Beth shoved him away and the three of them walked laughing all the way to the cabin.
Anne was watching them and envying their close, easy camaraderie. When Beth grabbed Jack on the butt, it made her gasp. She could feel her face go flush.
They were not gone more than a half an hour when they returned to the sluice and started to build the flume.
By noon they were ready for their first run.
They cleared a path to the river’s bank and laid planks over the rough spots.
Jack rolled a wheelbarrow over the path to the bank where Sonny filled it with dirt and gravel.
Jack wheeled it back to the sluice where Beth unloaded it into the sluice’s hopper with a shovel. She began pulling the large stones out of the hopper. She then moved the mouth of the flume over so that the water from the flume poured into the hopper.
All four of them watched as the dirt washed down the sluice. When all of the dirt was gone, Beth moved the flume’s spout so that the water was no longer running down the sluice.
Beth, Sonny and Jack began moving down the sluice looking at the riffle boards. Anne tagged along so that she could learn what they were doing.
Behind each riffle board they saw color. Beth reached in and pulled out a thumbnail sized nugget and squealed with delight.
She cried, “Of all the years we panned gold in Panama, cumulatively we never got as much gold as we have in this one run.
We’re rich.” She shouted. She turned to Sonny, grabbed him and started jumping up and down, screaming over and over again, “We’re rich! We’re rich! We’re rich!”
Jack grabbed Anne, lifted her off her feet and spun her around and around.
They were laughing, jumping, shouting and patting each other on the back. It took them ten minutes to settle down. When they did, Beth let out an excited scream and they started all over again.
When they finally stopped celebrating Jack said, “Well don’t stop now. Let’s go get another load. We’re certainly not going to get rich by washing just one load.”
With that Jack went back and picked up the wheelbarrow and headed back to the riverbank. Sonny ran over, picked up the shovel and joined him.
They skipped lunch and worked through the rest of the day.
With about two hours of sun left, Jack forced them to halt.
They dismantled the sluice and the flume and moved them to high ground.
Anne asked why they tore the sluice and flume apart.
Sonny said, “We have to take the riffle boards out to pick up the burlap so then we can separate the gold from the black sand. We move the sluice to high ground because it could rain fifty miles upriver and flood this area and carry the sluice and flume away.
It’s just a precaution. Besides it doesn’t take much to set it back up again.”
Back at the cabin, Sonny and Beth started to pan the contents from the sluice while Jack fixed dinner. They gave Anne a pan and started training her on how to use it.
Anne was pleased to be included and after days of inactivity was glad to help.
When Jack had gone back to help get wood for the fire he had put a couple of pounds of lima beans on to soak. In Fort Laramie they had purchased six large smoked cured hams. Tonight they were going to have navy beans and ham. He chopped up potatoes, onions, and carrots and poured in some garlic powder that he had pulled from his backpack.
As he prepared dinner he would hear Anne make excited sounds every time she found a fleck of gold. He smiled. It meant that she was thinking of something else besides her family. “This is good.” he thought.
Jack had pulled the beans and ham off the stove to let it cool just as the three came in. Sonny was carrying the gold in a one of their tin soup bowls. All three were excited and talking at once.
Jack said, “Well, how did it go?”
“I don’t know yet,” said Sonny. “I’ll have to get the scales out and weigh it but just from the looks of it, we have struck it rich!”
“What’s for supper?” said Beth.
“Lima beans and ham and a surprise.
Weigh up Sonny. I have a few minutes before the surprise is ready.”
Sonny set the bowl with the gold on the table and went over to one of the wall shelves and took down the scales. He sat down at the table and poured the gold into one of the scale pans. He then began adding weights to the opposite pan.
The other three gathered round him collectively holding their breath.
He took a weight off the weight pan and the scales evened up.
Sonny looked up and whooped, “Wow! Eighteen and a half ounces! About a pound and a half of gold for only four hours of mining.”
After a brief celebration, Jack shouted, “A pound and a half, A POUND AND A HALF!!! That’s unbelievable!!!”
Anne got a puzzled look on her face and said, “Isn’t that only a pound and two ounces?”
Beth looked at Anne, smiled and said, “No, precious metals are measured in troy ounces. There are twelve troy ounces to a troy pound.”
Anne gave an embarrassed smile and said, “Oh.”
Sonny said, “Gold is selling for eighteen dollars an ounce in the eighteen seventies so we have three hundred twenty-four plus dollars here.”
“Not really,” said Jack.
“Yeah,” said Sonny, “this stuff is probably twenty to twenty-two carat so we have a little less than three twenty-four.”
“What does that mean?” said Anne.
“There are impurities in the natural gold” said Jack, “so the gold that we have here is probably a few carats less than pure. No big deal, we’re still rich.”
He put his arm around her and said, “Don’t feel bad. We weren’t born knowing all of this. We learned it the same way you will, through experience. In a week you’ll know everything we know.”
This was the second time either of the boys had touched her except to move her. It gave her a warm feeling inside. It gave her comfort. It made her feel like one of them.
“Let’s eat,” said Jack.
