The Lonesome Gods Read online

  “I’m afraid so. I’ve been coughing less since I reached the desert, though.”

  “Whyn’t you stay over at Agua Caliente for a few days? Folks say that hot, dry air is good for lungers.”

  “I haven’t much time, Kelso. I am taking my son to his grandparents in Los Angeles.”

  Mr. Kelso walked away in the night and my father put his hand on my shoulder. “Hannes? See that big old palm tree over there? The Indians say one of their wise men, when he was growing old, turned himself into that tree so he could continue to serve his people.”

  “How could he do that?”

  “He willed it. He stood very straight and very still and willed himself to become a tree, and slowly he began to change until he became that tree.”

  “Do you believe it, Papa?”

  “I have never seen such a thing happen, Hannes. My reason tells me it could not happen, but my reason can only judge by what I know, and I do not know everything.

  “Indians are different from us. They have other beliefs, and other reasons for believing. It is best not to dispute what the Indians say, but to listen and learn, making your judgments later.”

  He glanced toward the small building where the light shone from a window and an open door. “Stay by the stage, son. I shall be back in a minute.”

  No one else had left the stage. All were asleep or trying to sleep. Mr. Kelso and my father had both forgotten the cold water, and I was thirsty.

  The men who had taken the horses away had not returned with the fresh team. Edging closer to the rift in the earth where the well was, I peered down. Far below I could see the gleam of water.

  Carefully I tried the first step, then another. One by one I descended. When I stood on the square of earth near the water’s edge, I looked up. All I could see was a rectangle of sky and two stars. When I looked around, straining to see in the darkness, I saw a huge olla or jar, and hanging beside it, a gourd dipper.

  Dipping it into the cold water, I drank and drank. Nothing had ever tasted so good. I filled the dipper again, and then realized somebody was watching me.

  It was an Indian, a very, very old Indian wearing a loose cotton shirt. His hair was thin and gray, bound with a band around his head and hanging to his shoulders. Suspended from a cord around his neck was a triangle of blue stone with markings on it.

  “Oh? I am sorry, sir. I did not see you at first.” I dipped the gourd into the water and held it out to the Indian, who merely looked at me. Then my father called, and I put the gourd dipper down and hurried up the steps. “I am sorry, sir. Please forgive me,” I said over my shoulder.

  My father was beside the wagon and he turned at the footsteps. “You had me worried. I was afraid you’d wandered off.”

  “I was getting a drink.”

  When the wagon was moving again, I said to my father, “I saw an Indian.”

  Fletcher was sitting up. “Ain’t likely. They tell me Injuns don’t come to the well no more. Not at night, anyway.”

  “He was very old,” I said, “and he had a piece of blue stone hanging from his neck.”

  “Turquoise,” Fletcher said. “They set store by it. More than gold.” He glanced at me. “Turquoise is a kind of rock,” he said.

  The new team moved off at a good gait, Finney driving. Farley had crawled back into the wagon and found a place where he could recline on the blanket rolls. “Next stop is Agua Caliente. You’ve been there before, Verne?”

  “Yes, several times. It’s right at the door of the San Jacintos. Some of the Anglos are beginning to call it Palm Springs. There’s nobody there except three or four white men and some Cahuilla Indians.”

  He paused. “I am expecting some mail there.”

  He leaned back against the baggage, and after a while I did also. I was tired, tired for want of sleep and tired of the wagon. I just wanted to be someplace and not to have to go on, day after day.

  Lying awake in the dark, I thought of that lost ship, trapped in an inland sea from which it could not escape, sailing around and around forever until someday it ran aground and could sail no more. I dreamed of finding that ship and going aboard and finding chests of gold and chests of pearls.

  Or chests of turquoise like the old Indian wore.

  The horses were trotting now, hurrying. We would soon be in Agua Caliente, and then on to Los Angeles. How many more stops? Five, six, a dozen? I did not know. The wagon rumbled along in the night and my father sat up, bringing his holster around to a better position. He took his rifle and placed it beside him also.

