the Haunted Mesa (1987)

by L'amour, Louis

  "When you need water," Gallagher agreed, "somebody has to control its use or there'd be fighting all the while."

  "Exactly. And there seems to have been, for a long time at least, an effort to close off any communication with this side. To develop a civilization needs input from other peoples. Europe had a lot of useful rivers, lots of coves, harbors, and the like, so it was easy for people to come and go and each one brought new ideas, new blood.

  "Nobody knows how old seafaring was in Europe. For years everything was based on what we knew about the Mediterranean, but there were ships in the Persian Gulf, the Indian Ocean, and the Pacific just as early, if not earlier than the Mediterranean. There was seafaring in the Baltic and Atlantic, too. All of it enabled ideas to spread, introducing new weapons, new tools, new crops." Raglan paused to sip his coffee.

  "What are you going to do now?" Gallagher asked.

  Raglan shrugged again. "Go back to Hokart's mesa. Hang around out there and see what I can learn." He paused. "I've got to find Erik. He asked for me to come, he almost begged me to come, there at the end. That wasn't like him. He was scared."

  "Aren't you?"

  "To be frank, yes. I don't know what's over there. If I go, I don't know that I can ever get back. Johnny never could make it and from what I gather he was a pretty canny old cowboy."

  "You be careful."

  "I'll do that." Raglan paused. "Seen any more of Eden Foster?"

  Gallagher shook his head. "I'm not liable to. Not for a while. The missus like to .flew off the handle when she heard I'd been over there. She doesn't know Eden but she suspects the worst."

  Raglan was silent, and then he said. "The way I see it, judging from what I might call contacts with them, they don't know much about how we function over here.

  "Eden knows, but she's only one and for reasons of her own she may not be sharing what she knows. Maybe it's because she just doesn't think of it that way. Little things, about how to spend money, getting change, paying checks in restaurants, and even the structure of our buildings.

  "At Tamarron, I don't believe that fellow even suspected there was a door behind me. He saw a glass wall and took it for granted. He was sitting so he could watch me and the entrance, so when some confusion distracted him, I slipped out that door."

  Raglan watched the movements outside. There was nothing going on beyond the casual, everyday life of the town. Where was Kawasi? Was she safe? Or had she, too, been taken?

  "Postmistress spoke to me this morning," Gallagher commented. "Said Mr. Hokart had not been in to pick up his mail. I told her to hold it. He might be out of town."

  "She buy it?"

  "I don't believe so. She didn't say anything but she looked doubtful, said Mr. Hokart was always very particular about his mail." Gallagher pushed back in his chair. "That's the beginning of it, Mike. Folks are going to start asking questions. This is a small town and they don't miss very much. Hokart was never what you'd call neighborly, but he was always friendly in passing and one way or another he did quite a bit of business here in town.

  "He bought groceries now and again, ate in the cafe, and he bought hardware--nails, tools and such ..."

  "Ammunition?"

  "Uh-huh. He bought quite a lot. Aroused some curiosity, as it was pistol ammo. Said he was shooting at targets, trying to perfect his shooting."

  "Reasonable enough."

  "Sure, anybody will buy that. None of us shoot well enough. No matter how good you are, you can always get better." He paused, staring out the window. "Anyway, folks are asking questions, wondering why he hasn't been in. But they've just begun to wonder where he is. Soon they will be asking questions about that, and then they will begin to wonder just who you are and what you're doing here."

  "I expect that."

  "Yeah? But are you ready for the next thing? They will be wondering how come you are around and Hokart's vanished. They will be asking about the connection. They'll be suspicious.

  "When they start asking questions they will be wanting answers, and I don't have any answers. Do you?"

  "I am a friend of Erik's. It is as simple as that."

  "If you're such a good friend, why don't you know where Erik is?" Gallagher stared at him. "You see what I mean? This is a small town. Everybody knows everybody else, but they don't know you. Erik wasn't one of them but they accepted him. He was doing something they thought foolish but he was doing it on his own land and he was willing to pay for it, so they are on his side."

  Gallagher was silent for a few minutes, then he added, "It's already begun. Over at Mexican Hat. Woman in a store over there asked about Erik Hokart. Wondered where he was, and then added that he was probably out on the mesa with you. She added that if anybody knew where he was it would be you."

  "A woman said that?"

  "Uh-huh. Nice-lookin' woman whom they didn't know but they said she'd been in before. Looked like a city woman."

  "Eden Foster?"

  "Sounded like her. Looks to me like some folks may not wait for suspicion to grow. They'd just help it along a bit."

  Mike Raglan thought about it. The question Eden Foster asked would be repeated, and of course, that was as planned. When Erik did not appear, suspicion would grow. She did not need to accuse, only to ask a few questions and start people wondering.

  "See what I mean? If I give them your answers they'd put me in a booby hatch, and I wouldn't blame them." He looked across the corner of the table at Raglan. "Seems to me you're in trouble, my friend. If you're coming up with any answers it had better be quick."

  Raglan knew he should leave here now. He should check out of the motel, drive back to Tamarron, cheek out there, and catch a plane for Denver and then New York.

