The Lonesome Gods Page 8

  Lifting my eyes, I found myself staring into other eyes, very black eyes.

  It was a boy, no older than myself.

  Chapter 12

  TORN BETWEEN FEAR and curiosity, I waited, my heart pounding. The strange boy crouched, peering through the leaves at me. I was afraid.

  No! I was not afraid! “I am Johannes Verne,” I told myself, “and I am not afraid.”

  The boy looked to be no older than I, and no larger. I knew I could lick him. Then I looked again as the boy slowly emerged from behind the bush. The boy looked brown and strong. He looked like a very rough boy. Maybe I could not lick him.

  He wore a wide hat of straw, somewhat torn, and a faded blue shirt that hung outside his pants, which were of white cotton. The boy was barefoot.

  “Hello,” I said.

  “Buenos días.”

  He came a step nearer. I did not know what to do. Trying to appear indifferent, I squatted and took up a twig. With the twig I drew a round head with long hair hanging down. Then I drew a hat on the head. I did not know what to say or do. I had known few children of my own age and did not know what they did. I added eyes and eyebrows, then ears to the picture.

  “What do you do?” The boy spoke in English, although with a strange sound to it.

  “It is a picture.”

  He leaned over, studying it. “Is it me?”

  “It is.”

  “The mouth? It has no mouth. I have a mouth.”

  I extended the twig. “Here. You draw.”

  He took the twig and drew a mouth like a new moon with the ends turned up. It was a smiling mouth.

  “Good! It is finished,” I said.

  We squatted side by side, looking at our drawing with some satisfaction.

  “You live close by?”

  “I live where I am.”

  “You have a house?”

  The boy gestured vaguely. “Over there.” Then, proudly: “I am Francisco.”

  “I am Johannes. I am usually called Hann-ess.”

  The boy shrugged. “What else?”

  He was a strange boy. I did not know what to think of him. I asked, “Where do you go?”

  “I go nowhere. I am here.” The boy paused. “And you? You will live here?”

  “I do not know. We were to go to Los Angeles, but there is trouble for us there.”

  “Stay here, if you are not afraid.”

  “I am not afraid. I am Johannes.” Then, after a minute: “Afraid of what?”

  “The house. Nobody stays in that house. It is the house of Tahquitz.”

  “What?” I was astonished. I pointed to the mountains. “There is the house of Tahquitz.”

  Changing the subject, I asked, “Your home is here?”

  Francisco shrugged. “My home is where I am. Sometimes it is in the mountains. Often it is the desert.”

  “You are not afraid of Indians?”

  He stared at me. “I am Indian. I am Cahuilla.”

  I was astonished. “You? An Indian?”

  “I am Cahuilla.”

  “Why do you say this is the house of Tahquitz?”

  “Much time ago my people went away into the desert to live. There had been rains and it was good there, but when they returned, this house was here, and it was lived in.

  “Nobody saw he who lived here. Only…sometimes at night they saw something…somebody. Then it went away and came no more. It was whispered that Tahquitz had come to this house. That he built it with his hands.”

  “It is a good house.”

  “What will you do if he comes back?”

  “He will come back?”

  Francisco shrugged. “Who knows? It has been long.”

  “There was a house before,” I suggested. “Part of this house was an older house.”

  “Who knows? Perhaps.”

  Francisco squatted by the step. I sat on the step. “I have a horse,” I said proudly.

  “Of course. Who does not?”

  “Someday we will ride.”

  Francisco took a stick and poked at the ground. From time to time he looked uneasily at the half-open door.

  “The mountain is large,” I said. “Is it far to the other side?”

  “It is far. Two times I have gone with my papa. We go for the chia that grows in a valley there. It grows many places, but not so much as in the valley. Once, the first time, there was fighting. There were others who wished all the chia for themselves. We gathered chia. Some chia.”

  “Is this your land?”

