Smith's Monthly #16

by Smith, Dean Wesley

  During the evening, they had wonderful dinners together, usually both of them cooking and learning how to cook with what was available in the time.

  Then there were the wonderful nights in a big featherbed.

  The longer she spent with Jesse, the more convinced she was she wanted to spend even more time with him.

  Years more, actually.

  And in May of 1907, as they were packing to head up to Roosevelt, Jesse told her that he felt the same way.

  They managed to get up to the Monumental Lodge by May 18th through large snow banks and then down into Roosevelt two days later and settled into the big house that Duster and Bonnie had built just up the stream from the main part of Roosevelt.

  The big house was all logs, with a massive main room and three bedrooms in the back. The fireplace kept the house warm and comfortable.

  On June 2nd, they finally really went to work as Bushnell arrived.

  Jesse had given her lessons over the winter on tailing someone without being seen, and they planned on working together to see if they could spot the robber who would attempt to kill Bushnell.

  Bushnell stayed in a cabin up a side creek about a half-mile above the town. He had told them he was always killed near that cabin, usually coming or going, usually within days of getting the last medal.

  Kelli had asked Bushnell why he hadn’t tried just staying up at the Monumental Summit Lodge and going down into Roosevelt for the meeting.

  Bushnell had said that he had done exactly that. Twice. Both times he didn’t make it back up the trail to the lodge.

  Bushnell had seen them in Roosevelt right after he had arrived, nodded, but they had not talked to him as planned.

  Now it was up to them to see if they could keep him alive.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  June 19th, 1907

  Roosevelt, Idaho

  JESSE GLANCED OVER at Kelli, where she was sitting like a lady on a second story porch above a lawyer’s office fanning herself in the hot afternoon. She had on her riding clothes and he knew her horse was saddled and waiting beside the building. Even from a distance like this, she was still beautiful. Over the last year he had come to love her more than he ever thought possible.

  And he respected and admired her mind as well.

  The narrow main street of Roosevelt, Idaho, was busy with a few roughly made carts and some men on horseback headed out leading pack horses covered in supplies. But from what Duster had said, this wasn’t as bad as it used to be.

  In the high days of this mining town, the main street would get so crowded, pack trains with supplies couldn’t get through. And since no wagon could get in over the trails to this town, only rough carts made in the valley were seen.

  But now, today, the sounds of the pianos playing in the saloons echoed from the open doors up through the valley. That music filled the valley every day and night in the summer. It had become a background sound for Jesse now.

  Most of the men and the few women now in the valley were still working the mines or running other errands while the sun actually hit the valley floor.

  With the steep and high mountains on both sides of the town, the sun wasn’t a regular visitor to this valley. Even in the summer, the town got less than five hours of direct sunlight. The rest of the time the town was in a shadow as the sun lit the mountains around and above it.

  Bushnell came out of the far saloon and headed toward the Monumental Stream that ran just past the town on the left. At this time of the year, the stream wasn’t running fast enough to even pretend to do battle with the piano music.

  Bushnell was dressed in his standard dark suit, vest, tie, and dark pants. He carried his saddlebag over his shoulder like he always did and it looked heavy.

  A miner was waiting for him on a foot trail near the stream. The guy did not look dangerous at all to Jesse.

  The miner and Bushnell talked for a moment. Then they both nodded and Bushnell handed the man a small bag, more than likely coins of some sort or small gold nuggets, and the man handed Bushnell something wrapped in cloth.

  Bushnell opened it, nodded, shook the man’s hand, tucked the prize in his saddlebag, and turned and headed for his horse.

  The miner turned and went down the valley along the trail that was beside the creek, clearly having no more interest in Bushnell.

  Now Bushnell had thirty-two of the Washington Peace Medals. Thirty-one were under the general store, the last one in his bag.

  From what Jesse could tell, no one was following Bushnell at all.

  Or even paying the slightest bit of attention besides him and Kelli.

  Jesse mounted up and leisurely headed up the valley along the main road, watching for anyone that might be waiting for Bushnell.

  He never saw anyone.

  In this narrow valley, there just weren’t a lot of places to hide since all the trees near the town itself had long ago been cut down.

  So just before the side trail that led up to Bushnell’s cabin, Jesse ducked into a stand of brush and tied up his horse. Then taking his rifle, he headed up through the brush and into the small side canyon, moving as silently as he could.

  He finally reached a spot he had found ahead of time where he could see both the trail coming up and Bushnell’s cabin. He got into position, making sure he was well-hidden.

  Bushnell’s cabin was a small log cabin tucked into some tall pine, clearly built by a miner to work a mine just up the stream. But that mine was now shut down and the tunnel caved in. The cabin had been abandoned and Bushnell had told Jesse he had bought it and the mining claim years ago to use.

  He knew Bushnell would be coming up the trail and behind him Kelli would be watching to see who followed.

  Jesse took a deep breath and scanned everything again. Now was the time they had been working for.

  Why did he have a nagging doubt he was missing something and this just wasn’t going to work.

  Five minutes later, Bushnell came riding up the trail, his heavy saddlebags draped over his horse in front of him.