  Was there to be trouble, then?

  A long time later, when I had slept, awakened, and slept again, the wagon rumbled to a stop. Peering out past Mr. Finney’s head, I could see a lighted window and a door opening to let light stream out. A man came from the door and hurried toward the wagon.

  My father moved to the back of the stage and slid to the ground. He had straightened up when the man came around the wagon.

  “Verne? Are you there? Is it you?”

  “How are you, Peter? It’s been a long time.”

  “Let’s go inside and have some coffee.” The man was as tall as my father and had a handlebar mustache of golden brown, and a goatee. He glanced at me. “This is your son?”

  “Johannes? This is Peter Burkin. He’s an old friend.”

  “We’ve got to talk, Zack. Serious talk. Let’s all go inside.”

  “We’ve only a minute. We’re just changing teams again. Farley’s in a hurry to get in.”

  “That’s just it, Verne. You mustn’t go any further. If you go into Los Angeles, you will be killed. You and the boy as well.”

  “What?”

  “They’re waiting for you, Zack.”

  Chapter 10

  THEY WENT INSIDE, and I followed. It was a small store with a bar along one side and three tables. Behind the bar were a few bottles; behind the counter on the other side, were some packages, cans, and boxes of groceries or supplies.

  My father dropped into a chair. His face was gray and his eyes hollow. He looked worse than I had ever seen him.

  “Peter, I’ve got to see them! I have to convince them! My son will need a home and he has no other kin.

  “I’m not worried about dying. I’ve accepted that and I expect I’m as ready as a man ever gets. If they kill me, it will only lessen the suffering, but it is Johannes who matters.”

  “You don’t understand, Zack. The way they see it, you disgraced the family by marrying their daughter, and your son is living evidence of their shame. They want him dead, Zack.”

  Peter went behind the counter and returned with two cups and the coffeepot, filling both cups. I sat on a bench against the wall and almost behind my father, although I could see the side of his face.

  His appearance frightened me. He looked so haggard, so exhausted, so drawn. When he glanced around, his eyes unseeing, I was shocked by the desperation in his eyes.

  “My God, Peter, what will I do? I’ve no home for the lad! I’ve come all this way, hoping desperately they’d take him in. The Californios I’ve known were kind to their children, and I hoped…

  “Peter, we’ve no place to go! No place at all! The last time I saw a doctor, he gave me four or five months, and that’s been over three months ago!”

  “Zack? Let me get your gear off that wagon. They know you’re coming, and they’re waiting. There will be four or five of them at the Bella Union and just as many down by the wagon yard. They’ve men posted on the trails into town.

  “You were always handy with a gun, but in your best days you couldn’t handle that many at close range. Nobody could.”

  Peter Burkin got up. “Sit right here, Zack. I’ll get your gear.” He leaned his big hands on the table. “Look, Zack, I’ve found a place here. The air is good for lungers, so take a few days, anyway. Get rested, think about it, and we can talk it over. Maybe there’s an answer. You won’t help the boy by getting yourself killed.”

  He paused at the door
. “You loved the desert, Zack. Give it a chance.”

  Peter Burkin went outside and my father stared into his coffee, then tasted it. After a moment he drank more. He seemed to have forgotten that I was there.

  Behind me the window was open and I could hear a murmur of voices from near the corral.

  “…takin’ his duffle off. Yeah, they’re waitin’ for him. You’ll see when you pull up at the Bella Union. Do him a favor and tell them nothing.”

  Farley said something I did not hear and then Peter replied, “How was he on the trip west?”

  “Bad, real bad. He did his share and more, he’s that sort of man, but he was coughin’ the whole way. Got so’s we got used to it an’ scarcely noticed. I will say he’s coughed a mite less since we crossed the Colorado. I think all that desert before helped him some.”

  “I’ll get his gear.”

  “Burkin? What’s behind it? I know all about Spanish pride and I know Verne wasn’t a Catholic and was a common seaman—”

  “An uncommon seaman, if you ask me.”

  “What’s behind it?”

