The Haunted Mesa (Louis L'Amour's Lost Treasures)

by Louis L'Amour

  “There at the edge of the trees? Where they come down to the ruin? I saw some dead stuff over there.”

  As Erik and Johnny went to gather wood, Mike turned to Kawasi. “Is there any other place? I mean, it’s our only chance.”

  “I do not know. I thought this place…”

  “We have water and we have walls around us. If we have to make a stand, we can do it here.”

  Johnny and Erik returned with wood, dumping it on the ground. “There’s plenty of firewood and we might be able to get away into the woods, come daylight.”

  Johnny glanced at Mike. “Nobody goes into the woods at night. Ain’t safe. Them big lizards hunt at night, mostly.”

  Mike gathered twigs and bits of shredded bark. Then, powdering some of the shredded bark in his fingers, he put it in a hollow in a slab of wood. Making a bow of a curved branch and some rawhide looped about a stick, he put the end of the stick in the hollow and worked the bow back and forth to twirl the stick. Soon smoke was rising, and then a tiny flame. He brushed the burning material into the gathered bark and twigs. His fire blazed up and he added fuel.

  He had an eerie sense of being watched. He turned his head suddenly.

  The creature stood in the shadows beyond the ruins. It appeared to be naked, but covered with hair. It stared, and he stared back. Deliberately, he extended his hands to the fire. When he looked around, the creature was gone.

  It resembled those seen that night in Copper Canyon. Like the creature who bumped into his car when answering the call of the light from No Man’s Mesa.

  There had been no animosity in the stare, only a kind of wonder. Or was it awe?

  “Kawasi? Did you see it?”

  “Yes. It was a Saqua, the hairy ones.” She added, “We believe they worship fire, but do not know. Yet something about the fire attracts them.”

  “They know the ways to pass through to our side?”

  “It is believed.”

  “Would they show us?”

  She was aghast. “Oh, no! They are fearful things! My people fear very much! Anyway, they have no speech. Or we think they have none.”

  “But if they know the way?”

  “You would trust them?”

  He shrugged. Would he trust them? In any event, how to communicate? They certainly would not know English, if they had intelligence enough to understand anything. Were they animals or men? Even that he did not know, for, while seeming like men, they acted like animals—and smelled like them.

  “Have they ever attacked you?”

  “No, but—”

  “Maybe they just want to be left alone?”

  Or maybe there was something else. He had extended his hands to the fire, held them there. Was there something in that? He had been doing nothing else that might attract attention.

  “Johnny? Erik?”

  They appeared from the darkness. “Johnny, I’m not going to waste your time with explanations, but I’ve a hunch. Let’s all of us stand around the fire and stretch our hands to it. Just warm your hands, palm down.”

  Erik stared at him. “What the hell’s the idea? My hands aren’t cold.”

  “Maybe not, and probably we’re wasting time, but I’m playing a hunch. It’s just for a minute or two.”

  Johnny reached his hands to the fire. “If you say so.”

  “We’re being watched, I think. The Saqua are out there, and they have some affinity for fire. I thought maybe if we showed something of the kind, it might help.”

  “With them?” Johnny asked skeptically. “They’re animals. They ain’t even human.”

  “They know the way through.”

  “Well, that’s what’s said. Seems like they come an’ go as they like. I’ve heard talk of that.”

  They stepped back from the fire and Mike went again to the forest’s edge for fuel. It would be a long night, and fires were insatiable in their demands. Yet he needed time to think. If it was true the Varanel would not attack in the night, he had time in which to think, to plan. How many times had he told others that it was only the mind of man that distinguished him from animals? That a human being should take the time to think. All right, he told himself grimly, think, damn you! Think!

  Telling himself to think brought no flood of ideas. He tried examining his situation from every view and could find no ready answer. Somewhere near, there would be an opening, if, indeed, it was not already too late.

