The Last Claim of Poverty Gulch

                                                       

I had planned in my twenties and thirties to write a fiction book about the history of Cripple Creek. During that time, I read every history book I could find about Cripple Creek and Bob Womack, starting with Money Mountain: The Story of Cripple Creek Gold by Marshall Sprague. That is the book that tells one of my favorite stories: “The Man Who Picks up Rocks Running.” Dr. Ferdinand Vandeveer Hayden was a fanatic geologist. As the story goes, a band of Native Americans encountered Hayden out in the wild. Instead of reaching for a weapon, Hayden simply ran, eagerly bending down to look at formations and stuffing interesting fossils, minerals, and rock formations in his pockets. The Indians decided he was crazy and left him alone. His dedication to his profession saved his life and gave him an unforgettable nickname. In many Native American cultures of the era, individuals who behaved in such an unhinged manner were believed to be under the direct protection of the Great Spirit. Deciding that this man who ran around, obsessively collecting useless rocks, was completely insane, they chose to leave him entirely unbothered. 

But my favorite stories of all were the ones about Bob Womack, the man who discovered gold in Cripple Creek and died a pauper. When I was growing up, my family would take visiting relatives from Illinois and Kentucky to Cripple Creek to visit Poverty Gulch where Bob Womack’s shack had been. My maternal grandmother was a distant cousin of Bob Womack, so that was a popular destination to take our visitors to. That was long before gambling

In my thirties, I worked in Cripple Creek as a blackjack dealer and pit boss. The first casino I worked in was Womack’s Casino, named after Bob. I dealt the first hand of blackjack there on opening night. To have my family’s history woven into the very dirt of Cripple Creek, and  to have dealt the very first hand of blackjack at the casino bearing Bob’s name, felt like a beautiful, poetic legacy to me. This short story is just a last wish sort of thing. I never did write that book, so I’ll honor the memory of Bob Womack, and my beloved maternal grandmother whose maiden name was Womack, with a story about the colorful character known by us as “Crazy Bob.” 

The Last Claim of Poverty Gulch

The wind off Pikes Peak didn’t just blow; it carved. It cut through the pine needles, rattled the aspens, and whistled through the chinks of the log cabin in Poverty Gulch where Robert Miller Womack sat, staring at his boots.

To the high-collared folks down in Colorado Springs, Bob was a legend in a fringed buckskin jacket. They knew him as the wild-eyed guide who could lead a greenhorn right to a grizzly’s den, or as the copper-haired rider who, on a whiskey-soaked Saturday, might spur his pony and ride it straight up the creaking wooden stairs of a brothel just to hear the girls shriek. For a wager, he’d bend low from a saddle at a full gallop and snatch a bad bottle of whiskey off the dirt with nothing but his teeth. Those nights usually ended with him in the local jail, too drunk to care.

But behind the stunts was a man who had spent a lifetime looking down.

For decades, Bob had panned the cold, clear creeks, tracing them like veins from the foothills of the Springs all the way up to their high, hidden source in the crater of an ancient volcano. His father, Sam, who was a staunch Confederate sympathizer and a chronic hypochondriac, had dragged the family west to escape the Union draft. Old Sam was terrified of the war, but Bob had ended up fighting a different kind of battle in the high country. A battle against the mountain, and against his own mind.

Now, he was just tired. He’d spent years telling anyone who would listen that there was gold in Cripple Creek. They’d laughed at him. They called his valley "Cripple Creek" because the cattle kept breaking their legs in the marshy ground, and they called Bob a lunatic. Eventually, if you hear a lie enough times, you start to believe it. Bob had stopped believing in the gold. He’d stopped believing in himself.

The fire in his small cast-iron stove crackled, throwing orange light across the dirt floor. Opposite him sat Winfield Scott Stratton.

Stratton was a carpenter, a man of cold measurements and quiet, agonizing precision. He didn’t ride horses up staircases. He looked at Bob with a quiet, assessing gaze, his eyes darting to a heavy, greyish chunk of rock sitting on Bob’s cluttered pine table.

