the Lonesome Gods (1983)

by L'amour, Louis

  "How are we going to find those Injuns?" Monte asked. "We won't," I said. "They will find us."

  "You mean we just sit and wait?" Monte asked.

  "Let them choose the time," I said. "They have their own ideas about things. And don't judge these Indians by others you've known. They're different.

  "They're changing, and some of the old ways are being forgotten, and some of the wise old men have not passed on their knowledge, partly because they found no one worthy of it."

  "What's it mean? Their name?"

  "Cahuilla? It's an open question. Some say it means 'power' or the 'people of power' or 'the power way,' and by that they do not mean physical strength, but wisdom and something more, the power from the mind."

  Monte shrugged. "Maybe. I never knew any Injuns who were much on the mind. Smart ... yes. Mighty smart when it comes to that. Of course, it depends on what you mean by mind."

  "You just may not have known them well enough," I commented. "My father used to say that just about the time you decided you knew all about Indians, you would discover you'd only begun to learn, and then after you'd learned an awful lot more, you would realize you really did not know anything yet."

  "Maybe ... maybe."

  Jacob was like the Californios in that he preferred to work with a rawhide riata, so he was busy plaiting the rawhide. He was a skillful man who worked fast. All of us had much to do to be ready for the wild-horse hunt. We must wait for the Indians to appear, but I had no doubt they knew of our presence and Francisco or one of the others would meet us "accidentally" at the store.

  Yet there was something in me that I did not quite understand. Mentally I was more content than I had been at any time since leaving the desert, yet at the same time restless to be out there in the really wild country. Was there an affinity between myself and the desert? Was it true, as some believed, that men had lived other lives? And that one of mine had been lived in the desert? Or--and the thought left me uneasy--had I left something there that now I must find?

  Of these thoughts I said nothing to my companions. Yet Jacob was puzzling to me. He seemed a simple man, yet on occasion he brought forth ideas that were far from simple. I knew that many men of the wilderness have much time to think, and their thoughts may wander down strange byways. My own father was an example. More and more I was wondering about him, and why he had done certain things, why he had often spoken to me as he had, suggesting ideas rarely shared with someone so young as I.

  Still, he had known, at the end at least, that his time was short. He had no doubt been trying to pass on as much of what he had learned as possible.

  No individual completely acquires the experience of another, but if even a small part may be carried over to the next generation, much time can be saved. In technical ways, methods of working and such, knowledge has been passed on, but too few have learned from experience. I remembered my father once saying that perhaps in the future some device might be constructed into which all historical knowledge could be fed, particularly all knowledge of government, of diplomacy, of statecraft, and then this device might tell us what mistakes have been continually made and what situations to avoid. Men have passed on the knowledge of how to mix cement, lay brick, splice a line, navigate a ship, make steel, and dozens of other crafts, yet in politics, statecraft, and social relationships we continue to repeat old mistakes. Wandering outside, I gazed up at the looming mountains, at the distant haunts of Tahquitz. Up there, somewhere, was Tahquitz. Both the fabled creature of whom the Cahuilla spoke and the creature who sometimes inhabits this house where now we lived. When the person or creature or whatever it was wished to be known, he or it would make itself known. Until then its privacy would be respected.

  Seven feet tall? It seemed impossible. Yet I myself was almost six feet now, and still growing. Who could say? I had never seen a man so large, although occasionally stories were heard of huge men.

  Walking around to where the track was, I studied it with care. I must remember, for sometime it might be important. Then with my boot I brushed out the track. I could not escape the feeling that it had been deliberately left, for there had been no others. Only that one, as if it were a hint, a warning, or even a signature.

  Our waiting was not in idleness. Jacob taught me how to plait a rope, and Monte already knew, although he favored a hair rope, as many from Texas did. We would need a number of them, for some would surely be broken, no matter how well done. Listening to Jacob and Monte talk, I learned much about wild horses and their capture. That night when Monte returned from the store he said, "We got company. Neighbors, I mean."