  Despite all the hiking about he had done, he had at no time been more than ten miles from where he now stood, and he doubted if it were much more than half that. Yet that long-dead river on which they had found the remains of the Iron Mountain must have begun far away, and the ill-fated steamer must have steamed north, hoping to find St. Louis or some such river port, only to find nothing and to tie up at last to a deserted riverbank, to move no more.

  He, at least, knew what had happened. He did not understand the circumstances, yet he had heard of such things many times. At least, the idea was familiar to him but he doubted whether anyone on the Iron Mountain had ever heard of such a thing as happened to them.

  Somewhere near was No Man’s, Johnny’s Hole, and what he couldn’t help but think of as the Haunted Mesa. Somewhere, just across that thin line dividing them from his world.

  The Anasazi had known how to leave this world and go to his, and they had known how to return when their decision was made. Was Kawasi keeping something from him? Did she not wish them to return?

  He stood at the edge of the forest, thinking, then began to gather wood. Something moved in the forest close by.

  “For the fire,” he said aloud, not hoping to be understood.

  There was no sound, no movement. He filled his arms, resolving that if attacked, he would throw the wood into the face of the attacker and then draw his gun. Nothing happened, yet he could distinctly sense the presence of something living. And that odd smell? Yes, it was there.

  “We want to go back,” he said aloud, hoping somehow to communicate his need.

  He withdrew one arm from under the wood, touched himself on the chest, and made a gesture outward, then repeated it with the one hand. “We want to go back,” he repeated, and then walked back to the fire.

  Johnny had gone to keep watch. Erik was seated, eating some of the trail mix from Raglan’s pack. “Sorry,” he said, “but I’m starved.”

  “I don’t wonder. Take what you need.”

  Raglan dumped his wood and stood staring into the flames, then sat down abruptly. “Whatever we do,” he said, “we should do before daylight.”

  Erik wiped his hands on his pants. “Mike,” he began, “I—”

  Zipacna loomed suddenly, across the fire. He was smiling, obviously pleased that they were startled. “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “Tomorrow at noon I will show you the way. You can go, all of you.”

  CHAPTER 42

  Nobody moved or spoke, startled by his sudden appearance. Raglan was angered by the man’s manner as well as his own carelessness, and at the same moment he knew he must not allow his animosity to affect his judgment.

  “Show us the way, Zipacna? To one of your trapped rooms, perhaps? I think not.”

  “Soon you have no chance.”

  Raglan shrugged, assuming a nonchalance he did not feel. “So? If we stay, we will simply take over. Your country is ripe for it and we have already demonstrated that the Varanel are not invulnerable.

  “The Hand has been wise to exclude outsiders. Over on our side we have a compulsive drive to move into any area that offers opportunity, and your country is dying. It is ripe for a takeover, as you yourself have decided.

  “There is opportunity here. There are undoubtedly minerals to be exploited. Conditions would be different but ours are an adaptable people. We have taken to working in many countries, to deep-sea drilling and spac
e travel.

  “In fact, Zipacna, I have been thinking about approaching The Hand. He might welcome some controlled innovation.”

  Raglan had no such idea. He was stalling for time, talking off the top of his head while seeking a way out. What he wanted was to be back on his own side and to forget the whole affair.

  Had The Hand a method of listening? Such devices were available in his own world and he already had been told The Hand sought such devices. Suppose he already possessed them and was listening now?

  Zipacna was angry and restless. Obviously, he too wished to be free of the situation into which his boldness and his ego had projected him.

  There was something else, too. Raglan had been feeling a growing sense of urgency. Was it some change in the atmosphere? Something caused by the approaching spacequake or whatever it was? From their attitudes he knew the others felt it, too.

  Johnny put wood on the fire. “You had better go, Zipacna. There’s nothing for you here. When we go, we will go our own way.”

  “You have until daylight,” Zipacna said stiffly. “Only until then.”

  “I think you speak for yourself only,” Kawasi said suddenly. “It is you who speaks, not The Hand. You are of the Varanel, not the Lords of Shibalba. I think you reach for power.”

