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

by Louis L'Amour

  Daylight came…one instant the sky was gray, and then the shadows retreated into the canyons and the dark places among the hills, and the sun crowned the distant ridges with gold, then bathed them in light, and the last faltering battalions of the shadows withered and died among the rocks and morning was there. In the early light Jacob Almayer drank again, drank deep now, and long.

  His thirst gone, hunger remained, but he stood up and looked over at the hill. Had he seen anything? Or had it been his imagination? Had it been some fantasy of his half-delirium? Leaving the spring he crossed the small valley toward the hillside and climbed it. As he walked, he searched the ground. No footsteps had left their mark, no stones unturned, no signs of a large body of people moving or working.

  The trees…he looked at them again, and then he recalled a traveler who had told him once of how the Indians gathered the nuts from these pines…from the piñon. He searched for the cones and extracted some of the nuts. And then he gathered more, and more. And that evening he killed a mountain sheep near the spring.

  At daylight he resumed his walk, but this time his gourd was filled with water, and he carried fresh meat with him, and several pounds of the nuts. As Jacob Almayer started to walk, he picked up a stone, and then an idea came to him.

  How far would an Indian walk in a day? Those who followed this trail would probably have no reason for hurry. Would they walk fifteen miles? Twenty? Or even thirty? Or would distance depend on the water supply? For that was the question that intrigued him. Where they stopped there would be water. The solution was to watch for any dim trail leading away from the main route toward the end of the day.

  Soon he found another pile of the stones, and he dropped the one he carried, and picked up another. And at nightfall he found a dim trail that led to a flowing spring, and he camped there, making a fire and roasting some of his meat. As he ate and drank, as he watched his fire burn down, as he thought of the trail behind and the trail ahead, he looked out into the darkness.

  Jacob Almayer was a Breton, and the folk of Brittany are sensitive to the spirits of the mountains and forest. He looked out into the darkness beyond the firelight and he said aloud, “To the spirits of this place, my respects, humble as they are, and in my heart there will always be thanks for you, as long as I shall live.”

  The fire fluttered then, the flames whipping down, then blazing up, brighter than ever. From far off there came the distant sound of voices. Were they chanting, singing? He couldn’t tell…it might have been the wind.

  Louis sent this story, like many others in this time period, to his agent in New York. The agent didn’t feel he could sell it and so, after a few weeks, Dad submitted it to Astounding Science, only to have it rejected there too. He then filed the short story away, but not the basic concept. Before the end of the 1950s, he would begin developing the project again, but with new characters and new locations.

  Louis’s fascination with the Palm Springs area began with my mother. Her father had been a land developer who, after completing a large project around Big Bear Lake in the San Bernardino Mountains, began to build a complimentary neighborhood of vacation homes at La Quinta, southeast of Palm Springs in California’s Coachella Valley. The appeal of these developments was that owners of mountain cabins could be cool in the summer and those who had desert casitas would be warm in the winter.

  My grandfather’s death and the onset of WWII brought an end to this dream, but the family was able to retain the secluded sixty-five-acre date farm near the La Quinta Hotel that had once been his headquarters. The property held a pair of small adobe bungalows, a machine shop, a stable, and some sheds. There was a reservoir, fed by several artesian wells, that doubled as a swimming pool. Most of the land was covered by a grove of date palms interspersed with grapefruit and other citrus trees. Until it was sold in the early 1970s, it served as the getaway for our extended family and their friends.

  Dad spent a great deal of time soaking up the sleepy atmosphere around the farm and hiking in the Santa Rosas. At times he happened across mysterious trails, writing the following in an undated set of notes:

  High in the San Jacintos I found a trail, a very old trail—the piece I found was dim, of a kind recognized only by the experienced. A small section protected by wind by rocks and somewhat by trees, yet my hunch was that it was older by far than even the oldest cedars, and they can be very old.

  …there was only that piece, scarcely twelve feet long yet it did point a direction and I followed where it pointed, knowing from many previous trails how a trail should go. I found nothing…I persisted, checking each square yard until I found what appeared to be another piece, somewhat shorter. Then I climbed higher on the mountain and looked down, knowing such trails are often visible from a place on a peak when invisible on the ground. Then I saw it—the thinnest and faintest of trails, vanishing here, reappearing there—yet a trail leading…where?

  Here’s another excerpt from Dad’s February 1957 journal:

  Followed “ghost” trail, partly Indian (prehistoric), partly by some prospector who marked his trail by small cairns at intervals and usually by placing some rock from another formation at a place it would not naturally be. For over half the way the rocks were white quartz or other white rock that could be visible at night. Lost trail but picked it up again. I was alone, walked 15 miles from noon to 5:30 p.m. May complete Shevlin story [The Highgraders] at La Quinta, some interviews on LONESOME GODS, some research in mountains…Expect to explore new route to oasis this trip, and old Indian trail over Coyote Pass.