  We looked at him, waiting. "Paulino Weaver, he's moved in over yonder. Been here for some time."

  "Mountain man," Jacob said. "I mind meeting him some while back. He's a good man."

  "A man named Sexton with him. They've made friends with old Juan Antonio. They're trading, cutting timber and what-all." Monte looked around at me. "Paulino knew your pa back when your pa was on the dodge from the old don."

  They . Were good men, yet in a mild way I resented them. I was jealous of my Indians, jealous of my canyons and desert, yet even as I thought that, I was amused by it. People would come, and my deserts would not remain empty, yet that thought made me irritable, and I got up and went outside. The stars were out, and the wind off the mountain was cool.

  If more men came, crowding the desert, what would happen to the Lonesome Gods? Where would the spirits of the ancient ones go? Would they fade into the old trees? Into the rocks? Or, being worshiped no longer, would they fade gradually away?

  When I went back inside, I said, "It's bound to be, I suppose, but I don't like the country getting crowded up. It seems to me we're losing something."

  Jacob nodded. "I know how you feel. I'm gettin' so if I see another rider on the trail, I'm jealous, but we can't be that way. It's here for all of us."

  "There's something out there, Jacob. Something I've got to find before it is too late. There's something out there for me."

  He said nothing for a while, and then he said, "Your pa and ma found something for them. They were on the run, but no matter. Your pa told me. They found happiness out there, happiness with each other. Maybe they didn't have it long, but they had it good. Don't you ever forget that."

  Thinking of them led me to think of Meghan. Where was she now? Did she ever think of me? I smiled into the darkness beyond the door, thinking how foolish that was. Why should she think of me? I was just a boy who had sat close to her in school, a boy too shy to talk, too awed by her presence to do anything but grow red and embarrassed if she so much as looked at me, which she rarely did.

  How did my father meet my mother? Had he been shy, too? I doubted it. He seemed the essence of confidence, of assurance. Months had gone by with Meghan, and I had said nothing, yet ... there had been communication of a sort. We read better than others in the class, and Thomas Fraser had often had us read aloud, first one, and then the other. It was not much. I realized.

  Restless because Francisco had not appeared, I saddled my horse the next morning and rode down to the store. As I walked up the steps, a man came from the store. It was Fletcher.

  His smile was not pleasant, and there was a kind of a taunting in his expression that irritated me. "Been keepin' an eye out for you," he said, "wonderin' when you'd head for the desert."

  "Does it concern you?"

  His smile was there, but the amusement was gone from it. "Maybe," he said. "Maybe it does. Your pa, now, he spent a lot of time in the desert. Him and those Injun friends of his. I been wonderin' why, and there's some who figured that was where he got his money."

  "Money?" I was puzzled. "What money?"

  "Him an' your ma. They lived it up back east there, an' your pa had money to pay your way west. Now, you take what your pa paid for you an' him on the wagon. That's a good year's income for many a well-off man these days. "Where'd your pa come by that kind of money? I figure he had it when he went east. I figure he got it
out of that desert."

  I simply stared at him. My father had had a difficult time during those years back east, barely having enough to keep us alive at times. There were periods when he had, briefly, done quite well, and then at the end the windfall from the races the horses had won, and the generosity of his employer.

  "You are mistaken, sir," I said. "My father had nothing when he went east beyond a little he had saved from cattle sales and furs."

  Fletcher took a cigar from his pocket and bit off the end. "Maybe, an' maybe not. Why'd he stop here instead of ridin' right into Los Angeles with the rest of us?" He waved a hand. "Why stop in this godforsaken spot? I say he had reason. I say he'd found gold, or those Injuns showed him where it was.

  "I say your Miss Nesselrode knows about that gold. Why else has she been keepin' you? Why are you goin' into the desert with that there Finney?"

  He put the cigar in his mouth and struck a match on his pants, bringing up his knee to draw the material tight over his thigh. "You go ahead. I'll foller. Maybe there's enough for all of us."

