Chapter 21

I received a call from Mervin while eating breakfast. "Mike, at your suggestion, I went to the REA people and asked about pole rental and why the telephone company didn't cooperate with them. From what they know, it is some long ago dispute that no one knows what the root cause is or why that has not been revisited. Just about the time you get cable, you might get a phone line too, but I might have something for you. The cable company has begun offering telephone service through the cable. You can now get a single bill for cable, internet, and telephone service. What do you think about that?"

"Sounds good, Mervin, but the first thing I need is to get is broadband up here on the mountain. If the cable company can work with the REA for pole use, how soon can I get internet service?"

"Funny you should ask that. I talked to Gene this morning and his men have run cable to the first leg that goes up the mountain. You might have what you want by the end of the week. I attended a short class up in Lexington that showed me how to install and test the telephone and broadband service. For your cable TV, I'll give you a switch so you can keep the satellite as well as cable. I'll understand if you decide not to renew the satellite service. I'll still get a residual for you being a multi-use subscriber to cable."

This was good news. Not only would we have the Internet, but we would have a regular telephone now. I wasn't sure there was a reason to have regular telephone company service, but if I found I needed it in the future, I'd have the telephone company install a line.

That reminded me: Jimmy wanted a telephone put in the office trailer. His idea was to use an answering machine so that if people had a road problem, they could leave it on the answering machine and one of the men would get back to them. After thinking about the needs of the road crew, I thought I should put phones in their residential trailers, as well as TV and the Internet in all three locations. The cable company feeder passes by the county lot, so it shouldn't be a big deal to get service.

I called Mervin back, "Mervin, I'm going to make your day. How about putting the multi-use service in the office trailer out at the county road commissioner's lot and in the two residential trailers that are on private land in back? We had to install a pole for the power to get back there, so it shouldn't be a big deal."

"Now that I can do myself, Mike. Do you really need TV cable in the office trailer?"

After thinking about it for a second, I said, "Sure, that way the guys can watch the weather in the morning before they go out. If it's a rainy day, like today is going to be, they will have the TV to occupy their time."

"Mike, how about I run a telephone line from the trailer to the pole barn? That way they can answer the phone if they are out there working."

"Sounds good, Mervin, I'll pick up some telephones and TVs for the guys today. When will you have time for that order?"

"Ha, ha, ha, you jest, of course. For you, my man, I will have you up and working by this afternoon."

I turned to Mom and Millie, "Can the women working in the garden do it without supervision? I need to make a run up to Wal-Mart, and if I do that, I might as well take another week's worth of wine to Rodrigo. We might be able to get a special early lunch there."

When you say shopping or Wal-Mart to a country lady, be prepared for a stampede. Mom said, "The ladies came while we were still eating breakfast and started right in. They know what to do for the next week. Since it's probably going to rain today, they should be fine with what they can get picked. Kroger is coming to get their corn that is being picked this afternoon, so they can pick up the other vegetable containers then, too. How long will we be up there?"

"I'll fill the bottles I've washed out and we can be on our way. That will take an hour and we can leave after that. What I need at Wal-Mart won't take long. I want to get three TVs, a PC with a couple of pieces of software, and four telephones. I'll get more surge protectors for everything, as well. Let me call Rodrigo and let him know we want to come for an early lunch and a delivery."

Rodrigo said he would be happy to serve us lunch and would have the chef make one of his new experimental creations for us. He also advised me that he may not be using the wine as fast as he expected, but would welcome having next week's delivery early.

I called Jimmy to let him know about the broadband and telephone service at the office trailer, but thought I might let the phone, broadband, and TV service be a surprise when they come in today.

Filling the bottles only took about thirty minutes, since I knew what I was doing now. The barrel I was filling from tasted especially good, so I knew Rodrigo would be pleased.

We were in Mount Sterling by ten thirty, and delivered the wine before the Wal-Mart trip. Rodrigo said he would have my check for the first delivery and this one when we came for lunch.

At Wal-Mart, the women took a cart toward household goods and I took a cart toward electronics. I selected two cordless phone sets that had an answering machine and two extra handsets. For the office I bought a regular type phone with an answering machine and a cordless handset. For the pole barn, I thought a standard wall phone would be best.

The PC was easy to decide on, as they had a package that included the PC with a monitor, surge protector, operating system, virus protection, and Microsoft Office. That should get them started. If they needed some form of CAD software, we would look for it. The TV selection also was easy to pick out since they were so cheap. I bought three 25 inch flat screens, along with wall mounts. That should make all of them happy. They can run cable if they want a TV in their personal bedrooms. I figured Mervin's internet was going to include a wireless router that the guys could use with their laptops. I think every military guy has a laptop.