  After all, what was Erik to him? Hokart was just a man whom he knew, like many others. Of course, the thing he could not escape was the fact that Erik had called on him for help. The man was alone, faced by God knew what in the way of enemies. Of course, if Mike went on, he would have the same enemies.

  He got up. "See you, Gallagher." He turned toward the door.

  "You going out there?"

  "What else can I do? Cut and run? He trusted me to get him out of this, and there isn't anybody else."

  "There's me," Gallagher replied.

  "You're an officer, with a duty to a community, and no telling what will come of this. Besides, I'd rather have you on the outside. I may need help."

  "What did you mean when you said there's 'no telling what will come of this'?"

  Raglan walked back to the table and spoke more quietly. "Gallagher, think about it. Supposing a lot of them come through some night? Without warning? You've got a small town here. They know how many you are and what your communications are. Supposing they decided to come over?"

  Gallagher stared at him. "Now you're really going off the deep end. Why would they do a thing like that?"

  "I don't for a minute believe they will. It was just an idea, but how many would it take to descend on a sleeping town?"

  "More than they are likely to have," Gallagher said. "Everybody in this town has a gun, most of them two or three. These folks do a lot of hunting in season, so they not only have weapons but they know how to use them and when."

  Raglan walked to the cash register and paid the bill, then walked out into the sunlight. Gallagher followed him. "Damn it, man, why'd you have to bring up an idea like that? Now you've got me worried."

  "Look, I doubt if you believe any of this, and I don't know what to believe myself. It was just one idea following another. The legend is that the Anasazi left the Third World because it became evil.

  "Evil in what way? What did they think of as evil? The Aztecs, the Mayas, and some other Indians from south of here believed in human sacrifice. According to the best reports they sacrificed literally thousands of people. Is that what they meant by evil? Did they think of human sacrifice as evil? Probably not, as it was a religious rite."

  They stood on the curb near Raglan's car. "Gallaghe
r, I don't know what to believe. I'm a confirmed skeptic, but that doesn't blind me to the fact there's a lot we don't know. We're only beginning to learn about this world, and believe me, the ideas of our grandchildren will be altogether different from our own. They will take things for granted of which we know nothing now.

  "The world is changing fast. When I was a youngster there were still a hundred jobs a man could do who had no education. Most of them have vanished. It's not even a machine world as we knew it. Now it's a computer world, and if you don't have education and the ability to adapt you're out of it. You either get an education or find a place on skid row."

  "Maybe."

  "You've seen Mesa Verde, Gallagher. That culture lasted a thousand years at least. Do you think they doubted it would last forever? When someone looks at Mesa Verde and the ruins left by the Anasazi, he should not just wonder at them but he should think of what they must have thought. What did they believe? We can reconstruct their world from the artifacts that have been found, and we know how they lived, but what did theythink ? How much did they know about other Indians? Probably there was interchange of trade goods and ideas with the Hohokam or the Mogollon cultures. There seems to have been some trade as far away as Central America. They've found mummified parrots in the ruins and other evidences of trade.

  "Did they know anything about the Mound Builders? What did they know of eastern Indians? And were any of the eastern Indians actually living where the white man first found them?"

  "So you going back down there?"

  "Leaving now. Soon as I can pick up a few supplies at the store."

  "Be careful, Raglan, and for God's sake, don't you disappear! I'll have trouble enough explaining Hokart!"

  He was still standing on the curb as Raglan drove away, and in the rearview mirror Mike saw him take off his cap and run his fingers through his hair, then walk back inside.

  A half hour later, with Chief sitting beside him, Raglan was headed back for the mesa.

  And he did not want to go. He just didn't want to go at all.

  Chapter XVII

  The road was empty, and he stepped on the gas. He wanted to get off the highway and into the desert as quickly as possible. So far there was no indication that he was followed or observed, but there was always a chance that somebody was already down the road or out in the desert awaiting him.

  The day was hot and still. Heat waves shimmered in the near distance. He turned on the air conditioning, and Chief made a try at curling up in the seat beside him but it proved impossible. There was simply too much of him and he lopped over, resting his big head on Mike's thigh again. Raglan did not like that very much, as it made it more difficult to get at his gun. He picked it up and put it between his legs where it would be quicker to grasp.

  At first there was much cedar alongside the road, but it thinned out and then disappeared, giving way to sparse brush and cactus. A car appeared in the road ahead of him, a camper with a man and a woman in the front seat. The woman was driving. Moments later he saw them disappear to the left over a low hill.

  The turnoff, a scarcely visible set of tire tracks, lay right ahead. Slowing down, he made the turn. The highway was empty and the trail on which he now drove seemed to show no fresh signs of travel. He slowed down still more, for the road had many dips and bends. Chief sat up, watching the road, suddenly alert. With the windows closed and the air conditioning on, there was small chance he had smelled anything, yet he seemed to know where they were going.

  Raglan's thoughts returned to the problem. If there was more than one opening to the Other Side, as there seemed to be, where were they? Kawasi had implied there were occasional, erratic openings that permitted passage.

  What was it like over there, and what rules, if any, governed the openings? The window in the kiva seemed to be an opening that was or had been stabilized. But what of the others? And where were they?

