Short Stories by James L. Fox
Lonesome Charlie
“Of all the stupid ideas you’ve ever had — Fred, damn it! Slow down, I’ve got sand in my shoe.” Betty Williams stopped tramping through the sand wash, sat on a large boulder and poured sand from both slippers.
“There — now as I was saying, this is absolutely the dumbest thing you’ve ever done. You spend a small fortune on a metal detector and a bunch of other crap. Then you insist on me following you for miles up this godforsaken, snake-infested sand trap. And this is supposed to help put our marriage back together? I don’t know who’s the dumbest, you or that stupid marriage counselor.” She lapsed into sullen silence.
Fred knew when she got into one of her moods, there was no negotiating. She wouldn’t walk another step farther away from the van, and he was sure she wouldn’t try to have fun looking for nuggets in the old sand wash.
“Why don’t you just rest a while? I’ll check out this area for another half hour, and if I don’t get rich, we’ll head back to the van.”
When she didn’t answer, he walked away swinging his Gold Bug back and forth. He soon forgot all about the time, and after successfully digging up his fifth nice little nugget, he looked around and found that he had covered almost a mile. He couldn’t see Betty, but he figured that she was either sitting behind the boulder or had returned to the van.
He headed back, working the ground as he went. When he got to the boulder and looked on the other side, he found her chatting happily with a grizzled old prospector. It was the first time he had seen her laugh in months.
“Fred, I want you to meet Charlie. Charlie’s my new friend. He’s a barrel of laughs, and I don’t know when I’ve heard so many funny stories.”
Fred held out his hand, and Charlie, with an agility that belied his age, jumped to his feet and wrung Fred’s hand like a long-lost friend.
“Fred, I’m sure glad to meet you and your lovely wife,” Charlie said, his whiskered face contorting into a toothless smile. “We’ve been getting along like kinfolks. Did ya find any color in that wash? I’ve been doin some drywashin’, but can’t do any braggin’ yet.”
Fred shook out the five nuggets into the palm of his hand. Charlie squinted at them.
“Not a bad day’s work for a beginner,” he said. “Maybe tomorra, you’ll let me try that fancy gadget?”
“Well, Betty and I hadn’t really decided on coming back tomorrow.”
“Oh no! You don’t have to rush off so soon, do ya?”
Fred, thinking about Betty’s tantrum if he agreed to camp out on the desert, answered, “I’m afraid so, Charlie.”
Charlie walked with them as they started back to the van. After about a mile, he pointed to a circle of rocks fifty yards to the right.
“My camp is right there, and the road is right behind my camp. Why don’t you stop by my camp, have a cold drink, and then you can walk back to your van on the road. It’s easier walking.” That was all it took to get Betty’s agreement, so they headed for Charlie’s camp.
Arriving there, they were surprised to see quite a few people milling about. As they entered the camp, several came up, happily greeted Charlie and asked to be introduced. When they had Charlie alone again, Betty asked:
“Charlie, are you putting us on or something? These people are all in costume — not really costume, but their clothes remind me of some of my grandma’s old photo albums. What’s the deal?”
“Well, honey, didn’t you notice? I’m in costume, too. We came out here to do a tintype — you know a motion picture. The equipment is delayed, so we’re just sittin’ around havin’ fun. Sure you don’t want to stay?”
Seeing no cabins or tents, Betty shook her head no.
She turned to Fred: “Why don’t you go get the van? I don’t think I could walk another step. Okay?”
Fred grumbled and headed off down the canyon. As Charlie had said, he found the road not far behind the camp. Soon he was packing his gear into the van and heading back up the canyon.
When he got to where he figured the camp was, he stopped, got out and locked the van. He looked for several minutes.
The area looked vaguely familiar, but strangely different. There was no circle of rocks. He could find no footprints. He searched the road until he found where he had entered the road, but when he tried backtracking, he could find no prints in the desert. He hurried to the sand wash. Plenty of prints there. His, hers, but wait a minute, Charlie had walked between them. How could he do that without leaving any footprints?
“BETTY!” He shouted — not even an echo. Where were all those people? Where was Betty? “BETTY!” Nothing.