When I found Mom and Millie, they were pushing their cart toward the checkouts. I let them put their purchases on one receipt, and I put all of mine on another so Maude could separate what I could deduct.

At the restaurant, Rodrigo personally served us, letting us taste his chef's latest experiment. We might not have had the most distinguished tastes, but all three of us thought the experiment was good enough to be added to the menu.

On the way back home, Mom and Millie asked that I take them home before going to the road commissioner's lot. They felt they should be around for at least some of the day's picking activity since it didn't rain today.

I headed to the road yard and found Mervin busily installing jacks in the two residential trailers. While he did that, I set the PC up and was immediately able to get on the Internet. I plugged in the cordless phone and let it begin charging. Out in the pole barn, I found the extension jack for the office phone and hung the wall phone. I called my cell from that phone so I would have a record of the number and made a note of it in my cell phone contacts, as that number would go out to all of the property owners in the county.

Back in the office trailer, I quickly mounted the wall bracket for the TV and hung it over the activity counter along the wall. It was a place where it could be seen throughout the main area of the office trailer.

While Mervin worked on the last trailer, I hung the other residential trailer's TV and followed Mervin to the last one. Together, we had the second residential trailer TV hung and working. Mervin had his laptop and connected to the wireless network telling us that the two connections were working. The man left notes in both trailers to advise how to do their setup, and also left his telephone number in case they had trouble.

As we walked out to our vehicles, Mervin told me, "You know the cable crew is pushing your connection through fast. They should have cable hung right up to your electrical pole by sometime tomorrow. Decide where you want cable drops so they can install everything you want at one time. Your cable path crew has been so good that the company wants to reward you with a fast installation of your account. The other thing is they wouldn't have tried to pair up with REA if it wasn't for you. We're way ahead of the telephone operating company because of you. This big cable company rewards those who help them."

I checked on Ezra and the men on the way home and found they were doing better than even they expected. Ezra gave me receipts that showed I had been shipping at least two loads of specialty wood logs a day. Ezra was smart and had three of the salt trucks hauling chunks of oak and hickory to the storage area on Ben's place.

At home, I cornered Raul and asked if he could build the bins Mom had talked about for the potatoes and onions. He said he would have them built the next day and not to worry about it. He was acting a little strange before he finally got out what he wanted to say, "Mr. Mike, there is a farmer on the other side of town near farmer George who has sold his land to a company that is going to tear down all of the buildings. Would you agree to us taking the buildings down and relocating them at your and our place? You will be able to build on to your barn with used seasoned barn oak and we could have an additional house and a big machine shed to house our trucks. We could use the extra wood to build a bigger chicken house for both of us. Would you allow us to do this? We would not want to be paid for work we do on our place, so you would come out ahead if we had to move."

"Raul, Jose, you can do all of that, but I do need the barn finished by the middle of October. The first freeze should have come and gone by then, so if you're going to do that, get going on it so you can finish the barn."

"Mr. Mike, we want to put another pole barn behind your expanded barn. The property we are tearing down has two pole barns and a silo that can be used for corn or whatever you grow enough to store."

"Sounds good, Guys, but please don't bring in too many more of your relatives. If there are too many new faces, you will draw attention to your home."

Jose came close and lowered his voice, "Mr. Mike, we have one cousin that must come here to escape the cartel. You will want him to help you, as he is a winemaker. He is not young enough to work the fields, but he can work a vineyard and knows how to make wine. You will be able to use him and he will be ever grateful for a place to live. The cartel has killed all of his family, so he is alone in this world. We feel we should help him and we think he will help you."

What do you say to men who have been fair and good to you? The only answer to give was a yes, and we would help him if he was as advertised.

Inside the house, Mom was talking on the phone on the desk in the little bedroom. How could she be doing that? I watched her and could tell she was really having a conversation, so I looked to see where it was plugged in and found that there was a jack down behind the desk. Next to it was another jack that led to a router that was connected to the PC on the desk.

While Mom talked on the phone, I booted the PC and when it was up, attempted to connect to the internet. Ta dah! It worked. Because I was curious, I went outside and saw the line from the electric pole to the house. The little cabin on the mountain was coming into the twenty-first century.

My cell phone rang as I was walking out to the barn to begin the evening chores. Jimmy excitedly told me, "You did it again. You surprised us all with the Internet and the phone line in the office and in the machine barn. You are a mind reader, Mike. This is exactly what we needed. Thanks for anticipating our needs."

We chatted for a minute before he hung up to finish his end of day reports.

