JEREMY LOCCARD
The First Four Chapters of a Western Horror Novel
CHAPTER I
At the top of the rise Duro Weaver pulled in his team to let them catch their wind…He pointed with his whip. “She lies right yonder, young feller, and I envy you none at all.”
The valley was several miles wide at that point, and the tiny huddle of buildings seemed lost in the vast expanse. On their left the valley narrowed into the pass, and beyond the pass lay the Mojave Desert, stretching into infinite distance.
“Twenty Mile Station they call it,” Weaver said, “and it’s a good twenty mile from the last stage stop. In any direction but along the trail it’s more’n a hundred mile to anywhere else at all.”
The mountains loomed dark and ominous in the late evening shadows. “Them mountains,” commented Weaver, “are better left alone. There’s deer in them, and bear, too. Almighty big ones…grizzlies. But that there ain’t the reason. The Injuns tell queer stories…mighty queer. You just fight shy of them.”
Jeremy Loccard shrugged his heavy shoulders. “I’ve spent most of my life at sea, and we’re used to strange stories.”
“Mebbe,” Weaver spat. He was skeptical of tales from other worlds. He preferred his own. “Mebbe so. But don’t you get to thinkin’ the West is all Injuns and fellers huntin’ gold. This here’s a strange, wild country, with queer tales aplenty.
“You ever hear tell of the Frog People? Injuns got their tales about them, and they’re said to live yonder in the mountains. Or the Little People? If you figure all the ha’nts is in old castles you got another think a-comin’.
“You just walk them mountains alone. Or down in the desert yonder, an’ you’ll feel them. You’ll feel watched. Yes, sir. You surely will. You won’t see nothin’ but you’ll know they’re there.
“Somewhere around here there’s a canyon full of writin’ on the rocks…only this here is dif’rent writin’. I mean real dif’rent. No Injun will even look at it.
“A few years back some fellers I knew went off into that desert. Everybody was findin’ gold an’ these fellers decide to have a try at it theirselves. They’d heard tell of that canyon and decided there must be gold there, so they set out huntin’.
“Those who claimed to know said it was deep an’ narrow and couldn’t be seen until you stood right on the rim. Mebbe some folks couldn’t see it at all.
“One night they figured they was close, so they went into camp. Come daylight they’d scout around. Johnny Haskins…an’ I knowed him well…he was huntin’ firewood when he come on a trail. The others said it could wait until daylight, but it still lacked a mite of bein’ dark an’ Johnny was impatient. He taken off into the desert.
“Mornin’ come an’ no Johnny. They come on his tracks, but the trail petered out in the desert yonder. Johnny was gone.
“They told the story their ownselves. I never did see Johnny after, but I heard tell of him.
“He come back, all right. On the mornin’ of the fourth day they woke up to see Johnny settin’ by the fire. They seen him plain, although his back was to them. They knowed it was Johnny, all right, because he had a funny white scar right back of his ear.
“They spoke to him and he turned around. Now this here is their story, not mine, but they do say Johnny turned into an old, old man. Three days had passed for them, a lifetime for Johnny.
“He wouldn’t tell them nothing, but he was almighty anxious to get shut of the desert, and believe me, once he got back he never went into the desert again. Wouldn’t go for love or money.
“Of a night they say he wandered in his dreams, and they’d hear him cry out…scared-like. Sometimes he’d whimper like he was in mortal fear.
“Sometimes in his sleep he raved about great buildin’s…castles, like. On’y thing we could get clear was that he’d been a prisoner somewhere, held a long time until he broke loose and got away into the desert. He found that ol’ trail again. He took off down that trail runnin’ until he ran smack into somethin’. He fell, an’ when he got up he seen the fire and come on in. Three days for them, sixty years for him. You figure it out.”
Weaver spoke to his team and the horses leaned into the harness, starting the stage once more. “There’s canyons about here where no man ever walked, and there’s valleys you can find sometimes that are greener than any desert should be, but no Injun lives there, where you’d expect them to be…won’t go near ’em.”
He paused, spat, and then said, more quietly, “Was I you I’d not git off the stage. That there Twenty Mile Station…there’s been two men vanish from there. Just disappeared complete.
“An’ don’t you get to thinkin’ all the spooky things happen of a night. There’s things happen by day….
“Why, there’s a deep canyon back yonder, cuts off into the mountains. Up that canyon maybe ten, twelve mile there’s a place. You cross the creek to go into it…narrow, winding canyon between low hills but with mountains all around…digger pine an’ blue oak…and some of them ghost trees…you know, they’re kind of white an’ misty-lookin’ after their leaves shed. Buckeyes, some call them.
“There’s a little basin back up that canyon. There’s a couple of springs there, too. I heard some mighty strange stories about that place. Ties in with the canyon I spoke of.”
Loccard listened with only half his attention. Twenty-six years old and for two years chief mate on the four-mast bark Annandale, he had heard such tales many times before.
He had once sailed on a vessel unlisted in any port he’d ever come across, and found her a good ship. Good enough, at least. Piracy had more than one method, and with the passing of Blackbeard and Kidd other ways had been attempted. A quick change of name and a coat of paint with some alteration in the rig…who was to say what happened after she left port?
Nor was he in any position to choose his berth now, any more than when he sailed on the mystery ship.
He had come up from the seaport town of Wilmington, recently established on the California coast, to look for an old friend in Los Angeles. He was hunting no trouble, a fact that helped him none at all when trouble came. He emerged from the hospital to find his ship had left without him. What money he had carried with him was gone for the doctor and what care he needed while recovering.
No ships were hiring off the West Coast…a seaman, perhaps, but no mates. After a few weeks of trying he accepted the job no one wanted, to handle the stage station at Twenty Mile.
Shadows were deep in the canyons when the stage rolled up to the station. Loccard looked at the buildings with interest, crouching dark and forlorn beside the stage trail.
Duro Weaver tied the lines to the whipstock and climbed back over the tarp-covered luggage. From the back he handed down the sea-chest, a battered carpetbag, and two heavy canvas bags belonging to the company.
“There’s grub in the bags. I hope you can cook.” Duro straightened up, putting a hand to the small of his back. Jolting over rough, rock-strewn roads was hard on a man’s kidneys. “There’s a well yonder. Water’s good when used reg’lar. Boss will get you some horses up here soon’s he can find a man to drive ’em.”
“Thanks. I’ll do all right.”
Weaver looked doubtful. From the boot he took Loccard’s rifle. It was brand, spanking new. “You’re likely to need this. Keep it by you.”
A worn holster and gun-belt followed. The butt of the gun carried five notches.
Weaver glanced sharply at Loccard. “Five? I never cottoned to carvin’ notches, but five’s quite a few.”
“They aren’t mine. They belong to the man I took it off of.”
Weaver looked at Loccard again. Loccard was at least three inches shorter than his own six feet, and Weaver guessed his weight at one-sixty. “You took that gun off a man who’d killed five men?”
“It seemed like a good idea at the time. He was shootin’ it at me.”
Weaver exchanged a glance with Cottonmouth Porter, who had been riding inside the stage. Porter shrugged. The only other man riding passenger besides Cottonmouth was a slender man in a black broadcloth suit. Loccard picked up his sea-chest, shouldered it, then took up his carpetbag and took them to the stage station.
