The Lonesome Gods (Louis L'Amour's Lost Treasures)

by Louis L'Amour

  English had long been her preferred language, although every young woman of her class in Russia spoke French in common conversation, yet she kept her books and her notes in Russian for the sake of privacy.

  In Russia she would have been making tea in a samovar. How long ago it was! What if she had not been sent to Siberia? What if her brother had not been involved in that rather silly plot? By now she would have married, had children, and would be spending much of her life in France or Germany, perhaps Switzerland.

  She remembered her mother, that slender, beautiful woman with her kind gray eyes and her stately manner. Her father had been terribly proud of his wife, although he affected to disapprove of some of her too-liberal British ideas. They had met when he was on a diplomatic mission to England, and it had been immediate love. He had not even waited to be presented but had crossed the room and introduced himself. It had been shocking, but exciting, too. Her mother had often told her the story, a story that never grew old and which she had delighted in hearing.

  So far, far away, so long, long ago!

  She remembered playing croquet on the lawn, and while waiting for Mikhail to make his play, she would look off down the avenue of firs toward the lake. She loved that view, and how often she had walked to the lake with her father on a Sunday afternoon!

  By now she might have been a great lady, received by the czar and probably living at court. Although she had always preferred their country estates to living in St. Petersburg.

  Nor had Siberia been the cold, dismal place they all expected. In the town to which they had been exiled the winters were less rigorous than in St. Petersburg and she had found the people more open and friendly, and the countryside beautiful in summer. Although exile was considered the worst of things, she had found it not at all bad, but then word had reached them of what was to happen, and they fled.

  So lost in her thoughts was she that when she turned and saw a man standing inside the door she was completely surprised. It was a man she had not seen before but immediately recognized for who he was—Yacub Khan.

  Her first impression was one of power, not muscular power alone, although that was obvious from his massive shoulders and mighty arms, but from something emanating from the man himself.

  He was no taller than she, but wide and thick. He stood facing her, his feet slightly apart, his loose shirt hanging outside his trousers. His face was broad, strongly boned, and his head was either bald or shaved.

  “You are friend to Meghan Laurel?”

  “I am.”

  “She goes to look for Johannes Verne.”

  “What? Meghan? But she cannot! She must not!”

  “She takes four men. One is Tomás Machado, a good man. Three packhorses.”

  If Meghan had gone into the wilderness looking for Johannes, she had not one chance in a thousand of finding him. He was pursuing horse thieves and would follow wherever the trail led. Meghan, having never been into the back country, could not appreciate the immensity of it, nor have the vaguest idea of what she was undertaking. She had ridden the trails in the Los Angeles Valley and into the San Gabriel and San Fernando valleys, but beyond the mountains it was something quite different.

  “She must be found before she reaches the desert.”

  “I go.”

  “You? Only an Indian could find them!”

  A glint of amusement showed itself. “I am born on the desert. My people were of the Taklamakan and mountains bordering it.”

  “I know of the Taklamakan. I crossed the Gobi as a young girl. I know of your people, but this desert is different, although less dangerous than yours.”

  “I shall find them.”

  “Johannes has been gone three weeks. No one has returned, so there will have been trouble.” She looked down at her desk, then looked up at Yacub Khan. “Johannes knew it was a trap. The stealing of horses was deliberate. They wished for him to follow.”

  “He will not be trapped.”

  “Yacub Khan, please bring her back. She is a young girl in love and she is my friend. She is very dear to Johannes, too.”

  When he had gone, she sat very still, remembering not the desert she had crossed with Johannes and his father, but that long-ago crossing of the Gobi. The Taklamakan she knew only by reputation; some said it was the worst desert on earth. In the far west of China it was reached by the Silk Road, which went around its border. That road had been taken by pilgrims from China proceeding to India to study Buddhism at its source. There had been great schools at Khotan, and the Buddha himself had been a Saka, an Indo-European people from Central Asia whose tribe had settled in Nepal.

  Such a man as Yacub Khan might find Meghan.

  But where was Johannes? Actually, now that she thought of it, he had been gone more than three weeks.

  Meghan herself had been worried about Johannes having enemies of whom he was not aware. At least he had been unaware of the true reason for their enmity, and she had herself been partly responsible for her father’s warning to Johannes, but that had been before she met Don Federico.

  After meeting him, her fears seemed ridiculous. Intrigued by his courtly manner and his obvious interest in her, she had accepted a contrary view, unwilling to believe that such a polished gentleman could also be plotting murder.

  Johannes had gone. He had left abruptly. Miss Nesselrode remembered that she herself had implied he might not return.

  Meghan had returned home sick and empty at the thought that she had driven him away, that he might not come back. She was used to the young men of the town, but Johannes was different. He possessed a quality she had not fathomed, a strangeness and a sort of inner quiet. Her father respected him, which was astonishing, as her father was rarely impressed by anyone.

  Yet she was not her father’s daughter for nothing. If Johannes would not come back, she would go after him. She told no one but the maid at her home, but she suspected Tomás had told Elena.