  At the time, Louis was interviewing a number of elderly Coachella Valley residents who had memories dating back to the previous century. Clearly The Lonesome Gods was a project that was still in the works. What follows is one of his early beginnings from that period:

  John Cable set on the wagon seat beside his wife and knew that he was dying. Death was in him, deeply seated there, and he accepted the fact, for if life had taught him anything at all it was the acceptance of the inevitable.

  He was not a warrior, nor a man of conflict, not one to take life in hard hands and twist it to shape with his own thinking and desire. He accepted life as it came to him, but for all that he lived deeply, roundly, and fully, savoring the flavor of his days and pleased with their nuances.

  He had looked upon life and found it good, even as he now looked upon death and found it not evil.

  That he was here upon a rocking seat of the wagon was his own decision, and he was not sure what Clare thought of it. She had always been quiet, possessed of depths of strength and resolution that continued to astonish him after thirteen years of marriage.

  Theirs had been a good life, and they had a son, fourteen years old, to show for it. Kinn was a fine boy, too thin for his height, but it resulted from activity rather than ill health. Kinn took to this life as Cable hoped he would, yet he also hoped that his son would not lose touch with his books, leaving the world of thought behind him because of the world of action with which he would be surrounded.

  John Cable had known he was dying for nearly a year, and had begun planning as soon as he knew.

  For some time he had been aware that the New England village which was their home was no fit place for Kinn to grow up. The boy had energy, a fierce drive within him that needed room in which to grow and expand, and there was a violence in him that could lead to trouble in the sober, serious town in which they lived.

  John Cable had nothing to leave his son but his wishes and what moral stamina, sense of values, and thoughtfulness he could instill into him. Much of this had been done, but it now remained for Cable to provide a theatre in which Kinn could expand. In the 1850’s the solution was obvious. They would go west.

  It was like Cable that knowing what physical torture the trip would bring to him, he accepted it as a price to be paid. He had given his son
what training he could and now they were moving west to the land he had chosen.

  He knew where he was going. He had always lived with awareness, and he had known about the pine-crested ridge and the stream for a long time, and in the leather wallet carried inside his coat there was a crudely drawn map, as well as a drawing of the ridge, and the location of a spring. Both drawing and map had been given him years before by a mountain man.

  John Cable knew he was dying but he hoped he could reach the place, build a strong dwelling, and install his wife and son before he passed on. Many would have believed him a fool to move west in his present condition, for his family’s sake if not his own, but John Cable knew the depths of strength that lay within his wife, and listening to the mountain man, Cable decided that on such a spot, with good land, good water, in close proximity to the trails, with fuel and signs of mineral, there would someday be a town. And his son would be there to grow with it.

  You can tell the basic details were not yet settled—even the names were different—but this scene does seem to be a first step toward the novel you have just read. Here are another few paragraphs of some early notes, further developing a slightly different yet still similar vision:

  Boy and father arrive on stage from east; man meets them and warns if they come to the coast they will be killed. Father is unforgiven, son not wanted. Too ill to return east, he stays in Palm Springs, then Agua Caliente.

  Boy plays with Indian children, at first both are hesitant. Father sits in the sun, walks a little, improves in health. Boy spends more and more…time with Indians or alone on the mountain or in the desert. He acquires an old mule who follows him.

  His father is warned again; his presence has become known. One day five men ride in and his father is murdered. His father does not even own a gun, yet he has been shot by all five. They ride away, and the boy sees them go. He will remember every man. He will also remember who sent them.

  That’s a setup for a pretty typical revenge Western. In fact, Dad even admitted it:

  Basic story one of hatred, fear and revenge and a mild man finally driven to fight back. And a man he kills and buries in the rocks above the town.

  However, the story continued to evolve, and this next bit is much more interesting, since it hints at the spiritual and supernatural elements that the finished novel would come to touch upon:

  A boy growing up in the mountains and the desert, a boy growing up with the magic of the sun and the stars, with the desert plants, the birds, and the snakes, growing up with the realization of the strength and beauty of it all.

  Let him grow into the country and let the country grow into him, let them be one in strength, in serenity, in inevitability. Let him view man as a part of nature, as a creature left to survive—if he can.

  He chose the weapons. He chose the time. Let him accept the world in which he lives. He uses the tactics of The Apache…when pursued. He leads his enemies to destruction and lets the desert destroy them.

  Let one event take place on the cliffs above PS [Palm Springs] where the pay-off takes place there and the other man’s body is left for the sun and the buzzards and the ants.

  Fill this book with desert and Indian lore, with magic, hope, love and realization with at the end, meditation and great books, with poetry and philosophy. A story about a man living out his life against the back-drop of the desert.

  Let this be magic!

