The Lonesome Gods Read online

  The wagon slowed down and Doug Farley spoke over his shoulder. “A little open through here. Stand ready.”

  It was dark inside the wagon. Outside it was still light, but it would not be so for long. I saw Doug Farley’s hand come back to his six-shooter to see if it was where he wanted it. I could see Jacob, sitting easy in the saddle, but Mr. Kelso was away off ahead of us now, around a bend in the canyon.

  Now the horses began to trot, Doug Farley talking easy to them. Rounding the bend in the canyon, we could see a silvery gleam of water far ahead. My mouth was dry, and I tried to swallow.

  My father put his hand on my shoulder. “It’s all right, son, all right. These are good men.”

  Farley was talking softly to my father. “You know the place, Verne? Cottonwood Island?”

  “I do.” My father paused; then he said quietly, “Unless they’ve spotted us, it’s unlikely the Mohaves will be around there at night. That big mountain on the left ahead is Dead Mountain, where the Mohaves’ spirits go when they die. They don’t like to be around there at night.”

  Farley slowed the horses through some soft sand. The wheels only hissed slightly as the sand fell from them.

  Kelso suddenly came in out of the dark. “Looks good, Doug. Water’s no more’n twenty inches deep this side of the island.”

  “Pray to God we don’t have a flash flood upriver,” Farley muttered.

  It was all downhill now, and Farley held the horses back, saving them, I guess, for a hard run if need be. I had listened to my father talk with other men and with my mother and could understand some of what was happening.

  It was dark and still. The stars were bright in the sky, and we could smell dampness from the river. Farley swung the team to avoid a boulder and bumped over another. He swore softly at the sound.

  “Deep cuts in the gravel here an’ there,” Farley commented. “Kelso will find one we can use, somewhere the bank’s broken down. You know the Colorado—changes all the time. You can’t count on the channel one time to the next.”

  “There are waves of mud underwater, too,” my father said. “I’ve known them to take down strong swimmers.”

  After that, nobody spoke. In the darkness of the wagon, I could hear the people breathing. My father took a drink from a bottle. He was not a drinking man, but sometimes it stilled his cough, and nobody wanted that now.

  “Is there a road?” Miss Nesselrode inquired.

  “Ma’am,” Farley spoke over his shoulder, “there ain’t even the ghost of a trail beyond what moccasins leave.”

  It was quiet again. Even Fletcher was still. I heard him grunt a little as the rear wheel hit a rock. Then we heard the click of hooves on stone and Farley drew up, resting the horses. A shape loomed out of the dark. It was Kelso.

  “I don’t like it, Doug. I don’t hear the frogs.”

  “Maybe we aren’t close enough.”

  “I was right up there. I haven’t heard a coyote in the last half-hour.”

  “Not much choice now,” Farley said. “Better to try it than get caught out here in the open.”

  “There’ll be aplenty of them.”

  “Nobody said this was a picnic. There may be deeper water on the other side. Worse comes to worst, we can cut loose the horses and try to float downriver.”

  Kelso agreed. “Water’s deeper in Pyramid Canyon, right below here, but that takes us right into the heart of Mohave country.”

  “Where’s Jacob?”

  “Ain’t seen him in a while.”

  My father said, “If it’s all right with you, Farley, I’ll ride up there on the seat with you. This looks like close work, and I can handle my pistols better.”

  “Glad to have you.” He clucked to the horses and slapped them gently with the lines. “All right, Kelso, stay close now. We’re going in.”

  There was no sound but the creak and bump of our wagon and of the hooves of the horses as they walked. Kelso was ahead and a little to one side, and I could see he was holding a pistol in his right hand.

  “Bank breaks off right ahead.” Kelso was back beside us again. He spoke softly. “Keep right ahead, and you can cross the end of the island. No dead trees or fallen stuff in the way.”

  Suddenly the horses went down before us, the wagon bumped, slid, then went over the edge. The horses were in the water. “Gravel bottom here,” Farley commented. “I’ve crossed here a-horseback.”

