The Turbulence of Butterflies (Max Howard Series Book 6) Page 6

  Ava looked like she had been through a wringer. The baby was wrinkled and still the color of a newborn, but she looked perfectly content next to Ava.

  “That was something wasn’t it?” Bryan said to me. He was obviously proud of delivering his child.

  “It sure was. You did a fine job, Bryan. How’d you know what to do?”

  “We thought she was just starting contractions and then the baby just came. I had to deliver her right then,” Bryan said. “Noah was born at home with a mid-wife so I knew what to do.”

  I hadn’t known that. I was impressed with my grandson and Ava. “How are you doing, Ava?”

  “Okay, I guess, for a cow,” she said and eyed me.

  Oops. She must have heard my comment to Bryan. In an effort to offer him encouragement and steady him, I’d offered that her giving birth was no different than what he’d handled hundreds of times during calving season.

  “I’m starved, though,” she said and grinned at me.

  “Barbin, why don’t you go heat up breakfast and Emily, if you would, start a fresh pot of coffee.” Nobody in my family liked my coffee.

  “Why don’t you. I’ve been up all night,” Barbin said, like all of us in the room hadn’t.

  “Right,” I said and winked at Ava. Barbin saw it and frowned at me.

  “Barbin, I’ll take care of it,” Emily said. “Come on, everyone, let’s give Ava some privacy.”

  After everyone was situated at the kitchen table I took some kolaches and orange juice into Ava and held the baby on the bed while she ate.

  “You didn’t bring me any coffee?” she said.

  “Barbin said none for you. The caffeine will get in the baby’s milk.”

  She frowned but didn’t say anything. “I’m sorry about the mattress and sheets. We’ll have to buy Katie a new mattress.”

  “Don’t worry about that. I’ll take care of it.”

  “What about the cistern?”

  “What about it?” I said.

  “We have to go back to Billings tomorrow.”

  I looked at the doorway to make sure my daughter wasn’t standing there. “Whatever we find, I want you to be in charge of this. We’ll work around you. In fact, that old ranch house on the property is livable if you want to come down on a more permanent basis.”

  “Oh, Max. I wish.”

  “You wish what?” Bryan said and walked into the room.

  “Max was just saying he wanted me to be in charge.”

  “Ava, that’s not possible, you know that. Besides, you don’t even know what they have out there. It could be nothing more than an old watering hole.”

  “Maybe. I want to be there when Hannah is lowered into the cistern.”

  “Yeah, right,” Bryan said.

  “Bryan’s right. You need to rest. We’ll film everything and you can look at it tonight. Speaking of which, I need to get back out to the Pape Ranch. They’ll be waiting on us.”

  “We need to take the baby in today. Emily made a doctor’s appointment for us with Katie’s pediatrician,” Bryan said.

  “My father is going to have a fit she was born in Texas,” Ava said.

  “Consider it a blessing and a sign of good luck,” I offered. I was tickled pink that Ava had the baby on Texas soil. “Do you have a name picked out?”

  “No, we’re stuck. We can’t agree on one yet,” Bryan said.

  “What do you think of Zoe?” Ava asked.

  “Whatever name you come up with, I know I’ll like. Look, I need to get going,” I said and handed the baby to Bryan. I kissed Ava on the forehead.

  She reached up and put her hand on my arm. “Max, I want this. I can handle it from Billings.”

  For whatever reason, I could sense Bryan didn’t want to be here in New Haven or have Ava involved. I suspected he came down just to placate Ava. I could see my chance with them slipping away. Bryan liked Montana too much. “I’ll call you guys later.”

  “Tell her to be careful. It could be that…. never mind, just make sure Hannah takes measured in situ pictures and absolutely no digging. Understood?”

  Barbin caught me on the way out the front door. “Why haven’t you gone to see James Lee?”

