by Lorraine Ray
George lay in his blankets in a back room of the trading post. The blankets swathed his thin legs and were tucked under his thighs. To discover that Paul Weaton, the owner of the trading post, was still a considerate man who remembered George had surprised him. Paul had let George make a bedroll in the trading post. He'd even said George would be no problem. Yes, Weaton was a good man, a rare thing nowadays. He'd asked George no questions about what he was doing up on the Rim. George supposed word that he wasn't a part of the State Museum anymore hadn't reached there yet, because Paul seemed to assume George was still a professor.
Sometime in the night, George awoke.
He had the strangest feeling that someone or something was watching him. A log of thick mesquite snapped and popped in the fireplace. George studied the bald-headed bear head looming over him on the log wall. Some blankets hung on the wall. A picture of a canoe on a lake attracted his eye. Just then George noticed several other blanket rolls in the far corner of the room. Something gleaming in a red blanket caught the light of the fire. An immense haggard eye leered at him through a slit in the blanket.
"I'm glad to see you again, Little Captain," said a voice from within.
It was an odd voice, a voice whose English wasn't particularly good, which addressed George.
"Who is it?" asked George, making an effort to sound casual and hide his concern about who might lie there.
No answer came from the bundle. The eye regarded him.
"I repeat, who's there?" said George, challenging the shape.
The rags suddenly unfolded, chrysalis-like, in the red glow of the fire. The effect on George was terrifying, more so considering George's sleepiness, and his mental state from the long tiring drive to the Rim, so he sat up, staring at the menacing whirlwind. As layers of tattered wool parted, the room filled with movement and sound, leaves fled across the floor, and large embers broke off the gray log with a dry snap of errant footsteps on a trail of twigs. Each ember breaking open, reddened to a scarlet glow the figure of an old Apache.
George stared at the man. He recognized the face, the dark eyebrows and peculiar lopsided grin; the man was a guide and...a horse wrangler. He'd worked for George many years earlier.
The man shook with laughter.
Hand were pumped and backs pounded and the pair of old men glowed like two newly minted pennies in the firelight.
"My old friend and companion!" said George happily.
"I frightened you," replied the man.
"Yes, yes..." George searched his memory for the man's name.
"Turner," said the man.
"Turner! Yes, you had me worried," said George with a hearty laugh.
"I scared you."
"You did, only for a moment."
"For more than a moment!" said Turner.
"Well, well, my, my, this is an occasion," said George awkwardly. "I have just the thing for us. Some fine whiskey. Do you still drink?"
Immediately, as he mentioned the whiskey, two young men arose from nearby bedrolls. "These are my nephews," said Turner. George, fumbling in his things for the whiskey, paused to shake the young men's hands.
"I haven't thought of you in years," said George. "But I knew you right away."
"You knew me."
"The times we had. So many good times!"
"Have you come to search for another Tishba, professor?" asked Turner.
George sat up happily, "You read my mind. You always could. Another Tishba. My idea exactly. As I think I told you once, I had always thought another site might exist near that famous place which would rival or surpass it."
"I think you might need some young men to help you with the heavy climbing and, perhaps, an old man to remind you when to quit at the end of the day?"
"Yes, there's some truth in that," said George.
"We are your workmen," said Turner.
"Well, you are!" George agreed.
So he had found guides and workmen. George noted with satisfaction the nephews' strong limbs and pleasant smiles.
~~****~~
