The Lonesome Gods (Louis L'Amour's Lost Treasures)

by Louis L'Amour

  “They belong to no one?”

  “That’s right. Wild as antelope or elk. Comes to that, I’ve seen herds of over a thousand elk. Boy, that’s one you’ve got to see! Somethin’ to remember.

  “Tame, too. The Californios don’t hunt much. They have all the beef they want and they make do with that. Me, I like elk meat. It’s right tasty.”

  We rode on, lazy in the sunshine. Cattle moved out of our way or turned their heads to look at us with a total lack of interest. We were not chasing them, and they knew it.

  “There!” Finney pointed. “See? The trees yonder? That dark pool? That’s it. You got to ride careful, there’s several smaller patches of tar here an’ there.”

  He waved a hand. “Most anyplace here you can push a stick into the ground and it will come up black with tar.

  “The Chumash been coming here for centuries to get tar to calk their boats.

  “See? The bones yonder? Something trapped there, buzzards fed off it, and maybe one of them trapped, too. If you set still and watch, you can see the gas bubble up. There! See, yonder? It bubbles up, the bubbles break, and after a bit, another one comes.

  “Water isn’t fit to drink. Too much oil an’ stuff, but this here’s somethin’ to see. A few years ago a ship’s captain from down to San Pedro, he come out here to get tar and he found a tusk. Elephant’s tusk.

  “Anybody’d told me, I’d not have believed it, but there it was.”

  “The Indians have stories about hunting them,” I said. “Not the Cahuillas, the Plains Indians.”

  “You don’t say? That’s one I never heard.”

  “It was the Osage, I think,” I said. “It was a hairy elephant they had killed.”

  We left our horses cropping the grass and walked over to the pools, but not going too close. The trees Jacob had mentioned were actually some distance away, but grass grew right to the edge of the water in some places. The larger pool was at least an acre in extent. “It was larger when we were here the first time,” Jacob said, “but this has been a dry year.”

  He pointed out two more pools, each no larger than a washtub, and several places where grayish bulges of tar or asphalt had pushed up through the grass.

  “There are several oil springs around,” Jacob said. “Miss Nesselrode wanted to see them, so we rode over to take a look. Injuns and some of the Californios come there to get oil for some treatments they give themselves.”

  “It is a strange place,” I said. “I’d like to come back again.”

  “Reckon you can do about as you wish when there’s no school. You talk about that with Miss Nesselrode. I don’t know what she has in mind, but you can bet she’s figurin’ on something. That woman’s mind never sets still, believe me.”

  “I like her.”

  “So do I,” Jacob agreed, “but let me warn you, although you aren’t likely to need it. Don’t cross her. She’s almighty pleasant. She’s a fine-looking young woman with a lovely smile and all that, but there’s cuttin’ steel under it, and don’t you be forgettin’ it.”

  We mounted up and started back, and Jacob said, “She wants you to ride around over this valley and get acquainted with the locality. Don’t ask me why. Maybe she just wants to be sure you don’t get lost sometime. Knowin’ her, I’d lay a good bit she’s got something else in mind.”

  We were unsaddling our horses when he spoke again. “Did you learn to speak any of that Cahuilla lingo? I mean, could you make them understand?”

  “Most of them spoke some Spanish. Francisco and his father know both Spanish and English. They know enough to get along, anyway.”

  “How about the Chumash?”

  “It is a different language, I think.”

  “She wants you to learn it, Johannes. She’s got something in mind.”

  We started for the house, and Miss Nesselrode was standing in the door, waiting for me. I knew right away that something had happened. Something was wrong.

  CHAPTER 23

  Miss Nesselrode rested a hand upon my shoulder, but she spoke to Jacob. “Will you come in, Mr. Finney? This is something you should know.”

  Her hand caressed the back of my head. “Johannes? You have a visitor. A guest.”

  It was dusk and the candles had been lighted. Something in her tone seemed to warn me. In my right hand I held my rifle and pistol belt, for I had been told never to ride without them.

  “You will not need those, Johannes. Come in, now.”

  She stepped aside to permit me to pass, then closed the door behind us.

  It was a moment not to be forgotten. The quiet room, the soft glow from the two candelabra, the old carved chest against the wall, the table, the chairs, the rag rugs upon the floor, and that tall, straight woman standing there, looking at me.

  Her hair was black, but white at the temples. She had allowed her rebozo to fall back to her shoulders. Her features were thin and what people called aristocratic.

  She was a beautiful and stately woman, no longer young, but a woman with presence, to whom years had brought added beauty. She had distinction, more than anyone I had known, perhaps more than anyone I would ever know.

  “Yes”—her voice was low, very pleasant—“of course! How like them you are!”

  She stepped forward, holding out a hand. “Johannes, I am your great-aunt, Elena. I have looked forward to this moment.”

  Great-aunt? My mother spoke fondly of her Aunt Elena, but if she was my grandfather’s sister, she must be an enemy. Yet she did not seem like an enemy. Her smile made me want to draw closer.

  “I am Johannes…” I hesitated, then added, “Johannes Verne.”

