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TO GET THE GOLDEN GOOSE

Lately widowed, Clara Johnson took literal stock of the life around her. Her husband, John Johnson had died during the recent confrontation of the town versus Little Red. He had not been among that number of Lawmen drafted into the posse. He had simply brought his head up at the wrong time, a bullet straying from the field of battle directly into his neck and shattered his spinal cord. No time even for goodbye.
In one moment, Clara and John hid beneath the small bar where their register with the cheerful dinging bell announced every sale. John popped up, a seeming lull in the fighting, and then he went down, directly into the arms of his wife. She screamed and tried to revive him. Tried to breathe life back into him, showering him with kisses and tears, but he was simply and irrevocably gone. She tried slapping him, shaking him awake.
“John,” she called, over and over again, throughout the rest of the raging battle outside. “John wake up. John, come back to me. John!”
There was no answer, and never was an answer from him again.
John, well loved in town, inspired a lively funeral. Everyone listened to each kind thing the preacher had to say, and each person filed up to the pulpit and told a story of a time that John had advanced them a line of credit, or discounted an item even if it was new. Person after person told story about how John had helped them, even at risk and expense to himself. With each story, Clara cried more and more tears until she doubled over and had to be escorted out of the parlor.
Madam held a wake that night at the Saucy Puss. Clara attended, but sat in the middle of the room, barely speaking. She kept bringing her fork down to a fastidiously plump platter of turkey, potatoes, and cranberries prepared personally by Madam. But Clara never was able to move the food from the plate into her mouth.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” a mourner would say, or “he was the best of us.” Then they would turn around, order a double or triple whiskey and party in honor of John. Clara tried to smile at this, John was often a partaker in such riotous events. She closed her eyes and thought back to a time he’d brought her to the Puss for a wake.
“It’ll be fun!” he said.
“It’s a wake,” she said. “To honor old Red Ruddy.”
“He would want it this way,” John had said. “After all, he was in here when he keeled over, ninety-five years and partied himself to his end.”
Even though Clara objected, John brought her a double whiskey. He took surreptitious sips from the glass all night, as well as his own. As the night drew darker and the light’s within the tavern became stars against the sky, John grabbed Clara and pulled her into a dance. All sense fell away from her and she began to laugh, and they fell into the private language of two drunken people lately in love.
“John would love this,” Clara said suddenly. “But I am overwhelmed.” She got up from her seat, said a polite goodbye to the Madam and bartender, and headed home to her house, a now empty apartment just above the general store that she now found herself in sole proprietorship of.
So, the next day, when the store reopened, she took quite literal stock of everything she owned. Rows of vegetables and potatoes and cured meats. Small trinkets from the nearest large town. Parcels of paper and ribbons and strings, and all sorts of knick knacks littered the store. Even the smallest little bundle of catnip reduced her to tears as she remembered how her husband had ordered it just for the stray cats in town, should they ever need to re-up their supply.
Clara was wiping away just such a tear when a cowboy came in, his duster covered in dirt and grime from the range, came jingling through the door. He was tall, broad shouldered, and about ten years younger than her late husband. He had the smile of a man who had not yet known a tragedy, his mouth upturned with a wink of good humor.
His brown hair swooped casually across his face. He smiled, a full toothed smile as he leaned over the counter.
“Not often such a beautiful rose of a woman owns her own shop,” he said. He brushed his hand through that swoop of hair.
“Who are you talking about?” asked Clara. “I’m all dusted over and blown away.”
“It makes it… real and honest,” said the cowboy. “I like that.”
“Tell it to the marines.”
“I did, when I was one. I laid in my bunk just wishing that someday I could come out here and meet you.” He flashed a smile with those perfect teeth. Clara flicked her own tongue against her cheek, then over the slight imperfections of her teeth. She flushed.
“Are you this forward with all women?” she asked.
“Some people find it honest,” the cowboy said. He stuck his hand out, decked in a fringed yellow glove. “Oops,” he said.
He made a show of slowly removing the glove to reveal weathered hands. He held the hand out across the register.
“Well?” he asked..
“Well what?” asked Clara.
“Aren’t you gonna shake hands and be friends? I’m Jack Hunter, man at all work.”
“Seems like you aren’t working now,” Clara said.
Jack Hunter, the cowboy, gave a snort, and his mouth twirled up into a laugh. He slapped the counter and seemed to forget about the handshake. “Why I knew I would like you,” he said, “ever since I seen you through the window I thought to myself ‘Jack, now that’s a woman of standing and real grace. Not pretend grace like those other girls, but a real and honest soul’ So I says to myself, "Jack, you oughta go meet her.”
“Well,” said Clara, taking time between her words. “You met me. Now are you going to buy anything or what?”
“Pack of Scheherazade’s to smoke and some Gumdelion for afterwards. Don’t wanna smell like smoke when I’m, well, you know.”
“Know, I don’t know,” said Clara. “I am sure I don’t.”
“If that’s what suits you,” Jack Hunter said. He smiled again, flashing his perfect pearl white teeth, and laid down twenty five cents on the counter.
“That’s too much.”
“Consider it a tip,” he said, and strode out of the building.
So began two weeks of Jack Hunter coming in each day to buy this little piece of bric a brac or that. He always stopped to chat with Clara, who would roll her eyes in annoyance at his bright and bubbly manner. He smiled as he took away the flotsam and jetsam and junk of the store and though always rolling her eyes or flushing at what he had to say, after a fortnight Clara began to check the clock around three in the afternoon each day, in anticipation of when Jack might come in.
Then for three days he didn’t come in.
Finally, on the fourth day, he came back in, his hat looking like it had swamped up all of the water of Ruddy Creek. He stopped outside the shop and wrung the hat out twice, three times, and even again. Yet as he crossed the threshold of the door he still tracked in water and muddy footprints.
“You’re soaked,” said Clara.
“I know,” said Jack. “And I got soaked too. There’s no gold over in the Greenhorn hills.”
Clara laughed. It was the old trick the miners played on every hopeful that came through. Anyone in search of silver or gold wanted to know where they might strike it rich. So the old hands would point to a mountain, saying there were rich candy mountain veins and wine sweet as water up there, setting hopeful naives off to either their death or disappointment at mining the wrong mountain.
“Sounds like you got some bad advice. I didn’t know you were gold crazy?”
“Not crazy per say,” said Jack, “but I want enough to get you something nice. Now that’s not so bad, is it?”
Clara stopped for a while. She looked out the window. In the dying light of the afternoon she could see John’s gravestone settled beneath the wide willow tree. Light beams danced around the grave and motes of dust sparkled like stars.
“I’m a widow,” she said.
“I know,” said Jack. “What’s that matter to this world? Can I take you to a fancy dinner, or buy you something nice?”
Clara twirled her hand through her hair.
“I… I guess it wouldn’t hurt to be sociable. But don’t expect nothing beyond dinner.”
“The thought never did cross my mind, Mrs. Johnson,” Jack Hunter said.
“I suppose you could take me out, but I have one condition. It’ll get you all ready to properly pay too.”
“What condition?” asked Jack.
“You need to bring me the Golden Goose. Why that might be better even than a dinner in the Saucy Puss.”
“What’s the golden goose?” asked Jack.
Clara smiled, her tongue flicking against her cracked teeth. “The golden goose is a bird like no other. The plumage is like the dawn itself spreading fire across the sky. Many have tried to capture it, but none have ever done so. Doc Sam and the Preacher both say they almost caught it once, they were out camping on a fishing trip. You’d have to ask them to know more, but if you could bring me that goose, we could make it a fine prize.”
“And then you’ll date me?”
“Then we’ll have dinner.”
Jack removed his hand from his glove again. He stuck it out over the counter. Clara rolled her eyes once more, but this time she took and shook his hand. Jack laughed again, a deep laugh from down within his bowels, quickly smiled and turned around. He strode out the building.
Lavinia Babbit, a local farmer’s wife currently completing her weekly shop turned to Clara.
“But the Golden Goose is like the Greenhorn prank.”
“I know,” said Clara.
“There's no Golden Goose out there.”
“I know.”
“He’s going to wander around out there for nothing.”
“I know,” said Clara. “But I want to see what he does for this.”