“I saw it,” the stranger commented, biting the end from his thin cigar. “It was in Los Angeles.”
“How could anybody miss at that range? It’s unbelievable.”
“It was Steve Darnell. Loccard was hit, all right, but he just kept coming. He took Darnell’s gun away from him and slapped him silly with it. You never saw such a beating in your life. Then Loccard took his gun, stripped off his gun-belt, and walked to the nearest doctor. He spent the next three weeks in bed.”
Weaver climbed back to his seat as Loccard walked back to pick up the rest of his gear. “Mr. Loccard, if I were you I’d be sure I had water enough and fuel enough before dark.”
He held the lines as if reluctant to leave Loccard alone. “No travelers come this way except by stage, and the stages only come by daylight. So, don’t open up for anyone…or anything.”
His whip cracked like a pistol shot, the horses dug in, and the stage vanished in the pursuing dust. Loccard watched it until it was only a dot in the distance. He glanced then at the mountains, at the looming blackness of them. They revealed nothing, offered nothing, and might conceal much.
The corral, across the road from the stage station, was empty. Until the horses arrived there was no way out of here but to walk, and he had no intention of walking. Or of leaving, for that matter. He had come to do a job and do a job he would…at least until he had money enough to take him to San Francisco and keep him there until he could get a ship.
There were three buildings and the corrals. The station itself was of good size, with a peaked roof a story and a half tall and no porch. The side facing the trail had a door and three small windows.
The barn for the housing of the horses was as sturdily built as the station itself. There was a lean-to back of the corrals for the temporary housing of additional stock. Behind the corral was a low hill.
Loccard went to the door. It was fastened shut from the outside with a hasp held in place by a whittled stick. Removing the stick, he let the door swing open. It creaked on rusty hinges and inside the air felt heavy, the dead air of a room long closed. For a moment he hesitated on the threshold, for there was something clammy and unclean about the smell.
With a shrug, he entered. Glass from a shattered bottle littered the floor and the pieces of a broken chair had been brushed to one side. At the end of the room was a bar, a long table with two benches, and one intact chair. On the back-bar were several bottles and a few unwashed glasses. The cash-drawer was empty. Nearby was a scale for weighing gold-dust.
The fireplace was large, occupied by two half-burned logs.
In back was a kitchen, which housed a range, a boiler, and a good stack of cut wood. The pots and pans were clean and polished. Wonder of wonders, there were a couple of flatirons.
On the left of the door where he had entered was a room with an unmade bed, a bed with a wooden frame and leather straps for springs. An old coat and a slicker hung on pegs, and alongside them a gun-belt and holster. There was a pistol still in the holster.
All else was dust and cobwebs.
He glanced again at the gun-belt, frowning. Odd that a man should leave without his gun.
Returning to the kitchen, he put on water for coffee, brought in his gear, and closed the door. Hesitating a moment, he turned back smiling at himself, and dropped the bar in place.
Yet he had one more thing to do. He lifted the bar again and taking the former station keeper’s clothing outside, he set fire to it. No telling how many lives were lost.
With the water on, he puttered about, cleaning up, putting things to rights. He discovered an ax, razor-sharp, and a cross-cut saw. There were several wedges for splitting logs as well as a pick, shovel, and gold-pan.
Suddenly curious, he checked the pistol. It had been fired not long since…three times. Never liking the presence of unloaded guns, accidents always seeming to happen with guns suspected of being empty, he slipped cartridges into the empty chambers and returned the gun to its holster.
Outside it was now quite dark. The stars seemed very close because the mountain air was clear. Stepping outside, he walked to the middle of the road, looking both ways. All was dark and still. Suddenly there was a swoosh in the air above him; involuntarily, he ducked. An owl…and a big one.
Not since childhood had he lived in the mountains, and the mountains he had known were far different from these, for even the trees and flowers of the eastern mountains were different. Since that time he had been at sea, the shallow seas of the Malay archipelago as well as along the China coast and Japan.
Returning to the station, he rebarred the door, poured a cup of coffee, and sat down at the table. The gun-belt and pistol he had taken from Steve Darnell lay on the table. It was a fine weapon, nicely balanced and easy to the hand. That had been trouble he had not wanted, but Darnell was evidently a known man and considered a dangerous one. Seeing in Jeremy Loccard a stranger and obviously not a western man, he had thought to have some amusement. Darnell had a few drinks under his belt, and in such circumstances, apparently he often became quarrelsome.
Loccard had not been wearing a gun, as he had much of his life, for the islands and the waters where he’d sailed were infested with pirates, and had been from as far back as records existed.
Two men had vanished from this place…how?
Of course, there were men who could not accept solitude. A few days of silence and loneliness were all they could stand and they must get away, no matter how. That could have been it.
Uneasily, he glanced at the black squares of the windows. Anybody or anything could be out there…or at least that’s what Duro Weaver had suggested.
What did he mean by anything?
He went from window to window, checking. Cobwebbed and dirty as they were it was unlikely anything within could be seen from without, beyond the light itself. For the first time he was struck by the smallness of the panes and the strength of the windows themselves.
A skilled workman, he realized these were not the original doors or windows. The doors were of double thickness and strongly hinged, mounted obviously by someone who wanted stronger, thicker doors.
Why?
He tried to recall what Duro Weaver had said about the Indians of the vicinity. Pah-utes, and further east the Mojaves. There were other tribes who lived close about whose names he had forgotten, and a tribe called the Tehachapis who lived in the mountains of the same name. They were rarely seen, but seemed friendly.
He added fuel to the fire and poured a fresh cup of coffee. Then he opened his sea-chest and got out a pair of black dungarees, a black and white checked shirt, and fresh socks and underwear. He was taking out the shirt when something fell to the floor.
It was an amulet, a good-luck charm given him by an old priest of some obscure religion of which he knew nothing. Actually, he heard later, it was a coin of Krananda, believed by many to be the oldest coinage of India. On it were several symbols: a Tree of Life, a swastika, and others. He had worn it from the day it was given him but had taken it from his neck while undergoing treatment for his wounds.
Not one to place faith in luck, either good or bad, he treasured the charm as a memento, not only of the priest and his daughter whom Loccard had helped out of a bad corner, but as a memento of the girl herself.
She had been a dainty, lovely thing with whom he had no means of communication beyond a few clumsy signs. All he had been able to discover was that they had come from some far land, both as a pilgrimage and in flight from some unnamed danger.
Yet, superstitious or not, he had emerged reasonably unscathed from a half-dozen brawls and two dozen hand-to-hand fights with pirates as well as the fight with Darnell, all while wearing the charm.
“What the hell,” he muttered, and slipped the charm over his head. “It never did me any harm.”
Hours later he was awakened by a faint sound. His fingers closed around the butt of the pistol. Then he lay still…listening.
He heard it again. Something outside the station, something silent, stealthy, creeping. Gently he eased himself from under the blankets and swung his feet to the floor.
Very carefully someone was lifting the latch, then pushing against the door. The door itself was heavy, the bar a formidable piece of timber. Nothing happened beyond that first creak. After one push the man or creature desisted.
