Free Auraria: A Novel by Tim Westover Page B

soon. The Five Forks Creek hasn’t given up all that it’s got.”
    At the edge of the creek was a hole cleared in the ice. Moss scratched in it with clumsy blue-tipped fingers and loosened a few handfuls of half-frozen black mud, which he transferred to his pan and worked with practiced motions. But either the creek was overzealous in its work and carried away the gold downstream, or more likely, there was no gold to find in the black mud.
    “I have a business proposition that you might consider a turn of luck,” said Holtzclaw. “Is there a warmer place we can discuss it?”
    “I’m fine here,” said Moss.
    “Yes, but I wasn’t prepared for a blizzard.”
    “That’s a personal problem.” Moss was intent on his work.
    Holtzclaw shivered again as he watched Moss dip another pan into the creek and wash its contents downriver.
    “Do you care to hear my business proposition?” asked Holtzclaw.
    “Will it cost me anything to listen?”
    “Of course not. I would propose to buy from you, at a fair price, your farmlands and pay immediately in federal notes, or if you prefer, gold coins.” He spoke quickly, hoping to get back to more seasonable weather.
    “Buy the farmlands? You want to get in before the harvest. We have a good crop of corn coming up this year.”
    Holtzclaw had not seen any corn, frozen or fresh. “We can make allowances for future crop yields, structural improvements, and mineral rights.”
    “You’d buy the gold still in the ground?”
    “I haven’t seen any gold. But if you had other provable minerals, like coal or iron, those can be considered.”
    “What do you need my farm so bad for that you’d just walk up and buy it?”
    “It is a convenience, not a necessity. I deal in scrap metal, and we are excavating a few of the abandoned mines here in the Lost Creek Valley. To move the scrap, we need a right-of-way, and it would be easiest to run through the land of your farm.” It was nonsense, but it would have been more convincing if Holtzclaw’s teeth were not chattering.
    Moss did not look up from his panning. “What do you think you’d pay for a place like this? Only because I’m curious.”
    Holtzclaw began his ritual of tabulation. He may as well have been quoting tonnage rates on cotton or rainfall rates in the desert for all the impact that the figures had on Moss.
    “I just couldn’t do it,” said Moss, interrupting. “One good strike here in the creek and I’d have half again as much as that.”
    “You’ve been digging here for how many years? Five? Ten?” said Holtzclaw, his frustration rushing out. “And what have you found? I don’t even see how there could be gold here. Where would the vein be? How would it wash into the creek? Yet it doesn’t stop you from looking. Your crops are dead, your trees are bare sticks, your farm is frozen over because your head was so filled with saw dust that you couldn’t remember to fix the door on your springhouse. Here comes a rare chance, a piece of good fortune such as you haven’t had in all your years. I am offering you gold, man, gold! You can pretend that you found it digging and panning because it’s almost the truth. Instead, you tell me that you’re going to keep the property, all this ice and dirt, because you’ve found nothing.”
    “Yes, that’s why I can’t sell. Because I’ve found nothing yet.”
    Furious and freezing, Holtzclaw stormed away. Of all the owners that Holtzclaw had met, Moss should have been the most eager to sell his worthless frosted property. And the absence of gold was not evidence of a future reward—that’s the gambler’s fallacy. But Holtzclaw couldn’t persuade Moss by pointing out his irrationalities. Moss lived in the midst of one.
    A sheet of snow began to fall upon Holtzclaw’s new hat, dampening it. He plotted his next move. It would be interesting to see Moss’s change of mind if he were to find a piece of gold on his property. He might redouble his digging efforts,