The Golden Pocket Watch of Elias Cobb

The Golden Pocket Watch of Elias Cobb

The Yukon heaven stretched out, vast and indifferent. Yet that morning it was pleasantly blue and pristine—a shining cupola of cloudless, northern sky. Spruce and pine, chalked and contorted by wind, stood silent. Their boughs were dusted with a light snow from the previous night’s fall. Ravens croaked and chickadees whistled, on and off.

In the rivers and lakes ice granulated, drifting disparately through the myriad blues of glacial meltwater. April. Thawing.

Elias Cobb trudged through the crackling underbrush, his boots clagged with brindled mud. His skin red with cold. Twin streams of vapor left his nose and his mouth, wafting round his weathered jowls and fissured cheekbones. He was a sourdough, an old hand in these parts, though the luster of gold had eluded him. It was always thus with gold. It was always thus with Cobb. But, ever since he was a youngster, he had dreamed of a paystreak that would set him up for life; the motherlode.

He paused to adjust his pack, the creak of leather straps breaking the cold silence. The resinous air was crisp and tobacco smoke sweetened its aroma like baking bread. Slowly, deeper, he advanced into the darkening interior of the boreal forest, each footfall hard-earned. A man chasing a golden dream.

As he did most days, Cobb trudged for miles, eyes scanning the riverbanks, rock faces, and gullies. Ever seeking a trace of placer gold hidden in the gravel bars.

In a small clearing by a tall bluff, he found a dead man. Flat on his back and wizened like dark, dried fruit. Odorless, mummified by cold. His oilskin jacket was torn, shredded by the fall. And his face was fractured, cracked open by the tree stump, which had entered through the nape of his neck as he descended. God damn it if the tree hadn’t gone and grown through him, leaves and all. Cobb reckoned it must have poked out his tongue and most of his teeth on account of how the skull looked.

Behind, the scalloped granite face from which he had fallen was wet and moss grew in a thick pile all over it. Cobb studied the edifice and squinted up into the flaxen sun that spliced through the branches in shafts.

He breathed in deep, he breathed out deep, and then pulled on his pipe. He turned to take a steamy piss as he contemplated his grisly find, the sour vapor coiling up from the undergrowth. Then he turned back to examine the corpse, scanning his way across it. He rifled through the man’s clothes, finding nothing until he checked the breast pocket. A watch. A gold pocket watch.

It was not a beautiful watch, but it was gold—least he thought so. It was scuffed and tarnished, rendered greenish-brown by a dull patina, but it was gold. He was sure of it. And on the back of the case was an etched symbol that seemed somehow older and more unfamiliar than other etchings he had ever seen. Though none made much sense to him on account of not knowing how to read.

Cobb’s fat, tobacco-packing-finger-and-thumb wound the ridged crown until he felt it tighten. But the watch was dead. He shook it. He heard no rattle, no loose parts. So he tried again, breathing on it. Still nothing. And so, after a second check through the fallen man’s coat, Cobb went on his way. He could get the watch fixed up and sold in Dawson City, maybe.

He was not walking long before he heard a gentle ticking. Over and over. It would come and go as he walked. The windless day made it audible. And before long he worked out it was, in fact, the watch. And what Cobb also got to reckoning was how it would only tick when he walked a certain direction. Were he to head back on himself, it would stop. Were he to go anglewise, it would stop. The only way to keep the watch ticking was to walk the way that kept it so. He figured it to be like a compass, and he was not wrong to do so. The hands didn’t move as such—just kept pointing to “XII” and shuttling back and forth every second.

Cobb ruminated hard on these events. He was sure he was mistaken, and he knew that watches don’t know where you are going. And besides, watches don’t want folks to go anywhere. And yet here he was, switchbacking and double-stepping to ensure that where he walked was in accordance with the watch. He smoked while he walked. He smoked his whole pouch, wondering what in the hell was happening and what he was doing. He reckoned he covered eight miles or more just following the ticking of the watch. After a time, he kept it pressed to his ear on account of a noisy breeze that blew up from the west, carrying a chill.

He came upon more rock, in front of which stood a tall series of black spruce and lodgepole pine. The sedge was thick and the ground was sodden underfoot. He coughed. He heard his cough return to him - an echo. He coughed again. The same. Then he sang, “Hell-o-oh?!” He heard his voice rebound again. And so he went scanning through the rock face for the cave he figured must be there. The watch’s ticking brought him right to the entrance. He peered into it and swore out loud, for fun. The watch had made him giddy. He felt lucky. Cobb wasn’t one for getting ahead of himself too much, but he was minded to head into the cave and was half-expecting to find the paystreak he reckoned destiny owed him.

He stopped and walked into the dark aperture. It was grey and mildewed. He choked as the damp air caught on his throat. He lit his candle lantern and as he did so the cave walls were gently illuminated in fronds of golden lamplight. “Well, I be damned,” he exclaimed, slack-jawed and motionless. “Well, I be damned to hell.” Cobb wiped at the stone. Then again, harder this time, the soft glow of precious metal catching in the half-light, streaking through quartz like a buried secret revealed. His heart raced. There it was, an old paystreak, untouched for who knows how long. Glittering like the promises the Yukon whispered to old fools like him.

Cobb unslung his pack and fumbled for his hammer, fingers clumsy with urgency. The cave was quiet save for the regular ticking of the watch in his pocket and his own ragged breathing. His grip tightened on the handle, and with a sharp crack, he brought the hammer down on the vein. The first blow splintered the quartz, shards of rock falling like shattered glass. He struck again, and this time, the gold came free in small chunks, heavy and real in his hands. The ore gleamed dully, still crusted with bits of quartz and dirt, but unmistakably gold. He ran his thumb over the nugget’s cool surface, a thrill of triumph surging through him. He laughed, and then he cried, and then laughed again. “I knew it! I knew it!” He kissed the watch. Then he kissed it again.

The grizzly was maybe nine feet tall on its hind legs. Drunk with gold, Cobb barely heard it approach him. The first thing he knew was that he was being thrown to the floor of the cave. The next, he was lifted and dragged back into the daylight. The animal did not care that he screamed and cussed. The claws tore his flesh apart in broad streaks that frayed at their edges and then ran red into the loam. He felt the wet of its nose upon his cheek. Its teeth bore down on his neck. And before he died, Cobb heard his own windpipe crack, snapping crisply like a brittle branch.

Two years later: Cornelius Gretsch considered making camp by an overgrown granite bluff. As he assessed the area, he came upon a dead man. “My good God,” he said. He looked over the emaciated stash of bones, hair, teeth and leathery flesh - much like dried fruit, he thought. The bones were broken all over, and he reckoned it was a bear that did it. He found a corn-cob pipe, a smashed candle lantern, and - a few feet sideways - a gold pocket watch. He picked up the watch and listened to it. He heard nothing at all, until he started moving. Then he heard it tick. And like Cobb - and all the other fellas who found that watch - he followed its lead. And soon enough, Cornelius Gretsch was dead too.