The Lonesome Gods Read online

  Peter turned the bay into the corral and put his saddle and gear in the small barn. “Listen to me, boy, and gather memories while you can. They come easily now and will warm an old man’s heart when the time comes.

  “Do not forget the lasses who were good to you along the years. Remember their eyes and their laughter and the way they were with you. It is a good thing not to forget. And remember the shadows on the hills at sunset or in the dawning.”

  He paused. “Your father is better?”

  “I think so. He seems to cough less, but he coughs.”

  “Aye, it is a miserable thing, the lung disease. Stay in the fresh air, boy.” He looked around at me, taking off his chaps. “Have you seen the Indian lad?”

  “No.”

  “Do not worry about it. He will come again. They are strange folk, Indians. Perhaps not so strange as just different from us, but he will come back. I know his father, too. He’s an important man among them.”

  “Will you come in?”

  “Of course I shall. Am I interrupting, then?”

  “My father reads to me at this hour. Less than he used to because of the coughing, but he reads.”

  “Good! He can read to me, too. If it’s Scott or Byron, I’ll prove a good listener. Or Shakespeare. There was a cowhand once who said that Shakespeare was the only poet who wrote like he’d been raised on red meat.”

  “Shakespeare?” my father said when asked. “Not today, I think. This is a day for Homer. You will like him, Peter. His people were very like those around us now. Achilles or Hector would have done well as mountain men, and I think Jed Smith, Kit Carson, or Hugh Glass would have been perfectly at home at the siege of Troy.”

  “Troy?” Peter Burkin said. “I mind something of Troy. That’s where they fought that war over a woman. Helen, wasn’t it?”

  “She was the excuse, Peter. Troy controlled travel from the Black Sea into Mediterranean waters, and the Greeks wanted to be rid of Troy. If it had not been Helen, they would have found another excuse.”

  Those were the wonderful, beautiful days! My father grew better. The clear dry air seemed good for him, and he began to take walks with me, and sometimes to ride. Yet never without a rifle and a pistol.

  We saw the Indians from time to time. Once I saw Francisco, and waved. He stood watching us ride away, yet I continued to look, and finally he waved.

  My father talked of the desert, of books and men and ships. Peter Burkin returned and rode with us. He was worried about the old don, and warned my father.

  “He’ll try again. I don’t figure he’s worried as long as you’re here, just among Indians. If you started for Los Angeles…

  “He don’t want you there, no way.” He rode in silence, then added, “After what happened here, nobody is very anxious to try you. At first it seemed like money found, just to ride out here and kill a man already sick.

  “When that first outfit came back with one man dead and two wounded, those who might have tackled you were short on enthusiasm.”

  My father tired quickly, so sometimes we sat down right where we were and talked. When he grew tired, his cough was worse.

  Often he spoke of the Indians, of how they lived and of their beliefs. “We do wrong,” he said, “to try to convert them to our beliefs. First we should study what they believe and how it applies to the way they live. First they must be sure of our respect.”

  “Francisco does not come.”

  “Give him time. They believe ours was the house of Tahquitz.”

  “It was another thing, I think.”

  My father waited, watching the cloud shadows on the desert. “I spoke of the Indian I saw at the Indian well. The old man who wore turquoise.”

  “You really saw such an Indian?”

  “I do not know if he was an Indian. I thought he was.” There was a time when I said nothing, and then I said, reluctantly, for I did not wish to be thought a fool, “I do not know where he was standing. I have thought of it since.”

  “I do not understand.”

  “At the foot of the steps, beside the water, there is a flat place of hard earth. I stood there. When I took a drink, I looked around and he was standing there.”

  “Beside you?”

  “Facing me. He was standing where there is no place to stand.” I hesitated; then I said, “I offered him a drink, in the dipper. He just looked at me.”

  “And then?”

  “You called.”