  “I know.” She seated herself, yet even in that simple movement there was something regal. “May we talk a little, Johannes?” She glanced at Miss Nesselrode. “You have been most kind. I have but little time. If he should call for me…at night I am almost never away.”

  “Of course.”

  Jacob came in quietly and took a seat on the far side of the room.

  “Please, Johannes, tell me of your mother.”

  My mother? What could I say? What could I tell her? Why should I tell her?

  “I loved her very much, Johannes. She was like my own daughter. And I liked your father. Had it been up to me…”

  “She was beautiful,” I said, “like you. We were only three, and we were always together. She was very happy, I believe, except when she thought about home. She told me many stories of Spain, and stories of the sea voyage to California, and of the landing.

  “My father offered to take her back to California, but she was afraid for him.”

  “He was always a bold one. I think he feared nothing. Tell me…where did you live? How did you live? I want to know everything.”

  “We moved often. My father had gone to sea with his father, who was a ship’s captain, as you would know, and he had planned to become one himself. Yet he could not return to the sea without leaving us, and he would not do that.

  “For a time he managed a livery stable in Philadelphia, and later he trained horses and managed a big farm in Kentucky. He was a marshal in a Missouri river town before that. I do not know its name. I was only a baby then, I guess.

  “Often he said he would like to find a permanent job so he could write. Mr. Longfellow, the poet, was also a professor, and Oliver Wendell Holmes was a physician. Mr. Emerson, I think, was a minister. Each had some way of living so he could write with freedom.

  “Many of the people who came to our house in Philadelphia were writers, like Mr. Lippard, who had long straggly hair and wore strange clothes. He lived in a big old ramshackle house of many rooms where all sorts of people lived. The house had been abandoned, I think, and they just moved in.

  “There was a Mr. Hirst, whom I saw only once or twice, and there was the editor, Edgar Poe. I think he w
as a writer, too.

  “Yes, I know he was because I remember Papa wondering what he might have written had everyone not wanted stories of ghosts, haunted houses, and tombs. Mr. Poe wrote what was wanted, like all of them.

  “Papa read me the stories of ‘Rip Van Winkle,’ and about the ‘Headless Horseman,’ and sometimes when Papa’s friends came around, Mama made coffee or tea for them. Mr. Poe liked to hear Papa talk about his years at sea when he was a boy, and he asked many questions. On one voyage Papa’s ship was blown far to the south when rounding Cape Horn, and they found themselves among icebergs and had a terrible time before they escaped.

  “Mama told stories, too, and one of them was about Boabdil, the Moor, who was sleeping in an enchanted cave with all his knights, awaiting the moment when he would awaken them to reconquer Spain.”

  “She sat with the men? She talked with them?”

  “It is not the custom. But they all insisted she be with them, for she knew so many stories. Some of them, I think, were stories you told her, for I remember she spoke of you sometimes.

  ‘Sometimes it became very late and they forgot I was not in bed, or maybe Mama just made believe she forgot, for she would say suddenly, ‘Oh, how awful! You should be in bed, young man!’ But if the stories were very good, she would make believe to forget again.

  “There was one story that made her sad. It was a story about a monster—”

  “A monster?”

  “A woman named Mary Shelley wrote the story. Her husband was a poet, I think. It was a story about a student named Frankenstein who made a man out of pieces of dead people. People thought the creature a monster, but he wasn’t really. Mama always felt sorry for the monster. I thought he’d be kind of scary.”

  For a moment there was silence in the room, and then Aunt Elena changed the subject. “You lived in Kentucky, you said?”

  “A man who met Papa at the livery stable gave him the job of training horses for racing. He liked the way Papa cared for the horses, and he said all the trainers he wanted were already employed and if Papa could produce a winning horse he would give him a share of the winnings.”

  “Did he never talk of going to sea again?”

  ‘Oh, no! By that time Mama was sick and Papa wanted to get out of the city where the air was better. Once when we were alone he said we must be very good to Mama because she was more ill than she believed. Papa would not take any kind of work where he could not look in upon Mama often.

  “Once I heard him talk to Mr. Poe about it, for his wife was ill also. Both of them had consumption, and it was considered a kind of aristocratic illness, whatever that is. People became pale and frail and all the doctors did was prescribe fine wines and special foods.

  “Papa said to Mama that he had no right to keep her where she was. He said, ‘In California you would soon be well. We must go back.’ But Mama would not go. She said Papa would be killed.

  “He said, ‘Do you think I would die so easily?’

  “ ‘No,’ she said, ‘but you might kill him, and that would be just as bad.’

  “Sometimes at night when they thought I was asleep they talked of me, worrying about what would become of me when they were gone, because by that time Papa was sick, too, and Mama knew it. After Mama died—”

  “How long ago?”

  “I was five, I think. I do not remember too well, but we lived in Kentucky then.”

  For several minutes I could not say anything, only remembering those last, long, lovely days when we could look out over the green pastures with their white fences and the beautiful horses running and playing there. Mama talked to me an awful lot then. I think she wanted to tell me everything, before…

  Aunt Elena had sat very still, reaching for every word I spoke. Sometimes her eyes filled with tears, sometimes her lips trembled, but she said nothing, and did not interrupt.