  “You? What are you? Only a woman!”

  “Among my people, I speak and am heard.” Her manner was cool, imperious. “You were nothing until somehow you crept through to the other side and learned a little, making yourself useful to The Hand. And then you found out about her!”

  “Melisande,” Erik said. He glanced at Raglan. “The girl of the sunflowers.”

  Mike Raglan looked from one to the other. What the hell was going on? Who was the girl of the sunflowers? Of course, there had been the missing pencil and the sunflower on the dog’s collar, even the sunflower stitched inside the collar of the sweater. Could this be the girl Erik had meant when he spoke of “us”?

  If so, where was she? Where had she been? And who was she?

  “Look,” he said impatiently, “if we’re going to get out of here, it’s got to be now. We haven’t the time to hunt up some other girl—”

  “I won’t go without her,” Erik said.

  Zipacna was ignored, except by Johnny, who, seated back at the shadow’s edge, held his pistol in his hand, his rifle beside him. Johnny was watching Zipacna with sullen, angry eyes, waiting for a wrong move, and Zipacna was aware of it.

  Some of the man’s arrogant confidence seemed to have deserted him. Nevertheless, he was poised and watchful.

  “Where is she?” Raglan demanded. “Whatever is done must be done now.”

  “She’s close by,” Kawasi replied.

  So suddenly that it caught even Johnny by surprise, Zipacna dropped a hand to a wall and vaulted over into the darkness below. Johnny leaped for the wall but Raglan spoke sharply. “Don’t waste the bullet. He’s gone and we’re well rid of him.”

  “He’ll be back,” Johnny said.

  Raglan agreed but did not say so. His only thought now was to get out. If that prophecy was true, they had almost no time left, but of course it was an estimate based on a rumor, nothing substantial to it at all. Nonetheless, he was uneasy, with that unsettling sense of impending doom.

  “All right, Kawasi,” he said, “let’s get her and get out. Zipacna will be back, and so will others.” He turned to Johnny. “Keep watch. I’ve got to look around.”

  Kawasi disappeared, to where he did not know, but she knew this country better than he. He felt for his gun, then went back to what had been an opening.

  The door was there but it seemed to have been walled shut with stone. He put his hand out to touch it, then hastily withdrew it. He didn’t like the look of it, and glanced over his shoulder again.

  Damn it, he had gotten Erik loose and now all they had to do was get back. But how?

  He began slowly to turn over in his mind, as he prowled among the ruins, just what he knew or thought he knew. Mentally he drew a map, starting with the window in the kiva where there was an opening—an “always” opening, it was said. Possibly two miles west was the opening through which he had come with Kawasi, an opening also used by Tazzoc. The Saqua had disappeared at No Man’s Mesa across the river and about equidistant from the kiva or Tazzoc’s opening. This seemed to be the focal point, if such there was, of the anomalous area. It was too dark to make a search, even if he had had more to work with. Disappointed, he returned to the fire and got out his old canvas map. It had been copied from the map on gold, yet there were differences, added by the old man himself.

  The one thing that disturbed him was the unexplained red cross marked on the map.

  Obviously important, yet he could not at the moment recall anything the old man had said about it. For that matter, he had never explained the map itself.

  “Johnny? You’ve prowled around this country. What do you make of that?”

  After a quick glance around, Johnny leaned over his shoulder. “Ain’t far from here, not as far as a body might figure,” he muttered. “Can’t say I’ve ever been yonder.” He stepped back and looked around at the sky-lined ridges. “Used to have a time with cows,” he said. “Come wintertime, they’d try to find a place out of the wind. With snow all over everything they’d sometimes half-slide down into some canyon, and come summer, with the snow gone, they couldn’t get out.

  “I’ve found beef cattle ten, twelve year old that never seen a man, seemed like. Holed up in those canyons with no way out. If lucky they got into one where, come spring, there’d be grass as well as water.

