Smith's Monthly #4

by Smith, Dean Wesley

  “What caused this?” Ryan asked as he leaned over April to look out her window at the stacked lumber that just seemed to go on and on and on through the trees. Some trees were growing out of the stacked lumber and the top layer of every stack looked like it had rotted mostly away.

  “That,” Duster said, as they rounded another corner.

  On the other side of the road was a large ruin tucked fairly close to one of the steep rocky slopes. One wall of the ruin stuck up into the air at least two stories and was leaning badly. April doubted it would last more than a few more hard winters.

  “Oh, my,” Bonnie said, shaking her head and staring at the ruin.

  “That was supposed to be a gold mill,” Madison said. “All this wood was cut for the boilers to run the mill, but the mine on the other side of the valley played out before the mill got going. The mill equipment was never even hauled in.”

  April just felt shocked more than anything else. She loved hiking, but in Colorado, she seldom had destinations to hike to. It was clear that in Idaho, history was very much a destination that could be the focus of her hikes.

  She loved that idea. Flat loved it. It was one thing to take a trail that thousands had taken to a summit of a small peak, but it was another thing to visit a forgotten part of history that few people ever saw.

  She had a lot of research and exploring to do, and that just exited her more than she wanted to admit.

  And from the way Ryan was reacting, he might want to join her on a few of those hikes.

  And she liked that idea more than she wanted to let herself think about. She was completely falling for this architect she was going to have to work with.

  Duster kept driving and they passed a few old log cabins, most just ruins, one with the stream running under and through part of it. None of them had doors or windows.

  All four of the people in front of her mostly just shook their heads and stayed silent, as if they were in a very sacred place.

  Finally, Duster pulled the car off to one side and shut it off. The road crossed the big stream on a bridge and headed up a narrow side valley.

  “We walk from here,” Duster said.

  “About a mile to the lake,” Dawn said.

  April looked at Ryan after they had climbed out into the still cool air. The sun was almost to the valley floor here at this wide area. He looked excited about all this.

  In fact, she and Ryan were the two most excited people in the group. The rest alternated between stoic silence and mumbled comments as they shook their heads.

  “Everyone grab a bottle of water,” Dawn said as they climbed out. “And a few power bars and such.” She looked at Ryan and April. “I know you are both experienced hikers, but this is over seven thousand feet, so stay hydrated and move slowly.”

  Both Ryan and April nodded. Their four hosts continued to be subdued, but she felt so excited at the idea of a hike in this magical valley, she almost wanted to jump up and down.

  As they started off along the left side of the valley on a trail cut into the rocks, Madison glanced around with a puzzled look on his face.

  “There should be a lot of ruins here,” he said. “This doesn’t look right.”

  Dawn stopped and pointed out across the valley floor to where the road went up a side canyon. “This was the high water mark of the lake. Monumental Creek has filled in this area with silt almost ten feet deep over the last hundred plus years. Everything that was left is covered or washed away.”

  “Oh,” Madison said, shaking his head.

  April could tell he was very, very sad about this, and Bonnie and Duster had gone stone silent.

  Dawn led the way along the trail with Madison following, then April and Ryan, followed by Bonnie and Duster.

  After a short quarter mile, the valley floor below them turned to a sort of marsh. April felt like she might get whiplash in her neck, she was moving it so much to watch where she stepped while at the same time trying not to miss anything around her.

  “The lake was almost fifteen feet deep up here,” Madison said. “Now nothing more than a meadow.”

  “All of this area will be a meadow in another hundred years,” Duster said, his voice low and very sad.

  Then, before April realized what had happened, they came around a small point in the trail and there, spread out from side-to-side in the valley, was a blue-water lake, the color so intense it seemed to have a light of its own.

  Monumental Creek poured dirty brown water into one side of it, but that dirt remained a cloud around the mouth of the stream only.

  “Oh, God,” Duster said.

  Bonnie gave a sort of sobbing choke and said nothing.

  April wanted to turn around and look at their faces, but decided she had better not.

  The trail split, one branch leading on along the lake on the left, the other led down onto what looked like a wide sandy area on the top end of the lake.

  A ridgeline covered in trees came in across the valley below, blocking the lake.

  April couldn’t see the mudslide until Ryan, beside her, said, “See the mudslide with a hundred years growth of trees on it?”

  And he pointed to the ridgeline.

  “That slide was over a hundred and fifty feet tall when it came in across the valley,” Madison said.

  “It took almost three days to back the water up over the town,” Dawn said.

  April just couldn’t believe she was standing looking at a disaster that had destroyed an entire town and was then just forgotten by history.

  “How many people lived in Roosevelt?” Ryan asked.

  “During the prime years in the summer,” Dawn said, “there were over seven thousand people in this town and lower valley.”

  April was again shocked. “Seven thousand in this narrow valley?”

  Both Dawn and Madison nodded.

  “It was a pretty wild place. And noisy,” Madison said. “The music from the pianos seemed to echo everywhere.”

