Collected Short Fiction (Jerry eBooks)

by G. C. Edmondson

  Frank sat for a long time looking at the whiskey bottle half full of gold. If he lived twice as long as a man his age had any right to expect, there was enough here to keep him in tobacco and flour—if he could just get it out.

  But doing so posed a new set of problems. If Frank showed up in town with that much gold, all the things he had warned Fred about would come true. The country would fill up with claim jumpers and confidence men—it would turn into another Klondike. Neither of them needed that. He would have to stash the gold somewhere and only take in small amounts. As long as he was scratching away barely making wages nobody was going to come stampeding up this creek to spook all the game and make life miserable. Frank calculated the country was ample for himself and Shep. If Fred and his dog continued eating at their present rate, however, it wouldn’t be long before he had to hunt farther away from home. And meanwhile, who else would be hunting?

  Fred was handing out gold the way butchers gave away liver. And Frank was beginning to believe all of this was really happening. Now, which of them was the crazier? He studied the bottle of dust a while longer, then studied his immediate surroundings until he saw a suitable spot beneath the splayed roots of a spruce. Fred gives. Someday Fred might want to take. Frank decided to wait until after dark to stash his hoard.

  He guessed he was lucky it was still early enough in the spring for day not to last all night long. Shep accompanied him out to bury the bottle. As he finished Frank suddenly knew that in a day or two he was going to be wondering if he hadn’t dreamed all this—that it was pointless to hide something if he was going to wear a trail out to this spruce making sure it was still here.

  Drive a stake in the ground in the opposite direction from the cabin and if the stake was still there tomorrow—it would mean nothing. If there really was a bottle of gold dust Fred could remove it without touching the stake. He gave a growl of disgust and took the bottle back into the cabin. “I’d give it to you,” he told Shep, “if you could find half the bones you bury.”

  Shep wagged his tail briefly but offered no suggestions.

  Frank’s next kill was well up the mountain. Directly above Fred’s diggings as near’s he could figure it. Despite last week’s Chinook there was still some snow at this altitude and he was having a fairly easy time dragging the buck head first so its close-laying hair glided smooth as an iced runner in winter. He came to a dropoff and saw a mile of creek spread in looping curves below him. Fred’s diggings were in the middle and he could see the pasteboard sluice box without even squinting. The creek downstream was milky, the piled pay dirt already half gone. It was not until he had studied the panorama for some time that Frank finally realized what he could not see. There was not the slightest sign of cabin, tent, cave, smoke—no hint of human habitation. Where the hell did Fred hole up?

  Despite the easy descent Frank was tired by the time he had dragged the buck down to Fred’s diggings. His jaw was serving notice again and the sudden stabs of pain made his vision shimmer. By now he was used to having to squint Fred and his dog into focus every time he approached.

  “Howdy!” Fred sounded jovial. “More meat? Just in time.”

  Frank slipped out of the tumpline harness and sat on the buck until he could catch his breath. “Just in time?” he echoed. “You’n that dog must’ve put away a ton in the last ten days.”

  “We do eat a lot,” Fred agreed. “But we went pretty hungry during the winter. And we’re puttin’ up some of it for a trip.” Just as Frank was noting that Fred’s voice and mannerisms were practically an echo of his own, the stranger’s voice changed timbre. “I s’pose it makes you wonder,” he conceded.

  Frank allowed as how he had been gettin’ a mite curious. “Mainly, I don’t see no signs of a cabin,” he explained.

  As he said that, Frank was horrified to see the shimmery outlines of a trapper’s cabin directly across the creek from him. Then just as he was turning to go home and kill himself the cabin disappeared.

  “Sorry,” Fred said. “It just happens. I didn’t mean to spook you thataway.”

  “You?”

  Fred shrugged. “Told you I come from quite a ways off. You wouldn’t believe how many miles. But it’s far enough for folks to have different ways.”

  “How many miles?”

  Fred sighed. “Put down a one and then write a mile of naughts behind it.”

  Frank knew better. “Ain’t no place on Earth farther than twelve and a half thousand miles.”

  “You’re right. No place on Earth.”

