the Lonesome Gods (1983)

by L'amour, Louis

  He turned, staring all around. The only light showed from the house itself; all else was dark and still.

  "Joaquin!" he shouted.

  He tied the stallion to an iron ring. Somebody would come soon. He crossed the patio, his steps echoing in the stillness.

  It was very late. No wonder there was no one around. He had not realized. It had been late when he left for that woman's house.

  He felt an emptiness within him. What had he been thinking of? She was a respected and respectable woman, well known and liked not only by the Anglos but also by his own people.

  His people? Since when had he thought of them in that way? They were Californios or Mexicans. He was from Castile! He was ...

  He now felt sick inside. What was all that nonsense, anyway? He had left Castile to escape the sneers, the things they would say about what had happened. He had run away from a disgrace he could not bear. He had come here, and then Consuelo That American fellow. That common sailor! He had dared to approach her! Dared to speak to her! His daughter!

  Leaving the stallion, he went into the house. A light burned from the table. He crossed to the sideboard and poured a drink of aguardiente, then another. Taking a third glass, he went to the big horsehide chair and dropped into it.

  He was tired. Exhausted. It was very late and he was not as young as he had been. He tried to turn his mind away from that woman, but her flashing eyes, her voice, so scathing ...

  There was a soft movement behind him, a hand on his shoulder. "Isidro? It is very late. You had better go to bed."

  "My horse--"

  "I will care for him. Go to bed now."

  "You know? You heard?"

  "I heard. When they came back for their things--" "Their what?"

  "They are gone, Isidro. They have left us." She paused. "Their pride was in us. We have failed them."

  His mouth tasted bitter. He glared to right and left; he started to rise, then sat back.

  The fools! The contemptible fools! Let them go! He would find better! He had the money. He could pay.

  Bed ... yes, he should get some sleep. Tomorrow would be soon enough. He never had been able to think well when he was tired.

  He should leave here, anyway. He should go back to Spain.

  His men were gone. All of them.

  Chapter 29

  When we rode out of El Campo and headed for Agua Caliente, Monte McCalla rode with us. Jacob seemed to accept him easily enough, but I was suspicious. I didn't know who he was or what he wanted.

  When we started drawing close to the Springs, I kept standing in the stirrups, looking. "There it is," I said suddenly, pointing. "The Calling Rock."

  McCalla made it out. He studied it. "What about it?" "They say if you turn to look back when you're leaving, you will always return. Some just call it the Leaning Rock."

  "I like the first name better. Say, that's a good story. How about it? Did you look back?"

  "I looked back a-purpose. I wanted to come back." When we came closer, I pointed up Chino Canyon. "There's a cave up there with a pool in it. The Cahuillas used to go there to drink the water before they went hunting. Said it gave them greater endurance."

  McCalla looked up the canyon. "Have to try it sometime."

  He noticed me looking down my back trail, and that Jacob turned in the saddle from time to time. "You boys are riding kind of edgy," McCalla said at last. "You expectin' trouble?"

  "You can cut out and ride alone if you're worried," Jacob said. "As a matter of fact, we think we left trouble behind, but we don't depend on it."

  "We're ridin' together," McCalla said, "so your trouble is my trouble. You see them coming, and I'll ride back and see if they can chew it."

  "This isn't your fight," Jacob said.

  "I'm ridin' with you. You don't size up like thieves, and in a fight three is better than two. When I rode up to your camp I taken a hand in your game."

  He was a strange man. Half the time, he was singing. His was not much of a voice, but not bad, either. Yet he liked to sing, and he seemed to know more songs than anybody I'd ever met.

  When he discovered our plan to catch wild horses, he wanted to come along. "I'm handy with a rope," he said, "and I can ride 'em as good as any man."

  Later, when we were alone, Jacob looked over the fire at me. "What d' you think, Johannes? Shall we take him on?"

  "I think he's a good man," I said, "and we'll need help."

  "My idea exactly."

  The next morning we rode through the sandhills to the store at the Springs.

