Novel 1987 - The Haunted Mesa (v5.0)

by Louis L'Amour

  “Suppose you helped me?”

  “I? You are insane!” Yet she looked quickly, nervously around, as if she feared someone might be listening.

  He lowered his voice. “Think about it, but think fast, because if he is not returned here within forty-eight hours, I am going over, and when I go, I won’t be making it easy for anybody.”

  He got up. “You are my only chance to do this quietly, peacefully. You’ve got forty-eight hours, and not a minute more. I want Erik Hokart back here and in good shape, or I go get him.”

  “You? Alone?”

  “I’d better do it that way. The next thing they may be sending the Delta Squad or the Marines.” He was just talking now, but she could not know that, or how important Erik might be. For that matter, Raglan didn’t know, himself.

  “They will kill you now.”

  “They can try. But you know that daybook? That record you tried to get back from me? It is in a safe place, far from here, and if anything happens to me, it goes right to the top. I can’t take the chance of letting something like this exist without their knowing.”

  “They will believe you? They will think you’re crazy!”

  “Perhaps. A few years ago they would have been sure of it, but too much has happened. We have put a man on the moon—”

  “So you say. We do not believe it.”

  He shrugged. “Nevertheless, it is true, and our people are prepared to accept what would have been impossible a few years ago. The average man knows at least something about black holes, and our science fiction stories and films have introduced a lot of speculation and some understanding. And even your people used to study the stars.”

  She looked up at him. “Why do you say that? What do you know of our people? We cannot see stars. The heavens are misty. We do not see the moon or the sun.”

  “No sun?”

  “Oh, it is there! But it is behind clouds or something—I do not know.”

  “There is no speculation?”

  “Of course not. Why should there be? Our work is enough, and our families. Such speculation is idle, wasteful. We know everything we need to know.”

  “You believe that? After living here?” He paused, then very casually, he asked, “What of your history? Are there no records?”

  “Why keep records? Oh, I believe there were, but they no longer exist. Besides, who would need them? Who needs to know what is past?”

  “You have artisans? Men who work with wood and metals?”

  “Of course.”

  “How do they know what to do when they take up a bit of wood or iron?”

  “They know what to do. They learn from their fathers.”

  “That is history, Eden. The skills men acquire are a part of history. If they did not pass on their knowledge, their history, each workman would have to learn everything all over again. That is why we have history in books, so that we can profit from the experience of those who have gone before.”

  “And yet you make the same errors again and again!”

  “Too true. The records are there but too few are willing to learn. For example there’s a lot of talk now about using cocaine. It was quite a big thing before the turn of the century, then almost died out in the time of World War One, but now it is back, all the lessons learned in those earlier years forgotten. The people of the drug culture act as if they have made an original discovery, and instead are sending their lives down the same drain as others did years ago.”

  He was silent, then held out his cup for more coffee. She evidently knew nothing of the Hall of Archives, and probably very few did. Was that Hall in the Forbidden area? Was that how he could gain entry?

  If she did not know of the Archives, how many did? Tazzoc had implied that he was left alone. No inquiries came; nobody used his records. If he had visitors at all, they were infrequent.

  “You must help me, Eden, and help your people in so doing. If we can get Erik Hokart back, your world will be left to go on as it has. If not, I shall have to come after him.”

  She laughed bitterly. “You would be killed! You would have no chance!”

  “If I go,” he said quietly, “I will go armed and prepared for trouble. Even if they kill me, what I will do will change everything. If nothing else it will start people thinking, wondering, and once someone begins to think, there is no end to it. If one asks questions, one will want answers.”

  “We have weapons, too.”

  Of course they did, and he knew nothing about them. What of those the Varanel carried?

  He needed to know so much more! So very much! He tasted his coffee, put down the cup. “You have lived among us,” he said bluntly. “Do you wish to go back?”

  “Do you think your world so superior, then?” She spoke with contempt. “Do you think I cannot leave it?”

  “You can, of course, but do you want to? Our way of life is different, but you seem to find it not uncomfortable.” He looked around, taking in the pleasant, casually easy living room. “I do not know your life. Is it better than this?”

  She hesitated. “No, it is not. It is much worse. It is more…more barren.”

  “You need not go back.”

  Her eyes met his and shifted quickly away. So she had been thinking of that?

  “How could I live?” she wondered aloud. “What would I do?”

  “Your income is from them?”

  “Of course. Anyway, I could not. I am watched. Everybody is watched. We are not trusted. If they knew of what we talk I would be taken back. I would be killed.”

  “There is somebody who watches you?”

  She shrugged. “Of course. I do not know who. I do not know how.”

  “Is your house bugged? You know the expression?”

  “Of course. I read your newspapers.”

  “You must have income. You live well. How are you paid?”

  “It is not like that. We are given gold, sometimes gems to sell. Nobody is paid, as you say it, except that those who work with me are given gold or money by me.”

  “And how do you get yours?”

  “It is brought to me from over there.”

  “And you have no superior here? You said you were watched?”

