Chapter 11

I sat at the picnic table on the patio looking out at the nightly spectacle of glorious colors as the sun set behind Picacho Peak. A song with a snappy beat wafted softly over the outside speakers hidden in rose bushes climbing up both sides of the patio on their trellises reaching for the roof. I couldn’t quite make out the words to the song, but it was very familiar.

If I didn’t know better, I’d believe I was actually back in my twenty-first century home. But I did know better.

“You’ve gotten quite good with the colors, my dear. They’re very realistic and quite beautiful,” I said, turning to Dream Laura who was sitting beside me with a glass of iced tea in her hands. “I’m always glad to see you, love, but why now?”

Dream Laura gave a soft laugh. “Yes, I quite enjoy the memory of all the work that went into building the real thing at home and the many evenings we spent enjoying the sunset. Those are some really nice memories.”

She continued reminiscing for a few more moments before giving a small shake of her head and turning to me.

“I thought it was time to talk about some things.”

“What things?” I asked as the smell of roses filled the air.

“Let’s start with my warnings. Know that I can only warn you just before you encounter a situation, and that the situation has to include a deadly threat directly aimed at you. If you’re not directly threatened, I can say nothing to you about a threat.

“Okay, I can understand that I think. Why are you bringing it up now, though?” I asked.

“I’m trying to explain why you only get a second or two of warning. It’s because the decisions you make can be changed, thereby taking you out of the situation. My warnings can only occur when you are in danger, not if you may be in danger. You mentioned at least twice that you would appreciate more warning than a second a two before you’re in a deadly situation. Now you know why I can’t give you more warning.”

I was sure I was missing something in her explanation but what she said made sense and I figured I’d understand what I was missing after thinking about it more. At my nod of understanding she went on.

“Likewise, I can’t tell you the impacts of changes you make to the timeline. Big or small, everything you do changes the timeline from what you remember in one way or another. Just your being here is a change and will cause other changes to ripple forward. You got a small glimpse of that when you discovered your cousin George here almost a full year before he was supposed to arrive. There will probably be others like that. It may even extend beyond just a year early. You may encounter folks you remember from your history as having died earlier or perhaps not even being born yet. There’s really no way to tell yet what the ripples your being here, not to mention the changes you’ve made and have yet to make, have already caused or will cause in the future.

“I know you’re planning on making many changes, large and small. All the changes you’re planning on making are good changes, I know; but you need to be cautious about the speed of those changes.

“Make sure you don’t try to make too many changes over too short a period of time. Give yourself plenty of time to identify and evaluate the results of those changes to the timeline, before moving ahead with more changes. You will encounter unexpected changes, both large and small, as a result of something you’ve done. Be ready to reevaluate your plans in light of those changes.”

The colors of the setting sun began to unexpectedly shift to pastels while the roses began to fade to a muted brown.

“My power is going fast, my love. I’ll see you again when I can,” Laura said as the entire scene began to fade away.

I suddenly remembered the name of the song that had been quietly playing in the background.

“Goodbye until next time, Laura. Thank you for the explanation. By the way, playing ‘I’ll Never Find Another You’, as background music was a nice touch, but I would’ve chosen ‘My Special Angel’.”

I finished my thought just as the scene winked out to a black nothingness, but I heard Laura’s sweet laugh echo over the distance.

I lay in bed in that not quite awake but not quite asleep state I hate so much, for a long time. Unable to really get back to sleep, I got up very early, well before anyone else was stirring. Anna mumbled and muttered as I got up but rolled over and settled back into sleep.

I showered and dressed for the day before going downstairs to the study. There I barred the door and opened the cave door for the first time in five months. I emptied the gold and gold hunting tools from the pannier, putting everything away in the cave before closing the cave door and returning to the bedroom.

Anna was up and dressed for the morning when I walked into the bedroom. We cuddled for a few minutes before we walked out to the upper courtyard and waited for everyone else to arrive. We were both shocked at the number of people who showed up. Along with most of the cousins, there were fifty farmers and the Padre.

As we looked around at all the people Tom opened up the upper courtyard door and everyone started filing out onto the upper plateau and forming lines. Anna and I shrugged at each other and joined in at the back. Tom and Yolanda led us through the Tai Chi and then everyone practiced katas on their own. Anna and I were the last two done. Most people had already left, and we turned to find Tom, Yolanda, Giuseppe, and Sofia sitting at the tables inside the courtyard cooling down and talking amongst themselves.