  My father was silent for some time and then he said, “Hannes, we know so little. Our world is far stranger than anyone has guessed. We know a little and scoff at much we do not understand, but the Indians are either a simpler people or one far more complex who merely seem simple.

  “There are trails in the desert, and mountains, Hannes, trails the Indians no longer follow. Here and there, for a little way, they use them. The trails were made by the Old Ones, the people who were here before the Indians. We do not know who they were or what became of them, and some of the white people do not believe in them at all. The fathers at the missions have told the Indians it is nonsense and they must not speak of them.”

  “These Indians, too?”

  “No, these are not mission Indians. Some of them go to Pala occasionally, but usually they return here. No priests have come here yet.”

  “Where do the trails go?”

  “Nobody knows. To water, probably. Sometimes I believe they go to hidden places where there is writing on the rock walls.”

  “What does the writing say?”

  “Often it is only a few pictures of animals, sometimes there is more. We do not know what it means.”

  “I shall find out. I want to know what it means.”

  “There are trails no Indian will follow. Someday you may go, but first there is much to learn.” My father got up. “It grows late. Now we will go home.”

  There were sandhills and cactus where we were, and there was scattered brush. The sun was going down. Something moved in the sand and started a small trickle down the dune toward us. Looking up, I saw nothing.

  “If it is the house of Tahquitz,” I said, “I like it. Will we stay there?”

  “If he comes to claim it,” my father said, “we will give it up, although I like it, too.” He paused to rest. “It shows much love, that house. It shows the love of a man for his materials and his creation. It is a thing to be respected. There is beauty in the house,” he added, “and I envy the skill of the builder.”

  I thought of the trickling sand. It was probably a lizard. “Will he come back, do you think?”

  “Who knows?”

  My father took my hand. “Come, we must get home. I am suddenly very tired. I wish…”

  They were there, waiting for us in the yard. There were four of them. The first was an old man with white hair and a stern face. His eyes were mean and cruel. He said, “It is he. Kill him.”

  “Sir?” My father’s tone was calm, although he must have heard the men behind us. “Let the boy go. He is a child.”

  “Kill the cur,” the old man said, “and kill the whelp. Do it now!”

  He turned sharply away as he spoke, and my father shoved me hard away and to the ground, and he drew. His right hand was shoving me from danger, so he drew more slowly. He was hit twice—I saw it—before he could fire. He fired then, once, and a man fell. His second shot cut a nick in the corner of our door, and then he fell.

  “Be sure he is dead.” The old man spoke quite calmly. “Such carrion is harder to kill than a snake.”

  Men came around my father and shot into his body. One of them turned his pistol to me.

  “Not here,” the old man said. “We will take him with us and leave him in the desert. It is better so.”

  A man grabbed me, and I kicked him. He slapped me hard across the face, smiling past his mustache. “Try that again and I’ll cut off your ears before we leave you.”

  He had a scar across the bridge of his nose, a livid scar that must have almost cut
it in two. He was one of those who shot my father as he lay on the ground.

  “Take him,” the old man said impatiently. “We must be gone. The Indians will come.”

  “We will kill them, too,” said the man with the scar.

  “You are a fool! They are many, we are few. Always,” he added, “they have liked him as if he were one of their own.”

  Holding me tight, the man with the scarred nose twisted my arm and smiled when I winced. “Maybe he will give you to me,” he said. “Then we shall see you cry. When I move, you will tremble. When I lift a hand, you will scream.”

  It was almost dark now, and they rode swiftly, avoiding trails. There were nine of them besides the old man.

  One was a young man, very handsome, very cold. He had looked at me with contempt. Now he said to the old man, “At last it is done. When this one is dead, it will be finished.”

  “Leave him to me,” the scarred one said.

  The old man turned sharply. “Silence! He will die. We will leave him in the desert.”

  “We are riding east!” the young man said suddenly. “It is the wrong way!”