In the midst of the panic that was taking over his mind, it suddenly occurred to him: “God, no one’s going to believe that I just lost her up here. I’d better get some help.”
He dashed back to the van and headed for the little town of Fort Exile.
Fort Exile was the only available source of help for forty miles. Most of the other small towns and villages had long since boarded up and moved out. The new interstate had created many ghost towns as it lured business to new locations closer to the flow of traffic.
Fred slid to a stop in front of a mud-colored adobe building with a weathered sign that read, “Fort Exile Sheriff.” His cloud of dust made visibility almost impossible, and when he got out of the van, the heat was like a blast furnace. He wiped his face with the back of his hand, smearing dust across the sweat on his forehead, and entered the small building.
Inside it was quite cool, and as he waited for his eyes to become accustomed to the darkness, he could hear the hum of the swamp cooler. There was a counter running across the entire room, and behind the counter seated at a table were two men playing checkers. Fred counted eight empty beer bottles on the table, and both men had their hands firmly closed around their refills.
“Where can I find the sheriff?” he asked impatiently.
“Well, that depends on why you want to see him.” one of the men answered, looking up with a sleepy grin.
“Mister, I need help. My wife and I were prospecting up the canyon, and I lost track of her. I’ve looked all over the place where we were, and she ain’t around anywhere. I think an old prospector that we met might have kidnapped her.”
“You sure she didn’t just go voluntarily?” The larger of the two got up and walked to the counter. He picked up a clipboard and got ready to write. “First, let’s have your name and your wife’s name and age. Then I’ll need a complete description. Okay?”
Fred was starting to get a little angry. “I want to see the sheriff. In the first place, my wife isn’t about to take off with a decrepit old prospector. Why, hell, Charlie must be at least seventy. He might be a smooth talker, but Betty wouldn’t walk across the street with the likes of him.”
When Fred mentioned the name Charlie, the other man got up and approached, “Did he say Charlie, Dan? Could it be?”
He turned to Fred: “Mister, my son, Dan, is the sheriff. My name’s Harold, and I’m his one and only deputy. Did you see any other folks with this Charlie fella?”
Fred looked at him, puzzled — “Yeah, there were quite a few folks at his camp. I left Betty there while I went to get the car, and when I got back, they were all gone. They even wiped away their footprints, but I’ll never figure out how they moved all those big rocks.”
Dan let out a sigh, “Well I’ll be . . . Old Lonesome Charlie has paid us another visit. I was sorta hoping he was gone for good.”
Fred interrupted his musing with, “Damn it, I’m the one with the missing wife. How about filling me in? Who is this Lonesome Charlie? If you know him, why don’t we just go get my wife, then we can all go home instead of standing here filling out stupid reports?”
Harold handed Fred a cold bottle of beer, turned to Dan and softly muttered, “You better tell him the bad news, son.”
Dan nodded. “You’ve got the wrong tense, mister. It’s who was Lonesome Charlie.”
“Back in the early eighties, the fort that this town takes its name from was located at the entrance to that box canyon you were prospecting in.
“They built the fort at the entrance because the walls of the canyon were so steep that no one could get in or out. The fort only had to defend against a frontal attack, and the horses, cattle and supplies were safe in the canyon.
“Gabby Charlie Wilson carried supplies to the fort. His wagon train arrived every four months. They called him Gabby because he talked all the time. Couldn’t stand to be alone. He even hired a different companion to ride with him on each trip so he’d have someone new to talk to and swap stories with. People at the fort started avoiding him ’cause he’d talk their ears off.
“Then trouble with the Indians started, and this one time when Charlie was back in the canyon unloading his wagons, the Indians attacked. The fort was doing fine until the Indians started a rockslide that covered the fort with a pile of rock six hundred feet high and a half mile deep. That slide killed everyone at the fort. Charlie survived but was left sealed in that canyon.
“Forty years later, when they discovered gold out in these rocks, this town came to life. When they were clearing the entrance to the canyon, they found Charlie’s body. According to his diary, he dug for nearly eight years trying to get out. You could tell from his writing how he gradually went mad for lack of human companionship.
“Wasn’t long after that, folks started disappearing. Some claimed to have seen Charlie leading people up into that canyon. Seems like Old Lonesome Charlie would pick up someone to visit with for a while, then when they ran out of interesting things to talk about, Old Charlie’d go get another one.”