Not five minutes later, my cell rang again, "Mike, what the f****k did you do? There is a phone line in each of our manufactured homes and two extra cordless units. Not only that, but I'm told there are TVs in the trailers, and I just noticed the TV here in the office. Holy shit, Mike, you didn't have to do that. This is unbelievable, guy; I hope we justify your generosity."

Jimmy hung up instead of letting me tell him I was very happy with everything the group had done so far. I was very happy to have provided a little comfort to their lives by streamlining or enhancing our communication abilities.

This was something good that I had done for the men. They were taking care of years of neglect by the former commissioners in the county's townships, and now, six men had put the roads in decent condition in just a couple of months. We might not be making a big profit, but we were up to date and prepared for winter.

I could sit back with a glass of wine and feel good about the progress we had made in all the areas we worked in.

Mom asked me, "You know, Mike, with all of the extra people you need to feed, you should get an extra steer. In addition to the widow and Teddy, you are going to need to help feed those men, as well as the families living at Ben's. It wouldn't be that big a deal to have another steer, and a younger one to join the other, as next on the grill. The kids will need beef, and if I know people right, Stanley and Gracie will want some, too. You already have half of what you need, see if you can come up with the other half."

I thought that I would worry about that on market day, as I really didn't have time to go hunt up a deal on another couple of steers.

The next day, I used the ATV to tour each of the vineyards and to taste grapes. Some of the grapes were mighty close, and some were a long way from ripening. I wrote down where the maturing grapes were on my pad before heading around the mountain to the second vineyard.

What do you know? I ran into a furry black critter right away. He acted like he knew he shouldn't be there, but he was, and he lumbered down the hill before he almost became the fourth hide tacked up on the wall of the pump house.

The grapes here were the same as the other grapes in our big vineyard. When I drove down the mountain to get to the Jorgenson vineyard and orchard, I could immediately see the bear and deer population had done a number on the lower branches. There were no bears present, or I probably would have killed them, instead of evaluating what was needed. I supposed I would have to put fences up to keep bear and deer away from the orchards and vineyards so we would have good crops.

Teddy said for me to cut hay again as it was tall enough to give us over a hundred wire bales of hay for winter storage. I was figuring on the last cutting being string bales in order to have the lighter bales in the front of the hayloft.

The grass I had planted in the three orchards was another problem; I could cut it, but couldn't get a rake or the baler between the rows of trees. I had been loading the hay by hand and hauling it out to where the baler was this year, but next year was going to be different. I was going to put that grass to use. The cost would be fencing, but that would have a two-fold purpose. It would keep deer and bear out, and also contain the animals I was going to get to graze and fatten up for the summer. By the time the hay growing season was over in the fall, I should have some fat animals that I could easily sell as butcher ready stock.

To be sure my thinking was right, I made a trip to the butcher. After describing how I would house and graze the beef, I asked him his opinion. He had a happy reply, "Mike, that should be almost as good as giving them grain for the last ninety days before you bring them in. If you want to put that extra bit of fat around the good rib meats, feed them some grain during the last ninety days. That should bring them into condition for even the best tables."

Now that I knew what it would take, I needed to work on getting the areas fenced.

I had a lot of baled and loose hay from the orchards, so the new addition to the barn was welcome. Instead of loading from the back, where the carpenters were still building, I loaded from the front, putting the baled hay in stacks on both sides of the loft, with an aisle down the middle. We forked the loose hay in the middle nearest the doors to use up first.

I personally needed a breather, so early one morning after determining that Ezra was doing fine and the road crew were taken care of, I packed a lunch, loaded the .30-30 Winchester, and began a tour on the ATV. My main objective was to check the markers on the land that was included in the two parcels I had purchased with Eliza's place. I wanted to go from there to see if I should try to buy everything higher, all the way to the top of the mountain.

The ATV was fun to drive, and I was easily able to find the old logging road. Knowing that I would probably want to cut a road eventually, I marked the trees that would need to come out of the old rutted wagon trail. The higher I went, the more cedar and pine I encountered, until I found the highest marker of the land I owned.

From what I had been able to determine, the land higher up was owned by the county and was undocumented and possibly unexplored. There was supposed to be a surveyor's bench mark on top of the mountain from which all of the lands below were measured. The spot was marked as BM+ on the USGS topographical maps I had gotten in for the whole county to help with the road work and cable path clearing. Those maps indicate the general type of vegetation as well as the positions of streams and the contours of slopes. The scale is odd, 1:24,000, but they're incredibly detailed.

The road around the mountain was normal, except for the fact that the higher I got, the less dense the trees and brush were. When I came out on a level area that almost looked like a platform on the way up, I realized I was now halfway around the mountain and within a half mile of the peak.