  “It is the right way,” the old man said impatiently. “The Indios will believe we are returning through the pass. They will ride after us. They cannot see our tracks, for it is dark. East is the right way.”

  There was a faint light in the sky when they stopped. It was an empty place of flat sand and broken rock and cactus. All around, as far as I could see, there was nothing but a few great boulders and the empty desert. “Here,” the old man said. “Leave him. He is of my own blood, after all. If he dies—”

  “Kill him now,” the younger man said. “Leave him dead.”

  “I will not,” the old man said stubbornly. “Leave him. Let the desert do it. I will not destroy my own blood even if it is mingled with that of scum. Leave him.”

  The man with the scarred nose pulled me free of the saddle and dropped me, then sharply turned his horse so that it would trample me, but I rolled away, then ran and hid among some stones.

  “Leave him!” the old man said impatiently.

  They started off, and filled with anger, I stood up among the rocks. “Good-bye, Grandpa!” I shouted.

  He winced as if struck, and his shoulders hunched as from a blow. He started to turn, but the young one said, “It is an insolent whelp! Like the father!”

  They rode away, and I was alone.

  Chapter 14

  I WAS IN the desert. I was alone. To myself I whispered, “I am Johannes Verne, and I am not afraid.”

  My father was dead. They had killed him, and they had left me to die.

  I was not going to die. I was going to live. I was going to live and make them wish they were dead. The faint light in the sky had increased. I stood by the rocks where I had gone to hide, and I looked around.

  Everywhere was desert, sand and bare rock. Here and there was cactus. Those who brought me here had ridden all night, and they had said they were riding east, but I knew it was not only east. It did not matter. I would follow their tracks.

  How far had we come? They had traveled at a good gait, slowing to a walk from time to time, but most of the time at what my father called a shambling trot.

  I knew something of distance, for we had counted the miles westward from Santa Fe. Mr. Farley had often spoken of how far he must go each day, or how far he had come. I suspected they had brought me forty miles into the desert. Those who rode horses thought it a lot to walk, but I had walked behind the wagon sometimes and I did not think it was so far.

  It would be hot. If I was to walk, it must be now when the air was cool. Mr. Farley had rested his horses during the hottest part of the day. He would only begin to travel when the sun was down. When it was cool, I would walk; when it was hot, I would find a place to hide from the sun.

  Where? I did not know.

  What would Francisco do? He would do as I was doing. He would walk. What else?

  There were the tracks of their horses in the sand. I could follow them back to the house of Tahquitz.

  Turning slowly around, I looked at where I was. It was a place to start from, a place to begin. In a few days I would be seven years old. In a few years I would be old enough, and then I would go calling. There were three men I would visit. The old don, the young handsome one, and he of the scarred nose. It was a thing to live for.

  My mother had taught me never to hate. Hate would destroy him who hated. Nevertheless, I would hate. My mother was gone, my father had been murdered, I had nothing else.

  My legs were short. I wished they were longer, and tried stretching my steps. Behind me the sun would be rising. The tracks were there, sometimes plain, sometimes faint. My father had taught me a little of tracking, but here it was not needed. The tracks of ten horses were plain.

  I had no water. We had stopped at no spring. I had not been this way before. I did not know where water could be found. I was thirsty, but not enough thirsty to worry. I would wait, and walk.

  “I am Johannes Verne,” I said aloud. “I am not afraid.”

  Then the strangeness came. Suddenly I stopped and looked all around. The sand was almost white, the rocks that had seemed black now were brown, the sky was very blue and there were no clouds. I should have been afraid, but I was not. All about me seemed familiar, although I had seen none of it before, and had ridden through it only in darkness.

  I sat down on a flat rock. This was where I belonged. My mother had come to love the desert, my father had lived with it, in it, had loved it and its people. Maybe that was it, but there was something more, too. I felt that I was born for this, to live here, to be a part of it.

