the Haunted Mesa (1987)

by L'amour, Louis

  "Of course." He picked up another sandwich and smiled at her. "I do know. I know just about where he is and we'll be in touch. I'll tell him you want to meet him."

  The smile had gone from her eyes. They were cool now. Or was he imagining things? He had been doing a lot of imagining lately, so he was probably seeing ghosts where they did not exist.

  He sipped the coffee. It was very good, with a slight flavor he could not quite place. He started to mention it, then decided not to. "You've a lovely place here," he said. "This was a nice thought, Gallagher."

  "It comes with the territory," Gallagher said. "What kind of an investigating officer would I be if I didn't know where there was a free lunch? And in good company?"

  "I'll agree on the company." Raglan smiled at Eden and her eyes warmed, lingering on his. He was glad then that he had known a lot of women. This one knew what she was doing, all of the time.

  The conversation turned to local topics and people and he enjoyed his coffee and another of the tiny sandwiches. In the distance he heard voices: Mary talking to someone, but who?

  Of the people and conditions about which they talked he knew nothing, although Eden seemed well informed, until she commented, "There was a fire over your way. We could see the smoke. Anything serious?"

  "Only to people who eat there. Benny's Cafe burned. Grease fire, I expect. They happen every once in a while." He got to his feet. "We'd better run, Mike. Time I checked in with the office. Be seeing you, Eden."

  Mike got up, picked up his hat, and followed Gallagher to the door. As he passed the bookshelves, he glanced again at the titles. "You've some interesting books. I'm flattered to see mine among them."

  He stopped at one bookcase and took down one of his books, idly riffling the pages. "The next time I come over I'll sign one for you, if you like."

  "Would you? That would be wonderful!"

  He paused on the steps. "If you should see Erik before I do, tell him not to worry. Everything will be all right."

  Her expression was wary. He glanced quickly at the table near them as she took his hand. "Do come again, and there's no need to wait for Gallagher to bring you. He's always so busy with that awful police work."

  "Can't be helped, Eden. There's too much going on. That fire in town, and then we can't seem to find Erik." Gallagher paused. "Or that girl, either."

  Eden Foster had started to turn away. Now she stopped and turned around.

  "Girl?" Her tone was a little shrill.

  "Pretty girl. Young. Big dark eyes. She was around town and then suddenly she disappeared. If we don't find her soon, we'll have the feds down here, nosing around."

  "What sort of a girl?" Eden asked. "A Navajo?"

  "No, but she looked like an Indian." Gallagher's eyes were innocent. "You talked to her, Mike. Was she an Indian?"

  "Not from around here. At least that was my impression."

  Eden's eyes were on Raglan's. "Youtalked to her? And she disappeared?"

  Mike Raglan chuckled. "Not while I was talking to her. She was too polite for that. Seemed like a nice girl."

  He paused. "She left that cafe just in time. It burst into flame not a moment later. She was lucky to get out."

  He got into his car and pulled away, Gallagher following. When he drove into town he pulled up in front of the cafe where he had talked to Kawasi. Gallagher parked alongside him.

  "Pretty woman," Gallagher said. "Food's good, too."

  "You're a devious man, Gallagher."

  Gallagher's eyes were innocent. "Thought as long as you were going to be around you should meet people. Eden's one of the brightest and damned good-looking along with it."

  He paused looking up the street. "Smart woman. Hasn't been here all that long but she's made friends. Been a guest at the governor's mansion two or three times, has money in the bank, good credit rating. Keeps to herself, but goes out to dinner at the homes of the best folks, supports local charities. Not in a big way. Modest support. No talk about her. Respected woman. Nobody would say a word against her."

  Mike Raglan rested his arms on the wheel. "Mary seems a nice girl."

  "Navajo. I know her folks. They live over toward Navajo Mountain, where they run some sheep. Mary did well in school."

  He paused. "Indians don't make much show of what they know, and I'm betting Eden Foster thinks she hired what we back in Oklahoma used to call a blanket Indian, meaning no disrespect. What I mean is that Mary not only has considerable education but she's bright.

  "Her father's gettin' along in years, so when Eden offered her good money, she took the job. That way she can stay close to home and her father."

  "Those books of mine? The ones Eden has? She just bought them. That book I had in my hands hadn't been read, and it was the third printing, which came out only last month. I think Eden Foster wants to know what I am and how I think."

  "Maybe so."

  Neither man moved, just sitting where they could talk without raising their voices. Mike Raglan spoke after a minute or two. "Eden Foster should read some detective fiction if she plans to play games around here. She needs to get used to our ways."

  "What d'you mean by that?"

  "She's careless. Remember that Eric Ambler espionage story I mentioned? The one the prowler took?"

  "I remember your story."

  "It was lying there on the table near the bookshelves."

  "Hell, a lot of people read his books. I do myself. Doesn't mean a thing."

  "No? Gallagher, I get a lot of books, so when I finish one that I intend to pass on to somebody else I make a check on the cover with a marking pen so I won't get it mixed up and keep it around. That book had my mark on it."

  Chapter XIV

  Back at Tamarron, Mike Raglan went down to the San Juan Room and his usual table near the window. With a cup of coffee before him he took out his notebook and opened it to a blank page.

