THIRTY-FIVE

 

 

May 30th, 1887

Central Idaho Mountains

 

THE SCRAMBLED UP the steep slope the next day high enough to see beyond the cliff and into part of the valley beyond. Sophie instantly knew she would love it. She could feel that.

“That’s a beautiful place,” Wade said, standing just below her and staring into the meadows and trees of the valley beyond.

“Want to live some lifetimes with me there?” Sophie asked, looking down at him, something she seldom did since he was a lot taller than she was.

He looked up at her with those wonderful green eyes. “I’m looking forward to every lifetime with you.”

Damn he sure knew the right thing to say at exactly the right time.

They stood there for a few moments staring at their future home, then started back down the steep, rocky slow.

That’s when things turned sour once again.

Wade was looking up at her more than he was watching his own footing and suddenly there was a rattling.

Nasty, angry rattling that could be heard over the sounds of the water.

She froze.

Wade froze.

He slowly turned to look down at where his boot was within a half foot of a rattlesnake on a wide, flat rock.

The snake was curled and clearly angry.

Sophie was stunned that Wade hadn’t stepped on the snake.

She wasn’t that afraid of snakes and they had killed a couple of snakes already on this trip. But on the steep slope, there was nowhere for Wade to go quickly.

Her only thought was that the snake would strike at his boot. She knew rattlesnake bites were not deadly, but they sure made a person sick.

Wade slowly tried to move his boot away.

Slowly.

But the snake lunged and struck his pant leg, right above the top of the boot.

“Shit!” Wade said, jumping backward.

And when he did, he lost his footing on the steep rock slope.

He went over backwards before he had a chance to even try to catch himself.

Sophie watched, frozen, with nothing she could do to help him.

It was like a nightmare movie in slow motion.

He tumbled and tumbled.

Head over heels, going backwards.

He tried to grab anything he could to slow his momentum.

Nothing helped.

Then he smashed his back and head into a rock so hard, she heard the crack over the sounds of the stream.

He went limp at that point.

With three more tumbles, he hit the rough, angry water.

“Wade!” she screamed, moving as quickly as she could around the snake and down the hill.

By the time she got down to the game trail, his body was only flashing bits of blue color of his coat in the bouncing water.

A moment later he vanished downstream.

He didn’t seem to be moving at all.

Or fighting to get out of the water.

As fast as she dared, she ran along beside the stream, checking every hundred paces for any sign of him.

She did that for the next two hours, all the way back to one of the small talus slopes before she gave up and turned back toward where they had camped, still checking the banks along the way.

By the time she got back to their camp she knew one fact for certain.

Wade was dead.

There was no doubt at all.

Wade was dead.

In this timeline.

At this point in history.

But she had to believe that he wouldn’t be dead, that he would be standing beside her in the cavern in 1902.

And that when she went back and unhooked that wire from the box they had been touching, she could hold him and kiss him again.

She had to know that.

She had to believe that. She couldn’t allow herself to believe anything else.

He was only dead in this timeline.

Just as they had both died in the other timeline.

She refused to let herself even grieve. They had talked about something like this happening to one or the other. The only plan they had was to get back to the institute.

Now she was alone in a wilderness that had already killed her once as well.

She had wanted to know how women of the west handled hardship. It seemed she was about to get a very real lesson.