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Chapter 1 Journeys of Life

She tossed and turned with the familiar old nightmares. The majestic horse stands 15 ½ hands at the shoulder (his shoulder is taller than her) and he weighs in at 1100 pounds. He is black as night with white stockings and a glistening white lightening bolt across his hip. Oh not again, he is 20 feet in front of her and swings around to face her. She has just driven him away from her to avoid another aggressive attack. She is hoping for a few seconds of dwell time to collect her thoughts in the hot sun and wipe the stinging sweat from her eyes. His tail suddenly makes a quick swish and he simultaneously pins his tense ears back, his eyes harden, his nostrils tense up, and he charges directly at her. She doesn’t want to be bitten or trampled again. Her heart is pounding and she is numb with fear. NO time to think! What can she do?

He was only 20 feet away and now he is closing in fast. His first giant stride puts him halfway to her. She can’t run – he would be on top of her with his next powerful stride. She doesn’t have time to shorten the lead rope. She pivots into a power position with both feet firmly on the ground, bends her knees slightly, and lowers her center of gravity. She frantically tries to send a wave of energy down the lead rope as she swings the carrot stick into position between her and the charging horse. Once the carrot stick is making a barrier between her and the charging horse, she puts a determined look on her face and vigorously marches toward the horse. She tries hard to remember to keep making the carrot stick barrier and as she advances to shorten the lead rope, as much as she can.

When he sees the carrot stick won’t let him bite her, he tries to rear and use his front hooves. She stretches up to raise the carrot stick barrier up to match his height and keep moving toward him. She can make a barrier to match his rearing height with her arm reach and the four foot long carrot stick.

He pivots to her left side to avoid the carrot stick barrier and swings around to face her. He is ready to continue the fight! She gives him a stern warning look and firmly holds the carrot stick ready for his next move. They face one another for what seems an eternity.

She wakes up shaking with fear and fatigue from the nightmare. When would the nightmares end? Unfortunately, this nightmare had really happened on too many occasions when he would attack her and bite her. It was a common occurrence until she had developed the natural horsemanship skills to be able to handle an aggressive attack from an angry, dominant horse.

Jessica always expected to take the path of being a wife and mother. She never imagined embarking on a natural horsemanship journey and the horse – human partnership resulting from one of life’s unplanned detours. Life had become a journey full of mysterious detours and partnerships that she could never have imagined even in her wildest dreams.

Jessica is a light sleeper and can't go back to sleep once she is awake. She walks to the kitchen and fills an insulated mug with water from the under sink reverse osmosis (RO) system. Water from the well is undrinkable without the RO system. Still wearing her nightgown, she slips on her snake boots and walks out the back door to the barn. It is still 96 degrees at this hour of the night. With the heat, snakes came out at night and she didn't want to step on one. The horses are resting in their outdoor paddocks. Jessica slips into a horse paddock and gently scratches his neck. Rocky likes it when she visits him at night and scratches his neck. She is ever grateful to the natural horsemanship mentors who helped her develop the skills needed to achieve such a great horse-human relationship.

Jessica devotes a lot of time to their relationship and spends a lot of undemanding time with him. Tonight, just standing beside Rocky and scratching his neck is part of maintaining their relationship. Sometimes, she just wanders around the pasture with him and bonds with him while he grazes. Rocky follows her around the pasture while she does chores like cutting weeds out of the fence row and dragging fallen limbs out of the pasture.

As Jessica stands beside Rocky, she recalls how frightening it once was to be in a paddock with him. Those early days are the source of many of her nightmares. When she first bought him, Rocky did not like people to be near him in his stall or while he ate. One day she was standing near Rocky while he was eating and he bit her in the stomach. She had a huge swollen hard hematoma bigger than her fist for months. She was shocked that he would bite her without any apparent provocation. Jessica was afraid he would bite someone else (especially her young daughter Cody) in the same manner.

Jessica was forced to learn natural horsemanship techniques just to be safe around him. Here is an excerpt in her diary when she was learning to be safe around Rocky.

My top priority is safety. This means letting him

know that I will defend my personal space so that he can not get close enough to bite. Horses defend their personal space so they understand this concept. I am not being aggressive toward the horse. If he moves toward me, then the consequence of his action is that he runs into a barrier (your arm or the carrot stick). He has to learn that I will defend my personal space.

Wax-on and Wax-off are defensive karate moves where you wave your arm between you and the opponent. When the horse attempts to barge into my personal space un-invited, I will wave my arms in a rhythmic arc so that he will hit an arm or sharp elbow before he can bite.

I will use the carrot stick like another appendage to establish my personal space. While walking with the horse behind me, I will rhythmically move the carrot stick behind me (like a dog wagging his tail) in a horizontal arc over the ground. When he is in front of me, I will rhythmically move the carrot stick to make a barrier between us. If the horse tries to barge into my space or gets aggressive, then he runs into the barrier created by the carrot stick and can’t bite me.

Jessica spent a lot of time working on his aggression toward people around his food. That was seven years ago when Rocky was boarded at a stable. She would arrive at the stable before feeding time and stake out a small empty paddock. She would put Rocky in the paddock with a food tub by the fence. Rocky was learning that humans were good providers of food just like the alpha in the horse herd knows where to find food and water. Jessica would put his sweet feed in the tub and stand or sit on the other side of the fence and ignore him and the food. This way, Rocky could not bite her but he had to be close to her if he wanted to eat. Hunger usually won out but some days he spent a lot of time studying the situation or wildly bucking around the paddock before eating. Each day, she moved a little closer while he ate and got to the point where she could stand in the paddock beside him while he ate. It took several weeks, but he was finally at the point where he showed no intentions of biting her around his food. Safety was a concern and she was always wary and kept a close watch – she had to learn to start trusting him and her ability to properly respond if he became aggressive. Rocky enjoyed being groomed and she started grooming him while he ate. He seemed to really enjoy this attention.

Her next challenge with him had been the carrot stick. She recalls the extreme negative reaction Rocky had when she first introduced the carrot stick to their training routine. Here is an excerpt in her diary from those early days with Rocky.

How did Rocky react to our new equipment?

Using the rope halter was not a problem once I mastered tying it. When I brought out the carrot stick, he reared up and grabbed the carrot stick with his mouth. He jerked the lead rope out of my hands and then galloped across the pasture to get as far away from me as he could. He dropped the stick on the ground and turned to face my direction. I had no idea what to do. The little brown natural horse training books didn’t cover this reaction to the carrot stick but I certainly recognized that familiar defiant look. I now know his look was declaring he would fight any challenge to his dominance.

How did I develop his confidence and trust around the carrot stick and savvy string? I used many variations of approach and retreat. The most successful one was to use the savvy string as a gentle fly swatter. Whenever I saw him vigorously trying to get rid of a fly, I would use the friendly game with my hands to help him get rid of the fly.

I gradually started introducing the carrot stick and savvy string to help him get rid of the fly. Horses often stand side by side so they can use their tails to swat flies on one another. I would stand by Rocky and gently swing my savvy string tail in the area where he had flies. It didn’t take long for him to realize what a great thing this was for him.

Now, if Rocky has a pesky horse fly in some place he can’t reach (like his underbelly), he will rush across the pasture to me so I can get the fly for him. While we are riding, the carrot stick and savvy string also make a great a fly swatter.

Jessica is so grateful they have developed such a great horse – human partnership in the last seven years. Rocky’s aggressive acts are long gone and she has developed the natural horsemanship skills to be a partner that he respects. She has a better relationship with him than she had dared to dream was possible with any horse. Why won’t her nightmares go away? She is worried that she still has issues trusting him or maybe she doesn’t trust herself.

Chapter 2 Barn Chores

“I love you forever and ever, amen... Our love is wider than the river …” The sounds of Randy Travis love songs fill the barnyard. Randy Travis love songs always make Jessica feel good and she hopes to go to a live concert someday. His lyrics fill her with fond memories and reflect much of her own philosophy about life, love, and the simple things that bring happiness.

Jessica cleans up the animal food pans and water buckets. All of the horses are checked to make sure they are maintaining a healthy weight and are drinking enough water. She feeds and waters all the animals. It is a constant chore to keep enough water available for the animals in this drought. This part of north Texas has had over 30 days with temperatures above 100 degrees and no rain for three months. Last year was an extreme drought year with less than half of the normal rainfall. It is hot and dry! The animals drink the water as fast as she can fill their water pans and tanks.

During the day, the chickens come into the barn to enjoy the shade and eat any insects foolish enough to look for food or shelter with the horses. The chickens like to scratch around the horse stalls looking for grain the horses missed. She has a mister set up near the ground behind one of the stalls to cool the air for the chickens and ducks. With the excessive heat, the chickens spend a lot of time sitting on the cool concrete floor and leaving a lot of chicken poop. Because the barn is open on two sides, the wind blows a lot of dirt and debris into the barn. The soil is so dry from the drought that the winds are constantly blowing dirt from the pasture and stall floors all over everything in the barn. She sweeps up the dirt from the barn aisle and feed room as she sings along with Randy Travis. Jessica wonders if music stars know how much pleasure their songs bring to people while they are doing really dirty jobs like cleaning manure out of the barn.

The barn is an old pole barn with cedar plank sides and a tin roof. The barn is open on two sides to let the air flow cool the animals in summer. The horse stalls are old fashioned open stalls made of heavy wood planks with six inch air gaps between the planks. The stalls walls are only six feet high so air freely flows through the stalls. Each stall has a gate that opens into the center aisle of the barn and another gate that opens into a corral at the back of the barn. The open back of the barn faces southeast to take advantage of the evening summer breezes coming off of the lake. The old barn was built long before the lake. The pioneers built the barn to catch the cool summer winds blowing from the Gulf of Mexico which is southeast of here.

This drought is awful for her budget. There hasn't been any grass in the pasture for months and she must feed hay three times a day to the horses. Hay is getting scarce and very expensive. The price of grain has doubled in the last year. Jessica is starting to worry about how much longer she can afford to feed the horses and barnyard animals.

Jessica runs an organic ranch without pesticides or animal hormones. Over time, the chickens have rid the barn of all flies. The chickens control the insects and she doesn't need or want to use pesticides around the barn. Chickens naturally crave the protein provided by the assorted insect pests around the barnyard. When she first moved to the ranch, turning on a light at night meant an attack by swarming insects. The windows would be black with night bugs. Now, after five years with the chickens hunting all manner of insects, it is safe to turn on the lights at night. Her neighbors are always amazed that she doesn't have any of the annoying insects usually found along the lake. They also really enjoy the free range eggs from the chickens.

In the current drought conditions, the animals that thrive among the sandstone boulders and the oak scrub are bark scorpions, snakes, and ants. The chickens don't eat the ants so she spreads cornmeal or diatomaceous earth to keep the ant population under control. It also eliminates any fleas that may find their way in the barn with the cats. Keeping chickens doesn't really help control the snake and scorpion population. She is always searching for natural methods to convince them to avoid the house and barnyard.

Jessica shivers every time she sees a scorpion or a snake. She agrees with Harrison Ford's character Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark when he said, “Snakes. Why'd it have to be snakes?” When she first moved into the cabin, the copperhead snakes would emerge from the debris and sandstone rubble around the cabin to sun themselves on the rocks. Their beautiful pink diamond pattern is so deceptive. She worked many backbreaking months to clean up the rubble around the yard and barn. She also used the noise and vibrations from the lawnmower to convince the snakes they should move further from the cabin and barn.

Max is her German Shepherd guard dog. He was bitten by a copperhead when he was 2 years old. Jessica hadn't seen the snake attack but he came up to the house limping with a swollen paw. She took him to the vet who shaved his paw to reveal the snake's fang puncture marks. She kept Max in the house and gave him the prescribed medication for two weeks. For the first few days, Max was sick and feverish. He found comfort resting on the old braided rag rug that was his favorite sleeping spot in her bedroom when he was a puppy.

The old rug was in the cabin when she moved there. Jessica was going to throw it away but she recognized it as a rug lovingly made by someone, probably the prior owner of the cabin. She had grown up with similar rugs and thought it deserved a better future than being thrown away. She found the time to clean and repair it. Max picked the old rug as his favorite spot. It had been hard to keep him in the house for two whole weeks to recover from the snake bite. She spent a lot of time sitting with him on that old braided rag rug to keep him company.

Jessica checks the training schedule for the horses. A natural horsemanship training progress chart and task list is posted on the wall for each horse. She uses the task list as a guide for training each horse. She has assessed the “horsenality^TM” of each horse. Just like people have a personality, horses have a horsenality. The personalities and horsenalities are Left Brained Introvert (LBI), Left Brained Extrovert (LBE), Right Brained Introvert (RBI), and Right Brained Extrovert (RBE). Natural horsemanship training approaches are tailored for each horse based on their horsenality.

Jessica realizes that she is an LBI personality and Rocky is a LBI horsenality. Jessica uses the techniques recommended for a LBI horsenality when she is working with Rocky. The basic horse traits for an LBI are identified in a Horsenality Profile chart. Here is a copy of Rocky’s chart.

Jessica keeps a diary of her work with the horses to track their training experience and changes to their Horsenality^TM Profile. The progress of each horse for their training tasks in the natural horsemanship training guide is recorded. The approaches that work best with Rocky’s LBI horsenality^TM are also recorded and updated as he learns and develops new abilities. When she started studying natural horsemanship, she developed reference tables to help her learn and remember how to communicate with Rocky. Putting the instructions in tables helped her identify Rocky’s behavior and how to respond to his actions.

Some of tables helped her learn to calm Rocky when he was angry and being aggressive or he showed the signs that he could become aggressive. Here is an example of an early table she developed to learn to calm Rocky when he became angry playing the circling game.

Rocky’s Actions	My Goal	My Actions
Aggressively moving toward me	Safety FIRST	Keep him out of striking range. Use pressure on his front shoulders if he is circling toward me. Use driving games to keep him back. If he is online, use the lead rope to force him back. At liberty, use rhythmic pressure with the carrot stick and savvy string keep him away.
Wildly moving around the area	Keep him moving until he works out his emotions	Keep him moving away from me. Stay relaxed while he is circling or moving. Change his direction to force him to think. Match his energy while changing his direction.
Stops but is still very emotional	Keep pressure on him until he works out his emotions	Send him in another direction. Drive him to keep moving. Match his energy levels while you are driving him.
Stops but is calm	Release teaches him this is the right answer	Let him come to you for some dwell time as a reward.
Soft ears	Keep him relaxed	After some dwell time, do some slower paced thinking activities.

Now, this table seems so out of date and she doesn’t need it. Rocky is no longer an angry or aggressive horse and he trusts humans. Rocky was always a confident horse but he had to learn to trust humans. Rocky is now a calm and trusting horse who no longer expresses angry emotions with aggression toward humans. His ears are a still a good guide to his emotions.

Just like human students, Rocky is continuously learning. The actions and techniques she uses change as he learns and responds differently. She updates her tables as needed to reflect how responsive he has become. Body language is important and she is constantly working on her body language so she can communicate her requests to Rocky more effectively.

Chapter 3 Evening at the Lake

Rocky paces in his stall waiting for dinner. He enjoys watching the chickens. The chickens are the organic insect control for the ranch. Chickens love bugs and are fun to watch as they scurry around chasing a hopping or flying insect. Rocky wants to make sure he is put out into the pasture after dinner. It is impossible to watch for suspicious events on Shadow Mountain if he is locked in his barn stall all night. On hot summer days when there isn’t much grass for grazing, Jessica often puts the horses back into the pasture after dinner to enjoy the cool night air. Rocky hopes she leaves the new foal and her mother safely in the mare stall tonight but lets him out to investigate. Rocky tells the foal to lie down and take a nap as the cool breeze begins to blow from the direction of the lake.

Rocky and his herd are Tennessee Walking Horses (TWHs).

They all have beautiful black and white patterns. The full name on his birth certificate is Rio Bravo Rocky Road. His whole family for generations has been born in Texas. Why aren’t they called Texas Walking Horses? He thinks about how long they have lived here. Rocky has been with his human partner since he was 4 years old. He was her first horse and wasn’t sure if she was capable of being his partner or not. He has done a lot of work to train her to be a good partner and natural horse woman. Rocky was never able to train his prior owners and still has nightmares full of the awful memories of the time with those prior owners.

Rocky is worried about the future of his herd. Rocky leaves the ranch more than the other horses to attend natural horse playdays and training sessions. He hears the humans talking about the bad economy and people moving to find another job or because they can't stay in their homes anymore. They also talk about the terrible toll the drought has inflicted on all living creatures. The ranchers can't afford to keep their animals and the farmers don't have any water for their crops. There are wild fires everywhere threatening everyone. At times, the air is heavy with the smell of smoke. The pastures here on Shadow Mountain are dust and the ponds are dry mud puddles. Even the great oak trees that live for hundreds of years have started to die because of the long term drought.

      Rocky watches Max make his patrol around the ranch and thinks about the difference between horses and dogs. Max doesn't have a birth certificate like Rocky and the other horses. Max is the guard dog and he takes his job very seriously. Max has been here since he was a 6 week old puppy. Rocky remembers when Max arrived on Shadow Mountain. Max stayed in the human house or a special dog crate to keep him safe from the night predators. The humans spent a lot of time training Max and taking care of him until he was old enough to take care of himself. Max has grown up to be a great guard dog. He is devoted to the humans and they love him as much as they can love a dog.
      Of course, Max can't take his human partner for horseback rides the way Rocky can so Rocky is her special partner. Rocky’s human partner especially loves his gaited horse rocking chair canter. Max stays in the human house sometimes but Rocky is still her special partner. She takes him in the horse trailer to visit her friends and ride in special places. Max must stay on Shadow Mountain and be on guard duty. Actually, Rocky realizes that Max loves Shadow Mountain and doesn't like to go for rides in the big truck.
      Max's main job is to guard the human family and the animals on Shadow Ranch. The horses don't need guarding. Rocky is in charge of the horses and takes care of them. Max must keep a close eye on the pesky little animals especially the chickens, ducks, geese, turkeys, and peacocks. There are a lot of predators on Shadow Mountain.  The predators include coyotes, bobcats, the mountain lion, owls, and snakes. Max must constantly remind the predators that ranch animals are OFF LIMITS for hunting.

Max makes a slow patrol around the house. He circles around the pond but doesn’t chase the rabbits that are coming out of the brush to look for grass in the long shadows of the evening. Max slips through the corral panels that enclose the horse stalls at the back of the barn. He walks over to Rocky’s stall and sits by the stall door to wait. Rocky walks to the back of his stall and stands on the other side of the stall door to wait. Jessica notices the unlikely partnership of horse and dog. “It looks like you two want to run around the pasture tonight. I heard a lot of coyotes last night chasing the feral hogs. Don’t you want to stay in the barn?” Rocky nickers and pushes at the stall door with his nose.

“We probably have 30 minutes of good light left. Do you want to go for a run down to the lake?” Jessica gets the 4 foot long carrot stick with the attached savvy string down from its hook on the barn wall and enters Rocky’s stall. The carrot stick is her primary natural horsemanship tool. She uses it like horses use their tails. Jessica bonds with Rocky by scratching his underbelly and rubbing his belly with the carrot stick. He really likes being scratched in places he can’t reach like his under belly. She rubs and scratches his neck and ears with her fingers. Jessica always bonds with Rocky before they do anything whether it is riding or just going for a walk. She opens the stall door and they walk side by side through the corral enclosing the back of the barn. Max follows them through the corral gate into the pasture. She plays natural horse games with Rocky as they cross the pasture. They circle trees, go sideways along the fence, and jump the fallen tree trunks left in the pasture for jumping practice. They slowly make their way to a gate in the pasture fence. The path to the lake begins at the gate. As they near the gate, Max runs ahead of them and through the gate. He checks the path to make sure the mountain lion isn’t on this side of the mountain tonight.

A public walking path follows the lake shore most of the way around the entire lake and Shadow Mountain. A pair of sandstone cliffs interrupts the public path on the north and south sides of Shadow Mountain. The mountain has two rocky arms that reach into the lake to create a secluded shore line for Jessica. These rocky arms are sheer crumbling cliffs and climbing the cliffs is forbidden by the park service.

Jessica’s path to the lake is really an old game trail that has been widened by Rocky’s grazing trips to the lake. Their path begins at the pasture gate and winds down the slope through sandstone boulders, brush, and some huge trees down to a path that follows the lake shore. To the north and the south, their lake shore path ends at the steep crumbling sandstone cliffs. These cliffs provide a permanent barrier to keep people from accessing their lake shore path. Hikers on the public path around the lake have no idea that another path exists along this secluded part of the lake. Boaters on the lake can only see a very rocky hillside covered with brush and can’t see the path either.

A low flying plane soars overhead. Jessica always waves at the plane. She assumes the pilot has an airfield nearby because he flies over the lake all of the time. Often, he circles around the lake several times before heading north along the shore. He must have a fantastic view.

Jessica opens the gate and backs Rocky through the gate using a game called YoYo. Rocky loves these games. He is so glad she finally learned to be the alpha horse and play horse games. She closes the gate and walks over to Rocky. They turn and walk side by side along the path to the lake. Max is scouting the trail in front of them and gets to the lake first. He doesn’t see anything suspicious so he wades into the lake to cool off. Rocky and Jessica arrive at one of the few spots with some grass left along the lake bank. They pause and Rocky grazes for a few minutes. Max is nearby enjoying the cool water and Rocky grazes on forage grasses while she sits on a flat sandstone ledge on the lake bank. She always checks for snakes and scorpions before sitting down. Jessica also keeps an eye on Rocky to make sure he doesn’t try to get some of the grass growing in the treacherous muck along the sandy areas of the lake shore.

Life is good and she says a prayer of thanks for another day. The remaining sunlight illuminates the water with pastel hues of pink and purple. The shadows from the mountain behind them are growing longer and covering the lake with darkness as they climb the rocky slope back to the pasture. Max smells another human in the distance. Rocky is also on the alert and nickers as he looks at her. He does a quick prancing step in place to let her know he wants to trot uphill back to the pasture. They have already climbed above the steep rocky part of the path and the rest of the path to the pasture is a gently sloped trail through the cedars and brush.

She notices and says “It looks like you are anxious to get home, so am I. Let’s do a slow trot tonight because I am really tired.”

They do a slow trot along the path up the hill with Max patrolling the path behind them. The path ends at Shadow Ranch and no one else should be here. Max decides that he and Rocky are going to watch this path tonight.

A stranger is roaming the slope below the cabin on Shadow Mountain. Max has lived here since he was six weeks old and there has never been a stranger roaming the paths between the human house and the lake. The stranger appears to be looking for something. Guns have a unique smell and Max doesn't smell a gun along the paths taken by the stranger so the stranger is not hunting or poaching. Rocky and Max are going to be on constant guard to protect their families. No one invades Max’s territory!

Chapter 4 Fond Memories

He walks along the path in wonder at the changes since his last visit to this area. He is filled with fond memories of his grandparents and his childhood. Five generations of his family had lived here before the lake and most of their old ranch was under the lake now. They had lived in a little cabin in the shadow of the old sandstone mountain.

His grandmother would get up early every morning and build a fire in her big wood cook stove. She would hum her favorite hymns as she made her amazing bread, biscuits, and pies. She would make the biscuits and put them into the oven to bake while she mixed the bread dough. Sometimes, she would bake some biscuit strips with cinnamon and sugar as a treat for him. His mouth watered and he imagined he could smell the sweet aroma of her handiwork. They ate the biscuits for breakfast with her homemade jams. His favorite jam was blackberry.

Later in the morning, she would knead the bread dough and let it rise again. She would bake the bread in the late morning and keep it in the warmer all day so it was still deliciously fresh for dinner (back then, the noon meal was called dinner and the evening meal was called supper). He imagined he could still smell the heavenly scent of her bread as it baked in the old wood fired ovens built into the old stone chimney. Their neighbors loved to come and visit grandma hoping to get a taste of her biscuits and bread before they were gone.

He spent his childhood living with his grandparents in the shadow of the mountain. His grandparents had the typical barnyard animals for their generation. He loved playing with all the dogs, cats, ducks, chickens, geese, and turkeys. Most of all he loved riding and playing with the horses. His grandfather was a respected horse whisperer and would take horses that others couldn’t handle. He had learned a lot of secrets from his grandfather.

His grandfather taught him the ways of the blacksmith and horse whisperer. They spent summer days down in the valley working with the horses and tending their crops. As he was growing up, he learned to ride bareback and without a bridle. When he got older and saw others riding horses with a lot of equipment, he felt sorry for the horses and couldn’t imagine why the riders didn’t become natural horsemen. It was so long ago that it seemed like a different lifetime.

He looks over the lake waters and remembers their trips deep into the valley to pick wild blackberries. His grandmother made the best blackberry jam and cobbler he had ever tasted. They would get up early in the morning on hot summer days and make their way down a steep path through the trees along the sandstone cliff. Her special wild blackberry patch was in a small meadow at the very base of the mountain. This patch had the biggest and most delicious berries he had ever tasted. A nearby artesian spring provided water to keep the berry patch thriving even in the worst droughts. He always ate more berries than he put in his bucket but his grandmother always filled her bucket with berries to make blackberry jam and pies.

He left the path to climb a little rise where a great old oak tree had grown leaning at an angle from the winds that traveled along the side of the mountain. He climbs up the trunk and sits down. As a child, this had been his special place to dream of an exciting world beyond this small town. His childhood carvings are still in the old trunk. These great white oaks could live for hundreds of years in the right conditions. He was so glad this one was spared from the flooding of the lake.

He listens as a low flying airplane makes several passes over the area. He is in no hurry. He will wait until the airplane has left the area. He has been watching the planes and knows their routine schedule.

Lately, he has spent a lot of time thinking about his grandparents and their abrupt deaths when he was a teenager. They couldn’t face life without the old ranch or without one another. Grandpa had lived on the ranch his entire life and Grandma was the girl next door. When the dam was built to create the lake, they couldn’t stand the sight of their beautiful ranch flooding. The lake had filled much faster than the geologists had predicted. They didn’t have as much time to prepare for the flooding as they wanted.

He turns and looks at the old farmhouse through an opening in the foliage. He could see the old back porch and the giant chimney for the old wood cook stove rising from the kitchen. Someone else lives there now. He can see the old farmhouse had been re-modeled with an addition on the south side. The old barn is there as he remembered. He chuckles to himself because some things never change; that old barn was still standing but it still needed a lot of repairs.

He hopes their family secret is still hidden. Grandma and Grandpa were gone and only he was left to take care of it. Yes, he had learned a lot of secrets growing up on Shadow Mountain. He desperately hopes he has time to take care of everything. As the lake waters recede, he must watch and wait for the right time. He has to make sure he is the one who finds whatever is left to be found. He owes this much to the memory of his Grandparents.

He closes his eyes in the fading sunlight and feels the slight breeze blowing off of the lake. He daydreams of those carefree days with his grandparents. These sandstone cliffs were the home to copperhead snakes and bark scorpions. Both had a very painful and potentially deadly bite. As children, he and his cousins would hunt for scorpions at night using black lights.

The sun had sunk behind the mountain and the shadows were growing long. The reflection of the final rays of the sun on the lake created some very beautiful colors. He returns to the shore path and walks past the path to the ranch pasture gate. He turns and looks south in the direction of the sandstone cliffs. The cliffs are hidden behind the brush and trees. The old familiar paths into the valley and into the sandstone cliffs are gone. He slowly turns around and goes back the way he had come. He reaches the lake and walks along the shore enjoying the fanciful colors painted on the water by the sun’s final rays. He pauses momentarily to look at an old arching oak that is emerging from the receding waters. He looks around the area to get his bearings. For a few moments, he bows his head as though he is praying. He walks north until he encounters another sandstone cliff where he turns and walks toward the setting sun.

Chapter 5 Night Patrol

After she finishes the barn chores and goes to the house, Rocky and Max meet and walk around the perimeter of the pasture. They stop and wait hidden by a cedar tree near the path to the lake. Max is a tan and black German Shepherd. He has a tan face and lower body with what Jessica calls a tan saddle on his black back. His colors blend perfectly with the dry vegetation and blackness of night. Rocky is jet black with white stockings and a white lightning bolt pattern on his left hip. Rocky is totally concealed in the dark shadows.

After the humans settle into the house for the evening, Max tells Rocky he still hears and smells a human on the path to the lake. Max’s senses are better than Rocky’s. A few minutes later, Rocky smells and hears the stranger. Neither of them recognizes the scent. Now they have a good scent to remember.

While Rocky stands guard in the pasture, Max moves slowly through the fence and into the trees along the lake path. Everything is so dry and every step makes a noise as the dead grass and leaves break under his feet. He moves slowly to keep the noise down. The human has stopped and appears to be waiting for something. Max hopes to get close enough to see him. Yes, it smells like a man. Max waits as the evening breeze off the lake starts to rustle the dry leaves and grasses. He hopes the sounds will cover the noise of his footfalls. Max hears a group of feral hogs snorting in the distance. The hogs like to root in the moist dirt and sand along the lake shore.

The stranger moves north along the lake shore to avoid the approaching feral hogs and away from Max. It is getting dark and the stranger needs to finish his walk before it gets too dark to see the trail. He walks up and down the rocky slope as though searching for something.

Max stays out of range of the feral hogs. Hog hooves slip on the step rocky slope so the hogs stay in the sandy soil left by the receding lake waters. Max watches the hogs from a rocky outcropping. The hogs smell so bad that his nostrils have a hard time filtering out the stench so he can focus on the scent of the stranger. The hogs either don’t know Max is there or they don’t care and ignore him. The mountain lion is the only predator of the big hogs. Coyotes and bob cats are a threat to the piglets when they stray away from the mother hog.

Max follows the stranger’s scent along the lake path to the south cliff. He follows the scent as the stranger walked up the path toward their pasture and then turned around. The scent trail leads back to the north cliff where the scent disappears up the cliff face.

Max follows the strangers scent back along the trails and the rocky slope where he had walked up and down the slope. When Max gets to the place where the man had spent a lot of time waiting, he pauses to try to understand what the man had been doing in that spot. Max circles the area but doesn’t’ see anything unusual.

The man’s scent was strongest along a huge old leaning tree. Max sits down by the tree and just looks around to try to see the same things the man could see. As Max sits there, the scent of the man fills his nostrils. There was a hauntingly comfortable feeling with the scent. It was a strange scent, but somehow it stirred old feelings. He would have to get Rock to this spot so Rocky could look around because Max couldn’t see over the brush.

Max told Rocky about the spot with the leaning tree when he got back to the pasture. They would make sure she took them to the lake in the morning.

Chapter 6 Morning at the Lake

Jessica gets up early the next morning to get the barn chores done before the rising temperatures made it unbearable. Cody is her 16 year old daughter. School is out for the summer and Cody plans to catch up on her sleep when she isn’t working as a volunteer zookeeper. Jessica makes her usual cup of coffee to drink while doing the morning barn chores. She needs to start filling the water tanks for the thirsty animals. She walks into the tack room and turns on her music. A Randy Travis spiritual song fills the barnyard,

Hey go tell it on that mountain,

Over the hills and everywhere.

His music helps her face another day.

Jessica feeds the poultry and horses. Max and Rocky are out in the pasture by the gate to the lake path. She grabs the carrot stick and her cup of coffee. Even on a hot day like today, there is nothing worse than stale hot coffee.

“It’s through the fire that my weakness is made strong”, the spiritual songs of Randy Travis are definitely on target for the hot day ahead.

Max and Rocky are waiting at the gate to the lake path. She walks through the pasture toward them. “I see you want to go back to the lake. I don’t have on my snake boots or jeans. I guess there is so little vegetation I can see the snakes but we are going to walk while I enjoy my coffee. Max, you need to let me know if you see any copperheads.”

Jessica spends a few minutes bonding with Rocky and playing friendly games. The three of them walk through the gate and down the path to the lake. Rocky stops to eat grass whenever he spots a few sparse blades of interesting grass among the dry vegetation. Max wanders back to the spot where the man had been last night. He barks to get their attention. Jessica brings Rocky over to the spot. Rocky raises his head high and looks around in all directions. Rocky is 15 ½ hands high (this means his shoulder is 62 inches high) and his head reaches much higher. He goes over to the leaning tree Max had told him about and looks around in all directions. What he sees frightens him and he shudders in the early morning heat. He tells Max there is a clear view of the people house and part of the barn from the leaning tree. They have a lot to think about. The stranger was watching them.

She says, “What are you two talking about? If I didn’t’ know better, I would think the two of you can actually talk to one another. That is such a lovely old tree. Nature never ceases to amaze me. That old tree has beaten the odds to hang onto this hillside and grow roots into these rocks. It looks like it would make a great climbing tree for the kids.”

She climbs up the trunk and looks around. The cabin is clearly visible from the perch in the tree. There are names carved along the trunk of the tree. As she starts to climb down, she also sees something else. It is a partial boot track and it is definitely not hers. The track is in some dry loose sand among the rocks. It is fresh enough that the wind has not destroyed it with the blowing sand.

She asks Max, “Are those tracks the reason you have been barking and sniffing around here? Do you smell a stranger or someone familiar? I just wish you could talk to me.”

Max looks at her and wonders why she would ask the question. The scent is not familiar; but yet there is something hauntingly comfortable about the scent. Max decides not to tell Rocky about this feeling until he understands why the scent provokes such a comforting feeling. He will be on alert and won't let this feeling keep him from protecting her.

Jessica looks around the area again and decides to keep an eye on this area of the lake. The Sheriff and park rangers have been posting warnings about poachers in the area. Most of the wildlife has moved on to greener pastures. The feral hogs are the most populous animal here now. Feral hogs can be hunted all year long without a permit. The tracks could belong to a hog hunter but the hogs usually stay at the edge of the lake and don't climb this steep slope.

Jessica takes a picture of the boot track with her cell phone camera. She brushes sand over the track. She plans to watch this tree to see if any more tracks appear. How did someone get to this tree? There aren’t any signs of a boat or human tracks in the lake muck. Were there any rocky outcroppings into the lake where someone might have docked a boat and walked across the rocks to avoid the muck? She would have to look for such a spot.

Jessica says, “Max, we will keep an eye on this tree to see if the owner of the boot comes back again. Rocky, you will need to make sure the horses stay safe. I am worried that someone might accidently start a fire down here and it would spread quickly up the hill to the barn.”

The trio wanders back to the lake. She sits down on a comfortable rock to drink her coffee with Max by her side while Rocky grazes on the sparse green blades of grass at the edge of the water. Rocky is alert for signs of the stranger, feral hogs, and snakes. He knows a snake bite on one of his legs could be deadly. He also knows the feral hogs charge without warning and could break one of his legs. Rocky stays away from the gooey muck left by the receding water. While he is grazing in a dry sandy area, he sees something shiny on the ground and paws at it revealing an old chain with a metal piece on it. The pattern in the metal looks familiar. Oh well, it doesn’t look like he can eat it.

Jessica and Max are sitting near the remains of a great arching oak tree. The water is still surrounding the tree trunk. Jessica has been watching this tree emerge from the depths of the lake. The feral hogs have been rooting everywhere in the sandy soil. She notices something gleaming in the sunlight where Rocky is grazing about 50 feet south of the arching oak. The boaters throw so much trash into the lake and it makes her mad. Rocky’s tracks are visible where he had pawed the ground near the object. Jessica picks up the object to make sure it won’t hurt Max or Rocky. After rubbing some of the muck off, it is clearly a piece of metal attached to a thin metal beaded chain. It has the same shape as the old door knobs she found for the kitchen cabinets. She had assumed the knobs were made by the blacksmith who had originally built the cabin. She washes it in the lake and realizes it must be a rosary. “When was it lost by the owner?”, she wonders as she returns to her seat across from the great arching oak tree.

Jessica pets Max and says, “Well, Max, this is a beautiful day. You and Rocky have formed an unusual partnership. I have worked a long time to bond with Rocky and have a horse – human partnership with him. I shudder when I think about how unhappy and angry Rocky was when I naively bought him for my daughter.”

