the Haunted Mesa (1987)

by L'amour, Louis

  He walked back to the ruin, glancing around in the outer room, where the blueprints were gathering dust. He and Erik were two of a kind. If Erik had not thought to notify him, nobody would have known what happened to him. Although, apparently, that had changed for him over there, for when he had written of escaping he had said "us." Somebody would be coming back with him. He was no longer alone.

  It would be easier to cope with what lay on the other side if he knew more of what they believed. Basic beliefs are important, even when they are largely ignored. In our world, with each religious system there is a code of ethics or something of the kind, a sort of behavior that is considered right and just. To understand any people, one must have some idea where they are coming from, and so far he had nothing beyond obedience to The Hand, the Lords of Shibalba, and enforcement by the Varanel.

  The moon was rising and the canyons were gathering deeper shadows. The river caught the moon's reflection and gave it back to the sky. He built his fire up and listened, but there were no sounds in the night.

  What could Erik do? Would he have access to materials? Could he construct some means of communication? Would anything of the kind work across the divide? Could he put together some kind of weapon? Had he been able to convince them that he could be important to them? Had he even tried? Was he given a chance even to talk? Above all, what was The Hand like? A superbrain? An ignorant man? A paranoid? Eden Foster was his representative here, but was she the only one? Who controlled his goon squad?

  Above all, what did The Handwant ? A better spy system with which to watch his own people, no doubt, but information from here as well, and some equipment. Above all, he wanted no suspicion of their existence.

  His own people were severely restricted in their movements, and no hint of dissension or the possibility of it was allowed to exist. Yet some of his people must know of the existence of those who had been followers of He Who Had Magic, such as Kawasi.

  Mike liked having the old stone wall behind him. Liked the protection it provided. Yet he was uneasy, always uneasy. Where was Volkmeer? And Gallagher?

  Suddenly, his skin prickled. Something--something moved out there in the darkness.

  Every sense alert, he waited. He had heard no car, seen no reflected lights. He touched the butt of his gun, and the feel of it was reassuring. He waited, listening.

  And he heard it again.

  Something was out there, something coming closer. Over in the kiva, a small stone fell, rattled among rocks, then fell again.

  Of course, a car might come without his hearing it. What of Gallagher that time?

  Who, he wondered, were his enemies? Did he have any allies whom he could trust? Gallagher, probably, and Volkmeer.

  The thought left him empty. How much could they help? How much did they actually believe? Did they believe what he said, or were they just humoring him?

  Stark black towers against the sky, island mesas, bathed in white moonlight. Not far to the south a place called Oljeto, meaning Moonlit Water. How well the Indians had named it!

  The night was chill. He shivered. From the cold? Or because of something else out there? What was it that lurked in the shadows, sometimes heard but never seen? Was it those creatures, the Hairy Ones?

  He would talk again to Tazzoc. He would listen to his voice, he would learn to imitate his walk, he would take the cloak with him, belt it as Tazzoc did, and with luck he could get into the Hall of the Archives and from there to the place where Erik was held.

  He would go into that other world and he would find Erik, and when they returned they would blast this kiva, or close it off somehow. They had to, because somehow he knew there was something wrong over there, something twisted and'strange.

  He remembered Tazzoc suddenly, and how the old scholar had seemed to revel in the knowledge of the secret doors and of the trapped men. Was it the cleverness of it? Or was there something more? Something evil, even in him?

  He unrolled the sleeping bag but did not get into it. Instead, he lay down on top of it and pulled his wind-breaker over him. A sleeping bag was fine but he couldn't get out of it fast enough. And tonight he might have to. Did the shadows move out there, or was it his imagination?

  He got up again and added fuel to the fire, and then he lay down with a flashlight close to his hand, as well as the pistol. What he needed was a good night's sleep, and he would not get it tonight. Something moved, or was it the dancing of the flames? Had there been a shadow, a ...

