The Lonesome Gods Page 12

  He knew nothing of the story of Tahquitz, so I told him the little I knew. He listened attentively, then said, “I ain’t one to scoff at superstitions. To my thinkin’ there’s always some truth to the stories you hear.” He pulled off the other boot. “Then this place will be safe. We’ll just leave any truck you don’t need.”

  Lying awake, listening to Jacob Finney snoring lightly in the other room, I wondered about Los Angeles. It had been long since I had visited a town, so long I scarcely remembered anything before Santa Fe except glimpses here and there, little things that clung to the memory. And Santa Fe was nearly four years ago.

  When morning came, I would take a hundred dollars in gold and leave the rest hidden. I would have my own horse, my own pistol and rifle. When I wanted to return, I could saddle up and ride. Traveling in the wild country was an old story now.

  * * * *

  FRANCISCO APPEARED AS I was putting the rifle in its scabbard. “You go?” he asked.

  “To Los Angeles,” I said, a little proudly.

  “It is far,” he said.

  “Five days,” I said, “perhaps six. I am not sure.”

  “My papa was there. There are many big houses.”

  “No doubt.”

  “You will not come back.”

  “My home is here, in this house. My father is buried here. I will come back.”

  “You will not come back.” His face was solemn.

  “You are my friend, Francisco. You will always be my friend. I shall come back to this house, and I leave my father’s things here. I leave even the books.”

  “Ah, the books.” He knew how I valued them. “Perhaps you will come back.”

  So we rode away when the sun was touching the peaks of Mount San Jacinto and Mount San Gorgonio, and the pass we followed led into the darkness that lay between them.

  As we topped the first rise, I looked back at the scattered palms, the mesquite, and the few huts, even the flat roof of the store. My house was hidden among the dunes, and I wondered about my unknown visitor who borrowed books and left others. Well, he would be pleased, I thought, to find two new books on the shelf. I had found them among my father’s things and I placed them in the place from which he had last borrowed a book.

  Looking back, I could see the Leaning Rock at the mouth of Chino Canyon. Some named it the Calling Rock, and it is said that when one is away the Calling Rock calls you to return. It is also said that if you turn and see it as you leave, you will always come back. I looked long, for I wanted to come back. Francisco was there, and he was my friend.

  Jacob spoke of Los Angeles. “Is it by the sea?” I asked, remembering my father had come to it on a ship.

  “No, it is twenty miles from the sea. At least twenty miles.”

  “Will we see the sea?”

  “There are low hills and mountains from which it can be seen. There are islands far out across the water. You will see them. It is said that long ago the Chumash Indians made plank boats and went to the islands. They painted them red. I do not know why.”

  “My father told me of them.”

  “It was a custom, I suppose. Remember, now! Tell no one you have come from the desert. Do not even speak of the desert. You have come by sea, newly arrived from the States. Before we arrive in town, you will change into your city clothes.”

  “But they are small for me now,” I protested.

  “No matter. We will get others in Los Angeles. You have been months at sea. You would naturally have grown. You must be careful! There is always talk, and even the gentes de razón have large ears. If it is discovered you are from the desert, if they know you are your father’s son, you will be in danger.”

  “I will remember.” After a few steps by the horses I said, “I have no friends in Los Angeles. To whom could I speak?”

  “You will make friends. Also, there is Miss Nesselrode, and I, too, am your friend. Most people talk too much, anyway.”

  We rode on, and my thoughts returned to words my father had spoken, for I was much with him, and being silent, I heard a great many things which I wondered about later. There was much I did not understand and much I came to understand as I grew older. But there was much to think about when I was alone, and often I lay awake wondering about things that were said.

  There was a time when a man spoke very impatiently to my father. He had seen a copy of the Iliad lying on the table. “You are reading this” he asked.

  “I have read it many times. Now I read it to my son.”

  “But he is too young!” The man protested, almost angry.

  “Is he? Who is to say? How young is too young to begin to discover the power and the beauty of words? Perhaps he will not understand, but there is a clash of shields and a call of trumpets in those lines. One cannot begin too young nor linger too long with learning.