  Miss Nesselrode walked to the window and looked into the street. The idea that Meghan would follow Johannes into the desert had not occurred to her. Nor could Meghan have any idea of what she was getting into. Few Angelenos had knowledge of what lay over the mountains, nor were they interested. Nor was it the kind of conduct one expected from a well-behaved young lady.

  She heard the steps on the boardwalk and recognized them at once. Impulsively she started for the door as Jacob Finney pushed it open and stepped in.

  “Mr. Finney…!”

  “He’s still out there, ma’am. We recovered the horses, but they took out after Johannes. He told us if we got separated to bring the stock back here, that he’d take care of himself.”

  “He’s out there alone?”

  “We weren’t ready for the desert, ma’am. Neither were they. Don Federico and a couple of his men came back for fresh horses and outfits. I think they plan to locate on water holes at the desert’s edge and wait for him to show.”

  “How is it out there?”

  “Upwards of one hundred degrees, ma’am. If I know Johannes, he’ll come out of that desert alive, but nobody else will. I’ve heard him talk about it a time or two. Those Injuns and his pa, they taught that boy aplenty.”

  “Meghan has gone looking for him.”

  “Meghan? What in God’s world…?”

  “She’s a young girl, Mr. Finney, and she’s in love. She knows nothing of what is out there. The man she loves is gone and she is afraid he’ll never come back.”

  Jacob Finney swore softly, bitterly. How far had she gone? He asked quick, pointed questions. His thoughts raced. She would be impatient, and she would push it. Tomás was all right, but what if something happened to him? She’d be out there alone, with three men whom she did not know, and in bandit country. And how could she even dream of finding Johannes?

  Of course, Finney had been planning to go back. H
e had not wanted to leave Johannes out there, but they had the horses to consider, and Johannes in many ways was better off alone.

  He was dead beat. He’d just come in, and the trip had been a hard one. It was the same with Monte and Owen Hardin, and Hardin was upset because of the loss of his friend Myron Brodie.

  He needed rest. “You’re not as young as you used to be,” he told himself. Still, he was far from an old man, and he knew the desert somewhat.

  “Tomás will slow her down if he can. Maybe by the time she sees some of that country she will begin to understand what she’s up against.” He paused. “I’ll get the boys, but they’re dead beat, Miss Nesselrode. They came in off the trail all wore-out. We’ll do what we can.”

  “Yacub Khan went after her.”

  Finney wiped the sweatband of his hat, thinking. Yacub Khan? Some kind of an Oriental foreigner who had a small place over against the mountain. He had only seen him once that he remembered.

  “He is a friend of Captain Laurel’s.”

  “Some kind of foreigner, ain’t he? What good will he be out there?”

  “He grew up in a desert worse than the Mohave, a good deal worse.”

  “Can he sit a horse? I mean, most of those foreigners don’t know one end from the other, ’less they’re Englishmen.”

  “His people live on horseback. They are nomadic herdsmen, following the grass from the desert’s edge to the high mountain country. Mountains,” she added, “that make these look like prairie-dog mounds.”

  Finney was doubtful. “I been in the Sierras,” he said, “and the Rockies. There’s peaks in the Rockies that top out at fourteen thousand, a lot of them.”

  “Where he comes from they are twice that high,” she said quietly. “In the Kunlun and the Pamirs there are many peaks over twenty thousand feet. He’s used to rough country, Mr. Finney.”

  “Maybe. But can he fight?”

  “He can. His people all carry broadswords and rifles. They protect their herds from bandits and other nomads. He grew up fighting. They tell me, too, that he’s a master at several kinds of hand-to-hand fighting.”

  Finney was silent. Finally he dropped into a chair. He did not want to go back out there, but how to explain that? He had been constantly in the saddle for three weeks. There had been a short, hard fight, and above all he knew finding Johannes would be impossible. He would lose himself in that desert. He would go places no man on horseback could go unless he had three packhorses loaded with water.

  He did not know Meghan Laurel, but in his own mind he was sure she would give up and return. No young girl was going to buck the heat, the sweat, the sleeping out…

  She had to be crazy. Almost automatically he accepted the coffee Miss Nesselrode offered.

  Other men were coming in. Matt Keller, De La Guerra, and then Ben Wilson.

  “Captain Laurel’s daughter?” Wilson asked. “What in the world…?”

  “She’s in love,” Miss Nesselrode said.

  Wilson shrugged, with a wry smile. “I suppose that explains everything. I’ve been across that desert, and I would say somebody had better bring her back before she dies out there.”

  A young girl out there alone? Finney swore under his breath. Tomás was all right, but who were the others? And there were bandits out there, several roving bands along the fringe of the settlements, to say nothing of Indians.

  He put down his cup and got to his feet. “I’ll get some boys together,” he said. “We’ll go after her.”

  “Johannes will thank you for it. So will I.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  There were so many routes, so many trails. Could he find hers now?

  He got to his feet. Wilson glanced at him over the rim of his cup. “It’s a big country,” he said.

  “Yeah,” Finney said dryly.

  Wilson glanced at him again. “If she’s in a hurry, as she probably is, they will need fresh horses.”