  When we walked into the store the storekeeper knew me at once, yet now I could look him right in the eye. "Howdy, son! You've grown some inches."

  "Yes, sir. Is my house still empty?"

  He hesitated, busy with arranging some items on the counter. "Well, I reckon. Sometimes it is an' sometimes it isn't, although I got an idea it will be empty when you show up."

  "And Francisco? Is he about?"

  "Comes an' goes. If he wants to see you, he will. Indians are notional."

  Jacob bought various items from the shelves--flour, salt, coffee, a ham, and a couple of slabs of bacon. Walking to the door, I glanced toward the sandhills where the house lay. Did I detect a faint suspicion of smoke? My heart began to pound.

  I hesitated a moment; then, turning to Jacob, I spoke as casually as I could. "I think I'll ride over while you're picking up supplies. Don't be in a hurry."

  He glanced at me, and Monte McCalla looked over his shoulder at me. "Want me to come along?"

  "Not this time. I'll go alone." To offset any comments, I added, "It was where my father was killed. I'd like to ride over there alone."

  "Oh? Sure," Monte said. "We'll come along later." Jacob was not fooled. He knew about the exchanging of books, and he was no doubt as curious as I.

  First I unlashed the sack of books and put them on the saddle before me; then I turned my horse and walked it slowly along the trail. When I turned into the winding lane through the dunes, I began to sing some lines learned from my father from an old sea song, "The Golden Vanity." In the middle of the yard, I stepped down from the saddle and shouldered the sack of books. When I came to the step, I put the sack down and drew the drawstring, opening it. Taking out one book, I looked at it, turning a few pages, then put it down atop the sack, and lifting the latch, I opened the door.

  The room was as I remembered it. The floor was freshly swept, there were no cobwebs in the corners. The books were still neatly arranged on their shelves, yet the air was not stuffy as in a long-closed house. It was fresh, clean, with a faint smell of pines.

  The beds were neatly made, only now there were sheets instead of simply the blankets I remembered. I opened the cupboards. They were well-stocked. Jacob need not have worried.

  The coffeepot was on the coals in the fireplace and the coffee was hot. Taking down a cup, I filled it and sat down, my back to the door.

  I was home again. This was the desert, this was my desert. My parents, captured by their love for each other, had fled across it, had hidden within it, had survived upon it. And I, too, had survived. And now I was back to the desert, back to the soaring mountains behind my house, back to the loneliness that was never lonely, back to the stillness that held silent voices that spoke only to me.

  Slowly, taking my time, I drank my coffee, looking out the window at the dark waves of the rock, pushed high by monstrous tides within the earth itself, waves long stilled that had given birth to pines, and exposed raw edges to the wind, the rain, and the ice.

  Enormous tides had built these mountains, but now they were being plucked at, teased, annoyed by wind and rain, by snow that fell and changed to ice, expanding to crack the rock and drop the fragments at the mountain's base. This was as it had been and as it would ever be. Men would come and go, leaving their tiny scars for the wind to hide with sand, men who in their ego thought the world belonged to them, forgetting the dinosaurs who had ruled the earth for many more millions of years than
man, and were gone now, leaving only bones.

  Some thought them dragons, some thought the bones had belonged to giants, some only shrugged and walked their way, seeking traces of gold and ignoring the mystery of the bones.

  Finishing my coffee, I stood up, hearing the coming of horses and the voices of Jacob and Monte, talking.

  I stepped outside to pick up my sack of books and saw that the one I had left atop the sack was gone.

  Deliberately I kept my mind from wonder. If something or someone was here who so desired privacy, I would not invade it by so much as a thought.

  We shared something, whoever it was and I. We shared a community of books, the companionship of gathered thoughts, and for the time it was enough. It did not want more, so I would not ask for more.

