Ms. Got Rocks (6 page)

The phone would not be anything close to the quality of her camera, but she wanted a record of what she was going to do to the cabin.

Back home, in the attic again, Rocky hauled up the sawhorses by the pulley she attached to the stair banister. It was hot up here, but the critters would not stay evicted without the windows covered.

Putting the glass in the windows was not that difficult but it took most of the afternoon to do the four attic windows. Rocky brought her tea up there, and surveyed what she could do to finish up tonight while it was cooler.

Walking around the attic, Rocky spotted a piece of plywood. She knew she could use that if she could get it down the stairs. Looking up, Rocky saw the late afternoon sky in several places through the roof. She could probably patch those from the inside, but decided to table that until Devlin told her what was possible. It was not going to rain any time soon anyway, but there was no point fixing the windows and having a lace shawl for a roof.

Wrestling the plywood downstairs and with the hammer, saw and nails from the truck, the plywood was now replacing the missing window glass in the living room.

The kitchen was not cleaned and the front steps were not fixed by the time the sun set.

It was apparent to her that she was not as good at this as she had hoped.

“Rome wasn’t built in a day, either,” she muttered to no one in particular and stirred her iced tea.

The dogs were happy with dog kibble and scrambled eggs for dinner and Rocky opened soup and ravioli cans. Hunger made happy in this case.

She was bone tired, but determined to have the kitchen cleaned before she went to bed and when the old kitchen clock struck midnight it was finished and so was she.

The kitchen floor was going to have to be replaced in spots where it was spongy. Rocky decided to crawl under the cabin in the morning and see how bad it was. The linoleum was in sad shape, but she had no plans to replace it for the short amount of time that she would be living in the cabin.

The last thing before going to bed was taking a few photos of the kitchen area. Jen would be itching to do a Trading Spaces make over for Rocky when she saw them.

Rocky set her time frame. Work on the cabin for this week to get it habitable. Then send out the resume after a trip to the copy shop in Auburn.

Also this first week, she would squeeze in going over the dredge and equipment. It may be possible to get the dredge in the water for the rest of the short gold dredging season in the Sierras. Next week, she would respond to resume hits and set up interviews.

Rocky had not thought about Tony or the divorce all day. Her mind was clear and fresh with no flashbacks. Her body felt like she has been pounded tender for cooking.

Saturday morning, Rocky went to town for supplies of dog food, milk and seeds for the garden that was to be. She had the cell phone pictures printed off at the copy store.

The truck automatically turned into the driveway with a garage sale sign. Rocky found a good buy on drinking glasses, and the buy of the decade of two barely used camera tripods for the incredible price of fifteen dollars for the pair.

Almost as exciting was a slow cooker, which would make dredging day meals a lot simpler.

By Sunday, Rocky had mailed twenty resumes to major and minor airlines and charter services that were of interest to her. She also mailed a long letter and lots of pictures to Jen in Anchorage.

The kitchen had new windowpanes and a door that closed and locked. The slow cooker was cleaned and made a big stew without heating up the cabin. The front screen door was hanging straight and fully screened again, it needed painting though, but that could wait.

Margie brought Dad’s microwave and computer over from her garage.

“Dad has a computer? The hermit of the twenty first century had a computer,” Rocky was stunned. Margie started to laugh with her.

“That was after electricity came up the hill,” Margie told her.

“Dev, what do you think, did he get electricity to have a computer or vice versa?” Margie asked.

“I think it was kind of simultaneous, he had a really good gold season three years ago. He had the money to hook up the electric,” Dev was pounding on a windowsill to repair the split.

“For a while, though, he swayed back and forth about needing the electric or not,” Margie added to the story.

"Yeah, I remember that,” Dev took up the tale. “I think the clincher was when he went to the gold show in Las Vegas and found out that he could get daily New York gold prices on the Internet and talk to other gold miners on e-mail,” Devlin was smiling at the memory.

“We came up one Sunday and the phone was hooked up and Dad was sitting at the computer, writing to some miner in Alaska. It was a hoot, I think he couldn’t wait for us to leave, he became an Internet junkie,” Margie too, was grinning at the memory of Dad that day.

“Well, anyway, here it is, I’ve been paying his Internet connection every month, you are online, his password is Goldbum1967,” Margie said.

“That was the year he and Mom were married. Guess that was easy for him to remember,” Devlin was talking and taking the computer out of the box.

In less time than it took to tell, the cabin was again computerized and hooked to the Internet. The whole works was nicely sitting on the freshly scrubbed floor.

It looked fairly ridiculous, but it worked if you were as tall as an ant.

The living room had windows with screens and would close. The entire cabin floor had been scrubbed with Margie’s buffer scrubber machine and then with her steam cleaner. Though it took most of Sunday and all of them working, the whole cabin looked fresh and without a doubt smelled better.