Fred could feel reality starting to slip away. Either these local yokels were giving him the treatment or the whole sun-baked world had gone mad.
“Just hold it one damn minute. I hope you’re not trying to get me to believe that some ghost from the past has kidnapped my wife just because he wants to talk to someone. If you expect me to believe a cock-n-bull story like that, you’re crazy.
“The Charlie I met is just as real as you or me. Hell, I even shook hands with him. If you’re too damn lazy to help me find her, then call the state troopers over at Bizel Junction. I want some action, and I want it now!”
Harold reached across the counter, patting Fred on the arm, “Calm down, sonny. What is your name? You never did say.”
“Fred, my name’s Fred Williams, and my wife’s name is Betty.”
“Well, Fred, you don’t hafta believe what Dan’s tellin’ ya, but all the folks around here will tell it just like it is. We can call ole Cap’n Rogers over at Bizel Junction, but I doubt if he’ll come over.”
“The last time Charlie grabbed someone, it was a female surveyor working for the government. Cap’n Rogers got in trouble ’cause he didn’t believe us when we told him about Charlie. He told us that she was probably hiding behind one of those Anheuser-Busches that we’re always sippin’ on.
“Anyway, the Feds chewed him a new behind for not reporting her missing and conducting an immediate search. The Feds had their own search team out there for a couple a weeks, but never found hide-nor-hair. Her tracks just disappeared, so they just hushed it up and left.
“You’re the first one to have actually talked with Charlie and got to leave. You musta not been very interesting.”
“That’s exactly what Betty always said,” Fred replied. “Has anyone ever escaped from Charlie?”
“Not in recorded history,” answered Harold. “At least this time, we didn’t lose one of our locals. ‘Course that don’t make you feel any better. Sorry.”
Fred finished his beer and grinned as Dan handed him a refill.
“Oh, I don’t know about that, Harold. I’m starting to feel better already. Who’s winning the checker game?”
All That Glitters
There are some folks who always seem to be standing down below when old mother fate empties her chamber pot. You know . . . they’re the ones you don’t get too close to . . . for fear some’ll splash on you, too.
Poor Bernie Twopops was one of the worst cases of no-luck-at-all I ever did see. His maw named him that ’cause she warn’t quite sure which one was his pop. One look at little Bernie and both of them left town — never to be heard of again. It wasn’t that he resembled either one of them, it was that Bernie only had one good arm. The other was half-size and kinda twisted. He had a club foot and a hare lip, but outside of those little imperfections, he appeared just a normal little baby. It wasn’t until he got to be about eight that his teacher decided that Bernie was a little slow in the head.
He grew like a weed, so by the time he was fifteen, he was man-size in body and still eight in his head. He was kind and gentle with everyone — especially with animals. Animals just loved Bernie, so when his maw ran off with the strong man from the carnival, Hiram Fugate took Bernie in and let him work at the livery stable.
Bernie was a happy kid and a hard worker. Couple a’ times, some drunk would use poor Bernie for a punching bag, but Bernie would just curl up into a ball, whimper and cry until they’d pull the mean bastard off. Bernie never did get violent. He did develop a wracking cough. Hiram thought it was from getting his ribs kicked in by a drunken trail hand, but Doc Patterson said no, it wasn’t that. He said that Bernie was in the advanced stages of consumption. He said lung fever was highly contagious.
Hiram didn’t know what to do. He felt guilty about making Bernie sleep in the stable with the horses — probably got the damn lung fever from sleeping on the ground in an empty stall. Couldn’t keep him around, and sure as hell couldn’t tell the folks in town. He sighed as he stood up and went out to the stable.
He found Bernie curry-combing the mule Hiram gave him for his last birthday.
“Bernie,” Hiram began, “how would you like to go into business with me?”
“Doing what, Uncle Hiram?”
“Gold prospecting.”
Hiram dug into his pocket and pulled out a nugget he’d been carrying around for the last year or so. . .
“See this beauty, Bernie! This is worth almost a hundred dollars. These little beauties are lying all over the place up there in those hills over yonder. If I give you the digging tools and enough grub for a month, how would you like to go up there and find us some of these gold nuggets?”
