the Lonesome Gods (1983) (31 page)

"The horse thief, he laughed sarcastic-like and said he'd had no broken back. At that moment the medicine man lifted a hand, and that horse started to buck. Next thing you know, that horse thief was on the ground. "He started to get up and he cried out and sweat broke out all over him. Our medicine man, he went and mounted his horse. He said to that horse thief, lyin' there, he said, 'You said you didn't have a broken back. Well, you've got one now.' And then he just rode off an' left him lyin' there."

"What happened?"

I shrugged. "What could happen? It was August. It was the Mohave Desert. If he was unlucky, he'd have lasted two, three days. If he was lucky, he'd have died the first night."

He glanced from one to the other of us, but nobody was smiling. Monte said, "Aw, he's a good feller, long as you don't cross him."

My eyes dropped to the stranger's gun. The thong was slipped off the hammer. Now, a riding man would want that thong in place unless he expected trouble.

Alejandro had moved slightly. He was now seated right behind the stranger. He spoke softly. "You didn't tell us your name."

"Just any name will do," I said. "We need something for the marker."

"What?" He started to get up, then sank back. "What marker?"

"Suppose horse thieves rode in and attacked us now?" I said. "We might be suspicious of you, or the thieves might think you were one of us. At least you'd be one less to share things with. We'd have to have a name for the marker on your grave. Shame to bury a man without leaving something to show where he passed."

He put down his cup. "Maybe I should be ridin' on," he said, "ride while it's cool, y' know?"

He got to his feet very carefully. He started to brush off his pants, which would put his hand near his gun, and then thought the better of it.

"Mount up," I said, "and ride. When you see Fletcher, tell him to come anytime he's ready."

Chapter
34

When it was daybreak, I walked down from our breakfast fire carrying a piece of bread, and whe
n
I reached the corral gate, I held it out to the black stallion. He shied away, tossing his head and rolling his eyes, but I talked quietly and held the bread out to him.

One of the mares came up and reached for it, and I broke off a bit and let her have it. This mare was one that had been handled quite a bit, I thought. Anyway, she took the bread from my hand.

The stallion seemed interested, but he was wary. I talked to him a little, but he held off, and finally I left the bread on the top rail of the gate and went away. I suspect the mare got it, but did not know.

Jacob was getting up from the fire, holding his cup in his hand. "I figure we should more 'em," he said. "I don't like that crowd."

"Me neither," Monte said. "I think they had something in mind last night. I think they were out there, ready to come in. I think he was going to start it."

"Martin saw something moving out there, and the horses were restless." Jacob sipped his coffee, his eyes on the scattered oaks along the mountainside. "Maybe it's the Injun stories, but I don't like this place. Or maybe it is just that I want to go back. I'd never have believed it, but that woman's got me thinkin' of business, wheelin' an' dealin' like she does. It's like poker, only it takes longer to rake in the pot."

He looked at me, a faint twinkle of humor in his eyes.

"Anybody told me I was becoming a city man, I'd of been ready to shoot him, but there it is."

My thoughts were on Meghan, and I agreed. "Why not?" But when I said it, I was looking at the hills. There was a place back there where a creek came down a canyon, with oaks on the mountainsides. I wanted to ride up that canyon alone sometime and drink out of that stream.

Ram& came up to the fire, leading a line-back dun from the herd. It was a horse to which he had given special attention. He dropped the reins, and getting his cup, poured coffee from the blackened pot. The others had gone, wandering off to catch up their horses. Most of them had already rolled their beds.

"We go now?"

"Jacob does not like it here."

"And you?"

"I like it." Nodding toward the hills, I said, "There is something up there for me. And in the desert there is something."

"You come back?"

"When I can." I threw the rest of my coffee on the ground. "It is an old place. I can feel that. It has changed, but it has been here. When I look at those mountains, I see the centuries pass like seasons.

"My father often said that men talk of what they call the 'Old World.' It is no older than this, if as old. Men had the Bible and they had the Greeks. They knew of the Egyptians and Babylon, so when the scholars began to dig, it was to find familiar things, things of which they had read. Whatever they found tied into something, and when they found something strange, they shied from it because it would have no place, no connection.

"Who knows when men first came here? Who knows how many people were here before you whom we call Indians? So much decays. So much disappears in the passage of years."

"You must come back."

The coals had burned down to nothing, only a few fain
t
fingers of smoke rising. I looked at the dying red of the coals and thought of Meghan.

Did she ever think of me? Why should she? I was only a boy who had sat beside her.

I looked around. What would she think of my desert? Of these, my mountains? Was it vain to think of them as mine? Yet they were mine in a secret place in my mind. They were mine because I belonged to them and them to me. Or was this simply a romantic idea I had because my father and mother had sought a refuge in the desert? Taking up my saddle, I kicked sand over the coals. "You are one of us."

"I am Johannes Verne. Beyond that I know nothing. What I am to be is something I must become. I must create myself from this that I have." I glanced around at him. "We are nothing until we make ourselves something." "No doubt."

"I do not know what I shall be except that I wish to be something, to be someone."

"Before the world? Before other men?"

"Perhaps. Sometimes that also comes, but what I wish is to be complete in myself."

RamOn took up his saddle. "Not too complete--to be too complete is often to be lonely. A man needs a woman, and a woman a man. It is the way of things."

We walked down to the corral and caught up our horses. Francisco was there, and he walked over to me. "You will take the stallion? He is trouble, I think."

