Chapter 11

“Paul O’Dell, you fool! You have a daughter. You’re a father! Not a mother!” Opal Anne chided me with outrageous laughter. “Wait until I tell that one to your brothers.”

“Oh, don’t do that,” but she kept laughing, condemning me to a life of jokes.

When she calmed down, Opal Anne began giving more instructions. “OK, my love, please clean me up and then we can think of a name for our daughter.”

“A name?” I knew I’d forgotten to do something.

“You didn’t think about a name for the baby, did you?”

I made a soft, quiet moan, “No.”

“I have to push again, Paul, this should be the rest of the cord and what they call the placenta. All you have to do is collect it and take it out and bury it or better yet throw it in the river and the fish will take care of it.”

Opal Anne let out a bit of a grunt and the remains of her insides came out. I carefully pulled the corners of the towel together to avoid any spillage and set it outside to the side of the door. It wasn’t stormy out, but it was cold, and I wasn’t going to run out there without the proper clothes.

When I returned to Opal Anne all I could see was the tiny little girl suckling on her mother’s teat. Her little hands were curled up in almost a fist and her face was only a little less red than her hair.

“What do you think for a name, Opal Anne?

“What do you think, Paul?”

“I wouldn’t mind naming her after her mother,” I said, thinking I had a brilliant idea, but a look at her and the face she was making washed away that idea.

“You mean like Opal Anne, Junior?”

“That does sound a bit strange.”

Smiling Opal Anne said softly, “I think we should name her after her wonderful father.”

“You want to name her Paul?”

“No! But what about Pauline?”

“Pauline? That sounds nice. I don’t believe I’ve ever met a girl or woman named Pauline. I like it. So, her name is Pauline Opal Anne O’Dell.”

“Opal Anne?”

“Well I thought at first that Opal Anne might be too long a middle name, but if you think the full Opal Anne is better, I can agree to that.”

“I think Pauline Opal Anne O’Dell sounds just fine.”

And just like that the Paul O’Dell portion of the O’Dell clan was off and running. Pauline, or Pauli as I came to call her, was a wonderful baby. She began sleeping through the nights after about three weeks.

Many was the night I’d fall back to sleep sitting against the head of the bed, with Opal Anne sitting between my legs, resting her back against my chest as she fed Pauli. I remember that there were several occasions where I woke up with Opal Anne there and thought that I was still dreaming.

Over the next two months the weather became milder and the snow melt began. In late March, I set the fish traps out, so we could have fresh fish anytime we wanted. It was a good break from deer, elk, and squirrel. Pauli enjoyed being outdoors with her mother and father, often just sitting in the little chair I’d built for her and giggling.

Some important things happened in our lives as Spring approached. First, Opal Anne and I started making love again. It had been a long time and while Opal Anne was free with the use of her hands and mouth, it wasn’t the same. She even let me have her ass a few times, but she didn’t enjoy it. She said she did it because she knew that a man needed something tight to stick his cock in and her bottom was the best she could do.

Once I found out that she really didn’t like it, I would stop her when she tried to get me to go there. I loved her for her, not the fucking. But once she said she was ready, we took our time for the first few times, and then it was just wild and crazy.

She would be out doing something in the yard and whistle at me. I’d turn to look, and she would have pulled her pants down and presented herself. We fucked in the woods, once when I had her hanging from a sling, we were using to lift logs onto a sled. Opal Anne told me it was her whore coming out. I told her to let it keep coming.

The other very important thing that happened as Spring approached, was the big find on the other side of the river. Once the snow mostly melted, we had the chance to really look around the property over there. I walked over the small bridge to look around after the thaw. The ground was clearer because the trees had not begun their Spring growth yet. The first thing that caught my eye was that there was a long piece of standing water, about two feet deep and twenty feet wide running across the property.

It seemed like it was similar to the smaller grooves we’d found and used to bring water to the stable and our hogan, but this was much larger. I followed the small bit of water to the right, and it circled back to the river just before the falls. I walked back in the direction opposite the flow and it started right at the river back where I had felled some trees to block the trail up to the plain and mark the spot where our land began. Closer examination exposed some wooden poles in the ground right up against the riverbank and the examination of those found that there was a gate of some sort buried there.

I went back to the other end of the groove and found another buried gate. The groove was a man-made riverbed that flowed right back into the original river. That was when I got excited. If the gate was designed to change the course of the river, it would leave the gold on the current riverbed accessible to mining.

When I took a pickax and shovel to the dirt behind the gate, it became apparent that I had correctly surmised the purpose of the gate. My next task was to clear as much of the alternate riverbed as I could. I waded into the cold water and cleared away as much brush and undergrowth that had grown while the river had remained in its normal course as I could before I lost feeling in my legs. I gave up on the idea of taking down the small trees that had grown as well. Cutting them in two feet of cold water was just not going to happen.

After nine days of work, I was ready to try to move both the upstream and the downstream gates. I put a rope around the free side of the upstream gate and applied a little force. I moved it just enough to get it partially open into the rivers flow ... and to break the thing. Now I had water running into both channels! I sat on the side of the river wondering what to do when Opal Anne came out, bringing me water and a venison sandwich.

“How’s the project going, Paul?”

“I think I broke the gate. This is going to be rough.”

Opal Anne looked at the situation with the gate being partially open and water running down both channels. She looked back and forth a few times and then spoke up.

“Paul? Why don’t you just close off the main channel permanently and turn this new one into the main channel? I don’t see why the Spaniards didn’t redirect the river in the first place. Then you can get access to the gold with no problems.”

I looked at her and then up to the heavens. Wasn’t that what I was going to do in the first place? But she was right in wondering why hadn’t the Spanish done that before? Was I overlooking something? I kept looking around to see if Opal Anne’s idea would work and seeing nothing apparent, I threw a rope around the largest of the wooden poles comprising the gate and handed the end of it to Opal Anne.

“I’m gonna walk around to the other side and get a mule. Tie a piece of wood to the end of the rope and then you can throw it over to me. I’ll use the mule to pull the gate over and close off the flow.”

“OK. Pauli and I will take care of everything.”

I kissed my wife and daughter, getting giggles from one of them. I ran across the bridge and got a mule out of the stable. I put a pack rig on him and cinched it down tight before leading him to the river.

“OK, Opal Anne let’s have it.”

Opal Anne swung the small log on the end of the rope around her head like a lasso and then let it fly across the river. It made it across easily with room to spare. I picked it up and, taking up all the slack I could, tied it off on the pack rig and led the mule away. I went slow in case the gate started to break up, but it held firm and soon it was closing off most of the flow down the main channel. I then did the same with the other gate. Soon the flow of the river quickly cleared out the loose mud and underbrush in the new channel and the river was flowing freely back towards the falls.

I was going to wait a few days and check to see the effects of the change in flow. I could have just committed to flooding every hogan on the plain! If all was well, then I would set about to make the gate solid by filling the front of the gate with dirt and mud from the original riverbed. Then I could get down to extracting the gold.

There was no flooding, except on the far side of the river. The channel was a work in progress when the Spaniards left. It was neither wide enough nor deep enough to hold the full flow of the river. According to the old Spanish journals that Opal Anne continued to read, they were digging gold out of the river further up the plain and hadn’t gotten to this section yet. They had begun to dig out the channel but never finished it before the smallpox came and ran off everyone.