  When I began to walk again, I did not hurry. Soon I must seek shade, and before night I should have to find water. Yet the strangeness was upon me, the feeling that I was not alone, a feeling that the desert was a friendly place.

  A jackrabbit started up and bounded away, then stopped, sat up, and looked at me. Then I saw where a snake had crossed the sandy trail, and some kind of bug had crossed over the snake’s trail.

  It was growing hot. In the sky, no longer quite so blue, but misty with heat, there was a buzzard. He had seen me and was watching.

  “Go away!” I said aloud. “I am not your dinner!”

  The buzzard could not hear me, but he would not have believed me. I remembered what my father had said, that the buzzard has only to wait. In the end, we all come to him or his like.

  I began to look for shade. There was none. I thought of pulling brush and piling it over a place where I could crawl for shade, but everything was stiff and dry and covered with thorns or stickers.

  The shadows of the Joshua trees were short. It would be nearing midday and there was no shade. My mouth was very dry. I picked up a little pebble and held it in my hand until it was not so hot, and then put it in my mouth. It would help for a little while. I stumbled.

  Some kind of small bird had run ahead of me in the sand. Far off, to the south and a little west, there seemed to be mountains. Were they our mountains? They must be. How far I had walked, I did not know. I sat down again.

  By the shadows it was midday, and I had been walking since just before daylight. Jacob Finney had talked to me about the desert, as had Mr. Farley and Mr. Kelso, and of course, my father. I knew I must find shade and rest. A man or a boy could not live long without water.

  The trail of tracks I was following dipped down into a dry wash, and the opposite side was steep. By the time I climbed out of the wash, I was very tired. And then I saw the rocks. It was only a small clump of rocks, but they were heaped together and one of them made a shelf that held a little shadow. When I was closer, I could see a hole behind it. Carefully, because of snakes, I inspected it. Taking a stick, and careful before I picked it up to be sure it was a stick and not a snake, I prodded into the shallow hole.

  Nothing.…

  Crawling in, there was room enough for me to lie down. A crack toward the back let a small breeze come th
rough. It felt good.

  Finally I must have slept, because when I opened my eyes it was cooler and I could see the sun was down. Crawling out, I looked all around. There was nothing but the desert. Keeping the stick with which I had prodded for snakes, I started to walk.

  A little sand had sifted into the tracks. They were no longer so plain. Suddenly I was afraid. What if the tracks disappeared?

  Stopping, I remembered what Jacob Finney had said. “Always take your bearings. Locate yourself.”

  I knew where the sun had gone down, which would be west. So I was facing south. Far away I could see a jagged point of rock, and it was due south. Walking on, night came, and I chose a star that hung in the south right over my point of rocks; then I walked on.

  The desert is cold at night, and soon I was cold, but I walked on, stumbling once in a while. A coyote howled and I took a firmer grip on my stick. It was a good strong stick.

  My mouth was very dry. Sometimes it was hard to swallow. I took deep breaths of the cool, clear air, which seemed almost like water, it was so fresh. Once I almost fell asleep walking. When I found a flat rock, I sat down. The coyotes seemed close, and I wondered if they were following me.

  Somebody had said they did not eat people. My father laughed at that. They were carnivores, he said, and would eat anything available. They were afraid of the man-smell because it meant danger, but they would attack anything they might eat if it could not fight back. If a man or a child is helpless, my father said, he might be eaten. Jacob Finney had agreed.

  “No animal has any special respect for man,” he said. “It is just that they have learned to fear. Once they lose their fear, a man has to be careful.”

  Clutching my stick, I waited. If one came close, I would hit him.

  Bending over, I gathered some rocks. They were black against the white sand. I piled them beside me on the flat rock.

  Sometimes I dozed, yet I tried to stay awake, and several times I heard something moving, but I couldn’t see anything. A small wind stirred, rustling the dry leaves on the brush. Something stirred again, closer. I picked up a rock and threw it hard. After that I heard no sound.