“I’m done, Winfield,” Bob said, his voice flat, drained of the old fire. “The Gold King is my last hole and it’s a dead one. It’s just more dirt and disappointment. I’ve chased it from the Springs to here, and all it’s given me is a bad back and a reputation as a fool. But if you really want it, it’s yours. I need the money for my sick father and spinster sister.”

Bob sighed, standing up from his creaking chair. “Let me go check on the horses before the snow rolls in. I'll be back in a few minutes.”

The moment the heavy wooden cabin door clicked shut behind Bob, Stratton moved with feverish speed.

He snatched the chunk of grey ore from the table. Stepping quickly to the cast-iron stove, he pressed the flat side of the rock directly onto the red-hot iron lid.

Seconds stretched. The cabin filled with the sharp, chemical tang of roasting sulfur. And then, like sweat breaking on a fevered forehead, tiny, brilliant beads of yellow metal began to bubble and boil out of the dark stone. It was pure, glittering gold, sweating under the heat.

Stratton’s breath caught. His heart hammered against his ribs. He quickly scraped the telluride ore off the stove, pocketed it, and used his sleeve to wipe away any trace of the yellow sweat from the iron lid. By the time the door latched open and Bob stamped back inside, blowing on his cold hands, Stratton was back in his chair, his face a mask of polite indifference.

“So,” Stratton said, his voice steady, though his pulse was racing. “You really think it’s a dry hole?”

“Dryer than a sermon in August,” Bob muttered, sitting back down. “If you want it, it’s yours. Money is tight and hands are out.”

Stratton sighed, playing the part of a man doing a foolish favor. “Tell you what, Bob. I’ve got five hundred dollars. I'll take the claim off your hands.”

To Bob, five hundred dollars was real. It was warm blankets. It was survival. He couldn't believe his luck, amazed that some carpenter was willing to pay real money for a useless pile of dirt.

“Five hundred,” Bob said, a spark of the old salesman returning to his eyes. “And I want two pigs. For the winter. And a bottle of whiskey, Winfield. A bad one, if that’s all you’ve got. The kind that burns on the way down so I know I’m still alive.”

“Done,” Stratton said quickly, almost too quickly, reaching into his pocket to count out the greenbacks before Bob could change his mind.

A week later, the mountain fractured.

Word had spread through the high country like wildfire. Stratton had gone back up to the claim, dug deep, and struck a vein so thick and pure it defied imagination. He was pulling fortunes out of the very dirt Bob had abandoned. Overnight, the quiet carpenter had become Cripple Creek’s first true millionaire, and the rush was officially on. The mountain was crawling with men possessed by the fever.

Down at the bustling, smoke-filled train station, the air was thick with coal dust and the manic energy of arriving prospectors, investors, and speculators.

Bob sat on a wooden bench on the platform, a quiet island in the middle of the roaring stream. He had his bottle of cheap, raw whiskey tucked into his coat, and his two pigs were safely penned back at his cabin.

An old-timer, a fellow prospector who had spent decades sharing the cold mud of the gulches with Bob, shuffled over and sat down beside him on the bench. The old-timer looked out at the crowds, then shook his head, looking at Bob with a mix of disbelief and pity.

“Bob,” the old-timer said, leaning in. “Did you hear the news? Stratton... he’s pulling gold out of your old claim by the bucketful. He’s a millionaire, Bob. He’s rich beyond belief. Don’t it just make you sick? Don’t you regret selling it to him for a pittance?”

Bob took a slow, quiet pull from his bottle of bad whiskey. He felt the familiar, sharp burn down his throat, reassuring him that he was alive, warm, and entirely free. He looked past the bustling crowds of desperate men, and out toward the jagged peaks where Stratton was now chained to his new empire.

Bob let out a soft, tired chuckle and shook his head.

“My father’s laid up with his latest heart attack. But what would I have done with all that wealth, Henry? Squander it, that’s what. But not Stratton.” Bob passed the bottle, a genuine, gentle smile touching his lips. “I pity him. I truly pity him, and all the trouble that wealth is going to bring him. Wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.”