  Francisco shrugged. “It is land. We come here. Sometimes we do not come for a long time. When it is hot, we stay in the mountains, where there is coolness.”

  “You speak well.”

  “It is nothing. In the store it is only your talk. My papa speaks much with people. He teaches me to speak.”

  “Last night at Indian Wells, when it was very dark, I went down to drink. There was an Indian there. He did not speak.”

  Francisco stood up. “I go now.”

  “You will come back?”

  “I go.”

  He walked away, slowly at first, then faster. He did not look back.

  When I went back inside, the room was light, and for the first time I could really see the floor. It was astonishing in its simple beauty. Around the outer edge was an intricate design and in the middle a black bird with its wings stretched, a bird like a crow.

  Sitting down on the bench, I looked at the design. The details of the feathers in the wings was amazing, and the bird had small red stones for eyes.

  My father spoke from his bedroom. “Is it you, Hannes? Are you all right?”

  “I am looking at the bird.”

  “I heard you talking, I think.”

  “It was Francisco. He is an Indian. He is my friend…I think.”

  He came from the bedroom and closed the outer door. “After the sun is up, it is better to keep the door closed so it will be cool inside.” He put his hand on my shoulder as he so often did. “It is good to have a friend.” He glanced down at the floor for the first time. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he said.

  Squatting on his heels, he studied the floor. He ran his fingertips over the floor. “Beautiful!” he said. “Simply beautiful!”

  “It was Tahquitz. This was his house.”

  My father looked up sharply. “What do you mean? His house?”

  “Francisco told me. Nobody will live here because this is the house of Tahquitz. He built it, they say, but when they returned, he went away and did not come back.”

  “Tahquitz? What was he like, this Tahquitz?”

  “They did not see him. Only in the night.”

  My father was thoughtful, but he studied the floor again as if he would find in its design the face of its maker. He pointed to the design that formed the border. “That purplish stone. That’s jasper. It comes in several colors. This is chalcedony. Both stones can be found in some of the canyons near the desert.

  “It is fine work. This Tahquitz or whoever it was is a fine craftsman. I should like to know him.”

  “You do not believe it was Tahquitz?”

  He did not reply for a moment, and then he said, “This work is finely done by a man who loves what he is doing. I should like to know him.”

  Slowly the days went by and became weeks. Sometimes I played in the yard, making friends with a very small blue lizard, and sometimes I wandered in the sand dunes. My father rested in the morning sun, stayed inside when afternoon came, and he read from the books Peter Burkin provided. Sometimes my father walked with me after the sun had gone down. Whenever we met Indians, they spoke to him respectfully, but they did not come to our house.

  My father did not leave the house without his pistol. “If you see any strangers, Hannes, come to me at once. I must know.”

  Another time he took me to the fireplace, where he had loosened a brick. Behind it was an iron box.

  “Tell nobody of this. Not your best friend, nor my best friend. In this box there
is money. I have saved it since before you were born. If I should die or be killed, get this out, put the box and the brick back carefully, and hide the money. You will need it.”

  Later, after he had been reading to me from Quentin Durward, by Sir Walter Scott, I asked him if we would go to Los Angeles now.

  “Not now. Perhaps later. Peter was right. The air and the sun are good for me. I feel better and I have coughed much less.”

  “Will they come to look for us?”

  “Yes, Hannes, they will. Do not forget them, ever. He is an old devil, that one. He will come, but now he is waiting, like the cat with the mouse. He is letting us get over being careful, when we think he will not come at all, them he will come.”

  My father looked at the bird in the center of the floor. “It is a raven,” he said, “and that is a curious thing.

  “Far to the south, farther yet than where we came to the Yuma trail, there is a place in the mountains called the House of Ravens. Only the Indians know it, but these later Indians do not often go there.”

  “What is there?”

  “Wait. Someday when I am feeling better, I will take you there. It is well not to go unless you are with an Indian.”

  He would say no more, and this I had learned of my father: when he ceased to speak, questions would lead him to speak no more. “You will be told in time. First, you have much to learn.”