Jack began his search for the Golden Goose by gathering information from the doctor and the preacher. They both told him the same tale, of how early one morning on a fishing trip out near Big Wolf Lake, up Piglet Bend, they awoke one morning to see a bird unlike any other. At first they thought, due to its size and bearing, it was some strange species of kingfisher, or even a golden-tinged blue heron.
But upon drawing closer to the bird, and hearing the merciless and loud honking that it produced, they came to the conclusion that the bird was indeed a goose. The feathers were golden light and shining hues like some regal stockpile of wealth.
“It is my opinion,” Doctor Samuel Thompson said, “that the bird, this goose, had eaten a special diet.”
“I think it’s a miracle by god,” said the Preacher.
“You always think it’s a miracle,” said Doc Sam. “I am trying to explain the science beyond the miracle.”
“Carry on,” said the Preacher, waving his hands in the air, as if shooing away a fly.
“I suppose there are gold-tinted berries up in our mountains,” Doc Sam continued. “Either that or the minerals from Big Wolf Lake have some special quality, and this makes the bird's feathers almost see-through, almost translucent. The same way that some fishing, underwater, will glow in the dark of night.”
“And who designed this world that makes such a specific sight?”
“You would say God,” said Doc Sam. “But that’s what you always say.”
“No one else has ever seen this bird,” the Preacher related. “I’d say that’s a miracle.”
“But you’re both sure you saw it? You know that it’s real?”
“We both saw it,” they nodded in agreement.

Word got around that Jack Hunter was planning to go after the Golden Goose. All the usual local wags would weigh in on the topic. They might laugh and tell him the whole thing was made up, but most of the town thought it good humor to send the bright, beautiful, but rather hapless young cowboy out into the wilderness.
“It’d do him good,” some said.
“After all,” Bartholomew Hand’s, the blacksmith said, drawing from his pipe, “we’ve all been in love enough to do something crazy. I think he might win Clara’s hand yet.”
“Lest too light winning make the prize light,” said the piano player.
“Aren’t you supposed to be playing a song?” asked the blacksmith.
“I try to give you culture,” the piano player said, sighing. He took a deep breath, and began jaunty tune raggedly banging the black and white keys of the piano.

Supplied with a week’s worth of anything he might need, Jack strode out to catch the Golden Goose early one Tuesday morning. He had consulted with La Bruja previously and she advised him to start any such conquests always on that day. Monday is ruled by the moon, she advised, and Wednesday is of magic.
“Only Tuesday is dedicated for war,” she said, “except Friday being the war of love.”
Jack took this in and nodded his head. He promised that his conquest would begin on a tuesday. “No sense in disappointing a witchy woman,” he told those at the bar the night previous.
“Good luck,” said Clara, calling after him, and watching him recede into the distance. She shivered in the early morning cold, carefully rewrapped her shawl around her, and set about getting her store ready for the day. A child and his mother passing by later remarked they heard her muttering, under her breath, “I must be crazy, getting up early for some young cowboy.”

After wending his way through the world outside of Ruddy Creek for a while, he found himself next to the small run off of the mountain that developed into the creek itself. Tracking that river up into the mountains he passed bush after bush until he came to a large meadow that opened up ringed by the forest. On the other side of the meadow from where he stopped, his horse panting heavily in the early heat of the day, he say the waters of Big Wolf Lake.
Big Wolf lake stretched a bronze-blue across the distance, the horizon being mostly of water. As Jack drew near to the creek songbirds rose up out of the bushes and began to twitter and dance along in their usual song. A deer on the other side of the lake pauses. It looked up, eyes staring directly at Jack, and he felt his hand out of reflex move down to his rifle.
Jack stopped.
“Not today,” he told the dear. “I have bigger game…. Even if it’s smaller.”
The deer said nothing but suddenly snapped out of its staring. It jumped high and danced off into the forest beyond.
“I know you’re out here, Goose,” called Jack.
Only the sound of the water, the birds, and the rustling of the trees answered him back. Jack sighed and alighted from his horse.
In a practiced manner, with quick and deft movements, Jack set up his tent. He carved out a small fire pit, and sat down on a nearby log he’d dragged across the meadow. He bit into his rations, a bit of jerky, and chewed carefully, surveying the scene.
No birds appeared other than the small songbirds. He heard a group of turkeys cry out their warbling cry somewhere in the distance. After finishing his lunch, and tying down everything he thought he might need to, Jack headed off into the brush, carrying only his compass, his rifle, and his ammunition.
It was a rather long walk away from the lake. In town the villagers had informed Jack of where they had set their duck blinds, and he was ready to take some time and sit at one laying in wait for the Golden Goose. After a good hour of scrambling through deer paths he finally came to one old duck blind, must have been ten years old, and sat down.
He waited at least a good quarter hour staring out into the distance space of a run off marsh. Here was where the lake and river intertwined and inundated. Cattails grew up and other grasses brushed like frames against the sky.
Then he heard quacking. Just a duck. He peered out into the distance. The quacking grew louder, more intense, more akin to the honk he was waiting for. A bird flew across the sky, its wingspan shining and shimmering gold in the daylight. He brought his field glasses up to the bridge of his nose and squinted through them.
“There it is,” he said. “Rather majestic.”
He watched the bird wheel an arc over the lake.
He carefully set the glasses down. Then he pulled his rifle up and readied it to fire. He fired slightly up, letting the bullet fall down into the midpoint of the bird’s next wheeling arc.Small birds in the brush sang their song and somewhere in the distance a small animal rustled over logs. Somewhere in the distance either a woodpecker or a beaver gnawed a sculpture into wood. He waited, drew in his breath, and then fired.
The birds and rustling stopped. The rustling ceased. The pecking stopped.
There was a moment of silence in the woodland.
The bird fell from the sky.
“Got it,” Jack said in a hushed tone. “And everyone said this was impossible.”
He stood up and carefully scrambled out of the blind.
“Wish I had a dog for this,” he told himself, and pushed blackberry thorns out of his way as he moved to where the carcass had dropped. He found his quarry. He turned it over. This was no goose, but a golden feathered duck, downy and brownish.
“At least I’ll eat tonight,” Jack said, and settled back in to wait for another chance at the Goose. The chance did not come that day.
The next several days fell into a similar pattern. He would sight a bird, double and triple check, make sure it was indeed the Golden Goose, and then upon finding the body he would realize his hopes had made a fool of him yet again. In this way he managed to take down a heron, an egret, a peacock and other smaller birds.

