It was in my thinking to go back to the place I had found, to the houses of stone, but I did not wish anyone to know where I was going, nor to find them, not even my old friend. It was something within me that warned me, so I was wary, and when in the late afternoon I went out of camp, I watched behind me with care.
So it was that I saw Pied Bull following me. I had seated myself on the bank of the stream before he arrived and when he came upon me I was staring into the water. He came up to me and peered over my shoulder into the water. “What do you look at?” he demanded.
“The water,” I said.
“The water?” He was puzzled. “But it is only water. What is there in it to see? Are there fish?”
“I do not know,” I said solemnly. “I think the water wishes to speak to me.”
“What foolishness is this? You have lost your wits.”
“Listen! Can you not hear it? It tells me things. Secret Things.”
“You are foolish.” He turned from me. “I do not know how they can listen to you.”
He strode away, leaving me alone, and when he had been gone some time I got up and went on my way. When I started into the canyon I could look back and see him heading for our camp.
This time the climb was quicker. My toes were ready for the narrow holds cut into the rock, and I went up swiftly. Once on the ledge I paused, took my spear from the strap over my shoulder with which I’d carried it, and went into the building.
The bones lay where they had been, and I stepped past them and went forward into the third room. Puzzled, I stood before the alcove. There was something I must do here, something I should remember.
Each time it had come to this, this moment when one must not turn aside.
Each time?
Into the alcove I looked, and saw nothing. Only bare walls, only the fitted stone, the silence of years. But there was within my mind the haunting sense of recognition. But how? Why?
The old man said, “You knew,” and I had answered, “I remembered.”
There was no time now—something warned me of this. I might go away and never find the opportunity to return here alone, and to sit down and think was not the thing, not now.
There are memories within the muscles, memories of actions performed long ago: the hurling of a spear, the dodging of a blow; these things become instinctive. Stepping into the alcove, I raised my hands and touched the wall before me. I found a crack opposite my chin, my fingers dug, a brick came loose. Behind the brick an opening, and in the opening a gripping place.
The grip was also of stone, a dark stone, smooth and polished. I put my hand in and I pulled.
For an instant, nothing happened. I braced my toe and pulled the harder.
The wall swung toward me….
I looked into a black, rectangular cavern. It was deep and wide, and in the center, on a stone table, lay a long box…a box as long as a tall man.
Inside the room were other things. On the wall, a shield, beside it, crossed, a spear and a sword.
No man in my tribe had seen such a weapon, but it was a sword. I knew it at once, knew its uses.
What was happening to me?
I stepped into the room. There were two smaller boxes against the wall. There were other weapons…and the long box?
I took hold and lifted the lid.
It raised easily under my hand, no squeak, no groan, no grating of stone on stone.
From within came a faint scent as of something musky, something faintly fragrant, and I looked upon the skeleton-face of a man long dead.
He wore a breastplate of thin and shining stone, on it a deer with one head and three bodies, a strange symbol.
The skull wore a heavy hat of the same thin stone and there were fragments of a robe. A hide? No, some different material. It had fallen to bits….It had been purple.
There was a circle about the bony finger of the right hand, a ring of strange design. And in the hand there was a sort of blackened box as long as my forearm, the end square, each side of the square as long as my thumb.
With careful fingers, I took the box from the skeleton-hand, took it reverently, gently.
I had forgotten where I was, forgotten who or what I was. What I was doing…it was something I had been destined to do.
Now I knew that our tribe’s trek north had not been only to save them, to escape from enemies into a land where there was water and a chance to live. I had needed to come to this place. My feet had followed a trail traced out by my mind, by some strange design woven into the fabric of my genes.
What was it the Old One had said? You are one of Them. You are one of those who remember.
The man who had been buried here in that long box had once been me. It had been my hand that held that now tarnished silver box, awaiting the time when I should come again and take the gift I held for my sometime self.
Gently, I removed the gold ring from the finger and fitted it to my own, then carefully I closed the coffin and, taking the silver box, I stepped back.
Tucking the silver box into my waist I took from the wall first the sword, then the spear. I glanced at the chests….What awaited me there?
Well, they could wait.
Perhaps for another day, perhaps for another time, or another life.
Out into the dusky twilight of the square room I walked, and turning, I took the handle, closed the door, then replaced the brick. Taking dust from the floor I blew some from my palm into the thin cracks around the brick.
Then I walked outside to the ledge and looked down the canyon. I could see the narrow opening into the valley, the sky overhead with its few stars, and I stood there breathing the cool air, knowing now that when I went down those toehold steps again I should no longer be the man who climbed them, but something else.
Seating myself on a block of stone I placed the spear and the sword at hand.
It was a short sword, no longer than the length of my arm without the hand, as wide at the hilt as the length of my thumb, tapering only slightly to a short but sharp point. Each edge was a cutting edge, unbelievably sharp.
Taking the box in my hand I placed it across my knees and felt it carefully. It was so dark I could see only the glint of metal, but it was embossed with some strange design. Suddenly my thumb halted.