Bernie’s eyes started to gleam.
“Do you think I could do it all by my lonesome? What if I get lost and can’t find my way back? How will I know if I got the right stones?”
“Sure, you can do it. You take this stone with you, so you can compare it to the stones you find, and if you run out of food and want to get home, wait till dark and tell that mule to go home. He’ll come right back — believe me, he knows the way.”
“When do I leave, Uncle Hiram?”
“First thing in the morning, right after breakfast,” Hiram answered. “I’ve got to go get you some tools and a gold pan. You’ll probably find enough water to do a little panning in your spare time. I’ll show you how to work a gold pan this evening, before we turn in.”
Hiram stopped and told Doc what he had planned.
“Don’t breathe a word to anyone about his consumption,” Hiram said. “I’ll keep him out in those hills prospecting for gold until he gets too weak to make it back to town. When the mule comes back with an empty saddle, I’ll go up there and bury the little tyke. I just don’t have the heart to let the town destroy him.”
Doc agreed, and so Hiram finished his shopping and returned home to teach Bernie to use a gold pan.
The next morning, Bernie climbed up onto his mule, grinned happily at Hiram and rode north into the mountains in search of gold nuggets. He was sure he’d find a whole bunch and make Hiram real proud of him. He didn’t know what a hundred dollars was, but Hiram seemed to like the sound of it, so it must be good.
Three days later, he was beginning to get a little worried. Hiram said they were all over the place up here, but he hadn’t found any yet. Maybe someone got here before he did and got all the nuggets — Hiram would be so disappointed. Bernie started to cry, but quit right away because he couldn’t see good when he cried, and he had to see good to find those nuggets.
During the fourth night, Bernie really had some bad luck. The mule woke him up . . . it was braying, jumping up and down and acting frightened. When he untied the mule to calm him down, the animal jerked the tether out of Bernie’s hand and ran off into the darkness. Bernie followed, calling his name and begging him to stop and wait. After about a mile, the mule did stop and waited for Bernie to catch up. Bernie was coughing so hard from the exertion that he started to cough up blood, but he didn’t notice. He just wanted to get back to camp. He arrived back at camp just in time to see a big black bear leaving with the last of his food. That’s what had been scaring his mule.
Now he was in trouble: He hadn’t found any nuggets, and a month’s supply of food was gone in four days. He couldn’t go back to Uncle Hiram after making such a mess of everything, and he couldn’t kill any of the little creatures in the mountains, even if he had to starve to death. He cleaned up his campsite, got on the mule and rode up the next canyon in his search for nuggets.
By two in the afternoon, he was hungry, had seen no nuggets and was ready to give up. He got off the mule and sat on a boulder, leaning back against the almost vertical wall. It was cool and shady, and he was asleep in minutes.
When he woke up, it was dark. He could see okay because there was almost a full moon. He looked around in a panic for the mule and was relieved to see him standing quietly nearby. Something bothered Bernie, though. It sure seemed like when he woke up, he heard a whole flock of birds chirping. Didn’t sound like the pigeons that hung around the stable for scraps of feed the horses dropped . . . sounded more like those canaries Missus Wilson hung in the window of the dry goods store. Couldn’t be, though — birds slept when it got dark. Musta been his imagination. Darn, but he was getting hungry!
He was startled to hear another burst of twittering from above his head. He looked up and caught a glimpse of three heads ducking back into a hole in the face of the cliff. Looked like some kids about ten or eleven years old — strange thing was, they were kinda light blue and they glittered when they moved.
“Hey, you kids, come on down . . . I won’t hurt you. Don’t pretend you ain’t there ’cause I saw you real plain. Quit playing games now and show yourselves, but be careful and don’t fall.”
He got no answer. He looked up at the hole and over at his mule. He thought he just might be able to reach the hole by standing on the mule.
When he got the mule in place, he climbed up and could just reach the lower lip with his fingertips of his good arm. There was a branch growing about six inches higher. As he crouched to leap up to grab the branch, the mule moved and off he fell. He lit hard on the back of his neck and suddenly lost the ability to move anything below his chin. His eyes filled with tears, and all he could do was yell at the mule,.
“Go home, Sam — go home!!” The mule trotted off into the darkness.