  The current was strong. I could feel the thrust of it against the wagon, high though our wheels were. Once the wagon was pushed and almost swung end-wise in the current, but Farley spoke to the horses and they leaned into their collars and pulled the wagon straight.

  We could almost taste the coolness from the water. Farley’s voice to the horses was low, confident, strong. How long we were crossing, I do not know, but suddenly the horses started to scramble and pulled us up out of the water.

  We could see the dark loom of the trees on our right, a few scattered ones just ahead. It was almost a half-mile across the island at this point, or so I remembered someone saying. We moved on, and there was no sound.

  Fletcher swore, slowly, bitterly. Miss Nesselrode spoke primly: “Please, sir, it is no time for that.”

  Fletcher was silent, and I wondered what Fraser was thinking. Now he would have something to write in his little book. If he got through this alive.

  Leaves rustled softly. Kelso was guiding us through brush and fallen logs.

  “It’s a trap,” Fletcher said, “a bloody trap.”

  They came out of the trees then, a dark wave of them, coming in silence that suddenly broke into a weird cacophony of yells. Farley’s whip cracked like a pistol shot and the mustangs leaped into their harness. The wagon lunged forward, and I saw my father’s pistol dart flame.

  A wild face painted with streaks of white suddenly appeared in the back curtains of the wagon as a warrior attempted to climb in.

  Miss Nesselrode thrust her rifle against his face and pulled the trigger. The face, and the head, disappeared.

  Chapter 4

  PAPA’S PISTOL WAS empty and he passed it back to me and began shooting with the other. He did not shoot hastily, yet he did fire rapidly, and there was a difference, for he seemed to make every shot count. Swiftly the Indians faded from the scene. Their ambush having failed, they would try other tactics.

  The wagon raced on, and suddenly there was a shout. “Finney’s down! Finney’s shot!”

  Deliberately Farley pulled up, and before he could speak, my father was gone from his seat. I saw him running back, I saw an Indian with a club start toward him, and my father fired; the Indian dropped.

  In the vague half-light I could see Finney, or someone, pinned down by a horse and struggling to get from under it. My father raced up, fired another shot, and then offered a hand to Finney.

  Somehow he got him free, and together, Finney firing now, for I knew my father’s pistol was empty, they retreated to the wagon as Kelso raced back, firing.

  They scrambled into the wagon and I passed the loaded pistol to my father and took the other. The wagon moved, jolted over a small log, and plunged ahead.

  Miss Nesselrode, her heavy rifle in her hands, waited at the rear of the wagon, Mrs. Weber beside her. Miss Nesselrode was lifting her rifle to fire when the wagon pulled up so sharply she almost fell from her seat.

  Looking past my father, who had again scrambled to the seat beside Farley, I could see the dark waters of the river rushing by, much swifter here, and obviously much deeper.

  The western bank of the river was there, not thirty yards away, but the water looked deep and strong.

  “We’ve no choice.” Papa spoke quietly. “There are too many of them back there, and by daybreak we will be surrounded and all escape cut off.”

  “Steady, boys!” Farley spoke gently to the team. Urging them on, he talked to them quietly. They hesitated, then plunged in. The current caught the wagon and slewed it around downstream from the team, but they fought for footing,
dug in, and leaned into their harness. For a moment they simply held their own, and then they began to move slowly. Guiding them diagonally across the current, Farley pointed them toward a gap in the brush.

  Slowly, steadily, they gained ground. Suddenly it seemed they were only belly-deep; then they were climbing out on to the shore and up a dry wash that emptied into the river.

  “They’ll be coming after us,” Farley commented. He drew up, glancing back into the darkness of the wagon. “Is anybody hurt?”

  “Verne has been shot,” Finney said.

  “I’ll be all right. It is nothing.”

  The team started again and the wagon rolled ahead; then, when the bank was low, they went over the edge to higher ground.

  Farley turned the team southwest and started them out at a steady walk. Kelso came up beside the wagon. “She’s all clear so far as I can make out,” he told Farley. “And flat—hard desert sand and rock. No problem.”

  Miss Nesselrode said to my father, “Sir? If you will come back here, I can put a compress on that wound. It will help to control the bleeding until daylight.”