  Later, when seated in the sun, he said, “This is an ancient land, older by far than the scholars believe. They trifle with years. They say that before this, nobody was here. They say the Indians have been here but a short time, and for some of them, that is true.

  “There have been men here for a million years and more. Before the great ice came, there were men here—and before the ice that was here before that. The wise men among us smile and say no, that men have been on this continent but a short time.

  “Who are they to say? Have they dug deeply enough? Have they looked in all the corners? Bah, they have scarcely scratched the surface! They have a Garden of Eden complex, believing that all men came from one source!”

  He coughed slightly, waited for a moment, and then said, “There are writings on the rocks, and some of the writings are from Indians whom we know, or their immediate ancestors. Others come from a time far earlier, or have been borrowed from an earlier time. The Indians, just as we, have learned from those who passed this way before.

  “And there have been travelers, ships have come here many times, both from Europe and Asia. Chinese junks have come to our shores even in my time.”

  He sat silent, staring out the window at the mountains. “If they have come in my time, why not before?

  “And they have, indeed they have! You must learn to read Spanish, my son. I mean better than you do. Your mother started you, and you speak very well, but to read is better, for there are records.

  “Father Salmeron tells of some Spanish soldiers encountering some Asiatics on the shores of the Gulf of California, who were trading with the Indians there, and seemed to think it no great thing, as if they had done so for years. He also speaks of Chinese ships making a landfall on the California coast.”

  My father sat silent, muttering a little. Then he sat up violently. “Confound it, son! You must have an education! It is time you were in school, but here there is no school! In Los Angeles…

  “I must forget that. It is impossible. But read. There are books here, read them, all of them. Find others. Many a man has done well with no more of an education than what he can have by reading.

  “Your friend Francisco. He is an Indian and will know much you do not.”

  And when a month had gone by, Peter Burkin returned. He rode swiftly, watching over his shoulder. “Be warned,” he said, “they are coming.”

  Chapter 13

  THANK YOU, PETER. Come in, please, and sit down. Will you have a cup of coffee?”

  “There’s no time, Zack! They can’t be more than a mile or two behind me!”

  “There’s time. Turn your horse into the corral and come in.” He lifted his own cup, and his hand was steady. “How many are there?”

  “Five, at least. There’s maybe more. He’s got a way of sending a backup crew to circle around and come in behind.”

  Peter ducked outside, and I could hear him running as he led the horse to the corral and turned him in out of the way, saddle and all. When he came through the door, he was sweating, and it was still early and the air was cool.

  “We’ve water piped into the house, Peter, and we’ve food enough. This place is built like a fort, and I expect we’ll have a good deal better time in here than they will out in the sandhills. So sit down.”

  Peter sat down, glancing uneasily out the doorway. “I know about the water. Ain’t often you see that. He must have figured on being trapped here sometime.”

  “That, or he didn’t want to be seen.”

  “Who would see him out here? Who but Injuns?”

  My father shrugged. “Perhaps he just did not want to be seen.”

  “You don’t believe that Tahquitz stuff, do you?”

  “I don’t know. After all, what is Tahquitz, if there is such a being? It is just a name to cover a belief or an idea or a fear.”

  He turned to me. “Hannes, I’d like it if you’d get back in a corner and sit down on the floor behind the bed there.”

  “I want to be with you.”

  “I’m sorry, Hannes. I want you to do as you’re told.”

  “I could load your guns.”

  “Maybe. Later.”

  Peter looked at me, smiling a little. “The boy ain’t scared, is he?”

  “He’s my son,” Papa said, and I was suddenly very proud. But I was scared…a little.

  We heard their horses’ hooves on the hard-packed yard. I hoped my blue lizard was hiding.

  “Halloo, the house!”

  My father went to the door, glancing from the window as he went toward it. “They don’t know for sure that it’s me who is here,” he commented to Peter. “No use keeping them in doubt.”