  Jesse watched as Bushnell got off his horse just outside his cabin, looked around with a look of almost near panic on his face, and then headed into the cabin carrying his saddlebags.

  Suddenly, a shot echoed through the narrow valley, clearly coming from the cabin.

  “Damn! Damn! Damn!” Jesse said to himself as he scrambled at a fast run toward the cabin, his rifle in his hands and ready.

  There was no back way into the cabin through the log walls, so he knew he had whoever was in there trapped.

  The door still stood open and Bushnell was sprawled on the floor just inside the door.

  A man stood over him, watching Jesse come running.

  The man’s hands were in the air and he was smiling.

  Why in the hell would the man who had just killed Bushnell be smiling?

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  June 19th, 1907

  Roosevelt, Idaho

  KELLI HEARD THE shot while she was still a few hundred yards from the cabin. She kicked her horse into a fast run and grabbed her saddle rifle at the same time.

  She came around the corner in the trail and saw Jesse moving slowly toward the open front door, his rifle drawn and pointing at someone inside the door.

  Kelli skidded her horse to a stop and jumped off at a run, cocking a shell into the chamber of her lever-action. She went to Jesse’s left to cover him as he moved closer to the door.

  “He’s not dead this time,” a voice said from inside the cabin. “Since you’re here finally. Got tired of killing the poor guy, actually, even though I know he doesn’t die.”

  Kelli glanced at Jesse who just shook his head without really taking his eyes from the man inside the cabin.

  “Come out into the daylight,” Jesse said, his voice carrying a power that Kelli had not heard before. Jesse was not lowering his rifle in the slightest.

  The man stepped out of the cabin, his hands up.

  The strange man had n
o gun that Kelli could see. But Jesse didn’t lower his gun, so she didn’t either.

  The strange man had short dark hair, wore a dark suit, dark vest, and black jeans and cowboy boots. Kelli noted that he had no hood or miner’s boots or anything that Bushnell had described.

  He saw Kelli and instead of being shocked, his eyes sort of lit up, clearly excited.

  What the hell was going on here?

  Why did he look familiar?

  And why was he excited to see her?

  The guy was clearly crazy.

  Or he had help of some sort.

  She did a quick scan of the narrow valley around them, studying the trees up the sides of the hill.

  No one else she could see, but that didn’t mean someone wasn’t there.

  “As I said,” the man said. “I didn’t kill poor old Bushnell this time. Just knocked him out so we could talk. He’ll have a headache, but he’ll be fine in a day. The gunshot was just to get your attention. I tossed the gun on the bed.”

  Kelli again scanned the area around the cabin for any help this nutcase might have.

  “So what’s your name?” Jesse asked.

  “I can only tell you that my name is Bryant. I’m from the institute and the year 2110.”

  Kelli just shook her head.

  Not two of them.

  They had been stunned to learn that Bushnell was a traveler, but now the guy that had been killing him was as well.

  And from a hundred years in the future.

  She and Jesse hadn’t told Bonnie and Duster about Bushnell being from the future because Bushnell had warned them not to. So why were they now facing another traveler?

  “I was starting to guess that something like this was happening,” Jesse said, putting his rifle down.

  “What?” Kelli asked, stunned at Jesse’s response. Her rifle was still aimed at the Bryant guy.

  “Even someone as inexperienced as Bushnell would have easily avoided the same guy from this timeline that many times,” Jesse said. “But not if it was someone from the future stalking him for some reason.”

  “Oh,” Kelli said, lowering her rifle.

  Jesse glared at the smiling face of the man named Bryant. “What the hell is your reason?”

  “I can only talk in very general terms,” the man said. “I cannot contaminate the future by telling you about it. Major rule.”

  “Fine,” Jesse said. “I understand that. Start where you can and tell us a story.”

  The man looked back at Bushnell sprawled inside the cabin, then indicated they move away from the cabin.

  They all walked down the trail about twenty paces and then stopped. Kelli kept her gun down, but ready. Jesse didn’t seem to be worried in the slightest, which she didn’t understand at all. Over the last few years he had been the most careful person she had ever met, seeing things going on around them that she had completely missed. He was seeing something here as well that told him this guy was not a threat.

  “In the early years of the crystal cavern and the institute,” Bryant said, “only historical researchers and mathematicians were involved, thus the focus was either on the math or on the past, with no thought to the future at all.”

  “I’m involved now,” Jesse said. “And I don’t do either.”

  The man nodded. “Thankfully, yes.”

  Kelli wanted him to say more, but Bryant said nothing. Just kept smiling, glancing back and forth at both of them.

  “Go on,” Kelli said.

  “I am authorized to tell you this much,” Bryant said. “In 2019 your expedition to retrieve the Season Medals from Roosevelt Lake is successful and your book and Bushnell’s book are successful.”

  “That seems to be a given,” Jesse said. “If it is allowed to happen. Which I doubt it will be. Go on.”

  Kelli glanced at Jesse. He was clearly angry and she had never really seen Jesse angry while in the past before. The last time he was this angry was when he saw the picture and thought he was being duped by his good friends.