By the fourth day of this routine, a grumbling Jack was hailed at his campsite by Mac Fianna the old miner.
“Hey stranger,” Mac said. “Mind if I share your warmth a bit? I’m a bit cold getting back to my tent. I can pay in a story, might pass the time.”
“Not like I got anything but a story myself,” said Jack. He brought out a bottle of Healer’s Legend.
Mac smiled and took a tipple, and then another, before passing back the bottle.
“That’s a hard thing,” said Mac. “I’ve never heard of this goose and I spend all my time out here looking for a good vein. I did find one once.”
“You did?”
“Speaking of gold, yes. It was the richest ore I’ve ever seen. But when I went back to the same mountain it wasn’t there. You might say Oregon.”
“Say again?”
“You might say the Ore was gone!” Mac laughed. Jack blinked. Then he cracked a smile.
“Oh, I get it. A joke! Like Oregon.”
“Yes sir, but let me tell you I did once find some golden nuggets in a pouch in a stream.”
Jack leaned in.
“Interested?” the old miner asked.
“Of course,” said Jack.
“Thought so,” Mac said. “I caught the smell of someone who wants money for something from a mile away. That and the smell of cooked duck. You got any to spare?”
Jack nodded. He motioned to the small rope hung between two trees near his tent. A whole row of game birds was hanging up, all ready to be plucked at even a moment’s notice.
“Then tell you what,” Mac said, “for a duck and your reasons, I’ll tell you what happened to my gold.”
Jack stuck out his hand. The two men shook on the deal.
“It’s easy for me,” said Jack. “I’m in Love with the storekeeper in town.”
“Widow Johnson?”
“Yep.”
“How’s she feel about it?”
“I told you about the golden goose,” said Jack.
“That’s right, that’s right,” said Mac. “Okay, let me tell you about the time I loved and lost. And my lady, her name was also Gold.”
Jack shuffled back and forth in his chair, stretching his hands out in front of the warmth of his fire. He listened as Mac continued.
“I had just got done exploring a vein I thought might have some silver. Nothing. I was comin’ back to town with nothin’ at all. Frustrated. Broke. Would have to sell my services to a mining company for the summer or perhaps wrangle some mustangs up north. Destitute really, only the clothes on my back and the supplies on my mule’s pack.
“Suddenly, as I made a crossing at Little River Creek–”
“How can it be a river and a creek at the same time?”
“I don’t know, I didn’t name it. Nevertheless, I was crossing through the sand when something shined out at me. Gleamed. I was like a bear on a fish the way I pounced at that gleaming. Must have seemed like a mad demon. Or a cowpuncher after a saloon girl after twenty days on the trails. They got songs about that you know.”
Jack nodded.
“Oh, my darling, oh my darling, oh my darling Clementine,” he began singing. Soon Mac was joining in. they both sang:

In a canyon, in a cavern,
Next to Red Ruby Mine
Lived a miner, forty niner
And his daughter as he called her
Sincehe bought her
And brought her across the water
And he named her Clementine

Oh my darling
Oh my darling
Oh never to be mine
Gone and been a showgirl
Oh my darling Clementine

She danced lightly like a fairy
In the saloon just half past nine
And she would show you stockings
And more for a quarter nine

Oh my darling
Oh my darling
Everyone has seen what I have spied
Everyone just for a quarter
Quarter hour with clementine!”

By the last verse, both Jack and the old miner were laughing so hard, that they each had to wipe tears away from their faces.
“It’s a good bawd,” said Mac. “Course there is that last verse, the one where she dies”.
“I don’t like that verse, it’s not needed. Who says just because someone’s a little loose they need some kinda of punishment. Never did like that, why’s it anyone's business?”
Mac nodded his head. “I agree,” he said. Then he cast his glance into the fire and continued his story. “I found this small satchel, really a pouch full of gold. It gleamed and glimmered and I counted it. Twice. Then again. I licked my lips, like I could taste it. I must have kissed it. Must have tasted it. Must have been a full pound as I reckoned it.
“Now there’s another creek you have to pass, Ruddy Creek. And as I was crossing Old Miller’s Bridge, the one Mr. Miller put up twenty years ago, I saw something in the water. My eyesight was like a hawk’s that day, the way I spotted these things. Sure enough, there in that creek, companion to my current pouch of gold, was the sparkling shine indicating a nearby vein.
“I dug my hand into the river and found a big golden rock. A much bigger rock. I worked my hand in and pulled hard. I must have had John Henry pulling my muscles that day because I finally worked this gleaming golden rock loose. Course, in knocking this gleaming gold loose, the small pound I had fell out of my pocket.
“Ruddy Creek is a pretty fast little creek, you know? Sometimes as wide as a river. It certainly is there where the bridge is. I suppose that’s why it’s a bridge and not a ford. Anyway, the dust and flakes and gold I’d found fell out while I was working.
“It didn’t matter. I had the bigger gold, so I thought, loath though I was to lose the pound I’d had. I finally pried the rock out of the river.You know what it was? Five pounds of pyrite!”
“Pyrite?” asked Jack.
“Fool's gold!” sad Mac Fianna. He stroked his beard with both of his hands. “And here I was the biggest fool in the world. I let one pound of gold get away for five pounds of nothing. Five pounds of pyrite! I was irate.”
“Pyrite irate,” Jack said.
“Something like that,” said Mac, kicking the dirt next to his seat. “I was such a fool. I'll tell you I never again gave up what I had for what I thought was better.”
“What, never?”
“Nope, not god, not guns, not gold, not girls. Kidna sweet on that Rory-Sue in town, she lets me come around and take tea with her, and washes my clothes. Some day when I hit the big vein I’ll take her with me to the pie in the sky.”
“That’s what I want to do for Ms. Johnson.”
“I see what you mean,” said Mac. He stood up. He held out his hand. Jack shook it and watched as the old miner receded from the red glow of the fire into the dim lit darkness. Finally, the old man had disappeared and Jack took one last swig of Healer’s Legend before retiring for the night.

The next morning, a little hungover, wiping the taste of legend from his lips, Jack spotted a fox in the brush. At first he thought it was the Golden Goose itself, and so he grabbed his rifle and headed through the brush. When it became clear that he did not in fact hear honking sounds but instead low yipping and barks, he realized that he chased after a reddish-yellow fringed fox.
From time to time during the chase the fox would stop. It might scramble squirrel-like up a tree. It also might peer out of a hole or dance through brushes stomping its feet, almost as if dancing and stomping its feet to the rhythm of the chase.
Once, Jack almost got it, actually lunging for the fox. Little tufts of white fox tail fur slipped through his hand.
Jack sighed and redoubled his efforts. The fox darted deep into the darkest parts of the forest. Jack scrambled after it through the brambles. From time to time the brushes and thorns scratched the hunter, so that when he finished his mad scramble through the deepest brushes light gashes were all over his exposed arms and even a few cuts into his skin.
He thought at one moment that he had cornered the animal. He raised his rifle and aimed, ready to fire. But just at the last moment the fox, momentarily stalled and looking straight at him, flinched and moved. The recoil of the rifle, which slipped then from his hands, pushed Jack back into the bushes, down a ravine. He tumbled end over end over end and down into a ravine, bumping his already scraped brow. Each rock and stick stuck into him so that when he finally found the end of elevation, he resembled more of a mass of mud than a human being.
More of a ball of dirt than a person.
And, he tumbled face first into a patch of prickly cacti, scarring and gashing him. That’s when the fox turned around, jumped over Jack’s body, and scrambled up the ravine away from the hunter.
As Jack slowly pressed himself upright, he heard honking from far away. Up in the sky he saw a flock of geese slowly making their journey south, honking like town gossips with oh so much to share. As one of the birds floated close to the sun it looked golden in the dying light of the day.
There was no time to aim his rifle. Jack kicked the dirt, cursed, and started the slow scrambled up the ravine back to his camp. He sat staring into the fire long into that night, grumbling from time to time about the fox.
Far away in the distance he heard that fox, or another, yip and a coyote howl in answer.