  “Who knows how much he will remember? Who knows how deep the intellect? In some year yet unborn he may hear those words again, or read them, and find in them something hauntingly familiar, as of something long ago heard and only half-remembered.

  “Yet perhaps it is only that I like to hear those rolling cadences. People, I think, read too much to themselves; they should read aloud from time to time to hear the language, to feel the sounds.

  “Homer told his stories accompanied by the lyre, and it was the best way, I think, to tell such stories. Men needed stories to lead them to create, to build, to conquer, even to survive, and without them the human race would have vanished long ago. Men strive for peace, but it is their enemies that give them strength, and I think if man no longer had enemies, he would have to invent them, for his strength only grows from struggle.”

  My father had waved his hand about at the stark Arizona mountains and the desert where the wagon rested.

  “Homer sang of his ‘wine-dark seas,’ but we, I think, will sing of these. You will find that our Homers will sing of the plains, the deserts, and the mountains. Our Trojans may appear in feathered war bonnets, but none the less noble for them. Our Achilles may be Jim Bowie or some other like him, our Ajax might be Davy Crockett or Daniel Boone.”

  My father was a tall man, and now he stood up. “My friend,” he said, “I do not know what else I shall leave my son, but if I have left him a love of language, of literature, a taste for Homer, for the poets, the people who have told our story—and by ‘our’ I mean the story of mankind—then he will have legacy enough.”

  Was this, then, this ride to Los Angeles, was this like a voyage among the Greek islands? Was this to be part of an epic? If so, it was a dusty one! And I was wishing Jacob would decide to rest the horses, because I was tired. Yet, looking over my left shoulder and turning a little, I could see a fine sweep of mountains, and the pines that grew there.

  Again I remembered those long plains over which we had passed, the great tower and broken battlements of El Morro, the magnificent vistas of plain, mountain, and forest. Whatever else my father had given me, he had given me a chance to see these, to know them, to live with them.

  I thought of Francisco. Who had been his Homer? What stories had he heard beside the campfire when the winter winds chilled the flesh? For it was in the winter the Indians told their stories.

  Over the fire that night, Jacob warned me, “Don’t you be expectin’ too much. It will remind you some’at of Santa Fe, but Miss Nesselrode, she says we shouldn’t be fooled by it. She says Los Angeles will be a great city, an’ the best thing ever happened to it was when those beaver pelts fell in price. She told me one time, she said, ‘Mr. Finney, it will be silk hats that build Los Angeles, because when over in Europe they stopped wearing beaver hats and switched to silk, it started all of those very wise, very bold mountain men looking for new ways to get rich.’”

  He added sticks to the fire. “Now, don’t you be judgin’ all Californios by your grandpa. By an’ large, there aren’t any finer folks livin’. Generous to a fault, give you the shirt off their backs, and do it graciously and with an air.


  “There’s another thing. They’re proud of bein’ Californios. They don’t consider themselves Spanish, nor do they think of themselves as Mexicans, although there’s plenty of those, too. They call themselves Californios, and although Los Angeles ain’t much, right now it is the biggest town in California, and you’ll see why they love it.

  “But she’s rough! I mean, almighty rough! There’s good folks aplenty, but there’s some of the meanest people unhung. Kill you soon as look at you.

  “Pistol or knife, but mostly it’s knives in Sonora Town. Back to the east, when a man wants to do you harm, he takes up a shootin’ iron of some kind, but out here it can be a shootin’ iron or it can be a knife or anything handy. You got to remember that folks were killin’ each other with rocks and clubs for a million years before anybody invented a pistol. So be careful. Learn to handle yourself and to handle weapons, but mostly you just learn to guard your tongue. A man out here who speaks careless of others will soon only have a marker in the graveyard.”

  We had been lying in our blankets, and the last coals were smoldering when suddenly Jacob raised up on his elbow, knowing I was awake.