He put the pot of beans and ham on the table. Then he went to the stove and opened the door and pulled out an iron skillet with a large loaf of fresh baked bread in it.
Beth clapped her hands and kissed him on the cheek.
Jack set the skillet on the table and pried the loaf out into a tin plate. He began ladling out the thick navy bead soup into their bowls.
Sonny opened four bottles of beer and placed a bottle by every place setting.
They enjoyed the hearty meal. There was a lot of excited talk and laughter. Life looked good to them.
When they had finished eating, Beth and Sonny began to clear the table.
Anne said, “I’ll do the dishes.”
Beth started to say something but Anne said, “I can do it! You can’t treat me as an invalid forever. I have to start pulling my weight.”
Beth laughed and said, “OK.”
They had mounted a washtub on a stand as a sink. There was a drain board next to the tub.
Jack and Sonny lit the lanterns. Beth picked up the guitar and started strumming it. She began to sing the Juice Newton’s classic “Angel of The Morning”. Sonny and Jack joined in on the chorus.
When she finished Jack took the guitar and sang Neil Diamonds “Sweet Caroline” with Sonny and Beth singing chorus.
Sonny took the guitar and they all began to sing Buddy Holly’s “Peggy Sue”. All three of them really got into the song. Jack and Beth did something that Anne had never seen before. They began to dance but it was like nothing she had ever seen or heard of. The driving beat of the music filled her with excitement.
It was a rapid dance with graceful movements. Jack spun Beth away from him and then would reel her back to him. He pulled her through his legs and into the air. They were both always in motion. He threw her up his right hip and then around to the other hip. Beth’s feet didn’t touch the ground. As she came off of Jack’s left hip in a shocking move Jack swung Beth out in front of
him, her back arched and her feet high in the air. Anne couldn’t believe what happened next. Beth began her decent and as she did she spread her legs and came down astraddle of Jack’s waist. Jack bent slightly at the waist. Beth’s back was now parallel to the ground. Her legs were straight and her toes were pointing at the ceiling. Jack straightened up and swung Beth off his waist and continued the swing until Beth was high above his head, her feet almost touching the rafters. She came down. Her feet hit the floor with a bounce and Jack swung her away from him. Every movement was to the beat of the music.
Anne stood transfixed. It was wonderful.
When the song was over and the dance finished, Anne stood there with her mouth open and then she began to applaud and to hop up and down.
Beth and Jack faced her, held hands and bowed.
Jack and Beth were breathing heavily. They all sat down at the table and finished their drinks.
Jack and Beth were catching their breaths. Sonny was swilling down the last of his beer.
Anne bubbled, “How did you do that? What was it? That music, oh, it was great.” She went on and on.
Jack smiled and sipped his beer.
Beth smiled, reached across the table and took Anne’s hand and said, “The song is called “Peggy Sue” and the man who wrote it won’t be born for almost seventy years. The music is called rock and roll and the type of dancing is called the bop It won’t be danced for almost another ninety years.”
It took a while for Anne to hear and then process what Beth was saying. She smiled and started to say something she then realized what Beth had said and stopped. She said in a hushed voice, “What?”
“We have been trying to figure out how to tell you this,” said Beth. “The truth is we haven’t figured out how to tell you but it is something we have to do.”
She waited for Anne to say something but Anne said nothing so Beth continued.
“We’re not what we seem. We’re not from Ohio and our parents didn’t die from cholera.
We’re…” she didn’t get to finish. Anne had found her voice and said, “I don’t care if you’re the Devil himself.” Her face contorted in anger and she said, “This is where I want to be. I don’t want to just be with you. I want to be like you in every way.
My father would ask a derelict in the gutter for advice before he would consider the opinion of my mother or me and my sisters. You!” she shouted and pointed at Beth “You are an equal among equals.” The more excited she became the thicker her Irish accent became.
“I have never seen man or boy cook as long as there were women around. I’ve seen women work as hard as you” she looked at Beth, “but I have never seen those women treated as you. When you talk they listen.” She indicated the boys with a sweep of her hand. “I’ve seen it. And they not only listen, they do what you tell them.”
Sonny smiled and said under his breath loud enough for Jack to hear him, “Yeah, we do if we know what’s good for us.”
Anne continued, “I never want to feel fear again. I never want some little bastard to ride up to me and look me in the eyes and see fear. I want him to look into my eyes and I want to see fear in his eyes.
I see you wearing those guns and I see your manner. Those guns are not on your waists for decoration. They are there because, if the need arises, you intend to use them and I’d wager my soul that you can use them well.
I want to know how to ride like you, shoot like you. I want to know the Cheyenne and to hunt the buffalo but most of all I want the confidence that you have.
So you see I don’t care if you’re from Hell, because if you are, I’ll go there with you.”
Jack blew his cheeks out and said softly “Whoa.”
There was silence for a minute.
Sonny said, “I think this calls for another beer.”
No one said a thing until Sonny set the beers down on the table.
Anne had had time to think about what she had just said. She thought, “What must they think of me? My God, what have I done? They hardly know me and owe me nothing and here I am making demands on them.
