“I’m an old man now. Never was a hand to hold to money, anyway. I spent it all on drink and whatever, but you watch Ben Wilson, watch Wolfskill, Workman, and some of them others! Shrewd, knowin’ men they be! They will make Los Angeles into a city, and all you’ve got to do is ride the river with them. You take it from me!”
“Thank you, Mr. Smith.” She held out her hand to him. I had never noticed how slim and beautiful her hands were.
He took it in one of his, brown and hard and strong, and he looked at it, then at her. “It was a pleasure, ma’am. A pleasure.” Suddenly he got up, walked to his horse, and without touching a stirrup, swung himself into the saddle. Then he looked back at her. “I have a feelin’ about you, ma’am. I shall come to Los Angeles sometime, just to see if I’m right.”
And he rode away into the night. For a moment the firelight was on his broad back; for a moment or two after that we heard the grate of his horse’s hooves on gravel, and then he was gone, as if he had never been, and we heard no other sound.
Farley looked over at my father and shook his head in what must have been wonder, and Miss Nesselrode simply stood looking into the dying fire for a minute, then looked at Papa.
“He’s quite a wonderful man, isn’t he?”
“He’s an old devil,” my father said, “but he is a wonderful man, too, and you, I think, have made a friend.”
“I doubt I shall ever see him again.”
“That may be, but he will not forget you. And do not underestimate the man.” My father coughed slightly; then he said, “Some of the mountain men were finely educated, some were not, but all were extremely practical men whose minds were beautifully tuned. They could not be dull, for to let their wits dull was to invite death.
“One does not need education to be intelligent, and these men might be short on what educated men use in the way of information, but their wits were sharp, their minds were alert, they were prepared to move, to change, to adapt at the slightest need.
“All about them were conditions and circumstances to which they must adjust, attack by Indians or outlaw trappers was an ever-present danger, they lived on the very knife-edge of reality, and when this is so, the mind becomes a beautifully tuned instrument.
“They did not fall into patterns or ruts. There were none. Each day was different, each brought new problems. No two traps could ever be set exactly the same. Whatever else you could say of these men, they were intelligent in the finest sense. Peg-Leg Smith is one of them. The men of whom he spoke were also mountain men, but of different character than Smith. When the money went out of the fur trade, they did not hesitate. They looked about for other opportunities, and in Los Angeles they found them.”
Farley stood up and brushed off his pants. “It is late,” he said, “and tomorrow we go down into the real desert.”
“Good night, gentlemen,” Miss Nesselrode said, and she went away to the wagon.
When she was gone, Farley looked at my father. “Do you think he will come back?” “No.” He paused. “Oddly enough, the man’s a gentleman, in his own way. If I were you, I’d keep watch, but I’d bet every dollar I have that we will not see him again.”
My father turned away toward his blanket roll. “Hannes, I’m tired. You’ll have to help me with my boots.”
Eight
In the night I was suddenly awakened-by what sound or sense, I do not know. Listening … All was still. From under the wagon I could look out and see the morning star hanging in the sky like a light in a distant window. Then I thought of my grandfather, that fierce old man who hated us so, and whom I had never seen. Under the blankets I shrank, my stomach tied in a knot of fear. “I am Johannes Verne,” I whispered to myself. “I shall not be afraid.” Over and over I said it, and the words seemed to ease the tightness, and after a while I lay quiet, but wide awake. Carefully, not to disturb my father, who lay close by, I slid from under the blankets and went out to stand alone in the night.
There was a step behind me, and turning, I saw Jacob Finney. “Can’t sleep?”
Finney asked very softly.
“I was awake.” Then I said, “I like it. The desert, I mean. I like the desert nights, and the stars.”
“Yeah, me too. No matter how hot it is by day, the nights are cool. It’s a resting time.”
“Sometimes I think there’s something out there, something calling to me, only I can’t hear anything.”
“I know.” Finney got out his pipe and began to stoke it. “Some folks can’t abide the desert, but those who love it, like you an’ me, for them there’s no place like it. Kind of magic.”
“My mother loved the desert.”
“Spanish girl, wasn’t she?”
“Yes, sir. Her name was Consuelo.”
“It has a lovely sound.” He lit his pipe. “Knowed a Spanish girl once, down Sonora way. I guess I was in love with her, but then there was trouble and I killed a man. Shot him. I had to leave. By now she’s married to somebody else an’ probly never thinks of me.”
He cleared his throat. “I think of her, though. I got something to remember, anyway. There was a fountain in the patio and we used to set there in the moonlight. Sometimes we’d talk, but mostly we just set. Her mama was close by, but that made us no mind. We really didn’t need to talk. “I heard about your pa an’ ma, an’ how they run off into the desert an’ were married there by a priest comin’ up from Mexico. “Can’t figure why the old don hated him so. He was an Anglo, of course, and a Protestant. Maybe that’s enough for an old Spanish man who is proud of his name and family. An’ maybe it was because your pa was just a seaman. I don’t know, but it was too bad. But he’s become kind of a legend, y’know. The way they chased him. Four or five bands of men huntin’ just her an’ your pa, an’ he slipped away from them, time an’ again.
“The Injuns helped. They set store by your pa because during a starvation time for them he gave them beef cattle. He’d been building a herd, hoped to make hisself wealthy so the old don might accept him. Well, when the Injuns was starving, he gave them beef, so when your grandpa was after him, the Injuns hid him, told him where to hide, like that.”
Finney glanced at the stars. “Better roll your bed, youngster. We’re startin’ early because of the heat.”
After Jacob Finney walked away, I turned back to the desert. For a long moment I stood perfectly still, listening. But was I listening? What was I listening for? I did not know. Behind me there was a stirring. Behind me there was movement, activity, but it seemed far away. I walked a few steps further and the sounds seemed to recede. I stopped again, and then I felt an odd coolness, a feeling of something strange, something different.
I shook myself, but it was still there. I looked around and I could see people around the camp. Mr. Kelso was saddling his horse. Mr. Finney was loading his rifle again, and my father was rolling his bed, yet it all seemed far away and in a world different from the one in which I stood. Yet I did not know why. I waited, expecting something, but I did not know what, and then I saw the shadow out there in the greasewood. A shadow where there was nothing that could offer a shadow. Yet something was there, something a little more tangible than a shadow, something that seemed to be appearing, something that seemed to be happening.
Back at the fire, someone spoke, asking about me. I heard my father say, “He’s walked into the desert, but do not worry, he will be back.” Suddenly I was not at all sure if I could go back. That I even wanted to go back. I looked again for the shadow, and it was still there, standing as if waiting—waiting, perhaps, for me?
Turning sharply, half-afraid, I walked back toward the fire, walking slowly, always with the feeling that I wanted to look back, even to go back-perhaps to join that shadow? No … not that. Not that exactly. My father walked out to meet me. “Hannes? Are you all right?”