  "Fletcher," I said, "you're a fool."

  For a moment I thought he would strike me, and I said, "Don't try it, Fletcher."

  Something in the way I said it seemed to warn him, for he suddenly looked at me again. "Hell, you're a man now. 'Least you've growed up. Now I can kill you."

  What happened within me, I do not know, but I was suddenly lighthearted. I smiled at him. "Whenever you're ready, Fletcher. Whenever you're ready!"

  Chapter 31

  What I thought of as the store was really nothing of the kind. It was merely a sort of dwelling where the owner kept a few supplies which he sold to the Cahuillas or to passersby. Under the counter he kept a jug from which he dispensed occasional drinks.

  When Fletcher walked away, I turned to see him go. Already I had learned that one does not become careless around such men. There was murder in the man; I accepted the realization and was careful.

  Yet when I turned, I was surprised. Francisco was there. For a moment we looked at each other, and then I drew a quick round face in the dirt. He took the twig from my hand and added the smile. Then we looked at each other, and slowly he held out his hand.

  His was not a muscular handshake. For that matter, few Indians whom I had known more than touched palms. The strong handshake that many think is an indication of character is not so at all. Many very strong men merely clasp one's hand. Theirs are not limp handshakes, nor the firm grip one hears of in fiction.

  We walked over and stood in the shade of some mesquite. "We're going up-country," I said, "to catch wild horses."

  He squatted on his heels, and I did likewise. "We hope to catch many horses," I said, "and we will need help." With a twig I dug in the soil for a pebble, turning it over. "We would like to find five or six Cahuillas to help us."

  Francisco pushed his hat back and squinted at the pebble I had dug from the hard-packed earth. He picked it up and turned it in his fingers.

  "We are thinking of three or four hundred horses. We would build a long fence of brush to guide them into a corral. There would be much work, but we would pay or share the horses."

  "We do not need horses," he said. After a silence he said, "You catch cows, too?"

  "Maybe."

  "Catch cows, we take some cows."

  "All right."

  We sat silent, watching a raven plucking at something in a palm tree.

  There had been times when I was a boy that I had gone with them to the oak groves to gather acorns, or to the mesquite for their beans. I had worked beside them and learned to know them, a little.

  There were old men I remembered who sometimes talked to us as they worked. I remembered the stories of the coyote who had planted mesquite beans after the sea disappeared from the basin and left it dry. The fish and the seabirds on which the Cahuilla had lived were gone, but there were forests of mesquite soon. Yet, until the mesquite grew, times must have been hard. They did not speak of that, only the story of the coyote planting the mesquite.

  Later, talking to Monte, I mentioned the story. "A legend," he said. "The Plains Injuns, too. They have many stories of the coyote."

  "But in all the legends there is some truth. As for the coyote planting the mesquite, it could be true."

  He took the cigarette from his mouth. "You mean you believe that?"

  "Why not? The coyote eats the mesquite beans. He goes into the desert to hunt rabbits. Where he stops to do his business, he leaves some undigested beans, perhaps? They grow. Why not? That's the way plants are often scattered, through bird and animal droppings."

  "Didn't think of that," Monte admitted. "Runoff water would bring down some seeds, too, I suspect."

  He glanced at me. "You think those Injuns will come?" "You can depend on it," I said. "They will come and they will be ready."

  "You've been in their villages?"

  "Time and again. Lived with them when I was a boy. I stayed in this house but often went hunting with them, gathering nuts and seeds, listening to the old men tell of when the water disappeared, little by little.

  "It came and went several times. Sometimes it came slowly, and at least once it came with a great rush, carrying great logs on a vast wave that swept up the valley. Many Indians were lost. The only ones saved were those hunting in the mountains or close enough to the mountains to escape."

  Gesturing toward the mountains, I said, "They have villages up there. In the Santa Rosas, too.

  "There are old trails in the mountains and on the desert. A few of them I have followed, and there are more I shall follow."