Clara sighed and looked out the window. Jack had been gone for four days at this point. The night before, Mac came in, bought a small vial of medicine, excused a small cough, and headed out the door. As the bell rang, Clara shouted, “wait!”
Mac turned.
“Have you seen Jack,” Clara asked.
“I seen someone. Who's Jack?” asked Mac.
“Jack, you know, the cowboy,” Clara said. She described his broad shoulders, his puckish smile, the muscles that you couldn’t help but notice through his shirt. (“You could tell he’d do an honest day's work,” she said.) She continued describing him, in terms that made her blush. She could see her rising and flushed face reflected in the small mirror she ket near the door so she could watch what those deeper in the store were doing without moving from her post.
“Oh, I seen him,” said Mac. “Little worse for the wear, but we had a fine talk.” Mac relayed the discussion he’d had a night or so before. Clara laughed to hear of the woes that befell Jack.
“But he’s still out there?”
Jack nodded. “Said he’s not going back until he got the golden goose.”
“He’ll give up shortly,” said Clara. “There’s no goose out there, well not golden.”
“Preacher and Doc seem to think so,” said Mac.
“Maybe they saw it but no one else never did,” said Clara. “It’s just a prank, really.”
“Call me crazy–” Mac held up; his hand when he saw Clara’s mouth opening. “I mean, I think that boy is going to stay out there until he finds some goose he deems gold enough. Wouldn’t even listen when I tried to tell him a tale of greed.”
“Really?” he’s committed to this?
Mac nodded. He waited for Clara to say something, but her eyes had wandered up, as if almost rolling back into her head. Mac waved a hand in front of the shopkeeper but she didn’t seem to notice.
Mac laid his dollar down in front of the register, tried waving his hand in front of Clara again, and slowly walked out. Only when the bell rang and the wooden door shut tight did Clara shake off whatever kept her head in the clouds.
“For me?” she asked no one in particular. Then she noticed the absence of Mac. She picked up his dollar, bit her lips, and quickly added it to the register. She sighed and said “Hope you’re okay out there, Jack Hunter.”

At that exact moment, Jack Hunter was not okay. After the previous few days mishaps, he decided to take more time each day. Time getting up, time going to this duck blind or that one, time wandering around the large lake. Yesterday, as the birds seemed continually to be whirling around as the flew southward, Jack decided to take down his camp and move it. He planned to follow Ruddy Creek down from the mountains out to the plains nearby. He would follow the river and perhaps fish along the way.
The fishing, when he stopped, after taking the whole morning to pack up his tent, his belongings, the ducks and small game he’d shot recently, went rather well, all told. He brought in three bottomfeeders, sucker-mouthed types that he’d seen before through the Sonora. It’d do for lunch and dinner, really. He stopped a few more times, and brought in a Bullhead as well.
As pastel-orange shades of evening descended, giving way to the purple-black sparkling of stars, Jack set up his camp. He hummed snatched of old songs as he did, always returning to his favorite of the old rhymes:

“On top of old Sally,
A geyser of fun
I got drenched by the woman
When she started to–”

Jack heard a snapping twig. He turned to see La Bruja, her wizened old face hidden beneath a shawl. Behind her, holding up a lamp, looking like an old painting of the moon goddess herself, the young woman always in the witches’ company moved forward.
“Come,” said Jack. “I’ve just got my fire started.”
La Bruja and her younger charge sat down at the fire. Jack tried to interest them in conversation. He related his reasoning for continuing the search for the Golden Goose. He explained all of his mishaps.
“But I’m not giving up on this,” said Jack. “You ever see someone and just fall all in love with them? Completely and totally with not explanation? When I got into town and first saw Ms. Johnson. She was wearing them widow’s clothes but there was not a softness behind her eyes but an edge.”
La Bruja nodded at this. She reached a bony hand out from under her cloak and held it to Jack’s arm.
“Don’t fall off the path,” she said. With that, she snapped her bony fingers together, and she and her young companion drifted like will o'the wisps receding into the surrounding woodlands.
“What does that mean?” Jack called after them. But, when the women had gone, Jack was left only with the snapping and crackling of the fire, the smell of birch burning, and the beginning of the calls of night birds and chirruping crickets.
The next morning, Jack awoke at dawn, hearing the "good morning" birds. He quickly roasted his leftover fish over the fire, making sure to take his time to savor all the flavors. Once again, his teeth glistening with a smile as he began, he set off into the wilderness, trying to track down and find this golden goose.
"If this thing is really out here, I'm certain to get it today," he told himself.
He had told himself the same thing the day before and the day before that.
He needed to follow little deer paths, bramble trails, and dart from copse to copse of trees, looking for where water might lead any bird to set down for a moment and take respite from long and arduous flights.
Finally, around midday, just as he was taking a bite of jerky from his pocket and about to lift it to his mouth, he saw what must be the golden goose.
He lifted his rifle up into the sky, carefully paused to take in his breath, and then he took a shot. Blam! Blam!
The bird went down.
Once again, Jack scrambled out, scratching himself yet again on the thorns and prickles that the plants around him had developed to prevent animals from taking their berries. Pushing through a late-blooming blackberry bush, his left arm was scratched orange and covered with smushed blackberry juices.
"Got it!" he yelled and scrambled over towards the bird. He was sure this was where the bird had dropped, right next to a small creek.
As he jumped down into the waters of the creek, he watched as the bird began to float away. He tried to grab the carcass of the animal but miscalculated his step. He sank down into a deeper portion of the creek than he expected, and as the water flowed around him faster than he imagined, he inhaled sharply at the coldness of the liquid.
It surrounded him, almost up to his chest, and while he did manage to grab the bird's body when he finally turned it over in his hand, he found that it was not a goose at all; it was a small grouse. Flinging the carcass on his back, he pushed himself up out of the river, shivering uncontrollably. He couldn't stop the chattering of his teeth, which knocked against each other like click click click. Completely drenched, he made his way slowly back to his camp, hoping that the sun and the warmth of the day would help raise his temperature.
However, when he reached his camp, he was still freezing. He stripped off all of his clothes and stood there naked in front of his fire, moving his arms back and forth, doing jumping jacks, and taking a slug of whiskey - anything to make himself feel better, anything to feel warmth at last. He brought out a small towel and wrapped himself in it, but it was too small to cover his whole body. He set his clothes up on the line he had posted at the camp, waiting for the shirt, pants, and underwear to dry. But a strong and heavy wind began to gust through the camp, causing his clothes to flap back and forth in the still cold late afternoon air.
Completely soaked, he put on his second shirt, slipped on a new pair of underwear, and took his time adjusting the second pair of trail pants.
"I had washed these yesterday," he said, looking down at a stain from the previous night's mishap with the berry juices.
So Jack spent the night, half-frozen, curled up underneath his blanket, not even remembering how cold he was to blow out the night.
Finally, near 3 o’clock in the morning, he fell asleep. That's when the coyote came.

