No individual completely acquires the experience of another, but if even a small part may be carried over to the next generation, much time can be saved. In technical ways, methods of working and such, knowledge has been passed on, but too few have learned from experience. I remembered my father once saying that perhaps in the future some device might be constructed into which all historical knowledge could be fed, particularly all knowledge of government, of diplomacy, of statecraft, and then this device might tell us what mistakes have been continually made and what situations to avoid.
Men have passed on the knowledge of how to mix cement, lay brick, splice a line, navigate a ship, make steel, and dozens of other crafts, yet in politics, statecraft, and social relationships we continue to repeat old mistakes. Wandering outside, I gazed up at the looming mountains, at the distant haunts of Tahquitz. Up there, somewhere, was Tahquitz. Both the fabled creature of whom the Cahuilla spoke and the creature who sometimes inhabited this house where now we lived. When the person or creature or whatever it was wished to be known, he or it would make itself known. Until then its privacy would be respected. Seven feet tall? It seemed impossible. Yet I myself was almost six feet now, and still growing. Who could say? I had never seen a man so large, although occasionally stories were heard of huge men.
Walking around to where the track was, I studied it with care. I must remember, for sometime it might be important. Then with my boot I brushed out the track. I could not escape the feeling that it had been deliberately left, for there had been no others. Only that one, as if it were a hint, a warning, or even a signature, Our waiting was not in idleness. Jacob taught me how to plait a rope, and Monte already knew, although he favored a hair rope, as many from Texas did. We would need a number of them, for some would surely be broken, no matter how well done. Listening to Jacob and Monte talk, I learned much about wild horses and their capture.
That night when Monte returned from the store he said, “We got company.
Neighbors, I mean.”
We looked at him, waiting. “Paulino Weaver, he’s moved in over yonder. Been here for some time.”
“Mountain man,” Jacob said. “I mind meeting him some while back. He’s a good man.”
“A man named Sexton with him. They’ve made friends with old Juan Antonio.
They’re trading, cutting timber and what-all.” Monte looked around at me.
“Paulino knew your pa back when your pa was on the dodge from the old don.” They were good men, yet in a mild way I resented them. I was jealous of my Indians, jealous of my canyons and desert, yet even as I thought that, I was amused by it. People would come, and my desert would not remain empty, yet that thought made me irritable, and I got up and went outside. The stars were out, and the wind off the mountain was cool.
If more men came, crowding the desert, what would happen to the Lonesome Gods? Where would the spirits of the ancient ones go? Would they fade into the old trees? Into the rocks? Or, being worshiped no longer, would they fade gradually away? When I went back inside, I said, “It’s bound to be, I suppose, but I don’t like the country getting crowded up. It seems to me we’re losing something.” Jacob nodded. “I know how you feel. I’m gettin’ so if I see another rider on the trail, I’m jealous, but we can’t be that way. It’s here for all of us.” “There’s something out there, Jacob. Something I’ve got to find before it is too late. There’s something out there for me.”
He said nothing for a while, and then he said, “Your pa and ma found something for them. They were on the run, but no matter. Your pa told me. They found happiness out there, happiness with each other. Maybe they didn’t have it long, but they had it good. Don’t you ever forget that.” Thinking of them led me to think of Meghan. Where was she now? Did she ever think of me? I smiled into the darkness beyond the door, thinking how foolish that was. Why should she think of me? I was just a boy who had sat close to her in school, a boy too shy to talk, too awed by her presence to do anything but grow red and embarrassed if she so much as looked at me, which she rarely did. How did my father meet my mother? Had he been shy, too? I doubted it. He seemed the essence of confidence, of assurance. Months had gone by with Meghan, and I had said nothing, yet … there had been communication of a sort. We read better than others in the class, and Thomas Fraser had often had us read aloud, first one, and then the other. It was not much, I realized. Restless because Francisco had not appeared, I saddled my horse the next morning and rode down to the store. As I walked up the steps, a man came from the store. It was Fletcher.
His smile was not pleasant, and there was a kind of a taunting in his expression that irritated me. “Been keepin’ an eye out for you,” he said, “wonderin’ when you’d head for the desert.”
“Does it concern you?”
His smile was there, but the amusement was gone from it. “Maybe,” he said. “Maybe it does. Your pa, now, he spent a lot of time in the desert. Him and those Injun friends of his. I been wonderin’ why, and there’s some who figured that was where he got his money.”
“Money?” I was puzzled. “What money?”
“Him an’ your ma. They lived it up back east there, an’ your pa had money to pay your way west. Now, you take what your pa paid for you an’ him on the wagon. That’s a good year’s income for many a well-off man these days. “Where’d your pa come by that kind of money? I figure he had it when he went east. I figure he got it out of that desert.”
I simply stared at him. My father had had a difficult time during those years back east, barely having enough to keep us alive at times. There were periods when he had, briefly, done quite well, and then at the end the windfall from the races the horses had won, and the generosity of his employer. “You are mistaken, sir,” I said. “My father had nothing when he went east beyond a little he had saved from cattle sales and furs.” Fletcher took a cigar from his pocket and bit off the end. “Maybe, an’ maybe not. Why’d he stop here instead of ridin’ right into Los Angeles with the rest of us?” He waved a hand. “Why stop in this godforsaken spot? I say he had reason. I say he’d found gold, or those Injuns showed him where it was. “I say your Miss Nesselrode knows about that gold. Why else has she been keepin’ you? Why are you goin’ into the desert with that there Finney?” He put the cigar in his mouth and struck a match on his pants, bringing up his knee to draw the material tight over his thigh. “You go ahead. I’ll foller. Maybe there’s enough for all of us.”
“Fletcher,” I said, “you’re a fool.”
For a moment I thought he would strike me, and I said, “Don’t try it, Fletcher.” Something in the way I said it seemed to warn him, for he suddenly looked at me again. “Hell, you’re a man now. Least you’ve growed up. Now I can kill you.” What happened within me, I do not know, but I was suddenly lighthearted. I smiled at him. “Whenever you’re ready, Fletcher. Whenever you’re ready!”
Thirty-one
What I thought of as the store was really nothing of the kind. It was merely a sort of dwelling where the owner kept a few supplies which he sold to the Cahuillas or to passersby. Under the counter he kept a jug from which he dispensed occasional drinks.
When Fletcher walked away, I turned to see him go. Already I had learned that one does not become careless around such men. There was murder in the man; I accepted the realization and was careful.
Yet when I turned, I was surprised. Francisco was there. For a moment we looked at each other, and then I drew a quick round face in the dirt. He took the twig from my hand and added the smile. Then we looked at each other, and slowly he held out his hand.
His was not a muscular handshake. For that matter, few Indians whom I had known more than touched palms. The strong handshake that many think is an indication of character is not so at all. Many very strong men merely clasp one’s hand. Theirs are not limp handshakes, nor the firm grip one hears of in fiction. We walked over and stood in the shade of some mesquite. “We’re going up-country,” I said, “to catch wild horses.”