THIRTY

 

 

July 8th, 1887

Central Idaho Mountains

 

AFTER SIX WEEKS, Duster had a hunch something had gone horribly wrong. He had expected Sophie and Wade to maybe take five weeks, since they were new and would go slowly. But six weeks worried him.

Bonnie and Dawn had gone to San Francisco and he doubted he would see them again in this timeline. What those two found interesting about San Francisco was beyond him. He liked the more rugged, growing towns.

And, of course, the great poker games in Denver. He planned on heading that way once he had Sophie and Wade settled in for the summer in Grapevine Springs.

He checked the institute’s weather records for the next few days for the central Idaho mountains just to make sure that this year there wouldn’t be a freak summer storm up there.

Nothing.

So he packed up and headed out, following the trail that he knew they would take coming back, just in case.

The days were warm and he kept drinking and chewing on jerky as he climbed up into the mountains, a habit that he had gotten used to over the many years.

Making far better time alone, two nights later he camped at the same place that he had left Sophie and Wade over six weeks before.

The next morning he got an early start up the game trail along the stream, looking for anything unusual.

Shannon Creek was now nothing more than a regular creek, nothing like the raging torrent it had been six weeks before.

It was an hour into his ride that he saw the remains of one of the packhorses. No saddlebags were attached and wildlife had chewed at it, leaving mostly only a skeleton and a head, half-in the water.

He kept going, spotting two more horse carcasses along the way, but no sign of Sophie or Wade.

After three hours he reached the talus slope. He had warned them that this would be their first really dangerous place along the trail in.

Another horse carcass was tangled up in the rock along the edge of the talus slope just above the river and he could see the remains of a tent and some camping gear twisted in the rocks as well.

Skirting along the side of the loose talus rock, he went down toward the stream until he finally spotted what he now knew he would find. Sophie’s body, half-buried under rock, right at the edge of the slope.

Below her, just above the water line he could see a part of Wade’s hand. He didn’t need to get any closer.

He turned and studied the slope above him. They must have camped very near the edge of the slope, more than likely to build a trail, and a slide had caught them in the middle of the night.

He shook his head.

He had learned early on to camp back away from talus slopes because of the regular nature of slides.

He climbed back up the slope to his horse and turned and headed back down the trail to Boise.

It looked like he was going to find out if the institute had picked well with Sophie and Wade a little sooner than expected.

There was just no way of telling how a person would handle and recover from sudden death.