Collection 2003 - From The Listening Hills (v5.0)

by Louis L'Amour

  “When I was patched up some we rode on and Betts went back to her folks, a widow almost afore she was a wife. We fetched up, final, in the Blue Mountains of Utah, and there we built us a double cabin and we ketched wild horses and hunted desert honey, just the two boys of us left from the five we’d been. We lived there and for months we was happy.

  “Your Ma was the finest ever, Son. I never knowed what it could be like to live with no woman, nor to have her there, always knowing how I felt inside when nobody had ever knowed before. We walked together and talked together and day by day the running and shooting seemed farther and farther away.

  “Johnny was happy, too. Them days his mouth organ laughed and cried and sang sweet songs to the low moon and the high sun, and he played the corn out of the ground and the good sweet melons. We hunted some and we lived quiet-like and happy. How long? Three months, five months…and then Marge comes to me and says Ellie’s got to go where she can have a doc. She’s to have a baby and something, she’s sure, ain’t right about it.

  “We knowed what it meant, but life must go on, Son, and you were to be born and I aimed to give you what start I could. The same for Johnny. So we gathered our horses and we rode out to Salt Lake with the girls. We sold our horses for cash money to some Mormons, and then we drifted north. The girls had to stay with the Doc awhile, so we got us a riding job each.

  “One day a gent comes into a bar where we was with a star on him and he sees me setting by the window. Marge’s time is coming nigh and we’re all a-waiting like. This man with the star he comes over and drops into a chair near Johnny and me. “Mighty hot day!’ he says. “Too hot to hunt outlaws, especially,’ he says, “when they size up like good, God-fearin’ folks.

  ““I got me a paper says them Tremaynes is hereabouts. I’m to hunt ’em up an’ arrest ’em, what do you boys think about that?’

  ““We reckon,’ Johnny says, very quiet, “them Tremaynes never bothered nobody if they was let alone.’

  “He nods his head. “I heard that, too,’ he says, “Leastways, if they’ve been in town they sure been mighty quiet an’ well-behaved folks. Worst of it is,’ he got up, wiping the sweat-band of his hat, “I took an oath to do my duty. Now, the way I figure that doesn’t mean I have to go r’arin’ out in the heat of the day. But come sundown,’ he spoke slow and careful, “I’m gonna hunt them Tremaynes up.’

  “That sheriff, Son, he looked up at Johnny and then over at me. “I got two sons,’ he said quietly, “and if the Tremaynes left family in this town, they’d be protected as long as me and my sons lived.’

  “We didn’t take long about saying goodbye, although we never knowed it was our last. We never guessed we was riding out of town and right to our death.

  “It was fifty miles east that we passed a gent on the trail. We never knowed him but he turned an’ looked after us. And that done, he hightailed it to the nearest town and before day a posse was in the saddle.

  “At noon, from a high ridge, we drawed up and looked back. We seen four separate dust clouds. Johnny, he looked at me and grinned. “I reckon we ain’t in no hurry no more,’ he said, “they got us again’ the mountains.’ He looked up at them twelve, and thirteen thousand foot peaks. “I wonder if any man ever went through up there?’

  ““We can give her a try,’ I said quiet. “Not much else we can do.’

  ““Horses are shot, Boone,’ he replies, “I ain’t goin’ to kill no good horse for those lousy coyotes back yonder.’ So we got down and walked, our saddle-bags loose and rifles in our hands.

  “Then we heard them on the trail behind and we drawed off and slipped our saddles from the horses and cached them in the brush. Cow Hollow, Son, and that’s where we made our stand. We had a plenty of ammunition, and we weren’t wasteful, making shots count. We hunkered down among the rocks and trees and stood them off.

  “Morning left us and the noon, and the high hot sun bloomed in the sky, but it was late fall, and as the afternoon drew on, a cold wind began to blow.

  “They come then, they come like Injuns through the woods after us, and we opened up, and then suddenly Johnny was on his feet, he’s got that old Winchester at his hip and he shoots and then he jumps right into them clubbing with his rifle. He went down, and I went over the rocks, both guns going, and that bunch broke and ran.

  “I fetched Johnny back, and he lay there looking up at me. “Good old Boone!’ he said. “Get the girls and get away. Go to Mexico, go somewheres, but get away!’

  “He died like that, and I sat right there and cried. Then I covered him over gentle and I slipped out of Cow Hollow and started up the trail toward the high peaks.

  “It was cold, mighty cold. The sun came up and touched those white peaks and ridges ahead of me, then the clouds covered her over and it began to snow. I walked on, and the snow stopped but the wind blew colder and colder. We was getting high up, I passed the timberline here on Tokewanna and crawled into this here place.

  “Son, I can’t see to write no more, and there ain’t no more to say. I guess I didn’t say it well, but there she is. You can read her and make up your own mind. This here I’ve addressed to your mother, care of that sheriff down there. I even got a stamp to put on so’s it will be U.S. mail and no one’ll dare open her up.

  “Be a good boy, Son, love your Ma and do like she tells you. And carry the name of Tremayne with pride. It was honest blood, no matter what you hear from anyone.”

