the Lonesome Gods (1983) (52 page)

Taking my time and using the material from the saddlebags, I cut out the moccasins and stitched them together, a better pair than I'd had since starting. I put the rest of the leather into the old rucksack and started hunting a way down into the canyon.

Nobody had ever told me climbing down into a canyon like that was going to be easy, so I took my time, easin
g
from ledge to ledge, walking along here, using hands and feet against the rock wall at other places, until I got down.

There might have been easier places, but I'd no time for looking. On the bottom I rested in the shade of the cliff and then started down the canyon.

Maybe I'd walked three miles when I saw the buzzards. There were several of them and they were circling above something down below. Checking my gun to see if it was there, I climbed around some boulders, stepped along on some rocks, and went around a dead Joshua washed down by some flash flood.

Suddenly several buzzards started up from the ground, but they did not fly away. What was down there was dying, not dead.

Now I moved with greater care. My ears told me nothing beyond an occasional squawk from the buzzards. A couple of them had stopped flying and had perched themselves on rocks close above something they were watching. I could see their ugly necks crane to peer closer. Then I came around a corner of rock and saw three horses. Two of them were down, one struggling to rise. The third horse was standing, legs spraddled, head hanging, obviously all in. Yet when one of the buzzards started down, his head came up and he moved at it.

They heard me scrambling down the rocks. The horse lifted his head and stared.

It was my black stallion.-

For a moment I stopped dead still. I never saw a horse that looked worse and was still on his feet. He had fallen or been attacked by something. One shoulder was all torn and bloody, and there was a nasty laceration on one hip. His head was up and he was staring at me, but he moved a little closer to protect the mare that was down. "It's all right, boy," I said, "I'm coming!"

His ears pricked a little. I think he knew my voice, and he should have. I'd talked to him enough, from time to time.

Then I remembered the tracks I'd seen now and then and the conversation I'd overheard when somebody name
d
Ventura was spoken of as chasing a small bunch of horses--"not more than five or six head." Well, there were only three of them now, and one was dead. Coming closer, I saw the horse that was down had a shattered leg, one of the worst breaks I ever saw. That down horse was suffering a good bit and needed killing, but I dared not do it until I'd done something for the stallion. A shot now might frighten the stallion into running, and in the desert like this, he would surely die.

Speaking softly, I walked nearer, trying not to frighten him. He was in no shape to run, as whoever had chased them had simply run them ragged, and tough as he was, that big stallion was only hours away from going down himself, and then the buzzards would move in.

Edging closer, I took off my hat, and unstopping my canteen, I poured about half of the water into my hat and held it for the stallion to drink. He shied a mite but was too bad off to run, and when he smelled that water, he moved closer.

He dipped his nose into my hat and drank. He drank it all and wanted more, but what I had must be kept. We had a long way to go. However, in that canyon there was water, the canyon where the palm trees were. Getting there was another thing. It would be tough for me, tougher for that black horse.

With the straps from the rucksack, I made a makeshift bridle. From the beginning I'd had a hunch that horse had been ridden at some time or at least handled by some man or woman. He stood quiet while I slipped the bridle on, and let me lead him off down the canyon a ways. Leaving him standing there, I walked back and put that down horse out of its misery.

Leading the black stallion, I started down the canyon. There was water aplenty at Thousand Palms, but getting there would be a trick. No longer did I have just myself to worry about, but a mighty big horse that would need a lot of water.

The canyon down which we were walking, with the desert opening before us, collected runoff from several intermittent creeks, so when I saw a hollow near a bould
er with cracked mud in the bottom, I decided to take a chance. Horses, wild horses at least, were good at finding water and sometimes pawing the dirt out to get at it. Using my bowie knife, I started digging at the ground to see if there was water. When I'd worked maybe a half-hour I began finding damp earth, and down deeper, water began to come in. Scooping out more dirt, I let the water seep in. It was slow, but it came. That stallion needed no urging. He just put his head down and sucked it all up.

We stayed right there until sundown, and whenever there was water enough seeped in, I let the big black drink. Meanwhile I scouted around and found some jimsonweed growing. That was no great wonder, because it can be found growing most everywhere along roads and up canyons, even sometimes on the bald desert. Crushing up some of the leaves with water, I plastered them on the sores. Then I washed my hands with fresh sand, not trusting the weed too much.

When shadows started to gather, I got up. "All right, boy," I said, "let's you and me go home."

He came right along after me, and I did not even have to lead him. He knew when he'd found a friend. I would have dearly liked to ride him, but he was in no shape for that.

We started, taking our time, because he was a very tired horse. The water had done wonders for him, and I'd managed a drink for myself-before we started out. Most of the way was downhill, a long, gentle slope. It would be that way until we were fairly close to the palm canyon; then we'd have to climb a bit. By that time the stallion would smell the water and would be eager to get to it. We plodded along past smoke trees and occasional palo verde that grew along the wash, until we found the wide valley scattered with palms--singles, twos, and groves. Some were ragged with thick skirts of palm leaves that had served their time and folded over at the bottoms of the trees, with the leaves of successive years thickening the skirts as the trees grew tall. Some had been burned, leaving the trunks blackened but alive, but here an
d
there the fires had proved too much and the palms had died.

It was a wild, desolate scene of fallen trees and scattered palm leaves, long dead. From among the palms a lonely coyote trotted away with only occasional backward glances at us who disturbed him.

From along the base of one grove there was a trickle of water rimmed with the white of alkali. Bad-tasting though it was, both the stallion and I drank and drank, then drank again.

