“As far as that goes, look at our own towns. What would be left after even two hundred years if nobody cared for them? A foundation or two covered with sand, that would be all.
“Iron rusts away. Hell, you let two, three hundred years pass and nobody would ever know we’d even been here. That goes for our cities back east, too. You just notice any old abandoned building and see how fast it falls apart! “I’ve heard stories about a city that used to be out in the desert, in the Mohave. It was destroyed by an earthquake and some great rains that followed it. Some of the Injuns or whoever they were took refuge in the Tehachapi Mountains, lived around there for years until the last of them died off. “You ever been in the Tehachapis or up Caliente Creek? Ever wonder why there’s no Injuns there? Well, I’ve thought about it, but I’ve got no answers.” Kelso ate in silence, then asked for more coffee. Tired as I was, I was wide-awake.
“Maybe I’ve spent too much time in the desert and mountains. You get out there alone, and pretty soon you get to wondering. You hear things, little things, you think you see things sometimes, and maybe you do. “Some of the Injuns have stories about what they call the Thunder-Bird, some great bird or flying thing that makes a noise like thunder. There was a Mexican who said something like that used to land in a lake, Lake Elizabeth, they called it. Used to kill his sheep sometimes. Then later there was a story about two cowboys who killed a flying reptile or something down in the desert in Arizona.” “You been listening to too many stories, Kel. I think it’s time you came in out of the hills and settled down with folks.”
“Maybe … Again, it may be that I’ve been closer to some of those Injuns. After all, they’ve been here a long time, Jacob.”
When morning came I went outside and looked for Mr. Kelso, but he was gone into the town.
I kept thinking about what he had said last night. Something or somebody had followed me in the desert. There were trails that seemed to lead nowhere. A city in the desert that had vanished, and the Thunder-Bird… the House of the Ravens … and my own house of Tahquitz.
I wished Francisco was here.
I had been in Los Angeles a long time when one day, our girl Rosa told me she had seen someone lurking under the willows near the house. When I entered the kitchen that morning, Rosa was making tortillas. She went to the door and pointed. “It was over there!” she said. “He was standing back under the leaves. I could not see him very well.” Walking over to the willows, I prowled around among them, looking for tracks.
Suddenly I found them, and not only tracks but cigarette butts, many of them. Some were old, some were new. Some were there from before the last shower; some were fresh. Somebody was watching our house. Searching, I found where the tracks entered the willows to come to the place of watching. I followed them back to a narrow lane that led along behind some farm yards to a street. Whoever was watching us had come up that lane from the street several times, perhaps many times, and he had watched our house while hidden in the willows. Had he seen Aunt Elena?
Who was it, and why was he watching our house? Was he watching me? Or Miss Nesselrode?
When school was over that day I went to the book shop, and when there were no customers, I told Jacob, who was there, and Miss Nesselrode about my discovery. “Look into this, will you, Jacob?” she asked.
“The boy’s good, ma’am. I’ll take a look, but I doubt I’ll find anything he didn’t.”
“I believe,” she added, “it is time you took that trip we spoke of once to see the Indians.” She stood up suddenly. “Tomorrow morning, Jacob. You and Johannes start tomorrow morning.”
“We’ll be gone quite a while, ma’am. Don’t you think—“
“Mr. Kelso will be here. I want Johannes out of here, and be sure nobody sees you leave. Change horses as often as you wish, but get away from this area very quickly.”
She turned to me. “You wished to take some books? Pick five or six and list the titles, if you will. Leave the list on my desk.” Jacob took up his hat. “All right, ma’am, just so you will be in good hands.” “I can handle it.” Miss Nesselrode smiled a little. “I believe you will remember that when need be I do not hesitate to shoot.”
Jacob smiled. “No, ma’am, you surely don’t.” He turned his hat in his hands. “Do you want us to check out that wild-horse hunt while we’re gone? Might be a good idea to come back by Cajon Pass. Give us a chance to ride up through the edge of the mountains and desert, maybe get a line on where we’d best look.” “All right.”