Bernie lay there completely helpless, figuring he’d probably die long before Uncle Hiram found him, when the twittering started up again. From where he was, he could see the hole in the wall. One of the blue kids took something out of his purse and made a blue bubble with it. He stepped into the bubble and slowly floated down to where Bernie was lying.
The blue kid made a bubble around Bernie and guided it up through the hole and out of sight inside the mountain. Bernie had been terrified at first, but as soon as he was inside the bubble, he felt so calm and safe, he just knew that nothing bad was going to happen.
Once inside, they left him in the bubble while they examined him. Every time they’d find something that was messed up, they’d look at Bernie with big, sad eyes and twitter like a whole flock of magpies. Like they were scolding about something. Finally, they seemed to be arguing about something, almost like they were voting. Bernie watched with the eyes of a helpless wounded animal. He knew they were deciding his fate, but he didn’t know the enormity of the decision. He figured he’d lost in the voting when they filled his bubble with a greenish gas that put him out instantly.
Bernie woke up with a start. His left arm was tingling all over like he’d slept on it and cut off the circulation. He rubbed it to make the tingling go away . . . then reality sank in. He could feel! He looked at his left arm — it was the same size as the right! Then he remembered the little blue bird people. They musta fixed him somehow. Glory be!! He couldn’t wait to tell Uncle Hiram. He looked around . . . he could see the town to the south and the mountains to the north — they musta brought him halfway home and dumped him there. It was an easy walk home. He picked up his backpack, it seemed extra heavy, but he blamed that on his being weak from his operations. How in heck did he heal up so fast, anyway?.
He walked into the livery stable.
“I’m back, Uncle Hiram. Did Sam, the mule, get back okay? I got hurt, so I had to send him back all alone.”
Hiram walked into the stable, turned white as a sheet and sat down quickly,.
“Bernie, is that really you? We wrote you off for dead six months ago. How in Hades did you survive out there for six months with no food?
“When Sam came back, we searched every inch of those damn mountains, and there wasn’t a single trace of you. We figured someone did you in and buried you and all your gear. Tell me, boy, what happened?”
Bernie told Hiram his story, and while he was doing the telling, he was unpacking his backpack. He stopped close to the part where he woke up in the desert and proudly held up a sack.
“My little bird people musta read my mind because not only did they fix my afflictions, they figured that gold was important to me, so they gave me these.”
He dumped a pile of gold nuggets at Hiram’s feet. Hiram picked one up, examined it and excitedly asked:
“Bernie, do you think you kin find that spot again? If you can, we’re gonna be so damn rich, we’ll never have to work again the rest of our lives.”
Bernie said he was sure he could find the spot. Hiram grabbed him by the arm.
“Let’s go over to Doc Patterson’s,” Hiram said. “I want him to give you a checkup — you know, make sure you’re really all right. Lord knows what you been eating to make you see visions like you been talking about. You find any funny-tasting mushrooms out there?”
Doc Patterson examined Bernie and nearly had a heart attack. There was no sign of any consumption, his hare lip had been surgically repaired, and his left arm had undergone a miracle — it had simply started growing and repaired itself. Bernie’s fall had crushed two vertebrae in his neck, but that damage had been surgically repaired also, and he had healed in less than six months.
Doc wanted to tell the world, but Hiram showed him the gold and got him to shut up. For a third of the action. They spent the rest of the day planning their prospecting trip. Hiram wouldn’t hear of Bernie sleeping in the stable, so he ended up spending the night in a room at the Plaza Saloon and Fancy Hotel.
During the night, something happened to demonstrate that although Bernie’s body was all fixed up, his bad luck was still the same. The day-shift barkeep and desk clerk went off shift at eight in the evening and Cliff Barton, the owner of the saloon, came on duty.
Cliff worked the night shift because that’s when the trouble usually started, and there was nothin’ he liked better than beating the crap out of rowdy drunks. Anyway, one of the ladies agreed to go upstairs with one of the drunks and asked Cliff for the key to an empty room.