Max laid his head on her knees as she stoked his fur while she remembered the early days learning to understand Rocky so he would be a safe horse for Cody. Cody was only eight years old then. Jessica has spent the last seven years learning natural horsemanship from her mentor CR. Here is an entry from her diary in those early days:

Respect does not transfer from one person to another person holding the carrot stick. Rocky responds differently to CR than he does to me. He has a totally different reaction to me when I do the same things. I must develop my own skills so that Rocky will respect me the same way he does CR.

Every time I learn new skills to gain Rocky’s respect so he won’t challenge me anymore, he develops new ways to challenge my skills. This caused a lot of bumps in our “rocky” relationship in Levels 1 and 2. Rocky and I would attend a training camp and I would feel so good about our progress.

After a few days, our relationship would start to deteriorate because Rocky would challenge me in new and different ways. I had to learn to adapt what I learned to respond effectively. This is basically what Rocky was doing, he came away from our training camps with a new respect for me; but, being a very dominant left brained horse, he was thinking of new ways to test my skills and challenge me in the horse dominance games.

CR is a certified natural horsemanship trainer who like many Texans has ridden horses her entire life. They had become friends as she fumbled her way through the training camps and lessons. It was a long hard journey for her to earn Rocky’s respect. Rocky had to respect her before they could make any progress with his aggression toward humans. Jessica had to develop her own natural horsemanship skills because Rocky’s respect for one human would not transfer to another human.

Rocky was the first horse Jessica had ever owned or ridden. It was a lot of hard work and yes at times it was terrifying for her. Once she realized how dangerous Rocky could be, Jessica was committed to keeping her family safe and making sure she did whatever she could to keep Rocky out of the dog food factory. There were basically two choices, learn to be an alpha horse that Rocky respected or risk serious injuries to her daughter or herself. She chose the long road of natural horsemanship. Now, people were amazed at their strong horse – human partnership. Rocky has become a safe horse and is her partner. It was definitely worth the effort.

Jessica is thinking about all of the unlikely partnerships on her ranch. She chuckles as she thinks about the black cat that likes to sit on Hershey’s back.

Hershey is a registered chocolate donkey. His prior owner abandoned him at a boarding barn and they adopted him. Kohee is a black cat that loves to climb on Hershey’s back. Hershey loves the massage Kohee gives him as she stretches out and flexes her claws in his fur.

The trio returns to the barn. Rocky is put in his stall with some fresh hay and water. Jessica returns to the house and lets Max sleep on the cool tile of the mud room floor. He enjoys resting on the old braided rag rug. The rosary hangs on the old boot bench by the snake boots. What memories are held by the rosary? The Randy Travis inspirational classic, Precious Memories, plays on the stereo in the background and seems so appropriate:

As I travel on life’s pathway
Know not what the years may hold
As I ponder hope grows fonder
Precious memories flood my soul
Precious memories, how they linger
How they ever flood my soul
In the stillness of the midnight
Precious sacred scenes unfold.

Chapter 7 Drought Forecast

Jessica is late getting ready for an important event. She curls her hair, brushes makeup on her face, and adds some bright red lipstick. A long black dress is arranged on the bed and she gingerly feels the delicate fabric as puts on the dress. For jewelry, she puts on pearl earrings with a long strand pearl necklace. She searches her closet and finds her last pair of high heels. A little black and white hat is hanging on the edge of the full length dressing mirror. She tries several positions for the hat before she is happy with the way the hat looks. Since moving to the ranch, Jessica hasn’t attended many formal dress events. She looks at the results in the mirror and worries that she is out of fashion. How long it has been since she has been really dressed up? She walks out of the cabin and to the Jeep. Rocky is waiting for her. He is wearing a black tuxedo with a white shirt and white gloves. He is sitting in the front passenger seat of her old Jeep. A black top hat rests in his lap. Where are they going? As she stands there looking at Rocky, Jessica realizes she can’t remember where they are going. Where did she get this outfit? She doesn’t have clothes like these and she certainly doesn’t wear bright red lipstick!

The alarm wakes her from another dream. Does she need counseling with these weird dreams? Lately, she has been feeling like she spends far too much time training Rocky. Cody will be out of high school and off to college in two years. They have owned Rocky for 7 years and she spent the first four years focused on learning to handle a very dominant aggressive horse. Maybe she should have devoted that time to Cody. Anyway, Jessica is attending a college lecture today and will be late if she doesn’t hustle.

Jessica parks her ancient Jeep wrangler in the far end of the public parking lot adjacent to the science building at the University. The most valuable thing in Texas this summer is shade. As she parks the Jeep, she is reminded about one of the kids question games. Question: When you see someone parking their car, how do know if they are from Texas? Answer: They park in the only shade in the parking lot even if it is a mile from the closest door.

There was a lecture about the current drought and long range weather forecasts being given by a visiting solar scientist. She was meeting her friend Janice at the lecture and they were going out for lunch afterward. They attended public science lectures by guest speakers at the campus as often as they could.

Both of them were so busy, they had not talked since their last natural horsemanship training camp. Janice was a high school science teacher and Jessica frequently served as a judge at the local high school science fairs. They both shared a true love of science and worked hard to help rural students develop their scientific curiosity.

She made her way down a side aisle to sit with Janice. They shared a greeting and turned their attention to the lecturer. The lecture was ready to begin as she took her seat in the lecture hall. “Sunspots have an 11 year cycle. The sun has not entered the sunspot cycle expected in 2008. The Little Ice Age (LIA) in the 1600's occurred the last time the sunspot count was as low as the current level. Scientists are speculating that the earth may be entering another LIA”, said the speaker as he introduced his lecture.

He was showing solar pictures of the normal sunspot cycle and the current lack of sunspots. He presented an explanation of the how energy from the sun impacts the ocean currents in both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. These ocean currents drive the weather patterns in North America and Europe. In other words, the current drought in Texas was a direct result of the puny sunspot activity.

The extreme drought was spreading east across the southwestern United States. Lake Meade is at the lowest level since the lake was created by the great Hoover Dam. There have been predictions that Lake Meade will be completely dry by 2025 without some sort of human intervention or there is a break in the conditions causing the drought.

Majestic Glen Canyon is being revealed by the receding lake to the delight of desert hikers. Glen Canyon Dam was completed in 1966 and formed Lake Powell. Most of the world famous orange slick rock gorges of Glen Canyon were at the bottom of Lake Powell. The Glen Canyon dam was a huge controversy back in the 1960's. Environmental issues with the sediment trapped by the Glen Canyon Dam and the downstream changes because of the dam were discussed.

She started daydreaming about the picturesque other-worldly scenes in the orange slick rock formations in Glen Canyon. She had always loved the photos taken of Glen Canyon before being flooded by Lake Powell. The orange slick rock canyons reminded her of the sandstone canyons being revealed as the lake at the base of Shadow Mountain receded.

Sandstone caves are usually shallow and formed at the base of cliffs. Most of the caves are home to millions of bats. The sandstone cliffs at the base of Shadow Mountain probably once had shallow caves housing millions of bats. She loved the idea of having caves to explore. Bats were among her favorite creatures because of their radar vision. There are several bats living in the decaying barn cupola.

Like all living things, celestial life has a beginning and comes to an end. Planets, solar systems, and galaxies are all born and eventually die. The lecturer was discussing the lifecycle of solar systems and galaxies. She thought of the Earth's changing weather and the havoc caused by the sun's current solar spot cycle problems. The only way for mankind to ensure the future of the abundant and miraculous life forms of planet earth was to move into space. In her view, mankind was the caretaker of planet earth and the life on planet earth. It was man's duty to move into space.

At least 5 known mass life extinction events had occurred on earth. Scientists sometimes use the name extinction level event or ELE. Several ELE disaster movies had been made in recent years. Her generation grew up believing they would escape the confines of the earth and be able to live in space. Neil Armstrong walked on the moon when she was only 14. She felt betrayed by the politicians on the coast. The technology of 2010 was generations ahead of the 1960's technology that put men on the moon. And now, there was no real space program.

Jessica returned her attention to the discussion about the local impact of the receding lakes. The lake below her cabin was one of a series of lakes that provided flood control for this part of Texas. Each lake also provided water and produced electricity for the large cities downstream in southern Texas. Neither of these functions was currently being satisfied with the receding waters of the lakes.

The drought is forecast to continue and worsen during the next year. The agriculture forecast is dismal. The wildfire danger is extreme without any relief in sight. The price of the agriculture products she needed would continue to rise. Her big concern is feed for the wildlife and her livestock. Hay is becoming scarce at any price. She is starting to worry about how long she could continue to keep the animals fed. Shallow wells in the area were starting to go dry. At least the deep wells still have water.

Her well was 950 feet deep. Jessica knew her well was at least 950 feet deep because one of the expenses when she bought the cabin was to fix the pump. She watched as the driller pulled pipe after pipe out of the well until he finally got to the submersible pump at 950 feet. It took a powerful pump to push water vertically up a 950 foot pipe. The driller had said she would be lucky if the pump lasted five years and almost exactly five years later the pump had gone out again. This last winter had been one of the coldest on record and, of course, her pump died. They went without water for two weeks during a series of ice storms. Luckily, she could collect enough water and ice in the rain barrels to keep the livestock watered until the well crew replaced the pump. She prayed her well was deep enough to help them survive the drought.

Chapter 8 Romance meets Reality in Natural Horsemanship

Lunch at Olive Garden is a great treat for both of them. They both love the bottomless salad and fresh bread. As an added bonus, they could enjoy the air conditioning while they talked. Both of them were worried about keeping their small ranches operating in the current drought. They both have income from other jobs but the drought is a real strain on their budgets, time, and physical abilities. It is taking a lot of extra effort to keep their livestock cool, watered, properly fed, and safe from the predators that were getting more aggressive as their natural food supply disappeared.

While they enjoyed the food and companionship, they worked on plans for an upcoming play day with some other natural horse buddies. Natural horsemanship play days are a regular event for them. They are both improving their natural horsemanship skills with a group of other like minded horsewomen. Members of the group take turns designing and building new horse training obstacles. Jessica had volunteered to develop a new obstacle for the next horse play day. She shows Janice plans for a portable turnstile prototype made of collapsible PVC pipe.

The turnstile can be used as a gate obstacle. It is made of three lengths of PVC pipe, two short pieces for the vertical supports and one long piece for the horizontal gate arm. The gate arm is attached to one support with a 90 degree PVC corner and the moving side of the gate arm rests in a PVC Y coupling. The vertical supports slip over plastic PVC step-in T posts like the ones Jessica uses for her portable fences. The vertical supports freely rotate around the step-in T posts. All of the pieces come apart and collapse to prevent injuries to the horse and rider. Jessica tied a string to the end of them moving arm of the gate as a handle.

Jessica and Rocky have played with the turnstile on the ground and while riding. They ride up to the gate arm, Jessica grabs the string handle to pick up the gate, places the moving end of the gate on Rocky’s neck, they ride a circle around the stationary post, and Jessica replaces the moving arm of gate in the Y coupling. Rocky always gets a neck rub or a treat when they finish riding around the turnstile.

They talk about the challenges different horses may have with the turnstile. For a Left Brained Introvert (LBI) horse like Rocky, the treat reward is one incentive to enjoy the game. LBI horses love to play complicated games and the challenge of the game is another incentive.

Jessica had been asked to write a blog about her experiences as a novice horse owner developing natural horsemanship skills when Rocky was a very angry and aggressive horse. Janice had kindly reviewed her first entry and provides some good suggestions. Her first blog entry has a page introducing herself and Rocky and a page describing Rocky's transformation from an angry horse to her horse partner. Here is a copy of the second page her blog entry.

The Natural Horsemanship Transformation

Rocky is a beautiful black Tennessee Walking Horse with a fantastic rocking chair canter. He has obviously been around people most of his life and loves human attention. In 2003 when we bought Rocky, he had good ground manners and was not difficult to catch, groom, bridle, saddle, or wash. Unfortunately, he could also become very aggressive toward humans. At the time, I did not understand the anger he was experiencing. When his anger surfaced, he became very dangerous to himself and the humans around him.

The photo on the left shows a very angry Rocky on the 4^th of July in 2004. Cody and her friends had decorated their horses to celebrate Independence Day. They put red, white, and blue ribbons in Rocky’s mane and tail. The photo on the right shows a happy, well-adjusted Rocky standing in our pond in the summer of 2010. These photos really illustrate Rocky’s amazing transformation from a very angry horse to a happy well-adjusted horse.

Rocky had the angry expression in the photo on the left frequently when we bought him in 2003. I didn’t understand what Rocky was trying to tell us with his expression; but, I did understand that he could be very aggressive toward humans when he was angry. Rocky was screaming for help and no one was listening.

CR taught me to listen to Rocky and help him work through his angry emotions. With the horse psychology of “Horsenality™”, I learned to understand Rocky and use natural approaches suited for his innate left brained introverted personality.

Janice says, “Rocky has certainly changed from an angry aggressive horse into a real gem who is truly a great horse partner. We have both been to natural horsemanship workshops where the experts talk about the romance versus the reality of working with horses. Rocky definitely illustrates the difference between the romance and the reality of horse ownership. ”

Jessica says, “Yes, Rocky definitely exemplifies the romance and the reality of a horse relationship. Cody had romantic visions of Rocky as a super horse companion when she begged me to buy him for her and I got the reality of spending the last seven years learning natural horsemanship to cope with an aggressive horse that could be dangerous. What do you think about a theme for the blog being the Romance meets Reality in Natural Horsemanship?”

Janice replies, “The theme certainly applies to the work you have done with Rocky. Many new horse owners need a dose of reality. Just like you, most new horse owners don’t have any experience or idea what they were getting into when they buy their first horse. “

Janice says, “Rocky is definitely closer to the romantic vision of a horse companion than he was when you started. I know it is great to write a blog and use expressions like “our Rocky relationship”; but that name doesn’t describe him today. He is a changed horse, like the difference between a wild teenager and a mature considerate gentleman. Would you ever consider changing his name?”

Jessica wonders why Janice would use the term “considerate gentleman” for Rocky. She has not shared her dreams about Rocky wearing a tuxedo with anyone. Maybe Rocky has become a gentleman in the real world as well as her dreams.

Jessica says, “That is an interesting thought. His registered name is Rio Bravo Rocky Road with Rocky as his barn name. What is in a name? Usually a name says a great deal, doesn’t it? Rocky and I have spent so much time together that I can’t imagine calling him anything else. Rocky belongs to Cody and I’ll ask her what she thinks about changing his barn name. We could call him Bravo!”

Chapter 9 Max makes a discovery

Race Jones was her neighbor on the other side of the lake. Most of his family's land was at the bottom of the lake. He was a native Texan. Race was also mostly of Native American ancestry. He was quiet but he would occasionally talk about his great-great-great grandparents who were the Comanche living in this valley with their horses long before the homesteaders arrived. His great-great grandmother married the original homesteader on the east side of the valley that was now under water.

Race was a handyman. She was thankful to be able to hire him to do heavy jobs around the ranch that she wasn't able to do. Like most Texas horse women, she was her own ranch hand and horse trainer.

She lived on part of the Smith ranch. As long as she lived, she knew the locals would refer to her land as the “Old Smith Ranch”. Race's land and the Smith Ranch bordered an isolated peninsula of the lake. Her place was across the lake from his place. In the winter when the trees lost their leaves, she could see his cabin and barn when she looked east across the lake. This arm of the lake was on the far north end of the lake. The dam was on the south end of the lake. They lived here in isolation without paved roads.

A few of the original land owners were lucky enough to be allowed to keep a few acres of unusable land around their family homestead cabins. Race’s family was one of the lucky ones while the Smith family was not. It broke her heart to know about their loss. Their heritage and livelihood were now at the bottom of the lake.

Race’s Native American ancestors roamed the mountain and the valley long before the European settlers arrived. Before the lake was built, Race's family had owned a large ranch that was now mostly at the bottom of the lake. His family was left with a piece of rocky hillside above the flood zone of the lake. This remaining land was unfit for ranching or farming. The government had taken the rest of their land by eminent domain.

The Smith's had lost their whole ranch the same way. Race had told her how his family and the Smith family had fought the government's plan to flood their land to the bitter end. In the end, the Smiths lost all of their land to the lake. They also lost the little plateau with the cabin and the barn to eminent domain. The government paid them the rock bottom price for the land and considered the old buildings to have no value. After the lake was filled with water, the government sold the confiscated land along the lake shore to developers at premium prices the original owners could never afford. The Smith cabin and barn remained above the flood zone after the lake filled with water so the government also sold it to developers. After several economic upheavals, the developers used the remnants of the old Smith place to help settle a bank debt and the bank eventually sold it to Jessica.

As usual, Jessica got up before dawn to finish her barn chores before the oppressive heat of the day. Race drove up the driveway and pulled his old pickup into the shade beside the barn as she left the house. She waves and says, “Good morning, how are you?”

Race replies, “Good morning, it is a cool morning. I thought I would nail down the tin panels on your barn roof before it gets too hot this morning.”

Some of the tin panels on her barn roof had blown loose in the strong wind storms last month. They didn’t get any rain, just a lot of wind. The drought with high temperatures and wind was causing everything to dry out far more than normal in the summer heat. Anything made of wood was drying out and shrinking. The shrinking wood in the roof deck was making the nails too loose to hold the tin down. Even the doors to the house were shifting and didn’t shut right anymore. She constantly had to jiggle the doors to get them to latch.

She says, “Glad you have time today. I'm in no hurry. There isn't any rain in the forecast for the rest of the summer but it would be nice to get the roof nailed down before the wind does more damage to the tin panels. I'll get you a cup of coffee.”

She returns to the kitchen to make him a cup of coffee. Race liked really strong black coffee. He did not like the weak flavored coffee that she made for herself. The first time she made Race a cup of flavored coffee had taught her a lesson about country coffee drinkers. He had politely tried to drink it but she quickly realized it was not the way he liked his coffee.

The kitchen window faced east toward the barn and the lake. She watches as Race puts the ladder against the upper barn roof and climbs onto the roof. In the past, he had joked with her that Native Americans had no fear of heights. As a child, he had loved climbing the great old oak trees and sandstone cliffs. They called him Race because he could race to the top of the trees and cliffs faster than anyone else.

He walks across the roof to the peak by the crumbling cupola that served as a bat house. She thought, “What is he doing?” He has a pair of binoculars and seems to be scanning the lake for something. Maybe he is just checking out his place across the lake. Or, he could be checking for wild fires. Is it possible he knows something about the stranger’s boot tracks by the leaning oak tree? A good look at the bottom of his boots will let her compare them to the tracks by the old leaning oak.

Max sees Race’s strange behavior and walks into the barn to tell Rocky about it. Max sits down by Rocky's stall door at the back of the barn and tells him Race has those special glasses for looking long distances. She uses them to watch birds.

Rocky nickers to Max, “Can you see what Race is watching?”

Max was on the ground with Rocky and could not possibly see what Race looking at from the barn roof. Rocky could be so ignorant sometimes so Max ignored his question. Max says, “Let’s be on the alert when we go to the lake this morning. I am getting a feeling that something bad is about to happen.”

Jessica brings the coffee to the barn and sets it on top of a fence post near the base of the ladder. She says, “I'm taking Rocky for a quick grazing walk on the lake path. Do you need anything before I go?”

Race walks to the ladder and climbs down. He replies, “No. I might be able to finish fixing the roof before you get back. Enjoy your walk.”

Jessica chats with him on his way down the ladder. She could see his tracks in the loose sand by the barn. Those boots did not make the tracks by the leaning oak.

She retrieves the carrot stick from the hook on the barn wall. After a good session of friendly scratching, they play horse games across the pasture and walk through the gate to the lake path. All three of them are walking slowing and looking toward the lake wondering why Race was looking at the lake with binoculars.

Rocky grazes on every blade of grass he can find on solid ground above the current lake shore. Jessica sits down on a rock and watches Rocky graze while Max sniffs along the lake. She watches Max wading in the water around the old arching oak that has emerged from the receding lake waters. In the past, she has taken several pictures of this oak because of its unique shape.

Max wades in the water around the tree to cool off. He pauses and looks into the water near the trunk of the tree. He sees something but can't quite figure out what it is. He reaches down and picks it up. It feels like a big round bone. He brings it to her and drops it at her feet. All three of them look down at what appears to be a human skull. Jessica looks at it for several seconds trying to decide if it might be real or if it is some sort of Halloween decoration. She washes the muck off of it in the lake to see if it is really bone or some sort of man made material.

She shakes her head sadly. They must have missed a family grave site when the government relocated all of the family cemeteries. In Texas, a family can have a family cemetery on their homestead property. She gets her cell phone out of her back pocket and calls the non-emergency number of the county Sheriff's office. She says, “I would like to report finding what appears to be a human skull in the receding waters of the lake.”

The call dispatcher asks if it is an emergency and she says no. The dispatcher tells her to remain there and wait for someone from the Sheriff’s office. She gives the dispatcher directions to her driveway and how to follow the lake path to her location. The dispatcher says someone will be there within an hour.

Race didn't have a cell phone so she couldn't call him to let him know why she wasn't coming back to the barn right away. She sat there looking around the area. This must have been a beautiful spot before being covered by the lake. There were huge old oak tree trunks laying everywhere. Some trees were still standing and they looked like petrified sentinels. There wasn’t anything in the area would indicate a family cemetery. There weren't any gravestones or fences marking a cemetery. Families usually put a permanent fence around their cemeteries.

This area must have once been a narrow valley about two miles wide between the slope below her cabin and the slope up to Race’s house. There was a river running through it. She tried to visualize how it looked before the lake with the tall arching oak tree surrounded by other trees and the pretty sandstone cliffs forming a perimeter for the valley. It must have been a beautiful, peaceful setting. The oak trees emerging from the lake were old because some of them were over three feet in diameter. This area must have been above the normal flood plain of the river that ran through this valley. She didn’t know how deep the middle of the valley was but this area provided enough shelter that the trees had managed to survive the floods that supposedly ravaged this valley. It would have made the perfect site for a cemetery. She started humming an old hymn, “…we shall gather at the river … the beautiful river…” as she tries to visualize the valley before the lake.

The feral hogs have been rooting everywhere. Rocky’s tracks near the hog rooting remind her that this is near where she found the rosary. Could the body have been buried with a rosary? Or was the rosary lost at another time by another person? She feels so sad about the body being disturbed from its resting place.

As she waits, Jessica realizes that she had made a lot of assumptions about the old Smith place. The deed history started with the date of the eminent domain acquisition of the land by the government. The deed only listed the government, a development company, and a bank that had acquired it as a speculative investment. The deed didn’t mention the Smith family. The Smiths had an original 1800’s homestead claim on a much bigger tract of land. The government created new deeds for the smaller parcels carved out of the land taken by eminent domain.

When she bought the property, the cabin had been abandoned and vandalized. Anything of value had been stolen. After six years, she was still in the process of fixing broken and damaged things in the cabin and barn. The driveway was a secluded old dirt road winding through great oak trees. She was still cleaning up endless piles of beer cans from the teenage partiers who took advantage of abandoned properties on secluded roads. Based on the old debris buried in the soil around the barn and house, she had assumed the original owner had been a blacksmith. She realized she really didn’t know anything about the Smith family. She didn’t even know their first names.

Race finishes the roof repair and realizes Jessica hasn’t returned from the lake. He goes down the ladder and gets a pair of binoculars from his truck. He climbs the ladder and walks to the highest point on the barn roof. He looks toward the lake for several minutes, scanning back and forth along the lake. He climbs down the ladder and puts it back in the barn. He puts up his tools and wonders why Jessica has not returned from the lake. It is still relatively cool so he decides to walk down to the lake. She might have been attacked by the feral hogs or been bitten by a snake. Or worse, she might have fallen down the steep rocky trail. Max was a good dog but he couldn’t keep her out of trouble forever.

When Race arrives at the lake, he sees her sitting on a rocky outcropping near the remains of a great arching oak tree. He pauses and stares in disbelief at the remnants of the old arching tree. Rocky is grazing nearby while Max sits at her feet. Rocky notices Race’s reaction to the tree and knickers to Max who has already noticed Race’s approach and reaction to the tree.

Jessica turns to greet him, “Hi Race. I'm glad you decided to join us. Look at what Max found near that old arching oak tree. We will be here for a while. I called the Sheriff's office and they want us to wait here.”

Race looks down at the skull and sits down on the rock beside her. She says, “This is really sad. The government must have missed an old family cemetery before they filled the lake. I assume they will have to check for other grave sites.”

Race looks at her and says, “Yes, it is really sad. Making this lake was a real tragedy for the families who lived here.”

Race stares at the old arching oak tree and sadly shakes his head. He says, “I finished the roof. If you don't need me to stay with you, I would like to go home. Do you need my help here?”

She said, “No, we have the situation under control. Rocky is happy grazing and I have a shady spot to sit and wait with Max. Thank you for repairing the roof. I'll bring you a check later this afternoon. There is cold water in the barn refrigerator. The chickens are still laying and there are also plenty of eggs in the barn refrigerator. It would be great if you could take some of the eggs.”

Race turns to leave and says, “You could probably wait at the house where it is safer and a lot cooler. It doesn’t look like there is anyone here to bother the area. The only risk is the feral hogs and you can’t stop them from rooting wherever they want.”

Jessica says, “You are definitely right about it being too hot to wait here. I will give the Sheriff an hour and then go back to the house. Do you know anything about a cemetery here?”

Race shakes his head and walks back up the path to the barn. A few minutes later, she hears his old truck drive away. Then she hears another engine but it isn’t the Sheriff. A low flying plane soars overhead and circles low around this end of the lake. Jessica always waves at the planes. The plane circles around the lake several times before heading north along the shore.

While she is waiting for the deputy, she opens the notepad application on her cell phone. She has been working on her drought planning list. Race has fixed the barn roof to prevent further damage to the tin panels. She has fixed the broken water pipes to the barn. This last winter had been exceptionally cold and dry. The pipes to the barn had frozen and burst. She had dug up the buried pipes in the dry hard dirt and repaired the breaks. Her next priority is deciding which trees and plants to save. She decides to try to save the great oak trees adjacent to the cabin. The summer temperature in the cabin would be unbearable if those trees died. She had already started digging deep trenches around the base of the trees at four foot intervals from their trunks. Her next task is to finish the trenches and keep the trenches full of water at night.

The next plants on her list were the rose bushes. She loved roses and had always planted roses in her yard wherever she lived. The cabin had two ancient rose bushes by the front door. Their fragrance was amazing. Visitors to the cabin always remarked about their amazing fragrance. American roses have been selectively modified over time to enhance their color at the expense of their fragrance. Old world roses were still valued for their fragrance. She had imagined the original owners of the cabin bringing those roses from their homeland in Europe. She must try to save the roses. She would prune them back just like she did in the fall as part of her winter preparations. She would also find a way to shelter them from the sun. With the temperatures well over 100 degrees every day for the last 40 days, even the roses needed shade.

About an hour later, a Sheriff's deputy calls her cell phone to ask for more detailed directions from her barn to the lake. She guides him down the path and shows him the skull. He takes a quick look at it and calls the Sheriff's office. The deputy says he will wait there until someone else arrives to get the skull and look at the area. He says she should go back to the house and avoid this area until the Sheriff lets her know she can return. The deputy also tells her not to tell anyone about the skull.

Jessica slowly walks up the hill with Rocky and Max. The temperature is already over 105 degrees and too hot to be hiking rocky slopes. She puts Rocky in the barn with some food and cool water. Rocky is annoyed that he has put him in the barn. He wants to be down at the lake watching the man. As he is pacing around the stall, he notices the symbol carved in the barn wall by the feed room. It has the same pattern as the metal he found yesterday near the arching oak tree. The metal must have belonged to the barn’s other owners. She has the metal now. He must tell Max there is a connection between the skeleton and the barn.

Jessica and Max walk to the house and she puts Max in the mud room adjacent to the kitchen. She makes him some food and gives him a cool bowl of water. They sit on the old braided rag rug together. As she sits and thinks, Jessica picks up the rosary from the boot bench in the mud room. She looks from the rosary to the kitchen cabinet knobs to confirm they were made with the same hands. She firmly believes that the bonds of love and family are eternal. The person at the bottom of the lake must have been loved by the Smith family and she was determined to make sure they could rest in peace together. She must learn more about the Smith family and find the Smith family cemetery.

After Max finishes his meal, he lays down on the old braided rag rug. He closes his eyes to drift off to sleep. This was his favorite sleeping rug when he was a puppy. His nostrils fill with the comfortable old scents from the rug. Suddenly, Max is alarmed by one the scents. The scent from the stranger is mixed with the other scents in this old rug. How is that possible? The stranger must have lived in this house in the past. He must tell Rocky on his next trip to the barn.

While Max is resting, she goes to the front yard and prunes the rose bushes. She puts the dry rose branches in a wheel barrow and takes the debris to her growing brush pile. The brush pile will be burned the minute the burn bans are lifted. Right now, she is so glad she started the brush pile so far from the house and barn. Next, she finishes digging the trenches around the oak trees.

The interesting thing about living in an old cabin is the bits of history you find every time you dig in the dirt. She usually finds broken pottery and blacksmith paraphernalia. Today, she found the remnants of an old bucket and parts of some old metal ladles used by blacksmiths to cool and mold hot molten metals. Her grandfather had been a combination metal smith and blacksmith so she recognized these objects. She remembers watching her grandfather melt metal ores in heavy ladles and pour the molten metal into molds to cool. Somewhere she might even find the molds for the kitchen cabinet knobs and sadly the rosary as well.

In the early evening, Jessica puts Max in the front seat of the old Jeep. She drives down the dusty driveway looking for deer. Most of the deer have moved to greener pastures but she can always hope to see one. At the end of the driveway, she turns west on the old gravel county road that eventually leads her around the north end of the lake and to the hill east of her cabin. She turns south on the gravel county road that will eventually take her to Race’s driveway. This road runs parallel to her ranch and she stops several times to see what her property looks like from the east side of the lake. She is shocked to see so many dead trees along her property.

Race has a locked security gate just like she does to keep the lake tourists off of their private property. Along the lake, it is difficult to tell where the public land ends and private land begins. Teenagers love to party on isolated property near the lake and hunters can easily get miss property boundaries. Jessica has never been to Race’s cabin. She always leaves his check near the gate. Just inside of his gate is a pile of sandstone rocks. Under the capstone rock is an old red Folgers 3 pound coffee can. Race always tells her to leave his check there so she does.

Chapter 10 Treasure Hunters Invade

The Sheriff's office and the park rangers spend another day looking around the site removing bones and anything else of interest. The Sheriff brought most of his team to the location by boat. It was a real mess working in all the gooey muck. They found most of a human skeleton and a lot of debris that may or may not be relevant. The medical examiner on site couldn't make any determination about the age of the burial site. Some guy in a lab somewhere would have to sort through the stuff and figure out what was important and what was typical lake trash.

She stayed around the house and barn doing her daily chores. Max stayed in the house with her except when she took him to the barn with her to help take care of the other animals. Max and Rocky talked about the latest news on every trip to the barn. Max told Rocky about the scents in the old braided rag rug. Rocky told him about the symbols in the rosary matching the symbols on the barn wall. Rocky was keeping a sharp ear toward the lake trying to hear anything of interest.

Max could only hear her side of most of the phone calls. But, Max heard everything when she used the speaker box on the phone. The Sheriff called to tell her the early report from the medical examiner indicated the body had been buried shortly before the lake was flooded. As she had only lived in the area for five years, the Sheriff assumed she wouldn't know anything about events that happened before the lake was completed in 1976. He had wanted to know if she had found anything in the old cabin or on her ranch to make her believe there was a family cemetery on the old Smith place. Of course, she said no because the cabin and land had been stripped of everything when she bought it. He also asked if she had found any firearms on the property. She hadn’t and told him no.

News travels fast in the country. Several people called to ask about the traffic on the roads near her branch of the lake and driveway. All she could say was the Sheriff was investigating something down at the lake and her driveway had the closest road access.

Everyone assumed it was either poachers or someone growing marijuana on the public land along the lake. The local hang outs were filled with discussions about what could be happening on the lake. They all remembered the big police news last year. A cock fighting ring had been busted last fall about a mile north of town. A big marijuana crop had been found on public land and burned by the police last spring. The current speculation was that the current police investigation had to be a marijuana crop because that part of the lake didn't have the roads needed for the crowds that attend cock fights. Poachers were ruled out because the only animals of interest left were the feral hogs and coyotes.

The Sheriff's office released a short news report the next day. The report said a skeleton had been discovered near the lake. The Sheriff's office and the park service were investigating the location and checking local records for family cemeteries.

This short news item brought out the treasure hunters. It seemed like everyone with a metal detector decided to walk along the lake shore looking for lost treasure. After all, who knows what early Texas families, the Spanish explorers, or Native Americans had buried in their cemeteries. Fortunately, most people did not know where the skeleton had been discovered.

Her phone was ringing constantly from people wanting to know if she knew anything about the skeleton or cemeteries. She could honestly say she had only lived here for five years and didn't know anything about what had happened before she moved here. Her isolated lake path and gated driveway prevented lake access by land. However, the lake was filled with boaters moving slowly along the shores looking for good spots to go treasure hunting.

The horses are kept in the outdoor paddocks near the barn. The paddocks were big enough for them to get plenty of exercise. That is, they could get some exercise if they wanted to leave their shady spots. The horses just wanted to stand in the shade. She made sure their water tanks and hay flakes were in the shade with them. The temperature reached 112 degrees.

They didn't go down to the lake shore but Jessica did spend a lot of time with her binoculars looking at the lake from the 2^nd floor window of the new part of the house. A lot of slow moving boats traveled along the edge of the lake. There were even boats at night shining lights on the shore. Her biggest fear was that someone would accidently start a wild fire.

Jessica called Janice to discuss meeting at the upcoming horse play day. As Janice was a native of the area, she asked Janice where she could find copies of the local school year books. Janice said she would check in the school library archive and let her know what was available.

The farrier came about two hours before sunset so he could work in the shade. Her 5 horses were an easy job for him. Her horses went barefoot; that is, without horseshoes, so all he had to do was trim their feet. She held each horse with a lead rope draped around their neck. She rarely tied up her horses. The horses were accustomed to being held and led with a rope around their neck so they didn’t give the farrier any problems. While he trimmed the horse hooves, they exchanged gossip. He warned her to be careful about the copperheads because his last client had just gotten out of the hospital. His client had been bitten on the ankle by a copperhead in her vegetable garden. She was in the hospital for two weeks and the anti-venom shots cost over $3000 each. He had another story about an older man bitten by a scorpion and the man suffered allergic reaction to the anti-venom shots.

All of these stories reaffirmed her dislike of snakes and scorpions. Jessica knew she would have nightmares about snakes and scorpions all night. After supper, Jessica and Cody sat on the back porch listening to the distant sound of the treasure hunters talking from their boats in the lake. There was usually a light evening breeze from the lake. Tonight was no exception.

Little did those treasure hunters know, they had their own bucket of real treasure. Cody was looking through the five gallon bucket of yard treasures for craft ideas. Some of the old glass was very colorful. They found an old wooden table with a broken top among the debris in the barn. Cody was hoping to find the right colors to make a glass mosaic for the table top. She had designed a mosaic pattern and wanted to use the old glass pieces. She just had to find the right colors for her pattern.

Whenever they found odd bits of glass, pottery, or small metal fragments in the yard, they put them in this bucket. The bucket was rapidly filling up the last few weeks. The loose dry sand on the soil surface was being blown away by the winds and leaving the heavier objects behind. Jessica was hoping for more of the kitchen cabinet knobs to appear so there would be a complete matching set. There might even be kitchen drawer handles out there somewhere. When they moved into the cabin, one of her biggest chores on the outside of the cabin was to clean up the yard garbage left by illegal trash dumpers and vandals. She had found a pile of the cabinet knobs under some wood debris that looked like a vandal had ripped out one of the kitchen cabinets and smashed it. There was still a place in the kitchen where she needed to replace that cabinet. Jessica prepared for the sleepless hours she knew would be coming after her snake nightmares by watching TV and having late night chocolate snacks with her daughter.