  What did he actuallyknow ?

  Aside from Erik's daybook, he knew only what Gallagher knew: Two people had disappeared and a cafe had been burned to the ground under what seemed peculiar circumstances. The information in the daybook gave him an advantage which he was not yet prepared to share with Gallagher.

  The police officer would immediately seize it as evidence and he wished to review the material himself. Moreover, there was small chance it would be accepted at face value.

  Had Erik not written down his day-to-day experiences he would simply have vanished without a clue, and after a few days it would have been taken for granted that he had fallen off a cliff into the river, and no further questions would have been asked.

  If what the daybook implied was true, considered with what Kawasi had told him, those who had been called the Anasazi existed on the other side of a curtain, carrying on their own civilization and wanting no communication with anyone from this side. Apparently there had been a way through that was occasionally used until blocked off by the dam that created Lake Powell. However, there seemed to be an area, in the vicinity Erik wished to build in, that was an anomaly, a region of occasional erratic openings caused by some local instability. The window in the kiva appeared to be outside that instability and to offer a permanent way into the world beyond the veil. Undoubtedly that was the reason it had been closed off by filling in the kiva. That, of course, was supposition. Somebody already on this side had wanted it open--hence the glowing red line on Erik's blueprint.

  Raglan was irritated with himself. Why had he not checked the kiva? Had he deliberately avoided it? Was he afraid of what he might find? Did he fear to look beyond, because of what he might discover?

  We accept the familiar and the usual. We are comfortable with it. We do not want our nice three-dimensional world shattered. We enjoy our certainty, and even Einstein shied from the erratic world of the quantum theory. It suggested a chaos with which he was not prepared to deal.

  Each of us enjoys the familiar and the usual. No matter how miserable it may be, one's own home is a haven. To step through the d
oor, drop into a familiar chair, and sleep in one's own bed is vastly comfortable. It is an escape from the world outside. It represents safety, security. Once inside the door, one can lay down the burdens of the world and relax. In a larger sense, our three-dimensional world is such a place. We are used to it, and the suggestion that it may be only a part of a much greater reality is disturbing.

  On the notepad Mike Raglan wrote:Erik . What did he know of Erik, after all? A cool, quiet, reserved man, a scientist with a considerable aptitude for business, not one likely to go off on a tangent, nor to give much credence to the fantastic.,

  Either Erik's notebook was an elaborate fiction, something completely out of character, or it was something Erik believed to be true. Knowing the man, Raglan decided the daybook had been written in good faith, written actually for Erik himself alone. Sending it to Raglan had been an afterthought, conceived in a mood of sheer desperation.

  The material in the daybook fitted no pattern of hallucination with which Raglan was familiar, especially given the man and the circumstances.

  Suddenly a memory of the old cowboy and his gold intruded. His gold, and the warning. The area the cowboy talked about had not been sharply designated but was probably now on the bottom of Lake Powell. There had been no lake when the story was told.

  Below Erik's name Raglan wrote the name of Kawasi.

  She could be an actress hired for a part. It could be a plot to extort money from Erik, but no such request had been made, and nothing in this sequence of events fit the pattern.

  What could he expect from Gallagher? The man was a sober, serious police officer of considerable experience as such. Moreover, he had lived in the area, knew the people, and understood a good deal about the Indians and their beliefs. Enough to consider what was happening with an open mind.

  What did he know about Eden Foster? Raglan was positive Gallagher had taken him there for more than a cup of coffee and a sandwich, yet he could scarcely have expected to discover anything as positive as the paperback book.

  The man who had entered his condo had either been there, in Eden Foster's home, or he had met with her somewhere. So there had to be a connection.

  The man who had come to the condo had known where to find him. Eden Foster must also have known; hence, others would as well. That they were willing to kill had been demonstrated at the cafe, so he must move with care. There might even be somebody in this room right now, watching, waiting. Obviously, with Erik out of the way he himself represented their biggest problem. Therefore he must be captured or eliminated.

  Mike Raglan let the waiter refill his cup, his eyes wandering over the room. Several of the people he knew. They were regulars. The tourists were obvious enough, often with children, or discussing plans for the day. Two tables were occupied by men who sat alone, which could mean nothing at all.

  One of their people might be a regular employee here, or on the housekeeping staff.

  Eden Foster did not, of course, know he had seen the book, and even if she did, she could not believe he had known it for his own. She was well established here and would not believe herself suspected, something that was in his favor. Yet he must be careful.

  Putting down his pen, he considered the situation, going over in his mind the little he knew. He had first come into this country on a very poor wagon road that ran east of Navajo Mountain. He remembered how he had been struck by the stark beauty of the land, and he had himself thought of building a home atop one of the mesas, just as Erik had.

  All that country had been known and traveled over by the people the Navajos called the Anasazi, studied by latecomers as the cliff dwellers. At first they lived in pit-houses atop the mesas. From the beginning they had begun learning how to use every drop of available water. Later they had moved down from the tops of the mesas into the great open caves in the cliff faces, building houses of native stone with doors wider at the top than the bottom. Various reasons have been offered for this but it was probably a simple one: A person carrying a water jar, a bundle of firewood, or the carcass of a game animal needs more space for the upper part of his body.