  Chapter XXVI

  Trusting to Chief, at last he fell asleep. Several times the big dog growled, low and deep in his chest, but Mike Raglan slept on, unaware. He awakened in the cold clear light of dawn, and looked beyond the thin tendrils of smoke rising from the ashes of his fire to the distant blue bulk of Navajo Mountain.

  He lay there, hands clasped behind his head, just resting. These last few moments before rising often offered the best rest of the night. Lying there, he reviewed his situation and the moves remaining to him.

  Today he would return to Tamarron and he would drive into town and talk to a banker whom he knew. If he did not come back from this venture, he wanted his affairs in order. He must check at Tamarron to see if any messages awaited him. On his return he would visit Eden. The time might not be up, but he had decided he would wait no longer.

  Both Erik and Kawasi knew of his place at Tamarron, as did his enemies, if such they could be called. He got up, shook out his boots, and put them on. The morning was incredibly beautiful. There was no movement on the river but he expected none. Few boats came this far up and the river runners passed quickly by. Glancing over at No Man's, he saw its top bathed in sunlight, its base still deep in shadow. Ominous, but magnificent, too.

  He stretched, feeling good. Well, he'd better. He would need all he had in strength, agility, and wit to face what lay before him. Over near the base of the red rock that Erik had planned to make one wall of his house, he saw some wild flowers, several of them sunflowers. He picked one, and returning inside the ruin to Erik's blueprints, he put down the flower and on a sketch pad wrote:Erik--I will need your help. Any time now.

  It was a wild gamble. Somebody using a sunflower as an emblem had come from the other side, somebody who had been friendly. That somebody might know where Erik was, might be able to communicate. In any event, nothing would be lost.

  It was a long drive to Tamarron. He stopped briefly at the motel and at the cafe.

  No messages. No sign of either Gallagher or Volkmeer.

  He told the waitress that if Gallagher came in, to tell him Mike Raglan had gone to Tamarron, and would be back the following day. He saw no one on the road, and was not followed. It was like entering another world. He drove first to the lodge to pick up his mail, then to his condo. It was a beautiful sunlit day, and people in bright costumes were playing golf on what must be, he thought, one of the most beautiful courses in the world.

  Once inside he glanced around but nothing had been disturbed. All appeared to be as he had left it. The mail needed only a matter of minutes. A check for an article recently completed, a note from a friend about a ruin recently discovered in Colombia, a letter about some mummies found near Arica, in Chile, that seemed to be five thousand years older than any discovered in Egypt. A couple of bills, and a brief note from a girl he had known in Rio, and when was he returning to Brazil?

  He changed shirts and, while buttoning his shirt, looked out the window. The snow where he had seen the tracks was gone. It had been the last of the season, and in just the few days that had passed, everything had changed. Of course, he was a thousand feet higher in altitude than on the mesa of the ruin. These were the San Juan Mountains; down there he had been in semi-desert.

  The Navajo reservation had once lain just to the south of him, covering an area larger than the combined size of Belgium and the Netherlands, half the size of England. Turning away from the window, he looked around again. This was real. This washis . His living quarters in his world. A comfortable, e
asy place to be, a world of pleasant reality with people coming and going, enjoying themselves or working, a place he understood and liked. And out there?

  He shied from the thought. He would be going into something he neither knew nor understood, and there was a chance he might not return. What if he opened one of those doors that could close behind him, lock him in forever? With nothing around him but blank stone walls, impossibly thick, and on the floor the bones of unfortunates who had preceded him?

  He need not go. He could stay here, then catch a plane and fly back to New York or to Los Angeles. Erik might make it on his own. Slipping into his coat, Mike Raglan knew he was arguing with himself to no purpose, for he was going back. He was not even sure if he was making a free choice. It might be that all his years of becoming what he was were dictating the issue.

  How much choice did a man have, after all? Are we not all conditioned to certain expressions of life? Do we have a choice, whether we run or fight? He slipped a notepad into his pocket and went out to the car. He was hungry. That was reality, and an issue he could confront here and now.

  As he turned up the road, he drove over a spot where a couple of years ago he had seen a weasel cross the road with a gopher in his mouth. Was he to be the weasel or the gopher? The predator or the prey?

