Ranger Rikki & Gabby discover Gold – Excerpt

“We’re here Gabby. So, uh, what are we here for?”

“This is it? Okay… Yeah the river bend looks right…” Gabby looked around, trying to find identifying landmarks. She climbed up on a decent size rock and surveyed the area.

“Do you need any help from me? Or anything?” Rikki asked. She didn’t like being useless or idle, at least when she was on the job. And she wasn’t confident that Gabby could determine much of significance from looking around.

“Not yet, you can put the tool bag down and hang out for a bit,” she said, pulling a folded map out of her bag. She set it down on the rock, oriented it, and kept looking around.

Clearly it wasn’t her place to run things, so Rikki set all her gear down and walked around. Keeping an eye on Gabby, she frolicked about in the high grass, finding some pretty flowers, indeterminate species of mushrooms, and a sleeping snake. She munched on some mint and checked the oak trees for beetles; thankfully there were none yet.

Out of the corner of her eye she noticed her client hop down off her high rock and start marching down the riverbank. She headed over, and saw the woman turn away from the river and head inland, towards a hilly area. Rikki followed, taking the gear bag with her.

Gabby approached the base of a prominent dirt mound and crouched. The area was thick with bushes, but she pushed and shoved her way between them. Rikki watched with curiosity, and then smiled when Gabby popped up at the base of the mound. Her beautiful hair was full of twigs and leaves, a prophesy Rikki had forseen.

Under that mass of messy hair, her smile beamed wide. She waved Rikki over, calling out for her tool bag and bubbling with excitement.

Rikki approached, but the bushes were pretty thick, and getting the tools through them would be an endeavor. “Are we gonna be in there for a while? These bushes are invasive, I wouldn’t be against cutting them back to clear the space.”

“Oh. Um, yeah, I guess we should,” Gabby considered. Of course ‘we’ meant Rikki, but the Ranger didn’t mind. “Could I get a spade while you do that?”

Ranger Rikki opened the tool bag for the first time. There were spades, shovels, and a bucket. But, also a metal detector, and a screen for sifting. Hmm, what exactly was Gabby searching for?

She passed the spade over and set to cutting the bushes back with her own shears. They were an invasive species originally from Australia, and Rikki didn’t feel bad about trimming them nude and then pulling them out by the roots.

As she worked, Gabby worked as well, digging around with her spade. As the bushes cleared, Rikki could make out a pile of boulders stacked against the mound, and her client scraping away at the base of them. Gabby seemed both excited and frustrated.

“What exactly are you expecting to find there?” she asked.

“Nothing. I mean, well, something… something important. That someone stashed here a long time ago.”

“Oh, something buried?”

“Kinda, well not buried, but hidden in a cave. It should be here, by all accounts, but this pile of rocks isn’t a cave. Maybe it’s the wrong spot…”

Gabby seemed distraught, and was reconsidering her map and the notes on it. But Rikki knew some things about geology and the lay of the land.

“Well, it could be a cave, maybe behind the rocks. Maybe the front collapsed and it’s just blocked,” she offered.

“But this is just a small hill, I think it’s dirt, not a rock cave.”

“Hm, true. But, it could be a mound. You know, like a burial mound. The Native Americans built burial mounds all over, and sometimes they retained an interior space, like a cave.”

“Oh. Hm, well maybe,” Gabby considered thoughtfully. She turned back to the pile of boulders, then pushed an upper one off. It tumbled down into the soft Earth.

“I’ve finished clearing the bushes, let me help you,” Rikki offered. Together the women moved rocks off the pile, handling the larger ones between them. After a few of the obstructions were removed, Rikki felt a cool breeze escape from behind.

“There’s air flowing! It’s probably from your cave!” Rikki excitedly exclaimed.

Gabby squatted down and peered between the rocks, then produced a flashlight and shone it in. “Oh yeah, this is it! Hot damn!” she jumped in excitement, and started tearing at the rocks.

The Ranger stifled a laugh, having not seen her client this excited during the whole trip, even last night. She was worried about injury though, any of those big rocks could break a toe. She assisted Gabby and tried to get her to slow down and be careful.

There was certainly a cave, or interior space, behind the rocks, in the mound. The entrance was low and small, and they would need to crawl.

One large rock still blocked the bottom. The women worked together to move it, resorting to using a shovel as a lever to lift the heavy boulder and tumble it away. “One, two, three!” they rocked it together, and it broke free.

A dam had burst, and water flowed out of the cave, through the opening the boulder had occupied. It was a surprisingly big gush at first, and the long retained cave water spilled over Rikki & Gabby’s boots. At first Rikki felt her socks get soaked, but then her worries evaporated as Gabby’s hand slipped into her own.

The flow slowed to a trickle, and the women sank to their knees to peer into the cave. Gabby’s excitement had transposed into Rikki, and they ignored the warm wet mud, trying to see the mystery that lay ahead of them in the darkness of that long enclosed cavern.