  “Mr. Poe’s wife died, too, someone said. I do not know, only that after Mama died two of the horses Papa had trained won their races and the owner gave Papa a share, as he had promised.

  “It was a very damp, rainy year and Papa was worse, so he quit his job and we came west.”

  “I see.” Aunt Elena sat very still; then she looked over at me. “Thank you, Johannes, for telling me. At least she was happy during those years. She had your father, and they had you.”

  She got to her feet. “I must go. Johannes, if you ever need me, please have Miss Nesselrode or Señor Finney come to me. In the meantime, you must be careful! About him there is nothing I can do. We have had words about this.

  “As yet, he knows nothing. I would know if he did. He believes you dead. He even talks of returning to Spain.

  “You must keep out of trouble! It was because of talk among the women about a fight at school that I heard of a boy named Johannes who was living at the home of Miss Nesselrode. I knew she had come west in the wagon with your father, and that Señor Finney had worked for Señor Farley on the same trip.”

  She started for the door, but Jacob got up suddenly. “Wait, ma’am. I’ll just take a look around outside first.”

  He was gone only a minute. “It’s all right, ma’am. A body can’t be too careful.”

  At the door Aunt Elena stooped suddenly and kissed me on the forehead; then, embarrassed, she slipped out and disappeared in the darkness.

  Miss Nesselrode came up behind me and rested a hand on my shoulder. “I believe she loves you very much, Johannes, just as she loved your mother.”

  “She does not know me.”

  “She sees your mother in you. Tia Elena has no children, and your mother was like a daughter to her. Now it is you of whom she thinks.”

  “She is a nice lady.”

  “Yes, she is. I am afraid she took a great risk in coming here tonight. If your grandfather should discover you are alive and that she came to see you, he would be furious. He might lock her up.”

  “He could do that?”

  “He could and he would.”

  * * *

  That night I did not sleep, but thought of Tia Elena. In some ways she was like Miss Nesselrode, yet different, and she spoke English amazingly well, although with an accent. I found I liked thinking of her, for she was a relative, of my own blood, and I knew of no others to whom I could speak.

  Yet there was a restlessness in me, a longing for the desert and the mountains. Where was Francisco? Had he forgotten me?

  A longing for the wild places was in me, and there was something else, too, some strange yearning, something that whispered to me on the wind, whispered words I could not hear, calling me back to where the lonely coyotes spoke to the moon and the great cacti would stretch agonized arms toward the sky.

  I could not go back. Not yet. My father would have wished me to go to school, and Miss Nesselrode had asked me what I wished to become. I suspected it was not only that she wished to know but that she wished to start me thinking of it. She wished me to be making up my mind.

  When morning came, I walked to the bookstore with Miss Nesselrode, where I was to help her. Two handsome Californios rode past, splendid on their fine horses with silver-mounted saddles. They doffed their sombreros, bowing gracefully to Miss Nesselrode, and I watched them with envy.

  Their fine horses almost danced as the riders went down the dusty street in their fine clothes and large-roweled spurs. Surely no one in the world could ride like the Californios!

  “It is a pity,” she said.

  “What?” I was startled.

  “Their world is going, going very fast, Johannes. They inherited large ranchos, they live well, they have no worries, they work a little at the roundups, they go to fandangos, or bailes, they flirt with the girls, and they give no thought to tomorrow. It is enough that today the sun shines, that they have a splendid new suit trimmed in gold or silver, that they have handsome horses. They
do not realize their world is gone.”

  “Gone?”

  “Yes, Johannes, change was sure to occur, and now it has. The Boston men have come.”

  CHAPTER 24

  “I do not understand,” I said.

  “It is very simple. The Californios are wonderful people. They are gracious, hospitable, and to those of their kind they are considerate. Yet in many ways they are like children. Most of them have never dealt with money. They have bartered for what they needed, with each other, with the Indians, and with the few traders.

  “The Boston men, as they call them, are shrewd, hardworking Yankees, and they are going to change all this. I will not like it so well, although I am a part of it, but the change is inevitable. There is no malice in it. The Yankees are simply businessmen. When a Californio wants something, a silver-mounted saddle, a fine suit of clothes worked with gold and silver, he does not question the cost. If he does not have money, he borrows it, and all loans are at compound interest, compounded by the month.

  “Those young men who passed us? The suits they wear would cost two thousand dollars each. The young man who saluted so gracefully? He used to have a rancho of forty thousand acres.”

  “Used to?”

  “Yes, Johannes. He has not realized it yet, but twenty thousand acres of his rancho are mine. He has borrowed several times, and although he has been reminded that the interest is due, he just smiles. Most of those who loan the Californios money do not remind them when their notes fall due, and their land is lost to them.”

  We came to the store and I unlocked the door. Inside, Miss Nesselrode removed her hat and the mantilla that had covered her shoulders.

  “Their world has changed, Johannes. The time for playing in the sun is over. If they wish to survive in this new world, they must work. They must plant orange or lemon trees as Mr. Wolfskill has been doing, or plant grain.”