  What the hell, he told himself. They've grabbed Erik, they burned the cafe, they tried to get me. They laid out the course they wished to travel. If they wanted it that way, they could have it.

  Magic. He had been a magician, but would that help? The chances were that they would be better at it than he. After all, most of the basic illusions were known to many people, including witch doctors in Central Africa or in the jungles of Brazil.

  When he was seated at a table in the San Juan Room and had ordered, he glanced around the room. It was at least two-thirds full, a bright, interested looking bunch of people. As he considered it, a tall old man, quite heavy, got up from a nearby table and crossed over to him.

  The man was well dressed in a casual, western fashion, had rumpled gray hair and a pleasant smile. "Mr. Raglan? May I join you?"

  "Please do."

  He ordered coffee and looked at Raglan. "Been wanting to talk to you, Raglan. We know some of the same people, Gallagher, for instance."

  "He's a good man."

  "He is that. One of the best." The old man paused, his eyes wandering about the room. "My name's Weston, Artemus Weston. Used to be a banker, one time. Retired a few years back. Been a lot of things in my time. Punched cows when I was a youngster, mostly over Utah way. Had a head for figures, an' my boss seen it. Saw it. He took me into the office to handle his books. Done that for a few years an' then the boss went into bankin' and took me along. When he passed on, I kept on at the bank, settled his estate."

  Weston took up his cup and sipped coffee thoughtfully. "S'pose you're wonderin' what I'm gettin' at. Just stay in the saddle an' listen.

  "Man like me, doesn't talk a lot, listens mostly, he picks up things. Hears things. I done some surmisin', too. A body does, you know. Never had much book-learning but I could put two an' two together. There at the bank the boss moved me into the loan division. I had a head for business, did well with the loan part of it, but I handled property the bank owned, too.

  "Don't get me wrong. This was a two-by-four western town bank where all the business we done in a month a city bank would do in a day, maybe. Thing we had to do to survive was to know the folks.

  "People we did business with. We had to know them. Did they pay their bills? Did they put in the hours or were they shiftless? Who was their family? Was somebody sponging off them? Did their ranches have good grass an' water? Things like that. We had to know, and mostly we did. We knew things about folks they'd have been embarrassed to tell. We never talked about it, but one way to be successful in the small-town bankin' business is just to know folks, to know what goes on in their heads.

  "Few days ago I was talkin' to Gallagher. He speaks well of you, an' I've got a granddaughter back East who reads what you write. Swears by you.

  "Gallagher says you got a friend missin' out thataway?"

  "I have."

  "Rough country. Easy for a man to get lost out there." He paused again to taste his coffee. "Easy to get lost but not easy to disappear. Dry country. Has a way of preserving whatever it gets. Dries 'em out, but keeps 'em. A body now? It doesn't fall apart like in wetter country, so if a man dies out there, they usually find his remains.

  "Found a couple of them myself. Dead cows, too, an' horses. Takes years to do away with a body. So if you miss somebody there's got to be a reason.

  "Now you take that country. Wide, beautiful, and mostly dry as all get-out. I love it. Could ride forever in it, only I don't ride anymore. Too old to break any bones, an' even the best of horses can fall. That's rough out there.

  "Strange country. Looks all wide-open to the eyes, but you an' me, we know different. The Navajo knew different and the Hopis knew. So did the Paiutes.

  "More of them around when I was punchin' cows, and some of them were a bad lot, like that bunch that run with Posey. Steal a horse right from under your saddle while you're sittin' on it. But there was places they wouldn't go. Other places they did go but they were careful."

  He let the waiter refill his cup. "S'pose you wonder what I'm gettin' at?"

  "No, I'm enjoying it."

  Weston chuckled suddenly. "I'm an old fool! Butt in-sky. Got no call to come worryin' you with my talk. No call at all, 'cept I like what Gallagher had to say an' I got to worryin' some.

  "I rode that country quite a few years, as cowboy an' as a banker checkin' on things. Rode it a lot just for the pleasure. Some of it I fought shy of."