Devlin and Rocky made the new front steps Friday night. They fixed the kitchen floor, even though that meant working into Sunday morning to do it. While they worked on the floor, Margie did the window jobs because her knees do not crawl around on floors. She installed the mini blinds in the bedroom and the living room. Rocky slept in her old room the remainder of the night.

They loaded the old soft furniture from the living room into both trucks for a dump run on Monday morning.

The living room was clean and bare of furniture other than the computer.

Monday afternoon Rocky looked at her little home and decided that if she could possibly manage it, she wanted a darkroom out of that closet right there.

“What is that?” Rocky asked the air in the living room.

C
hapter 6

S
he saw a dredge outfit through the newly sparkling window. Her bare feet slapped down to the floor from the window sill.

“Is that dredge on my claim?” she said squinting her eyes down to judge the distance. Rocky flew out of the lawn chair and looked closely at the strange dredge in relation to her claim markers.

When her Father bought the place with the gold claim, he and the children celebrated by collecting rocks. The surveyor came out to the cabin with his transit to measure the five acres true boundaries.

The Clancy family spent days building three-foot high cairns at each corner of the property. They built one at each end of the claim on either side of the river. Devlin and Rocky spent most of the time selecting the right rock for each side of the cairns and their Dad did all the real work.

Rocky eyeball lined up the cairn at the river’s edge and the dredge in the river.

“Yeah, that dredge is on my claim,” she exclaimed.

Whistling up the dogs they met at the corner of the cabin as she ran upriver. She was on the bank across from where the big dredge was chugging away in the middle of her piece of the American River.

Rocky lunged into the river with the dogs running down the bank after her.

She yelled to the dogs."To me and guard."

.She heard both of them hit the water swimming. The three of them were swimming up to the illegal dredge. Rocky reached over and turned the dredge motor switch to off. She called the dogs; they turned and swam back into the shallows. Rocky intended to stand waiting until whoever was down there surfaced.

“Lovie, Phoebe, guard.”

She said that in a command, no nonsense tone of voice and immediately both dogs moved in front of her. They stood hock deep in water watching the river. The hair on their backs standing on end. The dogs were formidable. They scared the daylights out of her. Phoebe would hold until called off. Lovie would kiss the intruder after awhile.

It was a long time before the river surface broke and a skin diving hood came into view.

Even covered in a wet suit hood, Rocky could see that this man was incredible looking. The slim straight nose, the skin unblemished, creamy milk white, with high cheek bones. His mouth was the only non-angular plane on his face, his upper lip was a bow shape and was it not set in such an angular male setting, it would have been lushly, sensually, feminine. There was nothing sensual or feminine to it now,

It was set in an angry scowl, and there was a crease in the area between his straight black heavy eyebrows. Scowling was something this face had done too much. Rocky had never seen eyes this incredible color. They were a sparkling blue that she could not see the end of, nothing was reflected in them.

The man spit out the dredging hookah mouthpiece and yanked the wet suit hood from his skull. This freed a shock of glossy, thin, straight, raven black hair. The hair fell over his forehead and eyebrows almost into his blue eyes.

The face was a study in sharp angles and contours, painted in black and white. If he were not shouting obscenities at her and moving across the river into her area, Rocky would be thinking he was the most gorgeous man she had ever seen, bar none.

When he had to stop shouting to get a breath and to swoop his wonderful hair out of his intriguing eyes, it was Rocky’s turn to do the talking.

“You are on my claim,” she said flatly but firmly, still standing in the river shallows with her hands at her sides.

“This isn’t your claim, lady,” he shouted. “I’ve owned this claim for years,” he was waving his arms and moving toward Rocky and the dogs through the hip deep water. His body looked thin and well muscled in his diving gear.

“Excuse me, that is my marker cairn right over there,and obviously you are over here. Ergo, you are on my claim.” Rocky pronounced firmly, while she pointed to the short rock tower in plain view on the riverbank.

“Who the hell are you and who gave you permission to be on this claim.” The man shouted at her, as she noticed that the dogs were moving by the inch closer to him as he moved closer to them.

“I’m Rochelle Clancy; this is my land and claim. You will move off now,” she again stated firmly. She used her maiden name.

The dogs were moving even closer to him. He either was very stupid or extremely brave to not take a step back when confronted with two dogs, who obviously meant business.

“Mister, I’ve asked you nicely to leave, I suggest you immediately do so,” her voice was all business.

Rocky glanced down at the dogs and back into the wonderful eyes that  were shooting sparks at her.

“And what if I don’t want to leave; what the hell can you do about it?” he challenged her.

He was now standing to his full height and taller than she was. Good Lord give her strength, her stomach had turned flip-flops, he was nothing short of luscious.