  “In early May,” Dawn said, “when the town was destroyed, less than two hundred actually lived here. Most of the residents had left for the winter and had not gotten back in over the passes yet.”

  “And most of the mines were played out,” Madison said. “So very few people bothered to came back without Roosevelt here to draw them.”

  Dawn pointed down into the clear water in front of April. “Main Street was there running down the valley, and those building foundations you can see there were a general store. A very special general store.”

  April was amazed. She could still see ruins of buildings and foundations and the outline of a street down through the crystal clear water.

  All she could do was stare.

  CHAPTER NINE

  May 24, 2015

  FOR THE NEXT TWO HOURS they explored the area around the lake. The entire place was amazing. Ryan had a very hard time imaging a town of seven thousand tucked in this tight, steep-walled valley.

  And Dawn and Madison gave such vivid descriptions of what the place was like, he was starting to understand why they were such acclaimed historians.

  After only a half hour, both Bonnie and Duster said they were going back to the car. Dawn said they would be another two hours and Duster had said to not worry about it.

  It was clear to Ryan that the lake and the entire setting really bothered Duster and Bonnie for some reason.

  So without Bonnie and Duster, the four of them went along the trail above the lake on the left side. The trail dead-ended into what looked like a huge logjam where the lake flowed over and around the ridge that had been the huge mudslide. But as Ryan got close to it, he realized the logs weren’t just trees jammed in there. They were the logs from buildings, from when the town’s buildings broke apart.

  Every log looked like a giant Tinker Toy stacked like that. Every notch in every log was clearly hand-cut and a few of the logs still had lines of chinking along them.

  And the logjam went down a good fifty feet into the crystal blue
water.

  Ryan climbed out onto the logjam and just stood staring down, realizing in a very real way that he was standing on the ruins of an entire town. It was impossible to not feel the power and the history.

  And the tragedy.

  April stood beside him for a moment on one log, staring down into the water through the pile, shaking her head.

  Then silently they moved on.

  From there they wandered in through the forest over the ridge that was the top of a slide, finding the remains of one log cabin crushed under rocks on the far side.

  “Steven’s cabin,” Madison said as they passed it. “It used to be almost a hundred feet up on the side of the hill above the town.”

  “The slide came down this side canyon along Mule Creek,” Dawn said, pointing to the canyon on the right of the lake. “It started up the canyon about two miles.”

  “Just below the Dewey Mine area,” Madison said. “It just kept coming and kept piling up and up. It was raining hard those two days it took this to build.”

  “Wow,” was all Ryan could think to say.

  Beside him April said nothing. But he could tell from her bright eyes and look that she was as excited as he was to be standing there. She clearly loved the history as much as he did.

  From the top of the big mudslide, they went down the main valley.

  “If we follow this for about two miles we’ll find the ruins of the town Thunder Mountain,” Dawn said. “Nothing much left there now. It wasn’t very big in its prime because of Roosevelt being so close.”

  They walked for about a quarter of a mile before the trail passed an old cemetery, roped off and with a metal plaque attached to a large stone.

  The rope was old and gray and weathered and looked like it would need to be replaced in another winter or two. There were a number of depressions in the hillside where graves had caved in and only a few weathered pieces of wood to mark a couple of depressions. Trees and brush had been cleared back from the square not much bigger than a small house.

  About a hundred feet below the cemetery, Monumental Creek crashed over rocks. Besides that sound, the forest and the valley were deathly silent.

  Dawn knelt and dusted off the pine needles from the plaque while Madison stopped a few feet back, indicating that Ryan and April should do the same thing.

  The intense silence of the day overwhelmed them there in the trees. To Ryan it felt like a pressure pushing down on them. The history of old western cemeteries was always amazing.

  Ryan watched as Dawn stayed in front of the plaque for almost a minute before standing and smiling at Madison and then going and kissing him.

  Ryan so wanted to ask what that was all about, but he had no idea how to do that. And April just looked at him with a puzzled frown and didn’t say anything either.

  Dawn and Madison, hand-in-hand stepped past the small cemetery and stopped about ten steps up the trail, giving room on the trail for Ryan and April to move up beside the stone.

  The plaque called the little roped-off area of the hillside the “Roosevelt Cemetery.” There were supposed to be thirteen known buried in the small area, and ten of the names were on the plaque. The plaque had been donated by The Pioneers of Thunder Mountain Gold Rush.

  April bent down and pointed to one name. There was no first name, but a last name of Rogers. Same as Madison’s last name.

  “You have a relative buried here?” Ryan asked.

  “In a way,” Madison said, smiling.

  “Tell them the truth,” Dawn said. “We said we would do that, remember?”

  “They wouldn’t believe it,” Madison said. “I wouldn’t have before all this. I sometimes still don’t.”

  Dawn shook her head and stepped away from Madison toward April and Ryan. “I know you don’t believe all of us talking about different timelines.”

  “We accept that you do,” Ryan said, and out of the corner of his eye, he could see April nod.

  “Fair enough,” Dawn said. “Thank you.”

