There are some folks who always seem to be standing down below when old mother fate empties her chamber pot. You know...they're the ones you don't get too close to... for fear some'll splash on you, too.

Poor Bernie Twopops was one of the worst cases of no-luck-at-all I ever did see. His maw named him that 'cause she warn't quite sure which one was his pop. One look at little Bernie and both of them left town -- never to be heard of again. It wasn't that he resembled either one of them, it was that Bernie only had one good arm. The other was half-size and kinda twisted. He had a club-foot and a hare-lip, but outside of those little imperfections, he appeared just a normal little baby. It wasn't until he got to be about eight that his teacher decided that Bernie was a little slow in the head..

He grew like a weed, so by the time he was fifteen, he was man-size in body and still eight in his head. He was kind and gentle with everyone -- especially with animals. Animals just loved Bernie, so when his maw ran off with the strong-man from the carnival, Hiram took Bernie in and let him work at the livery stable. Bernie was a happy kid and a hard worker. Couple a times, some drunk would use poor Bernie for a punching bag, but Bernie would just curl up into a ball, whimper and cry until they'd pull the mean bastard off. Bernie never did get violent. He did develop a wracking cough. Hiram thought it was from getting his ribs kicked in by a drunken trail hand, but Doc Patterson said no, it wasn't that. He said that Bernie was in the advanced stages of consumption. He said lung fever was highly contagious..

Hiram didn't know what to do. He felt guilty about making Bernie sleep in the stable with the horses -- probably got the damn lung fever from sleeping on the ground in an empty stall. Couldn't keep him around, and sure as hell couldn't tell the folks in town. He sighed as he stood up and went out to the stable..

He found Bernie curry-combing the mule Hiram gave him for his last birthday..

"Bernie," Hiram began, "how would you like to go into business with me?".

"Doing what, Uncle Hiram?".

"Gold prospecting," Hiram dug into his pocket and pulled out a nugget he'd been carrying around for the last year or so..."See this beauty, Bernie! This is worth almost a hundred dollars. These little beauties are lying all over the place up there in those hills over yonder. If I give you the digging tools and enough grub for a month, how would you like to go up there and find us some of these gold nuggets?" Bernie's eyes started to gleam,.

"Do you think I could do it all by my lonesome? What if I get lost and can't find my way back? How will I know if I got the right stones?".

"Sure you can do it, you take this stone with you, so you can compare it to the stones you find, and if you run out of food and want to get home, wait til dark and tell that mule to go home. He'll come right back -- believe me, he knows the way.".

"When do I leave, Uncle Hiram?".

"First thing in the morning, right after breakfast," Hiram answered, "I've got to go get you some tools and a gold-pan. You'll probably find enough water to do a little panning in your spare time. I'll show you how to work a gold-pan this evening, before we turn in.".

Hiram stopped and told Doc what he had planned. He explained,.

"Don't breath a word to anyone about his consumption. I'll keep him out in those hills prospecting for gold until he gets too weak to make it back to town. when the mule comes back with an empty saddle, I'll go up there and bury the little tike. I just don't have the heart to let the town destroy him." Doc agreed, and so Hiram finished his shopping and returned home to teach Bernie to use a gold-pan..

The next morning Bernie climbed up onto his mule, grinned happily at Hiram and rode North into the mountains in search of gold nuggets. He was sure he'd find a whole bunch and make Hiram real proud of him. He didn't know what a hundred dollars was, but Hiram seemed to like the sound of it, so it must be good..

Three days later, he was beginning to get a little worried, Hiram said they were all over the place up here, but he hadn't found any yet. Maybe, someone got here before he did and got all the nuggets -- Hiram would be so disappointed. Bernie started to cry, but quit right away because he couldn't see good when he cried, and he had to see good to find those nuggets..

During the forth night Bernie really had some bad luck. The mule woke him up...it was braying, jumping up and down and acting frightened. When he untied the mule to calm him down, he jerked the tether out of Bernie's hand and ran off into the darkness. Bernie followed calling his name and begging him to stop and wait. After about a mile the mule did stop and waited for Bernie to catch up. Bernie was coughing so hard from the exertion he started to cough up blood. Bernie didn't notice, he just wanted to get back to camp. He arrived back at camp just in time to see a big, black bear leaving with the last of his food. That's what was scaring his mule..

