Excerpt

PROLOGUE

August 17th, 2018

Boise, Idaho

"You ever hear of a man by the name of Tombstone Dan?" Dawn Edwards asked Duster Kendal.

The question sort of echoed around the big underground rock cavern under the Institute for Historical Research. The flat floor of the cavern was full of dozens of comfortable couches and chair groupings, a large number in front of a large stone fireplace against one wall. Everything was cloth and in brown tones, including the area rugs under some of the chairs and coffee tables.

Three were numbers of reading lights and fake plants around each sitting area, trying to give it a feeling of home. It was designed to be about as comfortable for a lot of people as a large, high-ceilinged rock cavern could be.

Right now the cavern smelled of chicken soup and fresh bread, a combination that made Dawn instantly hungry.

The cavern had been designed so that numbers of group conversations could go on at the same time and was often called the "living room" of the complex. It most certainly worked as the center of the place and Dawn always felt at home when she entered the big room.

Duster and Bonnie Kendal sat at a large kitchen counter that ran for almost twenty paces along one wall. The counter had enough stools that it could sit two-dozen people, although Dawn had never seen more than five or six ever sitting at that massive thing.

On the other side of the counter, built into one rock wall, was a full kitchen with a number of stoves and three different fridges and freezers stretched along the length. The cavern could hold a hundred people comfortably and the kitchen was designed to serve that many with just as much ease. It had all been designed to last for hundreds of years in the future. And every few years the appliances and furniture were updated.

Right now only about twenty-six people in the entire world even knew of the cavern or that the entire underground complex even existed in the center of Boise, Idaho. The Institute added a few researchers and scientists every year, but not near enough to fill this large space for a century or more.

"Colorful name," Duster said, shaking his head at Dawn's question about Tombstone Dan.

Usually Duster wore a long, dark brown oilcloth coat and a cowboy hat and in many timelines in the Old West he was known as Marshal Duster Kendal. But this afternoon in the cavern living area, he only wore jeans, cowboy boots, and a modern dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up.

He was sipping on a bowl of chicken soup and had a partially finished turkey sandwich on a plate beside his soup.

Beside him, Bonnie, his wife, had her long brown hair down and had on a tan silk blouse and jeans and tennis shoes. She had a finished bowl of soup in front of her.

The two looked perfectly normal, even though they were the two smartest minds on the planet, especially in mathematics. Because of discovering how to jump to other timelines, they both had lived for more thousands of years than Dawn wanted to think about.

Dawn had actually been alive for more thousands of years now than she wanted to think about. After the first thousand she had given up counting.

Even as long as they'd lived, all of them looked like they were in their early thirties.

Dawn had on a blue silk blouse and jeans and tennis shoes and had her long hair tied back. She and her husband Madison had been the first two historical researchers Bonnie and Duster had ever allowed to go back in time in another timeline. Since then the four of them had built the Historical Institute and pretty much ran things, even though Director Parks actually ran the day-to-day happenings of the Institute.

Bonnie also shook her head at the question about knowing a Tombstone Dan and went to working on her ham sandwich.

Dawn went around to the fridge and got a bottle of water. She had just come in from the Institute's main library in downtown Boise and the August sun had been warm. The comfortable and consistently slightly cool temperature of the cavern felt wonderful.

This entire crazy research on this one name had her going nuts. She had spent hundreds of years in different timelines living in Roosevelt, Idaho during the nine years it was alive, doing research on a number of books. She was considered the expert on the town that had existed and was now under a lake. She thought she knew everything about that small mining boomtown there was to know.

It seems she was wrong.

"Soup still on the stove," Bonnie said.

"Too hot," Dawn said, laughing. "You two do know it's August out there."

"Soup is good anytime of the year," Duster said.

Bonnie pointed at him and nodded her agreement.

Dawn went back to the fridge and got out some cold ham and a bottle of Dijon mustard. Then got two wonderful-smelling pieces of fresh bread from an open loaf on the counter and started to make herself a sandwich.

"So who is this Tombstone Dan guy?" Duster asked as he finished his soup and went back to working on his sandwich.

"Supposedly," Dawn said, looking around at Bonnie and Duster, "he owned all six of the major saloons in Roosevelt along Main Street."

Both Bonnie and Duster's heads snapped up to look at her.

Dawn laughed. Both of them had looks of total shock and disbelief on their faces.