For the first time in a long time, Jessica locks all of the doors before she goes to bed. She tells Cody to keep the doors locked at night. It would be really hard for anyone to actually walk from a boat in the lake to the shore below the cabin. The lake has receded so much that there is a huge band of gooey muck between the old shore and the current water line. Still, Jessica doesn’t want to attract attention to the shoreline below her cabin. They will have to be careful to make sure their visits to the lake aren’t observed by treasure hunters and boaters on the lake. They will only visit the lake shore in the very early morning and they will only go to places where the terrain or brush keeps them hidden from the lake. She doesn’t want anyone on the lake to think there is anything worth seeing here.

Before going to bed, she sits totally relaxed on the floor in a cross legged yoga pose. Jessica visualizes riding Rocky bareback and bridleless on a beautiful beach. She can feel the wind blowing against her face and smell the scents of the ocean, tropical flowers, and coffee. The scents are those of the Big Island of Hawaii near the coffee bean plantations. A candle scented with tropical flowers is burning and a CD plays with the gentle sound of waves on the sand. She is falling asleep in her yoga pose when she decides to try sleeping in bed.

Jessica still tosses and turns in her sleep. She dreams about Rocky’s biting attacks of the past. Rocky had been a practiced expert at sneak attacks to bite her. The general pattern of Rocky’s past sneak attacks was to move in close while she was distracted, make a quick lunge to bite her, and retreat just out of range as fast as he could to watch her reaction. The first respect lesson Rocky had to learn was that she would defend her personal space. She had to learn to drive him out of attack range and keep him there. Natural horsemanship uses phases of pressure to drive the horse away from you. The idea is to use the least amount of pressure possible and increase the pressure until you get the desired result. If you use a consistent pattern of phased pressure, then the horse will start to respond with less pressure. CR helped her develop a set of phases for driving Rocky out of biting range. This is a diary entry for learning phases of pressure.

Tool	Phase 1	Phase 2	Phase 3	Phase 4
Lead Rope	Shake the lead rope with wrist action	Shake the lead rope with elbow action	Shake the lead rope with whole arm action	Send a rolling wave of energy down the lead rope to violently move the metal snap attaching the rope to the halter
Carrot stick and savvy string	Hold the savvy string so it doesn’t move, slowly move the carrot stick up and down	More vigorously move the stick up and down	Tap the lead rope while moving the stick up and down	Vigorously tap the lead rope while moving the stick up and down making the metal snap move and if necessary march toward horse

Now, Rocky responds to her body language and she doesn’t even need to use the pressure of phase 1. That is, except in her nightmares! In her nightmares, even phase 4 couldn’t keep her from being attacked and bitten. She awoke exhausted and ready for several cups of coffee.

Chapter 11 Horse Play Day

Horse play days are fun for Rocky. He doesn't have to work very hard while he gets to do one of his favorite activities (after eating that is), he gets to watch the people. Rocky is a dominant horse full of confidence and he doesn’t need horse companions to feel secure. Jessica always loads him in the trailer with a fresh flake of hay for the ride to the play day. Rocky enjoys the breeze blowing in the trailer windows and from the ceiling vents.

Jessica drives down the long dusty roads on the way to the play day site and is shocked at how brown the pastures are. She arrives early to get one of the few shady spots for the trailer. When they arrive at the play day site, Rocky is disappointed because he loves the clover mixed with the grass in the pastures around the play day site. However, today the pasture is brown and dusty just like his pasture at home. Oh well, she gives him a fresh flake of hay beside the trailer along with a fresh bucket of water flavored with molasses. At least he gets to eat while she helps set up the natural horsemanship training obstacles.

Trailers are arriving with the other horses. The regular play day participants know they have to get there early if they want some of the sparse shade. Most of the horse owners are women. Natural horsemanship play days attract a lot more women than men. The men are usually the husbands or friends of the women who bring their horses. The natural horsewomen are dedicated to making the world a better place for horses and humans. Many of them have rescue horses or horses like Rocky that responded with anger and aggression to standard equine training approaches.

The natural horsewomen have a lot in common. They all drive pickup trucks big enough to pull horse trailers. They are their own horse trainers and ranch hands. This means they haul the hay and feed as well as shovel the manure at their barn. They also do the daily barn chores of feeding, watering, cleaning and repairing anything that needs to be fixed. These women aren’t afraid of the dirt and sweat in their daily lives. They also manage their households, raise the kids, and most of them have day jobs to pay the bills.

Today, CR was there to talk about horse personalities (known as Horsenalities^TM) and how to tailor natural horse training approaches based on the Horsenality of your horse. Some men came just to hear CR's talk. The men were wondering around the trailers checking out the trucks, horses, and the women horse owners while they waited.

Rocky didn't like most men. His early trainers had been men who used really harsh equipment and techniques. He really liked his human partner and wanted to stay with her. After all, he had a real investment in her training to be a natural horsewoman. She was finally a good enough horsewoman for them to have fun while they were riding and playing horse games. Rocky tried really hard to please her but she had to make sure she used body language that he understood. Sometimes when she is tired, he doesn’t understand her body language and he feels really bad when he can’t figure out what she wants him to do. She has gotten much better at recognizing when she isn’t being a good communicator.

Rocky caught a scent that sparked his interest. A man approaches him with his hand held out with the universal friendly horse greeting. Rocky sniffs toward the man's hand to indicate he could approach and touch him. The man walks around Rocky with the confidence of someone very familiar with horses. He rubs Rocky's withers in just the right place. Rocky enjoys it! As the man stands beside Rocky, the man's scent fills the air. Rocky realizes the scent belongs to the stranger roaming the paths on Shadow Mountain. The man walks away as Rocky tries to turn his head to watch him. Rocky is tied to the trailer so he can't get a good look at the man or see where he goes. Why does she have to tie him to the trailer, he won't run away! Why isn't Max here to follow the man? Rocky will have to try to find him in the crowds while they play with the obstacles.

After she finished setting up training obstacles, Jessica walks over to the trailer and Rocky. She sits down on the trailer fender to enjoy the last of her coffee. In the metal mug, the sun has heated it hotter than when she brewed it. She unties Rocky to let him drift around the trailer while she rests for a few minutes. She is thinking about the people at the play day and who might be a good source of information about the Smith family. Most of the women were close to her age so they would have been teenagers when the lake was created. Who were the life long residents of the area? She made a mental list of who she might be able to talk with as they played natural horsemanship games with the obstacles. Janice would also know about other sources of information.

Rocky is finally free to look around at the people. He is looking for the man with the scent. He plans to stay near her to make sure she is safe but he is watching all of the men for any sign of trouble. He will also try to get as close to the men as possible looking for the scent. While they are in the parking area, he wants to check out the trucks to see if one of them has the scent. He stays close to her as he drifts toward the trucks without trailers first. He finds an old Jeep with the scent. How can he get her attention? Simple, he will just wait there forcing her to come and get him. There isn’t any grass to eat anyway.

Jessica has been watching Rocky. He didn’t drift very far. There was an old Jeep parked on the other side of a big pickup. She had noticed the Jeep earlier. It is a classic Jeep in mint condition. The owner must keep it in storage most of the time because it looks brand new. Why would the owner drive it down all of these dusty gravel roads to the play day? She also wonders why Rocky is waiting by the Jeep. He isn’t causing any trouble and there certainly isn’t any food there.

When she finishes her coffee, she walks over to get Rocky. Together, they admire the old Jeep. It is a really old Jeep, probably at least 30 years old. She hasn’t seen the Jeep before but a lot of people came just to hear the Horsenality presentation and didn’t bring a horse because they didn’t want to bring their horses out in this heat. She walks Rocky to the arena to hear CR’s Horsenality lesson.

CR explains the basic personalities for horses are just like people personalities. It reminds Jessica of college psychology classes only for horses instead of humans. CR explains how to use the Parelli Horsenality^TM charts to determine the innate horsenality of each horse. They learned about Left Brained, Right Brained, Introverted, and Extroverted traits for the horses.

While listening to CR’s presentation, she thinks about Rocky and his Left Brain Introverted (LBI) horsenality and how CR taught her to understand Rocky’s needs by using horse psychology and natural training methods. A LBI horse like Rocky is dominant, confident, thinks before he acts, and expresses his aggression by charging, bucking, and biting. Jessica still has nightmares about Rocky’s past acts of aggression. CR taught her how to understand Rocky and his emotional state so she could effectively respond to his aggression and become an alpha leader he respects. Here is one of her diary entries for understanding Rocky’s ears.

Ears are the best indicator for Rocky’s attitude and emotional state. Tense ears usually indicate that Rocky is not in a good mood or his attention is focused on something he feels is a threat. When I first bought Rocky, tense ears indicated that he could become aggressive toward me. Thankfully, his days of aggression are gone but I still use his ears to understand his emotional state. If Rocky will not let me rub or scratch his ears then he is not in a friendly mood. The same is true if his ears are tense when I rub or scratch them. I always check Rocky’s ears before riding. He may pass all of the riding preparation respect tests and still have tense ears. I will play friendly and respect games until his ears are relaxed and following my lead. I will only ride when he has relaxed ears.

Jessica uses natural horse games to help Rocky relax before they play with the obstacles. Rocky really likes standing on pedestals and the sideways game. She lets him stand on a pedestal with his front feet to stretch out and massage his spine. Jessica rubs and scratches his underbelly while he stands on the pedestal. Rocky always loves an underbelly rub. She uses the carrot stick and savvy string to gently swat the flies. She scratches his special itchy spot on his neck and scratches his ears. An LBI horse likes to know there is some reward for him in all of their activities. Scratching itchy spots that he can’t reach and swatting flies are great rewards.

Zone 1 is in front of the horse and zone 3 is the middle of the horse (his stomach). Jessica begins by standing beside Rocky’s zone 3 and sending him sideways away from her and then back to her. For some variety, she has Rocky go sideways over a barrel laying on its side. Then they play the sideways game from zone 1. Jessica finds a place to sit down, sends him back 20 feet over a log, and pauses to give him time to think. She asks him to step sideways to one end of the log, waits a minute, and then asks him to step sideways to the other end of the log. Jessica sends him sideways in one direction a few steps and waits until he relaxes a little before sending him sideways the other way. Every horse has their preferences and Rocky usually finds zone 1 sideways more relaxing than zone 3 sideways.

During one of the water breaks, she sits down by Kelly who is a life long resident of the area. Kelly is about ten years older than Jessica so she would have been an adult when the lake was completed in 1976. Kelly does dressage with a beautiful gray Andalusian mare. Jessica asks Kelly about the new natural horse farrier she is using for her horses. Jessica keeps her horses barefoot (without horseshoes). Kelly keeps dressage shoes on all four feet of her horses. They compare experiences with natural horse farriers and equine dentists. They discuss the new Texas laws to control and license equine dentists.

Kelly knows she lives on the old Smith place. Jessica then brings up the subject of the Smith family, “I think the Smith family must have been blacksmiths. Every time I dig in the yard I seem to find bits of old blacksmith tools. Do you remember the Smith family?”

Kelly replies, “That was a long time ago. I didn’t know the Smith family personally. I do remember a boy that was a few years younger than me. I don’t remember hearing anything about them after the lake was filled. They might have just gotten fed up with the government handling of the lake acquisition and left the area like a lot of the old timers. The lake was built for the people in the big cities without a lot of consideration for the impact on local families. The government didn’t give the ranchers enough money to replace their land in the area because speculators moved in to buy the land for investment and land prices rose dramatically as the lake filled with water. Most of the ranchers who lost their land just moved their operation someplace else where land was more affordable.”

She asks, “What do you remember about the boy?”

Kelly replies, “There was a boy who was several years younger than me. I remember him riding his horse in the 4^th of July parades. I don’t remember him doing the rodeos or competing. Even as a young boy, he seemed to be a natural with horses. This was long before Parelli and other natural horsemen started formal natural horsemanship training programs. Everyone back then called natural horse people “horse whisperers”. They said the Smith boy learned to be a horse whisperer from the Comanche side of his family.”

They talked about the obstacles and how their horses responded differently. They were relating the different reactions to the lessons in Horsenality given by CR this morning. Jessica still has trouble getting Rocky through one of the water obstacles. He isn’t afraid of their pond, the lake, or water puddles they cross in their walking adventures around the ranch. She is trying to figure out what specifically bothers him about one of the obstacles. She plans to try some more approach and retreat this afternoon. The idea is to avoid focusing too much on the problem obstacle and rewarding small efforts on his part. The best reward would be a treat and then moving on to another obstacle that he really likes. They will also spend a lot of time just ignoring the water obstacle and playing with all of the other obstacles near it.

After some other discussions, Kelly says, “I have been thinking about the Smith family. Do you know if your neighbor Race and the Smiths are related? I can’t remember for sure if the Jones and Smiths are related. Every time I try to remember the Smiths, I think of Race. Race and the Smith boy were about the same age and stuck together like glue. They could have just been really good friends but I think that both Race and the Smith boy were part Comanche.”

She looks at Kelly and says, “Race has mentioned his Native American roots but he has never mentioned being related to the Smiths. How do you think they are related?”

Kelly replies, “Well, if I remember right, the Smith and Jones families homesteaded adjacent properties back in the late 1800’s. I think they owned that whole valley that is now the north arm of the lake. I remember my grandparents talking about the Smith and Jones families marrying into one another’s families. Their relationship must go back at least three or four generations if it is the same Smith and Jones families. Smith and Jones are such common names.”

Jessica and Rocky spent most of the afternoon playing with obstacles in the shade and visiting with friends.

As she was loading the trailer to leave, Janice approached with a box of thin books. She said, “Here are the old year books you asked about. These are from the local high schools for the years before the lake was filled. These are all of the old year books that I could find in the school archive. What do you hope to find in those yearbooks?”

She replied, “I decided to try to understand more about the area under the lake. I have been looking at topographical maps on the Internet. They didn't have satellite imagery at the time so we can't see actual images of the land before the lake was filled. I have been trying to find aerial photos but haven't had any luck. I want to see which families were living in the area back then. Out of curiosity, I also want to see if the Smith's had any children in school.”

Chapter 12 Snakes in the Barn

Question: How do you know when you reach Texas on the interstate? Answer: The fast food restaurants have drive up lanes for pickups pulling horse trailers. All of her friends from back east were always amazed that Texans eat in their cars. They were even more amazed to find out that the restaurants have drive up lanes built for trucks pulling horse trailers.

Like all rural Texans, Jessica had a huge insulated cooler in the back seat. She bought a double cab truck because she didn’t have a car. This truck served two purposes; it was general transportation and her ranch truck. The back seat wasn’t for hauling extra passengers; it was for hauling groceries and other purchases. In the Texas heat, she put most of the groceries into the huge cooler to keep them fresh on the long drive between the store and her ranch. The cooler always contained a supply of water. On long trips, she would put frozen water bottles in the cooler. The frozen water bottles chilled the cooler. When the frozen bottles melted, you could drink the chilled water and free up space in the cooler for groceries and other items to be protected from the hot Texas sun.

Jessica pulled into the horse trailer line and waited her turn to order. The weather reporter on the radio said it was 110 degrees with a heat index of 121 degrees. This was the 45^th consecutive day with a high temperature over 100 degrees. They really needed some icy refreshments. Rocky loved the icy grape drinks and so did she. She placed an order for two large ones and an unsweet ice tea. Four bags of ice were also ordered. One bag was for her refrigerator and Max’s water bowl. One bag would cool the horse water tank tonight. Another bag was for the poultry water tank. The remaining bag was for the poultry nursery pen.

Jessica had a special poultry pen on the east side of the barn built of tough chicken wire and covered with shade cloth. When the hens (duck or chicken) hatched their eggs, she immediately caught the whole family and moved them to this nursery pen until the hatchlings developed feathers. Her free range flocks had a very high survival rate because of this technique. Cody spent her high school summers working as a volunteer zoo keeper. One of the animal enrichments at the zoo was to place ice on the shade cloths covering the pens. As the ice melted, the dripping water cooled the pen and provided water fun for the animals. Jessica adopted this cooling technique for the poultry. When she didn’t have ice, she sprayed water to soak the shade cloth in the evenings to cool off the pen.

The cats also learned to leave the baby chicks and ducklings alone in the poultry nursery pen. Jessica lets the kittens and cats come into the pen with her while she feeds and does other chores in the pen. When the kittens are young and start playing with their cat and mouse games, they chase everything. When a kitten shows any interest in a baby chick or duck, Jessica gently picks up the kitten by the scruff of its neck (just like the mother cat) and moves the kitten someplace else to play. After a few relocations away from the baby poultry, the kittens lose all interest in chasing poultry because they don’t want to be picked up and moved.

While waiting in the trailer drive up lane, Jessica is facing the local hardware store. She is admiring the old Jeep in the parking lot; it was the same Jeep that was parked at the play day. The Jeep is old but in mint condition. As Cody would say, it is beast! A man who looked like Race came out of the hardware store. She starts to call out to him and then realizes that it isn’t Race. Although the man has a similar walk, height, and face; Race is lean and agile while this man is very muscular. He walks over to the old Jeep and puts a long box in the back seat. He starts the old Jeep and sits there for a few minutes. The Jeep has a canvas top without doors so he isn’t cooling the Jeep with an air conditioner. He appears to be lost in thought. He drives out the opposite side of the parking lot so she can’t see where he goes.

As she turns into the driveway on Shadow Mountain, Jessica realizes how hot and tired she is after a long play day. She makes sure the gate is locked behind her and opens the trailer window so Rocky can put his head out of the trailer. She never drives down the highway with the window open because she is afraid Rocky's head will get hit by oncoming traffic.

She drives slowly down the oak lined driveway to the barn. Even the great oaks with their deep roots are starting to turn brown. Rocky is hot and tired as well. He really enjoys the fresh air with his head out of the trailer. The smell of smoke from the wildfires in west Texas isn’t as bad as it had been earlier in the day. Rocky calls to the other horses and Max as they approach the barn.

Jessica opens the trailer and unties his rope so he can back out of the trailer. She gently tugs on his tail to signal that he can back out and uses his tail to guide him back out of the trailer. Rocky is always tied in the trailer for safety. When she bought her first trailer, she had been cautioned to always tie the horses in the trailer to prevent neck injuries that can happen if the horse bends over to eat hay on the floor and the trailer makes a sudden stop.

Max comes out of the barn with a low growl in his throat. He looks up at her and then at the barn as he growls. She says, “What is wrong Max? Is something in the barn?”

Max tells Rocky, “The big snake is back in the barn and it is squeezing another chicken to death. We have to convince her to go check the chicken nests behind the hay. Hurry up to the barn and help me. You know I can’t fight a snake in a confined space between the hay and barn wall. We have to move the hay out of the way.”

Jessica hurries to the barn and looks around. Most of the chicken flock is in the damp horse stalls with their feathers spread out and panting from the heat. Nothing seems to be wrong with the chickens. Max and Rocky are over by the hay at the east end of the barn. She keeps the hay neatly stacked under a tarp. The tarp protects the hay from chicken droppings and keeps the chickens from scratching the bales apart. Rocky has put his head under the tarp and is pulling bales of hay onto the ground from her organized hay stack. He is grabbing the hay bales with his teeth and throwing the bales away from the barn wall. Max is growling as he tugs and pulls on the tarp covering the hay.

Jessica says, “Rocky, I will give you some hay but you must be patient. You are making a mess of the hay stack and you might get hurt.”

She says to Max, “No, stop pulling on the tarp.” Max lets go of the tarp as he focuses his attention behind the hay and continues to growl.

Jessica walks over to tug on Rocky’s mane and guide him to his stall but he just keeps pulling hay bales down from the stack. As she starts to use more pressure on his mane, she notices Max is still growling at the hay. She moves around Rocky and looks behind the hay tarp to see a long snake wrapped around one of the hens squeezing the life out of her while it is swallowing eggs. She had been finding dead hens around the barn and assumed it was the heat but now she realizes it was the snakes. She had been catching the snakes in the barn and letting them go down by the lake. This was apparently a big mistake!

Jessica spends the next few minutes freeing the hen from the snake. She catches the snake and puts it in a five gallon bucket sealed with a lid. The park ranger should be able to provide some safe snake release advice. This snake will be released so it won’t come back to the barn and harm any more chickens.

She picks up the poor hen and moves the hen to a nest made of hay in the tack room. The hen has very shallow breathing but her eyes are sealed shut. She gets a small bowl of water and slowly uses her finger to put water drops on the chicken’s beak. Now all she can do is pray for the chicken. Max always sits with her while she takes care of sick animals. She pets him and gives him a huge hug. She says, “Max, thank you so much. I don’t know how I could live here without you. How can I ever show you how much you mean to me?”

Max is happy. He has been feeling so bad about not being able to protect the hens from the snakes. Now she finally understands what has been happening to the hens.

Jessica tosses the savvy string around Rocky’s neck and walks him outside. She sprays water on him so he can cool off after the hot ride in the trailer. Jessica takes time to scratch some of his itchy spots. They play a bonding game where Rocky uses his nose to point to an area he would like to have scratched. She vigorously scratches the itchy area and then slowly strokes the area as she sighs and relaxes to indicate she has finished scratching that spot. When they are done playing, she leads Rocky by his mane to his stall and puts some fresh hay in his feeder. She cleans his water bucket and fills it with fresh water. His grape slushy is added as a treat to flavor the water. She knows he will drink the whole bucket and that he needs the water to stay hydrated. His bucket will be refilled later tonight.

Max stays with Jessica as she feeds and waters the other horses. She puts the ice into the water tanks and spreads it out on the nursery shade cloth to keep the little chicks and ducklings cool. She realizes that she is feeling lonely. In all the excitement with the snake, she forgot to turn on her Randy Travis music. Maybe she needs counseling if she misses his music that much!

After the snake incident, it will be another sleepless night of snake nightmares. She decides to mentally focus on riding Rocky bareback and bridleless before she goes to bed. After all, if you can imagine yourself doing something, it is a lot easier to actually do it.

Rocky was busy drinking the sweetened water when Max returns to the barn and sits down by his stall. Rocky tells Max about finding the stranger at the play day. He also tries to describe the old Jeep that has the same scent. The only vehicle that Rocky recognizes is the big red pickup truck with his horse trailer. All other vehicles look alike to him.

Max tells Rocky about spending the day hanging around the barn in the shade. He heard a lot of people noise down at the lake but nothing specific. She had ordered him to stay near the barn and he had obeyed because his first duty was to guard the ranch. The wind was wrong for him to pick up any scents coming from their trails to the lake. Tonight when the breeze blew from the lake, Max and Rocky would be alert for the stranger’s scent. They both realized the stranger had the advantage of knowing their territory.

Chapter 13 The Romance and Reality of Riding Rocky

Jessica is dreaming again. This time she is on a lovely sandy beach with Rocky. The aroma of tropical flowers fills the wind with a tantalizing scent. She is young again and has long flowing hair blowing in the breeze. She is wearing a long white night gown and a long pearl necklace. The feel of real pearls against her skin is so cool and smooth. The huge pearls are so smooth as they slide back and forth on her skin as she rides. She is riding Rocky bareback and bridleless. They are cantering through the warm gentle waves that are washing across the sand. They are both having so much fun. Rocky has soft attentive ears and his body is so relaxed. It is thrilling!

Suddenly, his body is tense and he rears up. When his front hooves come down he kicks out wildly with his hind legs. She is still on his back as he jumps straight up in the air and strikes out with his powerful hind legs. Everything is a blur. She is standing on the sand covered with dirt and bruises. The big pearls from the necklace are scattered everywhere. She is old and tired. Rocky lunges away and then turns to face her. His face and eyes are hard with anger. His ears are tense and pinned back. Rocky snorts and his nostrils flare in anger. His tail makes a quick swish as he charges directly at her. Oh no, not again! What can she do?

He is closing in fast. Every step puts him so much closer to her. She can’t run and she doesn’t have her carrot stick or lead rope. She pivots into her power position with both feet firmly on the ground, bends her knees slightly, and lowers her center of gravity. She faces him with a determined look on her face. She marches toward him pretending she has her carrot stick in her hand making a barrier between them. When he sees her reaction, he skids to a stop in front of her. They face one another, waiting for one of them to back off.

She wakes up from the nightmare shaking and covered with sweat in the hot bedroom. The night temperatures were still in the upper 90’s. These were the same dreams again. Well, the pearls were a new detail in the dream. The dreams would start out with a romantic vision of riding Rocky and end with the nightmare of learning to handle a very aggressive Rocky. Whenever she had these dreams, she wondered if she still had trust issues with Rocky. Rocky had hurt her so many times that she had to work really hard to learn to trust him as they progressed through their natural horsemanship training program. Jessica had never shared these dreams with anyone. Maybe that was also a trust issue.

Jessica hears something pelting the windows and wishes it was rain. It is sand being blown by the relentless winds. She has a Parelli Level 3 riding lesson with CR today and hopes the winds would let up for her lesson.

Jessica goes to the kitchen, makes a cup of coffee, and returns to her bedroom as she thinks about her riding lesson today. Rocky is a totally different horse than when she first started riding him. She gets out her diary and looks back at the entries for the last seven years. Here is a copy of the riding preparation chart she customized for Rocky.

Respect Tests	Examples of games	Rocky Shows Emotions or is Tense
The Ears	Rub or scratch his ears	Spend some dwell time if he has tense ears or won’t let you rub or scratch his ears. Let him stand on a pedestal and scratch his underbelly. Play some slow thinking games like sideways or yoyo over an obstacle. Use porcupine backups.
Yield Hind Quarters	Online or liberty yield	Slow the pace with some friendly and porcupine. Use porcupine backup with your hand on his nose or chest. Use yoyo and back up games to engage him.
Yield Front Shoulders	Online or liberty yield	Slow the pace with some friendly and porcupine. Use yoyo and back up games to engage him.
Drive back and draw toward you	Online or liberty driving games	If he has emotional thresholds in the driving game, slow the pace with an obstacle yoyo or sideways game. If he shows emotions during these, slow the pace with friendly and porcupine. Try porcupine backups with your hand on his nose or chest.
Stick to you	Walk around obstacles, back up, run over poles together	If he won’t stick to you or shows emotions, try some hind quarter yields and back up games with dwell time to get him to focus on you. Send him to stand on a pedestal with some dwell time.
Faster Actions	Circling, squeeze jumps, extreme friendly	Slow the pace and get him to think about a task. Use sideways, sideways over obstacles, slow figure 8 around barrels, squeeze jumps, and yoyo with dwell time or an obstacle to get Rocky to think without becoming emotional or angry.

CR taught her how to properly prepare Rocky for riding to make sure he was safe and ready to ride. The standard respect test for riding involves yielding both shoulders and hindquarters, driving the horse back and drawing them in, and making sure the horse will calmly follow you like the mare follows the foal. Often in the early days of their relationship, Rocky would pass all of these safety tests and still not be ready to ride. The table of Rocky’s respect tests made sure he was ready to ride.

After all of these years, it is so easy for her to read Rocky’s emotions and use the right amount of pressure in the games to bond with him. Rocky is a much calmer and happier horse today. Rocky watches her body language and responds because he wants to be with her. Jessica and Rocky have developed a horse – human partnership. Why does she still have the nightmares? Is it a lack of trust in her horsemanship skills?

Jessica has a Parelli Level 3 freestyle riding lesson today. CR is coming to her ranch to help her develop riding confidence. She has successfully passed the Level 3 tests for online and liberty skills. Her big challenge is now learning to ride at the age of 55. Jessica assumes she is the oldest new horseback riding student around. The Level 3 freestyle test requires the rider to accomplish a set of riding tasks without a bridle or reins on the horse. Jessica and Rocky must learn to canter in a figure 8 and this requires using both a left and right canter lead without reins. Jessica is learning to use focus and body language to communicate with Rocky.

CR arrives and comments about how dry her ranch looks. Earlier in the year, CR’s ranch had received more rain than this area. Every little bit of rain makes a big difference in this drought. All of Texas is suffering from the drought and is now in an extreme drought category according to the national weather service.

Rocky could easily canter in a straight line while she rode him. Cantering online didn’t seem to be a problem for Rocky because he took his time transitioning from a walk to a trot and then to a canter. Their problem was cantering circles while she rode and changing from the right lead to the left lead.

CR taught her how to help Rocky practice doing online canter lead changes in a pattern called the question box. Rocky basically needed to practice cantering to build the muscle memory needed to easily enter the canter with the correct leads. It would take a lot of effort in this heat. She would have to pace their work so Rocky didn’t overheat. For a left brained horse, it was especially important that she avoid making Rocky bored or resentful about the tasks. She would have to be creative with their cantering practice.

After a water break, they practiced cantering while riding. Jessica put the bareback pad on Rocky and tied the four foot long savvy string around his neck. Riding for Level 3 was without a bridle or reins. Jessica showed CR how Rocky offered a few cantering steps and then entered a trot or a pace. CR was trying to understand how to motivate Rocky and asked her how she got Rocky to so readily offer those few canter steps. Jessica said, “When he started to offer a few canter steps, I would reward him by getting off and taking a break. I did the same thing to get him to love to jump. When he did a jump on the first attempt, I would just get off.”

They gave Rocky a short break. CR put a rope halter with the 22 foot lead line on Rocky. They practiced getting Rocky to canter in both directions while she rode him and CR guided him with the lead rope. After a successful set of right and left lead canters, Jessica got off to give Rocky his positive re-enforcement. She took off the bareback pad and put him in the pasture to graze on the remains of the morning hay bale.

After CR left, Jessica continues clearing a firebreak along her eastern fence row. Fire prevention is Jessica’s top priority for the next few weeks. The only fire protection she has is the volunteer fire department and her well water. The fire department has several water trucks but they would have to drive 20 miles to refill them. Basically, Jessica knew she didn’t have any real fire protection because the buildings and trees would be gone before the fire department could even get here. The pond was dry and the lake was too far away with the slope too steep to get water to fight a fire. The biggest risk was someone along the lake accidently starting a fire. Jessica had seen wildfires race up hillsides and wanted to make sure there was a firebreak between the buildings and the public land along the lake.

He parks the Jeep in the usual shady spot near the sandstone cliff. He enjoys the last of the coffee in his mug. With the temperatures still hovering near 108 degrees, the coffee remained hot all day in the metal insulated mug. He wonders if there was any escape from the blistering heat and blowing sand. He has spent far too much of his life in hot sandy deserts. This area was once a cool green oasis. As evening arrives, he crosses the sandstone cliff and makes his way along the trail beside the lake. The trail is an easy walk because that black horse has done a great job widening the trail with his grazing. He doesn’t worry about leaving tracks because the winds blow them away as fast as he makes them. When he is below the leaning oak on the trail, he makes a detour up the slope to climb the leaning oak and sit down for a few minutes. This is such a comforting familiar place to rest and think.

He knows the German Shepherd prowls the slope following his every movement. He recognizes the fire and spirit in that black horse with the blazing white lightening bolt. It requires a lot of horse sense and sheer determination to become the alpha for a dominant horse like that. While at the horse play day, he kept out of sight as he watched her play games with that black horse. On many nights, he has watched that horse stand guard on the pasture gate through his night vision binoculars. He must be loosing it in the Texas heat if he is starting to think that the dog and horse are conspiring to watch him. Tonight, she is still cutting brush and dragging it to a huge pile at the far end of the pasture. She is obviously concerned about wildfires. The current firebreak now follows along 2000 feet of fence and is about 40 feet wide. She will get heat stroke from all of the back breaking labor if she doesn’t slow down. He doesn’t see the dog. Where is the German Shepherd tonight?

Chapter 14 Texas History

The county only has one library. It houses the local historical society archive of newspapers and other information collected about pioneers in the area. After some library research, Jessica is going to meet her horse buddy Nancy at the café near the library for lunch to talk about cantering issues with their left brained gaited horses. Rocky has a beautiful and natural rocking chair canter. However, Jessica doesn’t have enough control over his canter. He stumbles over his own feet doing what CR calls a counter canter when turning to the left.

Jessica walks up to the Librarian’s desk and says, “I am interested in the history of the early settlers in the county. Where would you suggest I look for information?”

The librarian says, “What timeframe are you interested in? The archive is divided into Texas before Texas Independence, The Republic of Texas 1836 – 1846, the state of Texas before the Civil War, Texas during the Civil War, and Texas after the Civil War.”

She says, “I would like to start with Texas after the Civil War during the 1870’s and 1880’s. Do you know where I can find information about the original homesteaders of a piece of land?”

The librarian says, “We have an extensive archive of old newspapers and research reports done by the local colleges. You must review the material here in the library. I will show you to the research room. The official county records about land owners are at the court house.”

Jessica follows the librarian to the research room. The librarian shows her how to use the computer to read the material that is online. The librarian then shows her how the hardcopy material is organized and how it should be handled to avoid damaging the old paper.

Jessica decides to start with the research reports on the computers first. It quickly becomes apparent that the titles only make sense if you are a student of Texas history. She grew up in the upper Midwest and didn’t know much about Texas history so she would have to spend a lot of time learning about Texas. Browsing the research papers by date seems like a good approach to developing a timeline of events between 1870 and 1900. Why was she interested in these dates? She had a gut feeling about this being an important time for the Smiths, especially if they were the original homesteaders of the land.

Her grandfather, the blacksmith, was born sometime in the 1880’s and his parents had immigrated to America sometime in the 1870’s. Ellis Island wasn’t operational as the official American immigration station until 1892. Genealogy information about her own family was practically nonexistent and would be so much easier to find if they had immigrated through Ellis Island; but, they came before Ellis Island and she had never found a written record of their entry. She would start with the assumption that the Smiths immigrated prior to Ellis Island.

Texas certainly had a lot of history, even at the local level. Either that or the local colleges had a lot of research money to study the history of the area. After reading a lot of papers, she realizes that the oil and mining companies had provided a lot of funding for the research. This is because of their interest in anything, even rumors, about precious metals and signs of oil.

There were a lot of articles about the search for precious minerals in Texas. Apparently, North Texas had large deposits of copper ore but it was never developed because of the low copper content of the ore. Franciscan monks discovered and operated silver mines as early as 1680. There were papers describing the oral history of the Franciscan silver mines being operated in secret and concealed to this day. There was apparently no written record of the location of the mysterious Franciscan mines much to the disappointment of the mining companies and treasure hunters.

Wow, there was an article about a mine in Utah proving for the first time that silver can exist in sandstone. Until the 1870’s, miners did not believe that silver could exist in sandstone. The Utah mine was called Silver Reef because the silver in the sandstone made the sandstone look like an ocean reef. She couldn’t find any explanation for how sandstone could look like an ocean reef. She had seen many coral reefs while scuba diving and couldn’t visualize how the sandstone boulders around her ranch could look like an ocean reef. It must be a different kind of sandstone, she would have to research the different kinds of sandstone found in Utah near Bonanza City.

While browsing the mining articles, she found several research reports about using stone to build Fort Sill. There were drawings and photos made by archaeologists of the stone walls built by the stone masons hired by the U. S. Army to build the first permanent stone buildings in 1870. Apparently, archaeology students and history buffs liked to study stone forts. She assumed this was because the stones survived the test of time whereas most other artifacts weathered away. She was looking at the drawings and pictures trying to understand why they looked so familiar. After studying the reports for a quite a while, she realized that the stone foundation of her cabin looked like the same type of stonework. Until now, she had assumed the foundation was typical of that era. How common were stone masons back in the 1870’s? She wondered if there were any families named Mason living near her. Mason was the surname typically adopted by stonemasons when they moved to America just like the last name of blacksmiths became Smith.

