The Lonesome Gods Read online

  Finney nodded toward the desert. “Look yonder. Some folks start scannin’ afar off, and gradually work closer an’ closer to theirselves. I do it the other way because if somethin’ is close, I want to know it. I look slowly from as far as I can see to one side, to as far as I can see to the other, right close in front of me. I look for movement or something that doesn’t fit, some wrong shadow or something.

  “Then I look a little further out and sweep the field again with my eyes, and further and further until I’m at the limit of my vision, whatever that is.

  “Of course, you pay especial attention to good hiding places or ways that can be traveled without being seen.

  “This sort of thing you learn by doin’. Your pa, now, Farley tells me he’s a first-rate desert man. None better, Farley says, an’ from Farley that’s high praise.

  “Well, you try to be better. You learn from him. Learn from the Injuns, they’ve done lived with it, an’ maybe from me, Kelso, an’ Farley.”

  He glanced at me. “Is that Nesselrode woman settin’ her cap for your pa?”

  “No. I don’t think so. She is just being friendly, I think.” Then I said, “My father is sick. She knows that.”

  “I reckon so.” He was silent for several minutes and then he said, “I come an’ I go, son, but you all just remember. You got you a friend in Jacob Finney. You need anything, you come to Jacob. Or send word, and I’ll come to you.”

  He finished the last crumbs of his beef and bread and added, “Folks out west stand by one another. It’s the only way. An’ your pa surely didn’t waste no time unloadin’ from that wagon when I went down.

  “Why, I’d hardly hit ground, with Injuns comin’ up on me, when he was there, shootin’ an’ helpin’. That’s a man, son, an’ don’t you forget it.”

  Suddenly he pointed. “Look yonder! That’s desert! Real ol’ desert! But let me tell you somethin’. It’s been called ‘hell with the fires out,’ an’ that’s a fair description, but there’s life out there, boy! Life! You can live with the desert if you learn it. You can live with it, live in it, live off of it, but you got to do it the desert’s way an’ you got to know the rules.

  “But never take it lightly, son! If you do, she’ll rise right up, an’ the next thing you know, the wind is playin’ music in your ribs and honin’ your skull with sand. You take it from me, son, you just take it from me.”

  Chapter 5

  MY FATHER WAS asleep when I climbed down from the lookout. The few shadows had thinned and it was very hot. Mrs. Weber sat in the wagon’s partial shade, occasionally fanning herself with her hat.

  Doug Farley looked up at me from where he sat near the rock wall. “How’s things up yonder?”

  “We didn’t see anything.”

  “This hour, it isn’t likely, but it doesn’t mean they aren’t out there.”

  “No, sir.”

  “You pay attention to Jacob, boy. He’s right canny. He’s got an instinct for places where there’ll be trouble.”

  Fraser’s thin knees were drawn up before him, his back against a rock. His notebook was held against his knees and he was scribbling in it—I wondered about what. From time to time he looked up, as if thinking.

  A lizard, its tiny sides pumping for air, seemed to be watching me. In the far-off distance a red-brown ridge edged itself against the sky, but I was tired and looked for a place to lie down. All the good places were taken. I crawled into the wagon, although it was hot under the canvas.

  Alone in the wagon, I shivered, for I was very much afraid. I wanted to cry, but Mrs. Weber would hear me and I would be shamed before Mr. Farley and Mr. Finney. Huddled in a tight ball, I tried to forget the weird yells of the Indians and the shooting. I wished my mother were with me, and then I did not, for she would be afraid too. I thought of my poor father, so sick and hurt, lying under the wagon.

  Then I heard a faint stirring and my eyes opened and I knew I had slept. It was all dark and still inside the wagon, and when I looked out, it was dark outside, too.

  Horses were being moved around, and somebody picked up the wagon tongue. Miss Nesselrode climbed into the wagon, and when I moved almost under her feet, she gasped.

  “It is me,” I said.

  “Oh? Johannes, you startled me. I had no idea anybody was in the wagon. Are you all right?”

