Dust to Dust

By Lincoln Reed

First thing you have to do with a dead body is bury it.

The year was 1862. Yellowstone country. Where no explorer dared tread alone. Shovel in hand, I dug a grave for Darryl Evans and scooped the dirt over his corpse.

After a short prayer, I said my goodbye while an orange sun bled against distant peaks. “From dust to dust, my friend. Till we meet again along those streets of gold.”

It didn’t seem right, leaving Darryl without a headstone, but I had few options. We’d traveled West after being paroled from a Yankee prison camp. As long as we stayed away from the fighting and got lost in the wilderness, the Yanks were willing to let us explore the unknown. Gold fields and adventure—that’s what we’d been promised, Darryl and me.

Then, in the heart of uncharted Eden, after we’d survived Yankee bullets and imprisonment, Darryl had caught a deadly fever, leaving me alone with the horses, thousands of miles from my Carolina home.

Two years together. That’s almost eight hundred days. A mighty heap of hours.

All that time vanished in one fleeting breath.

That night, a million stars glittered above. Was one of them Darryl?

If you’re up there, I bet you can see gold down here clear as can be. Lead me to the dust, would you?

In the morning, I prepared the horses and drove the chuck wagon farther into the valley where pine and aspen grew as thick as fleas on a mule. Snowy mountains loomed. Crisp water gurgled through streams as pure as heaven itself.

It was near one of these brooks I bent to drink and wash my face. Refreshed, I retrieved my prospecting pan and sat on my heels, shifting dirt from the creek bed. Without Darryl’s friendly chatter, there was nothing to distract from the landscape’s inescapable heaviness—never resting, always watching, threatening like a cannonball that neither crashes nor explodes.

A Colt revolver hung at my belt, fully loaded, traded for at Fort Laramie. In the wagon, I had a few boxes of ammunition, Darryl’s scatter gun, and enough food to last another week.

“Darryl, you ruffian. Eating like a hoss. Leaving me short of grub. I’m sending you the bill—don’t think I’ll forget.”

Nothing glittered in the pan. I emptied it and tried again.

An hour passed as the silence reigned, all knowing, never ceasing until—

A twig snapped.

I stiffened.

Thirty yards away, a baby bear scampered from the tree line, pint-sized throaty growl punctuating the air. Another cub appeared as if answering a challenge, tumbling with its sibling in a wrestling match, one to which I had a front row seat. Having never seen bears so close, I remained frozen. The cubs scuffled and played. My heart pattered.

Slowly, I emptied the pan back into the stream, stood, and about-faced toward my wagon.

Sweet Moses….

Heading for the cart, the mother bear was almost as long as the carriage itself, thicker than three men, covered in brown fur that would keep a family of ten warm for a hundred winters. The two horses, as spooked as I was, sniffed the predator and bolted, taking my wagon with them.

The grizzly remained. Her massive head swiveled, dark eyes cutting through me.

Something splashed. Both cubs were now in the water behind me.

I dropped the prospector’s pan. The bear grunted. Fingers crept toward my gun holster.

Any man who has stared into the eye of a Momma Grizz knows two things: you can’t run fast enough, and your bullets won’t kill her quick enough.

She started walking forward, slowly corralling me away from her cubs, shepherding me toward the brook’s endpoint—a deep pond nestled against the face of a rock wall. Before I knew it, I was sloshing backward until the water rose to my throat. The gun stayed dry in my right hand, aimed at the bear.

Momma Grizz halted at the bank as if taunting me. A chill began to set in. The water bathed my chin. Soon I would be treading water with one arm. Terrified, I fired all six rounds in the air above the bear’s head. I shouted and cursed. She just snorted, unimpressed.

The gunfire’s echo decayed into the valley’s all-consuming stillness, leaving me with a creeping sense of doom. I wasn’t ready to die.

My grip loosened. The revolver plopped and sank to the bottom. I weaved arms and legs, weighed down now by boots and clothes.

Momma Grizz continued pacing the pond back and forth as my arms burned. Ribs ached. Legs numbed until I couldn’t churn them any longer. Momma Grizz had me trapped. I was a dead man and she knew it.

Succumbing to fatigue, I let go and slipped beneath the surface, where the grizzly’s image rippled into a squiggly mirage.

With seconds of air remaining in my chest, I turned my eyes toward the pond’s base. There—to my shock—was a bed of glimmering specs, nuggets, and sparkling fragments.

The will to live surged through my limbs. With every ounce of resolve I could muster, I pushed off the bottom and broke the surface. The grizzly….

She was gone.

I clawed at the bank and pulled myself free of the water. Glanced all around. No cubs. No Momma Grizz. I plopped on the dry earth, gasping, depleted. Fresh air never tasted so sweet.

My cart and horses were gone. Again, I was alone. Or, was I?

The next day, I started excavating the pond’s riches.

Darryl, son of a gun. You led me right to it. A Momma Grizz? It suits you… it does.

Without a wagon for carrying cargo, the first thing you have to do with a pile of gold is, you have to bury it.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Lincoln Reed is a professor, writer, and editor. He holds a BA in film and media production from Taylor University and an MFA in creative writing from Miami University of Ohio. More than 25 of his short stories are featured in online publications and print anthologies.

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