Jessica also read about the history of the American Homestead Act that promised free land to settlers wanting a new start. Texas had its own Homestead Act because any unclaimed lands in Texas belonged to the state of Texas and not the United States. The Texas Homestead Act allowed each head of a family or anyone over 21 years of age to claim 160 acres for a $12 filing fee. Men and women could file claims for a homestead. The claimant had to find an unclaimed 160 acre tract of land, live on the land for three years, and make the required improvements by building a dwelling and establishing a source of water. Extended families could acquire large tracts of land using the Texas Homestead Act. In 1875, Native Americans were removed from Texas to reservations and forbidden from returning to Texas to attack the immigrant homesteaders. Some Comanche families were known to have escaped the forced march north to the reservations in Oklahoma and settled in Northern Texas.

She would be late for lunch again. Nancy always had a good sense of humor about her tardiness. Both of them enjoyed any excuse to be able to sit down and wait in an air conditioned building. Like her, Nancy had a full time job, kids, and was a Texas ranch woman. A Texas ranch woman had to raise the kids, run the household, do all of the book keeping, work as her own ranch hand, take care of all the livestock, train the horses, and have an outside job to earn money to pay the bills. That meant each of us had the equivalent of several full time jobs!

After lunch, Jessica leisurely strolls back down the sidewalk to the library where she had parked her old Jeep. She notices another old Jeep at the gas station and it looks like the mint condition antique Jeep from the Play Day and the hardware store. Apparently, another Jeep nut has moved into the area. She will make it a point to introduce herself to this Jeep owner if she can ever get close enough to actually meet him. The Jeep drives away as she approaches.

She loves her old Jeep. She has driven a stick shift Jeep as long as she could remember. One of the great traits about a Jeep is that you can fix the older models yourself. Any part you want for a Jeep (including doors and fenders) can be bought from catalogs. Jeeps were built to be driven and repaired for a lifetime. Her secret fantasy is to own an original Willy Jeep.

Chapter 15 Independence Day

Texans love their Fourth of July parades. Everyone turns out no matter how hot it is. She always takes Rocky to the local parade. Unlike the other horsemen in the parade, she walks the parade route with Rocky instead of riding. People are always asking why she doesn’t ride her horse in the parade like everyone else. She always says, “We can stop and let the kids pet Rocky and give him treats if we are walking.” To be totally honest, she actually enjoys playing ground games with Rocky.

Jessica has flag mounts on all the front and back porches. She puts out the American flags and admires them waving in the gusting wind. Jessica and Cody are the only ones that will see the flags today but it is important to her that they celebrate Independence Day. She lives 4 miles by road from her closest neighbor. Race lives about two miles as the crow files across the lake but it is about 10 miles by road to get there. It is about 20 miles to the closest town. Before the lake was built, it was probably 6 miles by road to town. To put it in perspective, she has the privacy and seclusion that many people work their whole lives to achieve.

Jessica puts a patriotic table cloth on the old kitchen dining table and looks around the kitchen. She is thankful for so many things. She jokes with her friends that they are now six years into an infinite house remodel with the cabin. Being so far from town, she must do most of the work herself because she can’t find anyone willing to come out here and help her – even in this bad economy. She was grateful when a friend introduced her to Race and he was willing to help her. All of what she calls “the essential for living jobs” have been completed and she has put most of the remaining chores into a bin she calls “I have the rest of my life to finish these tasks.” They have hot and cold running water with electricity in the cabin. A reverse osmosis system under the sink provides great tasting drinking water. The barn has water and electricity too. The cabin even has air conditioning. All of the cabin walls and floors were wrecked and she has replaced them. She repaired and refinished the old oak kitchen cabinets. She installed a new kitchen sink, faucet, stove, refrigerator, and countertops. Everything in the kitchen is now in working order even if it is missing a few cabinets and door knobs. The main bathroom is totally finished and works. Her master bathroom is still a work in progress because it is missing a tub and the walls aren’t finished yet. She still needs to finish and paint the trim work in several rooms. She now has enough experience to a write a self-help book about practical home repairs on a budget.

She also jokes that she has “the Home Depot house” because all of her remodeling supplies have come from the big box hardware store. Thirty years ago, they called their first house “the Kenmore house” because everything came from Sears. Back then, all of the appliances, cabinets, kitchen fixtures, bathroom and plumbing needs, flooring, and wall coverings were all ordered from the Sears catalog. Time has not been good to Sears and now there is a Home Depot everywhere so Home Depot is where she shops now.

Cody grooms Rocky and puts red, white, and blue ribbons in his mane and tail. She puts a blue rope halter on Rocky with a 22 foot white lead rope. For a hat, Jessica wears a cowboy hat with an American flag scarf as a hat band. A white shirt, red scarf, and blue jeans complete the patriotic color scheme along with a flag colored waist pouch full of horse treats. She makes sure Rocky drinks a lot of water before they start the hot dusty trailer ride to town.

During the parade, she walks with Rocky. The play natural horse games along the parade route. The kids love watching Rocky go sideways and back up. Rocky backs up with a small wiggle of her index finger. The kids are intrigued by their mirroring exercises where she and Rocky mimic one another. He sidesteps in time with her when she steps from side to side along the road. Rocky dances small circles around her with high stepping front legs. When the parade is moving slowly, she has him do a series of slow semicircles in front of her for a simple falling leaf game. When the parade stops, the kids love to pet Rocky and give him treats from her waist pouch. The parents love taking pictures of their kids petting Rocky. Rocky is a real ham and loves it too! Left brained introverted horses love their treats!

The town center is full of booths selling crafts and food. The chili cook-off is well underway and the whole town smells fantastic. After the parade, Jessica makes sure Rocky has plenty of water to drink and a hay snack. Then she walks Rocky around the town center to visit with friends and neighbors. She buys an ice tea from one of the booths and joins Janice on a park bench near the historic buildings while Rocky stands quietly resting with his eyes closed. She tells Janice what Kelly had said about the Smith and Jones families probably being related. Janice says she didn’t remember anything about it.

Their conversation turns to natural horsemanship and Janice says, “Do you remember Rocky on your first 4^th of July with him? He was so angry and aggressive. Just look at him now. If I hadn’t known Rocky back then, I would not believe he is the same horse.”

After Jessica returns home, she looks at the photos in her diary of that first 4^th of July with Rocky. They were working through some very emotional “thresholds” in those early years. Rocky had a lot of emotional baggage from his experiences with prior owners. Here is a copy of her diary entry for that first 4^th of July with Rocky.

I am learning these rules to deal with Rocky’s attacks and aggression:

Driving cures biting.

Drive him back out of biting or attack range when he is tense or looks angry.

Never let him stay in my space when he has an angry expression.

Cody put ribbons in his mane and Rocky got angry. I drove him away from me when his face went “angry” and he started circling because it allowed him to GO. He is exhibiting angry emotions with his tense face, nose, eyes, and ears. He has the face of an angry, aggressive horse that wants to take action to exert his dominance.

Angry Rocky

I used a wave of energy down the 12 foot line to interrupt his pattern. I sent him in the other direction because a change of direction makes him think and helps him calm down.

Wave of Energy on 12 ft Rope

After Rocky calmed down and had a “happy face”, I drew him to me.

After Rocky came in from the circle, I scratched his ears to make sure they were soft and not tense. He likes ear scratches and frequently asks to have his ears scratched. If he won’t let me scratch an ear or he is still tense, then I drive him away again and do another SLOW (NO GO) game like YoYo or sideways. I let Rocky graze as a quiet dwell time reward. I kept the carrot stick between the two of us in case I need it to drive him back again.

Jessica says a prayer of thanks for the changes in Rocky. It has been a long journey and she is glad she stayed with it. She thinks about how much CR helped her along the way and thinks about ways she can show her gratitude to CR for hanging in there with her.

Jessica has everything she needs at the little ranch. The cabin has electricity, water, air conditioning, television with a satellite dish, and broadband Internet. What more could she need? That is, other than the obvious need for many inches of rain.

She decides to spend some time tonight looking for information about the Smiths and the area before the lake was created. The Internet has some interesting old topographical maps. The sandstone cliff forming Shadow Mountain behind her cabin is clearly visible. There are two lower cliffs extending from the mountain into the valley on the north and south sides of her cabin. The cabin has been built in a small plateau between this pair of shorter cliffs. There appears to be a hill of some sort east of her cabin, between her cabin and Race’s place. It is either totally gone or underwater now. She wonders if an island will be emerging as the lake recedes. The local newspaper archives don’t have much old material available online.

Chapter 16 An Unnatural Death

July is just beginning and Texas has already had 70 days with a high temperature over 100 degrees. In a normal summer, the high temperatures never go above 103 degrees. This year, the highs are hovering between 110 and 115 degrees every day. Everyone is amazed at how much hotter 3 or 4 degrees feels with it is over 100 degrees. It is extremely hot and extremely dry. All of Texas is in an extreme drought condition. Outside burning of any kind is banned. There is also no sign of rain. The only relief might come during the fall hurricane season.

Jessica awoke refreshed from a good nights sleep and enjoyed a cup of flavored coffee before heading to the barn. Janice called to tell her the latest news about the skeleton. Janice lived on a major road and got her newspaper delivery early in the morning. The newspaper article simply said that a skeleton had been found along the lake shore. The article did not identify who found the skeleton or where it was found. The medical examiner’s report indicated the skeleton belonged to a female approximately 50 – 60 years old. Her facial features where those of a Caucasian woman. No identity had been established for the victim. Her death was tentatively ruled as an “unnatural death”. She appeared to have died of a gunshot wound and a criminal investigation was being conducted.

When Jessica walks into the tack room, she knows the poor chicken that had been attacked by the snake has died. Max stands beside Jessica as she looks sadly at the poor chicken. Jessica thinks about the term unnatural death for the skeleton in the lake. Does this apply to the chicken as well? The hen had lived a good life as a free range chicken chasing bugs, eating green grass, and choosing her own roosting pals. Yes, it was an unnatural death due to the stresses of the drought that forced predators to hunt outside of their natural food chain.

Jessica picks up the chicken and a shovel. Max and Rocky follow her through the pasture to the wildflower garden. The wildflower garden is Jessica’s animal cemetery. In normal weather conditions, the flowers bloom from early spring until late fall. The garden has flowers for all three seasons. There is a flat sandstone rock marking each grave and forming what looks like an irregular rock patio under the great oak trees. With Max and Rocky solemnly watching, Jessica digs a grave and buries the chicken. Afterward, she places a large flat sandstone rock over the grave. The trio stands quietly for a few minutes. Jessica says a silent prayer for the chicken and the safety of rest of flock. Max is sad because he didn’t protect the chicken. Rocky is sad because they are sad. Jessica hums the Randy Travis classic I’ll Fly Away,

Some glad morning

when this life is o’er,

I’ll Fly Away

to a home on God’s Celestial shore

as the trio returns to the barn.

The Sheriff drives down the long, dusty driveway to the secluded cabin. He had called ahead so Jessica would know he was coming to talk to her and walk around the lake site with her. They had met socially at several benefit functions like the volunteer fire department fundraisers. They both also had kids in local high schools and attended some of the same high school events.

Jessica sees the dust from the Sheriff’s SUV as he drives down the driveway. She is looking at the rosary hanging on the boot bench as she puts on her snake boots and hat. Somehow the rosary offers comfort as she tucks it into her pocket. She slowly walks to the barn to wait. The Sheriff drives up to the barn and parks in the shade. This is his first visit to her ranch.

Max growls and stands beside her. He does not like strangers in his territory. She says, “Good morning, Sheriff. This is Max and he is just doing his guard duty. He won’t bite.”

The Sheriff says, “Hi Max. I am doing my duty, too.” She leans over and pets Max. The Sheriff does the same thing so Max will know she trusts the Sheriff.

She invites him to the cabin for coffee but he declines. The three of them (the Sheriff, Max, and Jessica) walk toward the pasture gate to the lake path. Rocky gallops up from the low pasture and joins them. Max and Rocky discuss the situation. Rocky wants to go to the lake too.

Jessica says, “This is Rocky and I take him for grazing walks to the lake. He thinks he is going to go with us and get some grass.”

The Sheriff chuckles, “It has been so long since I have seen green grass that I’m not sure I remember what it looks like.”

They walk through the gate and leave Rocky in the pasture. Max calls to Rocky, “You can watch the barn and the house while I take care of the humans. I will let you know if they find anything new at the lake.”

Rocky mumbles to Max, “I could jump the gate and follow if I wanted. I know she would be unhappy about that. I’ll watch from here.”

Jessica says, “I saw the article in the paper about the skeleton being an unnatural death and there would be further investigations. I’m really sorry to hear that. How do you think I can help you?”

The Sheriff says, “I know you spend a lot of time by the lake near the spot where you found the skeleton. I just wanted to walk through the area with you and have you tell me everything you know about the area. A dog like Max probably brings home a lot of souvenirs from his visits to the lake, maybe he has found something of interest. You may not know the significance of something you have seen.”

Jessica wonders why he thinks she spends so much time near the lake. Has he been watching her? Does he live someplace where he can see the lake shore below the cabin?

She says, “I will help if I can. You are right that when Max was a puppy he collected a lot of junk from the lake. Most of it was just trash and I threw it away. If he brought up any bones, I just threw them away because I assumed they belonged to animals. Do you know for certain when the body was buried?”

He says, “Yes, it was buried less than a week before being covered by the lake water. This is not information we are making public until our investigation has a more exact date.’

Jessica says, “How do you know she wasn’t buried in a cemetery by a loving family?”

The Sheriff says, “We did not find any indications of a coffin or a regular grave site. She appeared to have been buried fully clothed. We found the remains of some clothing and shoes. The clothing fragments were just regular cotton and wool fibers. The materials were light weight and there wasn’t any sign of fabric for a heavy coat. There wasn’t any jewelry or a purse. This information is also not going to be made public.”

They walk down the steep path to the lake. The lake has receded a lot since the fateful day when Max found the skeleton. She hardly recognizes the shore. Her landmark is the old arching oak tree standing like a sentinel guarding the grave. The tree is now surrounded by gooey muck left as the lake receded. The shore is now about 20 feet from the tree.

She points to the old arching oak and says, “This is my landmark for identifying the spot. It looks like the shore is about 20 feet further east than it was on that morning. Here is a photo I took of that tree on my cell phone that morning. You can see Max wading in water around the tree before he found the skull. I did not take any photos after Max found the skull.”

The Sheriff looks around the spot for a few minutes. He asks her, “How long has this area been exposed and out of the water?”

She says, “Well, the water was at least several inches deep at the base of the arching oak when Max found the skull. The tree was at least 20 feet out in the water at that time. Here is a photo that I took of Rocky along this shore about two weeks earlier. That arching oak is behind Rocky and it looks like there was at least a foot of water at the base of the tree then. I have been watching the lake recede and it appears to be loosing at least an inch of vertical depth per day due to evaporative losses and hydroelectric production. You can also see the feral hog rooting mess along the shore by Rocky. So I guess it hasn’t been uncovered very long at all.”

He says, “Yes, the feral hogs do so much damage to everything along the shore. We are trying to figure out if they disturbed the gravesite before you found it and if we might need to expand our search area. My men will be coming back here by boat this week to look around now that the lake has revealed so much more land.”

He looks at her and says, “Have you found any other objects in this area?”

Jessica doesn’t know why but she does not trust anyone else with the rosary. Somehow it seems wrong to hand it over to the Sheriff but she must. She looks at him and says, “I’m not sure what kind of objects would be of interest to you and your investigation. I think I found a rosary about a week before Max discovered the skeleton. Or rather, Rocky found the rosary in some muck left by the hogs.”

Jessica realizes that the Sheriff probably thinks she is an eccentric nut for saying the dog found the skeleton and the horse found the rosary. She walks down the shore 50 feet or so to where Rocky had pawed at the rosary. You can still see the dried pig tracks and rooting mess with Rocky’s hoof tracks where he pawed at the ground. She takes the rosary out of her pocket and hands it to the Sheriff. He takes the rosary from her and looks at it very carefully. He moves it around in his hand and then dangles the pendant by holding on to the top of the chain.

She says, “The metal emblem has the same pattern as the old kitchen cabinet knobs that I found in the yard near the cabin. So I assume it belonged to someone from the Smith family. Do you have any reports of a missing Smith?”

He says, “No, we don’t. Why didn’t you bring this to the Sheriff’s office?”

She says, “Honestly, I’m not sure. It matches other debris I found around the cabin like the kitchen cabinet knobs so I just assumed it was lost by a Smith. I found it before Max found the skeleton and I didn’t really associate it with the skeleton. I also assumed this was a Christian burial site that got missed when everything was removed for the lake. I am very sorry.”

The Sheriff says, “Well, I will keep this between us. I am Catholic and the Smith family used to attend mass at our church when I was a kid. I never really paid much attention to rosaries back then. It may or may not belong with the skeleton. Other than knowing that a Smith lost a rosary at some time in the last 100 years, the rosary doesn’t really help with the investigation.”

Jessica says, “Thank you. I don’t want to add fuel to the fire of the treasure hunters. If they thought jewelry was buried here, they would descend like a pack of rabid wolves on this spot.”

He hesitates for a minute looking at the rosary. He hands the rosary back to her and says, “Don’t do anything with the rosary until the investigation is over. I may need to ask you for it if the rosary becomes relevant to the case. Can I have that cup of coffee now and get a look at those kitchen cabinet knobs?”

She says, “Sure, but with this heat would you rather have iced tea?”

They slowly walk back up the steep hill. She subtly looks at his boot tracks in the loose dirt along the trail. He wasn’t wearing the boots that made the tracks by the old leaning oak.

She asks him, “Do you know what happened to the Smith family after they left the cabin?”

He says, “Yes, I do. The Smiths are buried in the Catholic cemetery in town. After the government took their cabin, they moved to town for a few months. Both of them died within six months of losing their cabin. They were both in their 80’s and just couldn’t deal with the change.”

She asks him, “Did they have any children?”

He says, “Their son and his wife died in an auto accident. They were hit head on by a drunk driver. That was back in the early 1960’s. They had a son who was raised by the grandparents here on this ranch. He moved away right after his grandparents died. I think he joined the U.S. Marine Corps.”

They arrive back at the cabin. Max lays down on the cool mud room floor adjacent to the kitchen. Jessica turns the air conditioning down a little so they can cool off faster. She gives the Sheriff a quick tour of the cabin and makes a fresh pitcher of ice tea. While they are sipping the ice tea, he is examining the kitchen. She has done a lot of work to restore and maintain the original beauty of the simple cabin. He takes one of the knobs off of a lower cabinet door. He asks her, “Do you know how these were made?”

She says, “I think so. My grandfather was a blacksmith. I remember him firing up his forge and smelting crushed ore rocks in these big metal ladles. He would separate the different metals from one another using the ladles and varying the temperature as he heated and cooled the materials several times. When he had the metal combination he wanted, the molten metals were poured into molds to make things like those knobs. Did I pass the blacksmith test?”

He chuckles and says, “My granddaddy was a blacksmith, too. My granddaddy and old Mr. Smith were good friends. Unfortunately, anyone that knew the Smiths has passed away or doesn’t’ have a good memory anymore. Do you know what these knobs are made of?”

She looks at the knob in his hand and then pulls the rosary out of her pocket. They both have a blackened silvery appearance. She says, “No. They are very light weight. Obviously the metal is pretty tough because these two objects have retained their shape without a lot of damage when you consider the harsh conditions in which I found them. Are they pewter? Do you know what they are made of?”

He replies, “Can I scratch the back of the knob with a knife?”

Intrigued, she says, “Sure.”

The Sheriff scratches the back of the knob and makes a deep gouge in it. The result is a shiny gouge in her knob. She looks at him and says, “Ok, what is it?”

He replies, “I think it is a very low grade silver mixed with other metals. I think the Smiths made their own custom metal out of the low grade metals found in the sandstone bluffs.”

Jessica says with absolute dread that the treasure hunters can hear their conversation, “Why do you think this?”

He replies, “It is just a guess because my granddaddy made some jewelry for my grandmother that looks a lot like this metal. He would never tell anyone where he got the special metals he used to make her jewelry.”

Jessica looks at him in disbelief, “I can’t believe it. How many people know about this?”

He replies, “I am probably the only one. My granddaddy and old Mr. Smith were very secretive guys. They didn’t talk very much to anyone. They were the strong silent kind of men who were content with the simple life.”

She says, “I really hate to be selfish about this but do you have to tell anyone? I really value my privacy and don’t want the treasure hunters tearing this place apart. This place was so vandalized when I bought it that I still cry when I think about how destructive people can be.’

He looked at her with knowing eyes and says, “I’m sure if there is any ore left that it belongs to the government along with the lake property. The amount of precious metals in the ore had to be so low that it could never be smelted on a large scale. Your secret is safe with me.”

She says, “I really appreciate it. If the Smith boy ever comes back, I will give him the knobs, the rosary, and anything else he wants; that is, if he wants them.”

Jessica sighs in relief as the Sheriff drives away. Oh, I hope the treasure hunters never find out about this. She walks out on the back porch and picks up their yard treasure bucket. She brings it into the mud room and sits down on the floor with Max. Every metal looking object in the bucket is examined. Anything that looks like it might be made of the same metal as the cabinet knobs is put into a separate pile. When she is finished looking through the yard treasures bucket, Jessica realizes there is about a quart jar of the stuff. Most of it is just unrecognizable blobs, probably from the smelting process. She takes the pile of metals to the barn. An old metal horse tank should make the perfect cover for other metals. She pushes the tank aside and buries the metal blobs really deep. After the hole is half filled with dirt, old horse shoes and other metal debris are layered with the dirt. She moves the tank back on top of it and fills it with water. No one should suspect there is any treasure here.

She returns to the house and drafts a quick genealogy chart for what she has learned from Sheriff Mason. Boxes are placed for the two Smith grandparents, their son, and their grandson. She puts approximate dates for their birth next to each box. The grandson was probably born in the 1950’s, the son was probably born sometime in the 1920’s or 1930’s and died in the 1960’s, and the grandparents were probably born between 1890 and 1910 and died in the late 1970’s. It is so much easier to get information about people if you are working with some starting dates. She will visit the Catholic cemetery with some flowers the next time she goes to town. Then, she realizes that the Sheriff’s last name is Mason which is the surname for a stonemason. Jessica wonders if he is somehow related to the Smiths and knows a lot more than he is telling her. She is also starting to wonder how a Native American like Race got a very English name like Jones. Jessica calls Race’s phone number. He doesn’t answer the phone and he doesn’t have an answering machine for her to leave a message.

Chapter 17 An Island Appears

Jessica is riding on a lovely sandy beach with Rocky. They are riding bareback and she is barefoot. The warm waves splash on her bare legs and feet. She is wearing a long flowing white nightgown with a long pearl necklace. There is a savvy string around Rocky’s neck for a rein but she doesn’t need it because he responds to the gentlest move of her body. She enjoys the gentle sea breeze filled with the aroma of tropical flowers. They canter effortlessly through the gentle waves washing across the sand.

Suddenly, his whole body is tense and she feels his heart pounding as he makes snorting sounds. Her heart is pounding and she is numb with fear. His head rears up with tense pinned ears as he stands on his hind legs. His front hooves strike the sand as his rump rises high into the air and he wildly kicks out with his hind legs. As his rear hooves hit the sand, his whole body jumps into the air. He wildly bucks over and over again. When he finally stops, she is numb with fear and fatigue. Her legs are shaking so badly that she can’t get off of his back. All she hears is his snorting and the sound of crashing waves. His body is tense and she knows he is ready to explode again. Jessica awakens from the nightmare frozen in fear.

Jessica has been dreaming again. The dreams start out with a romantic vision of riding Rocky and end in a fear filled nightmare. When will the nightmares end? Maybe the nightmares will never end. Rocky has not bucked with her on his back in four years! She has learned how to emotionally prepare Rocky for riding and how to recognize when a horse is safe to ride. Does she still have this many trust issues with Rocky or is just the way her daily survival worries manifest themselves? Honestly, being a working mother, running a ranch, dealing with the bad economy, and the extra worry caused by the drought would add stress to anyone’s life. Right?

Jessica goes to the kitchen and makes her first of many cups of coffee. Why has she been wearing pearls in her dreams lately? Has she suddenly become fashion conscious in her dreams? The horse diary in her bedroom has a lot of photos of Rocky bucking, but that was years ago. Luckily, no one was riding him at the time the photos were taken. CR teaches safe riding by properly preparing your horse for riding and getting off at the first sign of trouble. They have enjoyed many great rides since those terrifying days. What is the reason for the nightmares?

This part of Texas has had over 80 days with high temperatures over 100 degrees. Usually, a high of 100 is considered hot. This year, the high temperatures have been hovering between 105 and 112 degrees. This is an exceptionally hot summer.

An island is appearing in the lake between her cabin and Race’s cabin. The lake waters are continuing to fall and a group of sandstone boulders are now sticking out of the water like an island. Just after dawn, Jessica stands by the lake shore looking at the rocks while Rocky looks for some grass. He is pacing back and forth like he isn’t able to find anything to eat. Max sits beside her looking at the lake and the new island. Max had told Rocky about the Sheriff’s visit and the strange shiny metal covered with black. Max and Rocky agreed to look for metal objects and make sure they stayed hidden from everyone but her. Rocky is actually looking for shiny metal objects as he paces back and forth.

After watching Rocky for a while, Max walks over to Rocky and says, “I have noticed how you are moving back and forth looking for shiny metal objects. Is that the way you normally look for things?”

Rocky says, “Yes, I am walking in a pattern so I can keep track of the ground I have visited. This way I don’t waste time looking in the same place twice. Why?”

Max says, “I follow my nose and don’t use my eyes like you do. I don’t make a regular pattern like that when I am searching for something. Do people do patterns like that too?”

Rocky says, “Sure. Jessica and I do a lot of patterns when we ride. People do patterns all of the time. We ride a pattern like this when we are looking for something in the pasture.”

Max says, “After watching you, I think the stranger has been walking in patterns like that along the trails. He is definitely looking for something. We must be vigilant because the stranger knows our territory and what he is looking for. I hope it is not the rosary in her pocket.”

It would be great to walk out to that island. The ground left behind by the lake is a gooey muck like quicksand. It had to dry for weeks before it was fit to walk on. Even Max’s paws sank down into the muck. She had to keep a close eye on Rocky to make sure he didn’t wander into the muck. Rocky had a good sense about the ground under his hooves. Rocky was always careful where he walked and he stayed far from the mushy ground.

Jessica hears the engines of the small boats and another engine sound. The low flying plane is circling the new island just like a tourist. The pilot must be enjoying something new to look at as he flies around the lake. Jessica waves at the plane and wonders if he even notices her along the shore. He probably has a great view of her house and the shore.

She is standing on the shore looking at the island. The cabin is behind her to the west. Race’s house is in front of her and due east of her cabin. The emerging island appears to be in the middle of the valley between her cabin and Race’s house. To the west behind her cabin is the group of sheer sandstone bluffs called Shadow Mountain. To the left, a large crumbling sandstone cliff still extended into the water blocking land access to her shore line. To the right is the sandstone boulders and crumbling cliff that makes her little part of the lake shore secluded from the rest of the lake. The cliffs still extended into the lake sheltering the little secluded shoreline. She wants to look at the old topographic maps on the internet again.

The trio drifts back to the barn and cabin. Rocky hadn’t found anything and wasn’t sure if that was good or bad. All day they hear the noise of boaters that discover the new island. It is amazing how much pleasure everyone seems to get from the little island. The island seems to be the new IN spot to swim because so many people are jumping off the rocks to swim in the lake waters. Another group of people put up a big umbrella for shade and settle in for a long picnic lunch. She hopes and prays there isn’t any hidden treasure on that little island.

Jessica goes to her computer and looks at topographic maps of the area before the lake was completed. These maps were drawn by hand from surveys conducted on the ground. Satellite imagery and terrain analysis was not available back then. There was an object made with one contour line on the map about where the island had appeared. The map legend has the contour interval as 50 feet which means every contour line represents 50 feet in elevation. Water around the new island could be 50 feet deep. The four close contour lines outlining the cliff of Shadow Mountain meant it rose at least 200 feet in elevation. The rocky sandstone boundaries to the south and north of her property are shown on the maps. The sandstone boundaries appear to extend down into the valley and gradually disappear into the valley floor. It is hard to tell when they will be totally exposed and out of the water from the elevation on the maps. It is impossible to tell what is really beneath the lake waters.

Later in the day, she watches the island with her binoculars. There don’t seem to be any treasure hunters on the island. Everyone just seems to be enjoying a picnic or a swim. How can they possibly tolerate sitting or standing on that hot sandstone? What can the people on the island see of her place? It would be nice to have a boat and visit that little island. Max is her only protection. There aren’t any firearms or other weapons on her ranch.

The Sheriff’s team visited the shore again at dawn the next day. A weekday was chosen because there would be fewer people on the lake during the work week. The Sheriff had several small teams go to different parts of the lake so no one would suspect they were looking for more evidence at the skeleton site. It also let his team get an idea about the changing terrain in the lake. They were also searching for marijuana crops or what could be future crop sites.

Later that day, the Sheriff called Jessica to let her know they didn’t’ find any new evidence. He also told her to let him know if anyone came up from the lake to bother her. Jessica was busy with Cody, work, and the ranch. Temperatures were still in the 100’s every day with no chance of rain in the next month. There just wasn’t any time to focus on events at the lake.

Max and Rocky set up a nightly routine of listening to the stranger as he searches the cliffs between the cabin and the lake. On most nights, the breeze from the southeast lets them smell and hear him as he quietly walks along the hillside. Like a good hunter, Max knows his prey now. The stranger always arrives about 2 hours before sunset. He comes down the trail from the north and bypasses all of the areas he has already searched. Each night he begins his search where he stopped the night before – just like a grazing animal going to the next patch of grass. The only other stop the stranger makes is the leaning oak tree. Sometimes, he stops and rests there. This is where Max will wait for him. If he doesn’t stop by the leaning oak tree, Max has a fast path to the south end of the trail to get there before the stranger.

Chapter 18 Tracking the Stranger

Jessica is dreaming again. She is riding Rocky bareback and bridleless on a beautiful tropical beach. The air is warm with a gentle breeze filled with the scents of tropical flowers. Rocky is calmly walking through the surf. They are enjoying some undemanding time together. Suddenly, she senses they are not alone. She doesn’t see anything that appears threatening. Rocky is calm as he starts to look around and his ears begin to twitch. Rocky begins to sniff and snort like he smells something. A giant misshapen clock appears over the water. It looks like a melted clock similar to those painted by Salvador Dali. This clock has springs and cogs dangling from a broken face. The clock is moving toward them.

Jessica leans over and scratches Rocky’s neck. Jessica remains calm and gently talks to Rocky as she massages his neck. Cody loves old clocks. She reaches into her pocket to get out her cell phone camera to take a photo of the clock for Cody. She doesn’t have any pockets. Oh well, Jessica sits upright in her bareback riding position, grabs Rocky’s mane, and gently squeezes to tell him to trot down the beach. They trot down the beach and away from the clock. Jessica hears Max barking in the distance. She wakes up to see Max looking in the patio door of her bedroom. Is she late for something or just worried about Cody?

Jessica takes Max and Rocky for a quick walk down to the lake just before sunrise. Jessica is careful to avoid being seen by anyone in the lake. She doesn’t want treasure hunters and curiosity seekers to think there is anything interesting on this part of the lake shore.

As Max is sniffing along the trail in front of them, Jessica notices several partial tracks along the lake path in the loose sand. Were there any new tracks by the old leaning oak tree with the view of the cabin? Jessica calls to Max as she climbs the slope to the old leaning oak tree. Rocky scans for prints and shiny objects as he follows Max and Jessica up the slope. All three of them see a new partial boot print in the sand. Jessica looks at it and shakes her head. Max and Rocky watch as she takes a picture of the boot print with her cell phone and then brushes away the boot print in the sand around the old leaning oak tree. The trio returns down the slope to the lake path.

Jessica says, “Max, we are going to figure out who is stalking these trails and why. I just hope they are not dangerous. You and this carrot stick are my only protection. Can you sniff out his trail?”

Max and Rocky look at one another. They have already been stalking the stranger. They hope she doesn’t get in the way or do anything dangerous.

Max sniffs out the stranger’s trail back to the steep sandstone cliff on the north side of the trail. Jessica and Rocky follow along looking for more tracks and anything else of interest. All of them notice the partial tracks ending at the steep crumbling slope. There is no way Rocky or Max can climb that slope. Jessica is afraid of heights. To her, it seems that only an experienced climber using ropes could make the ascent and descent. Their private trail would be full of hikers if there was an easy way to cross that cliff.

Jessica marks the location where the stranger’s tracks end on her cell phone’s map application so she can find the nearest location on the other side of the cliff.

Jessica positions Rocky near a large rock. She bonds with Rocky for a few minutes by rubbing his belly and scratching his ears. Rocky is calm and bonded to her. There aren’t any signs of something that might startle Rocky. Jessica climbs up on the rock and slowly leans over Rocky’s back and scratches his withers. Keeping her eyes on his face, she holds onto his mane while climbing on his back. Once seated on his back, she rubs his neck with the carrot stick and yields his head back toward her she can scratch his ears again. Now after bonding with Rocky, there is a better view of the slope and the cliff. There isn’t anything unusual. Mentally, she is trying to visualize the closest place to park a vehicle. Jessica rides Rocky slowly along the base of the slope looking for anything to indicate that someone has been climbing this cliff. She rubs Rocky’s neck, dismounts, and gives him a thank you belly scratching. Rocky enjoys getting that dry itchy spot on his underbelly scratched and he is so happy that he stretches out his neck as his lips quiver.

After they return to the cabin, Jessica gets her purse and puts a leash on Max’s collar. Max doesn’t like where this is going. She tells him, “Max, we aren’t going to the veterinarian. We are just going to take a short drive to the lake,”

They climb into the big pickup and go down the driveway. She follows the roads around the west side of Shadow Mountain and then follows an old road back around to the north heading toward the lake. They stop at the spot where fisherman park and walk down to the lake. She puts on her hat and sunglasses. Her purse is safely hidden under the seat. Max is on a leash and doesn’t like it. They get out of the truck and walk toward the path to the lake.

Jessica says, “Max we are going to see if we can find the other side of that sandstone cliff where our lake path ends. Let me know if you sniff that stranger.”

Jessica thinks to herself, I hope no one hears me talking to Max as they wind their way along the path to the lake. The path to the lake wanders along the slope to avoid steep rocky areas. She looks for boot tracks along the path as Max sniffs along.

When they reach the lake, Jessica and Max turn south and walk along the shore. Both of them are alert for any signs of the stranger. The path ends at a rocky slope covered with sandstone boulders and topped by the cliff formed by an outcropping of crumbling rock. The cliff still extends into the lake waters. It is too steep to climb from this side. They walk along the slope several times looking for places to climb across the slope. Jessica says, “Max, do you smell the stranger’s anywhere along this little cliff?”

Max has been sniffing and yes he smells the stranger. He pulls her along the slope to the west and sits down by a boot print in the sand. Jessica pets Max as she studies the boot print and looks at the adjacent rocks. The boot print must be relatively fresh because it hasn’t been blown away by the wind yet. She looks back at her own prints to see how fast they are disappearing and decides she will do some experiments to see how long boot tracks last along her lake trail. Jessica takes a picture of the boot print with her cell phone camera and marks the location on her cell phone map.

Jessica doesn’t really see anything of interest along the cliff edge or among the boulders. The sandstone cliffs are topped with layers of loose rock that would break if you tried to climb or walk on them. A person could probably climb up some the huge vertical boulders to reach the crumbling cliff. Is it possible there is some sort of path to climb over the cliff or through the cliff to her lake path on the other side? She steps back from the cliff to look at it from several angles and from a distance. Just like the south side of the cliff, someone would need climbing equipment and a lot of experience to climb up this side of the cliff, cross the crumbling cliff, and descend down on the other side. Then, they would have to make the return trip. She was beginning to doubt that anyone could access her lake path from this direction. But, there were the same boot tracks on both sides of the cliff.

