TWO

 

 

Boise, Idaho

March 14, 1913

 

Idaho Governor Frank Stunenburg dropped down out of the passenger seat of the Model T. He stood thin and tall, almost too tall for a westerner. He had sharp, dark eyes and a smile that disarmed even his most staunch detractors. He brushed the dust off his well-worn suit and turned back to retrieve a package from beside the seat that contained material his wife had asked him to pick up. “Thanks, John,” he yelled to the Attorney General over the loud sputtering of the engine. “Going to have to get me one of these since they built the Governor’s mansion way out here.”

“That you are, Frank.” John waved and swung the Model T around and started it bumping down the dirt road back toward the center of town. The Governor watched, thinking that sometimes he wished things weren’t moving so fast. He enjoyed horses and always had. Riding in those automobiles was hard on the kidneys. But technology was moving fast. Too fast. And when the world heard about the discovery under that mountain outside of Moscow, it would move even faster.

He shook his head. He still wasn’t going to believe what they had told him until he got up there and took a look for himself.

He sighed. It had been a hard day all the way around. Actually a hard month, with the union mining problems up North. He wished like hell they could have just included that part of the state in the Montana territory. But they hadn’t. Back East it had all been political compromise with no attention to how difficult it was to move from the southern part of Idaho to the northern.

So as Governor he was stuck with the unions and the problems and all the killing going on in a place that took five days during the summer to get to and was impossible to travel to in the winter. Somehow the killing and the union had to be stopped. But no one seemed to know just how to do it. He had come down hard anti-union and that stance had divided the legislature in Boise. A fist-fight had even broken out yesterday on the House floor.

He could hardly wait to see what the legislators would do with the Moscow discovery.

Frank looked up at the not completely finished mansion and the young trees that surrounded it. It felt good to be home, even though they had only lived here a short time. Someday he knew the new mansion would be a place where Idaho governors would be proud to live. But it too had caused a huge amount of resentment between the people in the north and the government in Boise in the south. Northerners were still fuming over the theft of the state seal from the northern city of Lewiston and the government’s move to Boise. It had been a midnight raid and a three day non-stop ride over twenty years ago. But it wasn’t anywhere near forgotten.

Between the Moscow discovery, the seat of government and the union problems in the northern mines, he would be lucky to keep the young state in one piece over the next few years.

A new white fence ran across the front of the mansion and down the left side. A stream and a grove of maple trees bordered the right side. It was a beautiful setting above the growing main city. The government planners had been right to build it here. He was proud to be its first resident.

Frank hefted the package and started for the front gate. For the last month the gate had stood wide open, held that way by a large rock. But now it was closed. Frank thought nothing of it.

He switched his wife’s package to his left hand, flipped the latch up on the gate, and pulled.

The explosion sent most of the Governor of Idaho flying back into the middle of the road and left a crater the size of a house in front of the new governor’s mansion.