As a cold sleep descended upon him, Jack only saw the fire through the flap of his tent as it slowly began to wind down, turning itself out as the smoke danced in whirlwinds up into the sky. He shivered through the night, imagining himself sleeping in a snowbank, in an igloo. Before the fire fully died down, a coyote came to the camp and looked around.
It let out a few yips but then inhaled the great smell of the nearby human and suppressed its own barking.
The coyote circled around the fire twice and sat down, enjoying the warmth but staying just far enough away not to singe itself. It sat there sleepily for some time, raising its head every minute or so, looking left and right, and then back into the burning, crackling, sparkling fire again. Its nose ascended into the air, inhaling yet again.
After about twenty minutes of rest, the animal pushed itself back onto its haunches and made another lap around the campsite.
Jack had hung his provisions up on a tree, following the usual wisdom to keep them out of reach of bears and other animals. However, when Jack had stumbled shivering into his camp earlier, he had knocked down the line, and his supplies, especially the jerky he had brought with him as a backup, fell to the ground.
The little remaining jerky, now covered in dirt, piqued the curiosity of the coyote. It batted at each jerky stick with its paws, sometimes flipping the stick like a juggler might between the ground and its mouth. Then, it began to devour the prepared meat. The coyote stayed, all told, for three hours, wandering around the camp, devouring what meat was available, and destroying and ripping through all of Jack's supplies.
As the coyote continued to paw and maul his saddlebag, Jack finally woke up, still cold as the Antarctic must be, and reached out of his tent. He groaned, sounding more like a ghost than a man, and his eyes slowly opened, bringing him face to face with the curious and trembling coyote.
It reached out it’s tongue and licked him before he could react.
"Go on, get!" he yelled. The coyote jumped into the air, seeming to twirl around three times before making a landing, then scampered off into the gray-blue opening of sunrise. It yipped and whimpered as it fled into the distance.
"Damn it!" he said as he surveyed the morning campsite scene. His entire camp had been trashed, all of his food was gone, and many of his items were scattered about. His rifle had been pushed off its hanging place by the animal, much worse for wear.
"No time now to be cold," said Jack, as he grabbed all of his clothes from the drying line, rewashed them in the nearby creek, and hung them up again. He lost half a day resetting his camp. By the time 1 o'clock came, his stomach grumbled, and he cursed under his breath. He grabbed his dented rifle and headed out to find not the golden goose but anything that might satiate his appetite for the day. It took him several hours, but finally, he tracked a small rabbit back to its burrow and was able to gather a few, a brace really, just enough to get him through the night, the morning, and the next day.
Still, he felt cold, chilled all the way through and couldn't regain his warmth until that night when he sat by the fire for hours, indulging in the last bit of whiskey he had brought with him.
"I will have to give up the chase, at least for now," he told himself. "After all, I cannot get the girl or the goose if I die in the chase." He mused, "I suppose, between me, the tree, and the coyotes all around, I have about three more days before I need to fully pack it in." With that, he stared directly into the fire and watched as the flames seemed to be beautiful women dancing in Satanic rituals in front of his eyes, their backs arched as each flame swirled and twirled.
"I know you're worth it, Mrs. Johnson," Jack said, finishing the last wake of whiskey, and his drunken state swept him into sleep right there in front of the fire.

It actually took Jack another day to get the will to go out into the wilderness. The will and the necessity for food motivated him to yet again head out into the brush. As he went along, murmuring that this was his last day in the field until he could resupply, he suddenly saw the object of his quarry.
The golden goose appeared like a specter in front of him. It flapped its wings for a moment then folded them as it began to strut across a pioneer pathway back into town. Years of wagon tracks had made this a clear road, and there in the midst of that road, just about at the horizon, sat the golden goose itself.
Jack blinked, making sure he saw the bird. Sure enough, it was there, and it gave off a great honk. A honk so loud that it scattered the songbirds in the nearby brushes. They sailed into the sky like so many boats across the great sea of air, weaving and racing each other as they exploded away from the golden goose.
Jack knelt carefully. He pulled his rifle into position. He aimed at the bird, watched it walk about aimlessly. He watched it bend down and grab a worm or some insect.
“Steady,” he whispered to himself. “Steady.”
He made the shot and was sure that the bird had been killed. He walked calmly over to where the bird was.
He found nothing. He searched the sky, the area all around him. Nothing indicated that a bird had even been on the ground. There were no tracks, even where it had walked.
“Mirage,” he said. “I must be getting tired.”
He looked up and down the path. It would lead him straight back to his camp.
“There is a shortcut,” he said to himself, and he turned away from the path. He meant to cross from the meadows back into his mountain’s edge campsite rather quickly. However, terrains in such mountainside meadows are often dangerous. A hill can be hidden even in plain sight.
So Jack did not realize that the way he turned was a steep cliff, and he stepped off it. He tumbled down, end over end, as he did before. He tried to grab onto a branch, a brush, a tree, but ended up not only down a small canyon, but in a sudden hole within that canyon. It seemed to have grown up around him, purpose built to swallow him.
“Ouch,” said Jack, and a few other choice words besides as he tried to move. But his feet were snapped, his strength drained. He tried to push himself forward, to crawl out of the cavern. But the work was slow going. He cried with every movement. Eventually he breathed in a painful wheeze and passed out as he tried to stretch forwards.