“I can do nothing, but Fang and Brutus will do plenty. Later on, you will be getting a visit from the Sheriff.” Rocky advised him."Claim jumping is illegal in California."

The dogs were now swimming in circles around him. They were definitely showing him this was their territory.

Rocky quickly changed tactics when she remembered all diver carry knives.

“You didn’t tell me your name. Do you live around here?” she tried a more reasonable tone to her voice.

“The name is Callaghan.” Callaghan had apparently noticed Lovie and Phoebe in their roles as Fang and Brutus. He brought both of his hands to the surface, holding them still and easing himself to the middle of the river. He was taking care to move backward when neither of the dogs were behind him.

“Okay Mrs. Clancy, I’ll move my dredge over for tonight. But this isn’t your claim and I can prove it and I will. Do not get too comfortable here where you do not belong,” Callaghan continued to yell as he slowly moved backward toward the serenely floating dredge rig.

Callaghan was now into the swimming depth of the river, he turned and with a two dog escort swam to the dredge.

“Fang, Brutus, here,” she called the dogs, they ignored her and swam several more times around the man hanging on the pontoon of the dredge.

“Lovie, Phoebe, to me.”

Maybe he would not notice the dogs have changed names.

Lovie the big Boxer abandoned her circle and swam to the shallows and stood in front of Rocky. Phoebe the Lab and mutt was not finished with the intruder. She swam one complete circle around the dredge rig and then she turned to the riverbank to join her family.

The three of them watched as Callaghan, pushing his dredge in front of him, swam to the upriver side of the marker rock cairn. The trio continued watching as he set the anchors and tied off to a cottonwood tree that shaded the rock cairn. He was not moving off one inch more than he must.

With obvious disdain for Rocky and her claim, the claim jumper swam back to his dredge, flipped the motor back on and dove to the bottom.

“Lovie, Phoebe, guard,” she left the dogs on the riverbank.

“I need to get the Sheriff Deputies out here pronto.” she told them.

As usual for her, the cell phone was somewhere that she was not.

“I swear I’m going to pierce my nose and hang that damn thing from it,” she yelled as she ran along the river bank.

She ran as fast as she could with bare feet, back to the cabin and used the land line to call the substation.

Even if the claim jumper had moved off, she would still file a report, because claim jumping was serious business in the gold country of the West. It happened frequently when the price of gold went up. Unscrupulous miners move in onto un-worked claims. The claim jumpers dredge as much as they can without doing any reclamation or giving a care for the environment while they steal. Rocky wasn’t buying any excuse from this Callaghan character.

Knowing the dogs have her back, Rocky waited for the deputies on the porch. She cannot see Callaghan's dredge from this side of the cabin. She knew the dogs would somehow give her warning, should Callaghan decide to come to the cabin. The dredge motor was still chugging vigorously in the distance.

The evening light was lingering, when the deputy drove onto the meadow.

He was Deputy Justin Dixon; Rocky went to Auburn High School with him. He had not changed a bit. He was still cute, in a sweet boyish way. Not tall, blonde, but not platinum, eyes almost green, but also almost blue, thin but not buff, every thing about his appearance was medium. But a nice medium, like excellent vanilla ice cream.

Rocky gave him her data, and he walked down to the river’s edge.

Rocky called the dogs to the porch and they ignored the Deputy and ran to her side.

They waited on the porch steps. Rocky no longer heard the dredge motor. She used this wait to change from the roasting hot dive suit into jeans and peach colored cotton shirt and sandals.

“Ms. Clancy, uh Rocky, he has left for the night.” I advised him to move upriver and stay upriver,” Deputy Dixon told her as they sat on the front steps.

“He does own the claim and land upriver of you,” Dixon explained.“Do you want to file a complaint?” he asked her.

“You bet I do Justin,” she answered. “You know how long my family has owned this land and this claim.”

As they finished filling out the paperwork, Dev and Margie drove up onto the meadow.

“Hey Justin, how’s it going,” Dev said, joining them, on the porch steps.

“What did you do Rocky, run off a claim jumper?” Margie said in a joking way.

The Deputy’s face and Rocky’s face looked up at her at the same time.

Deputy Dixon asked, “How did you know that?”

“Know what? No, you’re joking; you had a claim jumper, here?” Margie was stunned, and Devlin was speechless for a change.

“Yeah, some guy named Callaghan, at the upriver cairn. He’s gone now. Justin ran him off, and I’ve filled out a report,” Rocky said signing the paperwork with a flourish.

“Okay, I’ll be going now, Ms. Clancy, you should get some No Trespassing signs posted by the river. Give me a call if you see Mr. Callaghan hanging around here, okay?”

“Nice seeing you again, Dev and Margie,” Deputy Dixon got into the squad car and drove back to the county road.