Down to a Soundless Sea (21 page)

Professor Gill grew more nervous and despondent by the
moment, but he rippled even further when he heard the Indian’s stallion whinny in the distance. Solomon couldn’t be sure, but he imagined that the sound came from the direction in which he was traveling. The thought gave him few prospects he wished to contemplate in depth. He reflected on the possibility that perhaps he had read too many pulp adventures as a youth. His imagination, though now tempered with education and experience, was still faintly littered with childhood images of bloody scalps, burning cabins, and waves of screaming, painted braves.

Another half hour of footsore travel and the trail flattened and became more bearable. Suddenly the professor thought he caught the scent of smoke, but then it was gone on the breeze.

He was hiking through a landscape of strange shadows and stranger perspectives. Every detail seemed contrived to impede any immediate view of his surroundings. Distances became impossible to judge. Then the fragrance of pine smoke drifted across his path once more, and he stopped for a moment to judge its source. That proved impossible.

Professor Gill limped down the trail until he came to a clearing in the trees. What caught his eye astonished him. There stood old Doughboy, reins secured to a tree limb and hind leg cocked in repose. Doughboy was slumbering the sleep of God’s innocents. A little fire burned in a small stone circle neatly cleared of all surrounding combustibles. The professor’s food bindle had been laid out neatly on the ground like a tablecloth. Closer examination revealed that his packed lunch, which he had neglected, had been partially liberated. Two pieces of fried chicken and two johnnycakes were missing. The professor’s canteen had been set upright on the bindle cloth and he noticed that the collapsible cup was still moist with use.

Though he waited cautiously, no one appeared from the shadows to claim responsibility, and there were no further appearances from the mysterious Indian horseman, for which Professor Gill was prayerfully grateful. Relieved at finding his transportation secure and quiescent, Solomon sat on the ground next to the spread bindle and ravenously consumed the last of the chicken and the remaining johnnycakes. Whoever had caught and tethered Doughboy had been generous enough to leave half the rations intact. Solomon was grateful for both.

When he had finished refreshing himself, Solomon packed his bindle, mounted the reanimated mule, and moved off down the shadow-laced trail with a prayer of sincere appreciation upon his lips. Doughboy and the professor finally made their way back to the lodge about nine o’clock. Both rider and mule were warm and fast asleep within thirty minutes of their arrival.

Solomon Gill rose upright in a cold sweat at five-thirty the next morning. He had heard a sound in his dreams that had frightened him. Suddenly he heard it anew, and it sent chills up his spine. It was the sound of a horse whinny in the distance.

Solomon pulled on his pants and went to the window. A wrangler leading a string of five shaggy cow ponies was coming up the road. The professor sat on the bed to pull on his boots. He was disturbed by his startled reaction to the sound of the horses, and he was forced to concede that the experiences of the last two days had not been all that he might have wished. The fact that he had been spooked by the phantom Indian gave Solomon pause to consider his own suitability as a field researcher. He missed his books and the simple comforts Mrs. Hammel’s establishment was pleased to provide. He had long since become accustomed to the secure precincts of
academia. It hadn’t been an acquired taste, either. He had fallen into it quite easily. The vistas might not be as broad and spectacular, but the dangers were correspondingly lessened by the mundane constraints of campus life.

The professor took his little five-and-dime notebook from his jacket pocket and looked at the scant few notes he had made in the last couple of days. There seemed pitifully little to show for his adventures except a possible Neolithic campsite he could never find again and a strange tale of a half-naked Indian horseman that he was sure no one in his right mind would credit.

Within seconds, Solomon Gill had talked himself out of any more expeditions into the hills. He would take the next available transport back to Monterey. If he didn’t arrive too late, he could catch the night coach to San Jose and be home in time for breakfast. The idea became more attractive every moment, so he cheerfully began preparations for a timely departure.

The professor’s fortunes were on the rise. As chance would have it, the motor stage north was due to stop by around nine o’clock. There would be plenty of time to enjoy a ranch breakfast of venison and eggs at his leisure.

The bill for Professor Gill’s stay at the lodge came to a grand total of six dollars and forty cents. He left the change to buy Doughboy a treat. Sixty cents worth of apples or carrots he thought a fitting gratuity for a mule. He left another dollar as a housekeeping tip. Then he took his bag and went outside to the veranda to await the stage in the morning sunshine. Little Anne from the kitchen brought him a second cup of sweet coffee to enjoy while he waited.