  “Yes, ma’am. I was asleep.”

  “I envy you. I tried to go to sleep, but it was too hot. Mr. Farley is hitching the team now. We’re going to go on.”

  Mrs. Weber got into the wagon, and then one by one the others. Fraser helped my father when he climbed in. He sat down near me. “Are you all right, son? I’m afraid I haven’t been much comfort.”

  “It’s all right.”

  Jacob Finney sat beside Farley on the driver’s seat. We moved out, Mr. Kelso riding a little way before us.

  My father moved to the back of the wagon, where he could watch our trail. Fletcher watched and said, “You ain’t in much shape for a fight.”

  My father’s reply was cool. “I hope I shall always do my share.”

  “You hintin’ I didn’t?”

  “I never hint, my friend. I say what I mean. I was much too busy to observe what you were doing or were not doing. I would assume you did what you could.” He paused briefly. “After all, we all wish to live.”

  After a bit: “You’re pretty handy with that gun, I’ll have to admit,” Fletcher said grudgingly.

  “The use of weapons is sometimes a necessity,” my father said, and there was silence inside the wagon. We rumbled along, grating over gravel, bumping over rocks.

  “Is it far to the other side?” I asked.

  “It will take us all night to reach the pass,” my father said. “The horses will have a hard time of it, and we may have to get out and walk.”

  The night was cold. My father told me this was the way of deserts, for there is nothing to hold the warmth, and the heat passes off quickly.

  Yet we did better than my father supposed, for by daylight we had come out upon a vast plain, a desert beyond which were distant blue mountains. It was a rocky desert, and there were plants of a strange kind, two or even three times the height of a man, yet with strange limbs, twisted oddly. They were like no trees I had seen before, having, instead of leaves, sharply pointed blades.

  “They are called Joshua trees,” my father explained. Then he pointed. “There! A day’s travel away in those mountains, there is a spring. We shall have no water until we reach there, unless there is some in Piute Wash, which is almost halfway. Usually there is no water there.”

  Doug Farley squinted his eyes at the distance. “Twelve? Maybe fourteen miles?”

  “About that.”

  “Well, the horses are in good shape.” He glanced back. “They don’t seem to have followed us.”

  “I wouldn’t trust them,” Kelso replied. “Maybe we made it so tough they won’t want to try it again, but that’s not like the Mohaves.”

  “We could make another mile, maybe two.” Farley looked around at us. “Is everybody game?”

  “Let’s go,” Fletcher said. “It’ll be as hot here as there.”

  Westward and south we walked, beside or behind the wagon, letting the horses have less weight to pull. My father, weak though I knew he was, walked beside me. “We must take care,” he said, “when we approach the spring.”

  “There will be Indians?”

  “Perhaps. All who travel in the desert must have water. The Indians know this. They also know where the water is. They might be there before us, waiting.”

  We had fallen behind a little, and now he stopped. “Johannes, when I leave this life, I shall have almost nothing to leave you, except, in these last months, some little wisdom. Listen well. It is all I have.”

  We started on again, and he said, “Much of what I say may be nonsense, but a few things I have learned, and the most important is that he who ceases to learn is already a half-dead man. And do not be like an oyster who rest
s on the sea bottom waiting for the good things to come by. Search for them, find them.

  “This desert is a book of many pages, and just when you believe you know all there is to know, it will surprise you with the unexpected. Nor was it always desert. You will see where ancient rivers have run, you will find where villages were, and where they are no longer.

  “If you dig down a few inches, you will find a layer of black soil that is decayed vegetation. Once there was grass here, and there were trees. Oaks, I would presume. Along the shores of streams or lakes where men once lived, I have found arrowheads, flint knives, and scrapers for cleaning the fur from hides.

  “But remember that men must go where water is, so despite all the vastness of the desert, it is really a very small place.”

  “Papa? I have heard they could not find you and Mama.”

  “They could not. Or perhaps their Indians did not try hard enough, for they knew me as a friend. But it was more than that, Johannes.

