Fire on the Mountain

by Edward Abbey

  “I’m serious,” I said.

  “I thought you said you were thirsty.”

  “I’m serious and thirsty. I’m seriously thirsty. Besides, the United States Cavalry always carried canteens.”

  “That’s because they were always lost,” Lee explained. “If you don’t know where you are or where you’re going it might help a little bit to carry a canteen. If you don’t have to depend on it. If you are lucky enough to find water even though you are lost. Why if it hadn’t been for the the movies the United States Cavalry would still be lost. They’d have lost the war.”

  “What war?” Grandfather said.

  “Why—the war they won.”

  “What war was that?”

  “Let’s forget it,” I said. “Let’s forget the whole thing.”

  We arrived now at a place high on the hillside where a dim little trail forked off to the left. The wagon road we were following continued on up the hill in the general direction of Thieves’ Mountain. Grandfather halted his horse and looked around. He looked back at the sun. He looked at me and Lee. “I’ll take the ridge trail,” he said. “You boys keep to the road. I’ll meet you at the cabin this evening.”

  “What do we do if we find the horse?” I asked.

  Grandfather studied my new straw hat. “How does the hat feel, Billy?”

  I touched the brim. “Pretty good, Grandfather.”

  “Does it keep your head cool?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Not too cool?”

  “No sir.” I loosened the hat a bit.

  “Not numb?”

  “No sir.”

  “Good.” He touched his spurs to the big sorrel and started up the side trail. He stopped between a pair of tall jackpines. “Come here for a minute, will you, Billy?” He looked at Lee. Lee nodded and moved on up the wagon road. When I reached my grandfather Lee was hidden from us by the trees. “Come close, Billy,” the old man said. He looked again to make sure that Lee could not see us, then opened one saddlebag and pulled out a war surplus canteen, U.S. Army model. “I was only kidding you about the water, Billy.” He unscrewed the cap and handed the canteen to me. “Take a good swig of that.” He smiled as he watched me drink. “Pretty good, huh?”

  I drank a little more and gave the canteen back to him. “Yes sir,” I said. It was good hot well water, the best I believe I had ever tasted.

  “Why a man’s a fool to run around out here without any water a-tall,” Grandfather said. He took a short drink and put the canteen back in the saddlebag. “Only don’t tell Lee, will you, Billy?”

  “I won’t, Grandfather.”

  “You promise?”

  “I promise.”

  “Fine.” He patted me on the shoulder. “And if you find that pony, just put a rope on him and bring him along. Okay?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Fine. Now you join up with Lee. Don’t let him get lost. I’ll see you this evening.” He turned the big horse and jogged away from me, up the winding path toward the crest of the ridge, and was soon out of sight among the pines.

  I trotted old Blue down the path to the road and caught up with Lee, who was standing beside his horse. “Everything all right?” he said.

  “Sure. He’s all right.”

  Lee looked back down the road to where the trail forked off. “He went on up the trail?”

  “Yes.”

  Lee grinned at me. “You still feel thirsty, Billy?”

  “No, not much.”

  “I know what you mean.” Still grinning, Lee unbuckled a saddlebag and drew out a military-style canteen. “Have a little water, anyway.”

  We each had a pretty good drink before Lee put the canteen away. “Your grandfather is a great man,” he explained, buckling the saddlebag cover, “the finest man I know. But you know how these old-timers are—kind of stubborn in their ideas sometimes. Too proud to admit they might be wrong about something.”

  “A man’s a fool to run around out here without any water a-tall.”

  “That’s the truth, Billy. Only—don’t mention this to him.” Left hand on the pommel, ready to mount, he looked at me: “What do you say?”

  “I won’t breathe a word of it, Lee.”

  “That’s my buddy.” He swung himself up to the saddle. “Now let’s move on out and see what the mountains have been doing when we weren’t around to help.”