  He waited awhile, looking around the room, and Raglan waited with him, his curiosity excited. "Mostly we had to know if a man was good for a loan, an' one time or another, most of them came to us. Most of 'em, but not Volkmeer."

  Startled, Raglan looked up, but the old man's eyes were wandering--his eyes, but not his attention. "Volkmeer punched cows, branded a few heads here an' there. Don't recall he ever had any breeding stock, there at first, but he registered a brand and bought a few head, mostly steers.

  "Those steers, now? Good stock. Never knowed any steers that were good for breedin'. Ain't in their nature, but nonetheless, here an' there one sees such a herd gatherin' size. Somebody with a wide loop, y' know? Well, first thing y' know, Volkmeer's runnin' a couple of hundred head. Then he rode off up into the Oregon country and bought several hundred head of white-faces."

  "He was always a shrewd man, Weston." Raglan spoke carefully. "As for the wide loop, you and I both know that many a big rancher got his start with a running-iron. There were always cattle in those old days that ran wild in the breaks and folks got around to branding them when they had time. Unless somebody got there first."

  "Sure. Man, the stories I could tell you! I've seen some herds grow mighty fast, like every cow-critter was havin' four or five calves a year!"

  He paused again, running his fingers through his gray hair. "I rode some with Volkmeer. Knew him well. Cagey man. Never talked much. He taken a stab at minin', too, like most of us."

  "I pulled him out of a cave-in once."

  "Heard about that. Fact is, I heard the story when it happened. Volkmeer did pretty well. First thing you know he's buyin' himself property. Bought him a ranch, paid for it in cash money. Then he put in a bid on some land adjoining what he had. This was maybe a year later, and the folks that wanted to sell had to close a deal right away. I mean quick. Something tied up with a dead man's will. Several people wanted that ranch and we just told 'em the first man who could come in there with cash money could have it.

  "Volkmeer got it."

  "He paid cash?" Raglan asked.

  "Sort of. He come into the bank, ridin' ahead of some others who wanted that land, too, and he paid for it ingold ."

  There was silence. The people in the room were disappearing, off to the mountains
or to Durango. Slowly, Mike finished eating. Weston was trying to tell him something, but what was it? Gold was not uncommon in those years. Men often cached gold coins until they had quite a stake. Many deals were made in which gold was the only money exchanged. After all, there were a lot of mines.

  "I heard he had done well," Raglan commented. "I was surprised, as he didn't look it when he came to see me and I figured I was about to hire an old cowboy to stand by me. I had no idea he'd become so successful."

  "He was in an almighty hurry. He wanted that property the worst way, so he paid in gold. Taken it right out of his saddlebags."

  "So?"

  "Seemed odd, to me. The shape of it, I mean. The gold he paid me was indiscs . Round discs thicker in the center, tapering off to the edges."

  Inside, Raglan was suddenly cold, chilled. He stared out of the window at the cliffs topped with forest. In his memory he was hearing a voice, the voice of another old man, that one in Flagstaff, long ago.

  " 'Ree-fined gold, boy. Discs, like. Size of a saucer."

  Chapter XXVII

  Mike Raglan looked across the table at Artemus Weston. He looked more like a cattleman than a banker, but that was apt to be the case in these western towns.

  "You're retired now?"

  Weston nodded, without turning to face him. He was staring off across the room, but what he was seeing was probably in his memory. "Ain't got long now." He turned his eyes toward Raglan. "Too many years behind me and my health's not what it was. Figured a young man like you, you ought to know."

  "Why did you think it important?"

  "I'd guess you know why, or you'd surmise. That there was the only time I ever saw gold like that, but livin' in a place as long as I have, a man hears talk. Volkmeer got himself rich all of a sudden, seems like. Might have found himself a cache somewheres."

  He took a cigar from his pocket and bit off the end. "A man in bankin', even an old cow-chaser like me, he thinks about money. Money's what he deals with, money an' people. Out here in the West it wasn't our way to ask questions, but that can't stop a man from wonderin', and I done some wonderin' about where that gold come from.