Digging the Trench.

Linc got up just as the sun was coming up, built a fire and put on a
pot of coffee. Then went down to the creek and got a bucket of water.
He filled the teakettle,
Lucas got out of bed, and said he had a great night's sleep. He went
on out of the cabin and sat in the sunshine . Linc brought out a
couple cups of coffee and sat down beside him, just as John and Trudy
drove up. Trudy had a container of cinnamon rolls and they sat and
ate them with coffee while they planned on just where to dig the
trench.
Linc helped John unload the front end loader, and as John began to dig
the trench, he joined Trudy and Lucas down at the wild blackberry
patch.
They had been picking about an hour when Trudy let out a shriek. Linc
and Lucas ran to see what was wrong. She stood stark still staring
at something when they found her. There in front of her, curled up on
a berry branch lay a huge rattlesnake. Linc touched her arm and told
her to slowly back away, and she did. She said she was done picking
berries now. She was too scared to pick any more. They had about
three gallons anyway so that was enough for now.
Back up at the cabin, they found John had finished the trench and had
a shovel, digging a ditch to divert the trickle stream of rusty water
into the trench. When he finished, they sat around in the shade
drinking iced tea, and rested while Trudy told John about her
encounter with the rattlesnake. Lucas said he should have warned her
about snakes but just didn't think of it.
They walked back up to look at the trench . They could see where the
water was slowly trickling into the trench and sinking into the
ground. So far, there was only a pile of rust where the water seeped
into the trench. It may be a long time before they would see any
water, but at least it wasn't going into the creek any longer.
It was getting late afternoon so Linc fired up the BBQ and Trudy took
some ribs she had cooked all night in the slow cooker. and put them
on the BBQ and they all got busy, getting the rest of the food ready
and out on the table.
After stuffing themselves, they all sat around talking about family
members and wanting visits and so forth. John said now that the
trench was taken care of he and Trudy would like to take the last
week in the month off to go visit family, if it was ok with them.
Linc said they would make out just fine. He said he could feed the
pigs and the chickens. The cows would take care of them selves. If
there was a problem he couldn't handle, he would call the ranch and
get someone to help him. So they could go, and not worry about them.
Just have a good time visiting.

Linc Thought about how he would like to improve a few things at the
farm. He knew that Lucas was getting older and he wanted to make the
farm his home. He didn't know for sure if he wanted to be a farmer,
but he was educated as a geologist and he liked the education he got.
He could always keep John and Trudy as long as they wanted the job, he
figured. He still didn't know for sure what the time masters had in
store for him, but what ever, so far, it hadn't interfered with his
life in this time period. He would just have to wait and see what
happened.
Linc knew Lucas was enjoying the stay here at the cabin, and figured
they would spend at least three more days here, until he had to take
Lucas into a doctors appointment. He also figured maybe by that time
he would have things straightened out at the retreat and supplied, so
he could tell Lucas about it and maybe take him there. He wanted to
ask the time master if there would be a health issue if he did it
first.

Later that night after Lucas was asleep, Linc went back to the
retreat. He took a strong bright flash light with him this time.
There were some things he wanted to look at in the cave, he couldn't
see with the lamps. He first went to the house and into the office.
After turning on the computer, he searched for any information on
Roland's files that would give him more info about the time masters
and where he had been while a time master. He figured maybe it would
give him some insight as to where and when the time masters lost their
powers and why. There was a lot of trivial junk that wasn't
enlightening at all, that he erased. A bit of porn that he erased as
well. He did find some info about Italy stays that were interesting
an a few items about Egypt that were very interesting. Some of it was
from an attempt to find out what was inside the great pyramid. Seems
he went there when a ruling Caliph was in power, and he had commanded
his army to break into the pyramid and extract the treasures he was
sure was in there. What he found out wasn't
recorded in his files, but it was interesting anyway. Got Linc to
thinking about Ruben Hanks, the tomb painter. Linc found Roland had
been to a lot of different time periods and brought back various
artifacts from them. Well Linc wondered. If he did, then where are
they? Could the terrible painting in the other room be one of them?
Or the two beautiful watercolors in the guest bedroom be some? He
would have to look closer at them. Linc browsed through more files
that he deleted. There were no e-mails. Maybe they would not
transmit from here or something, or maybe he just didn't e-mail
anyone. No record of any deleted ones either. Linc grew tired of
looking through the files for now. There were still a good many
personal ones and a whole lot of other files to go through. Some
other time. He shut the computer down and went into the other room
and looked at the big painting. Oh wow! This ghastly thing was
painted by Roland's Father. No artifact there. He went into the guest
room and looked at the watercolors. They were both signed EBH. So
Roland's Mother painted these. They were very lovely.
Linc went into the bedroom and went into the walk-in closet. As he
looked at the clothing hanging there, he could see some of them were
in style a hundred years ago or more. He thought maybe there were some
cammo sweat pants he might keep, then he put all the rest of the
stuff into a garbage bags to take to a thrift store. Boots and shoes
into another, and emptied all the drawers into another. There was a
trinket box with a few cuff links, tie-bars and rings in it, that he
left on top of a dresser. There was a full length mirror on the wall.
Old Roland was a very sharp dresser, that's for sure. Thing is, a guy
could walk around in the nude here because there was no one around to
see. Well what ever.
There was a shed around in back of the house. Linc took the bags back
there to store them until he figured just how he was going to get it
back off the island. He had put the garbage along with the garbage
that was already there and put the clothes on the other side of the
room. He thought, while John and Trudy were gone, He could drive the
truck to the big dumpsters that were outside of town, very early in
the morning before Lucas woke up, go to the retreat from there, get
the garbage, come back there and put it into the dumpsters. He
could do the same thing at the thrift store as well. Now with thinking
that problem was solved, he got the flashlight and went toward the
cave. When he was here before, he could see there was no water in
the kitchen part but he remembered seeing bowls and pitchers in each
bedroom and a wash basin on a table by the door to the pantry a
bucket stood there as well.
This time he walked on past the cave and walked a bit farther. Here
he found another cave. It was smaller, and had a water tap. Seems
there was a water line from some where to this cave. There was a wood
fired boiler that heated the water for a shower. They got the water
for the main cave here.
Linc returned to the cave and looked at the awful painting hanging
there. Sure enough, Master Hancks had painted that one as well.
He went into the bedroom to check something he thought he saw last
night, but the light was too dim to be sure. He went over to the
chiffenrobe and looked at the floor, Yes! He did see what looked like
tracks on the floor where the thing had been moved many times. It did
have casters on it, but was very heavy and made marks on the cave
floor when moved. Linc gave it a tug. And it swung away from the wall
smoothly. There was a tunnel back of it. Linc went in and followed
it. It must have been a hundred feet long, with notches carved out of
the side walls. He looked in some of them and saw they each had
pinkish glow to them. Linc wondered just what that was all about.
Must be a time masters thing. He went back to the cave and closed
the tunnel up. He had to look on the computer and see it there was
anything about it there before he asked the time master about it.
Could it have something to do with the lose of power?
He went on out of the cave and back to the cabin for a good nights sleep.



To be continued,