He gives her a key to the room Bernie is sleeping in. She and the drunk go upstairs, and two minutes later, she and the drunk start screaming and come running down the stairs. She tells Cliff there’s a big blue monster in the room. He grabs his scatter gun and sneaks up the stairs . . . He kicks open the door, turn on the light and finds Bernie sound asleep, lying naked as a jaybird on the bed.
Bernie sits up, rubbing his eyes, and wants to know what all the ruckus is about. Cliff tells him to shut up and go back to sleep. When Cliff turns off the light, he sees that Bernie is glowing a beautiful shade of light blue. Cliff looks closer, and Bernie starts to glitter like a star.
“Oh my God, he’s got the Blue Plague! Everybody outa here!” Cliff shouted. “I’ll call the military base — they’ll know what to do with him.”
So Cliff, his ladies of the night and all the drunks piled out into the street. Cliff went to Doc Patterson’s to use his phone. Doc let him in, but when he found out Cliff wanted to bring in the military, he sat him down and told him the whole story. At the mention of the gold, Cliff suddenly forgot all about calling the military.
“You say Bernie said there were a whole bunch of those little blue people? They must be friendly or they wouldn’t have helped Bernie . . . Hmmm.”
Cliff agreed to keep his mouth shut if they’d cut him in for twenty-five percent of the gold and take him along on the trip they had planned. Hiram didn’t like it, but he agreed ’cause ole Cliff sorta had them over a barrel.
Everbody turned back in for the night — everybody except for Cliff. He still had to close up the saloon and throw out the drunks for the night.
All the time he was going through his nightly routine, he kept thinking about how easy it would be to grab off Bernie from upstairs, head for the mountains and beat the crap outa him until he showed where he got those gold nuggets. Cliff didn’t put no stock in the wild tales about weird blue people who twittered like birds . . . Bernie musta been chewing on some loco weed or sumpin’. The more Cliff thought about all that gold, the greedier he got. Finally, he threw his bar rag down, rushed up the stairs and slapped Bernie awake.
“Get up you blue-ass little bastard, we’re gonna take us a little ride. Put your clothes on — you hear now!”
Bernie hurriedly dressed. He knew from past experience how mean Cliff could be.
“Are we gonna tell Uncle Hiram? Are we gonna get my mule? Hiram’s gonna be real mad at you if he wakes up and find me or the mule gone.”
“Just shut up and do what you’re told. I’ve got a nice gentle horse you can ride . . . Now come on, hurry up, it’s gonna be daylight in a few hours.”
They hurried down the back steps and rode off into the night.
Hiram was so excited about getting rich, he hardly slept. At the crack of dawn, he was over to the saloon to wake up Bernie. When he found both Bernie and Cliff missing, it didn’t take him long to put two and two together. He rushed over to Doc’s, beat on the door and started yelling that Cliff had kidnapped Bernie and was gonna get all the gold for hisself. Doc came running out, pulling his suspenders up over his underwear. He told Hiram to get them three good horses and some supplies. He said he had an injun family that owed him a big medical bill.
“Crazy Charlie is a damn good tracker and will be glad to help if I write off some of that bill.”
Hiram rushed off in one direction, Doc in the other, and in less than an hour, their tiny posse was ready to leave.
Bernie had pointed out a notch in the ridge of mountains to the north when he was telling his story to Hiram, so they had a general direction to start in. Ten miles out of town, the tracks grew so few that it wasn’t hard for Crazy Charlie to find a pair going north. Another two miles and those two sets of tracks were the only ones not covered by desert winds.
When they reached the opening to a box canyon, old Charlie balked. He wouldn’t enter the canyon, said there was big medicine in there — no injun would ever go into sacred canyon. He pointed out that there were no tracks coming out, so Cliff and Bernie had to still be in the canyon.
Hiram and Doc thanked him and left him there waiting while they went on in.
They were sneaking along real quiet for a couple of reasons — one being that ole Charlie’s fear had transferred and caused the hairs on their necks to be sorta sensitive, and the other was that they knew that Cliff was just mean and greedy enough for him to try to leave three bodies in the canyon instead of just poor little Bernie’s.
They were about to walk around a huge boulder when they heard a bunch of birds twittering just on the other side. They cautiously peeked out from around the big rock expecting to see birds; instead, they saw Bernie on his knees, crying — and Cliff holding him by the throat with one hand and punching him in the face with his pistol with the other.