  “Wish you wouldn’t do this,” Frank protested. “Been feelin’ a little peaked lately.”

  “I know. Been feelin’ kind of bad about it.”

  “You?”

  “Nothin’ much wrong with your eyes,” Fred said. “Thing is, I don’t really look like this.”

  “You ain’t human?” As he said it Frank knew he had been skirting around this question ever since he had first made Fred’s acquaintance. He remembered Shep’s attitude toward the stranger’s dog. “Your dog ain’t no dog either, is he?”

  “My dog is part of me.”

  Frank struggled to digest this.

  “Foxes, snowshoes, caribou all change color with the snow,” Fred explained. “Only I do it all year round. Always try to look like something harmless.”

  “Are you?”

  “Are you?”

  “Don’t rightly know,” Frank conceded. “S’pose it depends on whether the critter’s askin’ looks tasty.”

  “By the way, I saved you some more gold.”

  “You know what gold’s worth?”

  “I do now.”

  Frank considered the implications. “Don’t want no trouble,” he said. “If you’re goin’ to start wantin’ it back—”

  Fred shook his head. “If it’d buy what I need things’d be different. But the metal I need seems t’be pretty scarce in these parts. All the time I been diggin’ here I ain’t come up with more’n half an ounce.”

  “And you still don’t know what it’s called?”

  “If you knew I would.”

  Frank sighed. “What’s it look like?”

  “A little like silver. Heavier but not as shiny.”

  Frank knew there were any number of scarce metallic elements. But he didn’t know enough to connect up descriptions with names. “How much you need?”

  “Couple more ounces.”

  “Goin’ to be a pretty rich feller when you get home?”

  “Goin’ to take all of it just to get there.”

  “Use it for money, do you?”

  Fred shook his head. “Use it the same way you’d use cordwood in a steamer.”

  “Got your own steamer?”

  “Stashed. My ship looks kind of funny and makes a lot of noise.”

  That explained the racket Frank had heard one night at the beginning of shootin’-star month. “Y’ain’t been here long then?”

  “ ’Bout the middle of shootin’-star month.”

  Frank stared. “How’d you know about that?”

  “You must’ve figured it out by now.”

  Frank guessed he had. “Funny,” he muttered. “Never really thought I was crazy.”

  “You’re not.”

  “Must be if I’m swallowin’ all this.” Frank looked down at Shep, who seemed to have accepted the stranger and his now-absent dog. Even when Fred shimmered for a moment and looked very different from an old man in a mackinaw, Shep remained calm. Frank rubbed his eyes. “Either Shep ain’t seein’ it or it ain’t happenin’.”

  “Shep believes his nose instead of his eyes. I stopped trying to smell like a dog.”

  “Sure you ain’t a devil or an angel or somethin’ ?”

  “No such luck. I can’t tell your fortune or give you three wishes.”

  “You’re doin’ somethin’ the way you’re alluz a jump ahead of me.”

  “Can’t even see deep into your mind,” Fred explained. “Once you bring something up to the surfa
ce, about the time you’re goin’ to say it I can usually make it out. That’s how I learned t’talk English.”

  “You really are from quite a spell down the road,” Frank said. “And your name ain’t Fred. You was going to call yourself Frank and then changed your mind.”

  “You hit it,” Fred agreed. “I kind of cottoned to how you wasn’t too happy with a stranger in your backyard. There’s two of us gonna be happier when I’m gone.”

  “You ain’t figurin’ on stayin’ then? By the way, what is your name?”

  “Man ain’t got no language ain’t got no name either.” Fred shrugged. “Nice country you got here but it’s a little hot for me.”

  “You think it’s hot now, just wait till summer when the flies and the sun are both out all night long.”

  “Exactly. Just as soon’s I pan me out another couple of ounces of fuel you’ll have the whole country to yourself again—providin’ you don’t tell everybody about all that gold. By the way, there’s another tailings mat over by the bones.”

  “Been meanin’ to ask you about them bones,” Frank began.”

  “Been meanin’ to tell you. But I was afraid you might be a little weak in the stomach.”

  “Oh?”

