Fire on the Mountain (7 page)

The driver began pumping the starter and gas pedal again.

“Wait a minute,” Lee said. The driver stopped. “Get that coyote off the fender.”

They gaped at him. “What?” the driver said.

“Leave the coyote here.”

“Hold on,” the man in back said. “That’s my coyote. I killed him myself. He’s mine.”

“No, he belongs here.” Lee pulled out his pocket-knife and opened it. Keeping the men covered with the shotgun, he stepped forward and cut the cord that bound the coyote to the fender and hood of the jeep. The body slid off, falling to the side of the road. “Now you can go,” Lee said, moving back out of the way.

I moved too, turning Blue to the inside of the road, hard against the slope. Lee’s horse had stopped a few yards farther down the road, watching the proceedings.

The driver of the jeep ground the starter and pumped on the gas pedal. The carburetor was still flooded.

“Let me give you some advice,” Lee said. “Don’t pump on the gas when you’re flooded. That only makes it worse.”

The driver scowled at him. “You shut up. I’ll manage this thing without any help from you.” He released the brake and the jeep started to roll forward, passing us.

“Goodbye,” Lee shouted after them. “Drive carefully.”

“Drive carefully,” I echoed.

They rolled down the road without replying, without looking back, while the motor gasped and coughed, choking on gasoline. In a minute they were out of sight and gone. I rode after Lee’s horse, caught it and brought it back to him. Lee sat on a rock, wiping the sweat from his face with a handkerchief and airing out his hat. “Thanks, Billy. My God it’s hot.”

My body was trembling. I felt too weak to get down off my horse.

“What a day,” Lee said. He grinned up at me. “What happened, anyway?”

“I thought—I thought he was going to shoot you.”

“And you threw that spear at him?” We looked at the yucca stalk, lying on the road near the body of the
coyote. We looked at the coyote. “Now why did I do that?” Lee asked. He got up slowly, replacing his hat on his head, took the coyote by the scruff of the neck, hauled him to the edge of the road and let him roll down into the woods. After a moment he came back to his rock in the shade and sat down again.

“What about the guns?”

“Yeah, the guns.” He looked at the guns. “We’ll stash them here in the rocks and pick them up on the way home tomorrow.” He sighed, a little wearily, then smiled at me. “Billy, would you mind getting that canteen out of the saddlebags? And I think you’ll find something to eat in there too.”

“You bet, Lee.” Shakily, I got off my horse.

“Billy?”

“Yes?”

“You know, Billy, that was a foolish thing I did. I could’ve got both of us killed. But those—those men made me so goddamned angry. They had no manners at all.”

“That’s right,” I said, unbuckling Lee’s saddlebag. “No manners at all.”

He sat musing, hat pushed back. “I wonder if they were officers or enlisted men?”

“They sure weren’t gentlemen.”

“I was an officer myself. That’s why I find it hard to tell.” He glanced at the tough sun blazing over us. “Well, anyway, I hope they make it down the mountain all right.”

“I hope they dont.”

“It’s a good thing your grandfather wasn’t here. He’d have killed those fellows. Strangled them with his bare hands.” I handed Lee the canteen and a sandwich wrapped in waxed paper. “One other thing, Billy …”

“What?” I unwrapped a sandwich.

“Better not tell him about this.”

“About the canteen?”

“About this incident here. The men in the jeep.”

“Why not, Lee?”

“I’m afraid the old man might—do something drastic. Might go a little too far. We better not tell him, Billy.”

“Okay, Lee, if you think that’s best.”

“I think it’s best. We better not tell him.” The horses, tied to the nearest pine, stamped their hooves as we prepared to eat. Lee looked at them. “You two be quiet. Don’t you know there’s a lion up here?”

The horses stared at Lee.

“That’s right,” he said. “A lion.”

The horses stood perfectly quiet. Lee grinned at me. “Now we can eat.”