At 9:05 the motor stage rattled to a stop in front of the lodge with a grinning Corbett Grimes at the wheel. Next to
him sat a young girl he introduced as his daughter, Mary, called “Toots.” He said he was taking Toots to a friend’s birthday party up on the Palo Colorado. Grimes was in a garrulous frame of mind and full of good-natured quips. Toots laughed at everything.

Being the mail-stage driver made Mr. Grimes the first herald of all local tidings. His catalog of idle gossip seemed endless. Grimes loaded the professor’s bag in the boot of the stage with the mail, smoked wild boar hams for Frida Sharpe up at the Bixby Inn, and a roll of uncured deer hides for the little tannery in Monterey.

Solomon thought he would be the only passenger until the cowboy who had delivered the string of ponies earlier came out of the lodge, greeted Grimes with a chuckle, and climbed into the front passenger seat next to Toots.

The cowboy was dressed in the Spanish mode. He wore a black bandanna on his head in seaman’s fashion and a flat-brimmed black hat. He sported black leather leggings that buttoned up the sides and took the place of chaps, a style Mexican vaqueros had long since made popular. The cowboy carried a beaded quirt with which he saluted when introduced to Professor Gill by Mr. Grimes.

The vaquero said, “A pleasure to meet you, Professor. My name is Castro, Roche Castro. Have you enjoyed your stay in our wild country?” He spoke well, but maintained a lissome accent that sparked with Latin embellishments.

During the ride north Mr. Grimes and Roche Castro exchanged tall stories like trading cards. Occasionally Roche would turn to share exceptionally colorful details of some story with the professor, but for the most part Solomon Gill kept to himself.

He wasn’t impolite, just reserved, and Roche went out of
his way to make the shy professor feel included. He asked Gill where he taught, but not what. When he heard that Solomon was a professor at San Jose State, Roche said that he had a second cousin going to school there, but never asked if the professor was acquainted with her. He was just being polite.

Roche preferred trading hot shots with Corbett Grimes. He was not one to chat up strangers except when boosting them at poker. Toots just sat there in the middle soaking it all in and laughing at the old jokes as her father spun them out.

God only knew how many times she had heard these tales in her young life, but she enjoyed them all the same. Grimes liked regaling strangers with his stories about Robinson Jeffers, the famous poet. One of the first locals to meet him, Grimes had driven Jeffers up and down the coast when he first came to visit the Big Sur.

Professor Gill didn’t care much for poetry, but he listened politely while Grimes spun out yarns about the old days. Grimes had known George Sterling and crazy Jimmy Hopper too, but these names meant nothing to Solomon, so he let his mind wander out over the vast green ocean flecked with white. The sunlight was clear and sharp and defined the stark coastline in superb detail. The professor drifted in his reverie until Roche Castro said something about “the dark watchers.” Instantly the professor surfaced with a belated, “What? What about the dark watchers? What were you saying?”

Roche turned around and said that Corbett had been talking about this story he heard about a tool-drummer from Santa Cruz who got lost up the Little Sur River. When they found him he was jabbering on about being haunted all night by dark figures that watched his every move, but would not come out of hiding. They had been seen for centuries, Castro said. All
the local Indian legends related similar stories about the dark watchers.

Grimes cut in, shouting over his shoulder to make himself heard over the loud rattle of a particularly bumpy turn. “That’s the truth, Professor. Seen ’em myself once or twice of a moonlit night. Ain’t that right, Toots? You can ask Olive Steinbeck over in Salinas. She used to teach school in the Sur. A well thought-of woman, and you won’t find anybody as hard-nosed and stone-bound practical-Irish as Olive Steinbeck. There’s no malarkey tolerated with that woman, but she’s seen them, plenty of times. Told me so herself a few years back. She said she had spotted them when she was riding the high trails in the evening. Told me she made a habit of leaving small baskets of apples at special locations. The apples were always gone when she returned, but the baskets were never touched or taken. The dark watchers have never harmed a soul as far as anyone can recall, but Olive said that several greedy old prospectors had disappeared mysteriously while looking for Indian gold in the high canyons; fat chance of anyone finding Indian gold up there. Have you ever seen them, Professor? The dark watchers, I mean.”