“Is that the normal group that show up every morning?” I asked as we joined the others.

Tom gave a shrug of his big shoulders. “It’s a continuously growing group. Some days there are more.”

I nodded and told everyone we’d see them at breakfast. Taking Anna’s hand, we went back into the house and out onto the terrace, where one of the ladies had already set a coffee service on one of the tables. I raised an eyebrow at Anna.

“I asked for the coffee service to be here after Tai Chi every morning from now on. At least until it gets too cold to enjoy the morning.”

We sat on the terrace enjoying the peacefulness of the early morning surrounded by the smell of roses and fresh brewed coffee. As the light began to increase, I walked over to the terrace railing and looked out over the river. Anna joined me a minute later and handed me my cup with fresh coffee. She put her arm around my waist and her head on my shoulder as we watched the sun come up from behind the Doña Ana Mountains.

Cristina found us still standing at the terrace railing a few minutes later and let us know that breakfast would be ready in ten minutes. We thanked her and put our coffee cups on the tray with the service, and she took it all away. One more look at the desert and we turned to go down to breakfast. On the way downstairs Anna told me that the roses smelled lovely and that she hadn’t expected so many blooms the first year.

Over breakfast we talked about the tour of the Estancia we were taking for our morning ride. Raul and Rafael would break off after the tour and spend some time in the village with the Padre who’d volunteered to show them around and introduce them to some of the villagers. Cristina broke in at that point and told us that numerous crates had been delivered from Santa Fe over the last few weeks and she needed to know what we wanted done with them. Anna smiled and said it looked like we now had plans for the afternoon.

We all walked down to the corral and saddled up. With me and Anna leading, we rode for the village. As we topped the small hill overlooking the village, Anna and I stopped and stared in wonder at what was now an almost complete village, with over 270 homes laid out in a neat grid pattern. A large plaza was surrounded by a colonnaded covered walkway on each side, in front of the Finca operations buildings, the store, and the school rooms.

The new arrivals had continued the practice of tinting the stucco for their houses with the colors provided by Juan while the buildings surrounding the plaza had been tinted a soft rose color to match the Hacienda. Off to the sides of the village, the storehouses, stable area, and corrals had all been marked off. Large piles of stone were dotted around them. Tom saw Anna and me looking at the stones and told us that work on the stone and mortar buildings would start right after the rainy season ended. In the meantime, the outer corrals had been built, so that the mules and wagons could be closer to the village. Thus, the men wouldn’t have to make the trek to the Hacienda corrals every morning before work started.

Raul and Rafael were back in ‘stunned mode’ as we rode down the hill and into the village. We pulled up in front of the plaza at the side of the store, where hitching posts had been added. I noticed holes had been left around the front and back edges of the plaza for trees to be planted at a later date and made a mental note to ask Juan if he had ordered trees and if so what kind. If he hadn’t, I’d get with Anna and the others and decide what we wanted to plant.

Sofia and the Padre left us there as they started shepherding village kids into the school rooms. Lupe came out of the store and welcomed us back with a big hug, before leading us into the store. I introduced Raul and Rafael, and let Lupe tell us how the store was doing as they looked around. When Lupe was done, we congratulated her on paying back the store loan early and thanked her for the update before leaving to walk around the plaza.

We peeked inside the school rooms and listened as the kids were taught math in Apache. Raul and Raphael were amazed to see Hispano, Anglo, and Apache kids all sitting side by side learning the day’s lessons in Apache. We peeked into the Finca Operations buildings, but there wasn’t much to see as we hadn’t furnished them yet.

Now that the plans for the church and rectory had been approved, Giuseppe had laid them out along the back of the plaza and told us the villagers had decided to delay starting the construction until the beginning of next year. Tom told us it didn’t seem to bother the Padre since he knew it was planned and scheduled.

When we were done at the plaza, we walked over to the stable area and looked at the layouts of all the buildings at ground level. Raphael commented that the smithy was larger than he expected. I told him the plan called for three forges to support all the animals and farm work that would be supported from here.