Pistol in hand, Loccard edged to the window and peered out. He could, of course, see nothing. Vaguely through the unclean window he could see distant stars and the outline of the barn roof against the sky, and nothing more.
Yet something or somebody was out there, something that moved very quietly, something that did not wish to be seen, something with intelligence enough not to waste strength on a barred door.
CHAPTER II
Loccard waited, straining his ears for the slightest sound; moving silently, he went to each of the other doors and windows, but he could see nothing.
He was a tough, hardened young man, and as mate on a windjammer he was accustomed to responsibility, and to facing whatever trouble came. On such a ship it was always the chief mate who checked things out first, then reported to the captain, who usually made the decisions.
Now he was mate and master both, and he considered the situation. He was tempted to go outside and face whatever was there, but if he was wrong about someone trying the latch, and it happened to be a grizzly, he would be in serious trouble. Moreover, at this time he had nothing to protect outside, so there was insufficient reason for taking the risk.
Moving in the dark, he went to the kitchen. The glow from the coals was faint, so he added fuel, then put on the coffeepot.
Taking up his watch, he brought it to the grate, where he could check the numerals. It was two-fifteen.
Restless and curious, he went from window to window, listening. When the coffee was hot he filled a cup and sat down.
Something had pushed hard against the door, but finding it firm, pushed no more. That argued for an intelligence beyond that of an animal. Yet the push against the door had given him an impression of great weight, and what could have such weight but a grizzly?
With the coming of daylight he finished the last of the coffee over a few strips of bacon and sourdough bread. As he ate his eyes studied the doors and the windows.
Whoever had strengthened them had been a cunning workman. He had built strong against whatever might come….Had he known something? Felt some premonition, perhaps? Had he built the windows higher in the walls and the doors to their new strength before or after he began to fear what might be outside?
Before, quite possibly, or he might not have remained to build them.
Obviously they had strength enough, for they were unbroken. Despite that, the man was gone.
It was unlikely Indians had taken him, for they would have looted or burned the station.
Nevertheless, the man was gone, and another, also.
Which one had done the building? He who had first disappeared? Or the man who followed him?
That they had been taken while outside seemed apparent, which meant that when outside he must be wary at all times.
When he had finished eating he took up the new rifle, loaded it, and went outside, drawing the door to behind him.
There were no tracks on the hard-packed clay around the station. He walked to the barn and found twelve stalls, six on either side. There was a small tack room containing some worn harness, a fairly good saddle, and a rawhide lariat of the type used by the vaqueros of California. There was also a pitchfork and a scythe.
He refilled the water-barrel near the well, carried several buckets of water to the trough in the corral, and while doing so saw the tracks of a deer. There was another track, also, but it was oddly smudged and could not be identified. Yet it was a fresh track.
Mindful of what he had been told, he carried fresh water into the house, filling two buckets and the boiler. As he moved about he kept the rifle in his left hand, and his eyes strayed from time to time to the surrounding hills. The hills close by were bald, covered only by some close-setting growth that he did not recognize. On the more distant slopes were trees and occasional outcroppings of boulders, worn by wind and blown sand.
Far overhead a bird soared. Twice he looked at it, brow puckered. It was a large…a very large bird. Perhaps it was a condor, for it was said condors inhabited some of the mountain valleys they had passed coming hence from Los Angeles.
Finally, he returned to the station, got a broom, and swept out; then, rigging a crude mop, he took water and swabbed the floor as he would a ship’s deck.
He was a man to whom cleanliness was a habit, developed over long confinement to close quarters at sea and the necessity of setting an example for those who served on the ships with him. He decided what he must do was rig a holystone so he could clean the floors properly.
Loccard walked to the door to wring out his mop, and was standing there when his nostrils caught a strange, fetid odor, an odd scent that made the hair prickle on the back of his neck.
For a moment he looked about. A skunk? It could be, of course. The smell was not unlike that of a skunk, yet different somehow. He was turning to go back inside when his eyes caught several long hairs trapped under slivers on the outer surface of the door. They were coarse hairs, a kind of a dirty whitish yellow in shade, and unlike anything he had ever seen.
There were three of them, and carefully, he took them from the door and went inside. Why he did so he did not know, but he placed them in a folded paper for future examination.
Certainly, he had never seen such hairs. A silvertip grizzly? No…these were different.
When Weaver came next with the stage he would ask him, as being long in this country, he might recognize them. The hairs had been more than two thirds the way up the door, and standing on the flagstone doorstep they would have been at eye level for him, or even a mite higher. He shook his head, irritated by the puzzle.
A grizzly standing on his hind legs could have left them. Probably hairs from the white part of his chest, he thought.
Cleaning up the place took most of the day. He stored his food, gathered extra wood, and made ready for the night. The horses would be coming any day, and he found himself looking forward to their arrival. They meant more work for him, but they would also be company.
He glanced toward the flanks of the mountains, thick with a stand of timber. Suddenly, he thought of his telescope and went within.
When he had been unable to return to his ship they had put his gear ashore, and the telescope had been stored in his sea-chest.
Getting the glass from his gear, he returned to the door, where he spent some time examining the mountains. They were rougher than they at first seemed; he saw among the trees more of the outcroppings of boulders, and what could be cliffs.
As darkness came on, he found himself growing uneasy. He retreated within the station, rebuilt his fire, and settled down for an evening of reading. As a boy he had no access to books, and had worked most of the time from daylight until dark, finally going to bed so tired he was at once asleep. Not until he went to sea had he any experience of reading for pleasure.
He had but one book, a copy of a novel by Bulwer-Lytton given to him when he lay recovering from his wound. It was Rienzi, the Last of the Roman Tribunes. He settled down to reading, taking time out only to replenish the fire. Several times he went to the door or windows but heard nothing, saw nothing. At last, his eyes growing tired, he turned in.
At daylight he took his rifle and scouted the area. He found no tracks, no sign that anything had come near the station. Relieved, he went back inside, taking care, however, to bar the door.
He had fried bacon and put out some bread and dried apples which he had soaked well during the night, and was preparing to sit down when he heard a sound of hoofbeats, then a shout.
He went to the door, took down the bar, and glanced out. Seeing a herd of horses and two men driving them, he put his rifle down beside the door and stepped outside.
The older man rounded up a bay with three white stockings that seemed inclined to stray while Loccard walked across the road and took down the gate-bars.
When he saw the last of the sixteen horses through the gate, he looked around at the riders. “Coffee’s on. Come on in. You had breakfast?”
“We done et,” the younger man said. He was scarcely more than a boy, but tall and strong. “We camped up the road a piece.”
“You could have come on in last night,” Loccard suggested.
“Never git me to come up here of a night,” the older man said grimly. “This here’s no place to be once dark comes.”
“He stopped away back yonder,” the younger one said. “I’d have come on in.”
“Ain’t got no sense. Not a durned bit. Not after what happened to them others.”
“What did happen?” Loccard asked, following them through the door.
“Disappeared, that’s what. Vanished. One day they was here, next day gone. I come up here bringin’ grub an’ such. They was gone.”
“Well, not both t’ onct. Each in his own time. Jed Slocum…he was a good man. Sharp man, too. He wasn’t feared of no ha’nts, but little good it did him.”
“What do you think happened?” Loccard asked.