  “Next time you knock over some meat, don’t bother to clean it.”

  “You eat ’em whole?”

  Fred nodded.

  Frank guessed he wouldn’t be too sorry to see the last of Fred. “Uh, that stuff you’re lookin’ for—could I see some of it?”

  Fred produced a tiny vial of some translucent material and handed it to him. The vial was much heavier than Frank had expected. He studied the grayish metallic powder that rolled around inside of it and had a sudden inspiration. “Arsenic?”

  Fred was silent a moment. Frank knew the stranger was sifting through his, Frank’s, knowledge of heavy- metal poisons. “No. Pretty sure it ain’t arsenic,” Fred finally said.

  Frank wet his finger and shook the uncorked vial against it. He put finger to mouth and tasted the tiniest possible amount. There was a faint metallic taste and nothing else.

  Fred didn’t even look like Fred for a moment. “No!” he yelled. “Dangerous!” We are not alike but it can burn any life. Quick! Wash out your mouth and whatever you do, don’t swallow!”

  Frank shrugged and handed back the vial. “Man’d get pretty tired of living if he didn’t take a few chances.” But Fred was so insistent that he gave up and went down to the creek to wash his mouth out with clear water from above the sluice.

  But Fred was still het up over his tasting it. “Poison,” the stranger insisted. “I should never have let you touch it.”

  Frank shrugged. Then the full realization hit him. “My dog,” he began.

  Fred was holding something that looked like a piece of pipe with the ends stopped up. He passed it over Frank’s face and there was a whining like some lovesick mosquito.

  “I must touch you,” Fred said, “put things in your mouth.” He seemed to be expecting Frank to refuse.

  “Like a dentist? While you’re at it maybe you could jerk out that tooth.”

  There was a flicker of hesitation, then Fred said, “But there is nothing wrong with your teeth.”

  Frank sighed. “Kind of figgered that.” Shep studied him soberly. Frank began aiming his rifle. Then his vision blurred and he couldn’t trust himself to make a clean shot.

  For an instant he was so dizzy he had to sit down. When he could see again he sensed the stranger’s fingers probing his jaw from the inside. “Yes,” Fred sighed. “Here life has gone wild.”

  There was a sudden sharp pain that exploded upward from his jaw clear through his head until Frank knew even the roots of his graying hair were quivering. Slowly the pain subsided. Fred kept slipping in and out of focus as fie struggled to make Frank comfortable.

  “Sorry I don’t know what that metal of yours is,” Frank finally managed. “Though I could help look for it.”

  “Two or three more weeks and I’ll have enough, if you can just keep me in meat.”

  “Right,” Frank said. He was beginning to feel a little better now. “Go see’f I can wake up a bear tomorrow. They be skinny this time of year but I guess you won’t mind?”

  Fred would not.

  Frank accepted the piece of gold-incrusted carpet and went home to pan out the ashes. By now the quart whiskey bottle was nearly full of dust. But now his whole mouth was starting to feel as tender as a cheechako’s feet. By bedtime he was sincerely regretting his haste to taste Fred’s tiny vial of powdered metal. “Wush I had some whiskey,” he growled.

  Shep glanced up and thumped his tail but the dog had no whiskey either.

  Toward midnight Frank decided that tiny taste of metal might have been the nicest thing the creature from so far away could ever have done for him. His whole mouth seemed on fire and he was sweating buckets. Man his age couldn’t last through much more of this kind of agony.

  But he did and next morning, pale and weak as if he had run out of potatoes and gotten scurvy again, he staggered to the cabin door and studied the sky. Looked like another thaw. Didn’t make no difference. Too sick to go hunting today anyhow. He thought about making soup but knew he would never get it past the flaming hell of his jaws. Shep looked at him and whined. Frank realized the old dog’s teeth were probably not much better than his own. He got a fire pone and boiled up a mess of oatmeal and liver. Then he went outside and held mushy snow against the side of his face. It dulled the ache a little but when he took his hand away he saw that all the whiskers on that side of his face were coming out by the roots.