  She shrugged. “By someone, I do not know who. Sometimes messages come telling me to meet someone. I do not know how, but it is arranged. It was so I met the governor, several senators, and men in your army. Invitations came to me.”

  He stood up. “Remember: forty-eight hours. Erik must be returned or I go after him.

  “Think about it, Eden. You have a chance. You could move away from here, go to Washington, to Paris, London! You could be far from anywhere they could reach you. Help me and I shall help you. You could find happiness here.”

  “I? I shall find happiness nowhere.” Her tone was suddenly bitter. “There is no happiness for me. Long before I could think, my way was made for me.” She looked at him suddenly, sharply. She was beautiful, really beautiful. “You have not guessed? I am a Poison Woman!”

  Chapter 24

  *

  MIKE RAGLAN DROVE away from the house of Eden Foster, watching his back trail. He did not like what he was learning nor want to believe it. The Indian people he had known were not like this, and he had known many in his younger years. What he had to realize was that these were not like any people he had known, and their reactions would be different.

  Forty-eight hours! What scared him was that he had laid down an ultimatum for himself as well. If Eden Foster could not arrange Erik’s release within that time, he now had promised to go in after him.

  Tazzoc was the man he must see, but how to find him? He had believed the man would come to him, stirred by his scholar’s curiosity, but Tazzoc had no way of finding him when he was away from the mesa. Hence, he must return, make himself available. Tazzoc could not only tell him about the Forbidden area but could also tell him how to come to him once he was inside.

  No one, he remembered, was permitted to wander about within those pr
ecincts. Once inside, one had to go directly to one’s destination. After that…

  He shivered. What the hell was he getting into, anyway? He loved this country. Being here again brought back all his old feelings for it. He knew exactly how Erik must feel.

  He would live here himself, when he finally settled down. He loved this wide, beautiful land of desert, mountain, and canyon. In the old days, little time as he had spent here, he had made friends among both Navajo and Ute. An old Navajo medicine man had taught him about wild plants and their values as food or medicine. He had wandered the rough country with him, listened to his stories, and had developed a deep love for the country itself.

  His thoughts suddenly returned to Volkmeer. Who would have dreamed that that tough old cowhand would become a wealthy man? It just proved one never knew. He was a tough old boy, and even in the days when Mike Raglan had known him, he owned a few head of cows wearing his own brand.

  Well, that had been a start. He chuckled. What a fool he had been! He had believed he was enlisting the support of an old cowhand who would like to make an extra dollar helping a friend. And he was about to offer a deal for a few dollars to one of the wealthiest men in the state!

  Fortunately, he had not embarrassed himself by making his offer. Nevertheless, Volkmeer was the man he needed.

  He returned to the motel, gathered together what he would need, and put it in the car. Then he drove down to the café and parked the car where he could see it.

  Gallagher was not around, so he ate alone, watching the street and thinking. He would drive to the mesa, look around, and hope for a meeting with Tazzoc. He would wait most of forty-eight hours and then he would drive out to meet Eden Foster.

  When he left his car at the closest point to the ruin and let Chief out for a run, he saw nothing of Volkmeer. He had been hoping the man would be there, just for company. It was still bright and clear, not a cloud in the sky when he reached the ruin.

  Nothing seemed to have been disturbed. He went to the kiva and looked in. It was like any other he had seen—just a little better preserved, that was all. He shied from the window, but looked at it anyway.

  Just a window, looking no different than any other. The trouble was, it was different!

  He went back, picking up wood as he went, although there was little around. He broke some dead branches from a piñon, picked up a couple of pieces of cedar lying among the rocks at the mesa’s edge. Seeing several good pieces farther down, he climbed down to get them, and when he looked up, Tazzoc was there.

  “I wait for you,” Tazzoc said. His tone was wistful. “We know so little. Our world is isolate. To the west is desert.”

  “It has been explored?”

  “Oh, no! It is forbidden. What lies beyond we do not know. The Hand says we are all. There is no more. To ask questions is not good, but we see old ruins, and some of us wonder.

  “It is spoken that we live today, and we live tomorrow. What is past is finished and we do not look back.” He paused. “I am Keeper of Archives, once important. Now forgotten. I fear to speak or they might be destroyed.” His voice lowered and he looked from one side to the other as if fearing to be overheard. “I am forgotten, too, but I wish to know! I study our Archives, and so many questions arise! There is no one to whom I can talk, I—”

  “You can talk to me, but are there no others? None like yourself, who wish to know? And to remember?”

  “No doubt there are but they fear to speak. The Hand has listeners everywhere.”

  He sat down on a slab of rock. “When I am gone there will be no other.” He looked up at Raglan. “Always there has been a son, but I have no son. The doors will be closed, the Archives forgotten.”

  “We should have them. Such a record is priceless.”

  The sun was warm on the rocks where they sat. “I think this is true, what you say. We who have been Keepers, we believe it is so.”

  Tazzoc closed his eyes for a moment. “It is wonderful, your sun. So bright, so warm.”

  “Yours is not so bright?”

  “Oh, no! Not bright at all! Our sky is not what you say…clear?”

