by Lou Cameron
“What of it? No two basins are the same in detail, yet all in the end are not too different. As this one opens here, it has to close there. There is a valley beyond each hill and, beyond each valley, a hill. I was told this long ago by my father’s father, and I have always found this to be true.”
Poinsenay was silent for a time. Then he said, “It is very quiet out there. I do not think it is the silence of living things that freeze in the night because a man moves among them. I think it is so quiet because there is nothing there!”
“There is always something there, nephew. This is the dry time of the summer before the rains, and the basins are nearly empty of game, but. . .”
“Forgive me if I speak before you have spoken, uncle, but this is important!”
“It must be! What is the matter with you? Why are you afraid of a few yucca trees and the absence of a few crickets?”
“I do not know. I think there may be a witch among us. Something is crawling around inside my scalp near the back of my neck. I began to think, as I rode the point out front, that I was somehow riding downhill.”
“That is not possible. The Colorado runs into the Sea of Cortez to the south, and we have hardly risen above the level of the Colorado’s banks since we crossed it. We have skirted the easy ridge routes and kept to the dry flats. If this basin was taking us downhill, it would mean we were going lower than the level of the Great Bitter Sea, and this, my nephew, is impossible.”
“I know. I had other feelings out there alone in the darkness. I began to feel eyes, unfriendly eyes, and far far away, I seemed to hear someone, or some thing, laughing at us. I think, my uncle, we should turn back! I think the trail ahead is bad!”
Kaya-Tenay said, “There are no friends back the way we came. I have been in bad country before. Always, I have found better country on the other side. You may take your women and ponies back if you are afraid. If you tell Nana you are now my enemy, I do not think he will do more than shame you a little.”
Poinsenay didn’t answer. Kaya-Tenay hadn’t expected him to. They rode on for a time in silence as the older man considered his nephew’s suspicions of witchcraft. Like most Indians, the Nadene lived in a world devoid of accident. Where a white person might consider the unexpected misfortune a random fall of the cosmic dice, Kaya-Tenay knew that everything in life happened for a reason. Enemies struck at him because they were enemies. The sidewinder bit a child or pony because it was a snake, and snakes were meant to do such things. He understood the miss of an arrow to be the poor aim of the man with the bow, and when a pony drank bad water and died, he sensed this as the mistake of a foolish rider. Beyond these obvious avoidable dangers, his universe was peopled by evil forces only ghosts and sorcerers fully understood. Sickness and other misfortunes a man could do nothing much about were caused by some offended spirit, or the secret spells of a treacherous enemy. There did seem to be something wrong out there in the darkness. Something that reminded him of another time the spirit world had seemed to close in around him.
Kaya-Tenay said, “Once, when I was a boy, we hunted bighorn in a canyon where the Anasazi had lived long ago, before our people came up into this world from the Caves of Creation.”
“I know the place, my uncle. The long-dead Anasazi dwelt there in their stone wickiups, up among the ledges of the canyon walls.”
“That is the canyon I mean. The Pueblos say that once, when the world was younger and greener, the Anasazi grew corn and even squash among the bone-dry rocks of their haunted canyons, but the day we hunted there, not a twig of saltbush could be found. There was no water and the canyon was silent. There were no lizards among the rocks. We lost the trail of the bighorn we’d been tracking, and when we stopped to consider where it might have gone, there were not even flies around our ponies’ droppings. Truly, the long-dead Anasazi had that canyon to themselves.”
“It is a bad place,” his nephew agreed. “I have heard it said the Anasazi sit there, dried like jerky, staring down with empty eye sockets from the caves in the canyon walls. They say that once a Mexican disturbed the Anasazi there, searching for the Yellow Iron they like so much. They say the Mexican came down from the canyon, wide-eyed and frightened by something he saw in one of those caves. Some Real People found him, wandering in a mad daze and dying of thirst. Since he was mad, they did not wish to kill him, but he died anyway, screaming like an animal. He said, before he died, that evil bats had bitten him, but of course, that was only what the ghosts of the dead Anasazi wished him to believe. Did you see evil bats that day, my uncle?”