I’ll be lucky if they don’t throw me out into the snow.”
She reached for her beer with a shaky hand. She took a long pull on the beer.
She gave a ragged sigh and set her beer back on the table.
Beth was watching her. She reached across the table and gave Anne a reassuring squeeze and patted her hand.
She then began to tell Anne their story. She left nothing out.
When she finished there was dead silence. All Anne could hear was the wind blowing around the cabin.
She looked over at Jack and then Sonny to see if either one was smiling. Was this a joke, a cruel joke that they were playing on her?
Beth read her thoughts and said, “Jack get your backpack and empty it on the table.”
Jack did as she said.
There was a kerosene lantern suspended over the table from the rafters. It gave out a yellow light on the pack’s contents.
“Give her your pack.”
Jack handed Anne the pack.
Beth said, “Feel the material.”
Anne did as she was told.
“Have you ever felt anything like it before?”
“No.”
“Of course you haven’t. It is a synthetic called nylon. It won’t be invented for another sixty years.”
Beth rummaged around the pack’s contents and pulled out Jack’s flashlight. She turned it on and played the light around the room.
Anne audibly sucked in air.
“This is called a flashlight. The English will call it a torch.”
She turned the light off and picked up a BIC cigarette lighter and spun the wheel. A flame popped up out of the lighter. Beth made the flame get smaller then cranked it up so that the flame was about an inch and a half high.
She said, “This is a butane lighter. It will be put on the market in the 1960s. The gas is compressed Butane and the tank that holds the butane is called plastic. It was developed in this century but not brought into broad use until the latter half of the 1900s.
This lighter will light hundreds of times before it runs out of gas.
We are not lying to you. This is not some sort of a joke that we are playing on you.
If anything, all of this is a joke that has been played on us. We are a hundred years out of our time and we haven’t the foggiest idea how we got here or if we are ever going to be able to get back.”
Anne just sat there not knowing what to say.
Beth patted Anne’s arm and said, “We won’t blame you if you don’t believe all that I have just told you. We have a hard time believing it ourselves.”
Anne sat there looking at Beth, then Sonny, then Jack and back to Beth. She gave her head a decisive nod as if to say, “If this is what they say, then by God it’s the truth.”
She smiled and said in a demanding voice, “Another thing, I want to learn that dance.”
That broke the tension and they all laughed.
After they had cleaned up the dishes they pulled their mattresses around the stove.
Beth continued their story. She told about the Panama Canal and how their great grandparents had come to construct the Canal. She told Anne that she, Sonny and Jack were the fourth generation of Canal Zonians. Jack’s father and the twins’ father had been best friends growing up. After college they had married their childhood sweethearts and had returned to the Canal Zone, Jack’s father as an engineer and the twins’ father as a doctor.
Their mothers had become pregnant within days of each other. Jack was born two weeks before the twins. Their mothers had advanced degrees in education and had decided that the children would be educated at home. Their education began right after birth.
They were given music lessons almost as soon as they could sit upright. They learned Spanish, German and French at home.
There was a large Chinese population in Panama and a modern Chinese cultural center with a school not fa
r from where they lived. From the ages of two through ten they spent three hours a day Monday to Friday at the center. First they were in the center’s daycare and then as part time students learning Mandarin, Cantonese and calligraphy.
As long as they could remember, Jack’s Great Uncle Frank had come to visit their families. He would spend about a month in Panama and then disappear until the following year. Nobody knew were Frank went when he left Panama and nobody knew what Frank did for a living.
The children looked forward to Frank’s visits. He usually came right after the kids and their parents returned from their visit to the States. He came for a month. He always took them somewhere and did things with them. The things he did with them were exciting.
He taught them about the jungle, how to pan gold, how to shoot and he taught them martial arts. “His most important lesson,” said Beth “was never to give up. He taught us how to survive.
But as much as we love Frank, he’s the one who got us into this mess. If it weren’t for him, we would be sleeping safe and sound in our beds tonight.”
Anne gave a grim smile and said, “Yes, and I would be dead on the ground where you found me.”
“And we would have never had this adventure,” said Beth. “It’s been terrible and terrifying at times but I wouldn’t trade a minute of it. Would you boys?”
“I don’t know,” said Sonny, “maybe for a hamburger.”
“Oh, throw in some fries and a chocolate malt and I’m with you, Sonny,” said Jack as he rolled his eyes at the thought of a burger, fries and a Diablo Clubhouse malt.
Beth shook her head and reached over with her foot in a halfhearted attempt to kick at Sonny.
“Don’t pay any attention to these clowns. I don’t know why I ever ask them anything.”
Jack said, “If you want to know the Cheyenne, then you’ll have to learn to speak Cheyenne.”
Sonny yawned and said, “Yeah, there’s lots of things we’ll have to teach you.”
“Let’s see how the mining goes,” said Beth, “then we can figure out when we can teach you how to shoot and ride.
As far as learning Cheyenne, we can just start talking Cheyenne around you. Total immersion is the best way to learn a language.”
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