  She was referring to an earlier invitation from her brother, James Lee, to me to come to Houston, visit with his family, and meet to Laura Miller’s son whom he had just hired. If Barbin knew about it, then she had a hand in it. Laura Miller and I had been in a relationship after my second wife had passed away and Laura had played a role in my children’s lives when they were young. But I suspected it was more than that. Barbin had always thought, or maybe hoped, that Laura’s child was actually my son, and therefore her step brother. My three children had a difficult time after their mother died and I foolishly went through a string of relationships in the pursuit of relief from my own misery. As unstable as most of those relationships were, Laura, probably had the most influence on my children.

  “You are such a coward,” she said after I extracted my arm from her grasp.

  She didn’t know the half of it, but she made me pause for a moment. I went back into the kitchen to get a mug of coffee to take with me. Emily was talking to Kevin. The poor kid had nearly fainted when he saw all the body fluids on the sheets in Katie’s room.

  “If one of you gets the chance, take Bryan and the kids out to the Butterfly Pasture, before they have to leave. They’ve never seen it,” I said to Kevin.

  “I will,” Emily said. “You know, Dad, I was thinking that if the butterflies come this year, that’s going to be a great attraction for the Meeting Center. We could even set up a special event to celebrate and watch the migration, if it wouldn’t disturb them.”

  “That’s my girl,” I said and headed out to the truck.

  Man, I thought, if the Monarchs did come this year on their migration, I could unwittingly be setting myself up for more grief. It would be just like Lester Pender to accuse me of contributing to the Hurricane Season or whatever else he could concoct to pin on me. He had already insinuated that my land reclamation work on the Howard Ranch was just a cover-up for poor range management and an attempt to live off State tax subsidies. I should’ve never called him an ignorant sonuvabitch on the air and left him off the guest list for The Rancher of the Year Ceremonies. Sunny didn’t speak to me for a week after that on-air incident.

  Chapter 5

  Hannah McCoy was as tall and lanky as Shane Wagnor was and she was dressed in laced boots, shorts, and a wide-brim hat. He was right about her looks. She was an attractive looking young woman even from beneath the hat. They were sitting on the tailgate of her truck sharing a peach between them when I pulled up.

  She hopped down and walked over to my truck. Shane followed her over like a puppy with a new owner after he tossed the pit.

  “Where’s Ava?” he asked.

  “She had her baby last night,” I said still amazed and in awe of the experience.

  “Wow! I can’t believe that, she….” he said and then stopped.

  “That’s so cool. Hi, Mr. Howard, I’m Hannah McCoy,” Hannah said, muscling Shane out of the way and extending her hand.

  I shook her hand through the opened window. She had a firm grip like I figured she would. You could tell a lot about a person, man or woman, by their handshake. I opened the truck door and stepped down. “Call me, Max, please. It’s nice to finally meet you, Hannah. I’ve heard a lot about you.”

  “Don’t pay any attention to what Shane says about me. He exaggerates everything. Was it a boy or girl?”

  “I do not,” Shane protested.

  “She had a girl. They’re both doing fine. I was like you, Shane. I couldn’t believe it either. That was her third child, so I guess it just came easier for her this time. She had the baby right there in my daughter’s bed. We didn’t even need to call the doctor.”

  “That’s way cool,” Hannah said.

  “You guys ready?” I asked.

  “Yes sir. I built us a new rig from some
cedar logs late yesterday evening,” Shane said.

  “Let me get my gear,” Hannah said and walked back to her truck.

  “Did we cause Ava to have her baby too soon?” Shane said in a low voice after Hannah left to get her stuff. I could tell he was concerned that the outing the day before had made her go into labor earlier than she should have. He was a good man, I thought.

  “Shane, that’s on her, not you. There was no way she wasn’t coming out here after flying in from Montana. We’re just lucky she didn’t have it at the cistern. And she’s doing fine now. All’s well, that ends well.”

  On the ride out to the site, I told Hannah what Ava had said. She didn’t say anything until we reached the site. Shane had built two x-braces out of four-inch cedar logs and secured them with a cross brace on each side made with two by fours bolted through the logs. He had a five-inch-thick log in place over the cistern and between the X-braces, notched and secured with a wire wrap. The rig looked strong enough to support him and me both and certainly Hannah’s weight.

