to find the answer.

  A gripping new adventure in the Thunder Mountain series.

  GRAPEVINE SPRINGS

  A Thunder Mountain Novel

  For Kris

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Parts of this novel was published originally in a much altered form as a short story in the collection Stories from July.

  PART ONE

  A Missing Town

  ONE

  June 27th, 1909

  Grapevine Creek Valley, Idaho

  DUSTER KENDAL SAT high in his saddle, turning slowly in all directions, staring at the surrounding small valley in the warm afternoon sun. The hills were pine covered, the valley floor itself fairly wide for a mountain valley, with a gentle fall from north to south that allowed Grapevine Creek to meander back and forth from one side of the valley to the other, forming great stream banks under grass and weeds for trout to hide.

  He wore his long oilcloth brown duster over a thin long-sleeved shirt and jeans. His face and head were sheltered from the high-mountain sun by a brown cowboy hat.

  At six feet tall and with the long, flowing coat, he made an imposing figure in the saddle.

  The air around him had a hot-pine smell and only a very faint breeze even rustled the brush under the trees.

  Beautiful valley.

  Very peaceful.

  A place he might want to spend some time in.

  But it shouldn’t be.

  This was the location, he was sure of it.

  He just shook his head and rode slowly over to a stand of tall pine jutting off a ridgeline and into the valley floor, working his way through the grass. The trees would give him shade, a place to camp, and time to figure out what was happening.

  He dismounted, allowing his horse, Sandy, to graze close by while he took his canteen and a map from his saddlebag.

  He had printed the map before he left 2020 to come back to 1901. It looked like an old map of 1900, only with far more detail than most maps of this time could manage.

  He studied the map, then the valley around him.

  This was the right place.

  But he should be far from alone standing here.

  It had taken him eight years to finally get to this remote valley north of the Salmon River in Idaho, even though it had been the stated reason for his trip back into time.

  He had spent the first years helping once again to build the big log Monumental Lodge on the ridge above the mining town of Roosevelt, Idaho. He loved the two years building that lodge every timeline he helped build it in. And he loved more having it always there to stay at.

  Then, after building the lodge, he had gone to Denver to play some poker for a couple years. That had been fun. The poker games in Denver just after the turn of the century were the best anywhere in the country.

  But now he was back in Idaho, on a mission that had puzzled him and others for years, both here in the past, and in the future.

  His mission: To find Grapevine Springs, the mining town.

  He again studied the steep-walled valley as he took a drink from his canteen, letting the cool water wash down some dust.

  For the next thirty minutes he checked and double-checked every detail. He was in the right spot.

  But there was nothing here but a remote valley.

  Nothing.

  At this point in history, Grapevine Springs should be winding its mining days down, but at least five saloons and two thousand people should still be in this area right now.

  But clearly that had never happened. There were no trails into this valley, let alone a wagon road. As far as he could tell, the entire area hadn’t even had anyone go through it besides Native Americans, let alone been settled by miners.

  But it was supposed to have been.

  Grapevine Springs was a very real town in 2018. A former mining town turned tourist and ski town. The tall hill across from him was covered with snowboarders and skiers in the winter, with runs cut through the stands of pine.

  In January of 2018 he had stood on this very spot, actually, on the deck of a condo he owned, watching the skiers on the hill across the valley.

  The history of this town was well documented in a museum in the town’s center, plus in the Idaho Historical Society.

  Supposedly, a married couple named Watts, prospecting out of the Missoula region, had stumbled upon color in pans in Grapevine Creek around 1901. Good color, from all reports.

  They and a dozen silent partners out of Boise had managed to get claims in on most of the ground in this valley and had built the town of Grapevine Springs, selling off parcels of land to stores and saloons and other businesses.

  At one point, Grapevine Springs had bragged that it had over ten thousand people in it working dozens of mines up and down the valley. That had been before the gold died down and the town receded back to almost a ghost town with only a few winter residents and a couple hundred landowners coming in during the summer.

  In 2002, a group of investors, looking to build a major ski area destination resort like Sun Valley, visited the ghost town of Grapevine Springs and liked the beauty and the fantastic mountain and the winter snow, acclaimed to be some of the best and lightest in the west.

  Three years later the resort opened, and it grew every year since into a major tourist attraction for the State of Idaho.

  But in all of Duster’s years living in the past, beyond ten thousand years now from what his wife Bonnie told him, almost all of it in parts of Idaho, he had never heard of Grapevine Springs as a mining town.