Climbing a bench away from the small stream, we found a place under some palms where I searched for sidewinders or rattlers and found none. Lying down on some palm fronds, I promptly fell asleep and awakened hours later with the stallion nudging me with his nose. I put my hand on his neck, and he shied unconvincingly. Rising, I checked the sores on his back. They looked better, but I found no jimsonweed to renew the dressing, although the locality was a likely spot for it to grow. "Come on, boy, we're going home."

Ten miles or so to the mountains across the valley, but ten miles in a wide-open valley with no place to hide. It was early evening before I walked up the dusty lane to where the store stood.

The small ramshackle house was empty. The door hung on leather-strap hinges; the chimney had fallen, breaking through a part of the roof; wind whined under the eaves and whispered sand across the porch. I looked within. Dust, a broken box, a couple of empty bottles, and a sad-looking dented bucket. Well, he had not been a settler, only a squatter, moved on to fresher fields.

Walking beside the black stallion, I went along the road toward home. Rounding the last dune, I saw the ocotillo that fenced the place, but the house was gone. The walls had toppled; the chimney was a dark, questioning finger; a charred beam lay across where the living room had been. Leaving the horse, I walked up to the ruins. The spine and part of the charred cover of a book ... Walking on past, and calling the stallion, I went to the water trough. It sat there on its sturdy forked legs
,
unshaken by earthquake, unharmed by fire, clear cold water running from the rusted pipe into it. The stable roof had collapsed, but the corners still stood.

In the gathering dusk I stood and looked around. Gone . all gone, this last place where I had used with my father and where, despite his illness, we had been briefly happy.

While the stallion drank his fill, I sat on one of the fallen stones. What now of my lonely giant? What of the strange one from the mountains who came to my house for books and brought the smell of pines?

At the pipe I emptied and refilled my canteen. I could not remain here. My enemies would come here first of all, and they could not be far behind me. By now they would have found the bodies by Stubby Spring and my destination would be obvious. They would not take the time to track but would come directly here.

Tired though I was, I must find another place, a place to go, to hide. And then I must return to Los Angeles and to Meghan.

But where now? To Palm Canyon? There were nearly always some of the Indians there, but why take them trouble?

Yet I might be able to borrow a bridle and saddle, and the sores on the stallion's back were not where they would be chafed by a saddle or a girth.

Yet as I turned away, something stopped me. Turning, I walked back to the chimney, counted the bricks in the fireplace, and then worried one of them loose.

My father's gold, my gold. I had forgotten about it until now. It was still there. I pocketed the gold and replaced the brick.

All I wanted now was to rest, to stay in one place, to relax if even for a day.

There was a place I knew, a place where I had gone sometimes with Francisco; it was a hollow surrounded by mesquite and a few palms where grass had grown, and no doubt had one dug, he might have found water there, a seep from the mountain that rose sharply up for almost two miles right behind the place.

It was a place to hide, a place to rest, a place where they might not find me.

When I reached the place, nothing had changed. I picketed the black horse, using a length of rope found at the stable, and then I stretched out on the soft ground, looked up at the stars and the black wall of the mountain, and then I closed my eyes and slept.

In the night the mountain stirred, rumbles came from deep within it, and I awakened, listening, suddenly alert. Another quake? We who live with them become accustomed, at least to the small ones. A few stones rattled down the dark flanks of the mountain.

Tahquitz again, trying to escape from his walled-up cavern.

I thought of that, thought of our own Tahquitz, the mysterious visitor from the mountain, and then I thought of Don Federico.

Suddenly I sat up, and just as suddenly I was mad; a deep, fierce anger stirred in me. I had been chased and shot at, my life made miserable by the harassment of one man ... or two men. Yet my grandfather had bothered me less, of late.

All right, they wanted a fight. I would give it to them. Tomorrow I would become the hunter, and no longer the hunted.

Again I slept, and when I opened my eyes a man in a pink shirt; a blue neckerchief, and a wide hat was sitting on the bank watching me.

"You sleep well," he said, "for a hunted man." It was Francisco.

"Today I become the hunter," I said. "Now begins a war."

"I think so. It is time."

Chapter
56

Tomas was near the fire, his dark eyes alert. The boy had dropped back toward the shadows, nearer th
e
horses. "Leave her alone," Tomas said.

Iglesias did not turn his eyes from her. "Do not be an old fool! Who will know? Who comes here?"

"Johannes Verne will know. He reads sign like an Apache. He will come. He will find you."

"Bah! He is dead. They are killing him in the desert! She is a pigeon to be plucked. She is the little dove and we are the hawks."

Biscal was on his feet, and so was the third man, who was edging closer. Meghan's heart was beating slowly, heavily. Her small pistol was gripped in her right hand concealed by the folds of her dress. She had but two bullets, two shots to be fired. The barrel was short, and they must be close. She must not miss.

Yet she was not frightened. She had been, but not now. Her father, who had had many a brush with Chinese and Malay pirates, often talked of such things. "Think," he had said, "and act with coolness. Do what must be done." Tomas looked across the fire at her and said in a casual tone, "Johannes will be with his friends, the Cahuillas. Tell them you are his and they will be your friends also." The Cahuillas? Her friends? Was he suggesting that she escape? That she go to the Indians? But how ... ?

They were edging closer.

"Stop!" Tomas ordered. He reached for his rifle on the rock near him, and Biscal shot him.

She saw him stagger, and the unnamed man lunged fo
r
her. She lifted her pistol and shot him in the stomach. As the gun lifted she saw the sudden flash of terror in the man's eyes. He was already within four feet of her, his hands outstretched. The pistol was unexpected, but he could not stop or even try to evade. He was too close. His mouth gaped with a cry that never came. She was close enough so she heard the heavy, sodden thud of the .44 bullet as it hit him.