  I noted that she didn’t seem excited at visiting the cistern for the first time and I suspected that Shane had shown it to her already. While we double checked the braces and attached a rope over the log across the cistern’s opening, Hannah put on her knee pads and harness. She wore a light strapped around her helmet. Man, I thought, I’m glad my older brother and I hadn’t found this place as kids. He would have just lowered me down on a rope tied around my waist.

  “Did you recharge your iPhone?” Hannah asked.

  “Sure did. I can lower anything you need down along with the power bars and water,” Shane replied. “You’re in my hands, babe. Don’t you worry,” he said and grinned.

  Poor kid; I could tell he had no clue as to who was in whose hands. I walked over to Hannah as she hooked the rope to her harness.

  “Hannah, I want you to be extra cautious down there. All we want to do today is get pictures of what you can see. After we have those pictures you and Ava can decide what our next step is.”

  “I understand, Max. I know what I’m doing.”

  Shane put on some leather gloves and manned the rope, while I leaned over the edge and watched her descend. It wasn’t that far down, maybe nine feet, but we had decided it was better to lower her than have her climb down. It would free her up to film the walls of the cistern and not damage the sides with her boots.

  “Okay, I’m above the floor. Hold,” she called up.

  It was a tight squeeze. She braced herself against the wall with her feet on the other side and filmed the bottom. She maneuvered the iPhone beneath her butt and filmed the bottom of the cistern from about three feet. “Down, one,” she said.

  Shane lowered her down a foot. “Okay. Down one again.”

  I watched her take a ruler from her pocket and place it on the floor of the cistern. She had to really contort her body to lean down and reach the floor.

  “Up two,” Ava called up.

  Shane grunted and hauled her up two marks on the rope. After she had taken several more pictures of the bottom, she raised the camera and shot me looking over the rim.

  “Down, three, and hold,” she said.

  The cistern was so tight Hannah couldn’t bend over so she had to maneuver herself down on her knees. Once she was down, she examined the coins. “They’re recent and just pennies. Dates on them are from the thirties.”

  “Eighteen thirties?” I asked from above with some excitement in my voice.

  “No, nineteen. Wait a minute.”

  Shane had taken up the slack in the rope by wrapping it around his forearm and he was now looking over the rim with me. “What’d you find, Hannah?”

  “I can see an edge along this stone in the floor. It’s like a capstone over something. Let me finish brushing it out and you can pull me back up three.”

  After a few minutes she placed the ruler along one edge of the stone and told Shane to pull her up again. She repositioned herself so that the iPhone was below her body and she then took pictures of cistern floor. “Down, three.” Once she was on the floor again, she examined the pictures in the iPhone and took a few more pictures. “I want to take a look at the spring’s opening.”

  The opening to the spring was at shoulder height and she took a couple of pictures of the crevice in the cistern wall where the spring’s water would have flowed out. She removed the light from her forehead and strapped it on her arm holding the iPhone and then she stuck her arm into the crevice as far as she could. She did it so quickly I didn’t have time to warn her of the stupidity of sticking one’s arm into any kind of hole in the Hill Country.

  “You got your snakebite kit in the truck?” I said to Shane.

  “It won’t save any snake dumb enough to bite her.”

  “I heard that, Shane,” she said from the bottom of the well.

  She checked the images in the iPhone when she was finished. “Holy, shit.”

  That certainly got our attention. “What?” Shane and I said at the same time.

  “Pull me up.”

  As soon as she was up, she handed me Shane’s phone. Inside the crevice I could see an alcove in the limestone and then a smaller opening. I was expecting some kind of treasure chest, not a natural formation inside the dried spring.

  “I want to explore that formation,” Hannah said.

  “Let me see,” Shane said.

  I handed him the iPhone. After he looked at the images, he shook his head. “Man, I thought you’d found something.”

  “I did. The small opening in the back. It’s a hydro tunnel to the aquifer. The fact that there’s no breeze coming out of the crevice means it’s been sealed off.”