  In fact, at one point or another, he had been the town sheriff or marshal for most major towns in the west.

  So it would be impossible to not know about a major mining town here, especially that late into the gold-town period.

  So Grapevine Springs flat didn’t exist in this timeline. Or any of the other thousand timelines he had visited.

  Someone, for some reason, had planted the history of Grapevine Springs in historical records.

  So it actually was a real ghost town, because in the past it had never existed.

  At least not
in this past.

  TWO

  August 3rd, 2018

  Boise, Idaho

  PROFESSOR SOPHIE SILVERMAN sat on the grass in the shade of a small poplar tree watching the people in inner tubes and on small rafts and air-mattresses float by in front of her on the Boise River.

  The river was about as wide as Broadway in New York City and the water was clear and blue and reflected the bright sun. The air near the river smelled of dampness and had a slight fish odor that was actually pleasant, reminding her of days at the beach in New Jersey.

  The ages of the people going by were from elderly to very young children and everyone seemed to be smiling and having a good time. Clearly all were very relaxed, seemingly without a care in the world. All of the younger children had on bright orange life jackets and a few of the elderly did as well.

  From large yellow numbers on the sides of the inner tubes and small rafts, it appeared most of the flotation devices were rented.

  Many of the small tubes and mattresses were tied together like a floating party and numbers of dogs sat on their own small platforms, drifting past with their people.

  She loved dogs; just hadn’t had time or felt settled enough over the last ten years to get a dog again.

  The warm afternoon sun had baked many of the rafters by the time they got to her location, and she had no doubt a few of them would be wishing they had used more suntan lotion tomorrow.

  But from where she sat up on the grassy bank, it sure seemed like fun. From what she understood, the rafters took busses from the Julia Davis Park area just down the river from her and rode up to Barber Park about six miles up the river. From there, they could rent rafts or inner tubes and drift downriver to Julia Davis Park, going over a few rapids along the way, but nothing really dangerous.

  Mostly the float was just a wonderful time to relax and get away from the world on the calm, cold water as it wandered through tree-lined banks.

  From an article she had read in the Boise Statesman newspaper, sometimes thousands of people on a nice summer weekend were floating the river at any given time. She could see why. What a wonderful way to spend a lazy summer afternoon.

  Sophie adjusted her wide-brimmed floppy hat to make sure it covered her fair skin. She had short, pitch-black hair and skin so white she swore she glowed at night. And not a blemish on her skin either, which meant she didn’t just tan, she went from white to bright red and painful if she wasn’t careful.

  That was one of the reasons she hadn’t tried the river float yet this summer. And on top of that, she wasn’t much of a swimmer, so she wanted to be with other people, but in her six months in this wonderful city, she had been so busy with her research, she just hadn’t made many friends.

  She had come to love Boise, with its warm, dry days and chilly nights. Everything about the city seemed to be beautiful, from the rafters in front of her to the mountains beyond the city in the distance.

  The city was full of trees and seemed to be more like an oasis tucked down in a valley between tall mountains on one side and barren desert on the other.

  It was a far, far cry from her home in New Jersey.

  She had been born and raised in the small town of Phillipsburg in western New Jersey. In a few places, Boise reminded her of her hometown, mostly in the historic downtown area, but compared to Boise, Phillipsburg barely filled one neighborhood.

  Both cities had rivers as well. But the Delaware River was nothing at all like the wonderful clear blue waters of the Boise River in front of her.

  And the air in Boise was dry. Scary dry, actually.

  Here on the edge of the desert, she had gone through tubes of Chapstick in just the first week, and moisturizing lotion sometimes seemed to just soak into her skin faster than she could apply it.

  Humidity was called high here when it reached thirty percent. In her home town, that would have been the driest day on record.

  But now, after four months, she had to admit, she liked the dry better. And she loved how it cooled down at night and when a storm came in, it actually cooled things off instead of making the air more sticky and hot.

  “Professor Silverman?” a deep voice said from the sidewalk on the top of the grassy slope behind her.

  She turned around and then scrambled to her feet.

  “Director Parks,” she said, moving up and standing on the edge of the wide sidewalk beside him.

  “Hope I didn’t startle you,” he said, smiling.