A handwritten version of the beginning of this draft.
A small knob or button. Was it a catch? A means of opening the box? The box seemed to have no opening, yet from its weight it could not be solid. I pressed the
COMMENTS: I have as many questions about this story as you do. Who are these people? On what continent do they live? Who is the man in the coffin and what civilization is he from? What matters really, however, is that Louis has given us one indication of how this concept of reincarnation and the discovery of knowledge handed down over generations might function in other variations of this story.
The versions you have read so far have been some of the later ones, possibly written in the mid-1970s. It all fits in very well with the alternative spirituality of the time, a time when Louis was experimenting with stories about mysticism and other universes in novels like The Californios and Haunted Mesa. However, the first time Louis sketched out the beginnings of his reincarnation concept was in the mid-1950s, in a proposal for a television series—an idea that was likely twenty or thirty years ahead of its time.
* * *
SAMSARA OR THE WHEEL OF LIFE
A Television Series by Louis L’Amour
Who can say what mysteries lie within the soul and mind of a man? Who can say that he alone has the answers to all questions? Since the beginning of time Man has longed for immortality in the Western world, and feared it in the Eastern. To every man and woman comes at some time the belief that this life is not enough; there is the desire to live on, to live in another world or in another life than this.
Beyond the grave lies hope, and many religions offer the promise of immortality; but only in the belief in reincarnation, or metempsychosis—the t
ransmigration of souls—is there something tangible, something real, something all men can accept and understand.
More people of the world believe in reincarnation than disbelieve, and many millions look longingly and hopefully in that direction.
This series will have romantic appeal for men and women, who can escape the treadmill of everyday life by imagining the people they once might have been; it has enormous appeal and identification in that the hero, by moving through his past lives, has access to and command of all the knowledge and wealth of the universe.
He may know where lie the still unfound Maya libraries; or where the Pharaoh was buried and where he lies in his golden sarcophagus, awaiting the lucky archaeologist. He could know where Alexander’s ships went, where Cleopatra buried her treasure. There is no secret he cannot plumb, no life into which he cannot go.
Yet do we say we believe in reincarnation? Not necessarily. In the person of the scientist, the psychologist DR. RICHARD MARKHAM, we introduce in each episode a different and varying word of caution in his conversations with VAUBAN, our hero.
Perhaps the experiences come from stored-up knowledge of history; perhaps from books of fiction; perhaps from the very articles Vauban sells. We introduce much speculation through the psychologist, and all of it will be cogent, entertaining, and stirring to the imagination.
This is not fantasy; it is an adventurous step into realms of spirit, of the unknown. Man may return to dust after death, and that may be all, but millions believe otherwise.
—
MICHAEL VAUBAN is an importer of art and antiques; he is young, handsome, athletic, and he lives among the vases, the carved stones, the jewels, the weapons of bygone years.
To his shop one day comes a woman to buy a rare vase; she is waited upon by a clerk while Vauban writes busily nearby. She likes the vase, and is assured that it is a rare Etruscan piece. She, however, wants a pair. The clerk assures her this is the only one, that there is no other.
Vauban, still writing, comments aloud, “But of course there’s another! When Karchamal made that one, he made another, identical to it.”
The woman is surprised, the clerk astonished. Vauban looks up, realizes he has spoken, and is confused.
After the customer has gone, the clerk comments, “I had no idea there was another. How did you know?”
Vauban shrugs it off, but he is disturbed. He leaves that night, and walking down the street, goes to the home of Dr. Richard Markham. He explains, and he adds that this has happened not once, but several times…and more than once his hunch has proved to be correct. Can he be clairvoyant? Markham discusses the idea, suggests he try an experiment: Go home, relax, breathe properly….
Vauban does so and emerges panting and gasping from the sea. He is a galley slave who has escaped from a wrecked galley. He has various adventures.
In successive trips into the past he is a Roman Legionnaire; a priest of Isis in Ancient Egypt; a king of the Hittites; a wandering mendicant in Mughal India; a traveling minstrel in eleventh-century Europe; a prince of India.
But there is danger. When in the trance states he is in a state of suspended animation and if so found he may very well be taken for dead.
This actually happens, and he comes to in a coffin just before the funeral. This frightens him, and he knows if he is to venture into the past again he must have a room no one can enter but himself. It must be fireproof, thief-proof, etc.
He goes into the past and watches the burial of a Pharaoh; he is himself the priest; then he comes back in his twentieth-century life and excavates the tomb. With the wealth he gains from this sort of activity he builds a secluded home.
There is a young woman with whom he has a strange relationship. He sees her on the street, they exchange glances, but she evades him. She is dark, lovely, mysterious. He finds her in his dream-travel. He realizes that certain people have an affinity for one another in the reincarnation process.
Another time he wishes to see a girl whom he loved and lost in another life. He finds where she is in this life, but she is an ugly old crone who runs him off, flinging things at him.
