Fussin'

Clem was fussin’. Didn’t make no nevermind whether he wanted it or didn’t, when a foul mood struck him, he would start to fussin’. He had just spent a stone cold week in the snowy hilltops miles from the town, sifting and digging through ice cold water and frozen dirt and had never seen a wink of nugget. The people in town frequently laughed at his failed efforts in searching for gold, another week with not a flake to show for it wouldn’t change a thing.

As a result of his anger and shame at another failure, his legs would twitch and hands would tremble, the sure signs of a good bout of fussin’. He tried desperately to stuff his pipe with tobacco, but after years of hard gold mining in the hills, the feeling in his hands was weak and with his legs and arms twitching and twisting like a bobcat in a snare, fine detailed work like that was near impossible, and it only made him fuss all the more.

He turned away from the sticks over barely glowing embers that was his fire, and the cold beans that were to be his supper as a voice carried its way through the pines. Clems ears weren’t what they used to be, but he could hear the shouting loud enough to place it about 200 feet from him, still hidden from view but loud enough to be heard. Maybe a traveller lost in the woods, looking for help. He steadied his rattling leg with a firm grip and stopped the soft clinking of the spoons and cups on his belt, then turned an attentive ear to the voice in the woods.

No. Not voice. Voices. There were two now. Hollering back and forth at one another. Loud as the dickens and getting closer. Both voices trying to drown out the other. Clem sat, still as a hare that’s spotted a fox, and listening just as keenly. His attention was entirely on the voices as they grew louder and without realizing it, his fussin’ had stopped completely.

He leapt back off of his stool in surprise and rolled through the snow as several shots rang out in the trees. So close he could feel the pulses of the countless shots and smell the carbon in the musty evening air. The voices fell silent and were replaced by thumping of hooves as a pair of Mustangs galloped out from behind a set of bushes.

Clem shot up to his jittery feet as the riderless horses took off in opposite directions. He took to fussin’ in a way that he had never taken to fussin’ before. His legs jerked so hard that he basically leapt through the air like the fleas he routinely saw in his clothes.

“Oooooooooo heck!” his gravelly voice rang out in panic. “Shoot! Shoot! Dang! Darn! Damn!” he sounded off as he took to running to the origin of the fleeing horses. Through the bushes, two men lay in the mud. Covered in dirt and snow, neither man moved. Both men were dressed similarly in large black hats and long trench coats. They wore leather gloves and bandanas hid their faces from the cold. Both men still clutched their revolvers in dead, gloved hands, but neither could make a move to use them anymore.

Clem didn’t need to see anything else to know the story on these two. Bandits and thieves, they were. Fresh from a robbery he would guess, based on the masked faces and the boiling in their blood that caused the shootout.

He continued to cuss and holler as he nudged the first man with his shivering boots. The lifeless body rolled on its back presenting a satchel that slipped open. Although riled up and fussin’ something fierce, Clem’s curiosity found the better of him as he peaked inside the leather bag. His eyes shot open in awe as he was met with piles and piles of bank notes. Some carefully wrapped in neat and counted stacks, some crumpled up in wads and hastily stuffed inside. The bag easily held at least $20 000.

Clem froze in an instant, the shakes ceasing. He knew not what to make of it. He thumbed through the notes in disbelief, rolling them over in his hands and feeling the grit of the paper. Inspecting them to ensure their authenticity and re-inspecting them again in case he was mistaken. The entire time, his mouth gaping so wide in shock a grizzly could have made a comfortable winter home of it.

He lost track of time while the money was in his hands. Forty years of staking claims and sifting in lakes had never earned him more than $100 an outing. It was more money than he had seen in his life or was likely to again.

He snapped back into his mind faster than a bullwhip when he once again heard yelling nearby. His tent and firepit sat near a ridge by a small stream and voices were coming from the bottom of the cliff. Not just one or two but several. A jumble of voices that grew louder every second. Some laughing, others shouting. Clem scooped the bag up and scampered back to his campsite to see the commotion.

He peered over the drop to forty feet below to see a group of men riding in a group. Even at the far distance, he knew a posse when he saw one. He could make out the sheriff in the lead on his majestic Arabian and other men on horseback who must have been deputized locals from town. A pair of long ropes led from the saddle of the beautiful Arabian to the bindings on the hands of a pair of men in long trench coats. The sheriff pulled them along as he rode, clearly other members of the gang that had gifted Clem the banknotes, stripped of their disguise and menace.

Clem took to his fussin’ again. Some of the most violent shakes he ever had shook him like a diamondbacks rattle. They’d never let him keep the money if they found him, worse yet, he might suffer the same fate as the men at the bottom of the ridge. Even if he wasn’t immediately caught, he couldn’t just start spending the money without drawing attention to himself.

Thinking fast, he ran to a felled tree near the water, dug underneath the base and shoved the bag into the hole and filled it back in with dirt. He pulled the black leather notebook out of his travelling pack and unfolded the map inside. Ignoring the marks he had made indicating the lakes and streams where there was no gold to be found, he eagerly circled his campsite and turned to the freshest page in the book to mark the location with the note “Good lode. Must come back. Nice to sit under trees”

He tore down his campsite quicker than a jackrabbit in a running race and started the long walk home to avoid that bothersome posse. His mind running as fast as it could go with ideas of what to do with that money once he returned for it in a few weeks and how not to arouse suspicion. His old prospector brain immediately went to some other miners who would be happy to quietly part with some of their finds in exchange for the notes. Then he’d be able to take it back to more legitimate buyers and say he staked a good claim.

It was a good plan and Clem allowed his addled mind to wander to thoughts of mansions with servants bringing him mountains of exquisite, corned beef hash on silver platters. He was fussin’ and fussin’ hard. His legs jumped out from beneath him so hard he was practically skipping. It was a good kind of fussin’ though. After uncovering his largest find, he had buried it and the thought of finally being recognized as the successful prospector he knew himself to be made him giddy.