  Parks was the director of the Institute for Historical Research, the reason she was here in Boise. He had broad shoulders and seemed to be about thirty, with short-cut hair and a smile that seemed to always reach his eyes. He towered over her five-five height. She liked him and his wife Kerri a great deal.

  Both Sophie and Parks had on what seemed to be the standard uniform of the summer in Boise. Jeans, tennis shoes, and light shirts. She also had on over a light blouse a light jacket in case she ended up sitting in air-conditioning at one point or another. Plus it kept the sun from burning her through her blouse.

  He wasn’t wearing a hat, but he often wore a cowboy hat that made him look more like he should be riding a horse instead of directing the most prestigious research facility in the world.

  “Didn’t startle me at all,” she said, indicating the constant flow of rafters going past. “Just enjoying the show for a short time.”

  Parks smiled. “It’s great fun and very relaxing. Have you tried it yet?”

  “I want to,” she said. “Just haven’t taken the six hours needed to put on enough suntan lotion on this white skin.”

  He laughed. “Yeah, good point. The sun on that river can really burn a person faster than normal. But still worth it.”

  “I hear a voice of experience in that warning,” she said.

  “Hard earned,” he said, laughing.

  Then his face got serious. “I need your help on something if you wouldn’t mind.”

  “Anything,” she said.

  That had stunned her. Why Director Parks would need her help was beyond her. She had felt that over the last four months she had barely been noticed by anyone else at the institute. She had just spent days and nights buried in her research and often barely managed to stagger back to her condo to fall into bed with exhaustion.

  “Good,” he said. “Thanks. We have a new researcher applying for a position this afternoon. His area of expertise and study is similar to yours and we were hoping after we accepted him, you could show him the ropes and help him get settled.”

  She wasn’t sure if having another researcher close to her area of study was good or bad, so she flat decided to ask.

  She stammered out her question and Parks laughed. “Actually, not in the slightest. That’s why we figured you could help him get up to speed not only with Boise and the library and the living situation, but with some of his work. We like having more than one person working in similar areas and that’s one of the reasons we are going to accept him, not counting the fact that he is a brilliant researcher.”

  “What exactly is his focus on his research?” she asked.

  “His name is Doctor Olsen Wade,” Parks said. “He’s got an MD, but also degrees in history and teaches history at UCLA. His passion is the research of the medical condition of men in the Old West.”

  Sophie laughed. Her area was family life and women of the Old West, so the Director was right, her area and Doctor Wade’s focus were similar. And matched in many ways.

  “I’ll be glad to help him get up to speed here,” Sophie said.

  “Wonderful,” Parks said, indicating they should head toward the institute about a half-mile up the river from where they stood.

  The walk was wonderful, the conversation with the director light and about the rafters floating past.

  In all her years of college and then teaching for three years at the University of Massachusetts, she had never expected to be this happy with life in general.

  There was just something about being free t
o do her research as she wanted.

  And about Boise and the warm, dry summer days.

  THREE

  August 3rd, 2018

  Boise, Idaho

  DOCTOR OLSEN WADE stood near the door of the front reception area of the Institute of Historical Research. He had had no idea what to expect when he came to Boise for this interview, but finding the institute headquartered in a beautiful Victorian-style mansion perched on a ridgeline overlooking a river was not it.

  The building had been designed to impress from the moment it had been built in the late 1880s, and it impressed him completely.

  Warm Springs Avenue in front of the institute was lined with similar style mansions and clearly, back at the beginning of the last century, this neighborhood had been for the wealthy.

  The very wealthy.

  This front room just inside the massive wooden front door had towering ceilings, all with fine detail woodworking that would be far, far too expensive to do today. Windows filled two sides of the room. They had to be almost fifteen feet tall, framed in beautiful mahogany and old-fashioned heavy drapes pulled open to let in the light.

  A wide stone fireplace filled the corner between the windows. It was made of smooth river rock laid in a clean pattern and it extended all the way through the ceiling.

  From what he could tell, the fireplace was still used in the winter and wood was stacked neatly beside it.

  Period furniture sat in front of the fireplace on a large ornate area rug over the dark floors. A couch and two overstuffed chairs were arranged in such a way as to take advantage of the fireplace in the winter. A mahogany coffee table with claw feet sat in front of the couch with old lace coasters.

  He moved over and sat in one chair, letting his six-foot frame ease down into the soft cushions. Even ancient, the chair was comfortable and he could imagine himself spending an evening in the chair reading in front of the fire.