“Who knows? Somethin’ got ’em. Jed, he lived it out for nigh three months. Got thinner an’ more peaked by the day. Looked like a dead man last I seen of him, but he wouldn’t say nothin’ about it.”
“He said something to me,” the boy said.
The older man stared at him. “You?”
“He ast me if I ever seen a yaller bear.” The younger man sat down on a bench and stretched his long legs. “I said I never. There was no such thing. Brown bears, black bears, an’ them polar bears. They’re white. But no yaller bears.”
Jeremy Loccard shrugged. “Who knows what’s in those mountains? There could be bears of a kind no man has ever seen.”
“Or other things,” the older man spat, and Loccard winced. He had just swept and mopped that floor.
He helped himself to bacon from the frying-pan. “You ever really look at this here country? She’s good country. Grass, timber, water if you know where to look, but there’s no Injuns…or mighty few. Now I say that’s odd…mighty odd. I come west along the Humboldt River. Godforsaken country, but there’s Injuns there, so why not here? I say they either was run off or somethin’ took ’em.”
Loccard got the pot from the stove and filled cups for them. “Those horses out there,” he asked, “any of them riding stock?”
The younger man shrugged. “That grulla mustang has been ridden a good bit. Fact is, that’s why we brought him along. If any stock gits away you can round ’em up ridin’ him.
“There’s two or three others been rid some, too, but mostly they’re drivin’ stock.” The older man glanced at Loccard. “Heard your name. Jimmy, ain’t it?”
“Jeremy…Jeremy Loccard.”
“Jed Slocum, he was a nice ol’ feller. Good man. I never did cotton to that Zimmerman, though. He looked mean…kind of sullen, like.”
“He was the man here before Slocum?”
“Uh-huh. He was here three, maybe four months. Always had his nose in a book, big ol’ books, like of which I never did see…kind of worried pictures in them.”
“Worried?”
“Uh-huh. There was devils and such.”
“Weird?”
“That’s it. Worried. He seen me lookin’ at a book left open on the table and he got mad as hell. He come over here and slammed it shut, said something about me bein’ nosy. Anybody else an’ I’d have took it up, but not him. He was a mean…mighty mean.”
“He’d of killed you, Tom.”
“Mebbe. An’ mebbe I don’t kill so easy.” Tom glanced at Loccard, indicating the gun he wore. “You any good with that?”
“Good enough.”
The older man chuckled. “All y’have to be!” he said. “That’s all you have to be!”
A thought occurred to Loccard. “That Zimmerman, now? Somebody come an’ get his gear?”
Tom looked over at his companion. “You get it, Beak?”
“Must still be around. I know Duro never brought it down…all them books, too. It would have taken some liftin’ to get them aboard. Heaviest boxes I ever did see, an’ I helped him off-load them.”
“Them?”
“There was three…not so big but almighty heavy.”
“Hid ’em, prob’ly. He was that kind. Wanted nobody nosin’ around. He said as much, more’n onct. He had some notion…I dunno what…but some kinda notion about this place…these mountains. Maybe the desert.
“Asked all kinda questions. What was the Injuns like? Was they on’ Paiutes? I ever see any other kind? Ever hear tell of any stories the Injuns tell?
“Hell, like I tol’ him, these Injuns don’t tell no stories. They don’t even talk much. Anyway, what would they have to talk about? Nothin’ but ignorant savages, runnin’ around with no drawers on.”
Loccard nodded. “Maybe so, but I’ve sailed on some far waters, and I’ve seen things….It doesn’t pay to take too much for granted with any people, no matter how primitive they seem.”
“Bah! The sooner they’re all gone, the better. I seen aplenty of them, here and there. Good for nothin’.”
Loccard did not reply. To protest would do no good. The man had his mind made up and what he had decided pleased him, and left room for no further consideration of the subject. A neat pigeonhole was often a substitute for thought and a means of isolating ideas that might otherwise become disturbing.
“That Zimmerman, now. He was a canny one. Mean, but canny. I think he had something, some burr under his saddle. He didn’t come here just for no job. He was looking for something, something he figured was worth plenty.”
“How could that be?” Loccard suggested mildly. “In a country where there was nothing but savages?”
The contradiction irritated the older man. “Mayn’t always have been Injuns here. Who knows who was here before? I tell you, I seen things…well, they was things no Injun ever done.”
“What sort of things?” Jeremy asked.
“Mummies, an’ such. Seen ’em in caves.”
“Probably just the dry air,” Loccard suggested.
“Mebbe. Mebbe so. I was just tellin’ you what I seen. I seen aplenty, I have. That Zimmerman, though. He was no tin horn. He was a mighty big, mean man but he was knowledgeable. I never figured nothin’ would happen to him.”
The older man squinted at Loccard. “We got us a bet, down to Los Angeles. We got us a bet on you. I’m sayin’ you don’t last out the month. Somethin’ will git you, or you’ll run.”
Loccard had disliked the man before; he liked him even less now. “Who’d you bet with?” he asked.
“Weaver. He says you’ll stick it. I say you won’t. I say something’s goin’ t’ git you.”
“I hope it was a good-sized bet,” Loccard suggested. “Something worthwhile?”
“Bet him a month’s wages, mine against his’n.” He grinned, showing broken teeth. “He makes three times what I do, so I got me a good bet.”
“No bet is good if you lose,” Loccard said. “And I am going to make sure you do.”
The older man shot him an angry look, then went outside. The boy lingered. “Mister,” he said. “What he said about that Zimmerman was true. Those books now…There was some kinda strange signs inside. One book had some o’ these funny signs where one end points one way, and the other end the other way.”
“A swastika?” Loccard sketched the design in the air.
“That’s it.”
Loccard stood in the door and watched them ride away. He glanced toward the horses, who seemed at home in the corral, but he went out and added several buckets of water to the trough, his eyes restless over the mountainside and down the trail toward the desert.
Zimmerman had brought three heavy boxes and none had been taken away, so either they were here or they’d been taken by someone. He hesitated but did not add, something.
Slocum had lost weight, had been under strain, had asked the boy about yellow bears. Had he seen such a bear? Or was it something else? Some other kind of creature?
The articles found in the living quarters of the station had obviously been those of the last occupant, who was Jed Slocum, so where were those of Zimmerman, who had preceded him?
Walking to the corral, he glanced over the horses. Before going off to sea he had known a little about horses, and these were good stock. He located the grulla and offered him a handful of rich green grass, pulled from near the well. The grulla took it gratefully and held still while Loccard rubbed his neck and talked to him, but shied away when no more grass was forthcoming.
Yet it was the beginning of a rapport between them, and Jeremy hoped the grulla understood who he was: the man in charge, the man who fed him, the man who would be riding him.
Nothing had been said as to when the next stage would come through, but he assumed it would be today. He had turned back toward the house when from the corner of his eye he caught a flicker of movement near the corner of the barn.
He turned sharply, glancing that way, cursing himself for not having the rifle. His pistol, however, was in his holster, easy to his hand.
For a moment there was nothing, and then he saw them.
An Indian man appeared suddenly, ghostlike, at the corner of the barn. Loccard blinked, and a woman was standing beside the Indian. Then one by one, a slim, wiry boy, a girl of perhaps eight or nine, and one still younger, of perhaps but four.