  Knowledge is awareness, and to it there are many paths, not all of them paved with logic. But sometimes one is guided through the maze by intuition. One is led by something felt on the wind, something seen in the stars, something that calls from the wastelands to the spirit. To receive the message, the mental pores must be open, and we white men in striving for our success, in seeking to build a new world from what lies about us, sometimes forget there are other ways, sometimes forget the Lonesome Gods of the far places, the gods who live on the empty sea, who dance with the dust devils and who wait quietly in the shadows under the cliffs where ancient men have marked their passing with hands.

  Once my father had told me of finding a cliff dwelling built high in the rocks, the bricks plastered with mortar from clay, and in the clay were the marks of fingers. Who left those prints in the clay? Who pressed his hand here and then stepped back to view it? Why did he leave his signature here? To show that he, too, had a hand? To tell others that a man had gone before, had passed some brief time in this place, and then gone on? My father had found human bones there. Did they belong to the possessor of the hand? Or were they the bones of another, following long after?

  Why did he impress his hand upon the clay? Did he hope to send across the centuries a thought? A dream, perhaps? Or just to say that "I, too, was here? This was my place. This I built with my hands."

  I knew the image of that hand would be with me forever, for we who pass do not own this land, we but use it, we hold it briefly in trust for those yet to come. We must not reap without seeding, we must not take from the earth without replacing.

  My father told me of a Navajo once who found an arrowhead on the sand and took it up, but then he took from his pocket a small buckskin sack and from it a pinch of dust to replace what he had taken.

  Jacob Finney rode into the yard with Monte McCalla, and they swung down, leading their horses around to the corral. I followed, and suddenly Monte stopped, holding up a hand.

  There, in the dust, was a footprint, the print of a gigantic moccasin!

  "Lord a'mighty!" Jacob said in an awed whisper. "Look at the size!"

  "Make two of mine," Monte said, placing his boot beside it. "Hell, it would make three of mine!"

  I looked, then looked away. That footprint, I told myself, was no accident. Like the hand in the clay, it was a signature. It was a hint, a warning, the opening of a story.

  Never before had there been a footprint, never before an indication, only the missing books.

  This was a statement. This was saying to me, "This manner of man am I. If you would go no further, you may leave the trail here."

  Within me there was a pang, a sharp pain of sympathy. Where would such a one find a companion? Who could bridge the awe of size to share a meeting with this man, this being, this creature? Could I?

  How lonely he must be! How cut off by strangeness, by difference!

  Yes, I thought, the footprint had been deliberately left. Yet I, in my own way, had been a stranger, had been cut off from others of my age by the circumstances of my parents. Wherever I had gone, people had thought me strange, except in the desert, except, so far as I knew, the Indians.

  Yet no doubt the Indians thought all white men strange, for our ways were different from theirs and each people is apt to consider their own ways as "human nature," not realizing they were merely a pattern imposed upon them by rearing, by education, by the behavior of those with whom they associated.

  "Got a nice place here," Monte commented thoughtfully. "Somebody taken a deal of trouble. Clean, too." Monte glanced over at Jacob. "You know these Indians?" Jacob indicated me. "He knows 'em. He takes over where Indians are concerned. They know him, and his pa was a big man among them. You'll see."

  As dusk came, we lighted the lamps, and I took the other books from the sack and arranged them on the shelf. I removed some of those that had long been there, planning to take them to the book shop for those who might not have read them. Reading material was too highly valued and scarce not to be shared.

  "Your pa was killed?" Monte asked.

  "Right out in front," I said. "He got one of them, might have taken more, but he took time to shove me out of the way. He was a good man with a gun."

  "Zachary Verne? I've heard of him." Monte glanced at me. "How about you? With enemies like you've got, you should learn to use guns."

  "I do all right."

  "Maybe I can help. You should be one of the best. Then you don't have to worry."

  "All right."

  They spread their beds on the floor near the fireplace and I went into my old bedroom and closed the door. When I was in bed I looked up at the ceiling, which was lost in darkness, and remembered Meghan.

  When we had rounded up the horses, we would go back, and maybe then I would see her, and would meet her father.