“You sniveling little bastard, I’m not going to ask you again. Where did you find the gold — the gold nuggets, stupid? If you don’t tell me, I’ll blow your brains out.”
Cliff was so intent on what he was doing, he didn’t notice the big blue bubble that was slowly drifting down directly over his head. It wasn’t until it touched him that he looked up and started cursing. He tried beating it off with his hands, never letting go of the pistol, but it slowly sank lower, totally enveloping him until he was inside. Hiram and Doc could see him gasping as he tried to breath, but obviously there wasn’t any air inside. There was some more twittering, and they saw some heads duck back inside a cave high up the cliffside. The bubble slowly started to rise in the air.
“Good God,” Doc whispered, “would you look at that!” The bubble kept rising until it was several hundred feet above the rock they were hiding behind. Suddenly it popped and down fell Cliff’s body. It hit on top of the boulder and squashed like a ripe watermelon.
Crazy Charlie tried desperately to calm them down as they waited for Bernie to come out. It was almost two hours before he emerged. Once again, all his wounds were healed, and he was surprised to see Hiram and Doc waiting for him.
“Uncle Hiram, Doc . . . how did you guys know that mean old Cliff made me come out here, and how did you ever find me? I was worried about finding my way back.”
Doc said that Charlie had tracked them because they were worried that Cliff might do something bad to him to try to get the gold.
“Well, you were sure right about that. If my little friends hadn’t protected me, he would have hurt me real bad or shot me. My friends got really angry and punished Cliff, and they told me to go home and never come back ’cause all people were interested in was the gold, so they were going to hide the rest of it where nobody could ever find it. Sorry, Hiram, but they meant it, I’m sure.”
“It’s okay, Bernie. We’re just glad to get you back safe and sound.”
Bernie used his share of the nuggets they did have to buy a farm there in Troublesome Creek and start a family — he took Hiram’s last name ’cause he didn’t want to make a bunch of Twopops.
Some folks have heard Doc and Old Hiram Fugate out by that box canyon making bird sounds and flappin’ their arms like a bird, but that was put down to their just getting a little old and teched in the haid.
Lucky Dawg
Normally, the sight of his campsite at the base of the huge outcropping of decomposed granite cliffs brought feelings of excitement and anticipation to old Jim Graham, but this time as he brought his ancient jeep to a stop alongside the small bubbling brook, he felt only sadness. The kind of sadness that can only be understood by those who have suffered a similar loss.
The mid-morning sun was already unbearably hot as Jim stared back down the canyon. The clouds of white alkali dust still hung in the dead air to mark his passage.
“Think I’ll rest a little,” he muttered, resting his head against the back of the seat. “It can wait a few more minutes.”
He closed his eyes, remembering back to when he had discovered this magical spot. . .
Back in 1978, when his doctor had insisted on his early retirement, he fought tooth and nail against it, but too much had done him in. Too much eating, drinking and sitting behind a desk on his fat behind had made a physical wreck out of him and brought on a serious coronary problem.
He didn’t fancy chasing a little white ball all over the pasture, so when the doctor insisted on his getting regular exercise, he decided for going prospecting. He had always planned on doing it someday, so why not now?
Martha, his ever-loving, nagging wife, blew her stack. There was no way she was going to allow him to go off alone into the desert where he could have a heart attack at any moment.
They argued for weeks until finally he solved the problem by going to the animal shelter and getting a young lop-eared hound. He named the hound Dawg and enrolled him in an obedience training school. He installed a voice activated CB radio in the jeep and had the instructor teach Dawg to run to the jeep and bark into the radio at Jim’s command.
When he and Dawg put on their performance for Martha, she relented and agreed to let them go look for gold. He lost no time in buying all sorts of equipment and heading into the hills to seek his fortune.
He did a lot of metal detecting, digging and dry washing for several months and had almost nothing to show for his efforts. Then one day his luck changed. Normally, while he was prospecting, Dawg would search the area for jackrabbits, but would never get out of sight; however, on this day, Dawg took off through a narrow ravine and could be heard baying way off in the distance.