Chapter 19 Learning about the Smiths

Jessica is riding Rocky bareback and bridleless on a narrow sandy beach. The beach is adjacent to a rocky hillside strewn with big round boulders. Rocky is calmly splashing in the surf as they walk down the beach. Rocky begins to snort like he senses danger. Jessica remains calm and gently talks to Rocky as she massages his neck. She leans over and slides off his back. She rubs Rocky’s neck and scratches his ears until the tension is gone. Jessica holds Rocky’s mane and they run side by side down the beach splashing through the surf together. When they come to a large flat topped boulder, Jessica climbs the boulder and jumps back on Rocky. She grabs his mane, leans back, and they canter through the surf. There is a loud rumbling sound, the sand starts to move and the boulders start to shake and roll. Rocky looks back at her as his head rears up. She grabs his mane and leans back in her power riding position to shift her weight to his hind legs as they gallop away from the landslide. Her heart is pounding as the boulders crash around them and the water churns in whirlpools. A wall of water comes crashing toward them. She leans over and hugs Rocky’s neck as the wave hits them. She wonders where Cody is and if she is safe. Jessica smells coffee and wakes up to see Max looking in the patio door of her bedroom. The automatic coffee maker was brewing. The alarm went off to wake her up early so she could finish the ranch chores before their trip to town.

Cody and her friends made plans to see the latest Harry Potter movie. Jessica had watched the earlier movies with Cody and really had no desire to see another one. She dropped Cody at the movie theatre and had three free hours to fill. The Catholic Church was on the other side of town. She planned to visit the cemetery.

Jessica stops by the local mall and buys a bouquet of flowers. She drives to the church and parks her old Jeep under a shade tree near the cemetery. She wonders if there is any organization or order to the cemetery. Her family had a huge section of the Catholic cemetery back home. When the church expanded the cemetery several years ago, she bought all of the last plots adjacent to her family’s section for future use by her family. Families were usually buried close together. Sons were usually buried in their family plot. Daughters could either be buried in their husband’s family plot or her family plot. She thought about updating her will to let everyone know where she wanted to be buried.

A walk around the perimeter of the cemetery helps understand the layout of the cemetery and the different family sections. There aren’t any Smiths tombstones on the perimeter so she walks along the roads through the cemetery. Under a great oak tree there is an old metal tombstone topped with the same shape as the rosary. The cross was simple and yet so beautiful. The tombstone had obviously been made by a skilled artisan. These old European style metal tombstones were typically made of wrought iron by the local blacksmith. The tombstone had a solid base about three feet wide with a candleholder on each end. The base had a rectangular extension that formed the vertical shaft of the cross and a horizontal metal bar was bonded to it. The ends of the cross were hearts. A simple ring pattern was wrapped around the cross forming an unbroken circle. She mentally hears Randy Travis singing the old song Will the Circle be Unbroken,

will the circle be unbroken,

bye and bye Lord,

as she lays the bouquet of flowers at the base of the tombstone.

The area around the old metal tombstone had simple flat granite markers for each member of the family. Apparently, the whole Smith family cemetery had been moved here and each grave marked with a simple granite marker with their name, date of birth, and date of death. Most of the granite markers had an old iron cross beside them. The crosses had the same shape as the rosary. These were probably the original grave markers when the graves were at the ranch on Shadow Mountain. She found two that simply said Grandma Pearl Smith and Grandpa Mason Smith. They had died 3 weeks apart in 1976. Her eyes filled with tears as she thought of the Randy Travis song “Dig two Graves”. The lyrics were about the marriage vow to love “till death do us part” and when one died they may as well dig two graves because the other one wouldn’t last long. This was so true of many older couples who had spent their entire lives together. They simply could not or did not want to live without one another.

She wanders through the Smith plots and writes down names and dates. The Jones and Mason families have large family plots near the Smith family. Many of the tombstones are very old. She starts drawing a genealogy chart for the Smiths and Jones. Their family histories were intertwined for over 100 years.

The oldest Smith was Raene Smith. Raene Smith was born in 1824 and died in 1910. John Smith was the son of Raene. John was born in 1845 and his wife Greta was born in 1850. They both died in the 1930’s. Their son Liberty Smith and his wife Birdsong Mason were both born in 1875 and died in the 1960’s. Liberty and Birdsong had Mason Smith in 1895. Mason’s wife Pearl was born in 1898. They both died in 1976 as the lake flooded their ranch. They were the last Smith family inhabitants of her cabin. Their son John was born in 1925 and died with his wife Birdie Jones in the auto accident in 1966. John and Birdie must have had the son who was the cousin of Race Jones.

Looking at the names and dates, she realizes that the Smiths, Masons, and Jones have been related for several generations. The original immigrants were apparently Raene, John, and Greta Smith. Jessica decided to look into the Jones and Mason family histories when she had time.

Jessica has just enough time to stop at the coffee shop by the movie theatre while she waits for Cody. She tries to call Race on the phone but he doesn’t answer. She is starting to worry about Race. When they get home, Jessica uses her binoculars to look at Race’s house across the lake. She can see his barn and house but she doesn’t see his pickup truck. Maybe he went somewhere but she can’t imagine he would abandon his animals in this drought. Race’s horses are eating hay in the pasture south of his barn. Someone must be feeding and watering the animals for him.

While working on her computer before bedtime, she decides to take a mental break. She tries to use some genealogy tools to see if there is a history of the Texas Smith family. She now has names and dates for John and Greta Smith. It is interesting that the name Greta means pearl and Raene means “wise guardian”. She has been dreaming about wearing pearls while she rides Rocky. Is this a coincidence? No, she doesn’t believe in coincidences like this; she must have somehow known about the name Greta and that it means pearl. The mind has amazing abilities to associate facts that you don’t consciously remember. Was there something she had found in the house with the name Greta or Pearl and she simply could not remember it?

There are so many Smith genealogies that she doesn’t recognize any members of the Smith family. Smith is just too common of a name. It is interesting that the main players in the drama of the skeleton beneath the lake all have such common names. There was the Smith family and the Jones family living on adjacent properties for generations. And now, the Mason family was involved if you included Sheriff Mason and the assumption that Birdsong Mason belonged to the same family as Sheriff Mason. She had noticed at the Catholic cemetery that the Jones and Mason families had plots in the same section of the cemetery. Many of the tombstones were very old and some dated back to the late 1800’s. She would check and see if the Mason family had a homestead nearby.

Chapter 20 Road Trip to Buy Hay

Hay has become scarce at any price. The local feed stores and suppliers are trucking hay in from the upper Midwest. The hay is already sold to their regular hay customers when the trucks arrive. Jessica normally has grass in her pasture from March to November so she is not a regular weekly or monthly hay customer. She will run out hay in a week and is getting desperate.

In the wild, horses graze all day as the herd moves through their territory. She feeds 100 pounds of hay each day to her horses and supplements their diet with rolled oats and vitamins. Jessica tries to mimic grazing patterns for her horses. She spreads the hay out along the perimeter of the pasture in the shade three times during the day. If she put all of the hay out at one time, the horses would eat it immediately and feel hungry the rest of the day. At night, the horses get hay and rolled oats in their paddocks.

Each horse needs one percent of their body weight in food each day to maintain their weight. Rocky is an 1100 pound horse so he needs 11 pounds of feed. Each day, Rocky gets about 25 pounds of hay plus forage grass, oats, and vitamins. Rocky is maintaining his weight but he doesn’t seem to have much of an appetite. He spends most of his time standing in the shadows of the cedar trees by the pasture gate to the lake. Jessica is worried about his health. There hasn’t been much time to play horse games and it is so hot that both of them would be at risk of heat stroke.

Janice has relatives in the upper Midwest with horse hay they are willing sell. Janice is getting desperate for hay as well. They plan a 600 mile road trip to get a trailer of hay. Jessica has a big truck and Janice has a flatbed hay trailer. Jessica checks the internet and plans a direct route that avoids most of the interstate road construction. She also plans an alternate return path just in case the direct route looks too difficult for their return with a load of hay.

Jessica also arranges for her friend Nancy to spend the nights with Cody. It isn’t that she doesn’t’ trust Cody, Jessica is worried about the stranger roaming the lake shore. Unlike Jessica, Nancy is a well armed Texas horse woman. Nancy has a shotgun on the gun rack in the back window of her pickup. She also has pistol under the front driver’s seat. Jessica doesn’t have any weapons unless you count the 4-H bow that Cody used for archery when she was 10 years old.

Jessica can’t take too much more time off from work. She took several days of vacation time to clear the firebreak. Janice has a flexible schedule but needs to be back in time to sing in the Sunday choir. They plan to leave on Thursday so Jessica only has to take two days of vacation and Janice will be back sometime on Saturday. They plan to drive Thursday day and night, load the hay on Friday morning, and drive home the rest of Friday and into Saturday. They can take turns driving and resting.

They both love road trips. They spend the time catching up on their lives. Janice is an empty nester with two children in college. Cody is still in high school. Both of them grew up on farms and studied science in college. Janice became a school science teacher. Jessica worked in the big city wearing silk suits, panty hose, and heels to work every day for 20 years. After Cody was born, it seemed like destiny that Jessica would return to the rural life. From her birth, Cody loved animals and insisted on being with animals. When she was old enough, she begged and begged for horseback riding lessons. Then Cody’s desire to own her own horse led to buying Rocky. And that led to the little ranch.

Jessica tells Janice about her visit to the Catholic cemetery and the information she has learned about the Smith family genealogy. She also tells Janice how difficult it is to find information on the internet because the names Jones, Mason, and Smith are just too common. She had begun to think that those names were chosen by the immigrants just to make it harder to track them and their descendants.

Jessica had been too busy to look through the local school yearbooks so she had put the yearbooks in the back seat of the pickup truck. Jessica looks through the year books while Janice drives. She starts with the yearbooks from the 1970’s because she assumes the Smith grandson would be in high school in then. She finds pictures of Race and discovers that his real name is Mason Jones and he graduated from high school in 1976. She does not find any photos the Smith’s grandson – was she correct in assuming he was the son of John Smith (born 1925 and died 1966) and his last name would be Smith?

Jessica asks Janice, “There are pictures of Race graduating from high school in 1976. Did you know Race Jones real name is Mason Jones? The Catholic Cemetery tombstones show that the Smith family is related to both the Jones and Mason family by marriage. Do you think the Jones family is related to the Mason family?”

Janice replies, “That is interesting. The Mason family has lived here for a long time. The original Mason was a stonemason who did the stonework on most of the local churches. Most of the older Catholic Churches in the area that were built back in the 1880’s were built by the Mason family. The Masons were the county’s original stonemasons. You can probably find out more about the Mason family from the church records. Or you could ask Race, why don’t you just ask Race about it?”

Jessica replies, “I believe in being direct and asking questions. I asked Race what he knew about the Smith family and he just said the Lake was a tragedy for all the families involved. I have tried to call Race several times but he doesn’t answer. I have been leaving messages at the café but he hasn’t called me.”

Jessica continues to look through the year books. She finds a junior named Liberty Smith in the 1975 year book. She checks the 1976 year book and Liberty Smith is not in the year book. Apparently, Liberty Smith did not attend high school there his senior year. She looks back through earlier year books and finds both Race Jones and Liberty Smith were in the same class from first grade until their junior year.

Jessica says, “There is a boy named Liberty Smith who attended school with Race from first grade until their junior year. Do you remember a Liberty Smith? Do you think he is the Smith’s grandson?”

Janice replies, “I don’t remember a boy named Liberty Smith. Liberty is such an unusual name that I would have remembered it. You should just ask Race if Liberty Smith was his cousin and the Smith’s grandson.”

Jessica looks at her cemetery notes and adds, “There was a Liberty Smith born in 1875. The name Liberty is too unusual for that to be a coincidence.”

The extreme drought is covering all of Texas and New Mexico. Only southern Oklahoma has drought conditions. As they drive into Northern Oklahoma, they are amazed at how green the terrain becomes. They ignore their diets as they stop to get burgers for lunch, homemade pie and coffee for dinner, and waffles for a midnight snack. They drive through rainstorms in Arkansas and Missouri. Both of them are so excited that it is raining.

They park at a rest area in Missouri to wait out a thunderstorm with a heavy downpour about 3 A.M. Both of them enjoy the glorious sound and smell of the rain. It has not rained for months in Texas. They set an alarm in case the fall asleep.

Jessica falls asleep to the sound of rain on the truck cab. It is such a soothing sound. Jessica dreams she is in her old barn. There is a huge pile of fresh hay stacked nearly to the roof in the barn. The hay is green and smells so good. She and Cody are napping on the hay with Max resting his head in her lap. Rocky is standing quietly by the hay. Rocky looks so happy with his soft eyes and relaxed pose. It is raining and the rain makes a soothing sound on the old tin roof. She smells coffee and wakes up to see Rocky standing beside the hay. He looks so elegant wearing a black and white tuxedo with a top hat. His front hooves have white gloves on them. He is holding an ornate blackened silver tray with a fresh cup of coffee and a yellow rose in a small metal vase. The vase has an emblem with the same shape as the rosary cross. It was such a peaceful dream. The coffee just smells so good.

Janice wakes Jessica up and hands her a fresh cup of coffee. Jessica feels so refreshed after her dream. She is beginning to think she must be in need of some serious counseling with all of these dreams where Rocky is wearing a tuxedo.

Janice had driven the rest of the way to her aunt and uncle’s farm. She says, “My aunt makes a great cup of coffee. She also has breakfast ready if you are hungry. We have about an hour before it is light enough to load the hay.”

Janice’s aunt is apologizing for the rotten weather because it is only 70 degrees and rainy. Jessica says, “Please don’t apologize. I am really enjoying the change from Texas temperatures of 110 degrees every day and no rain for months. This rain feels like Heaven on earth.”

They enjoyed a wonderful country breakfast of biscuits and gravy with scrambled eggs. Jessica especially enjoyed the coffee. After breakfast, they loaded 200 bales of hay onto the trailer and began the long drive back to Texas. Jessica will make her 100 bales last for 50 days by feeding the horses a ration of oats in addition to the hay.

On the return trip, Jessica spends more time looking through the older year books. She knows the Smiths had a son named John born in 1925. John Smith and a girl named Birdie would have been in high school in the early 1940’s. Jessica looks through year books from the 1940’s. She finds pictures of John Smith and Birdie Jones in the local high school year book. Does this mean that Birdie is from the same Jones family as Mason Jones?

There are pictures of a stunningly beautiful girl named Raene Smith. Jessica checks her notes from the Catholic cemetery and verifies that there was a Smith named Raene who was born in 1824 and died in 1910. This is a different Raene, maybe a great – great – great granddaughter. The younger Raene graduated from the local high school in 1938. Her favorite subjects were art and history. Her bio said she wanted to be a teacher like her grandmother. Her senior page has a story about visiting enchanted lands and marrying a handsome prince. Jessica assumes this Raene was a romantic soul without a practical bone in her body. Janice doesn’t remember anyone named Raene. They will ask around to see if anyone remembers her.

Jessica updates the Smith family tree she is developing to include Birdie’s maiden name of Jones, adding Raene as a daughter of Mason and Pearl Smith, and Liberty as the son of John and Birdie Smith.

Raene Smith, 1824 – 1910; son John Smith;

John Smith, 1845 – 1936, wife Greta, 1850 – 1939; son Liberty Smith;

Liberty Smith, 1875 – 1963, wife Birdsong Mason 1875 – 1965; son Mason Smith;

Mason Smith, 1895 – 1976, wife Pearl, 1898 – 1976,

son John Smith, daughter Raene (high school 1938);

John Smith, 1925 – 1966, wife Birdie Jones 1926 – 1966; son Liberty.

Jessica calls their friend Kelly on the cell phone and asks her to see if any of her older relatives remember Raene Smith. She tells Kelly that Raene graduated from the local high school in 1938 and there are photos of her in the 1938 yearbook. Jessica then asks Kelly if Liberty could have been the name of the Smith’s grandson. She asks Kelly to look in the 1975 yearbook for the local high school and let her know if this is the boy she remembers as Race’s cousin.

Chapter 21 Max Watches the Stranger

Jessica feels so sorry for Rocky. When he isn’t in his paddock or eating hay, he stands a silent vigil by the pasture gate to the lake path. He stands in the shade among the low branches of a group of cedar trees. Sometimes, he blends into the shade so well that she has to take a second look to make sure he is still there. Jessica assumes he is trying to tell her that he wants to eat grass at the lake. In reality, Rocky is guarding their gate and on the alert for any unusual scents or sounds. Max spends all night patrolling along the lake paths. For several hours each night, Max follows the stranger. Rocky stands guard while Max rests for a few hours in the hottest part of the day. Jessica usually makes Max rest on the cool mud room floor during the hottest hours of the afternoon.

Max is studying his quarry. Each night, Max waits by the old leaning oak tree. If the stranger stops by the tree, Max watches him from his hiding spot in the brush. The stranger climbs the tree and just sits there watching the cabin. If the stranger does not stop by the tree, Max stealthily makes his way down the path to watch the stranger as he searches the hillside.

German Shepherds use their sense of smell to determine human moods and emotions. Anger and fear produce adrenaline causing the heart to pump harder and people to perspire. Max is very skilled at detecting human intentions based on their emotions and adrenaline levels. He doesn’t sense any aggression, bad intentions, or angry emotions in the stranger. For now, Max is just watching. If the stranger happens to show any aggression, Max will be ready.

Tonight, Max waits near the old leaning oak tree. The stranger bypasses the tree and moves on down the trail to continue his search pattern. He is careful to avoid leaving tracks in the muck at the lake shore. His boot tracks in the sand disappear quickly in the blowing wind. As his search approaches the sandstone cliff to the south of the cabin, he is making a smaller pattern as though he is closing in on the object of his search. The smaller patterns take longer and his progress is now slower than when he started. Max observes this change and assumes the stranger is getting closer to his quarry. Max and Rocky will get ahead of him tomorrow!

As the evening light fades into twilight, Max watches the stranger as he searches the hillside between the cabin and the lake. Occasionally, the stranger will pick up an object and put it into his backpack. The stranger is getting nearer to the sandstone cliff forming the southern edge of their secluded lake shore. With the approaching darkness, the stranger reluctantly gives up his search and returns to the path going north along the shore. He knows the wind will eliminate his tracks by morning so he doesn’t take the time needed to hide his tracks in sandy areas of the trail. Max follows him quietly along the trail. Max knows where the stranger is going so he stays well out of the stranger’s scent and sound range.

When they approach the crumbling sandstone cliff at the north end of the trail, Max closes the distance between himself and the stranger. Max wants to watch the stranger as he crosses the sandstone cliff. His keen sense of smell can only lead him to the cliff edge where the stranger leaves the path. Max has already staked out a hiding spot close to the trail where he watches the stranger cross the cliff. Max hurries to his hiding spot while the stranger is still on the trail.

In the descending darkness, the stranger hurries to the sandstone cliff. He needs to cross the cliff before it gets too dark for him to secure his footings. The stranger leaves the trail about 50 feet from the edge of the cliff and goes west away from the lake. He is walking a familiar route that is used infrequently enough to remain unrecognizable as a trail. The ground is a sandstone ledge with trees and thorny shrubs rooted in cracks in the rocks. He approaches a huge sandstone boulder with a vertical face. There is a rappelling rope hidden along the edge of the boulder. The stranger uses the rope to climb up the boulder.

Max watches and listens as the stranger climbs up the boulder. He now recognizes this noise as the stranger using the rope to climb up the vertical side of a big rock. As he watches, the rope disappears up the side of the boulder. Max continues to listen as the stranger makes metallic dragging noises. Max hears more noises like the stranger is climbing another rock. Next, he hears small rocks sliding down the steep slope as the stranger walks along the cliff. Max hears an occasional metallic sound as the stranger walks. Max assumes the stranger is using some sort of rope railing as he walks across the cliff. The sounds grow fainter as Max hears a different sound like something sliding smoothly along the rope. After it is dark, Max hears the distant sound of a truck engine starting. The truck doesn’t move for a few minutes.

The stranger is tired when he reaches the ancient Jeep. He starts the engine and rests for a few minutes in the Jeep. The Jeep has an open soft top and a slight breeze is blowing off of the lake. The sun has set and it is still 98 degrees. He drinks from a thermos filled with ice water and eats a sandwich. He needs water and food. The search is getting harder to do each night. The sun is setting earlier. He must avoid more boaters on the lake and the drug enforcement search planes while hiking further from the north cliffs each night. He is thinking about his options and other ways he might be able to conduct the search. Coming from the south was a formidable task when the water was higher. He needs to check out the southern route again. There might now be a shorter path to his search zone from the south. If there is, it would save a lot of time getting to the search area each night.

Later Max hears the Jeep drive down the road and he waits for quite some time before returning to the pasture. Max tells Rocky about the activities of the stranger. They make plans to search where the stranger had ended his search. They need to make sure she takes them to the lake at sunrise the next morning. Max lays down to rest beside Rocky who is standing guard at the pasture gate.

Jessica is enjoying a dream about her childhood. Her grandfather was a blacksmith. He has thick white hair and stands tall in his worn and blackened coveralls. He firmly believed in God Almighty and frequently said to the family, “Come hell or high water, the only way to treat others is the way you want to be treated.”

She is sitting on an old black walnut stump in their yard playing with the kittens. The stump is usually out of the path of the dirty smoke from the forge. Her grandfather has built a very hot fire in the forge. He has laid out a row of heavy metal ladles that have a long handle with a bowl on one end. He is crushing dirty rocks with a hammer in a big bowl shaped anvil and putting the broken rocks into the bowls on the end of the ladles. When he has filled a bowl, he puts it into the fire to melt the rocks. After he has put all of the ladles into the fire, he takes off his big gloves and drinks a cup of strong coffee. He sits down beside her and rests for a few minutes.

She looks around and sees the old farm buildings. The forge is in the center of the farm buildings under an old black walnut tree. There is a house, root cellar, water well, smokehouse, chicken coop and pen, and a barn. The forge was built on this side of the house to keep the dirty smoke of the forge away from the house. She sees the cows and pigs by the barn and chickens in the chicken pen. Beside the forge, there is a huge wooden box of dirty coal for firing the forge and a water tank for cooling hot metal objects. There is also a building for the blacksmith equipment near the forge.

Her grandfather could make everything. He stored anvils, hammers, awls and punches, big tongs, ladles, big metal bowls, lots and lots of molds and wooden boxes of different kinds of rocks in his blacksmith building. His tools and molds were neatly arranged by size and hung along the walls. She loved looking at the molds and watching her grandfather create things with them. The top rows had molds for small things like nails, hooks, awls and punches, door knobs, hinges, horseshoes, ladles, scoops, and kitchen utensils. On the middle rows, there were molds for pots and pans, kettles, skillets, and plates. Heavier molds for plows, rakes, shovels, axes, wagon parts, and bigger tools were on the bottom rows.

On most days, he used the big molds to make tools, household products, horse shoes, and farm equipment for other people. He usually poured the molten metal into big molds to shape it. While the object in the mold was still hot, he would grab the object with the big tongs and put it on an anvil where he hammered and hammered it into shape. He would put the object back into the fire to make it red hot again and then hammered on it until he liked the shape. Sometimes he cooled the shape in the water tank before hammering on it some more. It is really hard work.

Today is a special day because he is making shiny liquid for the tiny molds. The crushed rocks start out melting in big ladles. He adds extra material to the melting ores. As the ores melt, he pours part of the liquid into smaller ladles. He moves the small ladles around in the fire and watches the ores separate. When the liquid is just right, he scoops and pours the molten ores into other ladles as he mixes and separates the metals. When he has the right mixture, he pours the liquid into the molds. The molds are sitting in a bed of sand by the forge. She walks over to look at the pretty shiny patterns in the little molds. The molds contain different sizes of the rosary cross.

Jessica wakes up and goes to the kitchen where she makes a cup of coffee. She sits down on the dining room side of the great chimney and admires the custom ironwork. Men like her grandfather were true men of steel. They may call the fictional Superman the “Man of Steel” but real men like her grandfather truly deserved that name.

Chapter 22 The Price of Living in Paradise

Jessica is up before sunrise doing her morning barn chores before it gets too hot. The weather forecast is for another day with a temperature over 105 degrees. She is listening to the coyotes howling in the distance and her Randy Travis music. Randy is singing,

There's no place like home.

It just hit me as I was leavin'.

There's no place like home. …

Home sweet home.

Blue mesa moonlight shines

as purple shadows fall

silence broken by the lonesome coyote call.

Rocky is enjoying his ears being scratched and looks so happy. Life just couldn’t be any better in paradise. The only thing missing is some rain.

Then, Jessica notices there isn’t any water coming out of the hose in the horse water tank. Oh no, she rushes to the well house to check on the pump. The breaker is tripped and she resets it. The 240 volt control box makes a loud electrical humming noise and the lights in the well house dim. She switches off the breaker. Apparently, something is wrong with the submersible pump. It will probably have to be pulled and replaced. She calls the well drilling company on her cell phone and leaves a message that she has a water emergency.

As she disconnects the call, Jessica realizes that there are many other people in the area with shallower wells than hers. She had been hearing reports that many of the shallower wells were going dry or pumping muddy sludge. They are probably already on the driller’s priority list and she will have a long wait to get the pump fixed. She had been checking the online well database for municipal wells in the area and most of them were reporting the water table had dropped at least 100 feet since January. The typical water depth profile showed the water table peaked in the winter and slowly fell to a low in midsummer. With the drought last year, there wasn’t a winter peak in the water table. The water table had been falling since last summer.

The well would probably need a new pump and the extra pipe and electrical cable needed to lower the pump at least 100 feet. The real question was whether her well was deep enough to reach water without being drilled deeper.

She finishes the barn chores and goes to the house to assess her options for water. The chickens and ducks will die within hours without water. She walks around the house checking the rain barrels and estimating how much water is left in the barrels. There might be 90 gallons of water left. The water in the rain barrels was always saved for an emergency and this is definitely an emergency. She fills the poultry water pans using water from a rain barrel. The horse tanks must be filled sometime today. The four 100 gallon water tanks for the horses will need to be filled at least every other day to keep the horses hydrated in this heat.

Jessica returns to the house and checks the pantry. There are two cases of bottled drinking water. That is more than enough to make a cup of coffee. She makes a cup of Island Coconut. This is her favorite seasonal flavor and she assumes it will be a long stressful day. A really good cup of coffee made from coconuts grown in a tropical paradise is a pleasant morning break before dealing the reality of living in this hot parched paradise.

Jessica calls her local feed store and they still have portable water tanks for sale. These tanks are designed for hauling water in the back of pickups or on wagons. The feed store still had one rectangular polyethylene tank with a supporting metal cage designed for hauling water in the back of a pickup truck. The capacity of the tank is 275 gallons. The feed store agreed to hold the tank for her. Her next problem is where to get water to fill the tank. She calls the local city water utility. They will sell her water by the gallon.

Jessica wakes up Cody and tells her not to use any of the plumbing fixtures until the pump is fixed. She also lets Cody know she should be back with a tank of water before lunch. Jessica grabs her purse and checkbook before she walks out the door to the pickup.

At the feed store, she talks to the owner as he loads the water tank. Jessica is a regular customer and buys most of her feed here. She buys several bags of poultry food and horse electrolytes while she is there. The electrolytes help prevent dehydration for horses eating a hay diet in the excessive heat. She picks out the delicious apple flavored granules that she can feed by hand to each horse to make sure each one gets the right amount. They talk about the weather and the ever increasing price of grain. Corn now costs $13 for a 50 pound bag. Last summer, that same bag of corn was $6.75. Those chickens cost more to feed every day. She asks about hay and he says there will be a load from Colorado delivered later this week but he has already sold all of it to his weekly delivery hay customers. Jessica stops at the convenience store where she buys several cases of bottled water, hand sanitizer, wet wipes with lotion, and bags of ice.

Jessica drives to the city water tower and fills the water tank. Dehydration is a life or death issue with the livestock. Each horse needs at least 10 – 20 gallons of water each day. Filling a 100 gallon horse tank each day should be sufficient for the horses. She drives home and transfers 100 gallons of water to horse water tanks. Another 100 gallons will be added to those tanks in the morning. The remaining 75 gallons will be used for the poultry tanks and flushing the toilet in the house. Based on this planned water usage, she will need to make a water run every other day. Jessica is now exhausted and needs another cup of coffee. Max is in the mud room resting on the cool tile floor. Jessica sits down on the old braided rag rug with him to enjoy her coffee.

Chapter 23 Rocky finds a Gun

Jessica is admiring the plants, humming birds, and rock formations along a scenic trail in Arizona. It has been a long time since her last visit to Verde Valley and the Montezuma Castle National Monument. She always admired the Sinagua and how they managed to survive under such harsh conditions. Sinagua means “without water” in Spanish. The Native American builders didn’t leave behind a written language so no one really knows what they called themselves. She pauses on the trail and looks up at the wonder known as Montezuma’s Castle. It wasn’t really a castle, it was a Sinagua city built into the limestone cliff over 800 years ago. The dwellings were 100 feet above the desert floor and sheltered from above by a giant overhanging limestone cliff. It is early morning and the sun is just rising.

The castle glows with pastel hues in the sunlight. The limestone cliffs glitter and glow with a golden hue. Historians believe that the beautiful glitter of sunlight on the stone cliffs is why the early Spanish explorers went home with tales of cities made of gold in the desert. A light wind carries the pine and cactus scents of the high desert. Giant saguaro cacti are everywhere. With their uplifted arms, the saguaro cacti look like human sentinels from a distance. What a fantastic way to greet the morning!

Jessica realizes she is riding Rocky bareback and bridleless along the trail. Rocky is desperately searching for something along the trail. She assumes it is grass or water because she is so hot and thirsty. Rocky is not panicky, he is just searching for something. Jessica had always wondered how the Sinagua managed to find and store enough water in this desert to survive. Once they found water, how did they carry water up that cliff face? She remembers the park rangers telling stories about how each cliff dwelling had a complicated system of climbing trails with foot holds cut into the rock. If a climber started out on the wrong foot, they would eventually reach a place in the trail where they could not continue up the cliff face and in many cases they also couldn’t climb back down. The climber had to know the climbing pattern in order to make it to the dwellings safely. How did they do that carrying infants and water?

Jessica wakes up and realizes that she fell asleep with Max on the mud room floor. The last thing she remembers is enjoying a cup of island coconut coffee and thinking about her water problems. Caffeine has never kept her awake. The dream about riding Rocky in the Sonoran Desert reminds her that they didn’t go to the lake this morning. It is late afternoon but she decides that a nice walk to the lake to see all of that water would really make her feel better. She grabs a water bottle from the refrigerator, lets Max out of the mud room, puts on her snake boots, and walks to the barn to grab her carrot stick.

Rocky has been standing under the cedars by the pasture gate to the lake path. He has been anxious to go to the lake all day. The well problem this morning upset the plans that he had made with Max to search along the lake shore before the stranger had a chance to return tonight. Did they have time to search before the stranger made his nightly visit? Rocky is excited to see Jessica and Max approaching him.

Jessica bonds with Rocky by rubbing him with the carrot stick in his favorite itchy spots. She scratches and rubs his soft ears to make sure he is calm and responsive to her focus as well as her touch. Slowly, the trio begins the hot walk down the path to the lake. As they approach the lake, Jessica makes sure there aren’t any boaters on the lake or the growing island in the lake. It is so hot in the late afternoon that everyone has gone someplace cooler until later in the evening when the temperatures fall below 100 degrees. Rocky and Max drift to the south along the path. Jessica follows along. She assumes Rocky has spotted some grass to eat. Max is sniffing along the trail.

Max and Rocky drift to the west side of the path on the uphill slope. Rocky is walking back and forth looking for grass while Max sniffs along the edge of the lake. The feral pigs have been rooting in the muck left behind as the lake water recedes. That muck would pull off her boots if she tried to walk across it but Max is light enough that he doesn’t have any trouble with the drier muck. She makes sure Rocky doesn’t go near the muck because he would sink like it was quicksand.

Rocky is searching for shiny objects like the rosary. Max is sniffing for anything unusual in places where he knows Rocky can’t go either because he would sink in the muck or because the slope is too steep. Jessica sits down on a rock in the shade to watch the animals. They are being so energetic in the heat that she is exhausted just watching them.

Jessica turns to study the sandstone cliff that forms the southern boundary of her little lake shore. She is thinking about her dream with the Sinagua cliff dwellings. As a child, she loved to read mysteries and stories about ancient ruins and archeological sites. Books always had secret paths and hidden openings but this was real life. When she was younger, they had spent many vacations hiking and camping in the national parks with cliff dwellings. Man’s ability to adapt always amazed her.

As she is studying the cliff, Jessica realizes that someone who had grown up here and spent many years exploring these cliffs could have found paths or made paths just like the Sinagua. Several generations of Smith children had grown up here and the children probably spent most of their childhood roaming this valley and learning all of its secrets. They would have found any possible paths over that cliff, that is, if there were any paths across that cliff. She also realized the same was true of the rocky cliff on the north side of her lake shore. It suddenly dawned on her that she might have made a very wrong assumption about the secluded nature of this little stretch of lake shore. Someone very familiar with this area could and probably was crossing these cliffs to walk along this very lake shore. The stranger leaving the boot tracks was not a stranger to Shadow Mountain. Who is he? And what is he doing here? Why didn’t he just ask her for permission to access the lake shore from her property? This person was going to great lengths to keep his activities a secret and avoid be identified.

Jessica also had another question, where did the Smith family get their water? The Smith family had lived here for over 100 years before the lake. Her 950 foot deep well was drilled in the 1980’s by the developers who bought the land from the government. Did the developer simply drill an old Smith well deeper or was it a new well? The driller who replaced her pump had told her that the shallowest wells in her area were at least 500 feet deep and this was far too deep for a hand dug well with an old pioneer windmill powered by the wind. Modern ranches with deep wells had electric submersible pumps and the windmill was just there as a decoration.

Rural electrification began in 1935. Only 2% of Texans had electricity in 1935. Most remote rural areas didn’t get electricity until the 1950’s. The Smiths had lived on this rural Texas ranch without electricity or deep water well for at least 75 years. They had survived the Dust Bowl that began in 1932 and ended with rains in 1939. Their water supply was enough to keep them going for 7 years of the worst drought imaginable. Where did they get their water?

There weren’t any signs of an old farm well or a cistern. Most old ranches had windmills, large livestock tanks built into the ground, and hand pumps. Old windmills littered the Texas countryside. Developers typically left the old windmills because they added country charm to the mini-ranches built for people used to living in the city. If the developer had paid to remove the windmill and fill in the well, they would have removed the eyesore of a barn and probably the old cabin as well. Neither building would have had any value to a modern developer. Wherever the Smiths got their water, that source had to be available year round and survive at least 100 years of drought cycles. Jessica would call Race and ask him directly because she was getting desperate. She called Race’s phone and of course he didn’t answer.

Rocky stopped his search pattern to watch Jessica and Max. He was wondering what the stranger could be looking for among these rocks. He hadn’t seen any more shiny manmade objects. Maybe the object wasn’t shiny. He decided that anything manmade would be of interest. He was looking at a heavy black object that looked manmade. Rocky nickers to tell Max that he has found something interesting. When Max comes over, Rocky paws at the black object. Max says it looks like a gun but it doesn’t smell like one. Maybe guns smell different when they have been under the lake water. Max sits down by the gun and barks for Jessica.

Jessica was watching Max and Rocky. She walks over to see what they have found. A gun is laying on the ground at Rocky’s feet. Jessica sits down on a rock beside Max and strokes his head. She looks at Rocky and says, “You have found a gun. It looks like it could have been under the lake for quite some time. I have never used a gun and really hesitate to pick it up. But, I am afraid someone else will find and take the gun if we leave it here.”

