FORTY

 

 

September 19th, 1887

Grapevine Springs, Idaho

 

SOPHIE COULDN’T REMEMBER being so happy for a summer before. She worked until her legs and back and hands hurt, then spent one hour each night detailing out the events of the day in her research journal.

By the end of the first two months, three women besides her were living in the valley and from her and Wade’s best guess, a good two hundred miners and support people were also there. Tents dotted the landscape as far as they could see now.

The weather during the summer held nice and even a few days of rain seemed welcome.

In late August, Duster and another crew of men arrived to build her and Wade a home. Duster had laid out the plan for them and it looked wonderful, but the day Duster showed them the house plan had been one of those days where people were lined up in the store and Wade was needed in an emergency a half-mile above the town site.

So as their home went up very quickly, they both tried to pay attention, but they just knew it looked beautiful, tucked onto a flat shelf about forty feet above the valley floor.

It wasn’t until Bonnie and Dawn arrived with two wagons full of furniture that Sophie actually made herself stop work and go look.

She and Wade left a friend in charge of the store and went to their new home.

It was only a ten-minute walk from the store up the valley, but as she took the walk, holding Wade’s hand, she got more and more excited seeing the beautiful log home sitting there majestically.

All of the furniture, including a massive feather bed, had been unloaded from the wagons by the time they arrived and the wagons and horses were headed back toward the stables.

Bonnie, Duster, and Dawn stood in front of the house, smiling, waiting for them to arrive.

The house was made of logs, tightly fitted, with shakes on the roof. A large porch wrapped around the front, looking out over the valley, and a large window was cut into the front wall.

She had no idea how that glass window had made it up here, but it had.

She walked along the porch with Wade, listening to the sounds of the valley and the piano from the downtown area. She could easily imagine herself sitting out here in the evenings.

It was wonderful.

As they entered through the front door, a large living room with furniture and a large couch was on the right in front of a large stone fireplace.

On the left was a wonderful kitchen with a wood stove, a sink, and what looked like an icebox. And on one side of the kitchen was a large wooden table.

She had no doubt she and Wade would spend a lot of time at that table.

“The kitchen can easily add in running water,” Duster said, “but a little early for that in time at the moment. Same with the bathroom plumbing.”

Down a center hallway was a room on the right and two smaller rooms on the left. The large room on the right was a huge master bedroom with the large feather bed and a bathroom off of it with a huge tub and washbasin.

The other two rooms had desks in them and lots of shelves, at the moment all empty.

Sophie loved the place. Just loved it.

Wade hugged her. He was smiling as wide as she must have been.

“I think we have a home,” Wade said.

“I know we do,” Sophie said, hugging him back. “This is heaven.”

“Got some special features,” Duster said, indicating that they should follow him to the end of the hall and out back. There was a covered area out back that was for firewood to stay out of the rain and snow on the left and an outhouse tucked against the right and built like it was part of the building.

Directly across from the back on a wood walkway was a large door that went into what looked like a building dug into the hillside.

Duster pointed off to the right. “We brought you in water to a pool there from upstream. But until you can dig a well, make sure you boil the water.”

Sophie nodded. That pool would be a lot easier to get water from than buckets down at the stream. And in the winter they could use snow melt just fine.

“This would be a standard meat and fruit cellar,” Bonnie said, opening the door that went into the building dug into the hill.

Sophie was impressed. There was more than enough shelving to hold supplies for a very long time.

Duster moved over and clicked a hidden latch on one shelf and it swung inward, showing another room behind the shelf.

“Anything from the future you bring in needs to be kept back here,” he said. “The two rooms on the left have no windows and have some pretty secure locks, and a generator could be set up in here to charge batteries for laptops and such to work on in those two rooms.”

“Wow, just wow,” Sophie said.

Wade shook Duster’s hand and Sophie hugged first Bonnie, then Dawn.

“How can we ever thank you,” Sophie asked.

“We built it for you in this timeline,” Duster said. “In other timelines, it will be up to you.”

Sophie loved the sound of that.

Other timelines, other lifetimes.

That sounded wonderful, just wonderful.

So that evening, she and Dawn cooked the five of them a wonderful venison steak dinner with grilled potatoes and fresh corn brought in from a Grangeville area farm.

And the next morning Bonnie, Duster, and Dawn headed down the valley. Duster had left them weather data for the next ten years and in three days the first snow would hit.

And in a week that wagon trail into Grapevine Springs would be rough going.

Sophie and Wade were about to live their first winter in their new home town.

In their new home.

And Sophie was excited.

As long as she could do it with Wade at her side, that was all that mattered. They would face the future together.

Face all of the futures, actually.