Often I saw him near the plaza, a portly, kindly man with rather heavy features, whose genial manner only partly concealed a native shrewdness and skill in handling people and situations.
Suddenly, things were happening. On the seventh of August 1846, Commodore R. F. Stockton, with a small flotilla of ships, anchored at San Pedro, and landing four hundred men and some small artillery, marched swiftly and entered Los Angeles. Governor Pico and General Castro evaded capture and escaped to Sonora. Later, after Fremont and Stockton had left for San Francisco, the Californios retook the city from Lieutenant Gillespie.
People hurried along the streets or gathered in knots, talking. Miss Nesselrode was irritated. “It need not have happened! Had they been tactful…” They had not been. Least of all, Lieutenant Gillespie, and he had suffered for it.
Much was happening of which I knew nothing at all. Jacob Finney had ridden in and was staying around our house, in the event of trouble. “Your grandpa’s gone back to the rancho,” he told me. “Rode out last night. You won’t need to worry about him for a few days.”
“Have you seen Mr. Fletcher?”
Finney glanced at me. “He’s around. You seen him?”
“He came by the bookstore. I don’t like him.”
“Neither do I.” He glanced at me again. “Fletcher? Well, now.” Jacob was plaiting a rawhide riata as he talked. “There’s a bad one. Well have trouble with him one day. I feel it in my bones.”
“He threatened me.” Then I explained what had happened in the store, and Finney listened without comment until the end “Say, boy? You’re growin’! Hadn’t realized. If he comes back in, you don’t know anything, haven’t heard anything, and if he wants more, you tell him to see me.”
He put down the rawhide and went to the window, peering out. “Kelso should be in tonight.”
Something was worrying him. He returned to his plaiting, then got up and walked to the back of the house to check the corrals. When he came back, he asked, “Have you still got your rifle and pistol?”
“I have.”
“Keep ‘em handy. I ain’t worried about the Califomios or the Americans. I mean, I’m not worried about the soldiers. It’s that riffraff down in Sonora Town. If they think nobody is around to keep ‘em in line, they might start looting. Mostly I worry about the Chinese. They’re good folks, but some of them have money. Quite a lot of money.”
Jacob Finney spread a bed near the front door and put his pistol alongside his bed.
It was almost midnight when I awakened to hear a scratching at the door. Then a low mumble of voices and a new, familiar one. It was Kelso. “Jacob! It is good to see you, man! How has it been with you?”
“I’m working. You can see that. You would do well to join us.” “Well … join you for what? I am too old to wander around, Jacob. These last months … I’ve been like a leaf in the wind. I believe I was happiest when we were coming west. We were alive, Jacob. There was need for us then, and Farley … he was a fine man, Jacob, and Zachary Verne. I can’t get him out of my mind.
There was something about him-“
“Of course. We all felt it, I think. He was special.” “But why? I’ve met a lot of men, but none like him. I’ve thought about him a lot, coming west when he knew he was going to die, thinking only of his son, even willing to be killed if he could find a home for him.” “He was special. So is the boy.”
“Is he here? I ran into Peg-Leg Smith up north, and he was asking about the boy.
Said he’d found him in the desert. He’d come upon his tracks and followed them.”
“The old devil brought him in. Picked the kid up.”
“He told me. He told me something else, too. Somebody was following him.”
“Peg-Leg?”
“No, the boy. Somebody was following the boy.”
Following me? No … I had looked back, again and again. I had looked back to be sure I was holding my direction. There had been nobody out there. Yet, there were heat waves and it was hard to see very far. “What are you talkin’ about, Kelso?”
“There’s something about that boy. Remember the Indian he saw at Indian Wells?
The old man with the turquoise? He told his pa about it?”
“So?”
“I was back there, happened to mention it. Folks there said the boy was dreaming, there were no Indians at the Wells that night, and there hadn’t been any for days. There was something going on up in the Santa Rosas, up above Deep Canyon somewhere.”
“What are you saying?”
“Just telling you, Jacob. You an’ me, we both know there’s things out in that desert … things happen out there. Look, you’ve been around Injuns enough. There’s things they know that we don’t. About the desert, I mean, and the mountains.”
“Maybe. I’ve heard stories … Hell, Kelso, a man can’t believe half what he hears! Who knows what an Indian is thinking but another Indian? Who knows what they believe? I’ve known men who claimed they knew Indians … they were talking through their hats. Nobody does.”
Jacob paused. “Kelso? You said Peg-Leg said somebody was following Johannes? Who was it?”
“Peg saw the tracks. Moccasin tracks of somebody with a long stride… mighty long, according to Peg.”
“Who was it?”
“Maybe you should ask what it was. I don’t know anything but what Peg told me.”
Kelso paused. “Thing was, he didn’t see anybody, only the tracks.” There was silence in the room, and I lay wide-awake, straining my ears for every word. What were they talking about? What did they mean? “Look at it this way, Jacob. You’ve heard the stories about how Verne and his woman lived in the desert, how the old man tried to find them, had dozens of men out hunting, rewards offered … everything. Did they find them? No. And why not?”
“Hell, Verne knew the desert! He’d roamed out there a lot, and the Indians were friendly.”
“I know. Maybe that’s all it was, and maybe I’m having pipe dreams.” Kelso paused. “Jacob? Is there any grub around? Maybe I’m just hungry. Maybe I just can’t think straight anymore.”
“Sit tight. Ill roust something up from the kitchen. There’d be some cold frijoles and some tortillas.”
“I’d eat a cold horse collar right now. Or even an old saddle blanket.” There was a faint rattle of dishes, then a sound of something being put on the table. “What are you suggesting, Kelso? What’s biting you?” “Verne took food to those Injuns when they were starving, so they’d want to help him. I run into a Mex up to Santa Barbara and he told me they saw no Injuns. Saw no tracks except the two of them they chased. Only sometimes dust storms wiped ‘em out.
“The more I think about it, I’ve been wondering. Maybe Verne was in touch with something out there? Maybe the boy was? Who knows about the desert? Remember the boy being interested in old trails? And why didn’t the Mohaves follow us?” “They’d had enough, that’s all. We shot too straight.” “Maybe … or maybe they were gettin’ into country where their medicine was weak. Maybe they were scared to follow.” Kelso paused again. “You been in the desert, Jacob. Did you ever hear of the Old Ones?”
Twenty-seven
There was a long silence in the room, and my ears strained to hear what would be said. The Old Ones? Who were they? And where had I heard the expression before? “Oh, sure! Stories told over a campfire. Spooky stuff, like ghosts an’ ha’nts an’ such. We’ve all heard them.”
“There’s trails out yonder that seem just to wander off an’ go nowhere.
Sometimes they just fade out into nothing, lose themselves in the heat waves. Sometimes they go into the mountains.” He paused. “Ever hear of the House of the Ravens?”
“One time … down Yuma way, isn’t it?”
“West of Yuma, up in some rocky hills down there. These Injuns around now, they don’t know from nothing about it, but they know it’s there, like that Tehachapi country.
“Verne was around out there a lot, and those Injuns accepted him as one of their own, as much as they will accept any white man. If anybody knew anything, he would.
“I’ve wondered some about those trails out yonder. The ones that seem to just disappear? I’ve been wondering what would happen if a body just kept riding. I mean, why do those trails go somewhere and then suddenly stop?” “You want my advice, Kelso? Stay away from them. There are some things no man should pry into. Leave ‘em to the Injuns, or the Old Ones, whoever.” “One thing I’m sure of. There were people here before the Injuns the Spanish found, and there were quite a lot of them. If they built from adobe, nothing would be left. You know how quick it melts away if it isn’t plastered or roofed over.