Now he was in trouble: he hadn't found any nuggets and a month's supply of food was gone in four days. He couldn't go back to Uncle Hiram after making such a mess of everything, and he couldn't kill any of the little creatures in the mountains even if he had to starve to death. He cleaned up his campsite, got on the mule and rode up the next canyon in his search for nuggets. By two in the afternoon he was hungry, had seen no nuggets and was ready to give up. He got off the mule and sat on a boulder leaning back against the almost vertical wall. It was cool and shady, and he was asleep in minutes..

When he woke up it was dark. He could see okay because there was almost a full moon. He looked around in a panic for the mule and was relieved to see him standing quietly nearby. Something bothered him though, it sure seemed like when he woke up, he heard a whole flock of birds chirping. Didn't sound like the pigeons that hung around the stable for scraps of feed the horses dropped...sounded more like those canaries Missus Wilson hung in the window of the dry-goods store. Couldn't be though -- birds slept when it got dark. Musta been his imagination. Darn, but he was getting hungry!.

He was startled to hear another burst of twittering from above his head. He looked up and caught a glimpse of three heads ducking back into a hole in the face of the cliff. Looked like some kids about ten or eleven years old -- strange thing was that they were kinda light blue and they glittered when they moved..

"Hey you kids, come on down...I won't hurt you. Don't pretend you ain't there 'cause I saw you real plain. Quit playing games now and show yourselves, but be careful and don't fall." He got no answer. He looked up at the hole and over at his mule. He thought he just might be able to reach the hole by standing on the mule..

When he got the mule in place, he climbed up and could just reach the lower lip with his finger tips of his good arm. There was a branch growing about six inches higher, as he crouched to leap up to grab the branch the mule moved and off he fell. He lit hard on the back of his neck and suddenly lost the ability to move anything below his chin. His eyes filled with tears and all he could do was yell at the mule,.

"Go home, Sam -- go home!!" The mule trotted off into the darkness..

He laid there completely helpless figuring he'd probably die long before Uncle Hiram found him, when the twittering started up again. From where he was, he could see the hole in the wall. One of the blue kids took something out of his purse and made a blue bubble with it. He stepped into the bubble and slowly floated down to where Bernie was lying..

He made a bubble around Bernie and guided it up through the hole and out of sight inside the mountain. Bernie had been terrified at first, but as soon as he was inside the bubble, he felt so calm and safe he just knew that nothing bad was going to happen..

Once inside they left him in the bubble while they examined him. Every time they'd find something that was messed up, they'd look at Bernie with big, sad eyes and twitter like a whole flock of magpies. Like they were scolding about something. Finally they seemed to be arguing about something, it was almost like they were voting. Bernie watched with the eyes of a helpless wounded animal. He knew they were deciding his fate, but he didn't know the enormity of the decision. He figured he'd lost in the voting when they filled his bubble with a greenish gas that put him out instantly..

Bernie woke up with a start. His left arm was tingling all over like he'd slept on it and cut off the circulation. he rubbed it to make the tingling go away...then reality sank in. He could feel! He looked at his left arm -- it was the same size as the right! Then he remembered the little, blue, bird-people. They musta fixed him somehow. Glory Be!! He couldn't wait to tell Unkle Hiram. He looked around...he could see the town to the South and the mountains to the North -- they musta brought him halfway home and dumped him here. It was an easy walk home. He picked up his backpack, it seemed extra heavy, but he blamed that on his being weak from his operations. How in heck did he heal up so fast anyway?.

He walked into the Livery stable,.

"I'm back, Uncle Hiram, did Sam, the mule get back okay? I got hurt, so I had to send him back all alone." Hiram walked into the stable, turned white as a sheet and sat down quickly,.

"Bernie, is that really you? We wrote you off for dead six months ago. How in Hades did you survive out there for six months with no food?".