“No. We did not go into the caves or stone wickiups. But we only felt the dead around us. My brother said he thought we should leave the canyon. The rest of us agreed. It felt wrong to be in such a place alive.” He hesitated and added, “It felt as it does now! I think what we feel in the night around us is not witchcraft. I think this country stinks of death!”
“I think so, too. Are we going to turn back or, at least, go around this basin?”
Kaya-Tenay slowed his pony and stared up at the stars as he mused, “It may be better if we swing closer to the mountains, but I am not sure whether we should go east or west. The stars tell only north from south. They don’t say which range has the most water. I think we shall keep this path until morning gives me a better view of the peaks. It would be foolish to ride out of our way into mountains too low for good hunting and grazing.”
Suiting action to his words, Kaya-Tenay heeled his pony onward with renewed confidence, saying, “You had better take that point again. Ride toward that bright yellow star on the … on the horizon … ?”
Both men reined their ponies in as the possible meaning of what they saw in the distance sank in. Neither spoke for a time. Then Poinsenay said, “Uncle, I do not think that is a star. I think that is a camp-fire.”
Kaya-Tenay nodded soberly. “I think you are right.”
The ten American prospectors and their two Mexican guides were worried as they sat around their campfire, discussing the route they intended to follow in the morning. Their worry was not about Indians, since no Indians roamed this part of the Great Basin, except for a few miserable Diggers too meek to consider attacking such a large force of armed white men. The party had struck out into the desert from the picked-over gold fields east of Los Angeles City, aiming for a vaguely located range called the Panamints. The gold was said to lie like pebbles in the dry stream beds of the Panamints, and it was somewhere this side of Death Valley, but up to now, the Panamints had been a little hard to find, and their water was running low.
The rag-tag band of adventurers were too far south, but they were unaware of this. They only knew the desert was getting hotter and more barren with every mile, and some of them were offering the not-too-impossible suggestion that they were lost. Their nominal leader, a burly Ohio-bred giant called Calico, was for pressing on in the morning. To every suggestion that they might have taken a few wrong turns around a playa, Calico’s reply was always the same. Jed Smith had crossed the Mojave back in the twenties, and he, Calico, was just as good a man as any goddamn fool named Jedediah!
When someone pointed out Jed Smith had reported no gold in the desert after making his epic trek to the then-Mexican Pueblo de los Angeles, Calico’s ready answer was, “They didn’t know about the gold in Californee in them days. Jed Smith and them other Astorians was lookin’ fer beaver!”
Someone muttered, “Beaver? In this God-forsaken desert?” and Calico said triumphantly, “I told you boys the man was an idjet, didn’t I? I mean, if a man fool enough to hunt beaver in the Mojave kin cross it, I reckon folks as smart as us should make it easy.”
The argument went on, getting nowhere, as the men sat around the fire, chewing their plugs and staring morosely into the flames of greasewood roots. It was a large fire, for the night was bitterly cold, and few white men knew the Diggers’ trick of keeping warm between two small fires, rather than roasting one side and freezing the other next to a roaring blaze.
Under normal circumstances, the talk around the campfire would have slowly died away as one man after the other stretched out under a blanket on the desert pavement. But this was not a night like any of the others the party had spent on the trail since they’d left the green San Bernardinos.
The only warning was the nervous whinny from one of their hobbled pomes as it sensed a movement in the darkness beyond the circle of the campfire’s glow. One of the men stood up, muttering, “somethin’ pesterin’ my hoss,” and then he seemed to freeze in place, staring down at the feathered shaft of the arrow that had just thunked into his chest.
Calico was the first to come unstuck, yelling, “Injuns!” as he rolled to one knee with a buffalo gun in his hands. Two arrows took him over the heart as he fired blindly into the dark, and then he fell back dead across the fire.
From the darkness, a voice shouted, “Nleidi!” and another man who’d reached his rifle fell across it face down with three arrows in his back. The others fared little better, though some managed to get off a shot before they died, and two, unfortunately for them, were taken alive when the Nadene swept into the camp on foot.
Only one of Kaya-Tenay’s people had been hit. A lucky round had torn the top off Poinsenay’s head as he and the others made the final charge. The two captives were to learn, as others had in the past, that one should either kill every member of a Nadene band, or none at all.
