The Time Portal 2: Escape in Time (16 page)

“Sam,” he called out. “Look. Look at this. Can you believe this on the floor?”

“What?” she asked as she walked toward him.

“There,” he said, pointing to the floor as he reached around his back and pulled out the box while her head was down, intently studying the floor.

He dropped to one knee, looked up at her and said, “Samantha Coulter, I have loved you from the moment you sang that silly song in my hospital room. Will you marry me?”

Sam covered her mouth as she gasped out loud and tears flowed down her face.

“I hate you,” she said as she cried. “But I love you. And yes, yes. The answer is yes.”

The room with the security guard, the gemologist, the saleswoman and a half dozen other customers broke into thunderous applause and whistles as there they stood in Tiffany’s, the legendary jewelers on Fifth Avenue and Fifty-Seventh Street, in the middle of the store, hugging and kissing and for Sam . . . crying and crying and crying some more. Lucky had truly caught her completely off guard. It was the best of surprises for any woman, anywhere . . . in love.

Chapter Seventeen

Back at the safehouse, Lucky let Sam draw the group together and share the good news. The guys were all happy for them. Guys were always happy for their friends, unlike some women who had a tendency to be a little bit jealous or envious. It was the difference between men and women. A guy just never thought beyond it, didn’t overthink it.

As he watched Sam, smiling, showing off her ring, his mind wandered to other things – finances, security, investments, stocks. It could have been the realization that he was getting married one day, but for whatever the reasons, it dawned on him that his time travels could make him even wealthier, fatten his portfolio. Since he had the ability to travel to anyplace, anywhere in time, it would be easy. He could go back in time and buy IBM, Microsoft, Apple stock, or any of the Fortune 500 stocks at their initial offerings.

Lucky asked Mickey to step into the saferoom with him, not because he didn’t trust his friends, but rather to interfere with the listening ability of any possibly undetected planted devices. The steel walls provided solid security and comfort. It was there that Lucky explained that he wanted to take a trip to the city of Rhyolite, the city that he had discovered in his recent time travels. He described to Mickey the tiny town’s beginning stages of growth, its gold and silver boom, and what the future held for the present day ghost town, back then, and its investors. Lucky had already done his research. He knew about Shorty Harris, Death Valley Scotty, and the mystery surrounding them – how no one knew for sure how either man had gotten his money.
That could be fun to find out,
Lucky thought.
An adventure
. But adventure aside, truth be told, it was always hard for Lucky to resist an opportunity to add to his fortune.

First, Lucky needed either some early twentieth century money or something else he could use for bartering. Finding currency from the years 1900 to 1904 would be near impossible.
Diamonds and precious stones would have to do,
he thought. Lucky asked Mickey to arrange a meeting with Jacob, Lucky’s jeweler friend, and purchase a half million dollar’s worth of diamonds, rubies, sapphires, and emeralds, and a few gold bars to use for room and board.

Lucky did not want to travel to Australia to return to the train shed portal, so the following day he called Jack Kinsey and told him that tomorrow morning he and Mickey would need to use the portal inside the jail, located on the compound. Lucky knew that the jail portal would take him to the Outback where he could then enter the portal leading to the train barn and thus the town of Rhyolite. He asked that Kinsey leave their names at the front guard gate as guests arriving for an eight a.m. meeting at Jack’s office.

“And Jack, have an acetylene welding torch standing by, in the jail, ready to use.” Jack didn’t quite understand why, but nevertheless agreed and was waiting for them when they reached the jail the next morning.

Mickey wheeled the torch to cell number five and both men entered it. Once inside, Lucky lit the torch, adjusted the flame, and proceeded to cut through three cell bars, separating cell five from cell six, from top to bottom. When the last bar clanked to the floor, he shut off the torch and oxygen tanks and wheeled them to the front of the cell for Jack to pick up later. He and Mickey stepped right into the middle of the two cells, right where the bars had been. It was a lot easier entering the portal this time. Now it all made sense. While Lucky was a prisoner here, in his attempt to escape, it was difficult for him to squeeze into the portal because of the location, the close proximity of the bars, separating both cells.