  He was stiff from the cold, but he rolled over carefully and folded the letter and tucked it into an envelope. On it he placed his stamp, and then scrawled the name of his wife, in care of the sheriff. From his throat he took a black handkerchief and fastened it to a stick so its flapping would draw attention. Near it, held down by a rock, he left the letter.

  Then he crawled out and using his rifle as a crutch, got to his feet. He still had ammunition. He had no food. He discarded the almost empty canteen. For a long time he looked down the cold flank of the mountain into the dark fringe of trees. Far away among those trees flickered the ghostlike fingers of fire, where men warmed themselves and talked, or slept.

  Something blurred his eyes. His head throbbed. Pain gnawed at his side and his leg was stiff. How long he stood there he did not know; swaying gently, not quite delirious and yet not quite rational. Then he turned slowly and looked up, two thousand feet, to the cold and icy peak, silver and magnificent in its solemn grandeur.

  He stared for a long time, and then he began to climb. It was very slow, it was very hard. He pulled his old hat down, put the scarf lower around his ears. To the left there was a ridge, and beyond the ridge there would be a valley.

  He climbed and then he slipped, lacerating his hands on the icy rocks. He got up, pushing himself on.

  “Marge,” he whispered, “Son…” He continued to move. Crawling…falling…standing…he felt the snow, felt his feet sink. He seemed to have enormously large feet, enormously heavy. “Never aimed to kill nobody,” he said. He climbed on…wind stirred the icy bits of snow over the harsh flank of the mountain. He bowed his head, and when he turned his face from the wind he looked down and saw the fires below like tiny stars. How far he had come! How very far!

  He turned, and looked up. There was the ridge, not far, not too far…and what was it he had thought just a moment ago? Beyond the ridge, there is always a valley.

  The Moon of the Trees Broken by Snow

  COLD BLEW THE winds along the canyon, moaning in the cedars, whining softly where the sagebrush grew. Their fire was small, and they huddled close, the firelight playing shadow games on the walls, the walls their grandfather’s father built when he moved from the pit house atop the mesa to the great arch of the shallow cave.

  “We must go,” the boy said, “there is no more wood for burning, and the strength is gone from the earth. Our crops are thin, and when the snows have gone, the wild ones will come again, and they will kill us.”

  “It is so,” his mother agreed. “One by one the othe
rs have left, and we are not enough to keep open the ditches that water our fields, nor defend against the wild ones.”

  “Where will we go?” Small Sister asked.

  They avoided looking at each other, their eyes hollow with fear, for they knew not where to go. Drought lay heavy upon the land, and from north, south, east, and west others had come seeking, no place seeming better than another. Was it not better to die here, where they had lived?

  The boy was gaunt for each day he hunted farther afield and each day found less to hunt. Small Sister and his mother gathered brush or looted timbers from abandoned dwellings to keep their fires alight.

  The Old One stirred and mumbled. “In my sleep I saw them,” he muttered, “strange men sitting upon strange beasts.”

  “He is old,” their mother said. “His thoughts wander.”

  How old he was they did not know. He had come out of the desert and they cared for him. None knew what manner of man he was, but it was said he talked to gods, and they with him.

  “Strange men,” he said, “with robes that glisten.”

  “How many men?” The boy asked without curiosity but because he knew that to live, an old one must be listened to and questioned sometimes.

  “Three,” the Old One said, “no more.”

  Firelight flickered on the parchment of his ancient face. “Sitting upon beasts,” he repeated.

  Sitting upon? What manner of beast? And why sit upon them? The boy went to a corner for an old timber. A hundred years ago it had been a tree; then part of a roof; now it was fuel.

  They must leave or die, and it was better to die while doing than sitting. There was no corn left in the storage place. Even the rats were gone.

  “When the light comes,” the boy said, “we will go.”

  “What of the Old One? His limbs are weak.”

  “So are we all,” the boy said. “Let him walk as far as he may.”

  “They followed the path,” the Old One said, “a path where there was no path. They went where the light was.”

  On the third day their water was gone, but the boy knew of a seep. At the foot of the rocks he dug into the sand. When the sand grew damp, they held it against their brows, liking its coolness. Water seeped into the hollow, and one by one they drank.

  They ate of the corn they carried, but some they must not eat. It would be seed for planting in the new place—if they found it.

  During the night snow fell. They filled a water sack made of skin and started on.

  With the morning the snow vanished. Here and there a few seeds still clung to the brush. Under an ironwood they rested, picking seed from the ground. They could be parched and eaten or ground into pinole. As they walked they did not cease from looking, and the Old One found many seeds, although his eyes were bad.

  “Where do we go?” Small Sister asked.

  “We go,” the boy replied, but inside he felt cold shivers as when one eats too much of the prickly-pear fruit. He did not know where they went, and he was much afraid.

  On the ninth day they ate the last of their corn but for that which must be kept for seed. Twice the boy snared ground squirrels, and three times he killed lizards. One day they stopped at a spring, gathering roots of a kind of wild potato that the people to the south called iikof. His mother and the Old One dug them from the flat below the spring.

  Day after day they plodded onward, and the cold grew. It snowed again, and this time it did not go away. The Old One lagged farther and farther behind, and each day it took him longer to reach the fire.