  Occasionally the caves had springs, but usually both water and food had to be brought to them, carried down precarious paths or up from the canyon below. The expenditure of effort must have been enormous, only reasonable if some threat demanded defensible positions.

  In the latter half of the thirteenth century there had come a long drought and with it attacks by nomadic, raiding Indians coming down from the North. No doubt these were advance parties of the invading Navajo, Apache, and Ute peoples who were to populate the region in later years.

  Whatever the cause, their cliff palaces were deserted, their fields abandoned. The Anasazi disappeared. They were there, and then they were gone.

  Some evidence indicated that a few Anasazi had merged with other groups to become the Hopis. Others might have joined other Pueblo groups, but the greater part seemed simply to have vanished.

  Suppose, when the drought persisted and the attacks increased, that some of the Anasazi elected to return to that Third World from which they came? Fleeing from our world, they had returned to that which had grown evil, preferring to face an evil they knew rather than starvation and death. Once there, they would have wanted to close off the way to deny any pursuers a chance to follow. Over the centuries, an almost paranoid fear had built up of what lay on the other side.

  It was possible, as Kawasi seemed to imply, that only a few of the elite knew how or where to cross over, and that they had occasionally done so to obtain things not otherwise available on the Other Side.

  Mike Raglan finished his coffee, staring at the two names on the otherwise blank page.

  Erik. Kawasi.

  She knew him. Had met him. Yet there must be another involved, for when Erik had pleaded for help, he had spoken in the plural. Who was this other person?

  Erik seemed to have become a prisoner, yet Erik was an intelligent man with a vast store of knowledge that might help him to escape.

  Evil? What evil? Had those who returned to the Other Side taken up the ways of some of their relatives from Mexico and Central America? The Aztecs had engaged in bloody sacrifices of many thousands of people each year, most of them prisoners taken in war. Recently it had been discovered that the Maya did likewise. Was that the evil from which the Anasazi originally fled? Or was it something else? Something less tangible, something insidious?

  He sat very quietly, trying to consider every aspect of his problem, but the unavoidable fact remained: Erik was a prisoner, probably on the Other Side, and he must be freed.

  Moreover, Mike could think of nobody who might help. Gallagher had his own concerns and more than enough to keep him occupied, but suppose Mike could contact that old cowboy of whom Kawasi had spoken? Suppose in freeing Erik Hokart he could also free that old man?

  Certainly, in his years on the Other Side Johnny must have learned a great deal just in order to survive. The more Mike considered that possibility, the more he liked it. Yet first his base must be secure. He must know more about the Paiutes, if such they were, and more about Eden Foster.

  Above all, he must remember they would be attempting to kill or capture him.

  His eyes swept the room. One of the men who sat alone was gone. The other remained: a stocky man with a bullet head and short-cropped hair, wearing a neat gray windbreaker and slacks, and under the windbreaker a navy-blue T-shirt. He was facing the other way but in such a position as to catch Mike's slightest move from the corner of his eye. It was probably chance, no more. The man might be a guest, might be attending a convention, or just be out for the golf or fishing.

  Mike must be prepared. On the stairs, when walking, driving, or just at home. They would not wish to attract attention, so they would probably make a try for him when it could be done unobtrusively. Once he had been good at both karate and judo. How good was he now, after the years had passed?

  His thoughts returned to the problem before him.


  What manner of people would he find on the Other Side? What conditions?

  Judging by Kawasi and the unknown visitor at Tamarron, they were people much like himself. That was what the evidence indicated. But he must not make the mistake the white man did in judging the Indian, and vice versa. Each came from a certain cultural background, and assumed that certain attributes were typical of all men when such was not the case.

  There was no such thing as human nature, if by that one believed that certain reactions and responses were typical of all men. Our patterns of behavior develop from what we have been taught and from the responses of those about us with similar origins. The people on the Other Side would have an altogether different background and, hence, different responses.

  Obviously they had no desire to reveal their presence to those on this side of the curtain. If his assumptions were correct, there were several living on this side for one reason or another. Eden Foster might well be one of them, and if she was she had learned to fit in. She belonged. She had made friends.

  She had located the sources of power and had associated herself with them. She had friends at the Statehouse and, no doubt, others in business as well as politics. She had met and become friendly with Gallagher.

  Did Gallagher know or suspect who or what she was? Apparently he did, but what had given her away? Why did he suspect her of being something other than she seemed? The fact that he had taken Mike to meet her was an indication of something. Had something caused suspicion that she was not all she pretended to be? Or had something Mike said started him thinking?

  He glanced around again. Several people had left the room. The waiters were used to him, knowing he often sat long over his coffee. Often they paused by his table with bits of comment, questions about his work, or gossip about some of the more transient visitors at the lodge. They were a bright, interested lot and some were students at the nearby college.

  The man with the gray jacket remained where he was, seemingly uninterested in what took place around him. Positioned as he was, he could see from the corner of his eye when Mike got up to leave, if he got up. He could also see people who stopped by the table, but he was too far away to overhear.