Jessica returns to the path and piles some stones on the path to mark the spot directly downhill from where Rocky found the gun. She uses her cell phone map to mark the spot and the camera to take pictures of Max and Rocky standing near the gun so she can locate the spot later. She climbs up the hill, turns around, and takes some pictures of the path while she is standing by the gun. Next, she takes several pictures of the gun where it lies among the rocks.

Jessica looks at Max and Rocky. She says, “Do you see or smell anything else of interest?” Max and Rocky just look at her. They haven’t found anything else.

Jessica calls Sheriff Mason. She leaves a message telling him that she has found an old gun on the hillside. She takes off the scarf that she uses for a sweat band and picks up the gun with the scarf. The trio returns to the lake path and climbs the hill back to the pasture.

Jessica returns to the barn to finish feeding all of the animals, filling their water pans, and collecting the eggs hidden in nests around the barn. She puts ice cubes around the chickens and ducks to give them some cool water to play with as the ice cubes melts. She didn’t have any water to run the mister. Ducks need a lot of water and she doesn’t know how much longer they can survive without water for swimming and cooling down. Jessica spreads diatomaceous earth around the tack room to make sure fleas don’t bother the kittens. Diatomaceous earth is made by crushing fossilized marine skeletons into a fine powder. The powder has small crystals with sharp edges like broken glass. The crystals scratch the bodies of small insects, enter the wounds, and cause the insect bodies to dehydrate. It is a very effective and natural way to control insects that the chickens and ducks don’t eat.

When Jessica returns to the cabin, she puts the gun in a box in the mud room. She assumes Sheriff Mason will be interested in the gun. Jessica tells Cody about the gun and prints copies of the pictures with the gun’s location.

Jessica wishes she had running water so she could take a shower but that will have to wait until the well is fixed. Cody has made arrangements to use the shower at a girl friends house. Sheriff Mason calls to say he will send someone to pick up the gun in the morning.

Max and Rocky spend the night monitoring the stranger’s search along the hillside. Rocky guards the pasture and stays by the gate. Max spends the late evening and twilight hours watching the stranger as he searches the hillside. He continues his search pattern just as Max had predicted. When the stranger reaches the spot where the gun had been, he stops and examines the area. Human, dog, and horse tracks cover the area. He now knows the trio had been there and retrieved something. He sits down on a rock and looks around the area while he drinks water from a canteen. His gaze pauses in the direction of the old arching oak tree where Max had discovered the skull. The tree is now far from the receding shore line. The Sheriff’s crew has already found anything of interest near the tree. He returns to his search and spends the rest of the evening pacing along the base of the cliff and looking among the sandstone boulders littering the slope at the base of the cliff.

Max watches as the stranger continues his search pattern. The stranger must know something else remains to be found. Whatever he is looking for must be located at the base of the cliff. When he returns to the pasture, Max tells Rocky the stranger is still looking for something along the base of the cliff. They make plans to continue searching too.

Chapter 24 The Deputies

The well repair crew arrives early the next morning. They check all of the electrical control boxes in the well house. Their conclusion is that the pump needs to be pulled and replaced. They also assume the water table has dropped and the pump will need to be lowered. When they return to pull the pump, they will bring extra pipe and electrical cable so they can lower the new pump to the drought level of the water table. The well crew hopes to return sometime this month. She is added to the bottom of their priority list for the pump pulling truck and crew. Hauling water will have to be Jessica’s top priority task until the well is fixed.

Jessica calls Race on the phone and he doesn’t answer. Race doesn’t have a cell phone or an answering machine. She will keep calling and try to catch him in town somewhere. She desperately wants to know where the Smiths got their water.

The Sheriff’s deputies arrive as the well repair crew is driving back down the driveway. There is a deputy in a county Sheriff’s uniform and a deputy wearing plain clothes (jeans, cotton shirt, and hat). Jessica gives them the gun and the photographs of the gun’s location. The uniformed deputy puts them in his car and says they want to walk down to the site with her. He is carrying a camera and a notebook. The other deputy is carrying a metal detector. Jessica grabs her carrot stick and leads them to the pasture gate. Along the way, she bonds with Rocky by scratching his itchy spots and playing horse games. For some reason, Jessica feels more secure when Max and Rocky go to the lake with her. At this point, she knows the stranger prowling the lake shore is a local boy and she doesn’t trust anyone. The boot prints left by the deputies in the sand along the trail don’t match the stranger’s tracks but most people have more that one pair of boots.

Rocky, Max, and Jessica look for tracks along the lake path. They notice several partial tracks in the loose sand. The stranger had returned last night after they found the gun. For some reason that she could not explain, she doesn’t tell the deputies about the stranger. If the deputies notice the tracks, they don’t say anything either.

Max sniffs the trail ahead of them. He leads Rocky to the end of the stranger’s search pattern so they can begin their search there. While Jessica talks to the deputies, Max and Rocky continue their own search. The uniformed deputy makes comments about their tracks being everywhere as he takes pictures and writes in his notebook. Jessica shakes her head and tells the deputy that the animals were just out looking for something to eat when they found the gun. She is just glad Max and Rocky aren’t bothering the deputies as they look around the area. The plain clothes deputy is using the metal detector to look for more evidence.

Jessica finds a nice shady spot and sits down to enjoy the morning. Her gaze wonders to the great arching oak where Max had found the skull. The tree is surrounded by the gooey muck left behind by the lake. Jessica uses her cell phone to take a picture of Max sitting by the arching oak tree. The only green plants are growing in the moisture of the muck. Luckily, Rocky is smart enough to avoid the muck and stay on the stable soil along the slope. The pigs have been rooting everywhere.

She clutches the rosary in her pocket. Why is the stranger spending so much time here? What could possibly be so important after 40 years? It is possible that the stranger’s activities are unrelated to the skeleton but in her view that is not very likely. The stranger wants his activities to remain hidden. She also realizes that if the stranger had meant to hurt her family that he would have already done it.

Jessica turns toward the south and looks at the cliffs and boulders in the mid-morning light. Rocky and Max are pacing back and forth along the hillside. If she didn’t know any better, she would think they were walking along a grid pattern. As she thought that thought, she realized they were walking in a grid search pattern. They had been walking that same pattern last night. Rocky and Max were following the same search pattern as the stranger. In the past few weeks, the stranger had worked his search pattern from the north cliff and was now nearing the south cliff. His objective was apparently near the south cliff. Jessica decides she will spend some quality time with Max and Rocky along the south cliff later today. She doesn’t’ want the deputies to know about her interest in the base of the cliff so she turns her attention to their activities.

The plain clothes deputy hasn’t said a word so Jessica asks the uniformed deputy, “How long have you been with the county Sheriff’s office?”

He replies, “About two years. I moved here from Austin. I was in the mounted city police and decided to try the Sheriff’s office as a change of pace. I like to ride horses but the mounted police just wasn’t the same as riding.”

He looks at Rocky and says, “Do you ever put a rope on that horse?”

Jessica replies, “Of course, whenever we leave the ranch.”

He says, “Do you just let him run around this hillside all of the time?”

Jessica replies, “No, I am always with Rocky when he is looking for grass along the lake.”

Jessica wants to change the subject and asks, “How long do you think the gun was here? Does it look like it was under the lake for a long time?”

He looks at her and says, “The guys at the lab will have to figure that out.”

She says, “I don’t know anything about guns. Is it a modern gun or a common gun? Or is it really old like from the 1800’s?”

He replies, “It looks like a World War II German Luger. A lot of GIs brought them back from the war as souvenirs. After all of this time, those guns have been passed around and it will probably be hard to figure out how it got here.”

She asks, “So the gun is probably not related to the skeleton. Do you know if any of the Smiths were in the service in World War II?”

He shakes his head and says, “I don’t know anything about the Smiths. A lot of people come down to the lake to do target practice and guns get lost.”

The plain clothes deputy has been writing in his own notebook while he uses the metal detector. He says, “Where did you find the skeleton? We need to check the distance between this location and the skeleton.”

Jessica walks down the slope and shows them the great arching oak as it stands in the muck left behind as the lake waters disappeared. Max is sitting by the arching oak tree watching the humans. Jessica shows the deputies her cell phone pictures of the arching tree as it emerged from the lake. It is quite a contrast between the tree when it was submerged in the lake and the muck that now surrounds the tree. It is so mucky that you would lose your shoes if you tried to walk to the tree. The uniformed deputy takes photos of the great arching oak in its current state.

The little airplane flies over low over the lake and makes several passes over the slope. Jessica waves as usual. Max and Rocky are used to the airplane and ignore it. The deputies act like they don’t notice the plane.

The plain clothes deputy continues walking a search pattern with his metal detector. He asks, “What were you looking for when you found the skeleton and the gun?”

Jessica wasn’t expecting that question and said, “I wasn’t looking for anything. Max found the skeleton by the tree when the tree was still in the water. Max plays in the water to cool off and he found the skull. I don’t let Rocky get near the shore line in this area because of the muck. Rocky stays on the slope looking for grass. Rocky found the gun on the slope while he was looking for grass. I didn’t find either one.”

The plain clothes deputy says, “The dog found the skeleton and the horse found the gun. What were you doing while the animals were playing detective?”

Jessica looks at him and says, “I was sitting down on a rock and enjoying my coffee.” She is starting to realize that the detectives either don’t believe her or they are writing her off as a lunatic. Which is worse given the current circumstances? It must sound like she is not taking responsibility for her own actions and transferring blame to the animals.

The plain clothes deputy says, “We are done here. If you find anything else, please leave it where you find it and call the Sheriff’s department.”

Jessica says, “Yes, I will. I only moved the gun because I didn’t want the dog to drag the gun around and get hurt. If we find anything else of interest, I will sit with it and wait for you like I did with the skeleton. The problem is that I don’t know what is of interest to the Sheriff. People throw a lot of trash in the lake and most of it ends up on the shore among the rocks. Is there anything specific you think I might find down here?”

He looks at Jessica and says, “I don’t know of anything specific but you never know what kind of evidence might have been beneath the lake.”

Max was sniffing out a trail and Rocky was following him along the base of the cliff. Max is much smaller than Rocky so he squeezes between the boulders and the cliff base whenever he smells something interesting. Jessica calls to Max and Rocky. They look at her and she waves for them to come to her. Jessica and the deputies walk back up the hill to the barn. The deputies keep looking back at Max and Rocky as they walk up the slope behind the humans. The horse is nickering and the dog seems to be mumbling.

Rocky and Max trail behind them and talk about the base of the cliff. Max tells Rocky that there are strange musty smells coming from some of the gaps in the piles of boulders. They will have to make sure she brings them back here again. Both of them are starting to distrust the deputies and plan to be on alert until the deputies leave the ranch.

When they return to the barn, the uniformed deputy says he is interested in old pole barns and asks if he can look in her barn. She gives them a tour of the old barn and her poultry nursery pen under the shade cloth. There are chickens panting and laying everywhere in the shade of the barn. The ducks are sitting on the ground around the water troughs. Earlier this morning, she had spread ice out on the dirt floors of the stalls and in the nursery pen to cool the air as it melted. The chickens are enjoying the fans blowing across the moist soil. They talk about the price of hay. The deputy wants to know where she got her hay and she tells him about the road trip to northern Missouri.

Max and Rocky are standing in the barn door watching Jessica talk to the deputies. Max is sensing tension from the men and has a low growl in his throat. Jessica walks over and pets him. She tells Max and Rocky that everything is alright and they will get their lunch in a few minutes. Jessica is scratching Rocky’s ears while the deputies continue looking around the barn.

The deputies stop and look at the diatomaceous earth on the floor of the barn. The cats, ducks, and chickens have left white powder tracks all over the damp areas of the concrete aisle in the barn. Diatomaceous earth is a bright white powder made from ground fossils found in ancient sea floor formations. They want to know what it is and she tells them that she uses diatomaceous earth as a natural flea control for the kittens. Jessica explains that she runs a pesticide free ranch and shows them the diatomaceous earth bag in the barn trash can. The deputies are shaking their heads as they look at the diatomaceous earth and other barn litter on the bottom of their boots.

The deputies ask about the water tank in the back of her pickup. Jessica explains that her well is broken and must haul water until the well pump is replaced. She should be getting close to the top of the driller’s priority list for fixing it. They refuse her offer of bottled water for the trip back to town and they drive away.

As the deputies drive away, Jessica realizes the deputies were actually there to check out her property and look for signs of illegal activity. She can only imagine what they will write in their reports. She just hopes they enjoy reading the lab analysis report for the diatomaceous earth and other stuff on their boots.

Chapter 25 Where is the Water?

After the deputies leave the ranch, Jessica goes to the cabin. While she is eating a sandwich for lunch, she searches the internet for topographical maps of the area before the lake was built. Several maps show the details of the terrain on the east side of Shadow Mountain. Satellite imagery wasn’t available in the early 1970’s. All of these maps were drawn by hand from measurements taken by human surveyors. The elevation changes are only marked in 50 foot increments. A terrain elevation change on the sandstone slope less than 50 feet wouldn’t be marked on the maps. She prints off several maps and a couple of modern satellite photos of the area. The photos are several years old but should still be useful.

Shadow Mountain was made of sandstone. She also spent some time reading about the formation of sandstone hills and boulders.

Sandstone is made from the weathering of older rocks. The older rocks break down creating sand and other minerals. Over millions of years, the sand and other minerals are compressed and cemented into sedimentary rocks known as sandstone. The minerals in the sandstone provide the rich and varied colors seen in different sandstone formations. The hardness of the sand and minerals from the older rocks determines how resistant the sandstone formation is to weathering and erosion. The boulders are formed from hunks of sandstone that break away from the main sandstone formation. Erosion wears down the exposed edges of the sandstone to create the rounded surfaces seen on the boulders. Water dissolves the exposed minerals on the surface of the boulders and further erodes the edges of the boulders to give them a totally different appearance than the layered sandstone cliffs. The Internet has pictures of some beautiful sandstone canyons in Arizona and Utah that looked similar to the area around Shadow Mountain.

The sandstone pictures from Utah remind Jessica about their camping trips to Zion National Park and the stories about the giant Weeping Rock. Zion National Park is famous for hanging gardens of plants growing on steep rock formations where water seeps out of the sandstone. Weeping Rock and the hanging gardens are a tribute to the ability of water to percolate through porous sandstone formations. Winter snows and rain fall on the top of the high sandstone cliffs in Zion. The water slowly seeps down through the porous sandstone until it hits a layer of nonporous rock. A natural spring occurs where the water meets the nonporous rock and the water is forced out of the sandstone. It takes 800 – 1200 years for the water to percolate from the top of the sandstone rock formation to the natural spring known as Weeping Rock. Her little drought wouldn’t impact the water flow at the bottom of a sandstone cliff for hundreds of years!

It is outrageously hot outside. The digital thermometer says it is 112 degrees. Jessica ties a scarf around her forehead as a sweat band and ties another scarf soaked in water around her neck. She puts on a hat as she grabs a thermos of water, the maps, and a pair of binoculars. Jessica refills the animal watering pans and makes sure the fans are still running in the barn.

Rocky is standing in the shade of the cedar trees by the pasture gate to the lake shore path. Max is resting beside Rocky. If Jessica didn’t know better, she would think they could read her mind and were waiting for her. She grabs her carrot stick and walks through the pasture to Max and Rocky. She pets both of them and makes sure they have been drinking enough water. Max looks so tired but he is anxious to go to the lake. He can cool off in the lake water.

The trio makes their way down the steep slope to the lake shore path. They turn south and head straight for the sandstone cliff and boulders forming the southern edge of their lake shore. As they approach the cliff, Jessica finds a shady spot with a relatively flat rock. The maps are laid out with small rocks placed on the edges of the paper to keep them from blowing away. She orients the maps to match the terrain. Due north of this position, the sandstone cliff extends from Shadow Mountain into the lake. There were several sections of the mountain where the colorful sedimentary layers of sandstone were visible. Much of the mountain is covered with brush clinging to the slopes and hiding the true nature of the rock. She traces the line of the cliff from the mountain down to the edge of the water. The sloped rock layers indicated how much of original sandstone mountain had broken off and collapsed into the valley floor.

When the rocky island had appeared in the lake, she figured the surrounding water was still about 50 feet deep. The island was east and north of her south boundary cliff. The maps showed that the terrain fell another 50 feet or so into the widening valley to the south. The main part of the lake on the south side of this cliff must be more than 100 feet deep in some places.

It was impossible to know exactly what the terrain around the sandstone cliffs really looked like. She knew it was littered with huge weathered boulders. The cliffs on Shadow Mountain were nearly vertical structures whereas the boulders were weathered and worn like they were produced by different geological processes.

Shadow Mountain must have been part of a giant sandstone formation at one time. Major geologic events caused parts of the sandstone formation to break off and collapse as lower layers were worn away or dissolved. The sandstone cliffs to the north and south ends of her property were probably created as the sandstone between them and the mountain collapsed. Her cabin sat on a plateau created by this collapse. The boulders were formed from smaller sections of the sandstone that were exposed to extreme conditions of weathering by wind and water erosion.

Now that she knew how the cliffs were formed, did this help understand the source of the Smiths water supply? If water took 1000 years to travel through the sandstone, then this drought would not have any impact on the water supply in a Shadow Mountain spring if it existed. Could there be an underground source of water here? If so, was there any way that she could access the water without a well?

Jessica sits in the shade looking at the sandstone cliffs as Max and Rocky paced along the base of the south cliff. What are they doing? She had noticed them doing the same thing while the deputy was here this morning. Is it possible that they could actually smell water in some formation under the sandstone boulders?

She decided to join Max and Rocky while the searched along the base of the cliff. Jessica paced along with Rocky and Max. She paid particular attention to Max as he sniffed around the boulders and squeezed into spaces between the boulders. She was watching for snakes and anything else that seemed different. Could she identify a layer of nonporous rock that could indicate a natural spring might be formed where the sandstone and the nonporous rock met? Could she see something that might have once been a “hanging garden” where plants could grow using the water seeping out of sandstone? She had her doubts but would look anyway.

After about two hours of searching around the big sandstone boulders, Jessica had learned a lot about the cliff, the boulders, and the vegetation at the base of the cliff. As she looked around, Jessica realized she had set her expectations too high. Memories of Zion National Park were an oasis of green plants living in the desert compared to these dry dusty sandstone cliffs. She had assumed that she would find some plants that were miraculously getting water from the sandstone. Even though she was disappointed, Jessica realized that the main body of sandstone was actually Shadow Mountain and a spring or other water flow would only occur where the sandstone ended at a solid layer of nonporous rock. That nonporous rock could be really deep. Her well was 950 feet deep and it was possible that the nonporous rock layer was the reason there was water at the bottom of her well.

Jessica found some shade on the east side of a large boulder and sat down. She gave Max some water and enjoyed a drink herself. Rocky was standing in some shade at the base of the slope with his eyes closed. He was resting but he was alert enough to hear every sound and smell every scent. Jessica was looking down the slope trying to figure out where this cliff ended in the lake. It was impossible to tell from the topographical maps. From here, she was looking into the murky lake waters. A spring, if it existed, was probably still under the lake where the base of this cliff met the valley floor.

Jessica had gone spelunking in college and was familiar with exploring caves. That was so long ago that it seemed like she was remembering a past life and not the one she was living now. She had explored limestone and sandstone caves. Most sandstone caves weren’t part of an extensive cave system like the well-known limestone caves such as Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico and Mammoth Caves in Kentucky. Most sandstone caves also weren’t very big. In her reading about Texas history at the county library, there were stories of the Comanche using sandstone caves formed by water erosion at the base of cliffs. The caves were formed at the base of cliffs by running water that slowly eroded the bonding materials between the sand particles. Based on her understanding of the flooding history of this valley, there could have been enough seasonal running water to erode the base of the cliffs and create small sandstone caves.

This valley between her cabin and Race’s cabin was known for the frequent and violent flooding during thunderstorms. The floods originated in this valley and wreaked havoc as the waters moved south. That is why it was such a good place to build a lake. She stood on top of a tall sandstone boulder and looked north up the valley to see that the north part of the valley floor was now mostly a mud flat. The terrain to the north gradually rose into the surrounding hills that provided a lot of water runoff during storms. To the west was her cabin and Shadow Mountain. To the south was the main body of the lake. To the east was Race’s place on a hill at about the same elevation as her cabin. Both the Smith and Jones families had built their cabins above the flood plain. From this perspective, it was clear that the Smith cabin and the Jones cabin were built within sight of one another, like sentinels guarding the valley between them. Two scenarios came to mind, either the Smiths and Jones were united in their use and protection of the valley or they were adversaries that fought for control of the valley.

Climbing around the boulders had given her an appreciation for the skill of the stranger that was crossing the crumbling sandstone cliffs in the dark. Jessica had been observing Max and she knew he was following the stranger. What she didn’t realize is that Rocky was the rear guard stationed at the pasture gate. Based on her monitoring of the tracks along the lake path, she knew the stranger was visiting this area every evening for two or three hours. He seemed to arrive in the evening and leave as darkness made it too difficult to search. Jessica decided it was time to meet the stranger in a neutral place. She did not want to meet him here.

Chapter 26 The Cabin

When she returns to the cabin, Jessica decides she needs to understand more about the construction of the cabin that has become her home. Parts of the cabin were much older than the addition on the south side. The developer had started building an addition on the south side but never finished it. Remodeling the original cabin and finishing the addition had been a major commitment when they decided to live here. Every year, she added another year to her expression, “We are in year X of the remodeling job.” X was now six. She had made the cabin a livable home but it still needed a lot of work. The barn was always in need some sort of repair.

The original cabin included the current mud room, kitchen, dining area attached to the kitchen, and two other rooms. The kitchen, dining area, and mud room were on the east side of the cabin with the other two rooms on the west side of the cabin. These two rooms were probably both bedrooms. Early pioneers used the kitchen and dining room as their community rooms. They didn’t need a living room for televisions, stereos, or computers. They hung the extra chairs on hooks near the dining room ceiling to clear space floor room. The dining table usually served as kitchen counter space for the food preparation and processing. Packaged foods didn’t exist so food preparation was an all day job for part of the family.

Pioneer women usually kept the spinning wheels and other sewing paraphernalia in a corner of the dining room so they could use it close to the kitchen. A crib or play pen would also have been there. They could sew and watch the kids while keeping an eye on the food cooking in the kitchen. There might have been hooks for hanging the spinning wheel from the ceiling to clear floor space when it wasn’t being used. She hadn’t found anything as interesting as a spinning wheel or a butter churn in the cabin. Anything that wasn’t bolted down had been stolen and the stuff that was bolted down had been vandalized.

An old stone chimney was the centerpiece of the old cabin. It was situated as a dividing wall between the kitchen and the dining area. This was the house of a skilled blacksmith family so it obviously would have had custom built wood stoves. In the 1600’s, the Germans perfected wood burning metal stoves that forced the rising hot air from the fire to travel through multiple chambers thereby transferring heat to ovens and adjoining rooms before escaping up the chimney. When she used the dining room stove, the dining room and kitchen floors were warmed by heat transfer. Smith was obviously a very skilled blacksmith if he could design and build this structure in the late 1800’s in the wilds of Texas. She could understand how a skilled German blacksmith knew how to build the stove. What she didn’t know was “who was the stone mason that helped him build this giant chimney?” She decided right then and there that she was going to find a way to get inside of Race’s cabin to see if he had a similar chimney. While she was being brash and inviting herself to see chimneys, she might as well find an excuse to visit Sheriff Mason’s grandfather’s house to see the chimney in their house!

The dining room side of the chimney had the heavy metal stove built into the chimney along with a warming enclosure and an opening for storing extra firewood. The warming enclosure was above the firewood storage area and kept food warm when you had a fire in the stove. Obviously, the warming box had been built with hot air from the fire flowing around it to warm the interior. There was a heavy metal door on the warming box. The kitchen side of the chimney had a flue for an old wood cook stove and an area for storing firewood. The cook stove was missing and had probably been sold as an antique. Based on the area allotted for it in the kitchen, it would have been a giant wood cook stove with at least one built in oven. How did they get a stove that big and that heavy out of this cabin? They must have removed it when they knocked down the south wall of the bedroom to attach the addition. The developer could have removed it to make room for a more modern kitchen.

During her six years of remodeling, she had replaced every wall covering, the ceilings, and the floors. There was only a small part of the original floor left and that was the stone floor in the kitchen, dining area, and mud room. This stone floor probably marked the original construction. The bedrooms with the wood floors were probably added later. She went outside and looked at the foundation. The original kitchen and dining area had what appeared to be a solid stone foundation set on solid sandstone. The two bedrooms had a stone foundation perimeter and you could see where it was attached to the solid stone foundation. She had replaced the wood floors in the two bedrooms so she knew there wasn’t a solid stone foundation under the bedrooms. The modern addition sat on a solid concrete foundation.

Pioneer farm houses didn’t have indoor plumbing and had a well or some source of water close to the kitchen. Modern electrical wiring and plumbing had been added to every room in the addition by the developer. Old electrical wiring had existed in the cabin, probably from Rural Electrification in the 1940’s or 1950’s, and she replaced it all when she rebuilt the walls and ceilings. A water line had been run between the house and the well by the developer. Modern plumbing had been added to the kitchen for a sink. The sink was gone and the old countertops were so damaged that she had to replace them. The plumbing pipes that she had seen in the kitchen were PVC pipes. Any old metal or copper pipes that existed had been removed by the developer or stolen by vandals.

As she thought back to the vandalism of the cabin, Jessica realized she had never considered that the vandalism wasn’t vandalism. Was it possible that someone had torn up the cabin looking for something? The most damage was done to the two rooms with the wooden floors. Someone had cut holes in the floors and walls. The walls of the cabin were made from cedar planks. The exterior walls had rough cedar planks while the interior walls and floors were made of hand milled cedar and oak planks. Someone had cut holes in the most beautiful handmade oak floors she had ever seen. Those floors had been an antique work of art. Someone had devoted a lot of time to creating and caring for those wood floors. With extreme sadness, she had covered the old oak flooring with wood subflooring and carpet because it was just too expensive to repair the oak floors. She had covered the walls with modern drywall and paint. Race was a good carpenter and helped her with these tasks. He had crawled around under those two rooms to verify that the supports were undamaged. She had only looked around from the openings with a flashlight. The floors were still solid so she had not questioned his assessment of the supports or whether there was anything under the house that shouldn’t be there.

Max had been following Jessica around the house trying to figure out what she was doing. She should be resting after being outside all day with the deputies and then hiking around the cliff. He was worried that she had heat stoke and wasn’t thinking clearly. Max follows Jessica back outside. She walks over toward the dried pond and then turns around to face to the cabin. She sits down on an old tree stump and pets Max.

Jessica grew up on an old family farm with a grandfather who was a blacksmith. There were certain things every pioneer American farm had to have just to function. There was the cabin and barn. Every early farm had chickens. Farmers always had a poultry house that was separate from the barn. Poultry needed extra protection from predators. She had cleaned up a small collapsed building near the barn that had probably been the chicken house. She had cleaned up the remnants of the old outhouse. Race had told her that all of the waste pits for the outhouses had been cleaned up the by the government after they got the land and that was one mess she didn’t have to clean. All of the blacksmith equipment was gone but she could identify its location by the debris left behind.

What was missing? Early farms didn’t have refrigerators so they stored their food in cool underground cellars. The cellar was usually adjacent to the house. Farmers spent half of the year growing and preserving food for the winter. Where was the root cellar where they stored their food? Most farms had a building that was tall enough to smoke meats using a slow burning fire. Where was the smokehouse for curing and storing cured meats? Where was the original well or cistern for drinking water? All of these basic needs would have been really close to the cabin. The survival of the farm family depended on these things and they would have been within sight of the cabin. They were kept close for two reasons; easy access and they could be protected by the farmer. Where were these structures?

Jessica began thinking about the trails that would have been worn into the soil and the sandstone with 100 years of foot traffic several times per day. With the drought, the dry soil was being blown away by the wind to reveal worn areas that had been covered by plants and dirt in the last 40 years. The trail she used to descend the slope from the pasture gate to the lake path was worn into the sandstone in a lot of places. The path that ran along the lake shore was also very well worn through the sandstone in a lot of places. It took a lot of traffic to wear a path across the sandstone rocks. As the Smith family grew, other cabins would have been built for new generations when the children married and started their own families. Was her cabin the original cabin or one built in later life after the blacksmith was wealthy enough to construct that huge chimney? Were there older Smith cabin sites beneath the lake? If so, those cabins and the other farm buildings would have been removed before the lake flooded. If the water source was closer to those other cabins, then it was beneath the lake.

Jessica got a cold water bottle and a bowl of ice cream out of the refrigerator. At least she still has electricity for refrigeration and air conditioning. She figures they are only one utility away from living in the stone ages. The sun is setting in the west and the east side of the cabin is in the shade. She walks out of the mud room door and sits down on the porch to enjoy her snack. She pours some of the water in a bowl for Max. You can clearly see the paths used by Max, the horses, and her family. There is a clear depression where the soil has been compacted by traffic for generations. Most of these paths were already here when they moved into the cabin. While she is sitting there, she is visualizing the generations of pioneer women doing their daily chores. The pioneer women would have used this door to get water from their water source, get food from the root cellar, and get meat from the smoke house. Could she still see the trails worn by generations of pioneer women as they went about their daily chores from this porch?

The most obvious path goes from the mudroom porch to the barn. From the barn, there are several paths worn as the horses go to the water troughs and to the south pasture. The oldest visible path leads to the pasture gate and down the steep slope to the lake path. These are the paths she still uses today. What else does she see? The developer that added the addition only disturbed soil and rocks on the south side of the cabin. If she looks outside of his zone of destruction, a faint path is emerging as the soil is blown away. This path goes south around the pond and across the pasture toward the sandstone cliff.

The soil and sandstone rocks on the north and west sides of the cabin don’t show any signs of being disturbed for decades and don’t have any obvious trails. She has spent a lot of time looking for blackberries there and the trails could be covered with 40 years of thorny briar growth. All visible paths seem to lead to the south end of the lake path where it ends at a sandstone cliff. And this is where the stranger is scouring the slope for something.

Jessica grabs her purse, the topographical maps, and calls Max to the Jeep. She drives down the driveway and follows the gravel road north around the lake. She turns south and drives toward Race’s house. When she is parallel to the north end of the lake, she pulls into an old pasture driveway. She checks the topographical maps for areas at about the same elevation as her cabin and Race’s house. After a few detours onto abandoned country lanes, she finds an old road that leads through the oak forest to an old farm. The old cabin looks like it burned in a fire many years ago and the old barn has fallen down. The whole farm looks like it has been abandoned for many years.

From the farmhouse site, she can see her cabin and Race’s house. This farm is almost due north of Race’s ranch and north east of her cabin. This farm is almost due east of the boundary cliff on her north border. This farm had a great view to the north so you could clearly see the valley sloping upward toward the surrounding hills that formed the northern border of the lake.

Jessica walks around the old cabin with Max. The only part of the cabin still standing is an amazing chimney covered with vines and hidden by a dense growth of cedar trees. She climbs onto the chimney base and brushes away the dirt and dead weeds growing around the chimney to reveal a stone floor much like her own cabin floor. She clears away the vines and pushes the cedar branches aside so she can clearly see the chimney. It is still beautiful with the stove built into the chimney and several cast iron doors covering warming ovens and baking ovens.

Jessica sits down by the chimney to admire the handiwork of a skilled blacksmith and a skilled stone mason. The builders of these chimneys made a great team. Her chimney seemed smaller and didn’t have the built in ovens. When she got home, she was going to take a really good look at the kitchen side of her chimney to see if it may have once had built in ovens.

Jessica is looking around the farm. The location of the old barn and the remnants of two other small outbuildings can be clearly seen. These were probably an old outhouse and maybe a chicken house. There is no sign of a well or an underground root cellar for storing food. When was this cabin abandoned? There weren’t any signs of electric or telephone service on the farm. There wasn’t any sign of plumbing either. This cabin must have been abandoned before rural electrification.

Jessica gives Max a drink of water and has some herself. She tells Max, “We need to find a trail to the lake. You naturally find and use old trails. Let’s go to the lake.”

Max looks at her as she starts down the slope toward the lake. She turns and waits for him to lead the way. He sniffs around for a few minutes and finds a trail. They make their way under cedar trees, over logs, through thorny bushes, and across sandstone outcroppings. They follow the path west down the slope and then the path goes south along a relatively flat sandstone ledge. Along the way, Jessica notices the signs of a very well-worn trail. She sees areas where the sandstone has been worn down by foot traffic over an extended period of time and where ancient trees have wear marks in their bark. After about a mile, the path merges with a path that is obviously in current use. This path comes down the slope from the east. Jessica can’t see up the slope because of the brush but she can look west toward Shadow Mountain. Her cabin is due west of the point where the two paths join. This path must come from Race’s house.

Max and Jessica follow the ancient trail until it ends at the lake. The trail leads into the lake facing the sandstone cliff that forms the south boundary of her ranch. Well, it seems that all paths lead to that sandstone cliff. She decides that she is going to spend a lot more time around that sandstone cliff.

Jessica and Max rest for a few minutes on the trail. She gives Max some water and drinks the rest of the water bottle. Jessica uses her binoculars to look at her cabin and the sandstone cliffs from this side of the lake. She has never been over here and is amazed at the view. They make the steep climb back up to the old farmhouse. Jessica uses her cell phone to take pictures of the chimney, the stone floors, and the stonework in the foundation. They enjoy some more water from the cooler in the back seat of the Jeep. Jessica marks the coordinates of the farm on her cell phone map. A check of the county tax records on the internet will show who currently owns the old farm if it is not still part of the government owned land.

All she can think about on the drive home is that the Smith family and their neighbors spent a great deal of time near the south cliff. They also had a hidden source of water. When will her well be repaired so that she can have water again? It is obvious that she is suffering from heat stroke. Jessica doesn’t feel very good. She is extremely hot, fells nauseous, has a head ache, and is extremely thirsty. In spite of the heat stroke, she has some very valid question to answer about the Smith water supply and the value of the south sandstone cliff. Jessica is thinking about another western classic Cool Waters sung by Randy Travis,

All day I face the barren waste

without the taste

of water, Cool water

as she decides it is time for her to cool off and get some rest before the nightly barn chores.

Chapter 27 Drought Impacts

Sunrises and sunsets are spectacular because of the dust blown from the parched earth into the atmosphere where it is mixed with smoke from the raging wildfires. The sun rises as a fuzzy orange glowing orb against a sky painted with pastel pinks, lavenders, purples, and blues. Sunsets are equally colorful. After the sun sets on the west side of Shadow Mountain, everything east of the cabin glows with the reflected colors. The trees may be brown but they glow with pastel yellow and orange colors at sunset. The moisture in the gooey muck of the old lake bed is dotted with large green lily pads that burst from the muck and remain green for a few days until the muck dries out. Fresh water mollusk shells are scattered around the dried lake bed. The mollusks have died and opened to reveal their “Mother of Pearl” inner shell coverings. Jessica didn’t expect the see so much beauty caused by the drought.

Jessica goes to town every other day to fill her water tank at the city water tower. Several friends have offered to let her get water from their wells. She always says no because she would fell horrible if their wells went dry too. However, all offers to stop by for coffee or food and a shower are gratefully accepted.

On every trip to town, Jessica treats herself to a meal cooked by someone else. She stops by the local café for either BBQ or pie. The BBQ is the best in Texas and the local café has won many awards. They also have a mail order business selling the BBQ around the country. Everyone knows about the great BBQ. Most people don’t have room for the pie after their huge BBQ meal. The pie is homemade and delicious. Her favorite pies are the coconut cream pie made with a 4 inch high meringue and the apple pie topped with a strudel crumble. Jessica has to choose which one to eat because she certainly can’t eat BBQ and pie in one meal.