  “You listen to Miss Nesselrode, boy. She ain’t no mountain man, but she’s one of those who will make the wheels turn. I seen that right off.

  “You just set back an’ watch that woman operate. Ever’ time she flutters her lashes or turns her parasol, she’s figured out some new way to make a dollar!”

  But I was not thinking of Miss Nesselrode, nor of my father; I was just thinking of how wonderful it was to be riding west into a new land, and to be sleeping under the stars.

  My last thought was not of that warm and sunny place called Los Angeles, it was of my grandfather, the one who had my father killed and who created the fear with which I lived.

  Chapter 18

  THE NIGHT WAS clear and cold, with many stars. The wind off the sea was fresh when we rode down to the water’s edge. Out upon the water we could see lights from a dark hulk beneath bare poles, a ship at anchor.

  “Brought you roundabout, Hannes. We’re ridin’ into town like I met you here as you come off the boat. We’ll stay the night down here at the harbor.”

  He turned his horse and rode toward a shack that stood back from the water’s edge near a small dock where two boats were tied up. There was a corral beside the house, with two horses already there.

  A single light was burning in the shack, and Jacob rapped on the door without dismounting.

  “Who’s there?”

  “Jacob. It’s Jake Finney, Cap.”

  The door opened and a square-shouldered old man stared from him to me. “Is this the young rascal who sailed around from Bedford with me?”

  “Yes, sir,” I said, “and a fine voyage it was, too, except for that bit of rough weather off the Horn.”

  The old man stared at me, and then he smiled. “Well! He’s got a quick tongue, Jacob. Let’s hope he has the brain to go with it.”

  “I liked stopping at the Galápagos,” I said, enjoying it, “and the turtles we took aboard there.”

  The captain glared at me. “Who did you say this lad was, Jacob?”

  “Zachary Verne’s boy. Grandson of old Adam Verne, if you remember.”

  “Remember? How could I forget him? My first two voyages to the Pacific were made with him. Adam Verne’s grandson, eh? Well, I’ll be damned!”

  He took his pipe from his mouth. “Where’s your pa, boy? I knew him well.”

  “He’s gone, sir. Passed away. Murdered, actually.”

  “That’s why the trickery, Cap. The lad’s in danger. They believed they’d done for him, too.”

  “Then why risk it, lad? Come aboard my ship and you can sail to China. I’ll sign you on as cabin boy, and before long you’ll learn to navigate and be a ship’s master like your grandpa.”

  “Thank you, sir, but I am expected in Los Angeles.”

  “Miss Nesselrode will see to his education, Cap. She promised Zack Verne she’d do that.”

  “Nesselrode, eh? Well, I’d not say it of another woman I know, but if she intends to see after the lad, it will be done. If there’s ever a woman should wear pants, it’s she.”

  “It would be a pity, sir, lovely as she is.”

  “Eh? Oh, yes, of course. She’s a handsome woman. That’s the trouble, Jacob, dealing with a handsome woman is unsettling to a man. When he should have his mind on business, he’s thinkin’ of other things.”

  He stepped back. “Come in, lad. You an’ me can talk some while Jacob puts up the horses.”

  It was a long, low room with tiers of bunks along one side, all neatly made up. Directly ahead was a table and two benches, and on the left side a fireplace with a small fire going.

  “The bunks are clean. No bugs, I mean. You pick whichever suits you and dump your gear.” He seated himself at the table and reached down to the hearth for the coffeepot. “You drink coffee, lad? I don’t think much of it for young folks, but there’s nothing else hot.”

  “I’ll have a bit, sir. Just a bit.”

  The captain knocked the ash from his pipe on the edge of the hearth and began to stoke it anew. “Knew your pa, but your grandpa better. They were good men, good men.” He struck a match and sucked on the pipe.

  “Your pa was killed? Must have taken some doin’, as I remember him. He was a fightin’ man when need be.”

  “There were several of them, sir, and he took time to push me out of the way. He got at least one of them, wounded another, I think.”