  “There are places in the desert called tanks, where water collects in natural rock basins. Sometimes it is a very large amount of water, sometimes only a little.

  “There are seeps where in a week or more a few quarts of water may collect. I would go to one of these places, drink a little, let my horse have what was left, and I would go on, leaving nothing for those who followed. The desert Indians who were guides for those who pursued me knew those places too. They knew I would be gone and there would be no water, and the pursuing parties were six, eight, often twenty men. Some of them would not listen to the Indians, and they died out there for their foolishness.”

  We moved on into the vast desert, plodding slowly, wearily along behind the wagon and its tired horses. Finally we stopped. We had come to Piute Wash.

  Tired as we were, and as were the horses, Farley took them to the far side. “When you come to a stream or dry wash,” he commented as he was removing the harness, “always cross to the far side. By morning it may be runnin’ bank-full.”

  My father told me to listen to such things, but I did not need to be told, for it was the way boys learned, and there was much I wished to know.

  Miss Nesselrode sat near me when we were eating, and she asked me if I had been to school. “I am six,” I said.

  “You seem older.” She looked at me thoughtfully. “Have you known many children?”

  “No, ma’am. We have moved very often.”

  “Can you read?”

  “Yes, ma’am, and write, too. Mama and Papa taught me. And we read a lot together. Mama or Papa would read to each other or to me. I like to be read to, and sometimes we would look for places on the map that we had been reading about.”

  In the night the coyotes came and howled near the wagon, and I heard Mr. Farley go out to his horses and walk among them so they would not be frightened. My father was lying near me under the wagon, and sometimes when he turned on his wounded shoulder he would cry out in his sleep, but only a little.

  The stars were very bright and there were no clouds. Once I got from under my blankets and sat on the wagon tongue, liking the night.

  Mr. Finney was on guard then, and he stopped beside me. “Can’t sleep?”

  “I woke up, and it was so bright. I wanted to listen.”

  “I know how that is. Get the feeling sometimes myself, but better sleep. We’ve got a long day ahead.”

  “Will we stop at Piute Spring?”

  “Maybe even overnight. Doug Farley makes up his own mind, and somethin’s botherin’ him. I can read it in him.”

  At daybreak we were moving again, heading due west to the low, rocky mountains, and by midmorning we were loading our barrels at the spring. Farley told Kelso to fix a good breakfast, with lots of coffee.

  It was a very rocky but pleasant place. From the spring a small stream ran over the rocks and disappeared in the sand some distance away. There was Indian writing on some of the rocks.

  With a cup of coffee in his hand, Farley walked over to Papa. “You know this trail?”

  “Somewhat. There are springs at intervals. It is used by both Mohaves and Piutes. I believe it is very old. Pueblo Indians used to come out here to work turquoise mines.”

  “I’m uneasy about it.”

  “Trust yourself. You know this country. If you’re uneasy, there’s a reason. Your senses have perceived something your brain hasn’t.”

  Farley glanced at him. “You believe that? I guess most of us do, when it comes to that. Some call it instinct.” He sipped his coffee. “Kelso’s feelin’ it too. Maybe it’s that pass when we get to the mountains or that spooky country off to the north, in the Tehachapis.”

  Farley hesitated, then asked, “How’re you doin’, Verne? You bein’ sick an’ all, and then losin’ blood.”

  “I’ll be all right. I’ll make it.” Then he added, “I have to, for the boy’s sake.”

  They did not see me sitting on a rock near the water, but the air was clear and I heard their voices, and I looked into the water and wished my father would live forever.

  Sometimes at night I dreamed of that fierce old man who awaited me. What would he do when he saw me? I dreamed of a sunlit ranch house where he would be but my father would not, and I was frightened. I did not know what to expect or what to think, only that I did not want to go to that old man, or even to see him.

  Sometimes I wanted to cry when I was alone in my blankets, but my father had troubles enough and might hear me and be unhappy. So I lay wide-eyed in the night, my eyes dry, but the tears were inside me.