"When Sam came back, we searched every inch of those damn mountains and there wasn't a single trace of you. We figured someone did you in and buried you and all your gear. Tell me boy, what happened?".

Bernie told Hiram his story and while he was doing the telling, he was unpacking his backpack. He stopped close to the part where he woke up in the desert and proudly held up a sack..

"My little bird people musta read my mind because not only did they fix my afflictions, they figured that gold was important to me, so they gave me these." He dumped a pile of gold nuggets at Hiram's feet. Hiram picked one up examined it and excitedly asked,.

"Bernie, do you think you kin find that spot again? If you can, we're gonna be so damn rich, we'll never have to work again the rest of our lives." Bernie said he was sure he could find the spot. Hiram grabbed him by the arm saying,.

"Let's go over to Doc Patterson's, I want him to give you a check up -- you know, make sure your really all right. Lord knows what you been eating to make you see vision like you been talking about. You find any funny tasting mushrooms out there?".

Doc Patterson examined him and nearly had a heart attack. There was no sign of any consumption, his hare-lip had been surgically repaired and his left arm had undergone a miracle -- it had simply started growing and repaired itself. Bernie's fall had crushed two vertebrae in his neck, but that damage had been surgically repaired also, and he had healed in less than six months. Doc wanted to tell the world, but Hiram showed him the gold and got him to shut up for a third of the action. They spent the rest of the day planning their prospecting trip. Hiram wouldn't hear of Bernie sleeping in the stable, so he ended up spending the night in a room at the Plaza Saloon and Fancy Hotel..

During the night something happened demonstrating that although his body was all fixed up, his bad luck was still the same. The day-shift barkeep and desk-clerk went off shift at eight in the evening and Cliff Barton, the owner of the Saloon came on duty..

He worked the night shift because that's when the trouble usually started and there was nothin he liked better than beating the crap out of rowdy drunks. Anyway, one of the ladies agreed to go upstairs with one of the drunks and asked Cliff for the key to an empty room. He gives her a key to the room Bernie is sleeping in. She and the drunk go upstairs and two minutes later she and the drunk start screaming and come running down the stairs. She tells Cliff there's a big blue monster in the room. He grabs his scatter-gun and sneaks up the stairs...He kicks open the door, turn on the light and finds Bernie sound asleep lying naked as a jaybird on the bed..

Bernie sits up rubbing his eyes and wants to know what all the ruckus is about. Cliff tells him to shut up and go back to sleep. When Cliff turns off the light, he sees that Bernie is glowing a beautiful shade of light-blue. Cliff looks closer and Bernie starts to glitter like a star..

"Oh my God," he's got the Blue Plague! Everybody outa here!" He shouted, "I'll call the Military base -- they'll know what to do with him." So, Cliff, his "Ladies of the Night", and all the drunks piled out into the street. Cliff went to Doc Patterson's to use his phone. Doc let him in, but when he found out Cliff wanted to bring in the military, he sat him down and told him the whole story. At the mention of the gold he suddenly forgot all about calling the military..

"You say Bernie said there were a whole bunch of those little blue people? They must be friendly or they wouldn't have helped Bernie...Hmmm." Cliff agreed to keep his mouth shut if they'd cut him in for twenty-five percent of the gold and take him along on the trip they had planned. Hiram didn't like it, but he agreed 'cause ole Cliff sorta had them over a barrel..

Everbody turned back in for the night -- everybody except for Cliff. Cliff still had to close up the saloon and throw out the drunks for the night..

All the time he was going through his nightly routine, he kept thinking about how easy it would be to grab off Bernie from upstairs, head for the mountains and beat the crap outa him until he showed where he got those gold nuggets. Cliff didn't put no stock in the wild tales about weird blue people who twittered like birds...Bernie musta been chewing on some loco-weed or sumpin. The more he thought about all that gold the greedier he got; finally he threw his bar-rag down rushed up the stair and slapped Bernie awake saying,.

"Get up you blue-ass little bastard, we're gonna take us a little ride. Put your clothes on -- you hear now!" Bernie hurriedly dressed. He knew how mean Cliff could be from past experience..