  “About the Archives? Does no one come there? No one at all?”

  “It is rare thing. Long ago many come—that was when The Voice spoke.”

  “The Voice?”

  “It was what you call oracle. A voice that spoke what was to be, and we stood silent to hear. The Voice ruled, The Voice foretold, and The Hand did what The Voice said. Then The Voice became unclear, and The Hand would explain what The Voice intended. After a while The Voice ceased to speak and we had only The Hand.”

  “You say people used to come when The Voice spoke. Was there a connection between The Voice and the Archives?”

  “The place of the Archives was what you call temple. A place in which to pray.” Tazzoc paused, looking around at him. “All men need moments of silence. All men need to pray, if it is only to speak to themselves in the silence, to formulate their desires, and to say to themselves what they wish to be. Some of our people believed in the old gods, some did not, but all needed to pray.”

  That made sense. The earliest writing known had been in temples where an account was kept of tithes paid or gifts to the gods. It had been so in Ur of the Chaldees, in Babylon, Nineveh, and Tyre.

  So in Tazzoc’s world The Voice had been displaced by The Hand? A coup? Or had The Voice simply died out? Something of the same kind had happened to the Delphic Oracle in Ancient Greece, and there might be a pattern to such things.

  “Those Archives of yours? Do you have any idea of their range? The number of years covered?”

  “Oh, yes! I cannot claim to know them, but it is a part of our first training to know something of their origin. The first writing was on clay. These first tablets were lists of tenths paid to the temple. It continued after a number of years with added symbols, indicating that one who was behind in payments would pay later. Then there were lists of what belonged to the temple and where it was stored.

  “Then a man made a plea of being assessed too much, and told of his land and his house and what he possessed and what he could pay. In this way the words increased. The language grew.

  “The Archives are vast. Thousands of clay tablets and engravings on stone. Then there were many shelves of thin sheets of wood, used instead of clay, which was no longer practical.

  “Long ago twelve were numbered to care for the Archives, of which my family were directors. One by one they died or were taken away until I am alone. I come and go, a shadow they scarcely see.”

  “Does anyone ever try to enter the Forbidden area?”

  “Who would wish to? It is feared. Those who belong there go. No others consider it.”

  Yet if he could get in? Could he find Erik?

  Suddenly he remembered the golden map the old man had copied, and he had that copy. Was the Forbidden area included?

  “In your Archives,” he said carefully, “is there a plan of the area?”

  “Oh, yes. Our ancient leaders planned everything with great care. There is a shelf with nothing but plans, designs of each building, each room. Except for the Death Doors.”

  “The what?”

  “You see, it is a Forbidden place. Each knows where he must go, but he knows nothing else. Only The Hand knows all. Hence, the door you might open could be a trap, and there are many such, throughout the area.”

  “A trap? How?”

  “Each room is dark when the door is opened. Not until the door closes do the lights go on, so if you try to enter a place you do not belong, you are trapped.

  “When the door closes, lights go on, but in the traps there are no lights, and there is no air. He who enters the wrong door is caught in a room with no chance of escape. Such rooms permit no sound to be heard outside.”

  Tazzoc’s eyes held a sort of triumphant glow. “A mistake means death. No one comes to look. No one cares. There are dozens of such rooms, so few guards are needed, and even if you were suspected o
f being an interloper, rarely would anyone interfere. Soon you will enter a wrong door.”

  “How large are these cubicles? These rooms?”

  “Who knows? No one has ever come out to tell of them.”

  “No one has ever escaped?”

  “How is it possible? The walls are stone, many feet in thickness. When there is no air, one dies.”

  “Does no one ever make a mistake?”

  “Who cares? And who would know?” Tazzoc smiled. “No one has ever complained.”

  “The area must be large?”

  “Many of what you call acres. There may be ten such rooms. More likely there are fifty. Perhaps no one remembers.”

  “Are there such rooms in your place of the Archives?”

  Tazzoc shrugged. “There are doors I do not open. Who knows? The Hand does not care for those who blunder, or who try to go where they are not wanted. From the earliest time we are told not to open doors that are strange to us.”

  How, in such a maze, was he to find Erik Hokart? Yet where he was held, others must have been kept before him, so someone would know.

  The old man Mike had met in Flagstaff so many years ago had found gold—found it in some apparently abandoned place. “I would be interested”—he spoke slowly so that Tazzoc could follow—“in a history of your people. From what you say, yours is a small country, rigidly ruled. Apparently your people do not know of those who fled to another part of your country—”

  “This could not be.”

  “I have met a girl from such a group. She is a descendant of He Who Had Magic.”

  Tazzoc shook his head doubtfully. “It is a wild tale. It would not be permitted. Besides”—he shrugged—“where would they go? How would they live?”

  “There are no places in the mountains? Or the desert?”

  “No one ever goes there. These are fearsome places.”

  “Have you no records in your Archives of travel to such places in the long ago?”

  Tazzoc was uncomfortable. He peered uneasily around. “There were tales, wild tales told by irresponsible people. They are not believed. There is a section of the Archives…It was forbidden to look there.”