  Johnny had gotten through by accident but in all the years since had not been able to discover a way to return.

  Mike pulled up on the crest of a hill and slowly checked the area around him, examining every clump of brush, every cedar, every rock formation. By coming here alone he was walking right into their hands, yet there was no other place that held a clue to Erik and his whereabouts.

  It was very still. Turning, he looked back the way he had come. The road was empty, just a narrow, winding way among boulders, brush, and outcroppings of sandstone. Uneasily, he looked around. He had always loved the desert, its vast distances, the silence, the creatures that knew how to survive, for if nothing else, the desert was a place of survival. Everything that lived in the desert had found some pattern for survival, some means of adapting to the heat, the cold, and the lack of water. Each in its own way had found a means to conserve moisture.

  He got back in the car and started the motor. Easing forward, he tooled the car around bends in the road, up small slopes and down steep declivities. Off to the south he glimpsed the abrupt shoulder of Monitor Mesa. Erik's mesa lay on the near side of the San Juan River, a tributary of the Colorado. The canyon was deep, and not far from there a ford had once existed called The Crossing of the Fathers. It was there that Escalante had crossed in 1776 when trying to find a route to Monterey, in California. Due to the backup of water from Glen Canyon Dam, the Crossing was no longer of use.

  This had all been Anasazi country until their disappearance seven hundred years before, yet their presence had left little evidence behind. Had they not liked this area any better than he? There were the remains of two cliff houses up the canyon, but they were several miles away.

  Arriving at his former stopping place, he studied the terrain and found he could drive a half mile closer to Erik's ruin. Swinging the car around, he pointed it toward a clump of cedar. When he reached it, he turned the car to face in the direction from which he had come and then backed into partial hiding behind the cedar. For a moment then, after he switched off the engine, he sat listening. Then he opened the door and stepped out, Chief bounding past him.

  Again he listened, then carefully closed the door, making as little noise as possible. He locked the car and pocketed the key. "Let's go, boy," he said softly, taking up the few packages he had momentarily placed on the hood. With another look around he started for the mesa. It was only a short walk now.

  They had gone no more than a dozen yards when Chief stopped short, head up. Raglan's eyes went to the mesa. Beyond the bulge of red rock that was to be a part of Erik's house something moved.

  Moved, and was gone. He stopped, studying the area with care. Had he really seen something? Or was it a figment of the imagination? Apprehensively, he looked around. He was in the enemy's country now.

  The trail was uneven and littered with rock. He could not keep his attention on the ruin without risk of tripping. His thoughts went back to his Paiute miner friend with whom he had first come into this country, and to the old cowboy who'd told him about the gold he had found. Had that place been below Lake Powell? Or was it nearer here? Suddenly he realized, as his thoughts came together, that it had been close by. He would have to look at the old map again. "Get in and get out," the old cowboy had said. And the map had indicated a place.

  Excited, he began to hurry. Chief was trotting along, just ahead of him, but alert.

  The ruin was deserted and showed no evidence of anyone's having been there since he had last visited the place. He set down his groceries, putting those that needed refrigeration in the small icebox. With Chief beside him, he went over to the kiva, stopping at its edge to look down into it.

  It appeared unchanged. The "window" seemed the same, but Chief shied away from it, growling a little. Mike could see no fresh tracks, so he walked back to the ruin and gathered materials for a fire.

  The map the old cowboy had given him was of a way through the veil, but also to a place where gold had been stored.

  Stored by whom? And when? He had too many questions and not enough answers. But the old cowboy had warned
him that the people on the Other Side knew when the veil had been penetrated. He had barely escaped.

  That had been many years ago, but would the situation have changed? Suppose he could find how that cowboy had gone through? Would they still know? And where? And how did it happen that the gold was there, unguarded?

  If it was there, unguarded, it was because the powers that were did not know it was there. Therefore it must have been a deposit left by some previous generation of which this one knew nothing.

  It also was likely that it was in an area rarely visited. If that was true he might manage it himself. Yet if he was in a remote area when he reached the Other Side, he might be too far from Erik to be of any use.

  Mike Raglan slowly put the materials for a fire in place but did not light it. That would come later. For the present it was light and he needed to think.

  How much did they know? How much did they understand of this world and how it functioned? How much did they understand of equipment? Obviously, the man who'd driven the van had known how to drive. Eden Foster, too, knew how at least some parts of this world functioned, but did she know enough? And how much had she communicated to them? Might she not, to preserve her own power, have kept something back? How much did she prefer that culture over this?

  Could she be turned? Could she be made an ally instead of an enemy? He doubted the possibility but it must be considered. Another thought occurred. Was she herself a Poison Woman?

  He walked outside. The sun was setting as he stood looking across at the sun-bathed walls of No Man's Mesa. He told himself it was no different from any other such formation, yet the strange flare he had seen would not leave his mind. And who or what were the strange creatures he had heard on that night? Indians, out for some ceremony of which he knew nothing?

  It was near that mesa that the old cowboy had found his entrance to the other world. Near, but where? Mike tried to recall the old map the cowboy had given him. The San Juan River had been on that map, but on which side had the opening been?