  “Left to theirselves, cows can wander a far piece, an’ that’s how come I found the Hole. I was huntin’ strays and here an’ yonder I’d rounded up a good many. I rode up to the north end of the Hole and seen all that green. I just knowed cows would find a way down. When I rode back to the outfit I told them what I’d found an’ they laughed at me.

  “ ‘Trees, grass, an’ water? You’re havin’ a pipe dream, Johnny.’ That’s what they said. We boys was always yarnin’, o’ course, so’s there was some reason for them to be doubtful.”

  He took another long look at the map. He put a finger on a spot near the red cross. “Now that there. Looks like somethin’—”

  “What I can’t understand is that we were told the opening was controlled. That it wasn’t safe, yet when Chief—that’s my dog—when he went through, he seemed to be running off into the distance, barking after something. So how could it be so controlled?”

  “The Hand has ways, maybe some electronic contrivance, that lets him know when anybody comes through. Or maybe it’s some natural effect they’ve come to understand. Anyway, he does know.”

  They fell silent, studying the canvas map. Erik got up and came over to them. “Sorry I’ve been so much trouble. I was weak as a cat.”

  “Shouldn’t wonder,” Johnny said. “Don’t give it a thought. When that there Kawasi gets back, we got to make our try.”

  Mike Raglan looked away, then back at the map, narrowing his vision in hopes something would take shape that he had not seen. He was frightened, and admitted it to himself. He wanted to get out, and he had promised he would lead them. Vaguely, there seemed to be a trail of sorts to that red cross. Why had the old cowboy put it there? Or had he? Perhaps…

  No, it had to have been the cowboy. There was some significance to that cross, nothing else like it on the map.

  Where was Kawasi?

  “This Melisande, Erik? You’ve actually seen her? Do you know her?”

  “I’m in love with her. First time in my life, Mike, if you can picture that. We met and…Well, I don’t know what to say. We started to talk. She’s the last of them, Mike, the last of that crowd on the steamboat.”

  “Erik, the Iron Mountain vanished in 1872!”

  “Her
grandfather was aboard, carrying a lot of trade goods to establish a post in Montana, on the Upper Missouri. When the transfer came, nobody knew what to do, but after a few days he accepted it as something he did not comprehend but must live with. He and six others left the boat. The others were clinging to the one thing they understood, to their one grasp of reality.

  “Her grandfather scouted the country, found a little valley watered by springs, built a cabin, and moved in with all that belonged to him. There was another couple with some youngsters who came with them. Her grandfather had a son, who became the father of Melisande. Simple as that. Now she’s the only one left and she can’t handle the gardening as well as the guarding.

  “Her grandfather, when he had time to think, began sorting it out.” Erik paused. “He must have been a remarkable man, with imagination beyond the ordinary. In his youth his father had kept an inn and he had grown up hearing much speculation by intelligent travelers who stopped by.

  “One man who stayed for several weeks was a doctor who had formerly had charge of a hospital for the insane, and one man brought to him had been found wandering in the woods by a farmer.

  “The man was dressed oddly and seemed to speak no known language, and had been put down as mildly insane. After a few conversations the doctor thought otherwise and began to spend time with the man. Then he discovered the man possessed a remarkable skill at drawing.

  “Supplied with materials, the man drew an accurate pen-and-ink sketch of the farm where he had been found. Then he drew a vertical line, and on the other side drew a picture of a totally different world. In that world he drew a figure of a man. He touched that figure with his finger, then himself, indicating the man in the drawing was himself.

  “Then he had drawn a second figure of himself showing him passing through the line, and then a third picture showing him standing where he was found by the farmer.

  “It was obviously an attempt by the man to explain what had happened, but others ridiculed the whole idea. However, nobody objected when the doctor had the man placed in his custody. He then learned English, adapted himself to life in his new country, patented a few minor inventions (or were they memories?) and settled easily into the life.