There was something eerie about where I had stopped. It was almost as if something was telling me to go back, but another voice was telling to keep looking. The underlying voice to explore was ever present in my mind. The road finally ended at another level area. There were huge boulders that were between the plateau and the mountain, so I parked the ATV and walked between the boulders.

Holy smokes! In front of me were two huge cave openings. The openings must have been over thirty feet high and fifty feet across. I wondered about this, as it almost looked as if the boulders had been placed where they were to defend from a wagon approach.

I walked between the boulders and found a few pieces of metal that I recognized as rifle and pistol parts. That the parts were lying on the ground near the boulders was unusual, but I'm sure an archeologist or historian would know the reason.

Approaching the cave on the left, I had a weird feeling that someone was watching me. The natural light from outside lit the area back into the cave for more than fifty feet. It was about there that I found a row of small chests. They looked like small pirate chests from movies that I watched years ago.

The nearest chest to the entrance of the cave didn't have a lock on the hasp so I pushed it open. I didn't know what it was, but it looked like bars of something, and a lot of old coins that I had no idea about what they were worth.

I took a single coin and closed the chest. The next chest's lock was not closed and when I opened it I found it was equally as full of coins as were chests three, four, five, and six. It was amazing that all of the locks that were through the loop for the hasp were open but in a position to look as if locked. The seventh chest had a strange metal in it that I didn't recognize, but was all in small bars. The metal must have been valuable although I didn't know what it was. It looked like there were three types of metal bars. One type, the largest quantity, was probably gold. There were a couple that were probably silver but at least a half dozen bars of the strange metal I didn't recognize.

The eighth chest contained the same, but the ninth was something to marvel at. The inside was filled to the brim with some kind of an assortment of stones. They mostly were various sizes of smooth stones that you would find in jewelry. They were not diamonds, more like rubies and emeralds, but I don't know anything about stones. The top of the chest had large necklaces made of the different metals, with the stones inset within them. I didn't know the value of what I had found, but I did know it was valuable.

Outside, I walked up to the top of the mountain and looked out over the lower mountains near me and wondered about the people who had left the treasures behind. You would have thought someone would have come back for the treasure. Could everyone who knew about the treasure have died? Even the commanders who must have ordered the treasure to be stored up here couldn't have all died. But then that was a very vicious war and many people were killed including high ranking officers.

It was while I was on the top of the mountain that I felt a presence. I sat on the concrete marker left almost two hundred years ago and looked around to see if I could see who, or what, was watching me.

I didn't see anything, but still felt there was someone or something.

After recording the post at the top of the mountain, I went back to the two cave entrances and looked in the cave to the right. As soon as I entered that cave, I felt as if something was pulling me in and something else was pushing me away from the cave. This was a cave with some heavy secrets. Just past the entrance, and behind a couple of big rocks, were bones and what was left of Civil War Confederate Army uniforms. There were hats near the skulls, and leaning up against the rocks were a couple of Civil War era rifles that didn't look weathered or rusty.

This cave didn't let light in as well as the other one did, and I would need an alternate light source to see to the back.

Knowing what was on this side, I moved around the top of the mountain and found another cave entrance. I was thinking that this would probably connect with the two around the other side, and I looked in the cave as far as I could see. There was nothing except a couple of barrels fairly close to the entrance, and a small stack of cannonballs even closer to the front. There were no cannon, so I didn't know what the balls were far.

I traced my steps back to the flat area where the ATV was and looked at my watch. I was easily what might be an hour and a half from the house, and it was already four, so I needed to head back. Just for a record, I used my cell phone to take pictures of what I considered to be important. I didn't take pictures of the chests, as I needed to find out what the local laws on found property might be.

There was nothing to be concerned about at home, as the women had completed the chores and were preparing supper. Ezra showed up shortly after I came in the house, took his boots off, and sighed as he sat in one of the rocking chairs.

"Mike, we're going to reach Mount Sterling by the end of next month. I think the men may need at least a week's break before we start the other two short local runs and begin the run to Pine Ridge. I think I'd like to take your mom to Chicago for a couple of days to see the sights, if that's all right with you."

Mom was looking straight at me and winked at me when he said that. I took it that I should agree, and told Ezra, "Sounds like a good idea, Ezra. I'm going to be busy with winemaking and harvesting from the orchards, so it's probably a good time to get out of here. Make your plans and think about us while you're having a great time up there."

In my mind, I was mulling over what to do about the caves and the chests I found up there. This wasn't a good time to be messing with something like that, since worrying about it would take up all my time. The best I could come up with was to let what had been there for the last hundred to a hundred fifty years alone, and tend to it later. If everything got taken, stolen, or just disappeared, well, I didn't have it before, so did I need it now? The whole top of the mountain was really intriguing to me and I still felt a call to keep exploring.