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Novel 1987 - The Haunted Mesa (v5.0)

Page 33

by Louis L'Amour


  Johnny had found a place in the rocks and was reloading his rifle and replacing the empty cylinder of his pistol with another. That was the old way, for when loading took time, a man who needed a gun often carried fully loaded cylinders that could be quickly put in place.

  “Johnny.” Mike spoke loudly but he was watching Zipacna. “Get through the hole. You’ve no time.”

  “I ain’t leavin’ you.”

  “You’ve got to. When I get a chance I’ll make my break.”

  “You have no chance,” Zipacna said. “Now I kill you!”

  He took a quick, fencer’s lunge with his left fingers stiffly extended, stabbing for Mike’s eye. Mike ducked in time and the stabbing hand skidded around his skull. But those extended fingers were like steel.

  Mike feinted, then smashed a left to the body and missed a crossing right to the chin. Zipacna stepped back, then another of those stabbing lunges. The stiff fingers hit Mike just above the eye and cut deep, showering him with blood. Zipacna sprang close and tried to throw him with a rolling hip lock.

  Mike stabbed his own fingers down into a spot just above the hipbone, and Zipacna’s knees buckled. He fell and Mike fell with him. They both lunged to their feet, and Mike took a quick glance toward the place of the opening.

  Zipacna struck again with the stabbing fingers, and again they cut deep. Blood streaming down his face, Mike dodged another stabbing blow and slipped inside, smashing both fists to the body, then whipping a right hook over Zipacna’s shoulder that split his cheekbone.

  Zipacna staggered and Mike moved in, smashing another hook to the body, and then a left that crunched Zipacna’s nose. Zipacna staggered, then fell. Scrambling to his feet, he fought like a madman, clawing at Mike’s face with steellike fingers.

  Mike slammed another blow to the body, but it was corded with muscle. Nevertheless, Zipacna winced at the blow, and Mike put everything he had into a right uppercut, turning his body with the weight behind it.

  The fist collided with Zipacna’s chin. His feet left the ground and he came down hard.

  Turning swiftly, Mike lunged for the opening he hoped was there.

  In that flashing instant he saw that Johnny was gone, but just as he reached the spot, something thrown hard from behind struck him behind the ear.

  He felt himself falling, and in that last instant of consciousness he lunged forward, then fell, face down. Something seized him violently by the collar and he was jerked along the ground. Desperately, only half-conscious, he tried to struggle, but the vicious grip on his collar would not yield. He was dragged roughly along the ground, and in that instant his last grip on consciousness failed.

  *

  Chapter 44

  *

  BLOOD.

  There was blood on the ground where he lay. The side of his face was against the earth and his eyes were open and he was staring at blood on the grass, blood on the sand.

  It was his blood. His mind told him that, although he could not have explained how he knew. He moved a hand, wanting to touch his face.

  “Hey! He’s comin’ out of it! He isn’t dead yet.”

  “Hard man to kill,” somebody said.

  Somebody knelt beside him and gentle fingers touched his face. “He’s cut on the forehead,” somebody said, and then a woman’s voice said, “It was Zipacna.”

  The voice was that of Kawasi.

  “I’m all right.” He spoke aloud. “Somebody threw something, hit me on the back of the head.”

  “You were hit, all right.” That was Gallagher speaking. “You’ve got a welt back there as big as both my fists.”

  Struggling, Mike sat up. “I’m all right,” he repeated. “Something grabbed me back there.”

  “It was Chief,” Gallagher said. “He pulled you through.”

  “He what?”

  “Grabbed you by the collar and pulled you through—just in time.”

  Carefully, Raglan got to his feet. He swayed for an instant, then steadied himself. “Did anything else come through?” He looked at Kawasi. “I mean, except our crowd?”

  “Nobody. Nothing.”

  “Mike?” It was Erik Hokart. “Thanks. Thanks for both of us.”

  “It was nothing,” he lied, “simply nothing at all.”

  He looked around. “Where are we?”

  Gallagher hooked his thumbs behind his belt. “On top of No Man’s, waiting for a helicopter to take us off.”

  “Isn’t there a trail? There was supposed to be a trail.”

  “There is one,” Gallagher said, “but we haven’t found it yet. You come over with me next week and I’ll hike it with you.”

  His head throbbed with a dull, heavy ache. Tentatively, he touched his brow. It was caked with dried blood now. He had been cut to the bone at least twice.

  He wanted to get cleaned up, and then he wanted to lie down. He just wanted to rest, to sleep. He wanted to sleep for a week. He said as much.

  “Not yet,” Gallagher said, “I’ve got something to show you.”

  He would not explain.

  The helicopter took them back to the Haunted Mesa.

  At the ruin, Erik began gathering his belongings, and Mike picked up his backpack. He could see his car, not too far away. “We’ll go back to Tamarron,” he said to Kawasi. “Erik, you’d better bring Melisande and come with me. You, too, Johnny. There’s plenty of room.”

  “Mike?” Gallagher said. “Got something you should see. That there spacequake or whatever it was happened last night. Happened just after Chief pulled you through the hole. Seems like ever’body wasn’t so lucky.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Gallagher had been leading him toward the kiva. Now he lifted a hand and pointed.

  Where the window had been there were some fallen stones, and behind them an intact stone wall. Intact but for one thing.

  A human body cannot pass through a solid. Or can it? The brick wall was there, and in the middle of it was Volkmeer’s head, a shoulder, and one arm with a grasping hand.

  The stones of the ancient wall, apparently undisturbed for centuries, were built around him, perhaps even through him. Somewhere on the other side was the rest of him, the part that did not make it through.

  Volkmeer was dead. To all intents and purposes he might have been dead, almost mummified, for centuries.

  “Try explaining that,” Gallagher said. “Just try.”

  “You explain it,” Raglan said. “I’m a stranger here myself.”

  They stood silent for a minute, and then Gallagher said, “Eden’s gone. Deeded the place to Mary and just pulled out.”

  At the helicopter Gallagher said, “Want me to fly you back?”

  “We’ll drive,” Raglan said, “But thanks.” He paused a minute, then said, “Gallagher? Did you ever make fire with a bow and blunt arrow?”

  “Sure. Lots of times when I was a youngster. An old Paiute showed me how.”

  Mike Raglan walked out away from the ruin, and thrust a stick in the ground, tying a red bandana to the end. “They should be able to see that,” he said.

  At the base of it he placed a crude bow, fashioned from a somewhat bent stick and a piece of rawhide, which he looped around a blunt arrow. Taking a short board from the ruin he gouged out a hole to receive the end of the arrow, then cut a notch from the hole to the edge of the board. In the hole he placed a few shavings; at the notch, the tinder for a small fire.

  From his backpack he took a small magnifying glass and placed it on the top of a rock nearby.

  Gallagher shook his head. “What’s all that about? I don’t get it.”

  “For the Saqua,” Raglan said. “They need fire, they worship fire, but I don’t believe they know how to make fire.”

  Kawasi was waiting for him at the car. Melisande and Erik were in the back seat.

  Gallagher had walked over with him. “You’re leaving, then?” He waved a hand. “What about all this?”

  “All of what?” Mike Raglan looked at him
wide-eyed. “I don’t know what you are talking about, Gallagher. Erik thought about building a house out here but changed his mind. We came out to get him. That’s all there is.”

  “Are you crazy? You’ve got the greatest story ever. You could write a book, you could—”

  Mike Raglan started the car. He looked over at Gallagher, extending his hand.

  “I could,” he said, “but who’d believe it?”

  The End

  Author’s Note

  *

  XIBALBA: ALSO WRITTEN as Shibalba, is frequently referred to in the Popol Vuh, the sacred book of the Quiché Maya, as the lower regions where lived tormentors of men, and a home of all things evil. It is mentioned in The Annals of the Cakchiquels as an underground place of great power and splendor.

  HOUSE OF GLOOM: in Xibalba, a place of darkness and shadows, known to few, feared by all.

  LORDS OF XIBALBA: referred to in the Popol Vuh as promoters of evil and destruction.

  VARANEL: the Night Guards, soldiers of the Lords of Xibalba.

  ZIPACNA: a mythological figure of great power, finally destroyed, or at least defeated, by Hunahpu.

  ANASAZI: We do not know what the cliff dwellers called themselves or what they were called by their neighbors. The name is of Navajo origin and was given to the ancient ones who preceded the Navajo in the Four Corners area. That there was trade and communication between the Anasazi and the Maya is well established. Mummified parrots from Central America have been found in Anasazi graves. Archaeologists have been slowly piecing together the story of the cliff dwellers from fragments of pottery, weaving, sandals, and such, but they are hampered by the thoughtless vandalism of pot-hunters, who by removing a pot from its place of discovery make it impossible to place it properly in history. Often it is similar to removing several key pieces from a jigsaw puzzle, then expecting the puzzle to be completed.

  Much fine, painstaking work has been done, yet we have only begun to learn what the Anasazi have to teach us. I, for one, believe man’s life on this continent and our neighbor continent to the south is much, much longer than has been surmised.

  About Louis L’Amour

  *

  “I think of myself in the oral tradition—

  as a troubadour, a village tale-teller, the man

  in the shadows of the campfire. That’s the way

  I’d like to be remembered as a storyteller.

  A good storyteller.”

  IT IS DOUBTFUL that any author could be as at home in the world re-created in his novels as Louis Dearborn L’Amour. Not only could he physically fill the boots of the rugged characters he wrote about, but he literally “walked the land my characters walk.” His personal experiences as well as his lifelong devotion to historical research combined to give Mr. L’Amour the unique knowledge and understanding of people, events, and the challenge of the American frontier that became the hallmarks of his popularity.

  Of French-Irish descent, Mr. L’Amour could trace his own family in North America back to the early 1600s and follow their steady progression westward, “always on the frontier.” As a boy growing up in Jamestown, North Dakota, he absorbed all he could about his family’s frontier heritage, including the story of his great-grandfather who was scalped by Sioux warriors.

  Spurred by an eager curiosity and desire to broaden his horizons, Mr. L’Amour left home at the age of fifteen and enjoyed a wide variety of jobs including seaman, lumberjack, elephant handler, skinner of dead cattle, miner, and an officer in the transportation corps during World War II. During his “yondering” days he also circled the world on a freighter, sailed a dhow on the Red Sea, was shipwrecked in the West Indies and stranded in the Mojave Desert. He won fifty-one of fifty-nine fights as a professional boxer and worked as a journalist and lecturer. He was a voracious reader and collector of rare books. His personal library contained 17,000 volumes.

  Mr. L’Amour “wanted to write almost from the time I could talk.” After developing a widespread following for his many frontier and adventure stories written for fiction magazines, Mr. L’Amour published his first full-length novel, Hondo, in the United States in 1953. Every one of his more than 120 books is in print; there are nearly 270 million copies of his books in print worldwide, making him one of the bestselling authors in modern literary history. His books have been translated into twenty languages, and more than forty-five of his novels and stories have been made into feature films and television movies.

  His hardcover bestsellers include The Lonesome Gods, The Walking Drum (his twelfth-century historical novel), Haunted Mesa, Last of the Breed, and The Haunted Mesa. His memoir, Education of a Wandering Man, was a leading bestseller in 1989. Audio dramatizations and adaptations of many L’Amour stories are available on cassette tapes from Bantam Audio publishing.

  The recipient of many great honors and awards, in 1983 Mr. L’Amour became the first novelist ever to be awarded the Congressional Gold Medal by the United States Congress in honor of his life’s work. In 1984 he was also awarded the Medal of Freedom by President Reagan.

  Louis L’Amour died on June 10, 1988. His wife, Kathy, and their two children, Beau and Angelique, carry the L’Amour publishing tradition forward.

  Bantam Books by Louis L’Amour

  NOVELS

  Bendigo Shafter

  Borden Chantry

  Brionne

  The Broken Gun

  The Burning Hills

  The Californios

  Callaghen

  Catlow

  Chancy

  The Cherokee Trail

  Comstock Lode

  Conagher

  Crossfire Trail

  Dark Canyon

  Down the Long Hills

  The Empty Land

  Fair Blows the Wind

  Fallon

  The Ferguson Rifle

  The First Fast Draw

  Flint

  Guns of the Timberlands

  Hanging Woman Creek

  The Haunted Mesa

  Heller with a Gun

  The High Graders

  High Lonesome

  Hondo

  How the West Was Won

  The Iron Marshal

  The Key-Lock Man

  Kid Rodelo

  Kilkenny

  Killoe

  Kilrone

  Kiowa Trail

  Last of the Breed

  Last Stand at Papago Wells

  The Lonesome Gods

  The Man Called Noon

  The Man from Skibbereen

  The Man from the Broken Hills

  Matagorda

  Milo Talon

  The Mountain Valley War

  North to the Rails

  Over on the Dry Side

  Passin’ Through

  The Proving Trail

  The Quick and the Dead

  Radigan

  Reilly’s Luck

  The Rider of Lost Creek

  Rivers West

  The Shadow Riders

  Shalako

  Showdown at Yellow Butte

  Silver Canyon

  Sitka

  Son of a Wanted Man

  Taggart

  The Tall Stranger

  To Tame a Land

  Tucker

  Under the Sweetwater Rim

  Utah Blaine

  The Walking Drum

  Westward the Tide

  Where the Long Grass Blows

  SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS

  Beyond the Great Snow Mountains

  Bowdrie

  Bowdrie’s Law

  Buckskin Run

  Dutchman’s Flat

  End of the Drive

  From the Listening Hills

  The Hills of Homicide

  Law of the Desert Born

  Long Ride Home

  Lonigan

  May There Be a Road

  Monument Rock

  Night over the Solomons

  Off the Mangrove Coast

  The Outlaws of Mesquite


  The Rider of the Ruby Hills

  Riding for the Brand

  The Strong Shall Live

  The Trail to Crazy Man

  Valley of the Sun

  War Party

  West from Singapore

  West of Dodge

  With These Hands

  Yondering

  SACKETT TITLES

  Sackett’s Land

  To the Far Blue Mountains

  The Warrior’s Path

  Jubal Sackett

  Ride the River

  The Daybreakers

  Sackett

  Lando

  Mojave Crossing

  Mustang Man

  The Lonely Men

  Galloway

  Treasure Mountain

  Lonely on the Mountain

  Ride the Dark Trail

  The Sackett Brand

  The Sky-Liners

  THE HOPALONG CASSIDY NOVELS

  The Riders of the High Rock

  The Rustlers of West Fork

  The Trail to Seven Pines

  Trouble Shooter

  NONFICTION

  Education of a Wandering Man

  Frontier

  The Sackett Companion: A Personal Guide to the Sackett Novels

  A Trail of Memories: The Quotations of Louis L’Amour, compiled by Angelique L’Amour

  POETRY

  Smoke from This Altar

  THE HAUNTED MESA

  A Bantam Book / August 2004

  PUBLISHING HISTORY

  Bantam hardcover edition published May 1987

  Bantam paperback edition / May 1988

  Bantam reissue / August 1994

  Bantam reissue / March 2002

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright © 1978 by Louis & Katherine L’Amour Trust

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except

  where permitted by law. For information address:

  Bantam Books New York, New York.

  Bantam Books and the rooster colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  Please visit our website at www.bantamdell.com

  eISBN: 978-0-553-89919-1

  v3.0

 

 

 


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