  Mostly, Frank dozed for the next three—or was it four days? But finally the intense agony was over and he staggered from the cabin feeling slightly better. Didn’t feel up to chewing anything but after a cup of oatmeal thinned out with enough water so he could drink it he felt strength returning. Next day he went hunting and got a yearling caribou.

  “Feelin’ a mite peaked,” he told Fred. “Don’t suppose you could go a mile or so on t’other side of the creek and get it yourself?”

  “Hungry as I am, I reckon I could,” Fred said. “Not feelin’ well?”

  “Sore jaw.”

  “Oh. Thought I got it all out.” Fred didn’t have to say any more but he did. The dull flatness of his “Sorry” said it all.

  Still, Frank thought he was at least entitled to know the color of the snake that bit him.

  “Like any fuel,” Fred explained. “It bums. But this fuel burns without air.”

  “Gunpowder?”

  “Gunpowder carries its own air. This metal’s got to be kept in small lots or it blows up. It’s only safe to clump it together inside my ship’s engine.”

  “Am I going to blow up?”

  “No such luck. It’s a cold fire.”

  “ ’Tain’t phosphorus. I seen that in rat poison.”

  “No,” Fred agreed. “This has a long half-life.”

  “Half alive? You said you wasn’t no spook.”

  “Didn’t mean it that way. I should never have let you handle the stuff. But how could I know you’d put it in your mouth?” He struggled to say something comforting. “We ain’t the same kind of animal. Maybe you’re stronger.”

  Frank decided Fred’s kind of animal didn’t know much about the art of telling lies. “ ’Tain’t your fault,” he said. “You tried to warn me.”

  There didn’t seem to be much more to say. Frank took another gold-incrusted scrap of carpet back to the cabin and dropped it. He sat looking at Shep, wishing there were some way an old dog could go on living by himself. He wished fleetingly for some way an old man could go on living. Then he sighed and stopped wishing.

  But at Frank’s age one gets into the habit, no matter how unappetizing the prospect of living. He went into the cabin and began cutting elk steak into tiny bits he could boil and swallow without chewing. Next morning he went out hunting again.

  Wasn’t Fred’s fault. Fred was a funny codger
but he’d played square with Frank. Best Frank could do was keep him from going hungry until he had enough gray metal to hit the trail home.

  The next time he approached the diggings with news of more meat Fred did not bother about his appearance. Frank stood for some time studying an amorphous something that flowed, loose as a badger in a borrowed skin and twice as ugly. But even without any shovel, Fred’s claws made the dirt fly like a monitor nozzle. The sluice was working at full capacity and the creek downstream would never be the same again.

  Not that it made any difference to Frank. By the time the creek cleared he would . . . He was not quite prepared for Fred’s hearty “Howdy!”

  “Doin’ any better?” Frank tried to be polite.

  “Hit a pocket. Think I got more’n enough to make it home.”

  “Two ounces of that poison must go a long way.”

  “Oh, that’s not critical mass. Just enough to top up the breeder.”

  While Frank struggled to make head from tail, Fred abruptly reacted to his earlier remark. “Yes,” he agreed. “It is poison. Is there anything I can do? Would more gold help?”

  Frank shrugged. “If it would I reckon we’d have a lot of millionaires named Methusaleh.”

  “You feel pain?”

  “No worse’n usual. Jaw’s been sore all winter. Think it’s the same thing took my Maw.”

  “Cancer?” Fred had lifted the forbidden word from Frank’s mind and brought it out into the open. There was a long silence and Frank sensed that Fred was skimming him, searching for a full description of that forbidden word.

  “Yes,” the alien finally said. “I knew it was. We used to have a similar ailment.”

  Frank was mystified by Fred’s improved vocabulary. Then he knew the alien was lifting words from his mind that Frank had not thought of for a lifetime—not since a country doctor had talked to Maw about similar ailments.

  “I’ve got to leave soon,” Fred continued. “Probably tonight. Thanks for the meat. Best stand upwind when you burn the sluice.”

  Frank nodded and called Shep. That night he was awakened by what sounded like a rock slide. Then as the sky lit up he guessed it was still shootin’-star month. It wasn’t till he was thoroughly awake that he knew what it really was.