The Man from Forever

by Vella Munn

  Decided what? To convince a high-profile anthropologist that something unexplained lurked around the lava beds? Taking the argument as far as it would go, he had struck up a conversation with her and immediately introduced the subject of ghosts or spirits or whatever he wanted to call them.

  But he’d also told her straight out that he was trying to come up with a way to capitalize on people’s overactive imaginations and mine them for the park’s financial benefit. There’d been nothing veiled about his intentions.

  Warned by the threat of a headache, she turned her thoughts to the less weighty question of whether to stay with boots or change into more comfortable shoes for her next trek into the wilderness. When she started unlacing her boots, she told herself it was not because she could run faster in tennis shoes.

  It was dark by the time Tory returned to her cabin, and she needed to use a flashlight to find her way home. Throughout a long and eventful day, she’d gone through three rolls of film while documenting the park’s wildlife and had eaten both lunch and dinner with vacationers who’d insisted she share burgers and hot dogs with them. True, she hadn’t put up much of an argument when the invitations were offered. It wasn’t that she was a great fan of stale buns and wilted lettuce, but being around people kept her from thinking about that morning. And if there’d been times, like when she was trying to get close enough to capture a small herd of antelope in her telephoto lens, when she felt as if she were being watched, she’d chalked it up to that overactive imagination of hers.

  At least she tried to; only now, surrounded by night and alone with her thoughts, she couldn’t shake the suspicion—all right, the conviction—that something, or someone, had had his eye on her.

  Warrior. Although she barely whispered the word, it took on a life of its own, existed beside her in the small, kerosene-lit cabin, floated just beyond the two windows.

  Warrior—a man willing to give up his life for freedom.

  Unexpected emotion touched her, but she didn’t try to argue it away with twentieth-century logic. Once, men who answered to no name except “warrior” had roamed this land; that evocative word had spoken of what lived in their hearts.

  She’d seen their land today, at least what had once been theirs. The past year of her life had been taken up with one legal and political maneuver after another, all of it aimed at unlocking the key to a way of life that no longer existed. Consumed by those documents and studies and strategies and jockeying for position, she’d forgotten to take the time to focus on the actual people who had once lived the life she was so determined to record.

  But here at The Land Of Burned Out Fires not enough had changed. Although the wolves and grizzlies were gone, the deer and antelope that once sustained the Modocs still roamed free. The eagles they had turned to for guidance continued to soar through an unspoiled sky. And because ancient volcanoes had rendered it inhospitable to so-called progress, most of the land remained as it had always been. Only the Modocs had left.

  Feeling a little overwhelmed, she turned on the battery-controlled radio and chose an all-news station. While she did what cleaning up she could, she caught up on the outside world. By the time she changed to an easy-listening station, she’d gotten back in touch with what she’d long believed herself to be—an up-and-coming cultural anthropologist with more than thirty years of productivity ahead of her. Sentiment didn’t get the job done.

  She’d intended to do a little reading, fiction for a change of pace, but had read no more than five pages before hours of walking and fresh air caught up with her. She turned off the radio and climbed into the double bed with its sagging mattress. An owl kept hooting. She heard what seemed like a thousand crickets, and if she listened carefully, she caught what must be a few frogs somewhere in the sound. Just before she fell asleep, she asked herself when she’d last heard nothing except the sounds of nature. She couldn’t remember.

  He came into her dream, a whispering presence, heat and weight. She was standing in the middle of a ring of rocks, but this time there were no weeds obscuring the dance area. A sound that was part crickets and owls and frogs and part something else spread over the night breeze like music from an ageless source. Bare toes digging into the sparse soil, she lifted her head so she could pull the incredibly clean air deep into her lungs. She felt her hair sliding over her shoulders and realized with no sense of shock that she was naked.

  He walked toward her. This man, this warrior, wore no more than she did, and yet there was nothing vulnerable about his body. He strode out of the desert as if pride were as vital a part of him as the blood coursing through his veins. His mouth, firm and yet strangely gentle, briefly held her attention and kept her from losing her sanity in the rest of what he was. If he hated her for intruding on his land and his ancestors’ land, his mouth gave nothing of that away. Although her need to take in his entire body and commit it to memory was all but overpowering, she deliberately turned her attention to his eyes.

  His fathomless eyes.

  She felt herself begin to shake, knew her reaction had nothing to do with cold. The moon emerged in the space of a heartbeat. It bathed the warrior with white-silver rays, feathers of light that slowly and sensually revealed muscle and bone, strength and power. Still, she couldn’t stop staring into his eyes.

  They were black. More than black, they seemed to have been alive forever and born at the earth’s core. She wondered if he had his grandfather’s eyes, maybe the eyes of the first Modoc to walk this land. In them she saw generations of a proud and resourceful people who understood the seasons and land and sky in a way that had been lost. His mind held the knowledge to gather and hunt throughout the summer so there would be enough to sustain the tribe through the harshest winter. His eyes knew to scan the horizon for the first glimpse of the winter birds that came to the vast waterways.