Just as she had done, they also had lived many, many times in that old mining town of Roosevelt, Idaho. And in 1902, the four of them had built the huge Monumental Lodge above the town of Roosevelt.

Nothing should have surprised any of them about the mining town of Roosevelt and that entire Monumental Valley. And that's what was driving Dawn crazy. A very, very hidden bank record showed that a man going by the name of Tombstone Dan owned all the saloons.

"From what little I can find, he might have been a professional gambler, poker only," Dawn said, "who came to Roosevelt right at the start of the town, built the different saloons, brought in the pianos, and spent his nights all summer playing poker supposedly to help support his saloons. But that last part is just me making a bad guess. I honestly have no idea. None."

"Got a picture of this guy?" Duster asked.

Dawn shook her head. "Nothing. He appeared in some Roosevelt records and vanished when the town went under water."

"Do you have any information at all about him?" Bonnie asked.

"Nothing at all past what I just told you," Dawn said. "That's what is driving me so crazy."

"I could have sworn that those saloons were owned by three different men and a consortium out of Boise," Duster said.

"That is what we were supposed to believe," Dawn said, "but the evidence I have is pretty conclusive. He was behind the consortium and owned and built all six of the major saloons. The three men we know about just ran the places."

"What were the poker games like in them?" Bonnie asked Duster.

Dawn wanted to ask him the same thing, now. In her historical books about the town, she hadn't dealt at all with anything that went on in the saloons. Her interests had been in the people who lived in that harsh valley and survived and sometimes made a living out of what they did.

"Standard early 1900s poker games," Duster said, the remainder of his sandwich now forgotten. "No one stood out as a professional besides Pete from California in the summer of 1904, but he only stayed a few months and left."

"So how did this owner of the saloons get the nickname Tombstone Dan?" Bonnie asked. "Any information about that?"

"I'm not so sure if that was a nickname," Dawn said. "I found legal documents in two Boise bank records with that name as a signature."

"Okay, now that is really, really weird," Duster said. "Sure he's not one of us from a future time?"

Dawn shook her head. "I checked with Director Parks and no one by that name is a researcher that hasn't started on board yet. Or is a researcher who will start in the next hundred years, at least that we know of. But since we don't have a picture and a real name, Director Parks can't be sure."

"Really odd," Bonnie said.

"Driving me crazy for the last month," Dawn said. "So if you two don't mind, I'm bringing in some help on the research. The woman I'm thinking of might end up being a candidate for the cavern here."

"That good, huh?" Bonnie asked, standing and picking up her bowl and empty sandwich plate and carrying it around the end of the bar toward the dishwasher.

"Professor Margaret Lund from the University of Wisconsin," Dawn said.

"She has been on our list," Bonnie said.

The four of them always had a list going of major researchers from around the world who could benefit from what the Institute did. Most of the time they invited the researchers to just come and research, all expenses paid, without ever knowing about the caverns under the Institute or about traveling into the past of other timelines.

Dawn nodded. "She loves forensic historical research through old files. Did her dissertation on the techniques of forensic historical research."

"Wow," Duster said. "No wonder she's been on our list."

Dawn nodded. "If anyone can find evidence of who this Tombstone Dan is or was or what even happened to him, Professor Lund should be able to do it."

"Keep us informed," Duster said.

"Looking forward to meeting her," Bonnie said.

Duster shook his head. "Just when you think you know every little detail about a historical place, something like this comes up."

"I just can't believe we never heard of a man going by Tombstone Dan in that valley," Dawn said. "The name alone would have made him memorable."

And since she and Madison had lived hundreds of lifetimes in the Monumental Lodge above the valley and on the main trail in and out of the place, not knowing someone in the valley seemed impossible. It was enough to drive a historian like her crazy.

"If he played poker in those casinos," Duster said, "I'll recognize him when I see him. You want me to go back and try to see if I can spot him?"

Dawn shook her head. "Not yet, unless you are planning a trip back. I think our best chance is Professor Lund. And this is a great excuse to get her on board."

Both Bonnie and Duster nodded.

If Professor Lund was as good as people said she was, Tombstone Dan would soon be revealed.

So, as Dawn finished her sandwich, she and Bonnie and Duster worked to figure out a way to get Professor Lund to join them.

Dawn had a hunch that wasn't going to be an easy task.