© 2001

There were two universal truths in Gospel, Idaho. First, God had done His best work when He’d created the Sawtooth Wilderness Area. And except for the unfortunate incident of ‘95, Gospel had always been heaven on earth.

Second-a truth just as adamantly believed as the first-every sin known to heaven and earth was California’s fault. California got the blame for everything, from the hole in the ozone to the marijuana plant found growing in the Widow Fairfield’s tomato garden. After all, her teenage grandson had visited relatives in L.A. just last fall.

There was a third truth-although it was viewed more as an absolute fact-come every summer, fools from the flatlands were bound to get lost amid the granite peaks of the Sawtooth Mountains.

This summer, the number of lost hikers rescued was already up to three. If the count stayed at three, plus one more fracture and two more cases of altitude sickness, then Stanley Caldwell would win the Missing Flatlander Betting Pool. But everyone knew Stanley was an optimistic fool. No one, not even his wife- who’d put her money on eight missing, seven fractures, and had thrown in a few cases of poison oak for excitement-expected Stanley to win the kitty.

Almost everyone in town played the pool, each trying to outdo the other and win the sizable pot. The betting pool gave the people of Gospel something to think about besides cattle, sheep, and logging. It gave them something to talk about besides tree-hugging environmentalists, and something to speculate over besides the possible paternity of Rita McCall’s brand-new baby boy. After all, though Rita and Roy had been divorced going on three years now, that alone didn’t put him out of the running. But mostly, the pool was a harmless way for the locals to pass the hot summer months while they pulled in tourist money and waited for the relative calm of winter.