  Ryan only nodded.

  “One of the main reasons we want to build that hotel on that ridge in 1900 is because we have heard about the grand lodge that was built there,” Madison said, moving up beside Dawn on the trail. “But we have never found evidence of it ever being built in all the different timelines we have visited.”

  Ryan shook his head. “If you are actually in different timelines, how can something that happened in one and not happen in another cross over?”

  “Duster and Bonnie, with all their math skills,” Dawn said, “have been working on that very question now for three years real time and upwards of a thousand years in their varied lifetimes in different timelines.”

  Ryan was about to ask about that comment, but Dawn waved him off. “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “Remember, we told you that we could live fifty or more years in another timeline, but when we jump back here to our original timeline, we only have been gone two minutes and fifteen seconds. Every time, no matter what happens in the other timeline.”

  “Duster or Bonnie could explain the rules of conservation of time and matter and energy,” Madison said. “It makes my head hurt.”

  Dawn nodded and then turned and pointed at the plaque before Ryan could ask another question. “I fell in love with this magical valley the first time I came up here. And something about that plaque and this cemetery drew me to it.”

  She then pointed to a depression in the ground right near the rock and just inside the rope. “I buried Madison there in another timeline four months after we met and fell in love. On our first trip to another timeline.”

  Ryan glanced at the depression, then at Madison who just shrugged. “I don’t remember. I got hit by a falling rock, broke a leg, and died before Duster or Bonnie or Dawn could get us back to this timeline. It seems you can die in another timeline and still be alive in this one.”

  Ryan had no idea what to think of that statement at all.

  “The Rogers name on that plaque is a timeline echo,” Dawn said. “When we got back after that first trip, both of us spent a lot of time researching that name on that plaque. We could find no evidence at all of anyone in this timeline by the name of Rogers even living in Roosevelt or the surrounding area.”

  Madison grinned. “That name there has been driving Bonnie and Duster crazy trying to understand the echoes that cross between timelines. Even with all their higher math skills, they can’t figure it out and they seem to think it’s critically important to figure it out.”

  Beside Ryan, April was just shaking her head.

  Ryan turned to Dawn and Madison. “Were there always rumors of the big lodge up on that ridge?”

  “Always,” Dawn said and Madison nodded. “We had specialists come up here with equipment and take soundings and search the entire ridgeline. Nothing was ever built up there. And there were never plans in the works by anyone that we could find to do the project.”

  “So we want to build the lodge to live in,” Madison said. “Bonnie and Duster want to build it to try to get some answers on how there can be echoes across timelines.”

  Ryan just stood there staring at Madison and Dawn and at the grave where Dawn said she buried Madison in another timeline.

  “Did you take a sounding of that grave?” he finally asked.

  “We did,” Madison said, nodding.

  “There’s no one down there,” Dawn said. “The grave and the name on the plaque are timeline echoes. Just as is the lodge we are about to build in another timeline.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  May 24, 2015

  APRIL DIDN’T SAY MUCH after the conversation near the cemetery. The craziness of the entire conversation had just depressed her and she wasn’t sure why.

  She just wanted to enjoy the beautiful day hiking in a very interesting place with a guy she was attracted to. Very, very attracted to, actually.

  As they went back to the lake, Ryan kept asking all sorts of questions about the valley and eventually the history lesso
ns Dawn and Madison were giving about the old town cheered her right up.

  As they reached the sandy area near the top of the lake, Madison said, “Would you two mind going on back to the car on your own? Dawn and I want to sit for a moment where our house is built every time we come in here.”

  “Sure, no problem,” Ryan said and smiled at April. “You want to lead or shall I?”

  She almost said that he should so she could stare at his great butt, but managed to just say that he could.

  They climbed back up the slight incline to the trail and headed away from the lake.

  At the corner, before the lake disappeared behind them, Ryan stopped and turned and looked back.

  April followed his gaze to get one more look at the lake that covered the old mining town.

  Dawn and Madison had climbed up onto the trail as well and were sitting about a hundred paces up the valley from the edge of the water, holding hands.

  “They really love this place,” Ryan said.

  “And each other,” April said.

  She looked up at Ryan and held his intense gaze for a few moments. She hadn’t realized just how wonderful his hazel eyes were. In this bright mountain sunlight they almost seemed an intense green. And he was fantastically handsome.

  And smart. There was a real brain behind that handsome face.

  Finally he smiled at her and said, “Come on. Let’s give them some privacy.”

  He turned and started ahead of her along the narrow trail.

  “This is really some valley, isn’t it?” he asked after about a hundred paces.

  “This entire central Idaho area is spectacular,” she said, looking up at the tall mountains towering over them. Below them, Monumental Creek was winding its way through the marshland, continuing to fill in more and more of the lake.

  “I think,” she said, “I could spend my entire life hiking it and never see it all or grow tired.”

  “As could I,” Ryan said, glancing back and smiling at her.

  Damn she was really, really falling for this brilliant architect. How was that even possible? Especially with all the weirdness going on around them.