He followed Dawg out of curiosity, and about a mile up canyon, he found Dawg digging into a hole, obviously after a rabbit. Looking around, Jim noticed a small stream coming right out of the rock face. He had never used his portable sluicebox, but with the stream right there, now was the ideal time.
He sat it in the stream, then noticing the pile of dirt that Dawg had dug out of the face of the cliff, he took a couple of shovels of dirt and ran them through the sluicebox. Almost instantly, he started seeing color. By God, Dawg had found what he had been looking for. The more dirt he shoveled, the more gold he saw piled up in the box.
He put out markers like he had read about, carefully brushed away any traces of their presence and drove hell-bent for home. He excitedly told Martha about their good fortune and headed downtown to register his claim.
He named the mine The Lucky Dawg Mine. And throughout the years pulled out over forty thousand in gold. He pulled out something more valuable than gold from that mine — he got his health back ’cause he worked it by himself.
Every day a little harder, a little more and a little longer until his body was lean, his hands hard and his heart stronger. He renamed Dawg. Dawg’s new name was Lucky Dawg. Jim would work and Lucky would watch until early afternoon.
Then Lucky would take off up canyon hunting for their dinner. When Jim could hear Lucky’s baying getting close, he’d drop the shovel, pick up the shotgun and wait. Soon, old Lucky would run that rabbit right into the clearing, so that they wouldn’t hafta carry it too far after Jim shot it.
Lucky always hated to leave. When Jim would quit work and wash off in the creek, he’d take off his boots and soak his feet in the cold water. Then, when he’d get ready to leave, his boots would be missing. Lucky would steal them and hide them — so they couldn’t go home.
He and that Dawg were closer’n two ticks, and lately they’d sorta grown old together. Too damn bad that Lucky had gone first. Wasn’t going to be much fun coming up here anymore. . .
Jim opened his eyes, wiping away the moisture with the back of his wrinkled hand, and muttered to himself,
“I best get on with this — gotta find some high ground, and I’ll probably need a couple a’ wheelbarrows a’ rocks. Them damn coyotes’ll dig him up if I don’t use lotsa rocks.”
He worked in silence for about an hour, then returned to the jeep. He tenderly removed a blanket wrapped bundle from the rear seat. After the last rock was firmly in place, he sat on the bank of the stream lost in thought.
He took off his boots and put his feet into the cold water. The fast-moving water felt so good to his aching feet. He thought, “If only I could find something like that for what’s aching inside me. Damn!”
He was leaning back on his elbows, searching for familiar shapes in the fluffy white clouds high above, when he heard the first sounds of the hound coming from up canyon.
At first, he thought he was hearing things, but the next time, there was no mistaking the sound of a hound baying in full pursuit. It was getting closer now — much closer. . .
———-
Sheriff Bob Simpson sat awkwardly on the edge of the sofa, twisting his hat in his hands as he talked.
“Missus Graham, I just want to reassure you that old Jim went easy. He was flat on his back on that creek bank, his feet soaking in the water and a happy smile on his face. He obviously didn’t have any pain.”
Martha nodded, wiped her eyes and answered:
“Yes, Jim loved it up there in the canyon. He and that dog spent more time up there than they ever did at home.”
“That reminds me,” Bob Simpson spoke as he stood. “In my report here, it says that when you called 911, you said that you knew your husband was in trouble because a dog told you over the radio. Could you possibly explain that? Frankly, I’m confused.”
Martha explained about Jim’s heart condition back in 1978, the voice-actuated radio, and how Jim had trained the dog to use it. Then her hand flew to her mouth. She looked wide-eyed at the sheriff.
“My goodness, in all the excitement, I forgot that Jim went up there to bury poor old Lucky. Our dog died of old age just yesterday.
“I’ve been sitting here worrying and waiting for that distress call for sixteen years. When it did come, I plumb went outa my mind. I called 911 and gave directions to where the mine was located and never once, ’til right now, give any thought about that call. Our dog Lucky couldn’t of made that call. That’s awful strange, don’t you think, Mister Simpson?”
“Very strange, Missus Graham, very strange — and stranger still, we never could find old Jim’s boots.”
James L. Fox is a Navy veteran, retired manufacturing manager, industrial engineer, jack-of-all-trades and self-proclaimed hermit who writes tall tales from his lair in the Mojave Desert.