The Gold Watch
by Rik Hunik
Copyright 2013 by Rik Hunik
A slightly different version of this story originally appeared in Crimson Online Magazine #13, 2000
Chapter 1
The late-morning sun broke through the clouds and tried to melt the snow. Less than an inch had fallen overnight but it was late September in the year 1866 (Pete wasn't sure of the exact date) and up here in the Cariboo mountains there was a good chance this snow would be here until spring.
Pete, his pack on his back, hiked around a corner of the creek onto a wide gravel beach. Wet charcoal in the center of a circle of melted snow indicated where a fire had been last night. A trace of heat lingered in the burnt wood and there was a rectangular patch of bare ground nearby, where a tent had been pitched in the shelter of a boulder, but nothing had been left behind.
A confusion of footprints had flattened the snow and stirred the gravel all around the fire and tent, and a trail led to the creek. It appeared to be a typical campsite, except for the overabundance of footprints. Pete saw no reason to stop.
As he walked away his left foot came down on a loose rock and it grated against its neighbor with a loud "scrutch." Several startled crows took flight from behind the boulder, squawking their annoyance, then settled on nearby rocks and branches to watch him with their bright eyes.
Apprehension chilled him when he noticed that the sun was ahead of him now. The creek he was following had swung around in a wide arc to his right, to the east, the one direction he didn't want to go.
His probed the bush with his eyes, both sides of the creek, upstream, downstream, searching for any hint of movement that could presage a shot at him.
It didn't happen. Except for himself and the crows this place was deserted. Still wary, his rifle pointing the way, he advanced around the boulder.
A few more steps and he saw it, the naked body of a dead man. There was a bullet hole in his left hip and his right arm had been nearly blown off at the shoulder by a shot from behind. Another shot, in the stomach, had ended the man's life, but not right away.
Pete shivered as a cold breeze blew across his sweating face. He had heard the shots that ended this man's life.
He had been drinking weak coffee and cooking some brown rice for breakfast. Brown rice was more nutritious than white flour, and relatively cheap, but it wasn't his first choice for breakfast; it was all he had left. He had learned about brown rice from Jimmy Hong, a Chinese man he had saved from a beating in Barkerville last spring. Jimmy had also taught him about prospecting and gold mining, and a good many other things as well.
The early morning silence had been shattered by a short volley of distant gunshots, startling Pete into slopping hot coffee over his hand. While the reports echoed briefly among the rock walls of the hills and valleys Pete, in disgust, tossed his tin cup to the ground. It was no great loss. The coffee grounds had been reused so often every last dreg of flavor had been purged from them.
Pete wiped his hand on his pants and grabbed his new Winchester model 1866 rifle from his tent and kept it nearby. The shots had come from the east, maybe a couple of miles away. Most of the shots had come from a handgun, or maybe two handguns, with one rifle shot in between. It didn't sound like hunting.
Pete finished his bland breakfast, packed his camp and headed north, up the creek, carrying his rifle. He had intended to avoid trouble by heading away from the sound of the shots, but he hadn't been paying enough attention to where he was going and the creek brought him here.
It seemed that the man and his camp had been stripped clean by the killers, but Pete spotted a gleam of gold between the finger's of the dead man's left hand. It looked like a pocket watch. Let the poor fellow keep it, Pete thought, wondering how the killers had missed it.
Pete found a spot a short distance up the bank and dug a grave. He kept his revulsion in check while he dragged the corpse to the hole and settled it in. He said a short prayer and commenced burial.
He marked the grave with a crude cross of two sticks tied together. "I wish I could do more for you," he said aloud, "but what can an ordinary man do alone in this wilderness?"
He gathered his stuff together and was about to shoulder his pack when he noticed the golden gleam on the rocks where the body had lain while he dug the grave. He picked it up.
It was a fancy, gold-plated watch, engraved with a pattern of stylized leaves. He read the inscription on the back. "For Ben, for all time. Love, Sylvia,"
I guess he wanted me to have it, Pete thought as he flipped it open. 11:55 the hands told him. It felt warm and its curve fit nicely in his hand, like holding a woman, and he could hear its steady tick-tick, tick-tick, tick-tick, like a miniature pulse, as the second hand swept around. He slipped it into his pants pocket.
An image of Molina formed in his mind; her elegant profile, the way she walked, the sound of her laugh, the scent of her hair, the feel of her smooth dress and the warm softness underneath. She was a recent widow he was courting, waiting in Barkerville for him to come back with his fortune.
But the sad fact was that the gold watch in his pocket was the most gold he had seen since he left Barkerville, and none of the gold he saw there was his. All his panning had netted him only a few flakes of gold per pan, with an occasional tiny nugget barely worthy of the name. Not nearly enough to keep him in the gold fields, barely enough to pay for the trip south, back to civilization. It looked like he would be returning, broke and humiliated, to his mundane life as a clerk in a department store down south in New Westminster or Victoria. If he could get a job.
The snow melted in the sunlight but remained in the shade. Burying the prospector had used up a big chunk of his day and most of his energy. He was several days out from Barkerville and he had already been on half rations for nearly a week, hoping to save himself with wild game, but his luck at hunting matched his luck at panning for gold. In desperation he had decided to try one last day before heading back in defeat, but now he was too tired to go on, and he had no desire to run into the killers.
"To hell with my last chance," he muttered. "I'm calling it quits and turning back while I'm still alive. This is good-bye to the gold rush."