Mom's The Word. Roz Denny Fox

But back then, his larger-than-life presence had dispelled all the fears a young girl might associate with the darkness.

      Hayley wished Jake Cooper hadn’t ridden into her camp. In doing so, he’d reminded her how isolated she was. As melancholy overtook her, Hayley recognized that she’d fallen into the grip of a terrible homesickness.

      Not only that, her uninvited visitor’s unsubtle warning had turned the surrounding blackness into a potential place of terror. No stranger to the yip of coyotes, Hayley now gave a start and shivered whenever she heard distant calls.

      She’d intended to stoke the fire after doing her dishes and then read one of the Luke Short westerns she’d brought to spice up lonely evenings. When an owl hooted nearby and she practically jumped out of her skin, Hayley changed her mind about staying up. She scraped her uneaten food into an airtight container to be disposed of later, and banked the fire, instead of feeding it.

      She made one last check of the food sacks she’d hung in a tree. Jacob Cooper hadn’t mentioned bears in his list of things she needed to fear, but Hayley would rather be safe than sorry.

      Collecting her shotgun and rifle, she retreated into the tiny trailer, where she tossed and turned for hours. One thought she couldn’t shut out: What if Jacob Cooper didn’t belong to any Triple C ranch? What if, even now, he was rounding up pals to jump her claim? Things like that happened with regularity in the books she read. Perhaps she should have stocked some contemporary novels. People didn’t jump claims in the twenty-first century, did they?

      It was the newness of the situation, she tried to tell herself, not Jake’s warnings, that had her listening for every whisper of wind through the brush and turning it into a wolf attack or just a plain thief attack.

      She’d tried to act brave when Cooper leveled his dire admonitions. Inside she’d been quaking. The man at the recorder’s office yesterday had already informed her that two ranchers in this vicinity had reported jaguars killing their range stock. The friend of Ben’s from whom she’d borrowed the shotgun had painted a more gruesome picture. He’d flatly stated that homeless individuals who wandered the hills would certainly kill her and make off with her pickup and trailer.

      Inside, the trailer was hot as sin. At first she wasn’t willing to open either of the small windows, not even if it meant she baked in this tin can. The screens would be no deterrent, she decided, from any man or beast who chose to break in.

      She lay on her back in the close confines of the small alcove and laced her hands across her belly. Talking to her baby helped calm her. “This is our only chance to make a go of things, Junior,” she murmured. “Francesca warned me I’d kill us both hauling rocks or blasting ore out of the ground. Hard work never hurt a pregnant woman,” she said, more loudly than she intended. “Gramps said my grandmother took care of my mom, planted and maintained a garden, kept house and helped him haul copper out of his first mine.”

      Sweat beaded Hayley’s brow and trickled between her breasts. Breasts that had grown increasingly tender in the past two weeks. She drew up her nightgown and fanned her legs. “It’s not the hard work I mind.” Her biggest worry was determining the best time to leave here so Dr. Gerrard could deliver her baby. And would she have found anything worthwhile on this claim?

      Hayley couldn’t answer those questions. She did know that if she didn’t manage to get some rest, she could forgo working tomorrow. Heavens, she ought to be able to stand a little heat tonight. Things would look better in the morning. They always did.

      Ten minutes past midnight Hayley gave up suffering and opted for the possibility of a cooling breeze over the threat of death. Soon after she opened the windows, she felt such relief at the breath of fresh air that she began to cry. Unable to stem the flow of tears, she ended up crying herself to sleep.

      LIGHT FILTERING in the window woke Hayley before 5:00 a.m. At first it seemed she’d barely gotten to sleep, and she tried to burrow under the pillow. Almost as fast it struck her that she’d successfully spent the first full night in her new home. Not one bad thing had happened. She derived an immense satisfaction from that. Greeting the day seemed far more desirable than lolling about in a hot trailer.

      She showered in the cramped hollow carved in rock behind the waterfall. Refreshed, she hummed “Carrying Your Love with Me,” a once-popular George Strait tune, as she started a fire and put on water for tea. She ate a bowl of berries and cottage cheese while she waited for the water to boil. In this heat the ice in her cooler would soon be history. “I can’t be driving into town too often.” She spoke matter-of-factly to her unborn child. “Fresh fruit and veggies are not going to be very plentiful after what I have in my cooler spoils. Maybe some farmer around Arivaca will sell me a milk cow and a few laying hens next time I go to town for supplies. I don’t have a lot of the thousand dollars left after laying in prospecting tools and stuff. But if the price is right, junior, it’ll be worth the money.”

      She patted her stomach. “Dr. Gerrard said in a few months I can have an ultrasound done at the hospital to show how far along you are. It might also tell us if you’re Junior or Juniorette.” Hayley chuckled, but soon her laughter faded. “I’m not sure I want to know. Life needs some nice surprises.” For the first time since learning of her condition, Hayley wondered if Joe would care that he’d left her pregnant. Probably not, but he deserved to know he’d fathered a child. If the law found him, she’d tell him.

      Pouring herself a second cup of tea, Hayley firmly rejected further thoughts of Joe and set out to wander the low-lying hills beyond the waterfall. What she hoped to find was a stream that might indicate Gramps had been panning for gold. Swishing water around in a sieve would be much easier on her than blasting rock and hauling heavy ore down from a mountain.

      Instead of flattening out into a valley that would support a stream, the terrain beyond the spring grew hillier. There were signs in numerous places that her grandfather had used his rock hammer to split rocks. Since some pieces were missing, Hayley surmised he’d taken sections to assay.

      At the top of the second rise, she turned in a tight circle and surveyed the area all the way to her campsite. What had her grandfather expected to find?

      Sighing, she hopped from rock to rock and picked her way back to the trailer. This would be a beautiful place to build a home. The trees were green, the water sweet and the sky so blue it hurt her eyes. But Hayley was no stranger to the laws governing mining claims. A miner could throw up a tent or move in a motorhome, but any attempt to erect a permanent structure on land open to claims was illegal. And each year the rules got stickier.

      At her camp again, Hayley hauled out a couple of her grandfather’s mineralogy books, plus the copies she’d made of his yearly filing papers. Each year he’d listed a different mineral. None were valuable. Mica, pyrite and chalcopyrite, all names for fool’s gold. He’d once reported streaks of copper. Not a big deal. The area around this site was rife with small deposits of copper.

      “Gramps was nobody’s fool,” Hayley muttered, pouring herself more tea. He knew that if a person wanted to preserve a claim until he made a big find, it was best to feed the county recorder unimportant facts. His last report included quartz and chalcedony. Totally negative geological findings.

      Hayley settled into a chair with her tea, the books and a small journal she’d found in the strongbox. Her grandfather had never been much for writing. In fact, Hayley doubted he’d gone past sixth grade in school. Yet he’d painstakingly cataloged everything he’d found when he worked this claim. She noticed his last entry differed from the report he’d given the county recorder.

      Was that significant? Hayley sipped her herb tea and stared into space. He’d written coordinates, and in a shaky hand penned in hydrous silicon oxide. Hayley wasn’t familiar with the term. Did his unsteady writing mean he was excited, or was it simply a sign that he was growing older?

      His death was sudden and unexpected. Hayley, as well as others, assumed he’d recover from his nagging bout of pneumonia. Would he have told her about this spot if he’d had more warning? Hayley liked to think he would’ve taken her into his confidence. However, the old man really detested Joe,