Today, Jessica is having a BBQ lunch with her horse buddies at the local cafe. The natural horse play days for July and August were cancelled due to the extreme heat so the group takes time to catch up with their activities. Jessica hasn’t been riding or training her horses because it is just too hot and she is too tired. Nancy has a covered arena with misters. Nancy and Kelly have been riding in Nancy’s arena. Janice has been riding in the early mornings and getting ready for school to start.

Kelly brought a folder with old newspapers. Local newspapers have the three most important events in a person’s life: birth, marriage, and death. One of the old newspapers had pictures of Raene Smith’s wedding. Apparently, Raene had gone to Germany in 1938 and married a German named Wilhelm Steinmitz in 1939. There were faded newsprint pictures of the wedding party with her grandparents Liberty and Birdsong Smith and her parents Mason and Pearl Smith. They attended the wedding along with members of the Steinmitz family from Dallas. Apparently, Raene and Wilhelm Steinmitz met at a Catholic youth camp when he came to Texas to visit his relatives in Dallas and spend a year as an exchange student. Raene was a beautiful bride who seemed to have fulfilled her dream of visiting enchanted lands and marrying a prince. Jessica used her cell phone to take photos of the newspaper articles.

The wedding articles also described how the Smith family had emigrated from Germany to America in 1875 during the reign of Bismarck. Bismarck rose to power in 1865 and began the persecution of German Catholics and other undesirables. The Smith family left Germany because of the persecution instituted by the infamous May Laws of Bismarck in the 1870’s.

The group has a great time reading through the old newspapers and looking at the photographs from the 1930’s. It is so much fun to read about events in a simpler time and to see what kinds of products were being advertised in the ads. As they were reading through the old newspapers, Jessica realizes that one very important person was missing from the wedding party. That person was Raene’s brother John. Jessica checks her Smith family notes and John was born in 1925 so he would have been 14 years old in 1939. Why didn’t he attend the wedding?

Jessica says, “Thank you so much for finding the article about Raene’s wedding. It is great to see the happy Smith family photos. They must have been an amazing family to travel from rural Texas to Germany in 1939. Do you know what happened to Raene?”

Kelly says, “My aunt said she doesn’t remember hearing any more about Raene. They could have died in World War II or been displaced. It is just horrible to think about all those people that died during the war. The lives of so many people living in Europe were forever changed by the war. Our lives here were changed too by the loss of loved ones.”

Jessica asks, “Why did your aunt keep the newspaper about Raene’s wedding, were they good friends?”

Kelly says, “My aunts hoard newspapers. They especially like to keep the papers with local weddings, birth announcements, and obituaries. My aunts said they didn’t get to know Raene very well. Raene didn’t spend much time with the other girls at school. She came to school and then went straight home. The Smiths socialized with their friends in the Catholic Church.”

Jessica looked through the newspaper articles about the auto accident in 1966 that killed John and Birdie Smith. The newspaper articles described the drunken driving accident and the trial of the teenage drunk drivers. The obituaries described the extreme sadness of all the families involved. John and Birdie only had one child, a boy named Liberty. John Smith was listed as being survived by his parents Mason and Pearl Smith. His sister Raene was listed as residing in Germany. Birdie was survived by members of the Jones family. She was the sister of Mason Jones mother. Race Jones and Liberty Smith are first cousins.

Jessica looked through the newspaper articles in the 1970’s about the lake. The articles describing the eminent domain lawsuits, injunctions against the construction, and environmental impact studies were very interesting. One of the unanticipated impacts of blasting for the dam construction was the damage to the artesian springs and shallow wells on the northern end of the projected lake. The Jones and Smith families both filed injunctions to stop the dam construction project when their artesian springs went dry. The artesian springs had provided water for their families for at least 100 years. The underground water flow was unexpectedly altered by the blasting and sandstone formations on the east side of Shadow Mountain started collapsing. Apparently, the layers of nonporous rock beneath the upper layers of sandstone were cracked and damaged. Water now poured through the cracked nonporous rock formations and the water table dropped dramatically. That explained the missing source of the Smith water supply.

A group of lawyers representing Native American antiquities and sacred sites filed injunctions on behalf of the Jones, Mason, and Smith families. The families were direct descendants of the Comanche who had inhabited the valley for hundreds, maybe even thousands of years. The lawsuits cited the need to protect Native American cultural sites and endangered species. The ancient burial sites of their Comanche ancestors were in the valley and should be protected from exploitation. The Comanche families also had a herd of wild mustangs in the valley and their natural habitat should be protected.

Comanche ancestors of the families had escaped the forced exile to the Oklahoma reservations in 1875 and hid in their ancestral valley. The newspaper articles discussed the history of the homesteaders and the Comanche. Two stonemasons hired to build Army forts in Oklahoma fell in love with two Comanche sisters. The stonemasons arranged the escape of the sisters from the reservation and brought them to the valley sanctuary of their Comanche family. Angus Mason (from Scotland) and Birdwell Jones (from England) were the stonemasons. Together with their extended families, they homesteaded the entire north, south, and east sides of the valley. The Smith family homesteaded the entire west side of the valley.

Jessica asks Kelly, “I have spent many hours in the county library and these newspapers weren’t there. Why isn’t this information available in the county library?”

Kelly says, “This was a small local town paper. The local newspaper wrote articles of interest to the locals who were opposed to the lake construction. These views weren’t shared by the rest of the county or the state. The newspaper office burned down in the late 1970’s while these issues were still very painful for the local residents. This was before everything was digitized and backed up somewhere. The only copies available are held by hoarders like my aunts.”

Jessica says, “Please let you aunts know how much I appreciate them for sharing their hoard.” Everyone at the table agreed. They were having so much fun reading the old news.

Jessica found a small article about the first one room school house in the county being preserved as a historical site. There was a picture of the old school house in its original location in a forest of great oak trees. A bench under a great arching oak tree could be seen in front of the school house in the photo. Jessica stared at the great arching oak in wonder. Could there be two such great arching oaks on the Smith’s hillside?

The school house was moved out of the flood zone of the new lake in 1975. Raene Smith and her daughter-in-law Greta Smith started the first school in the county in 1878. The school deserved historical site status for several reasons. It was the only school in the county from that era that still existed, it had been maintained in its original condition, and it was the first school in the region to teach both homestead and Native American children. The Jones, Mason, and Smith families built the small school house for their growing families. Raene and Greta taught school in both German and English to the children living in the valley on the east side of Shadow Mountain. The article described Raene Smith as a respected author of children’s stories in her German homeland. She published an English translation of her stories. The German and English versions of her stories were used as texts to teach the children in several local schools. Apparently, the Smiths were a well educated family. The article went on to describe how the Jones and Mason families disassembled and relocated the great stone chimney of the school house so that it could be preserved with the rest of the building. Jessica decided she had to visit that little schoolhouse on her way home. Why didn’t the Smith family help move the school house?

Jessica asks her lunch companions, “Does anyone know where I can get a copy of Raene Smith’s books. This article says they were used in the local schools. Maybe someone still has a copy in their old school stuff.” They all agreed to check with their older relatives. Janice offers to check in the local school archive.

The group talks about the impact of the drought. The drought is a mere inconvenience for those that live in the city. For rural people whose soul and livelihood is tied to the land, the extreme drought is devastating. Jessica is losing several chickens and ducks every week. All of her efforts to keep them cool just aren’t enough for them to survive the extreme temperatures. Nancy and Janice are also losing chickens even though they are running fans and have water for misters. Kelly doesn’t have any chickens or ducks.

Janice and Jessica plan their next road trip to get hay from Janice’s uncle in northern Missouri. Both of them will be desperate for hay in less than two weeks. Janice teaches school and needs to make the trip before school starts. Jessica hopes to get her well repaired before their next road trip to get hay. She doesn’t want to burden anyone else with her watering hauling duties. Her priority right now is getting enough water to keep her animals alive. She is getting closer to the top of the well driller’s priority list.

At lunch, they listen to the conversations and gossip about the drought. It is the first week of August and the temperatures hang around 110 degrees every day. Texas is now in an exceptional drought condition with the driest 12 month period on record. Ranchers are selling so many cattle that the sale barns can’t handle all of the animals. The price of beef is falling for the rancher. Of course, the consumer will never see the lower prices.

Nancy raises cattle but doesn’t plan to buy or sell any more this year. She has horse and cow hay left from her bumper crop last year. Her ranch got rain during the May thunderstorms and she was able to bale two cuttings of hay. The hay crop this year was poor quality cow hay and cannot be fed to the horses. She is managing her hay to make sure she has enough to get her horses and cattle through most of the winter.

It would be a great time to start a cattle herd if you had cattle feed, water, and the money to buy the cows. Jessica didn’t have any of these cattle ranch necessities right now. Jessica also couldn’t afford to build the fences needed to keep cattle in the pasture. Even a standard T post and barb wire fence is too expensive for her current budget. Jessica uses portable electric fences for the horses. She can install and relocate the fences by herself. There is a T post and barb wire fence marking the east border between her property and public lake property. Currently she has an electric fence around the other three sides of her 20 acres and a locked gate where her driveway begins at the gravel county road.

Hay theft has become a huge problem. Jessica is surprised by the number of hay theft stories she hears at the café and every other place she goes. Ranchers usually move the big round hay bales to a corner of their pasture for storage until the hay is needed. People are so desperate for hay that they are stealing it right out of the fields. Some ranchers know their hay is being stolen by desperate neighbors who are stealing the hay one bale at a time to feed their starving animals. Enterprising thieves are stealing trailer loads of hay and selling it to desperate livestock owners. One rancher caught a hay thief in his field loading hay into a pickup truck and was shocked when the thief presented a receipt for the stolen hay. Apparently, the real hay thief had been in the pasture loading hay when he drove by and asked if he could buy some hay. The thief took his money, gave him a receipt, and left with a load of stolen hay before the rancher arrived.

The national news agencies are reporting on the changing habits of the bats living under bridges in the big cities in Texas. Millions of bats roost under bridges in downtown areas of the major cities. Tourists flock to see the bats emerge at sunset during the summer. There is a chain reaction happening because of the drought. The crops and plants are dying which in turn means the insect population is at an all time low. Bats eat insects and there aren’t enough bugs to feed the bat populations. Apparently, the bats are so hungry that they are emerging to eat well before dark and this is causing traffic jams around the major bridges where the bats roost. Hawks and other day light predators have also discovered the joy of hunting and eating bats. The whole bat food chain has been changed because of the drought.

The extreme heat is causing electric power providers to issue conservation suggestions and encouraging everyone to install programmable thermostats. Everyone is being asked to raise the temperature on their thermostats. Jessica already has her air conditioner set to run at 80 degrees. She is shocked to learn that most people set their thermostats to 72 degrees. There are also recommended guidelines for the best time to run major appliances. It is truly sad when the utility companies have to tell people when they should do the dishes and laundry. Everyone is worried that the rolling brownouts happening in the big cities will be coming to the country.

There are tales of discovery in the dry lake beds. Sadly, parts of the space shuttle Columbia are being exposed and recovered from the dry lake beds. Old cars and dumped appliances are common. Jessica is grateful that no one mentions the skeleton. Janice is the only one that Jessica has told about Max discovering the skeleton.

No outside burning is allowed and water conservation is being recommended. Cities are limiting home water use for watering lawns and washing cars. Along every road, you can see signs of wildfires. The grass is burned black and the trees are totally brown in the burned areas. The local fire departments are mainly volunteer fire departments. They are having a hard time keeping up with the calls to extinguish the wildfires. The volunteer fire departments are planning additional fund raising activities this year to buy more tanker trucks so they can transport more water to the fires.

Foundations are cracking in houses as the soil continues to shrink from lack of moisture. PVC pipes entering foundations are shifting and breaking from the pressure of the drying soil. The news has information about watering along foundations and pipelines to prevent damage. Unfortunately, Jessica doesn’t have any spare water for her foundation or the PVC water pipes from the well to the house or the barn.

Jessica has been watching the huge cracks develop in the soil around the cabin and well house. There isn’t anything that she can do but watch as the soil cracks get bigger. Luckily, she hasn’t seen any new cracks in the building foundations. That old cabin foundation must have been through this kind of drought in the past. Her kitchen and dining room floors in the old part of the cabin sit directly on a solid stone foundation on top of a sandstone shelf. The two bedrooms have wood piers sitting on a perimeter wall made of stone. She is closely watching the floors where the stone foundation ends and the wood piers begin. This is the mostly likely place for the cabin to suffer damage.

Even the illegal marijuana growers are suffering. Marijuana growing on public lands near water has become a big problem for law enforcement in recent years. Apparently, even the marijuana growers are having trouble getting water to their crops. The oak trees and other deciduous vegetation turned brown last month. This month, even the cedar trees are turning brown. Green marijuana plants are apparently getting easy to spot among the brown vegetation. Illegal crops used to be burned in the field by the police but that isn’t possible now with the burn bans and extreme fire danger. The crops are being cut and hauled to central disposal facilities.

Law enforcement is using low flying aircraft to find new fields of the illegal crops. As she listens to the gossip around town, Jessica slowly realizes that the low flying airplanes she has been watching all summer are actually drug enforcement planes. The planes seem to be keeping a close watch on her arm of the lake. If she were paranoid, she might even think they were watching her property.

On her way home, Jessica makes a detour to the town square. The little school house built by the Jones, Mason, and Smith families had been there the entire time and she didn’t know it. She had been in the town square many times and looked at the buildings but hadn’t realized that the school house had been relocated from the original Smith property. The building was now adjacent to a cluster of historic buildings that were in their original location in the town square. As she looked at the outside of the school house, she could see the same hands had built her cabin. The stonework in the adjacent buildings also looked like they had been built by the same hands. Now she understood why it took her so long to realize the uniqueness of the stonework in her cabin. She could see the magnificent chimney on the outside of the school house and peeked in the windows to see the interior of the building. The antique oak floors shined like new and the chimney had a beautiful stove and built in ovens that had been lovingly made by the hands of the local blacksmith. She read the plaque describing the school house and its historic significance. The plaque listed the teachers who taught at the school. The Smith women (Raene, Greta, Birdsong, and Pearl) were all listed as teachers. She had read this plaque on past visits to the town square without realizing that she now lived in their cabin. Is this why she was dreaming about pearls?

As she drives down her driveway on the way home, Jessica is thinking about all of the impacts of the drought. The trees are brown and the soil is bare because all of the dry grasses and weeds have been blown away by the wind. Jessica looks with sadness at the pasture. She has spent the last 6 years nurturing every square foot of her precious pasture. She has spread manure, tilled the manure into the soil, and planted a mixture of native and forage grasses. She has bonded with the land in a way she never expected. The pasture isn’t just land; she cares for and nurtures a living organism that in return provides grass for her horses.

There is also a lot of beauty in the drought. She is admiring the trunks and branches of the great oaks that normally form a cool canopy along her driveway. Just 10 miles west of Shadow Mountain, the vegetation is scrub trees and tall trees only grow along rivers and bigger creeks. She truly has an oasis here with the tall oaks growing close together to form a canopy. These oak trees are slow growing hardwoods and must be really old. Some of these oaks live for hundreds of years. This valley had a source of water for these oaks before the lake and she has to find it.

The low flying airplanes are probably looking for the same thing. They know that a secluded patch of good soil with access to water is an invitation to grow illegal plants. She shudders as it suddenly dawns on her that her property is being monitored for illegal activities and that is why the low flying airplane spends so much time on this end of the lake. What is the involvement, if any, of the stranger stalking the lake shore? Everyone she knows says she needs to learn how to use a gun and keep one on her at all times. Her only defenses are Max and her carrot stick.

Chapter 28 Trust Takes Two

Jessica is riding Rocky through a dense oak forest. This is an old growth forest with oak trees measuring three feet or more in diameter. It must be summer because the ancient trees form a cool canopy overhead and keep the heat of the sun away from the forest floor. They ride up a hill and stop at a rocky outcropping to admire the valley that stretches out before them. They are atop a hill that slopes gently down to the river winding through the lush valley. On the east side of the valley is a steep hillside covered with lush vegetation in sloping meadows shaded by great oak trees. On the west side of the valley is a sandstone mountain with rocky arms on the north and south sides reaching into the valley to create a small plateau above the valley floor. The plateau looks like an inviting safe haven for man and beast. To the south, the eastern hill and the western mountain melt into a wide plain of lush green vegetation. The cooling river meanders through the valley and disappears into the distant plain.

Jessica and Rocky descend the sloping hill into the valley. They see wild game everywhere they look. There are flocks of turkeys in the meadows. Deer are grazing along the river. Black bear are cooling off on a rocky ledge that forms a small waterfall in the river. A herd of wild mustangs trots across the distant plain toward the river. As the herd approaches the river, the stallion sees them and issues a challenging call to Rocky. Rocky ignores him as they ride up the western slope toward the plateau beneath the mountain. This will give the wild herd room to drink and graze without feeling their territory is being threatened by Rocky. Along the slope, erosion from past flooding has created overhangs and small caves. Outside of a shallow cave, a wall of huge sandstone boulders is covered with petro glyphs of buffalo, turtles, bow hunters, and birds. Other than the ancient art, there is no sign of human habitation. Once they reach the plateau, they turn and face the rising sun. They are greeted with a magnificent view of the entire valley from their perch on the side of the mountain.

Jessica wakes up and realizes that it is time to meet the stranger. She made the trip to town to get water yesterday so she doesn’t have to leave the ranch today. She has time to think and plan a safe meeting with the stranger.

First, Jessica must finish her natural horsemanship blog that is due today. The topic is Trust Takes Two. Here is a copy of the blog.

Trust Takes Two

The reason that I have spent so much time in this blog discussing the amount of stress caused by Rocky’s biting and the time I spent learning to help Rocky stop biting is to set the stage for one of my biggest challenges. How could I ever truly trust Rocky after all the bites and dominance attacks?

Honestly, if Rocky were a human being with these past behaviors and physical attacks, could you trust him and be his partner? I firmly believe in the sanctity of life and that all living creatures deserve to be treated with the respect and dignity due their kind. Rocky stretched these beliefs beyond any limits that I could ever imagine.

Of course, I have been presenting my views and fears.

What about Rocky? He was four years old when he joined our family and I have no idea what he experienced during those four years. Over time, I came to realize that Rocky must have developed his extreme dominance and aggressive behavior toward people before I met him. He had obviously been conditioned over time to respond to humans by biting and escalating acts of aggression until the humans left him alone. Rocky obviously saw me as a human to be driven away. How could Rocky ever trust me?

Rocky and I learned to trust one another during our journey to learn to respect one another. Rocky had to respect me as an alpha before he could trust me.

Rocky’s respect for one human does not transfer to another human. I had to earn Rocky’s respect by learning horsemanship skills and applying them properly. This means learning effective phases for every situation.

Gaining Respect with the Carrot Stick

This caused a lot of bumps in our “rocky” relationship in Parelli Levels 1 and 2. Rocky and I would attend a training camp and I would feel so good about our progress. After a few days, our relationship would start to deteriorate because Rocky would challenge me in new and different ways. I had to learn to adapt what I learned to respond effectively. This is basically what Rocky was doing, he came away from our training camp with a new respect for CR and me; but, being a very dominant left-brain horse, he was thinking of new ways to test my skills and challenge me in the dominance games.

I personally learned a lot of important lessons in my natural horsemanship detour. I have always viewed life as a journey to be enjoyed. I discovered how difficult the journey can be when you are in constant fear of acts of aggression by another, unable to let down your guard, and unsure if you have the skill to protect yourself.

Learning is easy for me as a life-long learner in my profession, hobbies, and personal development. Learning horsemanship skills was a huge challenge that required a physical, mental, and emotional commitment over an extended period of time. I started the natural horsemanship journey totally unprepared for these commitments and the amount of time required to help Rocky overcome his issues.

Learning to Listen to Rocky's Rhythm

Getting help from an expert also came easily for me. I am a firm believer in getting advice and help when you need it. I didn’t have an ego to keep me from seeking help. Finding the right expert is not easy. I am exceedingly fortunate to have found an expert willing to spend so much quality time helping me.

I found ways to not get discouraged. I am a naturally optimistic person but it was not easy with the challenges posed by Rocky. I really had to work hard to find ways to see progress and keep going. My solace was always in my belief that life is a journey to be enjoyed. I always try to identify and focus on small successes.

Sharing my personal feelings is not easy for me. For the longest time, I assumed my problems with Rocky were totally my fault and I didn’t know how to share his behavior and the extent of my fears with anyone. I perceived the situation as my failure because I couldn’t find any information anywhere about anyone that seemed to have similar problems with their horse. I absolutely hate it when I am told “no one else has this problem so it must be you”. The Parelli Horsenality™ information helped me recognize Rocky’s behavior as natural horse behavior albeit extreme left-brain, dominant behavior. I decided to write this blog so others could realize their situation is not hopeless and hopefully help by providing some useful information about the techniques that worked for Rocky and me.

I learned a lot of important lessons about the horse and human partnership. I learned:

- to understand Rocky and walked quite a few miles in his hoofs.

- what Rocky likes and doesn’t like.

- to listen to what Rocky’s expression and body language is telling me.

To some extent, I learned to think like a horse.

I came to realize that Rocky watches me constantly with his eyes and his ears. Sometimes, his attention is so subtle that I hardly notice it. He also senses my body with his. Rocky anticipates my actions based on subtle cues that I didn’t realize I was giving him. I learned to focus my cues for more effective communication with Rocky.

I learned to use effective communication skills with my body language and apply different phases of pressure. I learned to pace our activities to match Rocky’s needs. A partnership requires both parties to communicate and look out for the other partner. I learned to be the leader and partner that Rocky needed.

I realized Rocky was learning with me and I had to adapt to a constantly changing horse. I learned to use my evolving horse knowledge to keep pace with Rocky’s growth and to adapt my communication skills to match his changing needs.

I learned how to trust my horse partner and myself. Your partner just wants to survive and live with the dignity due him. Rocky is a herd animal and knows he needs a partner – I learned to be the partner he needs.

Developing a Beautiful Partnership

Jessica uses the Internet to browse the county property tax database until she finds the old farmhouse property she visited several days ago. It is owned by someone named William Mason and the oldest date shown for the property is 1976 when the lake was filled. The Mason family must have lost this homestead and had been issued a deed for the land that was left. In 1976, the property description was only for the land. The farmhouse had been destroyed long before the lake was built.

Jessica gets out the telescope and changes the lenses for terrestrial viewing. The cedar trees engulfing the old farmhouse chimney are visible from her second floor window. Now that she knows what to look for, she can see where the old farmhouse was built with respect to her cabin and Race’s cabin. She focuses the telescope on Race’s cabin. There isn’t any sign of his truck or of Race. His horses are grazing on hay so someone is taking care of his livestock. She focuses on the chimney visible above the roof of his cabin. From this distance, Race’s chimney looks like it was made by the same skilled stone mason that built her chimney, the school house chimney, and the one at the old Mason farmhouse.

The old Mason farmhouse sat on the hillside that formed the northern wall of the valley. Her cabin was on the western slope and Race’s cabin was on the eastern slope. These three buildings formed a triangle for protecting the northern end of the fertile valley. From all three buildings, the homesteaders could clearly see one another and the valley as it opened into a wide fertile plain to the south. The main body of the lake now covered that wide fertile plain. These three families must have shared the north end of the valley and offered one another mutual services. The Smiths were the German blacksmiths and the Masons were the Scottish stone masons. The Jones family was mostly Native American mixed with an English stone mason. America was truly the melting pot!

Chapter 29 A Tale of Two Rosaries

Jessica spends the day thinking about meeting the stranger who is stalking the slope below her cabin. She begins to wonder why she wants to meet him and just doesn’t ignore him. After all, the lake shore up to her pasture fence is public land and as far as she knows, he has never trespassed on her property. Jessica is not a confrontational person and decides to simply observe the stranger to see who it is.

Jessica fills the water troughs and pans with water from the water tank in the back of the pickup. Rearranging the hay and clutter in the barn clears the space needed for the hay from her next road trip with Janice. Max and Rocky watch her and wonder how she can work so hard in the heat. In the middle of the afternoon, Jessica takes Rocky for a walk along the lake shore to the south sandstone cliff. Max cools off in the lake and Rocky finds a small patch of forage grasses growing between some rocks on the slope.

Jessica finds a flat rock and sits in the shade while Max and Rocky explore for a few minutes. Water from the chilled water bottle is so refreshing while resting in the shade. Jessica is looking along the sandstone slope. Kelly’s old newspaper articles described the Smith and Jones family lawsuits about the sandstone collapsing around their artesian springs and damaging the water table. The damage to the underground rock formations diverted the flow of water from the ancient artesian springs and caused the families to lose their water supply. She scans the cliffs from the current edge of the lake up the slope toward her cabin. Tomorrow, they will find time to walk the entire cliff edge from her driveway to the lake edge with Max. It is late afternoon and time to return Rocky to the pasture and take Max for a drive.

Jessica calls to Max and Rocky. Max starts up the path to the pasture. Rocky lifts his head from grazing and looks at her. Jessica motions for Rocky to come to her. Rocky walks slowly through the rocks to Jessica. She bonds with Rocky by scratching his neck and ears. The horse and human partners slowly climb the path to the pasture. Jessica is tired and hangs onto Rocky’s mane for support. Rocky walks slowly and makes sure he keeps her in the shade.

When they return to the barn, Jessica sits down with Max for a few minutes to rest and make sure he has plenty of water to drink. Max stays behind in the barn to talk to Rocky while Jessica walks back to the house. Max tells Rocky that he thinks Jessica is going to drive to the other side of the north cliff and watch the stranger tonight. Max wants to make sure he goes with her. Rocky plans to monitor the stranger’s activities from his guard post in the cedars by the pasture gate. Max trots to the house to wait by the Jeep.

Jessica comes out of the house with her purse, cell phone, two water bottles, and some maps. She sees Max by the Jeep and says, “Max, I was just getting ready to invite you to go for a drive with me. You look like you are ready to go. Will you ride in the front seat with me?” Max jumps into the front seat while Jessica verifies the flashlights in the Jeep have working batteries.

As she drives down the driveway, Jessica is shocked at how many of the great oaks have turned brown and look like they are dying. She says a silent prayer for the health of the plants and animals that she can’t possibly feed and water. It is about three hours before sunset. The drive around Shadow Mountain to the old road leading to the parking area nearest the north side of her boundary cliff is slow and dusty. A cluster of cedar trees on the side of the dirt path leading to the lake should hide the Jeep from prying eyes and provide a vantage point to watch people as the arrive and leave the parking area.

Jessica and Max walk around the parking area used by the fishermen who make their way down the slope through the thorny brush to the lake. She follows Max along the path toward the sandstone cliffs forming the northern border of her property. Max makes a detour and leaves the path she expected him to follow. Max is following his nose along a trail back toward the parking area. Jessica is about to call to Max to stop when she sees where he is going.

Max takes her to the mint condition antique Jeep she has been seeing in the area all summer. The Jeep is hidden behind some cedars trees – just like she hid her rusty old Jeep. Jessica walks around the Jeep and sees the Texas veteran’s license plate and the USMC parking sticker in the folded down windshield. It was very possible this Jeep was in such good condition because it had spent much of its life in storage while the soldier who owned it served overseas.

Jessica looks around the interior of the Jeep. She is shocked to see a rosary hanging on the roll bar. The cross has the same shape as the rosary that Rocky found at the lake. There isn’t anyone within sight of the Jeep. The glove box should have the vehicle registration with the owner’s name but it is locked. A big cooler sits on the floor by the front passenger seat. She is feeling guilty like a real snoop at this point and doesn’t try to look in the cooler. Jessica sits down with Max for a few minutes to wait and think.

Jessica realizes this Jeep must belong to a member of the Smith family. She remembers the man she saw get in this Jeep in the hardware parking lot on the June natural horse playday. He looked like Race except he was more muscular than Race. Sheriff Mason had said that he thought Liberty Smith had joined the U.S. Marines when his grandparents died in 1976. This Jeep must belong to Liberty Smith. He must have spent much of his life serving overseas with his precious Jeep in storage.

Jessica feels so horrible for spying on a man revisiting his childhood memories. With tears in her eyes, she takes the rosary out of her pocket and hangs it on the roll bar next to the other rosary. Why are her eyes filled with tears? She is probably just feeling awful because she has been snooping into the private affairs of his family.

Jessica calls quietly to Max. She says to Max, “Please find the easiest trail back to our Jeep.” She feels really silly after she says this. How could Max possibly understand that she was totally emotionally and physically exhausted? She wasn’t sure she was physically able to retrace their path back down the rocky slope to the lake and then climb back up the path to the Jeep.

Max is really worried about Jessica. Her eyes are all red and wet. Her hands are shaking. He rubs his body against hers and nudges her hand with his nose. Slowly, he leads her on a relatively level path through several thick cedar patches back to their Jeep. When they arrive at the Jeep, Jessica crawls into the driver’s seat and motions for Max to sit beside her. She gives Max some water in a small bowl and then drinks the rest of the water in the bottle.

It has been a horribly difficult year for her and everyone else in the drought. She has been feeding hay for over a year because of the extended drought from last year into this year. In a normal year, the horses graze on grass in the pasture from March to November. This was also the coldest winter on record in North Texas. Jessica worked extremely hard hauling hay and taking care of the ranch during the ice storms and extreme cold. The pipes to the barn froze and water had to be hauled to the barn all winter. In February, the pump stopped working and it was a two week wait before the drill crew could pull and replace the pump. During that time, she chopped ice and melted it to water the horses and chickens. Now, it was the hottest summer on record and the well was broken again. She has been hauling water and feed for the livestock all summer in temperatures over 100 degrees. Jessica is suffering from heat stroke and sheer physical exhaustion.

Max lays his head on Jessica’s lap. Slowly she pets his head and says, “Max, I am so thankful to have you and really appreciate your partnership.” Jessica falls asleep long before the sun sets behind Shadow Mountain. It is the deep sleep of total exhaustion.

He makes his way slowly back along the path to the sandstone cliff near the Jeep. The backpack is heavy with the blacksmith smelting tools he has gathered from his grandfather’s hiding place in a shallow cave in the south cliff. All of the blacksmith tools and silver hidden by his grandfather above the flood line of the lake have now been collected. He is feeling tired from the exertion as he climbs the rope up the south side of the cliff and crosses the crumbling cliff using his makeshift safety railing. A short rappel down the north side of the cliff brings him near the Jeep. The climbing equipment is hidden in the crevice of a large sandstone boulder.

He walks the short path to his Jeep hidden among the cedar trees. The heavy burden is placed on the back seat and he crawls into the driver’s seat. He grabs a sandwich and water bottle out of the cooler on passenger seat floor. He relaxes and closes his eyes while he enjoys the cool water. Something is different. There is a different sound in the lake breeze. Someone has been here. Suddenly, he realizes there is an extra rosary gently swaying against his rosary in the light breeze blowing from the south end of the valley. He quietly finishes his sandwich and water while he warily looks around the area.

He picks up the extra rosary and holds it in his hands while he considers how it got in his Jeep. He didn’t know someone had found this rosary. If it had been found, he had assumed the police would have the rosary in an evidence bag along with anything else they found near the great arching oak tree. Maybe, he has made some other wrong assumptions. Is it possible that his family’s most prized possessions had been found? Is it possible that someone else has them?

He walks through the cedars toward the parking area used by the fishermen. All of the areas where a vehicle could pull off the dirt road and park hidden from the road are checked. It doesn’t take long to find her old Jeep. He watches the Jeep for a few minutes and wonders why she is just sitting there. Slowly, he realizes that she is asleep. He walks up to the passenger side of her Jeep and sees the German Shepherd with his head laying in her lap. Max makes a low quiet growl of warning and he extends his hand to the dog in a friendly canine gesture.

Max doesn’t sense any danger but will not let the stranger near Jessica. Max turns his head to look at the stranger and continues his low warning growl. The stranger reaches in his pocket and retrieves the rosary. He lays the rosary on the passenger seat and says in a very low whisper to Max, “Good dog, keep her safe.” Max rests his head on Jessica’s lap again as he listens to the stranger walk away.

The stranger returns to his Jeep and drives away. He drives slowly around the north end of the lake, takes the gravel road along the eastern shore of the lake, and back to Race’s ranch where he hides his Jeep in the barn. He fills the horse water tanks and puts out more hay for the horses. He spends some time bonding with each horse using friendly and porcupine games. He really misses the horse herd his family was forced to give away when they lost their ranch to the lake.

Jessica sleeps soundly for several hours in the Jeep. It is totally dark, very late, and the temperatures were still in the mid 90’s. For the first time in a long time, Jessica doesn’t remember dreaming while she slept. The cell phone clock shows it is nearly midnight. The phone was set to silent mode and it hadn’t been ringing. Cody has left several text messages wanting to know when she will be home. Jessica gently pets and hugs Max while she calls Cody to let her know she will be home in a few minutes.

When Jessica starts the Jeep engine and turns on the headlights, the rosary laying on the seat beside Max glints in the reflected light. She freezes and stares at the rosary. Had Max gone to the other Jeep and retrieved the rosary or had Liberty Smith been here and given it to her? Max normally doesn’t leave the Jeep by himself; he stays with her. Why hadn’t Max barked when someone approached the Jeep? She picks up the rosary and holds it tightly for a few minutes in thought. Why would Liberty Smith give his family rosary to her? Why doesn’t he just ask her for access to the lake shore instead of all this secrecy? As she drives home, she realizes she has more questions than she has answers.

Chapter 30 A Parody of Romance and Reality

All of Texas is now in an exceptional drought category according to the National Weather Service. It is the last week of August and Texas has officially had the driest 12 months on record. Almost every city in Texas has set two other weather records, one for the most consecutive days over 100 degrees and another for the most days over 100 degrees. It is the hottest summer on record. The weather forecast for the next 12 months is dryer conditions than normal. The drought is forecast to intensify. Jessica is trying to figure out how the drought can get worse than “exceptional drought” which is the worst category defined in the weather charts.

The well crew arrives early in the morning to fix her pump. Jessica and Cody enjoy their breakfast while they watch the well crew pull pipe after pipe out of the ground using their tall derrick. It takes four hours to pull 900 feet of pipe. Jessica works on the computer and enjoys several cups of coffee while she watches the pile of pipes grow bigger and bigger.

Jessica does the barn chores and fixes lunch before the pump is finally pulled out with the last pipe. The pump is full of sand. The water aquifer apparently has a lot of sand now. The sand clogged the pump and burnt out the motor. The well crew is surprised to find that the pump is still hanging in 100 feet of water so there is no need to drill the well deeper. A special sand filtering pump is needed. Most of the cost of the sand filtering pump is covered by the warranty on the old pump because it was only six months old. She will only have to pay for labor and the difference in cost between the two types of pumps. She is so relieved when the crew starts putting the pipes back down into the well.

Once the pump and pipe are back in the well, the well crew turns on the pump and flushes the well by pumping water onto the ground. They are amazed at the amount of sand in the water. The well crew runs the pump for an hour before hooking the pipe from the pump up to the pipes going to her well house holding tank. The well crew checks to make sure all of her fixtures have water before they leave.

Jessica immediately goes to the barn to fill the horse tanks and chicken water pans with water. Cody takes an extremely long shower and starts some laundry. Having water again is wonderful!

Jessica walks back to the well house and is amazed at the huge pile of bright white sand left where the drill crew flushed the well. The water has soaked into the dry soil and left a pile of white sand. This sand has very fine grains compared to the sandy topsoil and it is bright white instead of the reddish color of the sandy loam soil in the pasture. Jessica realizes this may be her clue to finding the artesian springs, sandstone caves, and mines if they exist. An area with rocks or sand of a different color or texture could indicate the presence of a spring or a cave.

The next morning, Jessica and Cody leave the ranch to have lunch and go shopping in town. They see Race in his truck pulling a trailer of hay as they turn onto the gravel road on the north end of the lake. Jessica stops and gets out of the truck to talk to him. She says, “Race, I have been so worried about you. You didn’t cash my check for fixing the barn roof in early June.”

