Five
My father was asleep when I climbed down from the lookout. The few shadows had thinned and it was very hot. Mrs. Weber sat in the wagon’s partial shade, occasionally fanning herself with her hat.
Doug Farley looked up at me from where he sat near the rock wall. “How’s things up yonder?”
“We didn’t see anything.”
“This hour, it isn’t likely, but it doesn’t mean they aren’t out there.”
“No, sir.”
“You pay attention to Jacob, boy. He’s right canny. He’s got an instinct for places where there’ll be trouble.”
Fraser’s thin knees were drawn up before him, his back against a rock. His notebook was held against his knees and he was scribbling in it-I wondered about what. From time to time he looked up, as if thinking. A lizard, its tiny sides pumping for air, seemed to be watching me. In the far-off distance a red-brown ridge edged itself against the sky, but I was tired and looked for a place to lie down. All the good places were taken. I crawled into the wagon, although it was hot under the canvas. Alone in the wagon, I shivered, for I was very much afraid. I wanted to cry, but Mrs. Weber would hear me and I would be shamed before Mr. Farley and Mr. Finney. Huddled in a tight ball, I tried to forget the weird yells of the Indians and the shooting. I wished my mother were with me, and then I did not, for she would be afraid too. I thought of my poor father, so sick and hurt, lying under the wagon.
Then I heard a faint stirring and my eyes opened and I knew I had slept. It was all dark and still inside the wagon, and when I looked out, it was dark outside, too.
Horses were being moved around, and somebody picked up the wagon tongue. Miss Nesselrode climbed into the wagon, and when I moved almost under her feet, she gasped. “It is me,” I said.
“Oh? Johannes, you startled me. I had no idea anybody was in the wagon. Are you all right?”
“Yes, ma’am. I was asleep.”
“I envy you. I tried to go to sleep, but it was too hot. Mr. Farley is hitching the team now. We’re going to go on.”
Mrs. Weber got into the wagon, and then one by one the others. Fraser helped my father when he climbed in. He sat down near me. “Are you all right, son? I’m afraid I haven’t been much comfort.”
“It’s all right.”
Jacob Finney sat beside Farley on the driver’s seat. We moved out, Mr. Kelso riding a little way before us.
My father moved to the back of the wagon, where he could watch our trail.
Fletcher watched and said, “You ain’t in much shape for a fight.”
My father’s reply was cool. “I hope I shall always do my share.”
“You hintin’ I didn’t?”
“I never hint, my friend. I say what I mean. I was much too busy to observe what you were doing or were not doing. I would assume you did what you could.” He paused briefly. “After all, we all wish to live.” After a bit: “You’re pretty handy with that gun, I’ll have to admit,” Fletcher said grudgingly.
“The use of weapons is sometimes a necessity,” my father said, and there was silence inside the wagon. We rumbled along, grating over gravel, bumping over rocks.
“Is it far to the other side?” I asked.
“It will take us all night to reach the pass,” my father said. “The horses will have a hard time of it, and we may have to get out and walk.” The night was cold. My father told me this was the way of deserts, for there is nothing to hold the warmth, and the heat passes off quickly. Yet we did better than my father supposed, for by daylight we had come out upon a vast plain, a desert beyond which were distant blue mountains. It was a rocky desert, and there were plants of a strange land, two or even three times the height of a man, yet with strange limbs, twisted oddly. They were like no trees I had seen before, having, instead of leaves, sharply pointed blades. “They are called Joshua trees,” my father explained. Then he pointed. “There! A day’s travel away in those mountains, there is a spring. We shall have no water until we reach there, unless there is some in Piute Wash, which is almost halfway. Usually there is no water there.”
Doug Farley squinted his eyes at the distance. “Twelve? Maybe fourteen miles?”
“About that.”
“Well, the horses are in good shape.” He glanced back. “They don’t seem to have followed us.”
“I wouldn’t trust them,” Kelso replied. “Maybe we made it so tough they won’t want to try it again, but that’s not like the Mohaves.” “We could make another mile, maybe two.” Farley looked around at us. “Is everybody game?”
“Let’s go,” Fletcher said. “It’ll be as hot here as there.” Westward and south we walked, beside or behind the wagon, letting the horses have less weight to pull. My father, weak though I knew he was, walked beside me. “We must take care,” he said, “when we approach the spring.” “There will be Indians?”
“Perhaps. All who travel in the desert must have water. The Indians know this.
They also know where the water is. They might be there before us, waiting.” We had fallen behind a little, and now he stopped. “Johannes, when I leave this life, I shall have almost nothing to leave you, except, in these last months, some little wisdom. Listen well. It is all I have.” We started on again, and he said, “Much of what I say may be nonsense, but a few things I have learned, and the most important is that he who ceases to learn is already a half-dead man. And do not be like an oyster who rests on the sea bottom waiting for the good things to come by. Search for them, find them. This desert is a book of many pages, and just when you believe you know all there is to know, it will surprise you with the unexpected. Nor was it always desert. You will see where ancient rivers have run, you will find where villages were, and where they are no longer.
“If you dig down a few inches, you will find a layer of black soil that is decayed vegetation. Once there was grass here, and there were trees. Oaks, I would presume. Along the shores of streams or lakes where men once lived, I have found arrowheads, flint knives, and scrapers for cleaning the fur from hides. “But remember that men must go where water is, so despite all the vastness of the desert, it is really a very small place.”
“Papa? I have heard they could not find you and Mama.” “They could not. Or perhaps their Indians did not try hard enough, for they knew me as a friend. But it was more than that, Johannes. There are places in the desert called tanks, where water collects in natural rock basins. Sometimes it is a very large amount of water, sometimes only a little. “There are seeps where in a week or more a few quarts of water may collect. I would go to one of these places, drink a little, let my horse have what was left, and I would go on, leaving nothing for those who followed. The desert Indians who were guides for those who pursued me knew those places too. They knew I would be gone and there would be no water, and the pursuing parties were six, eight, often twenty men. Some of them would not listen to the Indians, and they died out there for their foolishness.”
We moved on into the vast desert, plodding slowly, wearily along behind the wagon and its tired horses. Finally we stopped. We had come to Piute Wash. Tired as we were, and as were the horses, Farley took them to the far side. “When you come to a stream or dry wash,” he commented as he was removing the harness, “always cross to the far side. By morning it may be runnin’ bank-full.” My father told me to listen to such things, but I did not need to be told, for it was the way boys learned, and there was much I wished to know. Miss Nesselrode sat near me when we were eating, and she asked me if I had been to school. “I am six,” I said.
“You seem older.” She looked at me thoughtfully. “Have you known many children?”
“No, ma’am. We have moved very often.”
“Can you read?”
“Yes, ma’am, and write, too. Mama and Papa taught me. And we read a lot together. Mama or Papa would read to each other or to me. I like to be read to, and sometimes we would look for places on the map that we had been reading about.”