She looked over at me. “Pack what you need, Johannes, and only what you need. I shall miss you very much, but you will have a great adventure, I am sure.” “Yes, ma’am. Will you see Aunt Elena, ma’am?”
Miss Nesselrode considered that, her fingertips resting on the table. “I shall try. She is a very interesting woman, your Aunt Elena.” We rode away before the sun was up, when the last stars lingered in the sky, reluctant to yield their light to the sun. We rode rapidly, and as before, we held to the back roads and trails.
As we rode, Jacob pointed out places he knew or had heard of. We covered a lot of ground, moving at a shambling trot except where we walked up the steeper hills. Wherever possible, we kept to routes that were parallel to the trail, wishing to be seen by no one.
“How you gettin’ along in that school?” Jacob asked suddenly. “Had any more trouble with that Huber boy?”
“No, sir. It is a good school. Mr. Fraser is a good teacher, the best I ever had.”
“Don’t see how he makes it pay with no more students than he has, but if he can hold on, there will be more.”
“There are six now,” I said.
“I saw Cap’n Laurel’s daughter there, didn’t I? The pretty one with the gold hair?”
“Red-gold,” I corrected. “Yes, she sits beside me.” “Oh? No wonder you had trouble with that Huber boy.” He glanced at me with sly amusement. “Wait until you meet her pa. Ol’ Cap’n Laurel-now, there’s a character!”
There was nothing I could say, although I had heard stories, and Meghan had said he had asked about me.
“Laurel’s a canny man. In some ways an uncanny one. Some of his crew were ashore here a time or two, and it seems the old man is either mighty knowing or he’s tuned into something. They say he goes places where no cargo could be expected and there is always cargo for him.
“He knows the coast of China and Japan like he owned it. Siberia, too. Sometimes he sails up the rivers, they say. Always something doing with him. ‘Uncanny’ is the word.
“You know these fellows who go around tuning pianos? They have an ear for the sound, the exact sound? Well, Laurel seems to be that way. He’s been known to change course of a sudden, no warning, just a sudden change of course that will take him out of trouble or where there’s cargo.” “You mentioned Japan. I didn’t think they allowed foreign ships to come to their ports.”
“They don’t. Only Laurel, he knows somebody or something and he goes. If you get to know him, I’d surely like to hear what you think. So would Miss Nesselrode.” Riding in silence as we usually did gave me time to think, and there was so much to think about. So many puzzling things had come up. My mother had said my father had premonitions. Was that what Captain Laurel had? Or were they what is called hunches? Or was it merely knowledge?
My father had talked to me of his voyages and of my grandfather’s, and I knew that sometimes a sea captain kept certain ports of call or anchorages to himself, knowing that at intervals valuable cargo might be picked up there. “I always listened carefully when your father talked about the sea,” Jacob said. “Your father would tell me we will never know how much of the world was explored. The sea was often difficult to cross, but it was never impossible, and it has been crossed again and again by craft of every size and material. The Phoenicians, who were among the greatest of the early navigators, never allowed anyone to know where they went, and only a few stories have come down to us. “They knew, as did the Carthaginians who developed from a Phoenician colony, sources of raw materials they divulged to no one. For many years they permitted no other ships in the western Mediterranean, or to sail through the straits into the Atlantic. Then a Greek captain named Coleus sometime around 600 b.c. managed to slip by them and went to Tartessus, a port near Gades, which we call Cadiz. He returned with a ship loaded with silver, which left him a rich, rich man. “Nobody will ever know what voyages were made in the long ago. Hanno, a Phoenician, is reported to have sailed around Africa on orders from Necho, a pharaoh of Egypt. Tudoxus was on a ship off the mouth of the Red Sea in the Indian Ocean when some wreckage was seen that included the figurehead of a ship he had last seen in Gades, and that was over one hundred years before Christ. “You’ll like Cap’n Laurel, I think, and he will like you. Get him to tallkin’ about the sea, if you can. He’s made friends with some priests in Japan an’ China and they’ve told him things.”