We mounted back up a few minutes later and rode to the old quarry site to see the dams that had been built. We started with the dam just above the old quarry, and Giuseppe explained that all of the dams, except the bottom one, were exactly the same. There was an upper emergency control gate to release water if necessary, as well as a lower control gate to release water into the lower dam should we ever have a severe drought and need the extra water for irrigation. Tom said he was mapping the grass bowls within two miles of the dams to see if we could irrigate those as well, to grow more alfalfa.

The old quarry site was now about half filled with water from the seep and stretched almost a mile in width. Tom said most of the stones for the stable area and storage buildings at the village had come from here as they had widened the old quarry. He also told us that his and Giuseppe’s obsession with control gates was because the seep was going to continuously add more water to this pond, and that would eventually need to be released into the lower ponds and either have to be used for irrigation or released into the river.

I whispered to Anna, “We need to bring Tom in on the sheep raising idea before he gets too far down the line so that he can adequately plan things.”

She nodded and said, “We can do that this afternoon after we give them the pendants.”

Down near the river, below the lowest dam and near the beginning of the draw, we found Heinrich and his masons hard at work in a large sandy area. Heinrich smiled a welcome back greeting to both Anna and me when he saw us with the group. We dismounted and Heinrich told us that he and his crew had been busy casting concrete irrigation channels.

Tom said that until the levees were done, he had decided to take the cautious approach. What the masons were casting and laying down was a set of temporary discharge channels from the bottom pond to the river, so we’d lose less topsoil. When we were all done looking at the channels his crew were casting, or pulling up and moving into position, we mounted up and rode towards the quarry.

Tom and I were in the lead. “Has Heinrich given you any indication on whether they’re going to stay or leave, and if they’re leaving, when they’ll leave?” I asked Tom quietly.

“Nothing’s been said directly, but both Yolanda and I have the distinct impression that at least half of them are going to stay,” he replied.

I nodded and wondered when we’d find out for sure.

We were near the old quarry when I saw the macadam road Giuseppe had told us about, yesterday. It started at the entrance to the quarry and ran along the bottom of the ridge straight as an arrow north towards the upper end of the Estancia. Tom saw my glance and shook his head, telling us that they hadn’t yet found a crushed stone quarry site and this road had used all the crushed stone that was lying around both the old quarry and this quarry. We rode up beside the quarry and looked down into what can only be described as a huge hole in the ground.

Tom grinned at the exclamations of wonder. “This site should provide all the stone we need for everything that still needs to be built to include the miles and miles of perimeter rock walls around the Estancia.”

I looked around carefully before asking, “Tom, how big do you think this hole is going to be when we are done in two or three years?”

He thought for a moment. “It will probably be about a mile wide, two miles long, and roughly ten feet deep.”

I whistled and said, “That’s a big hole!” Everyone laughed at that.

I turned to Giuseppe. “How far are we from the river?”

His reply was instantaneous. “About a half mile.”

Swinging around in the saddle, I looked at the opening to the quarry before turning back to Giuseppe. “I have a new task to add to your list.”

With a laugh he said, “That’s how you always start a conversation when you’ve come up with a new idea. Let’s hear it”

I grinned and said, “Eventually, when the quarry isn’t required any more or has played out, I want this hole turned into a water retention and irrigation lake. We’ll need a dam at the entrance and some way of getting water from the river to the new lake. If nothing else we could use Archimedes screws at the river, to feed an aqueduct from the river to the lake. Once the lake is full, we can irrigate most of the land around it and have additional fields as well as a recreation area for the people of the Estancia.”

Anna was grinning broadly, and it was clear she liked the idea as well. I told Tom and Giuseppe the idea would be to irrigate the crops from the lake first which would ensure a continuous flow of water in and out of the lake during growing season and keep it from becoming stagnant. Giuseppe had been writing down my thought in the task book he always kept with him and told me he’d give it some thought and let me know when he’d come up with a good workable solution.

We rode down off the ridge and up the macadam road. We actually rode just off the road, as a steady stream of wagons were going back and forth from the quarry to the river dumping their loads of stone before returning for more. I asked Tom how often he was blasting the quarry and he told me he usually blasted on Saturday and Sunday afternoons every week. So far that had worked well and there was always enough stone for the teams to move throughout the week.

We reached the northern edge of the Estancia and Anna and I quickly realized the teams had gotten more done than we originally saw. The levee started at the river with a wing running inland to the west at a 45-degree angle before ending a half mile away. The levee continued south along the riverbank and the first three quarters of a mile looked to be almost completed.