  “Very well.” My father moved back into the darkness of the wagon.

  All night long the wagon rolled westward and south. Sometimes I slept, sometimes I was awake. “We can’t make more than ten or twelve miles by daylight,” Fletcher was saying, “and the horses must rest.”

  When I awakened, gray light was filtering into the wagon. Fletcher was asleep, as was my father. Farley had crawled back into the wagon, and Finney was driving. Crawling up beside him, I looked out at the bleakness of the desert, all gray sand and black rock in the vague light before the dawn.

  “Lost m’ horse,” Finney said gloomily, “and a durned good saddle. They killed him. That there was a good horse, too.”

  The horses plodded wearily along, heads low. The fire was gone from them now, and I could see an angry, bloody bullet burn along one’s hip. Ahead of us was a rugged, rocky range of mountains, and I could see no way through. I said this, and Finney nodded. “Does look that way, but it ain’t so. There’s a couple of passes, such as they are.

  “Doug Farley, there, he don’t make many mistakes, and he’s figured this trip mighty close. Right up yonder there’s a place where we’ll hole up for a while. A few hours, anyway. There’s water an’ grass. We’ll let these mustangs feed a mite and then pull out again.”

  “Will the Indians come again?”

  “Sure.” He paused, thinking it over. “Injuns are given to notions, but the Mohaves are fighters, and unless they take a contrary notion, they may follow us for days.

  “Y’see, son, they expected an ambush would do it, but Farley bein’ what he is, we was ready for them and there were just more guns than the Injuns expected in one wagon.”

  When I looked from the back of the wagon, I could see the gleam of the river far behind. We had come further than I would have believed, and we were higher, for we had been climbing steadily.

  Farley turned the team off into a hollow among the rocks. There was a little grass, and only enough water for the horses in a small tank where the rocks captured runoff water.

  Finney, carrying his rifle, went immediately to a place high in the rocks where he could watch our trail.

  When I saw my father in the light, I ran to him. He was pale and his shirt was all bloody.

  “Here,” Mrs. Weber said, “I’ll fix that.” She helped him off with his shirt, and we could see blood oozing from a hole in his shoulder. The shaft of an arrow with feathers on it was sticking out of his back. “I cut the head off,” Papa said. “I thought you could draw it out.”

  Miss Nesselrode’s face was pale. “I’ll try,” she said. “It got in the way of my compress,” she added.

  Farley came over. “Better let me do it, ma’am. I’ve done it before.”

  Taking a firm grip on my father’s shoulder, he drew the arrow out, carefully holding it straight so as not to enlarge the wound. I could see the sweat break out on my father’s forehead and face, and his eyes were very wide, but he made no sound. I was sad for him. His shoulders seemed so thin and frail, and I remembered them as strong and muscular when I was in his arms, only…I did not know how long ago.

  “You saved Mr. Finney’s life, you know,” Miss Nesselrode said.

  “Each of us does what he can,” Papa said. “We are traveling together.”

  “You are a hero!” Miss Nesselrode said positively.

  Papa smiled at her. “It is an empty word out here, ma’am. It is a word for writers and sitters by the fire. Out here a man does what the situation demands. Out on the frontier we do not have heroes, only people doing what is necessary at the time.”

  Kelso squatted on his heels against a rock, his hat off, head tilted back, eyes closed. I thought he did not look like the man he was, but one who my mother would have said should have been a poet.

  Fraser was sitting cross-legged on the sand. As Farley walked by him, Fraser looked up at him and said, “I failed. I could not do it. I failed.”

  Farley stopped, taking out his pipe. “You failed? How?”

  “I could not shoot at first, and then I could hit nothing.”

  “You fired? How many times?”

  “Only two shots. I was clumsy. I am a failure.”

  Farley stoked his pipe and said, “That’s two more shots than I got off in my first Injun fight. It all happened so fast I set there with a rifle in my hands and never fired a shot. You done all right, Fraser. Just don’t worry about it, an’ take your time. If you fire only once, make it count.”

  Fletcher sat by himself, his face sullen. How many shots did he fire? I did not see. I did not know. Perhaps many.