  “Search me. I’ve no idea. The old don’s filled with hatred, and so’s the other one, the man she was supposed to marry. Seems he’d had trouble with Verne before, and when Consuelo ran off with Verne, he was fit to be tied.”

  Burkin was removing gear from the wagon, and then he said, “Say nothing about it, will you?”

  “I can’t vouch for the others. There’s bound to be talk.”

  My father finished his coffee and walked outside, and I followed. Peter Burkin waited on the stoop.

  “I’ve a place for you, Zack. It’s an old adobe somebody fixed up, and if you can set a horse, you can be there in just a few minutes.”

  When we mounted, he led us toward the looming mountain, all black and mysterious. Peter saw me looking at it. “That’s where Tahquitz lives, boy. Or so the Injuns say.

  “He stole Injun girls an’ et ’em. Chewed ’em right up. Some young Injuns figured that was an awful waste of girls, so they taken after him, found the cave where he slept, bones all around it. They say a young Injun walled him in. Your pa knows that story.”

  “He told me. Do you believe it?”

  “You get up in those mountains alone, boy, or you get out in some desert canyon, an’ you begin to believe most everything.

  “There’s medicine men who can raise storms, they say, and they can make the dead walk, and some as say they can see the future or what takes place far away. Your pa knows more about such things than me, but I’ve heard talk around the campfires, spooky talk of ghouls an’ ghosts, an’ like the Scotch say, ‘of things that go bump in the night.’”

  The mountain loomed black against the night, with the stars hanging above, and I thought of Tahquitz and shivered. Was he up there now? Prowling in the canyons? Or was he still walled in his cavern, struggling to escape?

  Chapter 11

  PETER BURKIN LED the way through low sandhills to a small adobe surrounded by a living barricade of what seemed to be tall spines of cactus. “Ocotillo,” he explained, “makes the best fence ever.”

  He spoke over his shoulder, as I was close upon him, and my father trailing some distance behind. “Boy? You an’ me, we got to keep your pa here. He’s a mighty sick man, but if anything can help him, this climate will.

  “You tell him you like it here. Get him to stay on. You talk to him, boy.”

  He pulled up in the yard and stepped down, then lifted me from the saddle, although I could slide down and did not want to be picked up like a baby.

  “Do you know anyone who knows the stories about Tahquitz to be true?” I asked.

  He brushed his mustache with his fingers. “Well, now. Can’t say as I do, but then, the Injuns been here longer than us and they may know a lot we’ll never learn. Knowledge isn’t a lasting thing. Not unless it’s writ down in a good many places. People die, and what they learned often dies with them. Whole races of folks that once lived are now gone, and what they knew we’ll not be able to guess at.

  “I’m not a book-read man, boy. I never had no proper eddication, but I’ve listened to those who have had and to those who’ve traveled.

  “Take your pa, now. He’s a widely read man. He was a sailor onetime. You know that. He was a sailor on his papa’s ship, so he had access to his papa’s books, and there were times at sea when he could read.

  “He first went to sea when he was twelve, as cabin boy with his pa. He went to a lot of places with fancy names that just the sound of them makes you want to r’ar up an’ go. Places like Shanghai, Rangoon, Gorontalo, Capetown, and the like. Your pa had seven years at sea, mostly in foreign parts.

  “You’ve heard him talk. He’s got a way about him, a way with words. He can make the temple bells tinkle for you, and you can just hear them big old elephants shuff-shuffling along, the priests callin’ folks to prayer and the like.

  “Your pa learned a sight of things most folks never even hear of. I’ve seen scholars back off an’ look at your pa, amazed.

  “You take these Injuns, now. You look at the way they live and you’ll say they don’t amount to much, but what are they thinkin’? What do they know? What memories do they have? They want different things, boy, and they consider different things important. Many a thing we’d give anything to know, they just take for granted.

  “Some of these Injuns, maybe all of them, they’re in tune with something. I don’t know what. But some of them have lost touch with it, and others are losin’ touch. Goin’ the white folks’ way might seem the likely thing to do, but maybe they lose as much as they gain.”

