Bill Pratt His Partner

Bill Pratt His Partner

      

       Douglas “Big Nuggets” Reimoski

Bill Pratt slept till nearly nine the next morning and then got up suddenly and, after a pause, let out a whoop to wake the dead. He ran outside to the edge of the house to make sure and there it was. The bucket stood beside the porch and inside was half a quart of gold nuggets taken yesterday, in a single day, from the bed of claim 493, Grizzly Creek. The account of his find I will tell you shortly. First, however, it is fitting to watch the affects that came over him and moved him from place to place on his property. He peed beside the can. Then he ran inside, for it was cold, and threw on his wool long johns, and over these a shirt, pants and sweater, all in haste, the latter on backwards. Next, he barged out the door and ran down to the sluice box fifty yards away. There it stood, on the bank of the Grizzly, sand still in its tines, and at least three nuggets worth hundreds of dollars each gleaming out of the silt.

       “Eureka! Eureka!” Bill shouted at the top of his lungs. He jumped up and down, smacking the top of his head with the flat of his hand each time. He squatted and stood up, leapt sideways a good six feet and then back again to his original spot. He sniffed the air but stopped that before anything registered and instead bent double and tried to smell his crotch. Of this he got a whiff since he had not showered in months. Now he felt his teeth with both hands and next jumped again into the air and then ran backwards toward the cabin. Inside, he got his shovel and pick and raced out to the creek where he leapt into yesterday’s hole and, shoulder deep, shoveled out a mass more of sand onto the bank above. Then, unable immediately to get out, the declivity now seven feet deep, he clawed at the bank and cursed and roared and talked about getting a g-damned ladder built. He rose out of the pit after a while and then shoveled sand into the sluice box. He opened a small gate that carried water to the box and let it flow according to calculations made by dint of much experience. It flowed down the tines. Five minutes later the sand was gone and there it lay. Gold! Nineteen nuggets of varying weights, one the size of half his big toe!

       “Eureka! Eureka!” he shouted, and brought the precious metal to the coffee can beside his porch. He went inside and put coffee on, added wood to the stove and got it roaring. Next he cut raccoon meat off its carcass and laid it in cold grease in the fry pan. He took hard tack and bit off a piece, then ran outside to the hole and leapt back into it. He had forgotten his shovel and was forced to claw for a while to get back up onto the bank. Having seized the shovel, he flung himself back into the hole and sent scoops of sand out of it at a great rate. Soon tired, he attempted to climb out again but could not. He wore himself thin with cursing and then rested. Ten minutes later, with random yells and swearings and babblings about building a ladder, Bill hauled himself over the lip of his excavation. He filled the sluice, poured in water and, as before, to his insane delight and vocalizations, found nuggets there. This time, twenty-four of both big and small sizes, one as big as the knob of his tea kettle.

       “Eureka! Eureka!” Bill shouted and carried these new discoveries to the can. Bill Pratt knew then without a doubt, as sure as the time he’d shat himself halfway to the outhouse, that accident had intercepted history. He’d struck it rich!

       Bill haled from Turbulent, Nebraska, in the Duck Swamp region in the eastern part of the state. He had always been a good farmer, one who lived mostly off of the produce he grew. Frugal to a fault, niggardly in his contribution of money to those who requested it of him, and quite a careful spender to boot, when he joined his friends at a café and they all had coffee and pie, he would eat slowly and drink his two cups in such a manner, for one reason or another, that the rest would be finished first and waiting for him. This way it often happened that one of them, impatient finally, would pay the tab. His friends, of course, knew his habit and thought he would never change. They said as much.

       First thing Bill did when he had the can full, and another half full, after a week, during which time he did eventually remember to build a ladder, was pack up and get on the trail for Whitehorse. From there he mailed each of his old friends a package containing enough gold to provide them every one an early retirement. Two months later, he himself arrived home. From that day forward he insisted on paying for all the coffee and pie they ordered at the café. He often thought of the half can of gold he’d left standing beside the porch when he’d abandoned his claim. He never returned to it. It rattled around in his mind till he died at the venerable age of one hundred and seven.