  I find that piece fascinating because the way my father speaks (“Let him…” and “Let this…”) is almost prayerlike. These invocations are passive phrases, as if Dad were just the medium for translating the story into our realm of existence rather than the author who actively wrought them. This does make a certain amount of sense; many writers have the feeling that they are more the intermediary for their stories than their ultimate creator. A man like my father, who had found a way to write directly from his unconscious, really did try to just get out of the way of the story and let it pass through him with as little interference as possible.

  Dad continued to replay that beginning in his notes: the arrival from the East, the father dying of tuberculosis, the California family that won’t accept either father or son. Soon he committed to the idea of the mother already being dead and her people being Spanish. A generalized sense of trouble in the wife’s family evolved into jealousy and greed over whether the long-lost grandson might inherit the last dregs of the family fortune:

  1860’s at Palm Springs: Man arrives on stage with small boy. He is very ill. He is met by messenger telling him he is not wanted on the coast, that his wife’s family will receive neither him nor his child. Old hatreds combined with new fears that he will claim right to property deny him the chance to proceed.

  Too ill to return, and with no place to return to, he remains with Indians in Palm Springs. His son begins to play with Indian children, learns their language, wanders in mountains and desert with them.

  The family see his father as a threat to them and come looking for him. He is shot and killed and they hunt the boy into the mountains where he is hidden by the Indians….

  He cares nothing for the “estate.” He becomes one with the mountains and the desert, sees a lovely young girl on a stage coach and finally at sixteen decides to go to Los Angeles….

  The hatred of the family lives on. Not even after years does it lessen. Yet mingled with it is fear that he will come and claim all they have. He does not want it, does not need it.

  The next step in developing the underlying conflict was the introduction of the character of Don Isidro, Johannes Verne’s grandfather. At first, I believe, the old man was simply motivated by the idea that his daughter, someone he thought of as his personal property, had been stolen away by Zachary Verne. Not only was Verne considered lower class, but he was also a Yankee and a Protestant, definitely not a man who would be accepted as a member of an ancient, aristocratic, and devoutly Catholic family.

  But somewhere along the line a much more interesting idea came into being:

  THE OLD DON:

  A fierce pride in his family and name; the purity of his blood, a pride based as much upon ignorance of the facts as anything else. Certain tales have come down to him, and these he has never questioned nor examined. Some are true, some are false. He accepts what was told him, and walks in arrogant pride, which will brook no blemish or suggestion of one.

  A monster has been born and speedily spirited away, hidden from sight and from the knowledge of his peers.

  The shame of having fathered a child with some sort of abnormality was a powerful addition to the psychology of Don Isidro. Adding an element of deep emotional stress to his life could help explain his overreaction to losing control of Consuelo, Johannes’s mother, when she elopes with Zachary Verne. For a brief moment Dad considered it as simply a part of the family history:

  Show Don’s pride, his harshness—Let his sister remind him of black mark in family. And the child he had destroyed—

  Then he realized that he had stumbled upon an idea that could pay off over and over again if the character remained an active part of the story. Eventually, Dad decided that Alfredo, Johannes’s uncle, would suffer from acromegaly, a condition caused by an overproduction of growth hormone. This choice created a fascinating situation: Don Isidro could, initially, take pride in having a son and heir. However, since the disorder does not present in infancy, it would be some time before he realized that something was wrong. Obsessed with appearances Don Isidro might, initially, take pride in the young boy’s size and strength but, eventually, the child’s deformities would cause the Don to flee to distant California to protect what he saw as his family’s honor. Ultimately Alfredo would grow up to be “Tahquitz,” the enormous and secretive man the Indians would name after one of their spirits. Here are some pieces of my father’s notes in which we can see him experimenting wit
h various ways to use Alfredo in the story:

  …the Monster, his strange, lonely life and the friendship that grows between Johannes and the Monster. He was never given a name until Johannes names him, has him baptized by a blind priest. [This particular note was written before Dad settled on acromegaly as the boy’s problem.]

  Capt. Laurel talks to Johannes. He has been to Spain, hears strange story of Monster born to Spanish grandee, his house shunned, invitations ceased, a woman who came in the night and carried the child away. Build to confrontation of Don I [Don Isidro] with Monster.

  Monster finds him in desert, almost out of it, carries him back. Or in the mountains.

  Terribly wounded, M. left dying. Elena comes to care for him.

  When a son was born he was very proud, then the son began to grow, was becoming a giant. He hid the child from public eyes yet word got around and he was pointed out, or felt he was being pointed out, as the man who sired a monster. Got a grant of land and fled the country, leaving his sister to come afterward with a distant cousin. What he did not know was that she brought the monster with her. Cousin recognizing monster as a rival, tries to kill him. Fails.

  There are a few ideas in those last few excerpts that didn’t make it into the finished book. Here are a few more:

  Have old Don drive him from school—persecutes him and Miss N.

  Hannes inherits at the last—But little remains. He stands in the old house—(in ruins?) Looks about—