  He opened the door.

  He did not step outside, but simply stood in the door, perhaps a foot inside, waiting.

  “You, there!” The speaker was a burly Anglo in a striped shirt. “We’re huntin’ Zachary Verne. You seen him?”

  “I can’t say that I have,” my father replied mildly, “not since I got up.”

  “He’s here, then? He’s been here?”

  “Oh, he’s here, all right.” My father was smiling. “I think he’s going to be around for the next few weeks, anyway.”

  Over his shoulder he spoke in a lower tone. “Peter? Cover the rear of the house, if you will.”

  “You say you saw him? When was that?”

  “This morning, when I looked in the mirror. I was shaving.”

  It took them a minute. One of the Mexicans behind the Anglo said, “It is heem! He is the one!”

  “You? You’re Zachary Verne?”

  My father simply stood there, smiling a little, and then suddenly he said, “Well? What did you come for?”

  “I came to ki—!” Even I, who was not quite seven, even I saw he was clumsy at it. He started to lift the rifle which he held across the saddle in front of him, and my father shot him. Without haste, he shot the third man, for the second, the one who had been quickest to recognize him, had gone around the house.

  Peter’s gun boomed, and as he started to load it, I took it from his hands and showed him the shotgun, which he took.

  Careful to spill no powder, I reloaded Peter’s rifle and then crossed to stand behind my father, but those who had been about to attack were gone. One man, the Anglo, lay sprawled on the hard earth where I had drawn Francisco’s picture. There were spots of blood where another had bled, and two riderless horses stood in the yard.

  Suddenly a horseman spurred by us at a dead run down the lane, and my father watched him go, gun in hand. “No use to shoot him,” my father said. “He’s anxious to
get away. I do not think he will come back.”

  “He’s lost some fingers,” Peter Burkin said. “He dropped on the far side of his saddle, so I shot off the pommel and took some fingers with it.”

  “Thank you, Peter.” My father turned to me. “And thank you, Hannes. You are very cool. I like a man who doesn’t lose his head.”

  My father sat down suddenly, as if exhausted. He looked at Peter and shook his head. “I don’t have the strength anymore, Peter. I lack stamina.”

  “You’re lookin’ better.” Peter walked over and closed the outer door. “No matter what you may think, this air’s good for you.”

  “Possibly.”

  Peter went out, and when I looked again, the body was gone and the spots of blood had disappeared.

  When we were alone, my father said, “To kill a man is not a nice thing, no matter what the reason. He would have killed me, and you, so I had no choice. I hope this will be an end to it.”

  “Who was he, Papa? He is not the don?”

  “No, just a man hired to kill, as they all were.”

  “Is the don afraid, that he does not come himself?”

  “No, he is not afraid. I do not believe he knows fear. Perhaps he has never had occasion to be afraid. He hires such work to be done, just as he would hire a man to break horses or trap coyotes.”

  It was almost a month before Peter Burkin rode again to our house at the end of the lane. He rode a fine bay gelding and sat well in the saddle, and he brought a sack of good things to eat and three books. “Got ’em from a ship’s master,” he said. “Your pa dearly loves reading, so I keep my eyes out for him. I do a mite of tradin’ now and again. This time I had me some sea otter pelts, prime fur. I made him throw in the books to boot.”

  He stripped the gear from the bay, talking the while. “He remembered your pa, and his pa before him. You come from a seafarin’ family, boy. Your pa was more’n seven years at sea before he come to California. Get him to tell you about those places he went to.

  “My stars! When I hear him talk, his words are like a song my ears have been wanting. He sailed afar, boy, to places with names like music: Gorontalo, Amurang, Soerabaja, Singapore, Rangoon, Calcutta, Mombasa, and places like that. I d’clare, I could sit and hear him talk forever. It’s no wonder Consuelo fell in love with him. The way I hear it, half the girls in California were in love with him. He was a talker, your pa was.”