  Their eyes met. Ben Wilson knew this country as well as anybody could, and he knew the only ranch where they could get fresh horses. It was a hangout for outlaws, for Vásquez and his lot, and Ben Wilson knew it. He also knew that Finney knew it.

  Jacob Finney walked to the door. He glanced back at Miss Nesselrode and lifted a hand.

  When the door closed, she said, “He did not want to go.”

  “And I don’t blame him,” Wilson replied.

  CHAPTER 51

  On a cool brown ledge in the shade of a jagged upthrust of rock, I looked out upon a desert turning gray with the coming of night. It had been four days since I left my last enemy shouting threats and obscenities as I walked away.

  Those who pursued me were dead, and some future traveler could mark their trail by their whitening bones and the sound of a desert wind moaning in their empty rib cages.

  My moccasins had worn out again. As I watched the desert that tomorrow I must travel, I made a fresh pair from the buckskin of my sleeve-canteen. That water bag had leaked, yet retained enough water to get me across three long stretches where there were no springs.

  Torn on the rocks when I fell, the water bag lost the last few drops and I was near my end when I glimpsed some salt grass at the lowest part of a blistering desert basin. As I drew closer, I saw arrowweed and crawling mesquite, two more evidences of water. And then I found a spring that offered no other sign of its presence.

  That had been two days ago. Now I sat within a dozen feet of a rock tank containing water, a place visited by bighorn sheep, coyotes, and other wildlife. Their converging tracks, scarcely to be seen in the sand, had brought me here. I had drunk deep, splashed my face and chest with water, and then I’d moved off to sleep the night through and leave my animal guides access to the water. In the morning I returned to drink and then settled down to rest, study the desert, and wait for night.

  The changing light on the desert had let me pick my route. Tonight there would be a moon, and I would start for the mountains on the skyline. Now I was close to the southern edge of the desert and must move with extreme care.

  Every instinct and a bit of common sense warned me somebody would be waiting. At least three men had turned back, and one of them would have been Don Federico. He had tried too often and had a fierce hunger to see me die. The logical thing would be to watch every water hole at the desert’s edge until I appeared, as eventually I must.

  Odd, but I had never thought of myself as an heir. Nor had I wanted anything from Don Isidro, although the irony of it appealed to me, to inherit after all his efforts to see me die. It would serve him right.

  On the horizon were the San Gabriel and San Bernardino mountains. If I could reach those mountains I could travel south to join my friends the Cahuillas with less trouble. Not only would I be traveling among the pines, but water would be easily available. The thought of traveling with water and shade was tantalizingly beautiful.

  Now, studying the desert from my high point, I tried to decide where my enemies might await me.

  Not more than five miles from the low range of rocks where I now rested was Old Woman Springs; near it, Cottonwood Spring. Beyond them were the mountains where I wished to be.

  Twenty-five or thirty miles away was Rabbit Springs, but in the wrong direction for me. Don Federico would rightly guess that I would attempt to reach my friends the Indians at the hot-water springs at the mountain’s edge. Not these mountains, but the San Jacintos further south. He might or might not know about the Indians in Morongo Valley, closer, and also my friends. It was near there, I believed, that Paulino Weaver had settled. Don Federico would have men watching these springs.

  That I would be in desperate need of water they would realize, and they had only to wait. Yet there was now an advantage for me. This was country I had ridden and walked with the Cahuilla.

  By the time I reached the vicinity of Old Woman, I woul
d be thirsty and needing a drink, yet I would pass it by in favor of a more hidden spring with even better water, Saddlerock Spring, where the water flowed right from the granite in a hidden place in the mountains. Only a few miles further south and I would be safe among my friends the Indians.

  Now I rested. My belt was drawn four notches tighter than when I left the others. The last piece of jerky left to me was now in my mouth. I chewed slowly, to make it last as long as possible. During the days in the desert, I had found seeds that could be eaten, and with my small supply of jerked beef they had kept me alive.

  One more stretch of desert to cross, one more group of watchers to evade, and then I was safe.

  Now…I sat still, dreading the moment when I must leave this water behind and once more endure the desert.

  I arose. On a rock face near where I had been sitting there was Indian writing, faded by blown sand, almost obliterated by time. Here, long ago, Indians had come to drink. There was no pile of stones, what some unknowing people had called “shrines,” but I placed two stones, one atop the other. Then I turned away into the desert.

  San Gorgonio Mountain, something over eleven thousand feet above sea level, was almost due south of me. For a moment I looked at it, then chose a star just east of the peak and started walking. Once I paused to stretch, trying to stretch some of the stiffness from my muscles. I was tired, very, very tired.

  Until now all my effort had been directed simply to the next spring, water hole, or tank. At each I had fallen, exhausted. One spring upon which my hopes depended had proved to be dry. A tank I had hoped to find containing some water had been a bed of sand.

  Before me, beyond this stretch of desert, were the mountains. A forest, even if a sparse forest at first, but the cool, cool shade and cool, cool water! I longed to lie on pine needles beneath a tree and rest, just rest.

  A little further, just a little further! Into the night and the coolness I walked…and walked. Sometimes I found my eyes closing even as I walked; I stumbled and awakened, but on course. There was my star, there were the mountains.