They stood, silent, staring, their eyes upon him as though he himself were a ghost.
CHAPTER III
“Hello there,” he spoke quietly, not wanting to alarm them, for they seemed poised to run. “Come on in!” He swung his arm at them in a gathering gesture. He knew nothing of sign language but hoped they would understand.
They did not move, just watching him. He smiled at them, and then went about the corral, checking it for strength. On the far side he came to an abrupt halt. There in the earth was a smudged track, a huge track, not unlike that of a bear, yet different, somehow.
He glanced at the Indians. The man had come a little closer, so he motioned them on again, then pointed to the track in the earth. This time the Indian came on, whether from curiosity or because he was getting over his fear, Loccard did not know.
When the Indian was only a few feet off, Loccard indicated the track, then stepped back a little, spreading his hands and shrugging, as if to say he did not know what it was.
The Indian took one glance, then stepped back so quickly he almost fell. He backed away quickly. “Bad! Bad!” he spoke hoarsely, obviously frightened.
“Bear?”
“No bear! Bad! Ver’ bad!”
“No bear? Then what is it?”
“Bad!” The Indian backed away. His fear was obvious. “More big! Ver’ bad!”
Loccard gave it up, for the time being at least. “Eat?” he suggested.
The Indians had been about to walk away; now they hesitated. The man wanted to go, the woman was protesting. Her gestures indicated she was speaking of the children.
“Come!” Loccard said. “There is meat.”
Reluctantly, they followed him, avoiding the area near the track. Loccard was puzzled, for their fear was obvious and he had never known Indians to fear any animal. To respect them, to be wary of them, but not to fear. He had known no Indians so far west, yet he had known other primitive peoples, and fear of wild animals was rare among them.
There might be fear, however, if the animal was possessed of an evil spirit, or believed to be so.
He thought of that. There was something here, and he must know more. He must know more to satisfy his growing curiosity, and he must know more simply to survive.
He led the Indians back to the station and sat them down on the bench at the door. Then he went inside, put together some bread and meat, and brought it out to them. He did not know these Indians, and they might only be scouts for an attacking party lying somewhere nearby, awaiting a signal. Others had vanished from this place, and no man knew how. He doubted that Indians were involved, but who could be sure? He would take nothing for granted.
He brought out meat and bread for himself, then squatted on his heels where he could see the road, and ate with them, asking no questions, saying nothing at first.
Finally when he did it was in his halting Spanish. He spoke of a good day, asked if they’d traveled far.
“Not far,” the Indian replied in English.
“You are alone?”
The Indian indicated the woman and children. “They are with me. We look.”
“For a place to live?”
The Indian shook his head. He seemed to be searching for a word, then gave up and said it in Spanish. “Amigos.”
“Friends? Here?” Then he said quietly, “I will be your friend.”
The woman glanced at him slyly, almost hopefully, but she said nothing. The children watched him with large dark eyes.
“I have just come,” Loccard said. “I like it here.”
“You go,” the Indian said quietly. “It is not good place for man.”
“I serve the stage. The stage goes through. I help.”
“You go.”
Loccard was silent. He went inside and got cups from the shelf and filled them with coffee.
“You know this place?” He gestured around, taking it all in. “You have been here before?”
“I am Kawaiisu. This my land. One time I live”—he pointed toward a place to the northeast—“there.”
He sipped his coffee. Obviously he had once known more English, but now was feeling his way with a language long unused. At least, that was what Loccard thought. Having partially learned many tongues himself, he knew how quickly a language only slightly known can disappear. That was the trouble of being a seafaring man. One rarely stayed long enough in one place to learn a language well. He knew a smattering of marketplace, waterfront language from fifty ports.
Suddenly the Indian said, “One time many mans here. All gone, maybe.” He looked at Loccard. “You see?”
“No…not yet. I have not been here long,” he said. “You are the first Indian I have seen. But,” he added, “I was not expecting to see any yet. Maybe they have not made up their minds about me yet. Maybe they look at me to decide what to do next.”
“They look, too. Soon they take you.”
“ ‘They’? Who are ‘they’? And where would they take me? And why?”
The Indian shrugged. He wiped his hands on his legs. “Is no good here. Many mans here…where now? Gone…”
He finished his coffee and Loccard refilled the cup, adding sugar. The Indian sipped his coffee. “All around…bad places here. Ghost places. You no stay. You go…now.”
“I must stay.”
They sat silent. The children finished their eating and their mother likewise. They sat silently beside Loccard while the minutes passed into a half hour, then an hour. Finally, Loccard got up. “You stay…rest. We talk.”
The Indian stirred a little, but made no reply. The man seemed lonely, hungry for more than food. Or was that something Loccard was simply reading into him? It was hard to tell with an Indian, for all peoples do not manifest interest or joy or dismay in the same manner.
Shortly before noon he harnessed six horses and led them out of the corral and tied them to the corral bars to await the stage.
“That animal?” he said, after a while. “The one that made the track, he is bigger than a bear?”
The Indian held up two fingers. “Big like two bears. Maybe three. Long hair…yellow. No bullet kill him. No arrow.”
“He lives in the mountains?”
“No live here…other place.”
Loccard went back inside and began making fresh coffee. The stage would be coming along soon and the passengers would want some refreshment. He built up the fire and when he looked outside, the Indians were gone.
Loccard walked onto the road and looked up and down. The family, if that’s what they were, had vanished. Well…He shrugged and went back inside. In such a short time they could not have gone far, and they might return.
He heard the stage before he saw it, heard Duro Weaver’s halloo and then saw it coming in the distance. He went out to the roadside and was standing there when the stage came wheeling up and stopped. He caught the horses by their bridles, steadied them a bit, and then he began unhooking the traces as the passengers got stiffly down. There were three men and two women.
One of the women was scarcely more than a girl, and she looked frightened. The older woman was tall, slender, and very beautiful in a cold, somewhat haughty way. The men moved toward the stage station, and the younger woman made as if to follow, but was stopped by a sharp word. The other woman stood in the road and looked carefully about.
When the team was taken to the corral and the fresh team harnessed, Loccard walked back to the station with Duro.
“You all right?” The stage driver spoke softly.
“Sure. Everything’s fine.”
“Didn’t know whether to expect you or not,” Weaver said, “the way thing’s been happenin’ up here.”
“I’ll make it,” Loccard spoke with more assurance than he felt.
They went inside and he took up the coffeepot and filled cups. He glanced at the girl, smiling when their eyes met. She seemed startled and shot a quick glance at her companion, who seemed not to have noticed.
She was pretty, Loccard decided, almighty pretty. She was frightened, too, but why he could not guess. All three men were well dressed, and seemed to have no connection with each other or the women.
The older man, who might have been one of those who invested in mining ventures, or began them, waved a hand at the country around. “It must be lonely here. Do you have many visitors?”
“I like wild country,” Loccard said, “but visitors? Only some Indians.”
“Indians?” It was the older woman who spoke. “I thought…I mean, I believed there were no Indians here. It is not true, then?”
“There was a family,” Loccard said. “They came by just before you did. It is said there are Indians in the higher mountains. Some call them the Kawaiisu, some the Tehachapis.”