Once inside the portal, they took their usual baby steps to the end. They stepped out into the Outback of Australia near Alice Springs. Mickey was carrying the diamonds and stones in a bag in his pocket and each man carried one gold bar in their chino pants. The two friends wore cowboy shirts that they had picked up in Alice Springs and figured they’d buy cowboy hats when they arrived in Rhyolite. The plan was to buy anything they needed from the local merchants hoping to blend in.

Lucky knew exactly where the Outback portal stood. It was the one that led to the train shed. Since the portal was about the distance of a football field, they ran at a military trot the one hundred yards directly to the end.

They exited the underground train shed and walked the short distance to the Rhyolite portal and stepped out into its bustling city. It was early morning in Nevada and the men headed straight to the assayer’s office to exchange gold for cash and then walked to a tent selling breakfast. Here in this town, everything was a tent – hotels, stores, banks, restaurants all set up under tents. At their table, Lucky asked their server if Shorty Harris was in town.

“Yes, you just missed him,” the young man replied. “He’s headed for the Southern Hotel.”

Lucky thanked the young man. After he and Mickey finished their breakfast, they walked straight there, to the Southern Hotel. On their way, they saw wagons pulled by teams of horses, carrying women and children, entering the town. It looked as though families were arriving, perhaps joining the men of the household, in their quest for riches. Everywhere there were buildings of stone and stakes laid out in the ground, indicating where future houses and businesses would soon be built. Streets were being plotted, carefully marked, in anticipation of the materials needed to clear their paths. Toward the corner, a train depot was almost finished, its tracks being laid. Looking past the depot, they saw tracks disappearing into the distance and heard the slow wane of a train’s whistle. The men bounded up the three wooden steps leading into the Southern Hotel and walked to the front desk, which was to the left of the entrance. There, they reserved two rooms for two weeks, paid the clerk in full, and told him that we would be paying for the rooms on a daily basis, thereafter. Lucky casually asked for Shorty Harris’s room, stating that he knew he was there.

The clerk pointed to a short, weather beaten man with a craggy face and said,

“You don’t need to know his room because he’s right there talking to Albert Johnson and the other man. Shorty’s the little guy.”

They thanked the clerk and walked over to the three men deep in conversation.

“Excuse me, gentlemen,” Lucky said. “Sorry to interrupt your conversation, but I wanted to say hello to Shorty here.” He held out his hand. Shorty shook his hand and asked if they knew each other from somewhere.

“Mr. Harris,” Lucky answered. “My partner and I are speculators. I understand that you’re an experienced hand at finding gold, where others might only ‘hope’ to find it. If this is true, I’d like to know if you’re interested in a business proposition.”

“Son,” he said. “Take a seat. I’m always interested in a business proposition.”

Lucky and Mickey joined Harris and his friends as Harris signaled the waitress to bring over a couple of extra coffee cups.

“Whatta you have in mind?” Shorty asked as he got right to the point.

“Mr. Harris,” Lucky said politely.

Shorty put up his hand and said, “Call me Shorty, son. Shorty. Now what was it you were saying?”

“Well, I don’t know if you need a grubstake, but like I said, we’re a couple of speculators with a little investment capital. If you need or would like to have a stake, we’re here to offer it to you first, but if you’re not interested, I understand and we’ll find someone else.”

A grubstake was any prospector’s dream. That meant that someone was going to put up the money, the prospector would do the work, and all parties would divide the find or the earnings, as agreed upon.

Shorty scratched the stubble on his chin and said, “Well, I have
some
money, but if I had more I could mount a right sinful operation, and instead of poking here and there, I could mine the gold the way it should be mined. But I’m getting ahead of myself – what kind of money are we talking here? A
little
or a
lot
? There’s a big difference between a little and a lot, you know. A little is a little and a lot is well, a lot is a figure that neither you nor I have to describe ‘cause, dammit, it’s just a lot. I know where the gold is all right, but I need a
lot
of money to get it out.”

“It’s a lot,” Lucky said without flinching.

