“Come,” Joseph said. “Let’s go with him.”
But Thomas hung back. “The man is crazy. Let him go on.”
“I want to go with him, Thomas,” Joseph said eagerly. “He isn’t crazy, not violently crazy. I want to go with him.”
Thomas had the animals’ fear of insanity “I’d rather not. If we do go with him, I’ll take my blankets off into the brush.”
“Come on, then, or we’ll lose him.” They clucked up their horses and started down the hill, through the underbrush and in and out among the straight red pillars of the trees. So fast had the old man gone that they were nearly down before they took sight of him. He waved his hand and beckoned to them. The trail left the crease where the redwoods grew and led over a bare ridge to a long narrow flat. The mountains sat with their feet in the sea, and the old man’s house was on the knees. All over the flat was tall sagebrush. A man riding the trail could not be seen above the scrub. The brush stopped a hundred feet from the cliff, and on the edge of the abyss was a pole cabin, hairy with stuffed moss and thatched with a great pile of grass. Beside the house there was a tight pigpen of poles, and a little shed, and a vegetable garden, and a patch of growing corn. The old man spread his arms possessively.
“Here is my house.” He looked at the lowering sun. “There’s over an hour yet. See, that hill is blue,” he said, pointing. “That’s a mountain of copper.” He started to unpack the mules, laying his boxes of supplies on the ground. Joseph slipped his saddle and hobbled his horse, and Thomas reluctantly did the same. The burros trotted away into the brush, and the horses hopped after them.
“We’ll find them by the bell,” said Joseph. “The horses will never leave the burros.”
The old man led them to the pigpen, where a dozen lean wild pigs eyed them suspiciously and tried to force their way through the farther fence. “I trap them?’ He smiled proudly. “I have my traps all over. Come, I’ll show you.” He walked to the low, thatched shed and, leaning down, pointed to twenty little cages, woven and plaited with willows. In the cages were grey rabbits and quail and thrushes and squirrels, sitting in the straw behind their wooden bars and peering out. “I catch all of them in my box-traps. I keep them until I need them.”
Thomas turned away. “I’m going for a walk,” he said sharply. “I’m going down the cliff to the ocean.”
The old man stared after him as he strode away. “Why does that man hate me?” he demanded of Joseph. “Why is he afraid of me?”
Joseph looked affectionately after Thomas. “He has his life as you have, and as I have. He doesn’t like things caged. He puts himself in the place of the beasts, and can feel how frightened they are. He doesn’t like fear. He catches it too easily.” Joseph smoothed down his beard. “Let him alone. He’ll come back after a while.”
The old man was sad. “I should have told him. I am gentle with the little creatures. I don’t let them be afraid. When I kill them, they never know. You shall see.” They strolled around the house, toward the cliff. Joseph pointed to three little crosses stuck in the ground close to the cliff’s edge.
“What are those?” he asked. “It’s a strange place for them.”
His companion faced him eagerly. “You like them. I can see you like them. We know each other. I know things you don’t know. You will learn them. I’ll tell you about the crosses. There was a storm. For a week the ocean down there was wild and grey. The wind blew in from the center of the sea. Then it was over. I looked down the cliff to the beach. Three little figures were there. I went down my own trail that I built with my hands. I found three sailors washed up on the beach. Two were dark men, and one was light. The light one wore a saint’s medallion on a string around his neck. Then I carried them up here. That was work. And I buried them on the cliff. I put the crosses there because of the medallion. You like the crosses, don’t you?” His bright black eyes watched Joseph’s face for any new expression.
And Joseph nodded. “Yes, I like the crosses. It was a good thing to do.”
“Then come to see the sunset place. You’ll like that, too.” He half ran around his house in his eagerness. A little platform was built on the cliff’s edge, with a wooden railing in front and a bench a few feet back. In front of the bench was a large stone slab, resting on four blocks of wood, and the smooth surface of the stone was scoured and clean. The two men stood at the railing and looked off at the sea, blue and calm, and so far below that the rollers sliding in seemed no larger than ripples, and the pounding of the surf on the beach sounded like soft beating on a wet drum-head. The old man pointed to the horizon, where a rim of black fog hung. “It’ll be a good one,” he cried. “It’ll be a red one in the fog. This is a good night for the pig.”
The sun was growing larger as it slipped down the sky. “You sit here every day?” Joseph asked. “You never miss?”
“I never miss except when the clouds cover. I am the last man to see it. Look at a map and you’ll see how that is. It is gone to everyone but me.” He cried, “I’m talking while I should be getting ready. Sit on the bench there and wait.”
He ran around the house. Joseph heard the angry squealing of the pig, and then the old man reappeared, carrying the struggling animal in his arms. He had trussed its legs all together. He laid it on the stone slab and stroked it with his fingers, until it ceased its struggling and settled down, grunting contentedly.
“You see,” the old man said, “it must not cry. It doesn’t know. The time is nearly here, now.” He took a thick short-bladed knife from his pocket and tried its edge on his palm, and then his left hand stroked the pig’s side and he turned to face the sun. It was rushing downward toward the far-off rim of fog, and it seemed to roll in a sac of lymph. “I was just in time,” the old man said. “I like to be a little early.”
“What is this,” Joseph demanded. “What are you doing with the pig?”
The old man put his finger to his lips. “Hush! I’ll tell you later. Hush now.”
“Is it a sacrifice? Are you sacrificing the pig?” Joseph asked. “Do you kill a pig every night?”
“Oh no. I have no use for it. Every night I kill some little thing, a bird, a rabbit or a squirrel. Yes, every night some creature. Now, it’s nearly time.” The sun’s edge touched the fog. The sun changed its shape; it was an arrowhead, an hour glass, a top. The sea turned red, and the wave-tops became long blades of crimson light. The old man turned quickly to the table. “Now!” he said, and cut the pig’s throat. The red light bathed the mountains and the house. “Don’t cry, little brother.” He held down the struggling body. “Don’t cry. If I have done it right, you will be dead when the sun is dead.” The struggling grew weaker. The sun was a flat cap of red light on the fog wall, and then it disappeared, and the pig was dead.
Joseph had been sitting tensely on his bench, watching the sacrifice. “What has this man found?” he thought. “Out of his experience he has picked out the thing that makes him happy.” He saw the old man’s joyful eyes, saw how in the moment of the death he became straight and dignified and large. “This man has discovered a secret,” Joseph said to himself. “He must tell me if he can.”
His companion sat on the bench beside him now, and looked out to the edge of the sea, where the sun had gone. And the sea was dark and the wind was whipping it to white caps. “Why do you do this?” Joseph asked quietly.
The old man jerked his head around. ‘Why?” he asked excitedly. And then he grew more calm. “No, you aren’t trying to trap me. Your brother thinks I’m crazy. I know. That s why he went to walk. But you don’t think that. You’re too wise to think that.” He looked out on the darkening sea again. “You really want to know why I watch the sun—why I kill some little creature as it disappears.” He paused and ran his lean fingers through his hair. “I don’t know,” he said quietly. “I have made up reasons, but they aren’t true. I have said to myself, ‘The sun is life. I give life to life’—‘I make a symbol of the sun’s death.’ When I made these reasons I knew they weren’t true.” He looked around for corroboration.