“This is excellent coffee,” a man whom Loccard took to be a gambler commented. “Better than I expected from the tender of a stage station.”
The third man, who wore a black suit, spoke up. “You have not looked at him, my friend. I detect a certain air, a certain style. It is the style of command.”
“An Army officer?” The gambler studied Loccard with interest. “I believe not.”
“Will you have some more coffee?” Loccard suggested.
Duro Weaver, who sat at the end of the table, knew how Loccard felt. “Better drink up,” he said. “We’ve little time and I want to be out of the pass before dark.”
The older woman glanced at him, but her expression did not change. She was, Loccard thought, a remarkably beautiful woman who for some reason was trying not to appear so….Was it simply that she did not wish to draw attention to herself? Her eyes were large, her bone structure delicate yet strong.
The mining man, if such he was, glanced at Weaver. “Any special reason to be out of the mountains before dark? Like the lady here, I didn’t think there were Indians in this part of the country.”
“Could be outlaws,” the gambler suggested. “There’s one named Vasquez—”
“I didn’t think that was what he meant,” the man in the black suit commented. “I think our good driver had something else in mind.”
Nobody spoke for a minute, and Jeremy Loccard went to the door. The sun was sinking behind the mountains. It would soon be dark here, although light upon the desert, only a few miles away. He glanced toward the corral. The grulla had its head up, nostrils flared, looking north toward the darkest mountains.
He glanced down the pass toward the desert. A weird yellow light showed there. “Weaver?” he spoke in a casual tone. “Got a minute?”
The stage driver got up and walked to the door, wiping the back of his hand across his handlebar mustache. Loccard indicated the yellow look over the desert. “Is that what I think it is?”
“Sandstorm,” Weaver said, “a bad one. You’re sheltered here, don’t get much of it.”
“The wind is picking up, though.”
Weaver went outside and walked along the road a little, looking down the pass. He walked back. “You got comp’ny, son. No way to get a team to face that. Sometimes the sand’ll take the hide right off a man.”
Loccard shrugged. “Means you’ll have to spend the night at Twenty Mile,” he commented dryly.
Duro Weaver swore softly, bitterly. “I’ll tell ’em,” he said, “then we better put up the team.” He paused again. “Put ’em in the barn.”
They walked back to the station together, and as they stepped in, the older woman started to rise. “Is it not time?” she asked. “It seems to me we have stopped overlong.”
“We’ll be here longer,” Weaver said. He took out his pipe and began to fill it. “There’s a sandstorm blowin’ out on the flat, blowin’ like the mill-tails of Hell!”
Loccard was looking at the older woman. Her features had suddenly seemed to harden and for a moment he saw something in her face that seemed wholly evil, something so—
She turned toward him, and her expression changed swiftly. She smiled, beautifully. Her teeth were very even, very white. “We will be all right here, won’t we? I mean, we don’t have to be afraid of those Indians, do we?”
“Of course not.” He gestured about. “This place is very strong….Nothing could get in, unless we let it in. And we are well armed.”
She looked at him, and he thought her eyes were faintly amused, even taunting. “Are your rifles the answer to everything?”
“Sometimes they have to suffice,” Loccard replied quietly, “although I’ve had no trouble here.”
He followed Weaver outside and they led the horses to the stable and stripped off the harness, hanging it on pegs inside the stable. They forked hay into the mangers, and then went outside. Loccard caught the grulla then and took him into the stable, too.
Weaver hesitated in the road. “Loccard, tell me honest. You seen anything out here?”
“No,” he said. “I’ve seen nothing.” He paused. The wind caught dried leaves and scattered them down the road, moving a little ripple of sand along with them. The wind would get into the pass soon, and they’d be feeling it. And that was the trouble…they would not be able to hear.
“I’ve seen nothing, Duro, but there was something.”
Weaver took his pipe from his mouth, looking at him.
“Something almighty big, something bigger than the biggest grizzly you ever heard of, something that pushed against the door, something that might have weighed a ton or more.”
Weaver swore, slowly, emphatically, solemnly.
“I found a smudged track…long claws, and I found some yellow hairs. Long hairs, maybe seven or eight inches, mighty coarse. Smelled awful.”
He listened to the wind, saw the trees bend with it. A tumbleweed went rolling by on the road.
“The Indians saw the track. They were scared. I fed ’em, tried to get them to stick around. They disappeared.”
“Don’t do no good to feed Injuns,” Weaver said. “Underfoot all the time.”
“I wanted to know what they know. They said I’d better go…something would get me, like it got the others, and the Indians.”
“Indians, too?”
“That was my impression. There used to be Indians here. Now there are none. Maybe they just went away, but that Indian didn’t think so, he didn’t think so at all. He was scared.”
“What d’ you think it was?”
Loccard shrugged. “Look, I’ve been in fifty countries, talked to a hundred kinds of people. The white man thinks he knows it all because right now he’s running ahead of the pack. I came to one conclusion, knocking around in foreign parts, and that was that there was just a whole lot I didn’t know.
“Maybe there’s animals we’ve never seen, maybe there are things we’ve never seen. I had a dog whistle once that I couldn’t hear, but my dog could hear it.
“I picked up cargo along the coast of Sumba a couple of times. It’s an island in the East Indies east of Java, but off the mainline of those islands. We picked up sandalwood there, bird’s nests—the Chinese make soup from them—skins, shells, and sometimes horses. There’s a lot of wild horses on the island.
“I went back inland to see the high plains where the horses ran. They were there, all right, but here and there I saw stone walls surrounded by thickets of brush through which no path seemed to go.
“These were said to be villages long deserted, although they were not unlike some of the villages in other parts of the island. The people avoided them. Or perhaps they only wanted me to avoid them. In a thicket near one of those villages I saw a piece of what looked like rocks fitted together into some sort of a floor or platform. There were low trees around, a few boulders. I started to go near but they advised against it.
“Few minutes later I looked back and there was a man standing there beside that flat rock. He was looking at me. Or I thought he was. He hadn’t been there a few minutes before.”
The wind was blowing harder. Duro Weaver started across the road, then stopped again. “Those tracks you seen? Those claw marks? You ever see anything like them before?”
Loccard looked at him, leaning closer so Weaver could hear over the rush of wind down the pass. “One time. We were loading tar down at those brea pits out there west of Los Angeles. There were a lot of bones in that tar; made trouble for us, as they were always in the way. I came on a forearm or foreleg of some creature with claws like that. Whatever it was, it was mighty big, and it must have had tremendous crushing power in those forelegs.”
“I never seen no such animal,” Weaver protested.
Loccard gestured. “You ever been back in those mountains?”
“No.”
“Well, neither have I.”
CHAPTER IV
They went inside, closing the door on the wind, which was now blowing a gale. The fire on the hearth was warm, there was a smell of coffee in the air, and the men were gathered about the table, talking.
At the fireplace the two women sat…not talking.
The master of a ship, as Jeremy Loccard had occasionally been, or the chief mate, which he had been since he was nineteen, learned to be reticent, sharing his thoughts but rarely. Such a man learned to judge the shades of feeling among a crew, the way the ship creaked in different seas and winds, the way the lines handled and the look of the sails. There was so much in the handling of ships and men that could be found in no book.
