Later, when we were alone, Jacob looked over the fire at me. “What d’ you think, Johannes? Shall we take him on?”
“I think he’s a good man,” I said, “and we’ll need help.”
“My idea exactly.”
The next morning we rode through the sandhills to the store at the Springs. When we walked into the store the storekeeper knew me at once, yet now I could look him right in the eye. “Howdy, son! You’ve grown some inches.” “Yes, sir. Is my house still empty?”
He hesitated, busy with arranging some items on the counter. “Well, I reckon. Sometimes it is an’ sometimes it isn’t, although I got an idea it will be empty when you show up.”
“And Francisco? Is he about?”
“Comes an’ goes. If he wants to see you, he will. Indians are notional.” Jacob bought various items from the shelves-flour, salt, coffee, a ham, and a couple of slabs of bacon.
Walking to the door, I glanced toward the sandhills where the house lay. Did I detect a faint suspicion of smoke? My heart began to pound. I hesitated a moment; then, turning to Jacob, I spoke as casually as I could. “I think I’ll ride over while you’re picking up supplies. Don’t be in a hurry.” He glanced at me, and Monte McCalla looked over his shoulder at me. “Want me to come along?”
“Not this time. I’ll go alone.” To offset any comments, I added, “It was where my fatter was killed. I’d like to ride over there alone.” “Oh? Sure,” Monte said. “We’ll come along later.” Jacob was not fooled. He knew about the exchanging of books, and he was no doubt as curious as I. First I unlashed the sack of books and put them on the saddle before me; then I turned my horse and walked it slowly along the trail. When I turned into the winding lane through the dunes, I began to sing some lines learned from my father from an old sea song, “The Golden Vanity.” In the middle of the yard, I stepped down from the saddle and shouldered the sack of books. When I came to the step, I put the sack down and drew the drawstring, opening it. Taking out one book, I looked at it, turning a few pages, then put it down atop the sack, and lifting the latch, I opened the door. The room was as I remembered it. The floor was freshly swept, there were no cobwebs in the corners. The books were still neatly arranged on their shelves, yet the air was not stuffy as in a long-closed house. It was fresh, clean, with a faint smell of pines.
The beds were neatly made, only now there were sheets instead of simply the blankets I remembered. I opened the cupboards. They were well-stocked. Jacob need not have worried.
The coffeepot was on the coals in the fireplace and the coffee was hot. Taking down a cup, I filled it and sat down, my back to the door. I was home again. This was the desert, this was my desert. My parents, captured by their love for each other, had fled across it, had hidden within it, had survived upon it. And I, too, had survived. And now I was back to the desert, back to the soaring mountains behind my house, back to the loneliness that was never lonely, back to the stillness that held silent voices that spoke only to me. Slowly, taking my time, I drank my coffee, looking out the window at the dark waves of the rock, pushed high by monstrous tides within the earth itself, waves long stilled that had given birth to pines, and exposed raw edges to the wind, the rain, and the ice.
Enormous tides had built these mountains, but now they were being plucked at, teased, annoyed by wind and rain, by snow that fell and changed to ice, expanding to crack the rock and drop the fragments at the mountain’s base. This was as it had been and as it would ever be. Men would come and go, leaving their tiny scars for the wind to hide with sand, men who in their ego thought the world belonged to them, forgetting the dinosaurs who had ruled the earth for many more millions of years than man, and were gone now, leaving only bones. Some thought them dragons, some thought the bones had belonged to giants, some only shrugged and walked their way, seeking traces of gold and ignoring the mystery of the bones.
Finishing my coffee, I stood up, hearing the coming of horses and the voices of Jacob and Monte, talking. I stepped outside to pick up my sack of books and saw that the one I had left atop the sack was gone. Deliberately I kept my mind from wonder. If something or someone was here who so desired privacy, I would not invade it by so much as a thought. We shared something, whoever it was and I. We shared a community of books, the companionship of gathered thoughts, and for the time it was enough. It did not want more, so I would not ask for more.
Knowledge is awareness, and to it there are many paths, not all of them paved with logic. But sometimes one is guided through the maze by intuition. One is led by something felt on the wind, something seen in the stars, something that calls from the wastelands to the spirit. To receive the message, the mental pores must be open, and we white men in striving for our success, in seeking to build a new world from what lies about us, sometimes forget there are other ways, sometimes forget the Lonesome Gods of the far places, the gods who live on the empty sea, who dance with the dust devils and who wait quietly in the shadows under the cliffs where ancient men have marked their passing with hands. Once my father had told me of finding a cliff dwelling built high in the rocks, the bricks plastered with mortar from clay, and in the clay were the marks of fingers. Who left those prints in the clay? Who pressed his hand here and then stepped back to view it? Why did he leave his signature here? To show that he, too, had a hand? To tell others that a man had gone before, had passed some brief time in this place, and then gone on? My father had found human bones there. Did they belong to the possessor of the hand? Or were they the bones of another, following long after?
Why did he impress his hand upon the clay? Did he hope to send across the centuries a thought? A dream, perhaps? Or just to say that “I, too, was here? This was my place. This I built with my hands.” I knew the image of that hand would be with me forever, for we who pass do not own this land, we but use it, we hold it briefly in trust for those yet to come. We must not reap without seeding, we must not take from the earth without replacing.
My father told me of a Navajo once who found an arrowhead on the sand and took it up, but then he took from his pocket a small buckskin sack and from it a pinch of dust to replace what he had taken.
Jacob Finney rode into the yard with Monte McCalla, and they swung down, leading their horses around to the corral. I followed, and suddenly Monte stopped, holding up a hand.
There, in the dust, was a footprint, the print of a gigantic moccasin!
“Lord a’mighty!” Jacob said in an awed whisper. “Look at the size!” “Make two of mine,” Monte said, placing his boot beside it. “Hell, it would make three of mine!”
I looked, then looked away. That footprint, I told myself, was no accident. Like the hand in the clay, it was a signature. It was a hint, a warning, the opening of a story.
Never before had there been a footprint, never before an indication, only the missing books.
This was a statement. This was saying to me, “This manner of man am I. If you would go no further, you may leave the trail here.” Within me there was a pang, a sharp pain of sympathy. Where would such a one find a companion? Who could bridge the awe of size to share a meeting with this man, this being, this creature? Could I?
How lonely he must be! How cut off by strangeness, by difference!
Yes, I thought, the footprint had been deliberately left. Yet I, in my own way, had been a stranger, had been cut off from others of my age by the circumstances of my parents. Wherever I had gone, people had thought me strange, except in the desert, except, so far as I knew, the Indians. Yet no doubt the Indians thought all white men strange, for our ways were different from theirs and each people is apt to consider their own ways as “human nature,” not realizing they were merely a pattern imposed upon them by rearing, by education, by the behavior of those with whom they associated. “Got a nice place here,” Monte commented thoughtfully. “Somebody taken a deal of trouble. Clean, too.”