  “That’s like him. There was no quit to him, but always a thoughtful man.” The captain puffed at his pipe and glanced at me from quizzical blue eyes. “If you an’ Miss Nesselrode don’t hit it off, lad, you just be on the beach next time I come to port. You’ll be welcome aboard. You’ve the sea in your blood, and I’ll see you’ve a chance.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “That Miss Nesselrode, now. Jacob tells me you came west on the wagon with her. She get a case on your pa?”

  “I don’t think so, sir. I think she liked him, maybe felt sorry for him. He was very sick, you know.”

  “A takin’ woman. Make some man a fine wife if he was up to it. It would take a strong man, a man sure of himself to cope with her.

  “She’s a pretty woman, lad, and pretty women sometimes can do things no man would attempt. Mighty few men will say no to a pretty woman, no matter what she’s after.

  “Talked with her some. She come aboard, maybe two years or more ago, said she wanted to talk. Well, now, that old ship of mine is no lady’s boudoir. She’s a workin’ vessel, shipshape an’ neat, but no comforts, mind you.

  “No matter. She come aboard, drank coffee with me, and asked if I was sailin’ to China.

  “To China? No such idea entered my head. I was buying cargo, selling what I brought, and contemplating another voyage to Hawaii, maybe.

  “China, she says, so I ask her why I should go to China. She smiles very nice—she’s got a lovely smile, that lady—and says to sell furs. That it is the best market for otter.

  “I tell her I don’t have any such skins and she gives me that smile and says, ‘But I do, Captain. I have three hundred and forty-two otter skins, some beaver, marten, and two hundred cowhides.’

  “Lad, I was flabbergasted. Here was this handsome young woman who should be settin’ at tea with some other young ladies, tellin’ me she had all those skins for sale.

  “Next thing I know is, I’m makin’ a deal to sail to China. I warned her there was risk. She said she understood that. ‘Nothing is gained without some risk, Captain.’

  “We talked a bit and she asked questions, very sharp questions about markets, products, and shipping matters. I tell you, lad, there’s a shrewd woman!”

  Jacob came in, chose a bunk, and then came over to the table. “Weather changing,” he commented. “We’re in for some rain, and we can use it.”

  He paused. “Cap, have you heard any talk about war with Mexico? Nob
ody out here knows anything, but some men came through from Texas who say there’s a lot of hard feeling.”

  “I’ve heard rumors. What’s the feeling here?”

  Jacob chuckled. “These are good people, Cap. Good-natured. They want no trouble with anybody, but right now they have closer ties with us than with Mexico. They want to be known as Californios and only that. Push ’em, and they’ll fight…there’s always cuttings and shootings among the rougher crowd in Sonora Town…but mostly the people here just want to go their own way. If it comes to trouble with Mexico, I believe California would stay out of it unless some hothead starts trouble. If it becomes a matter of honor, the Californios will fight.”

  “Their trade is mostly with the States,” the captain commented, “and I hear complaints about governors appointed from Mexico who don’t understand conditions here.”

  “They want a California man for governor,” Jacob said, “and you can’t blame them. It takes too long to get word back and forth from Mexico City, and some of their rulings don’t make sense here. These are good people. Let them alone and they’ll be all right.”

  “They won’t be let alone, Jacob. You know that. It is too rich a country. Jedediah Smith showed the way across the desert and mountains. Ewing Young and his party got through also, and there have been others. They were just a beginning.”

  Far into the night they talked, often of things my father and mother had discussed. Everything about California, that mysterious place of menace, had fascinated me, yet finally I fell asleep, curled in my bunk.

  When I awakened, Jacob had already saddled the horses.

  “Sleep well? There’s a place up on the trail where we’ll breakfast.” He stopped, one hand on the saddle. “They have hot chocolate. Figured you’d like that for breakfast.

  “The captain, he went back to his ship last night.” Jacob pointed toward it. “He’s anchored about three-quarters of a mile out. When the weather’s right, he can come right in over the bar, as he doesn’t draw more’n about nine feet. Someday folks will get busy and deepen that channel, and you’ll see ships in here, dozens of ’em.