"Let him be my trouble. If he escapes, let him go." Monte walked over to me. Jacob was already in the saddle. "We're going to let out a few of the tame ones first, and I think the others will go to them with a mite of urging. We'll head them toward Tejon Pass."

"They'll be watching," I said. "They may try to stampede the horses."

"Maybe, but I think they will try to steal them at night, after they're trail-broke. They won't have men enough to handle a herd of this size. Or the horses."

We let a few of the horses out, and Francisco and Martin headed them off and held them: then we let a fe
w
more out and they fled at once to join them. After a few minutes we let out some more, and then some more, and Jacob led off, leading the herd down the old Indian trail. Francisco and Martin flanked them, and we let out more and then more. By the time we let the stallion out, the herd was trailing along in good shape, with Jaime and Diego falling in beside them.

His mares were already with the herd, so the black stallion went after them and we closed in. Selmo started from habit to close the gate.

"Leave it," I said. "Other animals will want to get to the water."

"Of course," he agreed.

Monte McCalla was waiting. He had his rifle in his hands, and I the same. "We'll sort of bring up the rear," Monte said, "just in case we have visitors."

RamOn had mounted up and disappeared, and when I looked around for Alejandro, I did not see him. "Scoutin'," Monte said. "He thought he'd have a look around, but he'll be along."

A dapple-gray mare had taken the lead. She was older, and had been saddled and ridden in some bygone time. There was a strange brand on her shoulder that we could not make out. When she shed some more of her winter hair, we would see it better.

"You going to ride that stallion?" Monte asked. "Sooner or later," I admitted. "When the time seems right."

"Give it plenty of time," Monte advised. "He's a fighter." We kept them moving at a good gait. "Get them tired," Jacob had said, "so when we bed down they'll be ready to rest."

The trail we followed was old, leading through low hills crested with boulders. Larger rocks were scattered across the low ground among the hills. There were only scattered oaks, but the grass was good.

Selmo was bringing up the rear, close behind the last of the horses. Monte and I fell back.

"You ever been in a fight, kid?" he asked me.

"I lived through a couple, loading guns for my pa. Miss Nesselrode was there, too."

"Her? In a fight?"

I told him about the Indian she had killed trying to crawl into the wagon. "And that wasn't the only one," I told him. "She can shoot."

"I'll be damned. You'd think she'd faint at the sight of blood."

"Not her," I said.

Late in the afternoon we slowed the pace and let the horses scatter out a bit. There was good grass in that little basin, and some water. They ate and they drank a little, and we moved them on.

Alejandro came up to us just as we were going into camp. There was an old horse corral, half of natural boulders and pieced out with poles. We let them graze a little more and then bunched them into the corral. There was room enough for all of them, but not much more. Each of us roped another horse and picketed them outside for easy access in case of trouble. I chose a dark dapple-gray that I had been watching.

Martin put together a small fire and Francisco squatted on his heels nearby.

"They come," Francisco said.

"You've seen them?"

"They come. Maybe tonight, maybe tomorrow."

Well, we had understood that. We had known they would come, and we were ready, as ready as anyone can be. When it was not quite dark, I took my rifle and went down to the corral with a couple of tortillas. I fed half of one to the mare, with the black stallion looking on. I held out a piece to him and he took a step forward, then shied away. The mare wanted it, but I would not give it to her. Francisco came over to me. "There are Mohaves out there."

Surprised, I said, "Mohaves? Indians?"

"St Maybe ten, maybe twelve."

Mohaves, too? I thought about that. Were they working with Fletcher? Or were they on their own? Mor
e
likely the latter, but if so, did Fletcher know they were there?

When I had taken a circle around the area, I went back to the fire, took my coffee, some tortillas, and jerky, and backed off from the firelight.

When Jacob came over, I told him what Francisco had said. He squatted on his heels beside me, and Monte came over, too.

"What d'you think?" Monte asked.

"I say we catch an hour's sleep, then get the herd down the trail. Alejandro just came in and he says there is a good place with grass and a seep of water down the trail about an hour's drive. We can leave the fire burning low." Jacob straightened up. "I'll go tell the boys."

He glanced at me. "That set all right with you?"

"It does." I drew the back of my hand across my mouth and looked up at the stars. There would be light enough. Ramon came in from the darkness. The blackened coffeepot still sat by the coals. He took his cup and filled it and came and sat near me.

He sipped his coffee as the others scattered to what they must do. "What is it you wish?" he asked.

"To be a complete man."

"And what is that?"

"I do not know yet. One lives so long to learn so little." "So you will come again to the desert and the mountains?"

"I will." I looked off toward the east, where the morning would begin, and then to the west, where along the distant mountains we would see the first light.

I was thinking then of Meghan, but I was remembering the vanishing books. I spoke abruptly. "Do you know the house of Tahquitz? Where I live?"

"I know it." He sipped his coffee and was silent, watching the rim of the mountains for the first light. "Of course it is not Tahquitz," he said then, almost impatiently. "Of course," I agreed; then added, "They say he is a monster."

Ramon shrugged. "Which of as is not a monster t
o
something else? To the ant in my path, I am a monster. Do you think this Tahquitz a monster?"

"No," I said. "He reads. No one who reads can quite be a monster. Or," I added, "perhaps he is only partially a monster."

"I cannot read."

"But you think," I said, "and you listen."

The Cahuillas were in the saddle. I got up and walked over to the dark dapple-gray and saddled up. The stallion was watching. "One of these days," I said to him, "this saddle will be for you."