  This warrior with his war-hardened body had hands made for hunting and fighting, for wrestling what he needed for life from land that offered nothing to more civilized people. Although they now hung along his naked thighs, the fingers curving in slightly, tendons standing out in stark relief beneath deeply tanned flesh, she imagined them cradling a child.

  What would those hands feel like on her?

  Made breathless by the question, she tried to step outside the dance ring, but the rocks expanded until she was trapped within the walls they’d become. Despite that, she could still see him and shrank a little from a gaze that told her he had the power to control these hard stones. She gaped in amazement and yet acceptance when he used his powerful hands to push one boulder aside so he could step inside.

  She couldn’t take her eyes off his thighs; a dusting of black hair draped flesh that had known years of heat and cold and physical life. Beneath the sheltering skin lived muscle and bone. His calves and ankles and feet were like the rocks that held her, made for eternity. She saw in them the runner he must be, the tireless hunter, protector of women and children.

  He hadn’t said a word. Still, she knew what had brought him here. The answer lay in the way he used his body, the arrogant strength of him, the blatant sexuality. Although she shrank from him, at the center of her being she wanted what he was. She faced the challenge and danger, the volcano. Their coupling would be as rough and wild as the land he called home. There’d be no gentle whispers, no lengthy foreplay. Instead, he would take what he needed from her, and she would do the same to him. Again and again until her strength gave out.

  He lay on his back on his bear-pelt bed. Since awakening—he could think of nothing else to call it—he’d cleared the brush from the slit of an opening above him. Although it was too narrow for him to get his body through or give the enemy access, it allowed enough sunlight to enter during the day that he could easily study the countless etchings that were his people’s history. At night, especially when the moon was full, the cave took on a silver cast.

  Staring at the opening, he tried to imagine how the land his people called The Smiles Of God had looked when
it was painted in the colors the creator had used to bless the moon. But although he gave thanks to Kumookumts for his generous gift to the Maklaks, he couldn’t keep his thoughts on what the world must have been like when Kumookumts was creating it.

  The woman filled him. He’d watched her today. Often her car—how he hated the harsh word—took her far from where he was, but she seemed to have no purpose to her wanderings, and several times came close enough that he could truly study her. Like so many of her kind, she carried that thing they called a camera. He would like to know what they did with their cameras once they were done pointing them. At least they didn’t make a noise like a gun, and he guessed they weren’t weapons because they often pointed them at each other.

  She’d come here alone. He’d seen loners before, but there was something about her that made her stand out from the others. He’d tried to tell himself it was because he held her responsible for his awakening, but tonight, with Owl foretelling of death and his body restless with his man-need, he knew it was more than that.

  He wanted her. He’d been awake for six moons and looked at women with lust and then acknowledged that he couldn’t have them. He’d spent his lust-need by running until his lungs screamed. But what he felt for her was different. Like the power of a volcano, it held him in its fiery grasp and warned him that if he didn’t run until his legs gave out, he might take her. If he did, she would alert the army men and they would kill him.

  Was that Owl’s warning? That his need for this woman would mean the end to him?

  A growl of anguish rolled up from deep inside him and pushed its way past his lips. Shaking his head, he tried to deny the depth of his craving, but it was no good. He’d had a wife, a woman chosen by his family because of her social standing in the clan. Although she’d been older than him with interest in little more than digging camas bulbs and drying and storing them for winter, she’d let him climb atop her and he’d spent his energy inside her. She’d given him his son. For that he would always be grateful to her.

  But she was dead and energy fed upon him the way lightning-born fire feeds upon trees and brush.

  When another cry threatened to find freedom, he shoved himself into a sitting position. The moonlight now slid over his head and shoulders, carved his legs in shadowy relief. Gripping a calf, he thought about the great distance he’d walked today, not hunting as he should have, but searching for the woman again.

  She carried herself as few of the enemy did. Instead of lumbering like a grass-fattened cow, she walked with an ease that drew reluctant admiration from him. She must spend much of her life, not in a small, cramped house, but where her legs could find exercise. She was tall, slender. Her hair flowed long and straight and dark down her back; the wind loved to play with it. He wondered where she’d come from, where she would go when her time here was done. He wondered what had brought her here. Most of all he asked himself what she’d thought when he showed himself to her.

  She’d known he was watching her today. He’d seen the truth in the way she looked around, the wariness in her bear-brown eyes. After spending the morning pointing her camera at anything that moved, she’d joined some of the enemy. Even when she was surrounded by them, there were times when she scanned the horizon, and although he was so far away that he couldn’t read the truth in her gaze, he’d sensed it in what her body said to him.

  Her body, her hated woman’s body.

  He flopped back on his pelt but a moment later scrambled to his feet and strode to the nearest wall. Although it lay in complete shadow, he placed his hand flat over a drawing of men herding elk into a brush-and-rope enclosure. When the settlers came bringing their hungry cattle with them, the elk had fled to the mountains and there had no longer been a use for the enclosures. Still, this drawing, like others of Eagle and Bear and Frog and Weasel, of generations of Maklaks life and ways, remained. As long as they did, as long as he devoted himself to their care and protection, he wouldn’t be alone.