“Well now, son,” Shorty said. “Now just how do you propose we split the take? Gimme something fair, show me that you really have a
lot,
and we gotta deal.”

“Fifty/fifty,” Lucky answered. “And don’t worry about it a
lot
,” he said with emphasis. You tell me what you need, when you need it, and you’ll get it and we’ll both make a
lot
,” he said as he raised his coffee cup into the air as a sign of mission accomplished. “To our new partnership,” he said.

Mickey and the other men, Johnson and another man called Scotty, joined in and, while the other man said nothing, his mind was spinning, wondering if there was a place for him in all of this. Shorty’s friends, not sure of what they had just witnessed, excused themselves. Lucky, Mickey, and Shorty could now talk more freely.

“I have a lot of my money tied up in diamonds and precious stones,” Lucky said. “Need to unload some of them.”

“Yeah,” Mickey chimed in. “Don’t like to travel with too much cash. Not a good thing. Might cause some problems and then I go and get pretty angry and then somebody
always
gets hurt,” he said purposefully, sending a message to Shorty. Mickey was street smart. He knew what he was doing. He wanted the word to spread all around town, quickly, that there were two men in town, two men who didn’t take crap from anybody.

Shorty didn’t react. Instead, he said, “Come on. Let’s take a walk just down the street a bit. I know someone who might be interested in your goods, and if he is, he’ll do you right by you.”

They stopped at a tent not far away, a small store called Silverman’s, and Shorty introduced them. Silverman picked up the stones one at a time, carefully examined them, and reexamined them. He recognized and appreciated their quality and purchased a substantial number of them right on the spot. It cleaned him out. With no cash left, he told Lucky to hold onto the remaining stones, as he would happily buy those as well, once he had his cash currency built up again. It seemed that the miners who had struck it rich in town followed a pattern. Many of them were eager to spend part of their newfound fortune on lavish items such as gemstones. Good for Silverman, good for Lucky.

Lucky gave Shorty some starter cash that he needed to move along the mining operation, telling him that if he needed more to let him know. Shorty looked down at the wad of cash in his hand, counted it out, and said, “Don’t worry, son. You gave me more than enough for the moment. This here will go far. You got yourself a partner.” And that was the way it was done – no attorneys, no witnesses—just three men, a handful of cash, a handshake and their honor. Well, hopefully their honor.

Mickey and Lucky scouted around the small town until they found a spot to set up their own tent next to the assayer’s office. An assayer, at that time, was a man who weighed the ores and determined their composition and value. There they set up a tent with a sign above it in large letters stating “GOLD AND SILVER BOUGHT HERE.” Lucky also hired a guard to watch over things. Each day, when they closed up shop for the day, Mickey took whatever gold was purchased back to the bank to store it in their vault. The gold accumulated more and more each day, so much so that Lucky thought he might have to return to the present to secure more diamonds and other gemstones.

With the money Lucky gave him, Shorty bought the equipment and tools he needed mine the gold. Shorty had already registered his claim long before meeting Lucky and now that he had some financial backing, the mine took off, producing gold in large, staggering quantities, all of it split evenly. Even Shorty knew when to hold them and when to fold them, so when a few months later, a wealthy industrialist by the name of Charles Schwab offered them a million dollars for the mine, Shorty said, “Let’s take it,” and Lucky agreed. Lucky then decided that he had accomplished what he had set out to and hired a wagon with two horses, went to the bank, withdrew all of his gold, and headed out of the city Rhyolite. It took Mickey and Lucky ten trips into the desert. With each trip, they buried the gold at the base of a mountain, the same mountain, near three trees. The mountain had a unique shape, making their landmark all the more recognizable. The gold would remain there, Lucky said, until he and Mickey returned to the present. Using their modern day phone camera, they took photo after photo, marking its location carefully and even drew up a map on a strip of dry lambskin. After they finished, they returned the horses and wagon and looked for Shorty to say goodbye. They found him at the nearby hotel where he sat, surrounded by gawkers, as he was now a celebrity. He was the guy who struck it rich. He became the example to all the others because he proved that there was gold and silver in the mountains surrounding Rhyolite.