"Are we gonna tell Uncle Hiram? Are we gonna get my mule? Hiram's gonna be real mad at you if he wakes up and find me or the mule gone..

" "Just shut up and do what you're told. I've got a nice gentle horse you can ride...now come on, hurry up it's gonna be daylight in a few hours." They hurried down the back steps and rode off into the night..

Hiram was so excited about getting rich he hardly slept. At the crack of dawn he was over to the saloon to wake up Bernie. When he found both Bernie and Cliff missing, it didn't take him long to put two and two together. He rushed over to Doc's, beat on the door and started yelling that Cliff had kidnapped Bernie and was gonna get all the gold for hisself. Doc came running out, pulling his suspenders up over his underwear. He told Hiram to get them three good horses and some supplies. He said he had an injun family that owed him a big medical bill. He said, "Crazy Charlie is a damn good tracker and will be glad to help if I write off some of that bill." Hiram rushed off in one direction, Doc in the other and in less than an hour their tiny posse was ready to leave..

Bernie pointed out a notch in the ridge of mountains to the North when he told his story to Hiram, so they had a general direction to start in. Ten miles out of town the tracks grew so few it wasn't hard for Charlie to find a pair going North. Another two miles and those two sets of tracks were the only ones not covered by desert winds..

When they reached the opening to a box canyon old Crazy Charlie balked. He wouldn't enter the canyon, said there was big medicine in there -- no injun would ever go into sacred canyon. He pointed out that there were no tracks coming out, so Cliff and Bernie had to still be in the canyon..

Hiram and Doc thanked him and left him there waiting while they went on in..

They were sneaking along real quiet for a couple of reasons -- one being that ole Charlie's fear had transferred and caused the hairs on their necks to be sorta sensitive, and the other was that they knew that Cliff was just mean and greedy enough for him to try to leave three bodies in the canyon instead of just poor little Bernie's. They were about to walk around a huge boulder when they heard a bunch of birds twittering just on the other side. They cautiously peeked out from around the big rock expecting to see birds; instead, they saw Bernie on his knees, crying -- and Cliff holding him by the throat with one hand and punching him in the face with his pistol with the other..

"You sniveling little bastard, I'm not going to ask you again. Where did you find the gold -- the gold nuggets, stupid. If you don't tell me, I'll blow your brains out." He was so intent on what he was doing, he didn't notice the big, blue bubble that was slowly drifting down directly over his head. It wasn't until it touched him that he looked up and started cursing. He tried beating it off with his hands, never letting go of the pistol, but it slowly sank lower totally enveloping him until he was inside. Hiram and Doc could see him gasping as he tried to breath, but obviously there wasn't any air inside. There was some more twittering and they saw some heads duck back inside a cave high up the cliffside. The bubble slowly started to rise in the air..

"Good God," Doc whispered, "would you look at that!" The bubble kept rising until it was several hundred feet above the rock they were hiding behind. Suddenly it popped and down fell Cliff's body. It hit on top of the boulder and squashed like a ripe watermelon..

Crazy Charlie tried desperately to calm them down, as they waited for Bernie to come out. It was almost two hours before he emerged. Once again all his wounds were healed and he was surprised to see Hiram and Doc waiting for him..

"Uncle Hiram, Doc...how did you guys know that mean, old Cliff made me come out here, and how did you ever find me? I was worried about finding my way back.".

. Doc said that Charlie had tracked them because they were worried that Cliff might do something bad to him to try to get the gold..

"Well, you were sure right about that, if my little friends hadn't protected me, he would have hurt me real bad or shot me. My friends got really angry and punished Cliff, and they told me to go home and never come back 'cause all people were interested in was the gold, so they were going to hide it where nobody could ever find it. Sorry Hiram, but they meant it I'm sure.".

"It's okay, Bernie we're just glad to get you back safe and sound.".

Bernie used his share to buy a farm there in Troublesome Creek and start a family -- he took Hiram's last name 'cause he didn't want to make a bunch of Twopops..

Some folks have heard Doc and Old Hiram Fugate out by that box-canyon making bird sounds and flappin their arms like a bird, but they put that down to just getting a little old and teched in the haid..

[End] .