Loccard knew that Duro Weaver was a brave, confident man. In any situation he would be where he needed to be and he would be doing what was necessary.
He closed the door and put the bar in place. They had fuel enough, for the nights were cold at this time of year, and they had food enough. The sandstorm might blow itself out overnight, but if it followed the way of storms at sea they might be in for two or three days of it.
The man in the black suit looked around at Loccard. “Any bears in these mountains?”
“Lots of them,” Weaver spoke up. “When we built the barn, yonder, we killed a grizzly had to weigh eight or nine hundred pounds.”
“Are they really dangerous?”
“Mister”—Duro Weaver got out his pipe—“any wild animal is potentially dangerous. I seen a man badly mauled by a buck deer. Up Frisco way I saw a woman half-killed by a cub bear she thought was mighty cute. She just had to ruffle his fur, she said.
“Wild animals are wild, you got to remember that; also, they’re like folks, and they have their moods. Bears more than most. Bears are notional. A body has to be wary where a bear’s concerned.”
“You’ve hunted this country?”
“No.” Weaver stuffed his pipe with tobacco. “I never hunted about here and I don’t know of anybody who has…’less it was Zimmerman.”
Suddenly Loccard realized Weaver had sharpened their attention. Even the women at the fire were listening.
“Zimmerman?” The man in the black suit was too casual. “Who was he?”
“Station man here…a while back.”
“What became of him?”
Weaver had not wanted to answer that question but had seen it coming. “Disappeared,” he replied coolly. “He was here one day, and the next day he was gone. Maybe,” he added, “he come onto one o’ them cute bears.”
“Disappeared? Did anybody look for him?”
Weaver stooped to the fireplace and took up a burning twig to light his pipe. “Look? Where? Mister, there’s a sight of country out yonder. Take a mighty big army with lots of time to comb it.
“Nobody,” he added, “knows what’s out there. Maybe nothing. Maybe things no man has ever seen. Maybe things no man wants to see.
“I’ve heard tell of a canyon back yonder to the northwest…maybe twelve, fifteen mile from here. Maybe not so far. Injuns used to go there. Left holes in the rock where they used to grind acorns. There’s two good springs in that canyon, grass, wood for the burning, shelter from the wind…but no Injuns. Not no more.”
“Why?”
“Your guess is as good as mine. They follow the creek up the main canyon, but you’ll never catch an Injun going up the south side of the creek. Least, that’s what I been told.”
“Superstition,” the mining man suggested.
“That there,” Weaver said, “is an easy word. It’s a word used to sidestep many an explanation, or a belief or idea a man don’t understand.”
“Or don’t want to take time to study,” Loccard added.
Weaver nodded toward the outside. “You ever been out in those mountains alone? Who’s to say what’s there? Maybe what the Injuns believe in is only there because they believe in it. Maybe in places like this there’s things left over, things that ceased to be a long time back…except in places like this.”
“You’re talking nonsense,” the mining engineer commented. “I only believe in things a man can measure and weigh. Whatever else there is doesn’t matter.”
Loccard added fuel to the fire. He crouched beside it, staring into the coals. On such a night, in such a wind, they would hear nothing outside. Maybe it was just as well. He thought of the horses. If there was trouble there he must go out.
The older woman came to him. “I am Andrea Ritter. I must speak with someone who is familiar with all this.” Her gesture took in the country around.
“I just arrived,” Loccard said. “Duro there, he knows as much as anybody and that’s little enough.”
Loccard paused a moment, and then in a lower voice he said, “What’s your interest, ma’am? If I knew, maybe I could help.”
She hesitated, seemed about to speak, then shook her head. “I cannot. It is too much, too, too much!”
Duro walked over, a cup of coffee in his hand. “Heard what you asked, ma’am,” he said, “but there’s nobody knows much. Some figure there just isn’t nothing to know. It’s empty country. The first white man along here so far’s anybody knows was a Captain Pedro Fages, exploring for the Spanish folks. Jed Smith come through, but we don’t know exactly where. Been a few white men back in yonder huntin’ gold, an’ that’s about it.
“So far’s anybody knows the Spanish never paid it much mind. Even the Injuns mostly pulled out an’ left.”
“Why? Why would they do a thing like that?”
Duro sipped his coffee. He had no answer to that and attempted none. He glanced at Loccard and raised an eyebrow. Neither could understand why a woman such as this was so interested in what was to all obvious view a barren and empty land.
Loccard’s eyes went to the girl. She was very pretty, but the scared look was there, too, and she seemed scared of Andrea Ritter as much as anything. Or was he imagining things?
He went back to the kitchen and began putting together a meal. There were supplies enough, and he saw no sense in stinting.
The girl followed him into the kitchen. “May I help?” she asked. “I can cook.”
“Sure.” He held out a hand. “I’m Jeremy Loccard.”
“I am Jennifer Kernaby….Call me Jen.”
“I’ll do that.” He waved a hand about. “We don’t have much. For now we’ll just make up some cazuela…one name for stewed jerked beef. You can chop up some onions for me, if you’re of a mind to.”
They worked in silence for a few minutes, and he asked, “Goin’ far?”
She did not look at him. “Not far. At least, I don’t think so. Maybe we’ll go back to Los Angeles soon. Andrea wanted to come here.”
“Here? This place?”
“I…I don’t know. She wanted to come here, and she wanted me along. Maybe she’s going on up to San Francisco. We talked about it. I think…maybe she’s looking for land.”
Loccard glanced at her. “Ma’am…Jen…this is no place to look for land. There’s land aplenty nigh to the sea, better land than this, I’d say, and it’s closer to market. This here is wild country, and it will be for a good time to come.”
Suddenly she was close to him. “Mr. Loccard…Jeremy? I’m afraid of her.”
Instantly she stepped away from him. There was a sound of boot heels clicking, and Andrea Ritter was in the door. “Oh? There you are! I wondered what had become of you.”
“I am helping Mr. Loccard,” she said primly. “There seemed such a lot to do.”
“I am sure he can manage.” Andrea’s tone was grim. “Come! You’ll be all smelling of onions.”
She rinsed her hands in the basin, and dried them carefully while Andrea waited, then turned and left the room without a backward glance.
“Make’s no sense,” he commented, to himself. “Why would she be with someone who scared her? And why would a woman like that be hunting land up here?”
He finished fixing their supper and served it. The mining engineer, whose name proved to be Delphin Rickard, came to the kitchen to help Loccard carry the food to the table. He suspected Rickard came more from a desire to look around than from any desire to help. “That man in the black suit? Do you know him?”
“I never saw any of you before,” Loccard said, “and it is unlikely I will see any of you again. I’ll make some money here, then be gone.”
“Probably a wise choice,” he agreed. “This Zimmerman now? Did you know him?”
“No. I don’t believe even the man who followed him knew him. Mr. Weaver, your driver…he knew him to talk to.”
“You’ve never been out in the mountains?” He took up a platter of sliced beef. “Hunting, or the like of that?”
“I haven’t been here long enough.”
“Odd that Zimmerman would come here,” he mused, looking about. “It’s unreasonable.”
“You should know enough by now that there’s no way of judging people. Just when you think you’ve got them figured, they’ll cross you up. But why Zimmerman? What made him so different?”