  Papa rode into the yard, sat his horse for a moment as if he was gathering strength, and then he dismounted, stepping down very carefully.

  “I’ll put up the horses, Zack. You’ll find a candle on the table just inside the door. To the right of the door.”

  There were three rooms, two very small bedrooms and a large, square living room and kitchen combined. There was a very large fireplace, a table, benches on each side of it, and two chairs. One of the chairs was very large, almost twice the size of any I had seen.

  My father stopped, lighted candle in hand, and stared at that chair.

  The floor was made of odd sizes of stone beautifully fitted together. No mortar had been used, but the stones were fitted with knifelike precision.

  “There’s nothing much here at Agua Caliente,” Peter Burkin explained when he came in. “There’s the hot springs to which the Injuns been comin’ for a couple of thousand years, I reckon. There’s a stage station, but no stages yet, and it’s a kind of two-bit store an’ post office. Mail comes in ever’ once in a while, sometimes as often as ever’ two months.

  “There’s two or three white men in camp, an’ there’s the Injuns, mostly Cahuillas.” He looked at me. “That’s the way they say it, Ka-wee-ya. Some folks call them Agua Calientes, from the name of the village.

  “There’s more of them back in the mountains. In the Santa Rosas.

  “They know you, Zack, so they’ll be friendly, which means you won’t see much of them, but they’ll not do you any harm, either. As long as you live in this house, none of them are likely to come around.”

  “What’s wrong with the house? It seems uncommonly well-made.”

  “You won’t find a better anywhere about. Not even in Los Angeles. The stable out back is built just as well. There’s a spring, cold water, that’s runnin’ into a fine stone basin, made by the same hands.

  “Nobody’s lived here for years, though. The house is considered bad medicine. They’ll think you a strong man for even livin’ here.”

  Burkin went back outside and brought their blanket rolls into the house.

  “Peter? I can’t thank you enough.”

  “Thank me? You done that years ago when you pulled me from under that grizzly.” He turned to me. “I was gettin’ chawed an’ clawed somethin’ fierce when your papa came along. He kilt that b’ar an’ then he ta
ken me to his camp an’ kep’ me there until I was able to get around. I was laid up for more than a month, an’ your papa put off what he was doin’ an’ cared for me.”

  Peter Burkin rode away and I watched him go. Already the sky was faintly gray, and I could see the stark black outline of his figure against the white of the sand dunes.

  My father was lying down, and from his breathing, was asleep. Although I had been awake most of the night, I was not tired.

  What was it about this house? Why did no one want to live here? Again I looked at that huge chair. Was it that? Did the sight of that chair frighten people away?

  Everything about the house was cunningly made. The closets and shelves were cut and fitted with the same precision as the tiles in the flagstone floor. Part of the house was very old. I could see where someone had begun rebuilding it, building up a wall here, opening a window there. An existing ruin had been taken and added to, walls rebuilt, a roof put on, floor added…or part of a floor.

  Out back there was not only a stable but a corral. There were two horses there, left for our use.

  My father had taken off his gun belt and hung it over a chair back close to his hand. His rifle and his shotgun were there, too. There was a blanket hung in the doorway, and I tiptoed back and let the blanket down to cover the door.

  This was my home now. For how long, I did not know, for it seemed that now I was not to go to that fierce old man of whom I was so much afraid.

  On the table there was a loaf of bread, and beside it a knife. I went to it and cut off a thick slice. With the bread in my hand I went back to the outer door again and looked out upon the yard.

  All around it was that living fence of ocotillo with its fierce thorns. There had been rain, so now there was a mist of green leaves along each cane, and a few bright crimson flowers. I stood there, taking bites of the bread and looking out at the yard of white sand.

  Where the opening in the ocotillo fence was stood a thick clump of greasewood. I glanced at it, started to look away, then looked quickly back.

  Something was there! From behind the bush I could see a bare foot, a foot almost the color of the sand, and the bottom of a pants leg of white.