Juan and Willy

It was the next afternoon, late in the day, when they were feeling very weak and down and out and had come back into their camp from exploring in the hills, looking for potato rocks, and had about decided to drive out of there, come what may, and give up on their dream of gold, or delay it, that the small figure of a man appeared coming down a hill.

  They noticed him walking down that hill toward their camp a long time before he got close enough to talk to them, and they could see he was a tattered old coot, wearing some kind of greasy leather vest and baggy jeans. When he was closer, they noticed the pants had stains all over them and there was lots of dust and mud on his black cowboy boots. He had little gleaming brown eyes and was nearly toothless, but friendly.

  “Hallo,” he hollered. As he approached up a little meadow of yellowy weeds, he took off his hat which was also leather, and someone had adorned its band with large teeth. “Hallo, fellers. What are you boys doing out here in the goddamn end of nowhere?” He shot a quick glance at their tent and their truck under a tree.

  They were so shocked to see him, to see anyone out there where they had been alone for days, that they could hardly form a sentence. It never occurred to them to ask who he was and why he was there. They felt guilty about what they were doing and only thought of explaining themselves.

  “Just camping,” said Juan, lying quickly about their purpose.

  “Camping?” replied the old fellow in a surprised voice.

  Willy noticed a big knife stuck in the man’s belt. The greasy vest had hidden the knife up until then and he had a funny feeling about the man, which he really should have paid attention to, because that friendly old man was up to no damn good as they were about to find out.

  “We’re just a coupla campers,” Willy said. “Camping out in the fresh air. Ah,” Willy said, breathing out deeply, “there ain’t enough fresh air up north where we come from. City life. Ain’t it a pile?”

  “What are all those picks and that old hi-banker and broken metal detector for? You wouldn’t be mining here would you?” asked the old coot, squinting at them and smiling. He turned a little and the big knife blade caught the sun and gleamed at Willy the same way the old coot’s eyes were gleaming. He seemed to sense that Willy had seen the knife, and without letting on to anything he used one hand to carefully close the vest so the knife wasn’t visible any more.

  “Oh no, no, no,” said Juan urgently, denying the mining observation. “Not us.”

  “Shit, no,” seconded Willy.

  Juan and Willy stood around awkwardly, holding their elbows. This old coot could be a scout for the owner of the land they were on, and they didn’t want to be discovered mining someone else’s claim. It was best to stick with the story that they were camping.

  “What would we be doing mining? We don’t know nothing about how you do mining,” said Juan, laughing nervously, and running his hand through his hair. “We’re just a couple of campers. Are we camping in a bad spot?”

  “Maybe,” said the coot. He looked around and studied the hi-banker and the picks.

  “That’s funny. You got a lot of picks leaning against your truck over there, and that’s a hi-banker set up beside your tent. You use that for separating ore, but you say you don’t know nothing about mining? Might be, just might be.” He scratched his jaw line slowly. “On the other hand you don’t need to know much about mining–if you’re lucky. However, I would bet...,” he said, lifting his filthy shirt suddenly and pulling a gun on them, “...that you’re not so lucky. Give me the keys to that truck. Now!”

  Chapter Ten