“Zimmerman? Ah? There was a strange one! I did not know him, you understand, only of him. He was a scholar. An authority on the occult, a delver into mysteries.”
“You must have him mixed up. This Zimmerman was a mean man by all I hear, a big, strong, and mighty difficult man.”
“Of course. He was all of that. I had friends who knew him, or knew of him. He went his own way, shared what he knew with nobody. But why should he come here? To such a place as this? What was he looking for? What did he expect to find?”
“Maybe,” Loccard said dryly, “he just needed the job, as I did.”
“Zimmerman? I doubt it. The man always had access to money. I mean he would seem to be on his uppers, then he would show up with money. And money was a prime requisite with Zimmerman. He liked to live. Champagne and fine wines, the best food, the best women. I think the man loved nothing but his appetites.”
Rickard took his platter and went into the next room and Loccard followed with biscuits, cheese, and a pot of stewed fruit.
The puzzle of Zimmerman allied itself to the puzzle of Rickard himself. Why was he here? Where had he come from? What was his connection with Zimmerman?
Yet, he might have given Loccard a clue. Zimmerman could always come up with money, and that implied a source. Was he a wealthy man? Had he wealthy friends or relatives? Or was there some other source for his wealth?
A delver into mysteries, Rickard said. Well, he found his mystery here, surely, and disappeared. Or had he? Suppose he was somewhere about?
Well, suppose he was, thought Loccard. That meant nothing to him. Zimmerman had left his job, gone off on his own. Or been killed.
Killed? By what?
The word brought Loccard up short. Why not by “whom”? Was he already imagining something else? Was he filling his world with creatures of the imagination? Was he not creating a mystery where there might be none?
Once the food was served Loccard sat down with the passengers. The talk about the table seemed so much idle chatter, and only Jen and Duro were silent. That was unusual for Duro, for he was a man who liked people and who talked well, and his long years on the frontier had given him a wealth of stories. Now he merely listened, and if anything, he seemed puzzled.
The fire blazed cheerfully on the hearth and the coal-oil lamps, backed with reflectors, gave added light to the room. Outside the wind howled and sand rattled against the windows.
The coffee smelled good, and slowly Loccard began to relax. He glanced once toward the door of his room. His rifle stood just inside the door.
As though reading his thought, the man in the black suit asked, “Do you always wear a pistol?”
“This country,” Duro replied for him, “a man better. No tellin’ what a body’d run into on the road.”
Andrea Ritter smiled. “I am sure there’s noth—” Her voice broke sharply off, for they all heard it: an eerie cry, heard faintly but clearly enough during a momentary lull in the wind.
It was no human cry, nor like any animal….A bird maybe, but what bird? What strange sound in the night? Andrea’s eyes went wide; her lips parted as if to scream, but no sound came. All were transfixed, all but the man in the black suit.
“There it is,” he said coolly enough, “all that was needed. It’s out there.”
They looked at him, staring, nor did any one of them speak. The cry came again…closer.
“It is coming then,” the man in the black suit said. “It’s coming.”
COMMENTS: Dad found the Southern California wilderness to be a spooky place. He touched on it in The Lonesome Gods and used that strangeness to a much greater extent in The Californios. I agree with him. We used to talk about the feelings we’d get back in the hills and the hot, chaparral-choked arroyos. It is a haunted landscape, even more so than a Colorado or Utah canyon full of cliff dwellings. I have no idea why that should be the case, but we shared the feeling nonetheless.
The location of this story seems to be very near to Tehachapi Pass in the area along Highway 58 between Bakersfield and Mojave. The idea of seeing a sandstorm come up from the desert makes complete sense; these days the area is near a giant wind farm. I’m confident in saying this story was written in the early 1970s because Louis mentions a narrow canyon where buckeye trees grow and the Kawaiisu Indians left pa-haz, or grinding holes, in the rocks—a description of a piece of property we owned not too far from the pass.
My mother and sister sitting in that narrow canyon at the base of the rocks with the grinding holes.
By the time he gets to Chapter 4, it seems Louis had reached a decisive moment in the writing process. The arrival of the odd group of stage passengers suggests that the mystery of the disappearing station agents, and even the existence of some sort of monster, is just the tip of the interdimensional iceberg. The place where Louis stopped writing is probably the place where he was going to have to commit to what the book was going to be about. Dad usually worked this sort of thing out unconsciously, but whether it was a conscious or unconscious process, it is obvious to me that he wasn’t quite ready to take the next step. No doubt several of the passengers are in on whatever is happening and it would seem that Jeremy Loccard’s amulet will also play a role.
It is amusing to see a moment of Chick Bowdrie–style forensics when Loccard places the smelly hairs in a folded piece of paper. (Bowdrie was a Texas Ranger character Louis wrote about early in his career.) The monster may be a giant sloth, though even as big as they were, I’m not sure they’d be all that aggressive. Perhaps it was a short-faced bear, an extinct carnivore of colossal size…which would definitely have been something to fear. The bones of both have been found in the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles.
As I mentioned, Dad was working with ideas here that were very similar to ones he experimented with in his novels The Californios and The Haunted Mesa: strange animals that come from somewhere else, another reality of some sort, and people who know about this other place and, regardless of the danger, wish to exploit it in some way. In his notes on this story Dad mentions checking into Harold Courlander’s The Fourth World of the Hopis and Frank Waters’ Book of the Hopi. Both were also inspirations for Haunted Mesa. Additionally, Louis considered rereading some of the work of Talbot Mundy, a writer who influenced Dad’s more occult-oriented adventure fiction, and Charles Fort, an early collector of unexplained phenomena.
In some ways it seems as if Louis was about to expand on, or even write a sort of sequel to, The Californios with this story. His notes mention “a lost city in the desert and the people who lived there.” Juan, the old Indian in The Californios who can travel between worlds, told the tale of such an Atlantis-like city. Louis jotted down the following bit of dialogue for one of the characters to impart:
“People throw things out of kilter. The Old Ones knew. Young folks lost a lot of knowledge. There was a wall in that town, and on the Wall were inscriptions. This wall could be read by the Old Ones, but when the storm came they were suffocated in the dust, all but a few who had gone through the Portals. When they came back all was gone, their folks, temples, houses everything gone. They live on the Other Side now and just return for pilgrimages, but they don’t want folks in the way….This here is on the route, the temple is in the mountains yonder, and the Portals are there. There were other Openings….”
This idea of portals to other worlds is a significant element in The Californios and Haunted Mesa. In both there is another plane of existence that invites exploration and offers a sense of possibility that our world has been running low on recently. Louis grew up in a time when the ends of the earth had yet to be completely explored, but by the time he wrote these chapters, the likelihood of discovering King Kong’s Skull Island or Lost Horizon’s Shangri-La had been reduced to nearly zero. A parallel universe was the next step for a writer of the frontier.
Dad also jotted down one final note, possibly of what was intended to be the last scene in this story:
A vanishing stagecoach? A Lurch of the stage, a jolt, a cloud of dust, then a trail the driver has never seen before. A shining city in the distance. Stage picks up Loccard, he warns them to turn around and drive fast, before the Opening closes. They escape—“Still, that city now. I’d like to have seen it.”