  There was shade where we were, and as the sun rose higher, it was needed. Miss Nesselrode helped my father put on a fresh shirt. It was his last one, and he was a man who liked fresh clothing, and to bathe often. He stifled a cough and Miss Nesselrode said, “You are a sick man, Mr. Verne.”

  “So it has been said.” He smiled at her. “Thank you, ma’am. It was kind of you to help me. I am afraid I shall have a stiff shoulder for a while.”

  “Your little boy loaded your pistols. How does he know to do such things?”

  “I taught him, ma’am. I have also taught him to respect weapons and handle them with care. We wish there were no violence in the world, but unhappily there are those who use it against the weak. I would not be one of those.”

  He smiled again. “You did very well yourself, ma’am.”

  She blushed. “I did what seemed necessary.”

  “Of course. It is that way, is it not?”

  “Will you be staying in Los Angeles?”

  Papa smiled a faint smile. “Perhaps…for a few days. Somehow I do not believe I shall be staying anywhere very long. Men and civilizations are alike, ma’am. They are born, they grow to strength, they mature, grow old, and die. It is the way of all things.

  “At least,” he added, “I am returning to the sea, where I came from. As a boy I planned to be a ship’s officer, as my father was, but then I came to California.”

  “You changed?”

  “I fell in love, ma’am. I fell in love with a gloriously beautiful Spanish girl whom I saw going to church. It changed my life, and hers too, I am afraid.”

  “She is the boy’s mother?”

  “She was. We lost her, ma’am. I am taking the boy to his grandparents.”

  There was a long silence. I sat in the shadow of a great rock with my eyes closed like Mr. Kelso. It was very quiet.

  Finney came down from his post and took a pull from a water bag. “Nothin’ so far,” he said to Farley. “We got us a good view from up yonder.”

  “Want me to spell you?”

  “Sit tight. I’m good for a couple of hours longer.” He glanced over at me. “Come up an’ join me after you’ve et. You can help me look for boogers.”

  “All right.”

  “…you ran away into the desert?” Miss Ness
elrode was talking to my father. “They pursued you?”

  “Yes, ma’am. There were many of them. They had men watching at the river crossings, in the towns, at the water holes.”

  “However did you escape?”

  My father was growing tired. His voice showed it. “We have never escaped. We only believed we had, ma’am. Now I am taking his grandson back to him because there is no one else.”

  There was another long silence, and then she said, “I could take him.”

  My father’s eyes opened and he looked at her and said, “Yes, I believe you would, but first…first we must try his own blood, his own people.”

  “Even if they hate you?”

  My father shrugged. “What is hate to me? What they feel toward me does not matter. It is my son who matters. He must have a home.”

  Slowly the day waned on, and after we had eaten a little, I climbed the rocks to where Finney lay, taking his beef and bread to him.

  From the crest of the rocks, under some cedar trees, we could look out across a magnificent stretch of canyons and broken, eroded land to where the river was. The mountains were blue with distance, and cloud shadows lay upon the desert.

  “It is so dry. How does anything live?”

  Finney wiped the crumbs from his lips. “They fit themselves to it, son. They adapt. The animals, the plants, all of them.

  “Ever see a kangaroo rat?”

  “No.”

  “Well, he’s sort of a ground squirrel, you might say. Has him a tail two, three times as long as his body, seems like. He can jump like you wouldn’t believe.

  “Now, that there kangaroo rat, he doesn’t drink. He gets all the moisture he needs from what he eats. An’ off down south of here along the dry streambeds you’ll find some trees called smoke trees. That’s because from a distance they look like smoke. Well, you take a seed from one of those trees and plant it, and nothing happens. Something in that tree knows that seed will need water to grow, so the trees grow along the dry washes, and when they drop their seeds the seeds are washed away by flash floods, and while being washed away they are banged around by the rocks in the dry wash, smashed against one rock by another, rolled over, and banged again. Then, when that seed finally lodges somewhere, it will be along the bank of one of those arroyos, as we call ’em, and it will grow where from time to time it can get water.”