THIRTY-SIX

 

 

May 31st, 1887

Central Idaho Mountains

 

SOPHIE TRIED TO sleep, but without Wade beside her in their bedding and their tent, every time she closed her eyes she heard noises.

And if she actually did manage to drift off, all she saw was Wade tumbling down that slope, frantically trying to catch himself.

That vision would haunt her for the rest of her life, she had no doubt.

Finally, in the middle of the night, she got up, made sure her fire was stoked full so that it illuminated the trees and underbrush around her. She then sat there with her saddle rifle across her lap and had a little talk with herself and with Wade.

“So what would you suggest I do next, Doctor?” she asked into the air, her voice carried away in the sounds of the stream below her and the crackling of the fire. “Besides get some sleep?”

She laughed. She knew Wade would tell her to just sleep.

“Not doing that,” she said, “until I have a plan.”

The moment she said that, she knew exactly what she had to do. She had to get back to Boise, back to the institute, and pull the plug on this timeline for her and Wade.

She had to get him at her side again.

She couldn’t believe how much she had come to love him in just their short months together. She felt empty without him.

For a woman who had prided herself on her independence, it was startling how much she had come to love having Wade as her partner.

Together they were stronger.

She knew that Bonnie and Duster and Dawn and Madison spent years and decades apart, but she wasn’t ready for that yet. She wanted to spend some decades with Wade first.

It was strange how they had talked about one of them getting injured or killed. If that happened, the other was to just head to Boise and pull the plug, hit the do-over switch.

But when they had that conversation, she figured she would be the one killed or hurt, not Wade.

They had made it sound so simple.

“So I know the goal,” she said out loud into the dark, cold night air.

The steam from her breath mixed with the smoke from the fire.

She glanced around in the direction of the four horses. She couldn’t just leave three of them or two of them here. They wouldn’t survive for long at all.

So she had to take them with her as far as she could. But leading a train of packhorses she knew was a skill.

Especially over the rough terrain.

“Jersey girl, looks like you had better learn that skill quickly,” she said into the darkness.

For the next hour she sat there, watching the fire, listening to the sounds of the creek below and the creaks and moans of the forest around her.

Finally, she felt like she might be able to sleep.

She crawled into the tent and the bedding inside, putting her rifle where she could reach it quickly.

Then she said out loud, “I love you Wade.”

Two hours later, at the first hint of light at the tops of the peaks above her, she was packing the tent and the bedding and leaving all of the provisions she didn’t think she would need to take along.

She saddled up her horse and put a light load on the packhorse she had led, then got the other two horses ready, leaving Wade’s saddle and gear behind.

It was going to be everything she could do to get out of this valley.

Everything a girl raised in modern New Jersey could imagine.

She loved researching the Old West and how women of this time dealt with the hardships. It seemed she might just have a chapter in a book if she made it out of here.

She looked around at the steep mountains still in blackness above her, the dark raging water below her, and the four horses. Scared didn’t even come close to describing how she felt.

Not even close.

Terrified would be more like it.