  The mountains had been doing a lot. They were doing very well. The stones and boulders, sparkling with veins of feldspar and quartz, looked bright and clean and solid in the sun, fresh enough to eat on, as new as if created yesterday. The junipers smelled sweetly, the jackpines stood tall and frankly perpendicular, and the pinyon pines had boughs heavy with clusters of green gummy seedcones, a bumper crop of nuts that would ripen through the summer and be ready for harvest in September. Among and above the trees flew a lively traffic of bluejays, finches, magpies, canyon wrens, phoebes, mockingbirds and woodpeckers, with a few big blue-black ravens croaking here and there, and above all this, about one thousand feet higher, a solitary hawk floating on a thermal column of air. The flowers, too, were rising between the ruts of the road and out of cracks and thumbholes in the boulders and in all the open spaces among the evergreens—the purple larkspur, the scarlet bugler, the golden beeweed, the blue and pink penstemon, the pale yellow sand verbena and the bright red Indian paintbrush. Also a few scattered yuccas, much smaller than the giants of the plain below, some of them in blossom and some dead. I broke off the slender stalk of a dead one and carried it like a lance, resting the butt on my stirrup tap. Sgt. William Starr, United States Cavalry, advancing toward the stronghold of the Mescalero Apaches, accompanied only by a single scout.

  “Try to keep that thing out of my eyes, Billy.”

  “I’m sorry.” I transferred the lance to the off-side.

  “Thank you. Tell me, Billy, can you hear what I think I hear?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Let’s stop.” We stopped. “I think,” Lee said, “I think I hear a jeep.”

  We listened hard. I could hear nothing but the heavy breathing of the horses, the squawk of a raven, the light and quiet breathing of the trees. “I don’t hear it.”

  “I don’t either, now,” Lee said, “but I did a minute ago.”

  We listened again, And this time we both heard it, the whining of a jeep engine in compound low, coming around a bend far up in the hills. Coming toward us.

  “How did they get there?” I asked. “They didn’t go up this way.” No tracks on our road.

  “I know. They must have come by way of that old mine road to the north that goes through the reservation.”

  “Reservation? What reservation?”

  “The military reservation. White Sands. The rocket range.”

  “Oh.” I thought about that.

  “Let’s go on.”

  We rode on, keeping the horses at a fast walk up the winding and ever-ascending road. It was the kind of road that only a jeep could negotiate—a sensitive and agile jeep.

  Within a mile, at one of the narrowest points on the narrow road, with the slope of the mountain rising steeply on one side and falling steeply on the other, we met the visitors. The open jeep crawled down the pitch with motor groaning, brakes squeaking, wisps of steam leaking from under the front end of the hood. Lee and I halted, blocking the road. The jeep had to stop, and as soon as it stopped, the engine stalled. The man at the wheel cursed and began grinding on the starter; the overheated motor balked. We could smell the gasoline flooding over the carburetor as the driver pumped on the gas pedal. After a moment he gave this up, stopped pumping, and looked at Lee across the lowered windshield of his vehicle.

  “Hello,” Lee said.

  “Get the hell out of my way,” the driver said.

  Lee paused to consider the implication of this greeting. There were three men in the jeep: the driver, the man at his side, and the man in the back seat. All three wore Army fatigue trousers, sweaty T-shir
ts, Army fatigue caps. They looked tired. The man sitting beside the driver held a double-barreled shotgun upright between his knees; the man in back held some sort of high-powered rifle with telescopic sights in one hand and a half-empty fifth of whisky in the other. The jeep was an Army jeep, olive drab, with identifying markings on the bumper and the hood. Lashed to one of the front fenders with the slim, silver-gray, beautiful and dead body of a coyote.

  “Hey, look what we got here,” the man with the shotgun said, smiling broadly. “We got two real cowboys. One big cowboy and one little cowboy. On real horses, just like real cowboys. What do you know about that.”

  “I see you’ve been hunting,” Lee said, addressing all three of them, since all three appeared to be in about the same condition. Almost as strong as the smell of gasoline was the smell of the whiskey, radiating from the men like the heat waves from the hot hood of the jeep. “I wonder,” Lee went on, “if you happened to see a horse.”

  “We’re not looking for a horse,” the driver said. “We got a jeep. Get the hell out of my way.”

  “We killed that coyote,” the man in back said, grinning. “Easy.” He raised the bottle to his mouth.

  “Congratulations,” Lee said. “The horse we’re looking for is a buckskin—”

  “Hey you,” the man with the shotgun said. “Big cowboy …”

  “—is a buckskin gelding with a black—” “Are you for real?” the man with the shotgun interrupted again. “Are you a real cowboy?”

  Lee paused. “Sure he is!” I shouted. Lee glanced at me and motioned me back. I stayed where I was, wondering if Lee had a gun hidden in his saddlebags. Not that it could do him much good now. I kept a tight grip on my yucca lance.

  The man with the shotgun smiled at me. “Jesus Christ,” he said, “we got two of them. The big cowboy and the little cowboy. This is too much. This is getting out of hand.”

  “Get out of the way,” the driver said. He eased up on the brake pedal and let the jeep roll slowly forward until the front end was almost under the head of Lee’s horse. He stopped. “I said get the hell out of the way.” His radiator sizzled.

  “Certainly,” Lee said. “As soon as one of you answers my question.”

  “We didn’t come out here to answer questions,” the man in back with the high-powered telescopic-sighted rifle said. “We came out here to kill things.” He grinned; he had power clutched in each fist. The rifle lay across his legs, pointing at nobody, but his right hand was on the pistol-grip stock and his forefinger inside the trigger guard.

  “That’s right, big cowboy,” the man with the shotgun said. And he raised the shotgun a little and aimed the two big blue barrels at Lee’s chest. “Now you just back your horse off to the side there and let us by.”

  I thought he was going to kill Lee. “No!” I hollered, and lifted my lance and flung it straight at the shotgunner’s face. Startled by my yell, he half-turned toward me, jerking up his arms and the shotgun to shield himself. At the same time Lee, moving quicker than I could clearly see, slipped from his horse, lunged forward, grabbed the shotgun and twisted it from the man’s hands. He backed off a couple of steps, watching the men closely, the shotgun at the ready.

  “You don’t point these things at people,” Lee said, breathing a little faster than normal. His horse, alarmed by the scuffle, had spooked and was clattering around on the rocks, dragging the reins. “Get my horse, Billy.”

  I didn’t want to miss anything; I stayed where I was.

  “Now,” Lee said, “you there in the back seat: pass that rifle this way. Butt first.”

  The man in back had raised the rifle so that it now pointed at the sky; he still held the bottle in his left hand. Eyes fixed on Lee, he fumbled around for a steady place to set the bottle down. “Hold this bottle,” he said, groping with it toward the driver, keeping his eyes on Lee.

  “Keep the bottle,” Lee said; he leveled the shotgun so that it covered all three men. “Just pass me the rifle.”

  “Can’t you see he’s crazy?” the driver said; “give him the gun.”

  The man in the rear hesitated, glaring at Lee, ugly hatred on his face. “Is that shotgun loaded?” he growled to the man in front.

  “My God yes it’s loaded. Give him the rifle.”

  “I ought to kill him.”

  “For godsake give him the rifle.”

  The man on the back seat hesitated again. “I ought to kill him,” he said, before sliding the rifle, buttplate first, over the shoulder of the man in the middle and toward Lee. The middle man relayed the rifle to Lee, who reached forward carefully with his left hand, accepted the weapon, and backed up again.

  “Now to get back to the subject,” he said, setting down the rifle but keeping the shotgun. “Did you see our horse?”

  “We didn’t see any horse,” the driver mumbled.

  Lee stared at him. “You’re probably lying.”

  “We didn’t see your horse.”

  Lee was silent for a little while. “All right,” he said. “You fellas can go on home now.”

  “Give us our guns.”

  “I don’t think I will,” Lee said. “I don’t think you people are big enough to play with these things. I ought to bust them over a rock, throw the pieces down the mountain.” He paused. “But I’ll do you a favor. I’ll leave them at the Sheriff’s office in Alamogordo. You can pick them up there. Now get out of here. There’s something about you fellas that makes me very sick.”

  The driver began pumping the starter and gas pedal again.

  “Wait a minute,” Lee said. The driver stopped. “Get that coyote off the fender.”

  They gaped at him. “What?” the driver said.

  “Leave the coyote here.”

  “Hold on,” the man in back said. “That’s my coyote. I killed him myself. He’s mine.”

  “No, he belongs here.” Lee pulled out his pocket-knife and opened it. Keeping the men covered with the shotgun, he stepped forward and cut the cord that bound the coyote to the fender and hood of the jeep. The body slid off, falling to the side of the road. “Now you can go,” Lee said, moving back out of the way.

  I moved too, turning Blue to the inside of the road, hard against the slope. Lee’s horse had stopped a few yards farther down the road, watching the proceedings.

  The driver of the jeep ground the starter and pumped on the gas pedal. The carburetor was still flooded.

  “Let me give you some advice,” Lee said. “Don’t pump on the gas when you’re flooded. That only makes it worse.”

  The driver scowled at him. “You shut up. I’ll manage this thing without any help from you.” He released the brake and the jeep started to roll forward, passing us.

  “Goodbye,” Lee shouted after them. “Drive carefully.”

  “Drive carefully,” I echoed.

  They rolled down the road without replying, without looking back, while the motor gasped and coughed, choking on gasoline. In a minute they were out of sight and gone. I rode after Lee’s horse, caught it and brought it back to him. Lee sat on a rock, wiping the sweat from his face with a handkerchief and airing out his hat. “Thanks, Billy. My God it’s hot.”

  My body was trembling. I felt too weak to get down off my horse.

  “What a day,” Lee said. He grinned up at me. “What happened, anyway?”

  “I thought—I thought he was going to shoot you.”

  “And you threw that spear at him?” We looked at the yucca stalk, lying on the road near the body of the coyote. We looked at the coyote. “Now why did I do that?” Lee asked. He got up slowly, replacing his hat on his head, took the coyote by the scruff of the neck, hauled him to the edge of the road and let him roll down into the woods. After a moment he came back to his rock in the shade and sat down again.

  “What about the guns?”

  “Yeah, the guns.” He looked at the guns. “We’ll stash them here in the rocks and pick them up on the way home tomorrow.” He sighed, a little wearily, then smiled
at me. “Billy, would you mind getting that canteen out of the saddlebags? And I think you’ll find something to eat in there too.”

  “You bet, Lee.” Shakily, I got off my horse.

  “Billy?”

  “Yes?”

  “You know, Billy, that was a foolish thing I did. I could’ve got both of us killed. But those—those men made me so goddamned angry. They had no manners at all.”

  “That’s right,” I said, unbuckling Lee’s saddlebag. “No manners at all.”

  He sat musing, hat pushed back. “I wonder if they were officers or enlisted men?”

  “They sure weren’t gentlemen.”

  “I was an officer myself. That’s why I find it hard to tell.” He glanced at the tough sun blazing over us. “Well, anyway, I hope they make it down the mountain all right.”

  “I hope they dont.”

  “It’s a good thing your grandfather wasn’t here. He’d have killed those fellows. Strangled them with his bare hands.” I handed Lee the canteen and a sandwich wrapped in waxed paper. “One other thing, Billy …”

  “What?” I unwrapped a sandwich.

  “Better not tell him about this.”

  “About the canteen?”

  “About this incident here. The men in the jeep.”

  “Why not, Lee?”

  “I’m afraid the old man might—do something drastic. Might go a little too far. We better not tell him, Billy.”

  “Okay, Lee, if you think that’s best.”

  “I think it’s best. We better not tell him.” The horses, tied to the nearest pine, stamped their hooves as we prepared to eat. Lee looked at them. “You two be quiet. Don’t you know there’s a lion up here?”

  The horses stared at Lee.

  “That’s right,” he said. “A lion.”

  The horses stood perfectly quiet. Lee grinned at me. “Now we can eat.”

  We rested for an hour or so during the noon heat, then remounted and continued the climb up the mountainside. All afternoon we searched for the buckskin pony, following out the side trails, exploring the scrub oak thickets and the juniper jungles. When we reached the place where the old mine road joined our wagon road we checked that too, backtracking the jeep for several miles to the north, clear to the boundary of the White Sands Missile Range, a padlocked steel gate and a steel picket fence that stretched eastward, as far as the eye could follow, down through the hills and across the desert plain, and westward up the mountainside toward the pass between Thieves’ Peak and the beginning of the San Andres chain of mountains. About eighty miles northwest of where we stood, admiring the DANGER—KEEP OUT signs, lay the site of the first atomic bomb explosion.