Matt Caldwell was awakened at dawn by the frightened voice of a picket shouting, “Corporal of the guard! Post number two!” and the sound of what seemed to be a railroad train roaring by at full steam.
The lieutenant rolled out from under his blanket and jumped to his feet with six-gun in hand. The eastern sky was glowing pearly rose, and the scene around him was just visible in the ruby horizontal light. Matt ran toward the sentry and the railroad sound in the dry-wash bed beyond and stopped wide-eyed as he saw what all the fuss was about. A trooper stopped beside him, gasped, and shouted above the roar, “Jesus Christ!”
The wash was filled nearly to the brim by a swirling, churning flood of muddy water. Even as they watched, the waters rose and they could see pinon trees, juniper logs, and boulders the size of their camels rolling end over end in the liquid mass.
Digger Greenberg and High Jolly walked over to join the growing crowd at the edge of the wash. Greenberg spit thoughtfully into the flash flood and said, “That happens sometimes this late in summer.”
Caldwell said, “I owe one to Rabbit-Boss. If it had been up to me, we’d have camped down in that wash last night!”
“Well, that’s why I put up with the fool Injun,” nodded Greenberg. “He does git notions, but sometimes it pays to listen to the old heathen.”
“I see what you mean, but where in hell did all that water come from? There’s not a cloud in the sky and … ”
“Musta rained in the high country last night. That range a dozen miles or so to our west looks high enough to trip a thunderhead.”
Caldwell stared at the still-dark west horizon and said, “I think I see some hills over there, but a dozen miles?”
“Shoot, I’ve seen a flash flood run thirty or more across the flats, with the sun shinin’ hot enough to fry an aig and ever’ clump of saltbush dried out dead. Gener’ly, they stick to the washes, but a man kin git in lots of trouble on a salt flat this time of the year. Lots of them old flats and playas would be lake bottoms anywheres else in the states.” He spit again. “That’s the trouble with this danged country. You either gits no water at all, or you gits too blamed much all at once!”
“Remind me never to camp in a dry-wash, Digger.”
“Won’t have to. You jest larnt better. Just remember one thing, though; there’s no hard and fast rules out here. Gener’ly, the water runs down the wash, but a four-foot wall of the shit kin catch you out on a flat, and sometimes a wash kin be a safe hidey hole iffen you know how to read the lay of the land.”
“I’m afraid I don’t follow you, Digger. Are you saying there are times a man out here might want to camp in a wash?”
“Well, sure, if he’s lookin’ to hide and knows which ones is safe.”
“How can any wash be safe? Just look at that damn water running by down there! It must be going forty miles an hour!”
“More like sixty. Antelope kin run forty miles an hour, and the flash floods sometimes catch ’em on a playa. The way you tell a wash is safe, though, is by the brush along the bottom. Crack willow and old dried tule means a wash gits swept by flash floods regular. No grass and lots of overgrowed mesquite means a wash has oxbowed its fool self dry and ain’t gittin’ too much water anymore.”
Caldwell remembered the oxbow lakes along the Missouri and understood how a shift of channel could cut a section of these smaller stream beds off from the main channel from the mountains. He asked Greenberg, “Why mesquite?” and the scout explained, “Mesquite roots deep. Cain’t take much floodin’, but its roots tap water deep as sixty feet. A young mesquite kin grow most anywhere, but to git old enough to shade a pony under … ”
“I see what you mean. There’s more to botany out here than meets the eye.”
“Yep, a man has to keep his eye peeled for more’n man or beast out here. Mistakin’ saltbush fer tarweed has been knowed to kill a man.”
“Good God, how could that happen?”
“Easy. Saltbush kin grow near a poison water hole. Tarweed cain’t. Most immigrants figure to see skeletons around a poison water hole, but sometimes a look-see at the vegetables is all you got to go on.”
“Remind me to take a better look at the next clump of tarweed we pass. The camels seem to like the saltbush, though. Do you think it’s safe to let them eat it?”
“Sure, there ain’t no poison in saltbush. The stuff jest ain’t too particular ’bout its water, is all. It kin grow with good water nigh its roots, but it does better where the other plants is pi’zened off by salts, washin’ soda, arsenic, and other shit that settles in the low spots hereabouts.”
