“Now, I won’t rightly say I did the honest thing, but I never told him they was rubies. I never told him different. Was I, a plumb ignorant ol’ desert rat, s’posed to know a ruby when I seen it?
“He figured he was cheatin’ me, and I taken his money. Fact is, I get myself a fresh grubstake ever’ now and again, just that way. I go into a saloon or somewhere, maybe an eatin’ joint where there’s newcomers, and I take out those garnets and study them. Soon or late, somebody wants to buy ‘em. “’Just pretty red stones,’ I says to ‘em. ‘Ain’t worth nothin’ except to my woman. She’ll set store by them.’”
“You know somethin’, boy? They try to talk me into sellin’ those red stones! And you know somethin’? I must be gettin’ weak, because almost ever’ time they convince me to sell. With three hundred dollars I can prospect for a year, livin’ high on the hog.
“Now, when I leave here, I’m goin’ north to that crater and find some more. It ain’t easy, for they ain’t so easy to find, but they are there.” Peter stayed for a week, teaching me how to make flapjacks, biscuits, and a few simple things, and I learned from him how to find gold, how to pan, what to look for. When he rode away, I did not know that it would be a long, long time before I saw him again.
Sixteen
In the passing of days, I rode often to the mountains or desert with Francisco, and often we accompanied his father and other Cahuillas who went to look at the acorn crop, for the oaks provided much of the living for the Cahuillas. It was important they be gathered at once or they would be eaten by squirrels or other animals and birds. Also, if the season was wet, they might rot on the ground before they could be gathered.
We rode along the watercourses to judge the mesquite and screw-bean crops, or to see when the tuna would be ripe on the cacti. The Indians knew each plant and what it offered in seeds, fruit, or pulp.
On one day we came upon a dim, dim trail leading off into the remote distance, but when I pointed it out, they rode on their way. “It is a trail of the Old Ones,” Francisco explained.
“You do not follow it?”
“It is their trail. We have our own.”
“It might lead to water.”
“It is their trail.”
Yet only some of the trails were avoided, and I did not know why. Perhaps the water that had once been there was gone now, or the groves from which the Old Ones gathered had disappeared. And who were the “Old Ones”? Each day I learned something new, and when we went to the desert and mountains, I watched which seeds were gathered and which plants were avoided. Having crossed the desert with my father, Mr. Farley, and the others, I had learned much, but I began to see that the area in which the Cahuilla lived, partly due to the range of altitude from below sea level to the top of the mountains at more than ten thousand feet, was richer in plants than those held by other Indians whose countries I had passed through.
Occasionally we met other Cahuillas, and once a party of Chemehuevi, and all knew me because of my father. He had discovered their starving time and had come to them with beef cattle. Flash floods had swept away some of the mesquite groves upon which they depended, and dampness left by the rains had ruined the acorn crop, but the beef my father brought saved their lives. The days passed into months, and the months into years. In the house, I puzzled over the books, reading slowly, gradually becoming accustomed to the strange words, learning their meanings by their associations. Once a strange Indian came suddenly to the door, warning me of riders, and I slipped away into the dunes to watch.
No doubt it was believed that I was dead, but my grandfather was an uneasy man, and perhaps rumors had come to him that somebody lived in this house. Once, when they would have entered the house, they were stopped by Cahuillas who rose like ghosts from the dunes, bows bent and rifles ready. The riders turned their horses and very wisely rode quietly away, expecting at any moment an arrow in the back and perhaps a pitched battle. The Cahuillas had followed them for several miles, making them aware their presence was not wanted. Yet I had not begun to understand the remoteness of the area in which I lived. The pass between the San Jacinto Mountains and Mount San Gorgonio was the best of all passes to the coast but was the last one found by white men. From a distance, approaching from the east, the high peaks loomed against the sky, seemingly an unlikely place for a pass.
Once they had arrived, the Californios rarely visited the desert. Some of them had come by sea, others came over the inland route from Mexico that crossed the river near the home of the Yuma Indians, then the desert and the Anza route over the mountains, which lay south of the pass where I lived. There simply was no reason for them to make the long, difficult journey from Los Angeles to the southern desert.
Nor was there anything here they wanted, nothing to incline them to make the attempt. The hot springs from which Agua Caliente took its name had long been used by Indians, but the Californios had access to hot springs that were closer, and the existence of these was scarcely known.
From time to time a book vanished from my shelf, but always another book took its place, and once during my first months alone a sack of pinon nuts was left on my table. Another time a loaf baked from some strange, nutty flour. Reading became easier, so I welcomed the strange books, but I was careful not to mention the exchanges of books to the Cahuillas, who might not have understood. Obviously, somebody was hiding out on the mountain who did not wish to be seen but who did not wish me any harm. If he did not wish to be seen, it was his affair.
When my father died, he left some six hundred dollars in gold corns. When the supplies dwindled away and Peter came no more, I took one of the coins from the iron box my father had hidden away to the small store to replenish the supplies. The storekeeper took my coin; then, glancing around to be sure he was unheard, he said, “I ain’t askin’ you, boy, but if you got more of these, you’d best not let folks know. Even the best people will talk, an’ there’s drifters come through who’d kill a man for less than this.”
He hefted the coin. “This here will buy you all you want and then some. You leave it with me, and when you are needful of something, just come an’ get it I’ll tell you when I need more.”
He seemed a kindly man, yet I trusted no one. His suggestion was logical, however, and I did as he proposed.
Often alone, sometimes with Francisco, I wandered the fringes of the desert and deep into the San Jacinto and Santa Rosa mountains. Often I climbed in the canyons, occasionally staying out for days at a time. One day when alone I heard a horseman coming. The door was open to catch the coolness of the evening, so I took down my father’s pistol and stood in the doorway, holding it down by my side, only my shoulder, arm, and one eye showing. All my life I had been familiar with guns. Long ago I’d been taught that all guns were to be considered as loaded and were to be handled with care, yet any rider might be an enemy. Yet when the rider came within sight, I almost dropped the gun.
It was Jacob Finney!
Tucking the pistol behind my belt, I stepped outside. As soon as he saw me he began to smile. “Well, now! You’ve growed some! Mind if I get down?” “Please do, and come inside.”
Leaving his horse ground-hitched, he came in, putting his hat on the floor beside him as he sat down. He noticed the pistol. “You expectin’ trouble?”
“Yes, sir. They killed my father.”
“Heard of it. From what was said, he taken one or two with him. Well, that’s too bad. He was a mighty fine man.”
“He would have taken more of them, but he tried to push me out of the way before he drew.”
“Like him.”
“How is Mr. Kelso?”
“Last I heard, he was workin’ a claim in the Mother Lode country. Farley’s got him a ranch down San Diego way.”