  “So?”

  “You’re not a caver, you wouldn’t understand. Chances are, those caverns below the tunnel used to hold the aquifer before it dried up and have never been explored. I want to be the first.”

  “You’re crazy, Hannah,” Shane said.

  The boy was about to shoot himself in the foot. “What about the stone cover?” I asked to refocus the conversation.

  “I don’t know. We should probably lift it up and see what’s below it,” Hannah said.

  “Okay. Let me see if Ava is back from the doctor. You can meet her and tell her what you’ve found.”

  She removed her gear and then sat in the cab of the truck alone looking at the images while I called the house. Shane looked at me, like what did I do? I had no idea, but if I had to hazard a guess, maybe he had built this find up more than he should have. Hannah probably figured this was going to be hers to excavate.

  “What’s the matter, Hannah?” I asked as Shane drove us back to the ranch house.

  “I’m not sure I can be of any help to you, Max. If you bring in UT, I doubt very seriously I’d get any funding for a joint project. That’s not the way it works.”

  “Well, just so you understand, I’d rather see Texas A&M University do the work than the University of Texas, but I’m trying to get my grandson Bryan and his family to move back down here to Texas. He’s Ava’s husband. I was hoping I could kill two birds with one stone, so to speak.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “It’s a long story, but the short of it is, I’m the trustee for the Pape Ranch Trust. After we finish the grassland restoration I need to find a way to make the ranch financially self-sustaining. If I can’t, I’ll have to sell it. When Shane found the cistern, Ava got my hopes up that it might be more than just a watering hole and maybe something that would draw in paying tourists.”

  “What did she say she thought it was?”

  “Well, she’s been playing her cards pretty close to her chest. She wouldn’t say exactly, but she didn’t think it was part of the Spanish monumentation system. She wanted to see inside the cistern first before she would tell me.”

  “She’s right; it’s not a trail marker. I didn’t miss anything visible inside. Maybe there’s something beneath the capstone?”

  “We can come back this af
ternoon after we talk to her. Will you be able to get the capstone up?” I asked.

  “I think so. I tapped it and it didn’t sound very thick, but that’s just a guess. I’ll need a thin pry tool. I don’t want to use my knife and risk damaging the limestone. It might compromise the integrity of the capstone’s seal.”

  . . .

  I didn’t realize how small our new house actually was until all nine of us were crowded into the living room and trying to talk. I finally asked Barbin to take Bryan’s kids into the TV room and den, so we could talk about the find. She wasn’t happy, but she also wasn’t mad enough at me to show her teeth in front of company.

  It was obvious that Hannah was enamored with Ava’s new little girl and Ava let Hannah hold the baby as Ava scanned the images on Shane’s iPhone.

  “It makes sense,” Ava said on viewing the pictures of the capstone.

  “Okay, let’s hold it right here,” I said. “Before we go back out there, I want to know what you’re thinking, Ava.”

  “I’m going to guess you’ll find a map on the bottom of that flat stone rather than any treasure.”

  “A map to what?” Hannah asked.

  “Go retrieve it, Hannah. Then we’ll talk. Be careful with it. As soon as you have it up, get a picture of it, then, reseat it.”

  “We’re not going anywhere, just yet. I don’t like operating in the dark. You said something about the inscription not being Jesuit. What did you mean?” I said as if I were in charge. I felt I was, but in truth, I knew this was a young person’s undertaking, not mine. I was just paying for it.

  Hannah put her free hand to her mouth in surprise. “Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudeum. I knew the INRI inscription looked familiar,” she said and handed the baby back to Ava.

  “I didn’t say it wasn’t Jesuit. I said I didn’t think it stood for what most people thought it did, like Hannah,” Ava said and opened her robe to feed the baby. “The Black Robes, as they were known then‒in contrast to the Gray Robes who were the Franciscans‒had a secondary meaning to I.N.R.I. To some of the Jesuits it stood for, IUSTUM, NECAR, REGES, IMPIOS. A rough translation is; it is justified to kill non-pious heretical kings or rulers.”