Two days after that, Jack still had not returned. Clara ringer her hands together staring out the shop door. Each time the bell rang and someone came in she jumped.
Doc Sam and the Preacher came in, together. They stood in front of Clara, who continued staring out of the large windows, not noticing the men in front of her. Preacher and Doc Sam waved their hands in front of the woman. No response.
The doctor tried clearing his throat. Still no response.
The bell rang and finally Clara looked down from her reverie and noticed the two customers in front of her.
“Doc, Preacher, what brings you ehre?”
‘“We’re worried,” said the Preacher.
“You said you would ease into it,” said the Doctor.
“Well, you just saw her,” Preacher said.
“Her is right here,” said Clara. “What do the both of you want?”
“You’ve been distracted lately. What’s wrong?”
“Wrong?” said Clara. “Something wrong? There’s nothing wrong. What do you want? Tobacco Preacher, you really ought to stop smoking that stuff. Pack of gum for the Doctor?”
The doctor leaned over the counter. The doctor slapped a hand down. Hard.
“Ouch,” he said.
“Well doctor, if you don’t want it to hurt that much, stop doing that,”: said Clara. “What are you two on about anyway?”
“You’re distracted. And we know exactly why. It’s Jack.”
“Hunter?”
“Jack Hunter,” the PReacher said. He looked out the window, letting his own eyes fall across the main street. “The very same. The young man caller who is out there somewhere right now on a literal goose chase just in hopes to win your favor.”
“Never met him,” said Clara.
“If you never met him,” said the Doctor, whirling about dramatically, then pointing his hand directly into Clara’s heart, “how did you know his last name?”
“Just ah, uh… guess.”
“Admit it,” said the preacher. “We got you dead to rights. You are right now sighing and moping like a daughter over some young man lately into town.”
“He is some young man lately into town,” Clara object.ed.
“Ah, so you admit it,” said the doctor, using the conversation as an excuse to swipe a box of matches from the counter, stuffing it into his pocket. “Then you have to admit that it’s worrying that he’s not back yet.”
“Fine,” said Clara, letting out a sigh as loud as a cow snort. “You got me. I like the dude. Soi what?”
“So you sent him out into the wilderness.”
“And?”
“And he may have ht muscles,” said the Preacher, “I certainly saw them. And he may even be smart. But he doesn’t have the experience. How long did he say he’d take anyway?”
“Well,” Clara thought for a moment. She leaned over the counter and snatched the box of matches back away from the doctor. “Twenty five cents if you want these.”
“It’s five cents,” the doctor protested.
“Call it thief insurance,” Clara said. “People keep trying to swipe them. I’m a widow, you know, I got to keep my costs down.”
“You wouldn’t have to be with Jack.”
“I haven’t thought about that.”
The Preacher turned over a small pad of receipt paper on the desk next to Clara. The paper contained her name written over and over again, a little plus, and Jack’s name. It was like a list of different names. It had her original last name, then her husband’s last name, then the list morphed into various spellings and calligraphy stylings of the name “Ms. Clara Hunter”, over and over again.
“So this is meaningless then?” the Preacher asked.
“Gimme that,” snapped Clara. She folded up the paper and tucked it into the pocket of her shopkeeper’s apron. “That means nothing.”
“It means you should be worried,” Doctor Thompson pointed out. “How long did he say he would be?”
“Two weeks,” Clara said.
“And when did that end?”
“Three days ago,” said Clara. Both men started to open their mouths but she held up her hands. “Don't you say anything. I haven’t been counting. I haven’t!”
She stamped her feet in frustration, resembling a small child who had been asked if they had done something wrong. The doctor and preacher exchange looks, each raising their eyebrows. Clara looked like a child, possibly holding the very object of her recent misdeed openly at first and then attempting to conceal it in her hands.
The men nodded.
Okay, but maybe he’s in trouble,” suggested the Preacher.
“Trouble? Like what?”
“Well, anything can happen out there on the range you know? Could be a coyote, a big wolf, maybe even a bear,” said the Preacher.
“Why do you always think it's a bear?” Doc Sam asked.
“Sometimes it’s a bear,” Preacher said. “Sometimes it’s worse.” The Preacher glanced through the window out to the cemetery. He looked at the gravestone erected at some expenses to himself for his former partner, Raymond.
“Anything can happen out there,” Doc Sam said. “It’s a wild and weird world.”
“What are you suggesting?” Clara asked.
“Someone has to go out there and track down the kid,” the Doctor said. “He could be hurt.”
Clara said nothing. She simply shooed both men out of her shop and flipped the sign to closed. She ascended into her small apartment, leaving both Preacher and Doctor standing on the stoop of her shop.
The Doctor looked at the preacher. “Saucy Pussy?”
The Preacher nodded in agreement. “Good idea,” he said. “She’s not likely to do anything until tomorrow morning.”
“Are we planning to join her?” asked the doctor.
“I need to be here for religious purposes,” said the preacher. “But you do go ahead if you feel the need.”
“Well, the town needs its doctor,” said Doc Sam. “What if something happens here while everyone is out there? You need the health at home.”
The two men shook hands. “I’m glad we understand each other,” said the Preacher.
From the apartment up above, as the two men began their nightly debauchery, they could hear the sounds of many items being turned over. There were clumping and crashes, and yells from Clara some of which polite society might find shocking: those words that are saturn in nature and start with an S— or a F— or in one case, when what seemed like a whole armoire full of clothes came crashing down from the frenzy up above a “G-d d— you you f– f– son of a w— c– s– bag”.
“I didn’t know the lady knew such words,” an old drunk miner, just passing the reverend and the doctor said. He list to left slightly, a bottle absconded with from the Puss falling out of his hands and cracking on the wooden sidewalk. The little bit left spilled into the street and the bottle cracked.
This might have been heard disturbing the peace of the night, but the ever increasingly louder and louder crashes and shouts from above drowned out anything else.
Upstairs, Clara was indeed rifling through all of her belongings, and those of her deceased husband as well. She found his old trail pants. She remembered, just for a moment, as she held the pants and smelled his scent once more, the time that she tried them on as a good for John. She’d worn nothing but those pants, the suspenders that held them up, and they fell back into their bed.
He’d held her tightly, kissing her eyebrows and licking her face like a puppy, ready to explore and taste each pore on her face. Ready to press his warm beating heart against hers. She exhaled sharply, murmuring a sweet nothing into his ears as he wrapped himself around her. John kicked the covers around them, wrapping both of them up like rabbits or other small mammals burrowing underneath the sheets, knowing each other only by the touch they felt.
Opening here eyes, Clara said “John where did you leave everything?” She looked through the piles of clothes she’d tossed on the floor and in the middle of finding a good dress for the trail, staring up from the bloomers she’d had the blacksmith’s boy adjust for her so she could go out riding from time to time. Her eyes looked to the wall, where she found John’s old hunting rifle.
“I’ll need that,” she said. It took her a few minutes to bring the gun down from its resting place. It hadn’t been moved since two years prior, when the Preacher and the Doctor took John out on a fishing trip. They’d told him to bring his rifle just in case. In the morning the men sent him on that oldest of tricks, telling him that they’d heard a snipe out in the trees somewhere.
He’d spent the entire day following bird tracks. The Preacher was surprised when several birds were attached to the butt of the rifle.
“No snipe,” said John. At least that’s the way that John had told the story, usually over a few too many brews at the Saucy Puss. The Doctor and the Preacher maintained that it was all in a spirit of good fun. But, though the story passed through the town the same way as all stories: it was understood as if by invisible magic by all people of Ruddy Creek, all at once, with the first telling, John never did again agree to go out fishing with either of the men.
“I prefer,” John said while kissing Clara on the cheek, “to stay here with you. There are some men for the wilderness. But I prefer the town.”
As Clara got her gun down from the rack, she said, “John I have your gun, but tell me, why am I imagining Jack Hunter saying the same thing to me now? Doing the same thing.”
She stared at the place on the bed, still un-made up from the last time that John slept in it, and sighed. There was no answer not from anyone living nor any ghost dead to her question.
Pulling on her bloomers, her skirt, and a chemise, she looked around for a shirt and a vest to pull the outfit together. She found a gold and paisley top, the pattern looking a little less like fleur-de-lys and a little more like small birds flying through the green background of the fabric.
“Ready,” she said, and then realized the mess she’d made as she surveyed her apartment. She sighed and started picking everything up, carefully setting it all back into the right place. “A woman’s work is never done,” she said. “John I wish you would pick up after yourself.”
She snapped her fingers and stopped for a moment.
“Woah,” she said, and looked again at the space where John used to lay sleeping after a long day in the shop. “It’s like you never left. Except I made the mess this time….. I’ll still blame it on you though.”
As she tidied up, she thought she’d better tackle an extra saddle bag, and so got down a monogrammed bag, “J.J.” down from a high closet. She dusted the bag off and coughed as the thin film of dirt and grime blew upwards into her face. As she peered into the bag, she found one small crumpled piece of paper in the bag. She unfolded it and found a letter to her from John, signed but never sent:

“My dearest hart and other fawnings,” the letter bega. Clara chuckled. On their first date, back east, John had spent some time discoursing about how lazy he found the poet’s who would collapse deer and dear into heart and heart. He thought it the most obvious of puns and wished that these so-called great thinkers of all time might think for a moment about how crass and shallow their writing truly was. He was well into a speech about how Shakespeare, supposedly “for all time” seemed to mostly be a collection of crass jokes hung upon a plot.
Calara had kissed him to interrupt and from there their romance began. Now, after hjis death, she smiled to think of those days. She remembered holding hands down a shady lane. She remembered watching leaves pile up in autumn. She remembered the time he had taken her hand and led to a window sill on which old Widow Wallings had set her pie to rest.
Snickering in the later afternoon, Clara grabbed the pie at John’s behest. They ran off into the night, talked long hours in the cemetery, and fed each other pie as the night went on.
“Strange,” said Clara, “why that memory now? And stranger to think that Widow Wallings is still alive and I have joined her in widowhood. Must remember to send her something by way of apology.”
Finally, she continued reading the letter:

“I am writing to you because I love you, of course, of course,” the letter started. “I don’t know why you talked me to going out with these two, but you always did prompt me to be better, be more sociable, and be a good person. I’d be lost in this life if not for you.
“They have me chasing after some bird. Good metaphor. They laughed of course afterwards and told me something of a golden goose they’d seen once. Personal snipe hunt.
“But if I didn’t believe in miracles, or that these things might be true, I wouldn’t have ever tried for you… and you paid me back every day with a love that I can only hope to measure up to. Someday I will be the man you see, you talk about. I’d rather try and fail for that than anything else.
With love,
John.”

There was little satisfaction in crumpling the paper up, as it had already been crumpled through years of being stuffed down in the end of the bag. Clara instead carefully uncrumpled it, and set it out on the table in her kitchen. She took an iron, and began to try and smooth out the creases of the letter. This took a while, and so when she had finally finished smoothing the letter out, she looked out the window of the apartment and saw the sun had risen.
She walked over to the bed, and without thinking about it, made up the whole thing– even the spot where John had once rested.
She stepped out into the street, flipped the “closed – in mourning” sign she had not yet changed back for the upcoming holidays, and headed to the livery. There she said a crisp goodmorning to the stable master, who nodded and simply took the small rent she paid as she chose the horse closest to the door.
“Best rested,” said the stable master. “The old Hobson’s choice.”
“Thank you,” said Clara, and kicked gently into the side of her horse. The horse began at a trot, then a canter, then a gallop. The horse kicked up dust through the town as Clara headed out into the wilderness.
Cinder, just out of the blacksmith shop, dunking some metal work into a bucket of water later reported that he heard Clara shouting “Jack Hunter I’m coming for you. And if you died out there before you came back to me I’m gonna kill ya.”

Out there in the wild, it took about half a day for Jack to wake up. His stomach growled and at first he rolled over thinking that a bear was after him. Then his stomach groaned again and he realized, reckoning by the sun’s position in the sky relative to the last thing he remembered that he’d been out for much longer than he meant to. He tried his feet but he could not stand. Still, he called himself forward, dragging himself up out of the ravine biut by bit, stick by stick.
After about twenty feet of upward movement, he fell back down into the ravine.
He cursed.
But then he got up, grabbed a vine and used it to pull himself further up out of the ravine. More careful this time, more slowly, he moved about one foot every ten minutes. A bruised, battered, but not yet fully beat Jack Hunter crawled up out of the ravine.
“Ouch,” he said again. He started to form a curse with his mouth, but as the window blew around him and birds chirped, it seemed no one else might even hear him for mile’s. How strange it is that when you are on your own, and even so injured, the loudly yell that is so common to hear when you sense the presence of others descends into a muteness. Gasping and sucking in air like an old man gasping his last breaths, Jack sat for twenty minutes before trying to find his footing.
He fell right to the ground again.
Now he did curse, and he cursed loudly. He did so a second time.
“I do feel a little better,” he said. Then he glanced around, his eyes finally finding some straight enough sticks that would do. There were small woodbines laced between different nearby plants, especially an overgrown green bush. Underneath there were many leaves.
“I hope it’s not poison ivy,” said the cowboy. He took his time in binding a split for each of his ankles, crawling over to a small sapling, which he used to push himself up. As he tried to steady himself, the sapling came out of the ground.
“I’m sorry tree, I didn’t mean for you to die so I can live,” said Jack. But he pushed down on the trunk of the tree. With the tree as a kind of balancing stick, he managed to move forward, step by step, inch by inch, slowly entering back into the thick part of the forest. Hour by hour went by, and though he did not know the way fully, Jack sensed he was getting closer and closer to his camp.
Could he have seen himself from above, he would have known that three times, he was not five feet away from the edge of the woods and his small campsite. He looped back around three times, but by the time he finally began to emerge into his campsite a sudden dust storm blew through, a hundred miles an hour of pure sand whipping against his skin. Jack collapsed again, picked himself up, and crawled exactly the wrong way.

The dust storm seemed to come out of nowhere. It rose up like an angry spat in a bar room, full of force and power, and covered everything in its wake with dust and sand. While Jack was trying and failing to find his way back to camp, Clara too was riding through the dirt. It whipped her face, cutting sharp blades of tiny glass just under her eyes.
‘“Jack,” she called out, spurring her horse further and faster through the whirling sand and wind. “Jack, where are you?”
There was no answer, so she called out again. A whip of dirt whirled into her mouth. She spit that out, brought a bandana up to her face, and continued forwards. But the wind kept whipping the sand around more and more harshly until little hurricanes of sand began to blow past and around Clara. Just before a strong brace of wind came and knocked her down Clara alighted from her horse, brought the creature down, and used it as shelter against the oncoming storm.
She lay there, the wind howling like her own cries of mourning at John’s death. Staring out into the shape of the sand, the wind and soil began to dance around her. She wiped her eyes and seemed to see shapes in front of her: the shape of John, of them running in their younger day’s romance; the fun of the stolen pie, their marriage, the decision to move west; the shooting down of lawmen and deputies in Ruddy Creek scant weeks ago, the bullet meeting with her beloved’s brain; Jack Hunter walking in sure of himself like a schoolboy who’d never been rejected in his life, his pleasantly sneering smile, and the way he waited for her to choose to hold his hand on their first meeting— all of this swirled in sand sculpture around her as the wind increased in anger and intensity. Though warmed by her mount’s body, she still felt a skeletal chill run down her spine as the wind danced around her, seeming like a winter spirit ready to freeze her into some cemetery stone.
“Jack!” she called out. She kept calling out for Jack. In the whirling shapes of the Sand she thought she saw not Jack, but John. He seemed as he always had in life, big smile, broad shouldered, hands warm and welcome. His hands were stretched out towards her.
Clara grabbed her husband's hands. He whispered to her, told her to duck under this flying branch, to jump over this downed tree. Little by little, her dead husband, a sculpture being of the sand, led her moment by moment to a small campsite. The wind had downed a clothing line, and torn through some of the tent. Food bags were knocked over and empty. But there was a horse, tied up and trying its best to weather through the storm, neighing and nickering it’s discontent at its treatment so the sound of the storm, mixed with the sound of the horse into an unpleasant and constant complaint.
There was a small monogrammed bag by the tent, reading “J.H,” though most of the H had long since been weathered away. The H looked so much moire like a J, that the bnag seemed to read “J.J.,” in matching with Clara’s husband’s old bag. She set her bag down next to this one, and inspected it, finding the remnant stitching of where the H used to be fully sewn onto the bag.
“JH?” she questioned. Then she snapped her fingers. “Jack!”
She called for him again and again. There was no way to see through the whirling and shifting shards of sand that stabbed into her. She ducked into the remnant of the tent, still calling “Jack! Jack Hunter! Where are you Jack?”