Caldwell was suddenly aware that nearly every man in his patrol had joined him at the edge of the wash. He turned and snapped, “Spread out and soldier, damn it! We’re bunched like raw recruits in a pay line! Where’s Corporal Muller?”
The noncom detached himself from the far end of the line, snapped to attention, and called out, “No excuse, sir!”
“All .right, get your men properly dispersed and secure the area. We’re taking ten for breakfast, and then it’s boots and saddles. Are there any questions, Corporal?”
“No, sir! You others, as you were. Chew if you got it, but no mess fires and no smoking in this light. Each man by his mount and ready to move out in exactly ten minutes.”
As the men started to shuffle back to their bedrolls, Muller called after them, “That ten minutes includes piss call. Pack up before you stuff your guts!”
Muller shot his officer a guilty smile and Caldwell nodded, saying, “Carry on, Corporal. I took a bit of time getting the sand out of my eyes, didn’t I?”
“If you say so, sir. I won’t act such a fool again.”
High Jolly left to tend the camels, but Digger Greenberg only seemed amused. He fell in beside Caldwell, walking back to where he’d left his own gear, and the officer asked, “Where’s Rabbit-Boss?”
“Out earnin’ his keep, I reckon. Injuns don’t sleep all that much, and he’s put out ’cause I been hoorahin’ him ’bout not findin’ them Apaches fer you.”
“I thought we were following them.”
““Well, we is and we ain’t. Rabbit-Boss allows they headed north, but he ain’t found a sign of the tricky bastards that a man could bank on.”
“You mean we could be simply running around in circles out here?”
“We ain’t runnin’ in circles, we’s headed for the Mojave River. The trouble, as I see it, is that them Apache ain’t. I’ve given Rabbit-Boss another day to cut their trail his way. He don’t do it by sundown, I reckon we’d best try mine.”
“I didn’t know the two of you had a difference of opinion.”
“Well, we do. Rabbit-Boss suspicions they headed fer the Mojave, ’cause it’d be stupid to go anywheres else. I keep tryin’ to tell him Apache don’t think or act like sensible folks, red or white, but I cain’t git the fool Digger to see it my way.”
“All right, what is your way, Digger?”
The scout spit and said, “Due north. It’s the worst damn way a body could head out here in this damn desert. There’s not a damn thing betwixt here and the Providence Range but miles and miles and miles. No fodder, no sweet water, no goddamn reason at all fer goin’ that way, ‘lessen you jest happen to be Apache.”
“That sounds crazy to me.”
“Well, of course it’s crazy! That’s how you figure Apache. You think of the dumbest, pi’zen-mean, most ornery thing you kin, and that’s what the nearest Apache’s likely to be a-doin’!”
“Damn it, Digger, there’d be no sense in Diablito leading his band into the area you describe. If I was Diablito, I’d want to … ”
“Back off and think a mite on what you’re savin’, Lieutenant! Both you and Rabbit-Boss keep makin’ the same fool mistake ’bout Diablito! Rabbit-Boss thinks what any sensible Injun would do. You think what a white man with enough sense to matter might do, and both of you are off the mark. Apache ain’t dumb. They know, jest as well as you and me and Rabbit-Boss what anyone with sense would do, then they go and do jest the contrary. How do you reckon they’ve stayed alive this long, with ever’body from the Papago to Horse Utes agin’ ’em?”
“By avoiding the obvious?”
“By avoidin’ the possible! None of these desert tribes is schoolmarms, Lieutenant. A Papago kin track a lizard over rim rock, and a Horse Ute kin live where a rabbit wouldn’t want to. Apache steer clear of good water holes, good pasture, and good shade. They’ll ride a pony into the ground, walk sixty miles in one night through rough country, and steal fresh mounts. Surround the sons of bitches and they’ll slip through your fingers like spooks to shoot you in the back and run off laughin’. Diablito’s even had Apache out to kill him, and he’s still alive, bouncin’ around like spit on a hot stove. You think a man like that’s about to lead his band beside still waters, like some jasper from the Good Book? I tell you, I know where Diablito’s goin’! He’s takin’ his band into the nearest thing to hell he kin find this side of the real thing!”