  In the night, the wind came up, blowing softly in from the desert to the east, that strange, empty desert where the old trails were and where the sea had once been. Soon I would be out there, far out on the sands, wandering. And in the night, when the winds whispered around the eaves, I lay awake in the house of Tahquitz and wondered where he was, and how he fared.

  Where was Francisco, who had drawn the smiling face? And when we met again, would that face still smile? Would he still be my friend? We were older now, and it had been long since we talked.

  By Indian standards he would now be a man, but was I not a man also?

  The swift-paced years had gone by and left no footprints on the sand that had not blown away. I could only hope there would be some traces, some memory in his mind.

  Tomorrow, I hoped, I would see Francisco.

  My eyes opened suddenly from near-sleep. What of the old man with the turquoise? Would I see him also? Or was he only a ghost figure in my imagination?

  Why had he come to me that one time? If I had stayed, would he have spoken?

  Would he come again?

  Chapter 30

  My father had prepared me for marvels. He was a cool, logical man, but life upon the sea and the desert had left him with the realization that man thus far has but scratched the surface of knowledge and of his possibilities.

  "Keep an open mind," he told me, "for no man can say what can or cannot be, nor can he say what does or does not exist.

  "Landlubbers make much of what Columbus did, but many longer voyages had been made under more difficult circumstances. Landlubbers might believe the world was flat; any seaman knew otherwise, for he had seen ships disappear over the curvature of the earth.

  "Landlubbers would have you believe that ancient seafarers hugged the coast, when any fool knows that is by far the most dangerous place. For thousands of years men have known the stars and how to travel using them as guides. The open sea had no dangers that compared with the reefs, offshore or onshore winds, baffling currents or floating objects, which were much more common close to shore.

  "The farmer, the hunter, or the deep-sea fisherman always had his eyes upon the heavens. He lived with their vagaries as much as with the trails he followed or the furrows he plowed. He could read the weather in the clouds, locate distant islands or lagoons by their appearance. He knew the flight of birds and which lived upon land and whic
h upon the sea. Long before there was a compass, he understood how to locate the sun on an overcast day. He who sits at a desk and tries to understand by logic often loses touch with the realities. "Remember this, my son: our world is one where the impossible occurs every day, and what we often call supernatural is simply the misunderstood.

  "When you go into the wilderness or out upon the sea, keep your mind open. Much can be learned from books, but much remains about which no book has been written. Remember this: the poor peasant, the hunter, or the fisherman may have knowledge that scholars are struggling to learn."

  All this was in my mind when I pulled on my boots that morning. Jacob was already stirring about, and Monte had been outside.

  He came back in while Jacob was frying some ham. "That track," he said. "I found where he put his other foot down."

  "Another track?" Jacob inquired.

  "Not exactly. He stepped on a rock in a place where the ground was soft. Pressed it deep. I took it up and could see it was freshly done. Judging by the stride, that thing must be seven or eight feet tall!"

  "Jumped, maybe?"

  "Ain't likely," Monte replied. "That rock would have been tipped a mite when he landed. No, that man or whatever it is is big. I checked that track again. It must weigh twice what I do. Maybe more."

  "Don't worry about it," I said. "Whoever or whatever it is hasn't bothered us. Let's return the compliment." Monte started to speak, but Jacob interrupted. "I'd say that's good advice. Let's just forget it, shall we?" He glanced around at Monte. "And don't ask any questions or even mention it."

  Monte shrugged. "Hell, what difference does it make? I've already forgotten it."

  We switched over to talking about wild horses and how they could be trapped, how canny they were, and the necessity for picking out the good ones.

  "If they're too old," Monte said, "even if they're in fine shape, we'd be fools to bother. The old ones are tough to break. Some of them will die before they'll give in." "There may be some horses that have escaped from ranches," Jacob suggested, "and that will almost surely be true of any mules we find."

  "There are wild, unbranded cattle out there, too," I said. "My father told me that some of the cattle he rounded up for the Indians had been running wild."