The professor didn’t answer at first. He couldn’t. He was about to say “No” when the stage made a wide turn around the base of a hill. On the bluff above the road overlooking the Pacific, mounted on his black horse, stood Professor Gill’s private Indian nightmare.

Solomon felt cold perspiration bead on his temples. He wanted to say something, but his throat constricted and the words wouldn’t come. Solomon desperately needed to know whether the other passengers could see what he saw, but he found it impossible to make himself understood. When Roche
Castro turned to better hear the professor’s answer to the previous question, he was confronted by a disquieting sight. Professor Gill was almost blue, sputtering and pointing a shaking hand to indicate the mounted figure high on the bluff ahead.

Professor Gill was not remotely prepared for what transpired next. Suddenly Corbett Grimes, Roche Castro, and Toots all caught sight of the figure on the hill. They began to wave and hoot wildly. Grimes blew the rusty Klaxon horn and waved his hat out the window while Toots crawled across Roche’s lap, propped herself out the passenger window, and waved both arms with delighted enthusiasm. Gill was then double stunned to see the half-naked Indian dismount, smile broadly, and wave back. In a few moments the motor stage had banged and popped its way down through the next turn and the apparition was gone. Solomon heard Roche Castro’s voice as through a fog. “Are you all right, Professor? Professor? Are you feeling well?”

Professor Gill at last found his voice. “Yes. Yes, thank you. It was all something of a jolt, well, a surprise at any rate. I’ve seen that man before and, obviously, you are all well acquainted with him. Who is that Indian, sir? I’m confident we have crossed paths before.”

Roche Castro turned with an amused knit to his brows. “I shouldn’t be surprised, Professor. But he’s no Indian, though he knows the local Indians better than any man in California. That was Dr. Jaime De Angulo. He bought a ranch from me a few years back. He’s a famous anthropologist, studies Indian languages for one thing. I’ve heard said Dr. De Angulo knows twenty-five dialects, maybe more. He’s an expert on the Pit River tribes. I’m surprised you never heard of him, being a professor and all.”

Professor Gill sat back with the expression of a poleaxed calf. His jaw dropped, his eyes rolled to heaven, and his head nodded like a Chinese doll. After a few moments Solomon Gill reached into his pocket to retrieve his handkerchief and wipe his perspiring brow. When he withdrew it, his little notebook emerged in the folds. He looked at the cheap marbleized-paper cover for a second and then tossed the fluttering pages out the window into a ditch.

In late August Dr. Hedgepoole sent a letter to Professor Gill. The message communicated the doctor’s disappointment at not hearing from his friend since his trip into the Big Sur. The letter also related the news that a local anthropologist and noted Indian linguist by the name of Dr. J. De Angulo had discovered a remarkable network of Native American hunting encampments in the Big Sur.

Dr. Hedgepoole had been told the discovery took place in approximately the same area Professor Gill had supposedly investigated. Dr. Hedgepoole went on to state that he had never met the man personally, but was apprised that Dr. De Angulo was understood to be quite the character and that the Big Sur locals all seemed to know the man well. Dr. Hedgepoole asked if Solomon had met Dr. De Angulo while staying at Pfeiffer’s Lodge. He closed his letter by asking for news of his friend as soon as it was convenient.

It was almost four months before Dr. Hedgepoole heard from Professor Gill again. One day he was surprised to receive a letter postmarked from Chicago. The professor apologized for the long delay in replying to the doctor’s previous message. He went on to explain that he had decided to accept a more
lucrative teaching post at a prestigious women’s college in Illinois. Unfortunately, his move had required considerable dispatch and thus afforded little time to catch up on his parting correspondence.

Professor Gill’s letter went on to relate various trivial details about his decision to move east, but one aside did manage to catch Dr. Hedgepoole’s attention. In the vast fertile plains of anthropological study, Professor Gill had finally decided to focus on an unusually obscure and unpopulated field of study. Dr. Hedgepoole didn’t quite understand it all, but the gist had something to do with early grain cultivation, arthritis, and dental ware in prehistoric European populations: obviously a field of study offering little competition. Professor Gill’s letter noticeably avoided any mention whatsoever of his journey into the Big Sur, or his singularly bizarre encounter with fellow anthropologist Dr. Jaime De Angulo.
Sic transit gloria mundi
.