  We left Piute Spring that day and suddenly, Miss Nesselrode was walking beside me. We were behind the others and alone. “You are unhappy,” she said abruptly. “Is it because your father is ill? Or is it something else, too?”

  For a moment I said nothing, for this was very private and I did not think I should speak of it to a stranger, but then I said, “Papa is taking me to my grandpa.”

  “I see.” After a minute she said, “Johannes, if it does not go well for you there, come to me. I shall be in Los Angeles. Will you remember that, Johannes?”

  I would remember, but then I would have to be afraid for her, too.

  As if she knew what I had thought, she said, “I am not afraid, Johannes. You will be safe with me.”

  I looked up at her, and I believed her.

  Chapter 6

  MY FATHER WAS dying and must find a home for me: this I knew very well, and this I understood. This was why we had come on this journey, trusting ourselves to Mr. Farley and his lone wagon. But why had the others come?

  When we were walking alone once, I asked my father. “It is a guess, of course, for none of them have said very much, but I would say that Fraser hopes to write a book, and later to lecture.

  “He is not well-off, as you can see. He has taught school, I believe, but there is small future in that for a young man with no connections. I think he hopes to write a book that will give him some stature, and use it as a stepping-stone to the future.

  “Mrs. Weber? I do not know, of course, but I would suggest that she goes west to marry again. There are fewer women out there, and she feels she would not be lost in the crowd. She is not very bright, but in her own way she is shrewd, and I think she would make the right sort of man a good wife.”

  “And Mr. Fletcher?” I wondered.

  “Ah, yes. Mr. Fletcher. Avoid him, Johannes, and avoid men of his kind. He is a surly brute, quick to temper, violent in expression. If he has not already done so, he will someday kill a man, or be killed. I would surmise that he is running away from something he has done or toward something he expects to do.

  “More likely,” Papa added, “the former, judging by the way he kept from sight until we were far from Santa Fe.”

  “Miss Nesselrode?”

  He stopped, watching the wagon ahead of us. It was almost a half-mile off now, and Fraser and Fletcher plodded along at least half that distance in front of us.

  “A handsome young woman. Not beautiful, but ha
ndsome. And she is intelligent. She is unmarried, and the reason is obvious. She is much brighter than most of the men she meets, and unless she becomes very lonely, she will settle for nothing less than the best.

  “Unhappily, she is a woman alone. Obviously she has no family, no position. The men she would be apt to meet are marrying to better themselves, marrying money or family or both, which leaves Miss Nesselrode a respected outsider. But I do not believe Miss Nesselrode is thinking of marriage.”

  I told my father then what she had said to me. He stopped again, quite suddenly.

  “She said that, did she?” He swore softly. “I’ll be damned! Well, son, I do not think she realizes what she is inviting, but you have my permission to go to her if you wish. And if you can.”

  He put a hand on my shoulder. “At least you have made a friend, and that is important, Johannes. And she is your friend. You made her a friend with no help from me.”

  Sometime during that day the decision was made to go by a different route than the one planned. Mr. Farley decided, and he told us about it at supper.

  We would be longer in the desert. We would come to Los Angeles by a different way. We would avoid some mountains and perhaps some trouble with outlaws. We would be wending a way through the desert where wagons had not gone, and were likely to see some sights others had not seen.

  Mr. Fletcher immediately agreed, and Mr. Fraser also. Miss Nesselrode listened carefully and then agreed. “If you think it best,” she said, but she turned to my father. “You have experience of the desert. Do you think it wise?”

  “I do,” Papa said, “although the way is longer.”

  Later, when we were moving again, she looked over at my father. “Mr. Verne, if you are feeling well enough, perhaps you could tell us something of Los Angeles?”

  “Of course,” he agreed. “It is a very small town, and you must remember it is nearly eight years since I have been there, and it was changing even then. When I left, there were, I suppose, between two and three thousand people, mostly of Spanish extraction. There were a few blacks, most of them with Spanish blood and Spanish names, and a handful of Europeans and Anglos.