Jack finally heard the ever increasing cry.
“Clara?” he asked.
“Jack! Jack Jack!” was the only response he heard. He steadied himself, even against the whirling tiny blades of glass that poked into his skin.
“Where are you, Clara– Mrs. Johnson?”
“Jack!” Clara called.
“Mrs. Johnson?” He followed the sound of her voice. He didn’t worry about which branch might get in his way. He simply held his hands out, one like it was swimming in the air, the other bringing the small sapling down as a walking stick. He moved steadily, refusing to buckle underneath the wind.
“Jack!” Clara called out. As she was sitting down inside his tent suddenly she saw a large shadow. Two large shadows: the first the sand sculpted version of her former husband, slowly fading away into the still swirling storm, and the second was the shadow of Jack Hunter pushing through on his hurt, bloodied feet, finding his way right back to his campsite.
“Jack!” said Clara, almost surprised that she had seemed to summon him out of the storm. He opened his mouth to say something, but coughed instead, spitting up some sand and a little blood. He leaned forward and fell directly into Clara’s arms.
Just then the storm, as sudden as it rose up into the world, stopped. Just like that. A sudden stoppage like a cart overturning at an intersection. The whole world on pause. Just as soon as the storm upended the entire world, being the thing– the only thing– that everything was focused on, it passed away into a peaceful moment.
And then all the birds began to chirp again, noisy serenades soaring through the air.
Clara caressed Jack, letting her hands run tangles through his hair. Each knot and tangle she found she twirled around her fingers, then brusquely pulled her fingers away. As Jack slowly came back to consciousness, he moaned: “that feels nice.”
“Shh Jack Hunter,” said Carla. “I don’t need any of your charm right now. I just need you to be alive.”
Jack blinked. He looked at the paisley pattern on Carla’s vest. He reached out with his fingers and brushed against the fabric.
“It looks… the shirt… it looks like a golden goose,” Jack said.
Carla squinted, looking down at her clothes. “I guess it does,” she laughed.
“I caught the golden goose,” Jack said, “even at great peril to myself.” He turned over, and scooted next to Carla. They sat up, their hands interlacing with each other.
“You poor fool,” said Carla.
“Maybe I should have stayed on the path,” Jack said. “But then you wouldn’t have found me. Somehow I think it all comes to rights.”
“You poor stupid fool,” said Carla again.
“I found the goose,” said Jack. He stared into Carla’s eyes and smiled. He held her vest between his fingers, rubbing the cloth between his thumb and pointer.
“I must be a fool too,” said Carla. “And yes, I guess you found your goose.” There was a small pause in the world, as if even the chirping crickets in the distance, the frogs and owls croaking and hooting, and the evening songbirds themselves had stopped so the world could draw in a breath for what came next.
Clara bent down and kissed Jack. And Jack kissed back.
When the next day came, and the Cowboy and shopkeeper rose from their cold night, Clara helped Jack get back on his horse. She led the way, driving both of them directly into the town as quickly as she could. She knocked on the doctor’s door, even though Jack protested it was early morning.
“Is your legs healed up then?”: asked Clara.
“Well, no, but–”:
“Health don’t wait, you have it while you’re here,” said Clara. She pounded on the doctor’s door again. Doctor Thompson slowly opened the door, wiping the crust from his eyes.
Clara pushed Jack into the doctor’s arms. “Heal him, Doc. Now,” she said.
“Yes ma’am,” said the Doctor. Clara started pacing around the room, as the Doctor helped Jack onto his examination table.
“Will you go and fetch me some water?” asked the doctor. Clara nodded and grabbed a bucket near the door. She ran quickly to the town well.
“What’s the water for Doc?”
“Keep her busy, she doesn’t need to see all of this. People like to feel like they’re helping,” the doctor said.
“I see,” said Jack. “Well, can you help me?”
“Mmmhmm,” said Doc Sam. “You’re gonna need these bones reset. Lined up again.”
“Like how?” asked Jack.
Like this, said Doc Sam, as he quickly slammed the cowboy’s bones back in place. The cowboy gave such a great cry that rang through the town, ringing against the bells, that at the well Clara dumped the water onto the ground by accident. She sighed, lowered the bucket back down into the well, and began trying to draw the water up again.
“Now stay off this for a few weeks,” said Doctor Thompson. He held up a hand, indicating that Jack should wait for a moment. The doctor dug into the closet and found a pair of crutches. Then he returned to the examination table, wrapped up the reset bones in bandages, and handed Jack a small bottle of laudanum.
“None too much now,” he cautioned. “Just when the pain feels a bit too much.”
Jack nodded. “Yes Doc.”
Carla came in with the bucket of water. “Where did you want this, Doctor?”
“Just on the stove there. I’m gonna have a small stew for breakfast.”
Carla grimaced. The Doctor moved over to her and held her hand.
“Listen my dear, Jack is going to need some care, do you understand?”
Carla nodded. The doctor continued: ‘“He has to keep off of his legs for a while. I suppose you could perhaps take him in and entertain him.”
Carla blushed and nodded.”I can do that Doc Sam,” she said.
“Oh, and one more thing,” the Doctor said, loud enough for Jack to hear as well. “You can’t send him out on any more of these wild goose chases.”
“But I found the goose,” said Jack. He pointed to the fabric on Carla’s chest, his hands tracing the pattern not like the geometrical shape it really was, but like the form and outline of a bird. Carla grabbed Jack’s hand, pressed it into hers, and kissed his forehead.
“Maybe all of us are geese,” she said, “wildly flailing about our business, knocking everything over just trying to get by. Silly things really, all of us.”
“Now there’s a phrase,” said the doctor. “Silly goose.. That’s certainly a phrase.”
Jack and Carla ignored the doctor’s musings. She wrapped her arms around him and continued nuzzling his face as he sat on the examination table. They kept kissing each other as the doctor made his breakfast soup.
Eventually he told them they needed to get out. “I only made enough soup for myself this morning and I have several appointments.Get out you geese!”
Doc Sam watched them go, slowly, but slammed the door as soon as they left. He went back for a second and third helping of his breakfast stew, burning his mouth a little each time he sipped it.
He sat back in his chair, smoking his pipe and considering the tale of Jack and his quest for the Golden Goose. “Silly goose,” he repeated again. “Yes, that’s the fool in all of us.”
He puffed his pipe, sending up clouds that circled around him, and nearly dozed off in his chair, tobacco lit– simply sitting and smoking until his first appointment came in.