  The boy did not meet their eyes now, for they looked to him, and he had nothing to promise.

  “There was a path of light,” the Old One muttered. “They followed the path.”

  He drew his worn blanket about his thin shoulders. “It is the Moon of the Limbs of Trees Broken by Snow,” he whispered, “that was the time.”

  “What time, Old One?” The boy tried to be patient.

  “The time of the path. They followed the path.”

  “We have seen no path, Old One.”

  “The path was light. No man had walked where the path lay.”

  “Why, then, did they follow? Were they fools?”

  “They followed the path because they heard and they believed.”

  “Heard what? Believed in what?”

  “I do not know. It came while I slept. I do not know what they believed, only that they believed.”

  “I believe we are lost,” Small Sister said.

  The mother looked to the boy. He was the man, although but a small man, and alone. “In the morning we will go on,” he said.

  The Old One arose. “Come,” he said. Wondering, the boy followed.

  Out in the night they went, stopping where no firelight was. The Old One lifted his staff. “There!” he said. “There lies the path!”

  “I see no path,” the boy said, “only a star.”

  “The star is the path,” the Old One said, “if you believe.”

  It was a bright star, hanging in the southern sky. The boy looked at it, and his lips trembled. He had but twelve summers. Yet he was the man, and he was afraid.

  “The star is the path,” the Old One said.

  “How can one believe in a star?” the boy protested.

  “You do not have to believe in the star. They traveled for a reason. We travel for another. But you can believe in yourself, believe in the good you would do. The men of the star were long ago and not like us. It was only a dream.”

  The Old One went back to the fire and left the boy alone. They trusted him, and he did not trust himself. They had faith, and he had none. He led them into a wilderness—to what?

  He had wandered, hoping. He had found nothing. He had longed, but the longing was empty. He found no place for planting, no food nor fuel.

  He looked again. Was not that one star brighter than all the rest? Or did he only believe it so?

  The Old One had said, “They followed a star.”

  He looked at the star. Then stepping back of a tall spear of yucca, he looked across it at the star. Then breaking off another spear, he set it in the sand and lined it up on the star so he would know the direction of the star when dawn came.

  To lead them, he must believe. He would believe in the star.

  When morning came, they took up their packs. Only the Old One sat withdrawn, unmoving. “It is enough,” he said. “I can go no further.”

  “You will come. You taught me to have faith; you, too, must have it.”

  Day followed day, and night followed night. Each night the boy lined up his star with a peak, a tree, or a rock. On three of the days they had no food, and two days were without water. They broke the spines from cactus and sucked on the pulp from the thick leaves.

  Small Sister’s feet were swollen and the flesh broken. “It is enough,” his mother said. “We can go no further.”

  They had come to a place where cottonwoods grew. He dug a hole in the streambed and found a little water. They soaked cottonwood leaves and bound them to Small Sister’s feet. “In the morning,” he said, “we will go on.”

  “I cannot,” Small Sister said.

  With dead branches from the cottonwoods he built a fire. They broiled the flesh of a terrapin found on the desert. Little though there was, they shared it.

  The boy walked out in the darkness alone. He looked up and the star was there. “All right,” he said.

  When the light came, he shouldered his pack, and they looked at him. He turned to go, and one by one they followed. The Old One was the last to rise.

  Now the land was broken by canyons. There was more cedar, occasionally a pion. It snowed in the night, and the ground was covered, so they found only those seeds that still hung in their dry pods. They were very few.

  Often they waited for the Old One. The walking was harder now, and the boy’s heart grew small within him. At last they stopped to rest, and his mother looked at him: “It is no use. I cannot go on.”

  Small
Sister said nothing and the Old One took a long time coming to where they waited.

  “Do you stay then?” the boy said. “I will go on.”

  “If you do not come back?”

  “Then you are better without me,” he said. “If I can, I will come.”

  Out of their sight he sat down and put his head in his hands. He had failed them. The Old One’s medicine had failed. Yet he knew he must try. Small though he was, he was the man. He walked on, his thoughts no longer clear. Once he fell, and again he caught himself on a rock before falling. He straightened, blinking to clear his vision.

  On the sand before him was a track, the track of a deer. He walked on and saw other tracks, those of a raccoon, and the raccoon liked water. Not in two months had he seen the track of an animal. They led away down the canyon.

  He went out on the rocks and caught himself abruptly, almost falling over the rim. It was a limestone sink, and it was filled with water. He took up a stone and dropped it, and it hit the pool and sank with a deep, rich, satisfying sound. The well was deep and wide, with a stream running from one side.

  He went around the rim and lay down flat to drink of the stream. Something stirred near him, and he looked up quickly.

  They were there: his mother, Small Sister, and the Old One. He stood up, very straight, and he said, “This is our place; we will stop here.”

  The boy killed a deer, and they ate. He wiped his fingers on his buckskin leggings and said, “Those who sat upon the beasts? What did they find, following their star?”

  “A cave that smelled of animals where a baby lay on dry grass. The baby’s father and mother were there, and some other men wearing skins, who stood by with bowed heads.”