A Pines Family Thanksgiving
(November 26-30, 2014)
2. Through the Woods and Under the River
"I'm not at all sure about this," Ford said.
Stan laughed. "We're in the middle of nowhere, Poindexter! Who's gonna see me naked?"
"That's not the point! Stanley, it's cold!"
"Sixty degrees ain't cold," Stan said, stripping off his shorts. "It's bracing!" He pulled on his trunks and then started getting into his wetsuit. "Ugh, this thing's like a onesie!" He sat on the bank of the pool and got the legs started, then stood and pulled the suit up around him. "Good thing I went for the extra insulation. Help me with the sleeves."
It was November 17, and they had gone to the same beaver pond where Wendy, Dipper, and Mabel had begun their adventure in the old ghost town. Across from them, Ghost Falls tumbled over an outthrust rock shelf and poured down into the pool. "OK," Stan said, stretching to adjust the fit of his diving suit. "Accordin' to the kids, there's a cave behind the falls. Should be a shelf of rock one, two feet under the water that I can climb on to get in. Help me with the tank and then I'll put on the mask and flippers and see what I can find. Got the bag and reel?"
"Right here," Ford said. "Are you sure you can carry that?"
"It's all in the legs and flippers, Ford! Look, I got the SCUBA lessons, OK? Now help me."
Reluctantly, Ford helped him suit up. Then, fully dressed and equipped, Stan waded duck-fashion into the scummy water. At the bank, the depth was about two feet, but a little way from shore there was a drop-off. Stan gave Ford a thumbs-up and muttered, "It's pretty damn cold, though," to himself. Then he put in the mouthpiece, stepped off and leaned forward, and started to kick.
It was awkward. The waterproof bag of equipment strapped to his chest, but in his right hand he carried a reel of strong light cord. The mask didn't help much with visibility—the water was too churned-up, too full of mud particles, to let him see very far. But he kicked steadily, skirted the white water just beneath the falls, and found the ledge that Dipper had described. He scrambled up on it, removed the flippers, and holding them and the reel of line, he edged sideways until he saw the dark opening of the cavern.
He stepped inside and unreeled a few more feet of the line. The cave was flooded—a foot of water toward the falls—but the back part was reasonably dry. When he stepped out of the water, Stan unzipped the waterproof bag and took out a walkie-talkie. "Ya there?" he bellowed over the roar of the falls.
"I'm here," Ford said. "Are you all right?"
"Peachy," Stan said. With his free hand, he took out the powerful little flashlight and turned it on. "OK, I'm in the cave. I'm on dry rock now, but the front half is under a foot of water. There's stuff here, all right—pile of rotted wood, looks like some bags in the corner. Gonna check 'em out. You got the line secured?"
"Tied to a stake."
For five minutes Stanley rummaged around. Then he moved what looked like the remains of a knapsack and said, "Bingo! Ford, come in!"
"Yes, here. Are you in trouble?"
"Nope. OK, what I got is a little pile of gold nuggets. I'm gonna put 'em in one of the bags and then we'll see if we can get 'em across."
"Understood. Hurry. It's cold, and—"
"Yeah, yeah, we'll just do the one bag. We can come back in the spring when the weather warms up."
Holding the flashlight between his teeth (real, not dentures—his had grown back in since he drank from the Fountain of Youth), Stan scooped the nuggets up and put them into a tough triple-canvas bag. He estimated that the little hoard came to somewhere between eight and twelve ounces. "Coulda carried this out," he muttered, but they'd wanted to test their system.
He carefully fastened the bag—it had a double closure—and then hooked it onto the line with a cinch carabiner. He waded back into the water until he stood a few feet behind the falls. Again, he shouted into the walkie-talkie to be heard: "Ford! Haul it in. I'll unreel."
"All right. Ready?"
"Take it away."
Stanley paid out the line as Ford, on shore, hauled it in hand over hand. The bag went into the water, beneath the falls, and more and more line went out. Then the movement stopped, and Ford said, "I have it."
"Yeah, there's only about thirty feet of line left. Haul all that in and we'll coil it up. That way I won't have to carry it with me on the way back. I'll get the flippers and mask on and be there in a minute."
Stan repacked everything in his chest pack, put on his gear, checked the air regulator. Then, leaving only the line spool behind, he edged out behind the falls and kicked his way over to the bank, where Ford helped him climb out. "We should have had a campfire going," Ford said, handing Stanley some oversized towels.
"Nah, don't want to leave evidence that we've been here," Stan said. He toweled off—the air felt warm after the water—and hurriedly dressed. "That's better! How much do you think?"
"I don't know," Ford said. "Probably less than a pound."
"Let's go," Stan said. "We'll check it out."
It was a four-mile hike back to Ford's car, and that warmed Stan up even more. As they started back to Gravity Falls, Ford said, "Even if that's real gold, I'm not sure we can keep it."
"Of course, we can!" Stan said. "I got the permit from the Department of State Lands! For all anybody knows, we found that stuff by panning in creek beds. And we did recover it from a waterway, you know. Totally legit, practically."
It wasn't an enormous gold strike—as they found out when they got back to the McGucket house and used a pan balance, it weighed out to 10.21 Troy ounces—but it was real gold, the quality was good, and it would bring in enough funds, as Stan said, "to go back in the spring and loot the place."
"That may be all the old miner left," Ford told him.
Stan shrugged. "Eh, I'm pretty sure there's probably more under the water in the cave, but even if there's nothing left, it'll still be fun looking. You gotta try skin-diving, Ford! It's a kick."
"I'll think about it," Ford said in a voice that hinted he wouldn't.
"Yeah, and then maybe we can look at your photos of the maps showin' where the Spanish galleons went down and maybe take a Caribbean trip to poke around in the ocean. We could go far if we found one."
"How so?" Ford asked.
"Well, they got like six thousand miles to the galleon," Stan said. "Hah!"
"Very amusing," Ford told him. "And I suppose there's sunken treasure yet to be found, but we don't really need all the money in the world, you know."
"Hey," Stan said, "give me my dreams!"
On Wednesday morning, they ate breakfast in Greasy's, and as they got up to leave, Stan slipped a fifty-dollar bill under his empty coffee cup.
As the twins reached the door, behind them Lazy Susan yelled, "Hey, Stanley! Ya forgot something!"
Stan grinned back at her. "Nah, that's your tip," he said.
"But the check was just fourteen bucks!"
"It's to make up," he said, "for all the times I stiffed ya."
People in the diner laughed and Lazy Susan was so surprised that her other eye opened. "Well—thank you!"
It was a good thing Ford and Stan hadn't waited a couple of days before taking their prospecting expedition—Wednesday had dawned with a gray overcast sky, the temperature had fallen steadily the whole night before, and at 8:00 in the morning a light snowfall sifted down. "I'd hate to be swimmin' today," Stan said.
"I hope you didn't catch cold," Ford told him as they reached the Stanleymobile.
Stan unlocked the doors. "I'm fine, Ford. Long as I didn't catch some weird beaver disease. I'm more likely to come down with something today—it's gotta be thirty degrees, and me without my heavy coat!"
"Let's get home and warm up," Ford said, climbing into the passenger seat of the El Diablo.
In the car, Stan smiled and said, "'Nother week and they'll all be piling in for Thanksgiving."
Ford said in a brooding voice, "I'm still worried about how the twins' mom and dad will react to Gravity Falls."
"Meh," Stan said as he started the engine, "we'll cross that bridge after we burn it."