There is much humor, for he learns to distinguish who people are in this life, recognizing them from the past. A man comes to his shop to sell antiques whom he recalls as a trickster in ancient Tyre. He refuses to buy. He passes a pig in a marketplace that he knows is an acquaintance in another life, and he says, “Just as I thought. I’d have known him anywhere!”
For this series there is no end. It is adult entertainment, but it has romance, it has many talking points, in that each chapter will begin or end with a speculative comment by Dr. Markham.
The hero can venture into any world, into any life, can be anything, always returning to his own life. There are many dangers. He always knows he will live again, but he does not know when he will die in each life he returns to. And in some of them he will die….Here, for the first time, we have a hero who can be killed and still appear in the next chapter.
He can be anything, do anything, go anywhere.
—
REINCARNATION: the successive habitation of many different bodies by the same soul. The belief that the spirits or souls of men pass after death into other bodies is a feature of many religions, especially in the East, and is still held by the Buddhists and by many Hindus, and, of course, by the modern Theosophists. It was taught in Ancient Egypt, by the Orphic priests of early Greece and by Pythagoras, was discussed by Plato, and was believed in by some Christians.
—
My background to be the writer of this series, and I would write all the episodes myself, is excellent. With due apologies I might say that I have read several hundred books on psychology, metempsychosis, hypnotism, the occult sciences, yoga, psychometry, multiple personalities, clairvoyance, the subconscious, and the earliest and latest ideas on the human mind.
I have an extensive knowledge of the arts, music, and literature of ancient times; I have read widely in the history and archaeology of all nations, am an amateur archaeologist myself, and have at hand both the knowledge and the library for essential research.
My travels in many lands have fitted me with the background to handle this series, and it is a theme that intrigues me with its romance and unlimited scope. Before us lies the entire field of world history; there is no avenue we cannot explore. A Viking in early America? A Phoenician sailing beyond the gates of Hercules? A castaway in the time of Rome?
Many of the early stories can be done with an eye on the budget, but there are no limits to the possibilities.
Throughout the series there can be this one mysterious woman, one to whose life cycle Vauban is bound, who continues to show up in the lives he leads. Sometimes he is old, sometimes young; he is a cripple, a blind beggar, a gladiator; he is Alexander the Great, he is anybody.
This is a series without a chance of being stereotyped. It cannot become monotonous. It appeals to the spirit of romance, adventure, and speculation. It will stir controversy. It will demand comment. And no man, anywhere, can say it is impossible. We will, in the person of Dr. Markham, offer, as I have said, alternative solutions. We make no claims; we offer stories and we offer explanations. The viewer can choose the truth he likes the most.
COMMENTS: The Wheel of Life is obviously a simpler approach than the first two versions of this concept. It’s a more straightforward, “time travel through past lives” situation, where there is not so much mystery, though perhaps a greater variety of adventure. It was also an easier concept for a writer to pursue because the television series of the 1950s were essentially episodic and open-ended, and thus it wasn’t so important to work out what the conclusion or meaning of the overarching story was going to be.
I have always wondered if Vauban’s shop was based on one belonging to a very dear friend of ours, Harry Franklin. Harry had a narrow storefront in Beverly Hills and inside it was a cabinet of wonders. He specialized in primitive and oceanic art and there were giant carvings from New Guinea,
masks and drums form Africa, and Roman and ancient Chinese jewelry. As a little kid I found it to be both a fascinating and a kind of scary place—a shop very much like the Harry Franklin Gallery also appeared in “The Hand of Kuan-yin,” a story of Dad’s that was used as the pilot for Hart of Honolulu, a TV show which, if the pilot had been picked up, might have become the first detective series shot in Hawaii.
Over the years Louis made other attempts to get the novel version of Samsara started and to figure out how to write it. The most powerful and personal version is the one that follows.
* * *
CHAPTER I
A man with gold rings in his ears…a vase of ancient glass…a fragment of carved stone…and a girl.
Yes…a girl.
These things caused a door to open, a door I cannot close, a door I am not sure I wish to close, yet a door that has opened the way to a haunted past.
Alone I am, and alone I have ever been except for those days, those moments even, when from out of the beyond I have found again those whom I love, and who love me.
For the one thing I have discovered is that love need not die, need not end…for even after millenniums I have known it to endure.
Yet never have I been so alone as now when I possess a knowledge I cannot share. Not, at least, in its entirety.
The man with the gold rings in his ears, the fragment of stone…the girl…these were not a beginning but rather a culmination of something that began…how can I say where? Or when? Or how?
When I was not more than five years old a Gypsy said things to me that I have not forgotten. That Gypsy set me upon my path. My father was a veterinarian who also dealt in farm machinery, and not far from the town in which I lived were some farms owned by Gypsies. In the spring they came to plant their crops, vast fields of wheat in those days, and when the wheat was well above ground they would depart, returning only for the harvest.
Volume 1: Unfinished Manuscripts, Mysterious Stories, and Lost Notes from One of the World's Most Popular Novelists Page 42