  And she had no idea why he figured the medals being found wouldn’t be successful.

  “The medals are stolen in a robbery before they can be distributed,” Bryant said. “Six innocent people are killed in that robbery.”

  “And that robbery happening changes just about every timeline going forward to 2110, doesn’t it?” Jesse said.

  Bryant nodded. “And not in a good way.”

  “How do you know all this?” Kelli asked.

  “In one hundred years,” Bryant said, “the math on all this has advanced to the point where it makes the fantastic breakthrough math that Bonnie and Duster are doing look like kids’ algebra. And we have the computing power to trace the repercussions of any major event in history and most minor ones as well. In all major timelines.”

  “A robbery of some commemorative medals does not seem like a major event,” Jesse said.

  “I agree,” Bryant said. “The medals were accidently destroyed in the process and we could not stop that, the robbery, or the deaths that occurred from our position in the future. At least not at the point of the robbery, or even slightly before.”

  “So your world sucks because of those six deaths,” Jesse said. “And you are back here trying to stop the medals being even found.”

  Bryant nodded, now no longer smiling. “More billions die needlessly in billions of timelines because of those robbery deaths than I want to think about. In numbers of timelines, humans are basically wiped off this planet by events set in motion from those deaths during that robbery.”

  “All because we rescue some historical medals?” Kelli asked.

  She wasn’t really believing any of this, but of course, she was also standing in the Idaho mountains in 1907 and had lived for years back here while only two minutes passed in her real timeline. So belief at this point for her was a very relative term.

  Jesse just shook his head.

  “It’s not really the medals as they stand,” Bryant said. “It’s the robbery of the medals after they are recovered from Roosevelt Lake. It is the deaths that cause the problem in the future timelines. All the deaths are collateral damage to the attempt to take the medals.”

  “So because Bushnell rounds up those medals instead of leaving them alone, the ripples forward through time are disastrous,” Jesse said.

  “Exactly,” Bryant said.

  “So you are trying to do a Monumental Summit Lodge switch of timelines,” Jesse said.

  Kelli glanced at him, feeling stunned. Bonnie and Duster had told them about what happened with the lodge, but that didn’t mean she understood it. Clearly Jesse did.

  “Yes,” Bryant said simply.

  “What do you want us to do?” Jesse asked.

  “Get rid of the medals,” Bryant said, “just as I did after each time I killed Bushnell.”

  “But you getting rid of the medals did not change the problem in your time, did it?”

  “No,” Bryant said. “Because Bushnell would just repeat his process again. So we need one more thing done. When Bushnell returns to the institute after this attempt and the medals can’t be found in the lake, ban him from collecting them again.”

  “I can ban him?” Jesse asked.

  Kelli was surprised at that as well, but said nothing.

  “Just trust me and do it,” Bryant said.

  “If this works this way, how will you know?” Kelli asked.

  “I will know instantly when I return to my time,” Bryant said. “Did Bonnie and Duster explain the shimmering to you after they returned from building the Monumental Summit Lodge?”

  “They described it like a heat wave without heat that only lasted a second,” Kelli said.

  “That’s a time wave as time streams simply reset and adjust into the future. Time and matter and space are fluid and connected.”

  “And you will be able to remember the other time streams?” Kelli asked.

  “I will, and a few others who are in the institute in my time
as well.”

  A moaning came from the cabin and Bryant turned and looked worried. “I need to get out of here. Just tell him you chased me off. And please tell no one you met me. Not even Bonnie and Duster. This must remain our secret until you both die.”

  “Pretty strong request,” Jesse said.

  Bryant nodded. “I hope you do what we are asking. In all the years of the institute, this is only the third time we have adjusted time streams like this. Doing so is so against all that we believe and that the institute stands for. But this was critical and this is our only chance with this adjustment.”

  Bryant glanced back at the cabin and then faced them again.

  “It really isn’t though, is it?” Jesse asked, laughing. “You are not a good liar.”

  Bryant also laughed and the laugh sounded almost the same as Jesse’s laugh to Kelli as the sounds echoed up through the canyon.

  And now she understood why this guy looked familiar.

  “No, it isn’t,” Bryant said. “This was just the easiest, even killing poor Bushnell in there a bunch of times to get your attention. Problem was that he didn’t tell anyone what was happening until this last time, so Bonnie and Duster couldn’t help him or stop him.”

  “Seems like the institute needs a reporting system or two,” Jesse said, shaking his head.

  Bryant laughed again. “Researchers, can’t live with them, can’t live without them.”

  Sounds came from the cabin as Bushnell struggled to stand up.

  “It was wonderful meeting you both. A dream come true for me,” Bryant said.

  With that, he tapped something beside his ear and vanished without a sound.

  Jesse and Kelli just stood there, staring at each other.

  Finally Jesse sighed. “We tell no one. About him or Bushnell in there.”

  Kelli nodded as they turned toward the cabin to help Bushnell.

  “I agree,” Kelli said. “And besides, who would believe us if we told them we just met our great-great-grandson.”

  That stopped Jesse cold in his tracks and she just kept walking and laughing.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR