The Lonesome Gods

by Louis L'Amour

  “I have no messenger. You have sent them away.”

  “Write the order,” Miss Nesselrode replied. “I will see it delivered by one of those who used to work for you.”

  Elena went to a desk and brought paper, ink, and a quill to him.

  For a moment he stared at the paper; then slowly, reluctantly, he wrote the order.

  He looked up at her, his eyes ugly. “You have destroyed me.”

  “No, my brother. I have tried to save you. You have been destroying yourself. From the first, this foolish pride and your hatred destroyed everything you were or could have been.

  “You were harsh and cruel, but how much of it was due to Don Federico? A good deal, I believe. It is he who has been your evil genius, always at your elbow, advising or suggesting. I think you would have relented long ago had it not been for Federico.”

  The old man shifted in his chair. “The little one,” he muttered. “He called me grandpa!”

  Kelso holstered his gun. “Ma’am, it’s late. I don’t know about you, but I was a tired man when the evening began.”

  “Yes, yes, we must go.” Miss Nesselrode turned. “Elena? Will you come with us?”

  “I shall stay. He will need me now.”

  * * * *

  PETER BURKIN STRIPPED the gear from his horse at the pole corral among the pines. Through the trees he could see the gleam of water from Hidden Lake. He was later than he had planned to be and would spend the night, something he rarely did.

  Hoisting a heavy burlap sack to his shoulder and gripping another sack in his hand, he started over the trail.

  It was late afternoon and the sky was clear, the air cool. Twice he paused to rest. “Ain’t as young as y’used to be,” he said aloud, “or else this here trail is gittin’ steeper!”

  Alfredo was sitting outside, holding his head in his huge hands.

  “You all right, boy?”

  Alfredo looked up. His features seemed to have grown heavier, his flesh thicker, but that was probably the way the light fell.

  “No, Peter, I do not feel well. It is harder to walk now. I…I think my muscles grow weak.”

  “Brought you some extry grub, some books, an’ such. I ain’t so spry on these trails, m’self. Gittin’ old, I reckon.”

  Burkin looked around. “Got you a place here, boy. You surely have! Ain’t a purtier or more peaceful place anywhere.”

  “I found Meghan Laurel,” he said.

  “She is safe?”

  “She is with the Indians. With Francisco’s woman.”

  “Was there trouble?”

  “Two men. One ran away. The other I…I slapped him.”

  “You slapped him?”

  They were silent, watching the sun’s face grow red as it slipped beyond the mountains where the ocean was. “You all right, boy? Anything I can do for you?”

  “You have done too much, Peter. Without you…without you I could do nothing.”

  “Don’t worry yourself, Al.” Peter took up a stick and poked at the pine needles. “Never had nobody m’self until I met her. An’ you.

  “I had a lot of dreams, one time, but they come to nothin’. Never had eddication enough, an’ I wasn’t much of a hand for readin’ like you an’ them Vernes. I missed out on a lot until I met your ma.”

  “She wasn’t my mother, not really.”

  “I know that, boy. I know that. But she thought of herself as such, an’ so did I. When she was dyin’, she told me you was different an’ that I should sort of look after you.”

  “And you did. You’ve been the father I never experienced, Peter. You’ve been kind.”

  “I’m gittin’ along, boy. That trail seems to git steeper all the while. If anything should happen to me—”

  “Don’t worry about it, Peter. I don’t believe I shall be around long.” As Peter started to speak, he lifted a hand. “No, Peter, I feel it. And just as well. I am tired, you know? I’ve loved these mountains, loved them so much. And Johannes? He’s meant a lot to me.

  “We talked, you know? With the books, I mean. If there was one he liked especially, he’d sort of pull it out from the rest.

  “I never wanted him to see me. I just wanted to be a person, a friend, like. If he saw me, he might think different of me. When I left a book for him, I could think of him reading it, and I could wonder what he thought of it. He could do the same with me.”

  “He’s a nice boy. Got a good feelin’ for country.”

  “When they burned the house, I thought it was the worst thing could happen to me.”

  “I know how it is, how you worked on that floor.”

  “I wanted to build something, something that would last. In some of those old books you found in the mission, it showed some mosaics. That was what I wanted to do.”

  “Gittin’ late, boy. Maybe you better go in an’ lie down. Take a rest, like.”

  Peter Burkin sat alone after Alfredo had gone inside. Be a blessing, he told himself. Not that he wished harm to the boy, for he was all he had left. Only, that trail was getting steeper and he was getting kind of stiff in the joints and long in the tooth for the long rides.

  Folks were beginning to notice, too. They’d seen him come and go, and they were asking themselves why. Someday one of them would take a notion to follow.

  When he went inside, Alfredo was lying on his huge bed. He was staring up at the ceiling of the cave.

  “Fix you some grub,” Peter said. “You just take it easy.” He began slicing potatoes into a pan, and got out the slab of bacon he had brought with him. “Anything I can do for you, boy?”

  “If you are in the San Bernardinos sometime, you can pack the best of that stuff over here. I doubt if I shall go back.”

  Peter glanced at him. “That bad, eh?”

  “Yes, Peter. It is an effort now. Once everything was so easy.”

  “But you’re a young man!”

  “Once, before we left Spain, my sister got an old woman she knew to take us to a Moorish man. As he was a Moslem, nobody went to him, but my sister heard that he knew more about medicine than anyone.

  “She told him about me and he said he had known such cases, but they were rare. He told her what I could expect, so I have been ready for this.” He smiled suddenly. “And I am only a young man to you, Peter. I have not been a young man for a long time.”

  “You ain’t as old as me. My pappy was one o’ them Kentucky riflemen who f’t with Jackson in the Battle of New Orleans. I was born whilst he was away at war.”

  Alfredo closed his eyes and rested. It felt good just to lie quiet in the half-darkness. After all, he had had a good life. All this mountain country had been his for a time, and he had learned to live as the Cahuillas did. When occasionally he encroached on their groves he had always left something in payment to acknowledge their ownership and his trespass.

  Often he would lie in some secure place above them and watch where they gathered their food and what plants they used. Peter Burkin and his mother—he thought of her so—had taught him even more.

  Peter had told him that Zachary Verne and his son were returning, and they had agreed he must be stopped from going to Los Angeles.

  He avoided Indian trails but moved through the woods or mountains parallel to them, trying not to use the same exact route twice. In his earlier years, when he had been very strong, he could travel incredible distances, and he had ventured far into the desert. Peter had taught him about gold and precious or semiprecious stones he might find. Over the years he had made several small finds of gold and several fine opals.

  While still in his early years, and living in the Indian village, he had learned about Telmekesh, the place where the spirits of the dead lived, which was reached through a gate between two moving mountains; the good were permitted to pass, but the evil were crushed as the mountains slammed together, closing the gate.

  He had become a skillful hunter, but knowing the sound of a rifle could be heard for some distance, he preferred more silen
t means. He used a bow and arrow occasionally but had come to prefer the sling. Due to his length of arm and extraordinary muscular power, it had become a formidable weapon in his hands, and one with which he could kill at a considerable distance.

  “Come, boy. Set up an’ eat. Cookin’ for you is like cookin’ for an army. Takes time.” They sat opposite each other across the flat top of a chunk cut from a great stump.

  “Meghan went to Francisco’s woman? She will be all right, then.”

  “And you, Peter? What will you do?”

  Peter looked into the fire; then he looked around at Alfredo. “I don’t know, boy. Get me an outfit an’ hit the trail, I guess, but I won’t be far from you—”

  “Peter?” Alfredo placed a great rubbery hand on Peter’s. “I mean, afterwards? After that?”

  There was a long silence. “Well, son, I hope there won’t be no afterwards. You an’ that woman”—his voice grew husky—“well, I never had nobody before. Not rightly, I didn’t, although Zack Verne was always a friend. You been part o’ my thinkin’ for so long—”

  “Peter? Go to Johannes. Go and see him. I don’t want you to be alone, if it comes to that. Johannes will do big things, I believe, and he will need a good man, and he likes you.”

  The big voice rumbled off into silence, and the two men sat quietly, watching the fire.

  Before the day broke and while Peter Burkin slept, Alfredo slipped into his moccasins and a blanket coat and left the cave. He stood outside, stretching and looking carefully around. This cave was not unlike his temporary home in the San Bernardinos, except that the cave was larger and there were several inner rooms. It had two other entrances, both of them some distance away. One was natural; the other he had created himself when he discovered how close the cave came to the outer wall of the mountain. Both entrances were carefully hidden.

  Standing still, he looked around before moving. The chance that someone might have approached the place was always a possibility, although he had never seen a white man atop the mountain, and the Cahuilla avoided his area. Often there were deer feeding on a small meadow nearby, and once he had seen a bear.

  It was a grizzly, a huge beast that when standing on its hind legs towered even above him. The bear took a couple of steps toward him, and he stood his ground, unworried. He knew the beast was nearsighted and curious. When it found out what he was, it stood staring at him and he at it; then it dropped to all fours, and apparently satisfied, walked away. Yet, when some fifty yards off, it raised up on its hind legs again to look back, shaking its big head as if mystified.

  Now, on this morning, he walked back into the pines and followed a vague trail, his own, to the edge of the mountain and to what he called his chair. Actually, it was a ledge of rock, a quarter-circle of it, that offered a convenient seat.

  It was a place to which he often came, some eight thousand feet above the valley below, looking down upon the canyons and the palms that gathered near the hot springs and wound in a green, lovely ribbon up a canyon to the southeast. The widest of the canyons was below him.

  Here he could watch the sunrise and sunset over the valley and look far up the pass through which Romero, Williamson, and Ben Wilson had traveled. He also could look eastward into the desert, a vast expanse of white and pink that was constantly changing color under the rising or setting sun. By day, cloud shadows paraded majestically across that vast emptiness.

  This was the place. When the end came, if he could make it, this was where he would come. He would sit here, as he sat now, and wait for the long silence.

  He started to rise, but his muscles seemed without strength. He tried again and half-fell back to his seat. For a long time he sat still, staring out over the desert. He tried again, but there was no strength left in him. His head ached.…The headaches had been worse lately. He sat still, his eyes closed. Slowly, then, he opened them and watched an eagle riding the hot air rising from the desert, soaring out there on magic wings, soaring, soaring.…For a moment he lost the eagle, his vision misting over.

  He lifted a huge hand and stared at it, slowly closing the fingers. It fell back to his lap. He looked again, trying to find the eagle. It was there, tilting its marvelous wings against the sky.

  He tried again to rise, but this time there was no response whatever. He relaxed slowly, sitting very still, his big hands resting on his massive knees.

  “Now?” he whispered. “Is it now?” And then, more softly still, “Why not now?”

  Chapter 59

  FRANCISCO SAT ON the sandbank watching me. “It was spoken that you had come. Your house is gone, so I knew you would be here, in our old place.” He glanced around. “Nothing has changed.”

  “Not here,” I agreed. Then I looked at him, smiling a little. “You eat well, Francisco. There is more behind your belt than when we met.”

  He shrugged. “I have a woman. She is a good woman and she fears that I shall eat too little. Yet I can still run, and wrestle.”

  “You were always good. Sometimes you beat me.”

  He studied the breadth of my shoulders and shook his head. “No more, I think. You have grown strong.”

  “I have enemies,” I agreed.

  “You have a woman?” he asked mildly, flicking a stick at the sand.

  “No,” I said, “but there is one of whom I think.”

  He got to his feet and stretched, whipping the sand from his hat, which he had lying beside him. “She waits for you,” he said, “and talks to my woman.”

  Surprised, I got to my feet and went for the black stallion. “Meghan? Here?”

  “She looks for you. She fears you will not come back to her.” Then he added as we walked along, “She has had much trouble, amigo. She speaks of this to my woman, and she to me.” He glanced at me. “She killed one man. Shot him.”

  “Meghan? I can’t believe it.”

  Francisco shrugged. “Who knows what iron is in the heart of a woman? She escaped and they followed.” He paused, looking across at the clustering palms. “The big one, He Who Walks the Night…he found her and left her close to us. She rode on in alone.”

  “The big one? Tahquitz?”

  He shrugged. “It is a name. No doubt he has another. Your woman says he is Alfredo.”

  So…Alfredo. It all was falling together at last.

  * * * *

  MEGHAN CAME QUICKLY to her feet as I came up to the fire. For a moment she simply stared; then she ran to me, and it was natural that I should take her in my arms.

  “I think we should go home, honey,” I said. It was the first time I had called anyone such a name, and I was astonished at myself, but she accepted the term without question. Who knows about women?

  We talked, and we ate the food Francisco’s woman brought to us, but when I went to my horse again, it was saddled and Francisco was there. He told me then what had happened with Meghan, and when he had finished he said, “So she killed one, and the Big One, he killed another. One is left, and he is the worst. He is Iglesias.”

  “So?”

  “He has come far, amigo, to ride back for nothing. Do you ride carefully, then.”

  Meghan emerged, her clothing brushed and her hair rearranged. She was the girl I’d dreamed of, and more.

  Francisco went for her horse. “You go too soon,” he said. “It is long since we have talked.”

  “Remember the wild plums we used to find at that place on Snow Creek Trail?” I said. “It would be good to go there again.”

  He nodded, putting his hands on his hips. “You come back. You and your woman. We build a kish for you. You stay.”

  Meghan, when we were riding away, asked what a kish was. “A shelter…a house. Often around here it is built of palm fronds.”

  We rode on, talking only a little, happy to be together. Yet I remembered what Francisco had said about Iglesias and turned often to look back.

  “There is an Indian village ahead,” I said. “We will stop there. I know them. It is a place where Peter B
urkin often stopped when he rode through.”

  “He will be an old man now?” she asked.

  “I suppose so. I do not think much of ages. People are people. What does it matter how old or young they are? It is a category, and I do not like categories. It is a sort of pigeonhole or a label. But it would be good to see Peter.”

  * * * *

  IGLESIAS WAS A frightened man. It was not only his horse that had been scared. He had seen the huge man loom up before him and he had seen the casual whip of the great hand that flipped Biscal off into the gorge. When he finally got his horse stopped, he was far up Burns Canyon, so he kept going, camping that night in Round Valley under the looming peak of Tip Top Mountain.

  When morning came, he fixed a small breakfast and considered. Maybe he had been dreaming. It was fantastic. There could be no such creature as he believed he had seen.

  But that girl! She was real, vital, beautiful. In all his life he had seen nothing like her hair of red-gold, her slim, lovely body. He wet his lips with his tongue and swore. To have such a one and let her get away? He had to be stupid.

  Yet…her home was in Los Angeles, and she would be going back. To go back meant she had to go through San Gorgonio Pass. If he were to take the Ciénaga Seca Trail to Big Meadows, he could go up South Fork and cross over to the Falls Creek Trail. He had done it once, with several others, to escape some ranchers who were pursuing them.

  He might get down into the pass and by discreet questioning discover whether the girl had gone past. It would not be easy, but he planned to ride into Los Angeles anyway.

  He allowed his horse to graze a bit longer while he thought out the way. He camped that night in Ciénaga Seca. Once, on the following morning as he was riding into Big Meadows, he looked back and thought he caught some movement. Deer, probably. There were a lot of them around. Yet before turning up South Fork, he looked back again.

  Nothing.…

  A mile up the canyon, he camped. The wind off the peak was cold. Perhaps he was a fool. What did one woman matter? But such a woman!

  He drew his serape around him and thought about her as he stared into the fire. Somebody would be with her. One man, no doubt. Wait for the right moment and shoot him down.