  Guided by instinct, he ran his hand over his people’s entire history, ending with the winter when the army burned a small village and forced them to take shelter in caves under land capable of sustaining only rabbits and mice. The men, himself included, had searched for food to fill their families’ bellies and when, in desperation, they’d killed some of the enemy’s cattle, they’d known they were doing something that would never be forgiven. There were no drawings of that because what today’s enemy called Captain Jack’s Stronghold was far from this sacred place. There was only what he’d created last winter—proof that the Maklaks weren’t all gone after all. He remained.

  Alone.

  She should have come to Canby’s Cross yesterday. Loaded down with fresh film and a container of water, Tory left her car at yet another of the areas designated for vehicles. As she’d done yesterday, she’d chosen early morning so she could absorb the area’s essence without interference from her fellow travelers. Yesterday, compulsively taking pictures and finding people to talk to, she’d kept this particular site at the back of her mind. However, as she was waking this morning, she decided to make coming here the first order of business. After all, this was why she’d come to the lava beds, and activity, particularly this activity, should bury last night’s dream.

  Maybe.

  It took no more than a couple of minutes to walk the short distance to a large white cross designating where General Canby, her ancestor, had lost his life. She stood looking up at it, reaching out with her senses for something of the man. Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted distant Mount Shasta, the rising sun painting it gold and red. She became aware of closer landmarks, such as the rocky outcropping to her right, where armed Modocs had hidden while peace talks took place in the flimsy tent General Canby and the other peace commissioners had set up.

  The army’s headquarters, a hastily erected tent city, was several miles away. Even farther away was Captain Jack’s Stronghold. From what she understood, the site where she now stood had been chosen because it had been seen by both sides as a neutral location.

  But appearances were deceptive. The land lay in desolation all around her, perfect for friend and foe alike to conceal themselves while the principals argued and postured and tried to find grounds for compromise.

  It hadn’t worked. The Modocs, led by their chief, Captain Jack, and the young killer, Hooker Jim, had ambushed the whites. In a matter of minutes her great-great-grandfather and a minister had been murdered, and former Indian superintendent Alfred Meacham left for dead.

  Not sure of her emotions, Tory turned in a slow, contemplative circle, trying to imagine what the general had seen and felt during the last morning of his life. She couldn’t recall when she’d first heard of his role in history. As a child, she’d thought that being killed during an Indian war was a noble way to die. As she grew older, she occasionally thought of him with a sense of sadness because he hadn’t lived to see his grandchildren. But most of the time he never entered her mind. Standing here now, she knew he would always remain a part of her.

  Although she’d brought her camera with her, it dangled from her fingers. Taking a picture would reduce the experience to something one-dimensional when she wanted to keep her senses alive and alert.

  Once again she turned to take in her surroundings, this time not so she could gain a greater perspective on her ancestor, but because that feeling had returned.

  The wind blew across the grasses and flattened them until they reminded her of a vast gray carpet. Dark lava rocks punctured the carpet and created the only contrast in color. A faint gray haze coated the sky and made it difficult for her to gauge the height of the hills surrounding Canby’s Cross. Still, driven by something she didn’t quite understand, she imagined she could hear the impatient sounds of waiting horses, the clang of weapons, men’s angry or nervous voices.

  And through it all she knew she was being watched.

  Chapter 4

  Crouched behind a boulder, he watched the young woman run her hand ove
r the white cross. When he’d first seen her car, he thought she might be leaving. If she did, he would be able to dismiss her from his mind, his thoughts, and think only of staying alive and safeguarding his people’s legacy. If she did, he would never know what she smelled like, sounded like, felt like under him. Never know her name, or why his life had been linked with hers.

  She hadn’t left. Instead, she’d come to where the army leader had lost his life. More of the enemy than he could count had walked to the cross to aim their cameras at it, but she was simply standing beneath it, alone, looking sad and cautious, her eyes taking in her surroundings.

  She sensed he was here. Everything about the way she moved and looked told him that. He could walk away from her, leave her with nothing except her suspicions. Or he could approach her and see if she again ran in terror.

  Instead, he simply watched and absorbed and learned as she crouched at the cross’s base and ran her fingers over the dried grasses growing there. She looked, he thought, almost as he must when he touched his son’s blanket. Knowing that twisted his heart in a way he didn’t want. She was the enemy. It was his right to hate her. But how does a man hate a woman who has crawled into his dreams?

  Confused, he moved a little closer so he could study her features without being watched in return. As he did, she sprang to her feet and looked warily in all directions, her long, straight, shiny hair floating on a breeze. She was like others of her kind, stupid in the ways of the wilderness. If she had spent her life hunting, she would know to watch for birds or rabbits frightened from their hiding places. The birds and small creatures always told when something dangerous was about.

  Still, he didn’t ridicule her for her lack of knowledge; her body’s language told him that she sensed something few did. Yes, many came here, but instead of letting the land tell them what had happened that cold morning, they read the talking leaves they’d brought with them or the plaques that had been placed in the ground back where they left their cars. As a consequence, they knew nothing.