  "Whys"

  Why, indeed? Turning that over in my mind, I shrugged. "How do I know? It is my destiny, I think. All I know is that I shall never rest easy until I have gone into the desert alone. Until I have followed some of those trails to wherever they go."

  "I know," Monte said wistfully. "It's something around the bend in the trail or over the next ridge. I feel it, too."

  We would need extra ropes, so we bought hides from the Indians or the Mexicans and we made ropes. We worked, waiting for the day. Our horses were in good shape, as we knew they must be for the work ahead. The next morning, when we went outside, Francisco was there, and five Cahuillas were with him; with them were their horses.

  "Come on in," Jacob invited. "We're fixin' some grub."

  Nobody moved. One Indian lit a cigarette; the others simply looked across the desert toward the mountains. Francisco looked at me and shrugged. "It is the house of Tahquitz," he said.

  Jacob walked over and looked at their horses. They were good stock, mustangs all, and built for the work they most do.

  "Tomorrow we go," he said. He glanced at Francisco. "All right with you?"

  "Bueno."

  There were still a few supplies to get, a little work to do. When my part was done, I sat down with The Last Days of Pompeii, by Bulwer-Lytton. It was one of the books I was leaving for my unseen visitor, but I wished to read it first. However, I was scarcely reading, for my thoughts were of him.

  Who was he? What was he? A giant? A monster? An evil spirit, as some presumed? Had my father known him? Had the Indians seen him?

  If he was so large a being, how could they not have seen him? Where did he live? How did he move back and forth without being seen?

  At night ... of course, he did travel at night, at least until he returned to the mountains. That he came from the mountains, I was sure, for there was the smell of pines about him.

  Where had he come from? Where had he learned to read? Or to lay mosaics as he had here? Or to build so beautifully? How did he pass his days?

  The only thing I actually knew about him was that he was or had been a builder, a worker in tile and timber. Also, that he liked to read, and read good books. Presumably he was a thoughtful man, but I did not know. Nobody knew.

  Suppose he was mad? Suppose on some occasion he should suddenly go berserk? Or decide that I was spying upon him? What then? He could--he had
--come into this house in the night. Suppose he did it when I was here alone?

  Inadvertently I glanced over my shoulder. What did I know of him? Nothing....

  By the time I closed the book, all were asleep. I extinguished the candle and went outside. The Cahuillas had chosen to sleep in the shed, so I walked along the path that led into the sandhills. It was very still, the stars bright as only desert stars can be.

  Alone, I stood, feeling the stillness, the softness of the night. Far off I heard a faint music. Straining my ears, only half-believing.... It sounded like a flute, like one of those I had often made as a child. I listened, but the sound faded, vanished.

  The night was empty again.

  An Indian? Some of them played flutes, but the music had a sound ... It must have been European or American music.

  At last I walked back to the house and went to bed. Tomorrow the desert, and after that the northern valley--the San Joaquin, some called it.

  Captain Pedro Fages had been there, probably the first one. Others had followed, but very few. The northern desert was the haunt of the Mohaves, at least at times. In the mountains a few Piutes remained, although from what Francisco had told me, they were leaving, going away. There was something about that Tehachapi country they no longer liked.

  "I do not know it," Francisco said. "RamOn does." "Ramon?"

  "He will meet us. I do not know where, but he will." He glanced at me. "He comes when he will. Of you I have spoken, and he will come. He will know where the horses are. Ramem is of the desert," he added, "and the mountains. He comes alone to join us."

  "He is Cahuilla?"

  "No Cahuilla, no Chemehuevi, no Piute. I do not know." "There are wild horses there?"

  "Muchos. There is grass, amigo, and from there to the north and in the mountains there are horses. There are also cattle."

  "We will touch no branded cattle."

  "Of course. It is understood."

  I thought over the situation, and what lay ahead. It was good to be with Francisco again, and I must come to know the others. And in the morning before we left, I must sweep the floors, leave all as we had found it.