Race is really shy and says, “I’m sorry. I’ve been helping my cousins in Northern Oklahoma. They work on a migrant crew that helps ranchers bale hay on shares. I figured it was the best way for me to get some hay for my own horses. Is everything ok?”

Jessica realizes that Race looks exhausted and he really is exhausted. He has been working all summer in hay fields across the Midwest just to earn enough money to buy hay for his horses. Race is hard working man who isn’t afraid to take on a back breaking job to feed those he loves. Jessica feels so guilty for wanting to ask him snoopy questions about the past while he is desperately trying to survive the challenges of today.

Race looks at her and says, “Do you have any more chores for me to do? I can stop by in a few days if you need me.”

Jessica says, “Sure, I always have more work than I can do myself. Go home and get some rest. Do you need any help unloading your hay? Cody and I can help if you do.”

Race says, “No, I’ll just park the trailer in the barn for a few days. Bye.”

Jessica calls Janice with a proposition. She says, “I just saw Race and realized that we could hire him to haul the hay from your Aunt’s place in northern Missouri. We could pay for his time and his expenses. That way, you can get ready for school and I don’t have to worry about leaving Cody or hiring someone to watch the livestock. What do you think?”

Janice says, “What a great idea. I am so far behind with my “to do” list that I am worried about being ready for school. I’m really low on hay. How soon do you think he can go?”

Jessica says, “I’ll ask him and let you know. I’m stretching my hay to the limit. The feed store got 20 extra bales on their last truck. The feed store owner let me make a standing order for any of the hay that arrives that isn’t preordered and prepaid. So I got the 20 bales!”

Janice says, “I was going to call and let you know that I found one of Raene Smith’s books in the school archive. I have been reading it and it is hilarious. I can see why the kids loved her stories. I’ll bring it over later this week.”

Jessica says, “Thanks. Cody and I are going to town to do some shopping. Do you mind if I stop by and pick up the book? Or we could meet for lunch?”

Janice agreed to a lunch date and they picked a time to meet at the local cafe. When they arrive at the cafe, Janice is already there. She is reading a little book and hardly able to keep the laughter to herself. Janice waves them over and shows them Raene’s book. The three of them take turns reading the stories aloud while they wait for their lunch.

Janice had been reading the Raene’s stories and she was right that they were hilarious. The stories reminded them of two TV shows – Hogan’s Heroes and MacGyver. The hero of the stories was a common sense inventor and no one ever got hurt by the bungling soldiers. Every story had four main characters. The hero was a knight in shining armor. He was an inventor. In every adventure, he invented new gadgets to save his family and friends from the evil emperor. The heroine was a beautiful princess who was rescued by the hero in the first story. The hero and heroine fell in love and married. The heroine’s mother helps them in most of the stories. The mother is a lovely woman who is an especially good cook and often distracts the evil emperor’s soldiers with her tantalizing food. The stories were about their exciting adventures rescuing their friends from the iron fist of the emperor and his soldiers. The evil emperor was a short bald man with a big curled mustache and big bushy eyebrows. He always wore military uniforms with too many medals and decorations. His flag had an iron fist on it and he sent his soldiers everywhere to capture the peasants he didn’t like.

While Cody was reading one of the stories, Jessica almost fell out of her chair. They were all laughing so hard during a story where the Mother used her tantalizing pies to distract the attention of the soldiers. Somehow her little house filled with smoke from the fireplace and the soldiers had to help rescue her pies and take them outside so they could eat them. The part that unbalanced Jessica was the peasants escape route through a tunnel. The tunnel was accessed using a trap door hidden in the great stone fireplace. Cody read several stories that described the great stone fireplace with its hidden compartments and trap doors. The stories said the knight in shining armor and his stone mason friends had built many magical fireplaces in the enchanted land. Jessica was astonished; was it possible that her cabin had such a fireplace?

Jessica and Janice talk while Cody continues to read the book. As scholars, they realize that a book like this written in the late 1800’s was probably a parody of some very real situations. Based on their knowledge that the Smiths had escaped from Germany during the reign of Otto Von Bismarck, the evil emperor must be Bismarck. The Smiths were Catholic and Bismarck imprisoned and exiled the Catholic clergy and persecuted members of the Catholic Church. Raene Smith must have written these fairy tales about their heroic escapades to help their fellow Catholics escape from Bismarck. The Smiths were truly an amazing family.

Cody looks up pictures of Bismarck on her cell phone wifi connection. She says, “You are right. These pictures of Bismarck show a fat balding man with a really bushy mustache and huge eyebrows. He is also wearing these gaudy military uniforms. He probably gave himself those awful medals. It would be great to draw cartoons to match these stories.”

Cody doodles cartoon characters for Raene’s fairy tales while Janice and Jessica talk about the drought, hiring Race to get a load of hay for them, the upcoming school year, and horses.

Chapter 31 Natural Trail Finders

After the barn chores are finished the next morning, Jessica is amazed at how much free time she seems to have because she isn’t hauling water. The dirty dishes have been washed and the stone and tile floors have been mopped. She is ashamed to admit how much time she spent in the shower. It would be heavenly if the master bathroom was finished with a bathtub so she could spend some quality time soaking in a bathtub. Running water feels like a luxury to be fully enjoyed.

Jessica walks down to the pasture and lets Rocky in the yard by the cabin. She brings Rocky and Max to the mud room door. Max gets his morning hug and Rocky gets some bonding with underbelly and neck scratching. They walk to the northwest corner of the house and Jessica points into the woods to send Max and Rocky in that direction. She tells Max, “Find a trail.”

Max and Rocky look at her. Rocky has never been on this side of the house to graze because there isn’t anything for a horse to eat here. Max and Rocky are natural trail finders and followers. Max puts his nose to the ground and dives into the dry brush. Rocky uses his eyes and feet to follow the hidden trails behind Max. Jessica uses her brush scythe to cut thorny bushes out of the path so she and Rocky can follow Max through the most overgrown briar patches. Once the animals find the trail, Jessica is surprised at how obvious the trail is; that is, if you know where to look.

The trail ends at a huge depression of collapsed sandstone rubble that looks like a sink hole for rocks. Geologically speaking, this is a recent collapse of a sandstone formation. The depression has not been filled in with topsoil and trees. The smooth weathered rocks that had been on the surface are mixed with the sharp freshly broken sandstone rocks. The soil around the collapse is bare because all of the plants have died and blown away in the wind. The soil has fine white sand mixed with reddish sandstone crumbles. This must have been where one of the Smith’s artesian springs had been before the explosions from the dam construction altered the water table and caused many of the sandstone formations on the north end of the valley to collapse.

They walk around the collapsed sink hole. Jessica is looking for anything that doesn’t look natural. After they circle the area, Rocky stops on the edge of the sink hole in the direction of the house. He feels the soil is harder that the soil around it but it doesn’t feel like rocks.

Rocky tells Max, “This soil is harder than the other rocks and soil. Come and look at it.”

Max comes over to sniff around and tells Rocky, “The soil is also a different temperature than the rocks or the other soil. Let’s dig and see what is here.”

They begin to dig and paw at the ground. Jessica walks over and helps dig with the handle of her brush scythe. About six inches under the soil, they find an old iron pipe.

Jessica says, “I guess this is one mystery solved. The Smith’s had a pipe to get water from the artesian spring to their house. The house is down hill from here. Gravity would have carried the water downhill to the cabin. I have been wondering if the Smith’s had a bigger blacksmith forge than the one down by the cabin. Can you find anything else?”

Jessica takes pictures of the sink hole and pipe with her cell phone camera. The location is marked on her cell phone map.

They look around some more but don’t find anything else. Jessica pets Max and leans against Rocky as she scratches his neck. Jessica says to Max, “Take us home” and she follows Max and Rocky straight back to the mud room porch.

Jessica gets water, dog treats, and carrots from the mud room. She gives Max and Rocky water to drink. Max gets some jerky dog treats and Rocky gets several carrots. Jessica has some water and carrots as a snack too. She is proud of her trail finding partners.

The cell phone map application shows the location of the old artesian spring with its pipe. From the mud room porch, the distance is less than 1000 feet. The old pipe is probably still in the ground between the old spring and the cabin. Someday she will look for the end of the pipe.

Their next challenge is to follow the trail from the mud room porch through the pasture and along the south cliff face. After a short rest, Jessica leads Rocky and Max along the path through the pasture. Max goes through the fence and onto the trail leading to the south cliff while Jessica leads Rocky through the pasture gate and around the fence to meet Max on the trail. The dry winds have blown the loose sand away from the underlying hard packed trail making it almost easy to follow the trail once you realize what it looks like. They work their way along the base of the cliff toward the lake.

In several places, Jessica sees signs that the stranger has already visited the small sandstone caves and crevices among the sandstone boulders. She can identify areas where he has been digging in the shallow caves and between large boulders and the side of the cliff. He obviously knows the area very well and knows exactly where to dig for his treasures. She wonders what he has been removing and what makes it so important that he is willing to work so hard in these record high temperatures. Also, why doesn’t he just ask her permission to access this area via her property?

The trail runs along the base of the cliff and ends at the lake. Jessica sees a dark opening that looks like the entrance to a cave is emerging from the lake waters. There is no way that she is going to try to enter the cave with most of the entrance still under water. She wonders if the stranger has already been in the cave. This is where she will wait for the stranger.

It is getting late and she is very tired so the trio walks back along the trail to their pasture and the cabin. When they get back to the cabin, Jessica sits on the mud room porch step while Max and Rocky rest quietly and have a snack. The mud room porch has a stone floor with one stone step down to the ground level. The stone step is one long piece of sandstone with a riser made of smaller stacked sandstone pieces sealed with mortar.

Max and Rocky are talking about what Jessica might be seeking. Rocky says, “I think she is still looking for water. She has been so worried all summer about water and of course how much hay I need to eat. I have been eating as much forage by the lake as I can find so the other horses can have more hay.”

Max says, “I know she is worried about water and looking for water in the ground. I think she is looking for something that is different than it should be. The stone under her feet is different than the other stone on the house. That stone always has a different temperature than the rest of the stone. It is different than it should be.”

Max walks over and sits by her feet on the porch step. He begins to dig at the base of the step by the house foundation. Rocky walks over and begins to paw at the ground on the outer edge of the porch. A fine layer of dirt covers a stone base along the step. Jessica knew the stone base was there and hadn’t bothered to sweep away the blowing dirt that accumulated against the stone riser for the porch. She says, “Max, NO, don’t dig up the sandstone foundation.”

Max looks at her, whines, and continues digging. Rocky whinnies and continues to paw at the ground. Jessica gets a broom from the mud room and sweeps away the dry sand and soil that has accumulated there. When the stone base is cleared off, the trio steps back to look at it. Rocky says to Max, “It looks just like all of the other rocks to me.”

Max says to Rocky, “These rocks are never the same temperature as the other rocks in the house floor. These rocks are different.”

Jessica looks at the pattern of the rocks. The stonework pattern doesn’t match the rocks used in the rest of the porch and it doesn’t match the stonework in the foundation of the house.

Jessica says, “What are you two chatting about? I don’t know how you knew, but that step base was not built by the same hand the built this house. Stay here while I get a shovel.”

Max and Rocky smile at one another and are happy because they helped their human partner. Max continues to dig along the edge of the stone base and most of the corner is uncovered by the time Jessica returns. Jessica digs all of the surrounding soil away from the stone base. The base is about six feet long, two feet wide, and a foot deep. It was built to be about the same size as the step, but the top of the base was a couple of inches lower than the surrounding soil so it would be covered with a fine layer of dirt and the differences wouldn’t be obvious.

Just because it was built at a different time than the house didn’t mean there was anything suspicious about it. Maybe a less talented Smith built the step base. Jessica doesn’t believe this to be true but she must at least consider the possibility that it is just a base for the step.

Jessica uses the shovel to remove the dirt under the corner of the base to reveal about a foot long section along the bottom of the base. She uses her cell phone to take photos of the underside of the base. She also takes pictures of all sides of the base. The bottom of the box is also covered with stones.

Hide in plain sight is the best approach to concealing things. What should she do now? Jessica gets the hose and turns on the water. It is so great to have water again! She washes off the stone base and watches it dry. The stone is so dry that it just soaks up the water. It is quite obvious that the type of stone, the cutting of the stone, the stacking of the stones, and the mortar job were not the same as the rest of the house. Jessica looks at Max and says, “Thank you Max. Can you smell anything of interest anywhere along this stone box?” As she says the words, Jessica realizes that this must be a stone covered storage box.

Max sniffs along the whole top and the sides of the box. Rocky is looking at the stones and tells Max he sees a thin crack along the top of the box. Max sniffs along the thin crack. The area around the crack has a different temperature than the rest of the box. Max barks while sniffing the center of the box. Jessica rubs her fingers along the area and finds the cracks. She pets Max and scratches Rocky’s ears. She had seen Rocky using his nose to point out the area to Max.

Jessica gets a thin chisel and hammer from the tool box in the mud room. For a fleeting moment, Jessica wonders how silly she would feel if this was just a base built by one of the Smiths for the step. Slowly the thin chisel goes into the crack and a quick tap from the hammer widens the crack. The process is repeated in all of the cracks appearing between the stones. The stones loosen and fall off of the underlying wood frame. A small box about one foot on each side is under the lose stones. Jessica recognizes the wood as part of the oak floor that had been removed from the two bedrooms in the cabin. Someone had cut up those beautiful oak floors and used the wood to make the frame for the stone base and a smaller box to fit inside of it. Why would someone do this? Wasn’t there any other wood available to them?

Jessica removes the small box from the wood frame of the stone base. It was crudely made but sealed against moisture with wax and tar. The box should still be water tight. Should she open the box? The guilt she felt about spying on Liberty Smith returned. Jessica hid the box in the back of a bedroom closet while considering what to do with it.

Jessica found some wood to repair the wood frame of the stone base. A wood patch is nailed to the top of the wood frame and caulk is used to glue the stones back into the correct positions on top of the wood box. Jessica doesn’t have any mortar mix so she puts the dirt and sand back around the stone base. Sand is brushed with the broom into the cracks between the stones to make it look natural. She will worry about making the box watertight before the next rain storm which according to the weather forecaster will be in about 3 months. Hopefully, no one will notice that she has been digging up yard treasures.

Chapter 32 The Real Treasure

Jessica does the evening barn chores early. Rocky is in the pasture while the mare and foal are kept in their stall. A nap will help her make it through the evening wait for the stranger to make his nightly visit along the lake shore. They will meet tonight.

Jessica lets Max in the house to nap on the cool mud room floor while she takes a nap in her bedroom. Exhaustion wins and they both fall into a deep sleep for several hours. Jessica dreams about watching bats in the sandstone caves while Max dreams of playing in the cool grass with a cute German Shepherd girl dog. Maybe the humans will get him a companion.

It is well after sunset when Max and Jessica wake up. They missed their opportunity to meet the stranger tonight. Max desperately wants out of the house and immediately does his security check around the perimeter of the house and barnyard. Max meets Rocky under the cedars by the pasture gate. Rocky tells him the stranger has already left for the night. The night is filled with the stench of feral pigs and the howling of coyotes. The two friends prepare for a long night of guard duty. There is lightening in the distant south but the air doesn’t feel right for rain here in the shadow of the mountain. There is no relief from the drought.

Jessica takes the wooden box out of the closet. It is crudely made and sealed with wax and tar. Something moves around with a thud when you shake the box so there is something in this box. There doesn’t appear to be any way to open the box. An old fashioned hammer and chisel should do the trick. Does she have any right to open this box? Theoretically, she owns everything on the property and she doesn’t know who built this box or when it was placed in the ground. The only way to know if the contents need to be returned to the rightful owner is to open the box and look at the contents.

Jessica mentally hears the Randy Travis classic, The Box,

In the workshop where he spent his extra time
Was a dusty wooden box that I had never noticed till that time

And we set it on the table and carefully, we opened up the top
And stared into the memory
Daddy kept inside the box.

The box is setting on a towel on the master bedroom floor. Jessica places the chisel in the seam along what appears to the top of the box. Light taps of the hammer on the chisel all of the way around the box break the wax seal. Stronger taps on the chisel are necessary to pry loose the nails holding the top of the box to the sides. Slowly, the top is totally loose and she lifts off the top off of the box. What is in this box?

Jessica sees books, really old books. The first book is really old and looks like a hand written diary in a language she can’t read. It may be German. The second book looks even older. It is a very small hand written book with letters and symbols she doesn’t recognize at all. The third book is a more modern diary written in a very flowery cursive English. Finally a book she can read.

Jessica opens the English diary and begins to read. It is the diary of Raene Smith, not the original Raene but the one born in 1920. The first dates in the diary are from 1936 when Raene turned 16. This was the diary of the very romantic Raene who married Wilhelm Steinmitz in a grand German wedding in 1939. Jessica remembers the stunning beauty in her wedding photographs from the old newspapers hoarded by Kelly’s aunts.

Jessica stayed up all night reading the diary. She just couldn’t stop herself. Raene was truly a romantic who was blindly in love with Wilhelm Steinmitz and the idea that she should have the “happily ever after life” of a fairy tale princess. Jessica could not imagine anyone who could live in Nazi Germany in 1939 and not know about the horrors of Adolf Hitler; but, people often see only what they want to see.

Wilhelm Steinmitz was a proud German military officer from a well respected aristocratic family. Raene was his stunningly beautiful wife. They lived the good life in Berlin. Raene’s early diary entries read like a happily every after fairy tail with grand parties, live theatre shows, and social outings. This was the life Raene felt destined to live.

Then, one day, reality hit Raene like a freight train. Raene was forced to face the reality of Nazi Germany and the persecution of the Jewish population. In a matter of minutes, Raene’s fairy tale world was shattered and she saw history was about to repeat itself. The young Raene had grown up believing in the enchanted fairy tales of her great-great-grandmother Raene without realizing the stories were a parody about Bismarck persecuting members of the Catholic faith. The harsh realization that her knight in shining armor was committing acts of unbelievable horror to innocent people was more than she could bear.

Raene finally understood the truth behind those fairy tale adventures written by her great-great-grandmother Raene. Her ancestors had fought the oppression of Bismarck and now it was her turn to save as many souls as she could from the cruelty of Nazi Germany. Raene moved into the Catholic convent and ran a sort of underground railroad to hide children and find ways to move them out of Nazi Germany. The book used codes for names and places in case the dairy was found by the Nazi. Did anyone have the key to decipher the codes?

In her own way, Raene had lived two fairy tale lives. One fairy tale was as a princess with her “prince charming” and another was as the heroine saving the innocent from the iron fist of another evil emperor. Her real life adventures had many happy endings for the children of the persecuted.

Raene was hounded and hunted by her husband throughout the remainder of the war. He disfigured her beautiful face in one encounter and shot her with his German Luger during their last meeting. She managed to escape from him and recover physically. From her diary entries, it was clear that she was emotionally scarred by the outcome of their relationship and the cruelty she had witnessed. Most of all, she was ashamed of her own gullibility and how she had been blind to the suffering of others around her.

Jessica’s eyes were filled with tears as she read the World War II entries written in Raene’s diary. The Randy Travis song, Point of Light, plays in the background;

There is a point when you cannot walk away
When you have to stand up straight and tall and mean the word you say
There is a point you must decide, just to do it 'cause it's right
That's when you become a point of light.

The last entries of the diary were made on Shadow Mountain in the 1970’s. Raene had apparently returned home when she heard about the auto accident that took the life of her brother John and his wife Birdie. It was a life of self imposed seclusion and only the family knew she had returned home. The little schoolhouse under a great arching oak tree was her home and her sanctuary. Jessica had seen the old newspaper picture of the school house in its original location in a forest of great oak trees with a bench under the great arching oak tree in front of the school house. It must have broken her heart when the Mason and Jones families dismantled the schoolhouse to protect it from the flood waters and moved it to the historical site in the town square. When she had read the article in the old newspapers hoarded by Kelly’s aunts, Jessica had wondered why the article said the Jones and Mason families moved the school house and didn’t mention the Smith family. Now, she knew why the Smith family couldn’t bear to help dismantle the building and move it to town.

It was also obvious from the diary entries that Raene would rather take her own life than leave the Smith ranch. For a Catholic, this would ordinarily be unthinkable; but Raene was clearly distressed as the lake construction posed a new reality that she must handle. Also, it was obvious that Raene was buried where she would have wanted to be buried. The glaring implication from these two facts was that someone who loved Raene dearly must have buried her under the great arching oak tree.

There was an envelope addressed to Liberty Smith in the back of the diary. The envelope was sealed and it contained several hard objects that felt like jewelry. Jessica felt so guilty about reading Raene’s private diary but she could not help herself. It was such an intriguing set of events that she couldn’t stop. But there was no way that she would open and read a letter addressed to someone else. It was definitely time to meet Liberty Smith.

Now, it was clear that the body beneath the lake must be Raene Smith. No one would suspect that it was Raene because everyone believed Raene was still living in Germany. This fact generated a lot of complicated questions. How did Raene Smith really die? Based on the emotional state of the last entries of the diary, Jessica could believe that Raene might have taken her own life. In Raene’s troubled mind, she had no where else to go when the little schoolhouse was moved and the lake was flooding her valley sanctuary. Raene clearly did not want anyone to know she was here because she was ashamed that she had lived her princess fantasy life while millions suffered and died because of the acts of her husband and others in Nazi Germany.

Raene must have been a very important factor behind the legal maneuvers of the Jones and Smith families to fight the construction of the lake. It must have been a tremendous hardship on those families and Raene when they lost their water supply during the lake construction. And then Raene lost her home when they moved the old school house.

Those events happened over 40 years ago. Raene’s death and burial were the events that concerned Jessica and would have the most impact on the possible courses of action today. Who buried her beneath the lake? If Raene was murdered, then the murderer must have buried her. If Raene took her own life, then you still have the same question, who buried her? Was Jessica planning to meet a murderer and tell him that she possessed his family’s most precious possessions? Of course, if she were a Smith then the diaries would be her family’s most precious possession. Did Liberty Smith feel the same way or was there something else buried around here that was more important to him?

Why did the thought of turning these books over to the Sheriff seem so wrong? Was it a fool’s errand to try to return the diaries and the letter to the last remaining member of the Smith family? She must be going nuts herself!

The other troubling thought was that Race Jones had to know Raene had returned home to live in the valley. Given the proximity of Race’s house, there is no way Raene could have hidden from his family. How was Race involved in this mess? He had said that the lake was a tragedy for everyone that lived here and he was right.

Jessica has a lot of thinking to do before meeting Liberty Smith. In the mean time, she takes photos of the box and its contents. The box is returned to its hiding place in the closet.

Cody is participating in the state robotics competition and won’t be home from the field trip for two days. Jessica has time to meet with Liberty Smith while Cody is safely away from the ranch.

Chapter 32 Sandstone Caves

The upper atmosphere is so dry that there haven’t been any jet contrails in the sky for at least three months. Jessica and Max are sitting on a rock under a dense group of oak trees at the base of the sandstone cliff within sight of the emerging sandstone caves. These caves will surely attract a lot of attention as the water levels reveal more of the entrances.

Jessica is thinking about the drought and how it has impacted her life personally this last year. It has been a difficult year but each new challenge is being handled, one by one as the situations arise. Jessica realizes that she has mentally shifted her attitude from waiting for the rain to return to one of enjoying what each day has to offer. The drought will be here for an extended period of time until the sunspot cycle returns to normal. Blame it all on those puny sunspots! Periods of low sunspot activity have happened in the past and will eventually return to normal. Life finds a way to survive and adapt. It has always been that way for every life form. Survival is a basic instinct and the prime motivation for most living things. Is the mere act of being here counter to the basic instinct to survive?

They are waiting for the stranger to appear around a curve in the path. They will see him before he sees them. Jessica has planned this meeting to be a safe and short meeting. Cody is safely away at an overnight robotics competition with her school robotics team. Janice will call Jessica at sunset and will immediately call the Sheriff if she doesn’t answer the phone.

Jessica has the letter hidden in her back pack. There are two bottles of water for refreshments while they meet and talk. Max is here as her partner and guard dog. Rocky was forced to wait in the pasture. He is periodically whinnying to Max. Jessica isn’t sure if there is any real communication between horse and dog; but if it is possible, then these two are having quite a conversation. It is about three hours before sunset and she warns them to be quiet.

About 20 minutes later, they hear one long whinny of warning from Rocky. The pasture is further north than they are and Rocky has access to the scents from the lake blowing up the slope into the pasture. A few minutes later, Max perks his ears and tenses up with his eyes and nose focused on the path. Jessica slowly and quietly pets his soft fur while they wait.

He rounds the large sandstone boulder in the path and sees them. He stops for a minute and looks at her. From the gear he is carrying, it is clear that he had planned to enter the caves tonight. What is hidden in those caves?

Max makes a slow quiet warning growl in his throat while he focuses all of his attention on the stranger. Jessica pets him and says, “It is alright Max.”

Jessica looks at the stranger and says, “I have two bottles of water for us to share while we talk. I thought it was time for us to meet. Please join me.”

He walks over and sits down on a nearby rock facing her. The low flying plane approaches from the north and flies around the lake several times. They sit quietly and wait for the plane to move out of sight. Jessica hands him a bottle of water and enjoys one herself.

After the plane is gone, Jessica extends her right hand and says, “Hello, I am Jessica and this friendly fellow is Max.”

He hesitates and then shakes her hand. He says, “I am Liberty Smith.”

Jessica smiles and then says, “I am pleased to meet you. I have some of your possessions and I would like to return them to you. “

She reaches inside of her backpack and he warily reaches into a pocket inside of his vest. Max growls and tensely watches Liberty.

Jessica retrieves the letter and hands it to Liberty. He removes his hand from his pocket and accepts the letter. He looks from the letter to Jessica and back to the letter several times. Liberty finally says, “Where did you get this?”

Jessica hands him a bottle of water and says, “That is a long story. Do you want to read the letter now or later?”

Liberty is just staring at her. He doesn’t’ know what to say or do. The handwriting on the old letter clearly belongs to his Aunt Raene. How is this possible?

Jessica is quietly petting Max and waiting for him to make the next move.

Liberty finally says again, “Where did you get this?”

Jessica says simply, “I will tell you after you tell me why you have been prowling this hillside every night for the past four months.”

He looks at her and says, “I have never trespassed on what is now your property. The changes in the water table and the rapid flooding of the lake forced my family to move before they had time to pack and move all of their possessions. I have been collecting whatever the lake didn’t destroy. ”

Jessica smiles and says, “I appreciate your respect for the property boundaries. I will make the long story short. My well went dry and I had to haul water for the last two months. In an act of desperation and probably the insanity of heat stroke, I started looking for your family’s artesian springs and found this in a box with several books. Would you like to have the books?”

Jessica thought he was going to faint.

Liberty can’t believe what he just heard. He says, “You found the diaries. Yes, they are the only memory of my family. They would be my most prized possessions. I thought they had been lost to the flood waters. I would like to have them. Where are they?”

Jessica says, “The books are in the cabin. Please join us for the walk up the slope to the cabin. The plane will probably be coming back soon. I find it annoying to think that I am being watched all of the time. I don’t have to be paranoid to think those planes are watching me.”

As they walk up the slope, Jessica says, “Max won’t bite. He is a very good dog. I have wondered why he doesn’t bark at you. Do you know why he doesn’t bark at you?”

Liberty smiles and laughingly says, “Is it my charm or my good looks?”

Jessica smiles and says, “Did you live in the cabin?”

Liberty says, “Yes, from the time I was born until we were forced to move when I was 17.”

Jessica says, “I saved an old braided rag rug that was stuffed in the damaged wall of one of the bedrooms. I believe that your scent permeates that old rug. Max slept on that rug in my bedroom when he was a puppy. He must associate the comfort and safety of my bedroom with your scent in that rug. Does that make sense to you?”

He looked at her and said, “My grandmother made a red, white, and blue braided rag rug for me when I was born. She put the rug on the stone floor by the fireplace in the kitchen and dining room for me to play on when I was a baby. Later it was on my bedroom floor. I took that rug everywhere. On hot nights, that old rug was a sleeping mat on the mud room porch. On cold winter nights, I slept on that old rug by the fireplace.”

When they reach the pasture gate, Jessica is afraid Rocky is going to attack Liberty. Rocky gallops circles around them to force his way between Jessica and Liberty. Jessica remains calm and Rocky quickly returns to his calm self. Jessica scratches his neck and he walks through the pasture with her hand on his mane. Liberty walks in front of them with Max.

Max and Rocky are chatting up a storm. Max is telling Rocky about the conversation between Jessica and Liberty. He also tells Rocky that she invited the stranger into the cabin to see the old books from the box. Max is going to stay with the stranger. Rocky is so disappointed that he can’t go to the cabin with them.

Liberty spends some time looking at the ranch and the remaining buildings as they walk toward the cabin. At the mud room porch step, Jessica uses the broom to brush some dirt away to reveal the crude stone base buried below the step. Liberty just stares at it and says that it hadn’t been there when he was a child. Jessica tells him that it contained a crude box made from wood cut out of the oak floors in the bedrooms.

The box and its contents were sitting on the island work space in the middle of the kitchen. Jessica is using an old table as a kitchen island until she decides how to fill the space vacated by the old wood cook stove. Jessica shows Liberty the box and he removes the books. He lovingly caresses the books. She knows that she has made the right decision.

Jessica says, “How did Raene die?”

Liberty says, “During World War II, her husband hounded her to leave the convent. They struggled and he shot her. Raene recovered physically but she was emotionally devastated that he could hurt her like that. Her husband later died from wounds he received during an air raid. A big part of her spirit died in World War II. She lived in a convent until my parents died and then she came back here to be with me. The lake took the rest of her spirit; but, in the end she found a way to stay where she wanted. My grandparents tried to stop Raene from taking her own life but she died in the struggle. We buried her in her favorite place under the great arching oak tree. My grandparents felt so guilty about the loss of Aunt Raene that both of them died within months.”

Jessica says, “I am very sorry for the tragedies suffered by your family. Is there anything that I can do to help?”

Liberty just shakes his head.

Her next question is, “Is there anything else you want from the house or property?”

Liberty looks warily at her and says, “What else have you found?”

She says, “The pattern of the kitchen cabinet knobs and the rosary is obviously an important symbol for your family. Do you want them?”

He smiles at her and says, “No, the knobs look very nice on the restored cabinets. My grandmother would be pleased at the way you have restored the cabin. Aunt Raene would be pleased to know that someone else values her rosary.” He is staring at the kitchen side of the great chimney.

Jessica says, “While I was suffering from heat stroke and frantically looking for artesian springs, I saw the old Mason cabin chimney on the north side of the lake and the chimney in the old school house. Those chimneys made me realize that someone has expertly filled in the ovens that were built into this chimney. You have my permission to tear down the stonework and take whatever is hidden there.”

Liberty shakes his head and says, “I would prefer to let you enjoy the beauty of the chimney just the way it is now. These books are the family treasure that I wanted to find. Thank you very much.”

Jessica says, “What are you going to do now?”

Liberty says, “Tomorrow morning, I will visit the Sheriff’s office and file the papers necessary to properly bury my aunt in the family plot of the Catholic Cemetery.”

Jessica says, “You may access the lake through the pasture gate any time you need to visit the lake shore. Do you need a ride back to your Jeep?”

Liberty says, “No, I know the way and I want to enjoy the sunset tonight. Thank you.”

Max and Rocky follow him through the pasture to the gate. They stand under the cedars by the gate and watch him slowly walk down the slope toward the lake.

After he leaves, Jessica sits down to enjoy a cup of coffee and stare at her chimney. That was very intriguing. Liberty had confirmed her suspicions that someone had expertly walled in the great stone ovens in the chimney; but, by his expression it was clear that he was totally unaware of it. If the chimney change was so obvious, why didn’t Race say anything about it? Race had helped her remodel this house and had probably spent hundreds of hours here. What did Race know about her chimney?

The stone box at the base of the mud room porch had been crudely done by an inexperienced hand; but, the stone repair job on the chimney had been done by an expert craftsman. The stonework was flawless and if she hadn’t seen other chimneys with the ovens, she would never have known that someone had modified her chimney.

Janice calls on the phone at sunset. Jessica has quite a story to tell as she watches the reflections of the setting sun on hillside east of the lake.

Chapter 33 Raene’s Story

Jessica and Janice sat in the rear of the Catholic Church. They arrived early to allow the family to privately assemble and get re-acquainted. The Smith, Jones, and Mason families arrived and mingled before the service. This was a huge extended family. It was clear that this extended family had deep affections for each other as they greeted and hugged one another.

Liberty faced the family and friends assembled in the Catholic Church. He was there to honor his Aunt Raene. Liberty said, “My Aunt Raene was a remarkable woman who led an amazing life. I would like to read an entry from her diary so you can hear her own words as she wrote them in 1940.”

My name is Raene Smith. Raene means “wise guardian” and I finally understand the reality I was destined to encounter and overcome. I was named after my great-great grandmother Raene Smith. I grew up listening to her stories of the enchanted land where she grew up. She was an eloquent woman who wrote fanciful and romantic stories in her diary. Grandmother Raene’s stories were filled with the romantic adventures of a princess and her knight in shining armor. The knight rescued the princess from evil, they fell in love, and they lived happily ever after. The knight and princess had many exciting adventures rescuing their family and friends from the iron fist of the evil emperor. The knight and princess moved to America and they had more adventures in the Promised Land saving my Native American cousins from imprisonment on the reservations. Although happy, they always longed for the home they left behind.

Whenever my relatives traveled to Germany, they would return and tell such exciting stories of their adventures in this enchanted land. I couldn’t wait to go there myself. When I graduated from high school, I made plans to go to school in Germany. Mom and Dad were shocked at my decision. I went to that enchanted land of my ancestors to study art and history. I married my knight in shining armor in a real life fairy tale wedding. We were so much in love and for a while we lived “our happily ever after”. I was so enamored with my own romantic dreams that I turned a blind eye to the reality around me. When the true horror of man’s inhumanity to man was unfolding around me, I only saw my knight in shining armor.

Then one day, an old woman with a star drawn on her tattered coat ran around the corner of the church in front of me, grabbed my arm, and thrust an old book into my hands. She said, “Please save this for my family, this is all I have left to give them.” Later, I learned this was a Jewish woman’s prayer book that had been handed down through many generations and was the recorded history of the woman’s family. The old woman passed by me and continued to run down the street. I turned to follow her as a group of soldiers ran past me after the old woman. She was grabbed by the soldiers and dragged away. I followed them to the train station. I saw an officer hand the old woman over to soldiers who were herding people onto train cars.

The officer turned to face me and I saw reality in the face of my knight in shining armor. He ordered me to go home. I obeyed him, but I did not go to the home he intended. I went straight back to church and moved into the convent. I vowed to spend the rest of the war fighting to save the persecuted just like my great grandparents John and Greta Smith had done during the reign of Bismarck. I finally understood the reality behind the romantic adventures written by great-great grandmother Raene. It was my turn to face reality and do what was right.

Liberty ended the eulogy by saying, “Aunt Raene’s diary and the Jewish woman’s prayer book are being donated to the Holocaust Museum. In her diary, she recorded the names and as much family information as she knew about the many children that she helped save during World War II. Our family hopes this information will help other families find peace and enable some families to be reunited.

Aunt Raene spent the final years of her life at peace with herself and the Lord. She lived in solitude in the valley below our family cabin tending a small garden, enjoying the undemanding honesty of nature, and in prayer. She could not bear to be uprooted by the lake and died of sorrow at the loss of her tranquil valley. ”

As she listens to Liberty, Jessica thinks of the Randy Travis song I’ll Do My Part. As she leaves the funeral service, Jessica hums the lyrics,

I tried my best.

I gave my heart.

I took no rest.

Time will tell if I left my mark.

The Smith family was truly an amazing family!