We rested for an hour or so during the noon heat, then remounted and continued the climb up the mountainside. All afternoon we searched for the buckskin pony, following out the side trails, exploring the scrub oak thickets and the juniper jungles. When we reached the place where the old mine road joined our wagon road we checked that too, backtracking the jeep for several miles to the north, clear to the boundary of the White Sands Missile Range, a padlocked steel gate and a steel picket fence that stretched eastward, as far as the eye could follow, down through the hills and across the desert plain, and westward up the mountainside toward the pass between Thieves’ Peak and the beginning of the San Andres chain of mountains. About eighty miles northwest of where we stood, admiring the DANGER—KEEP OUT signs, lay the site of the first atomic bomb explosion.

Returning from there, we followed wandering deer paths and cattle trails along the spine of a ridge that led toward a junction of two other ridges high on the east side of Thieves’ Mountain. Up in there, too far away to see, was the perennial spring, the corral, and the old log cabin where we would camp overnight. And far above the camp, above timberline, the naked and jagged peak soared into the blue.

“What’s up there?” I pointed toward the summit.

“What do you see up there?” Lee’s gaze followed my pointing finger.

“Well,” I said, “I don’t see anything up there.”

Lee was silent. He lowered his head, returning his eyes to the trail and terrain ahead of us.

“There must be something up there,” I insisted.

“What are you looking for?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Something.”

“You won’t find it up there.”

“How do you know, Lee? Were you up there?”

“Yes, I climbed it once. On foot. You can’t get a horse all the way to the top.”

“Well, you must have seen something up there.” He did not answer. “What did you see up there, Lee?”

“Good God,” he said. “I mean, my God, you’re persistent.” He smiled at me. “You really got the disease, don’t you.”

“What disease?”

“The disease. I don’t know what else to call it, I already feel sorry for the woman who marries you.”

“I’m not going to marry anybody. I like horses better.”

“That’s a twist.”

“All right,” I said patiently. “When you went up there, Lee, what did you find? I mean, besides rock?”

“Besides rock? Well—I found a little grass. Not much. A strange green kind of grass. And some tiny little flowers. Tiny flowers, no bigger than snowflakes.” He paused. “Some wild-sheep droppings. One eagle’s nest.” He stopped.

“What else?”

“That’s about it.”

Lee fell silent again. We rode quietly side by side, through a glade among the stunted pine trees. The quick wild birds flew before us, the sky deep and silent over their spontaneous cries. I waited.

“Are you positive you were up there, Lee?”

“Look,” he said, pointing to sharp hoofprints intersecting the trail ahead of us. “A buck and a couple of
does
pase por aqui
not five minutes ago. See where one of them peed on the ground? Not five minutes ago. We should’ve seen them. I must be getting old.”

“How old are you, Lee,”

“Last year I was thirty-three. Old enough to be crucified. I got married instead. Next year I’ll be thirty-five. Old enough to run for President.”

“Are you going to run for President?”

“I’d rather be right than be wrong. My country, right or wrong? There’s talk about it, Billy. There’s a ground swell of support appearing in Guadalupe County. The grass roots are growing and I’m mending my fences.”

“Let’s talk about something important.”

“Like what? What could that be?”

“I’m hungry.”

“You can say that again.”

“I’m hungry.”

“Now you’re talking. Now you’re making sense. Let’s jog up these here saddleracks and see what the old man has for supper.”

The sun was hanging close to the shoulder of the mountain, roaring down from the cloudless sky, when Lee and I regained the old wagon road and measured its final few switchbacks up to the bench of level ground where the corral and cabin stood. We saw the sorrel stallion, barebacked and glossy, staked out in the little dry park in front of the corral. A thread of smoke dangled over the cabin chimney and Grandfather himself, when he heard our horses, appeared in the open doorway.

“Evening,” he said. “I thought you boys would show about now. I got three cans of beans and a panful of corned beef warming up on the stove.”

“That’ll do for a start,” Lee said.

We dismounted and unsaddled our horses. I was tired. In fact the saddle, as I lugged it to the corral
fence, seemed to weigh approximately five hundred pounds.

“You can just turn old Blue loose, Billy,” Grandfather said. “He’ll stick close to Rocky. You might brush him down a little.”

Lee picketed his horse. We curried our animals with juniper twigs and then went into the cabin, following the scent of food. The inside of the cabin was neat and clean, was furnished with an iron cot, a table and chairs, a cupboard full of canned goods, a kerosene lamp, and other supplies, including a sack of grain suspended on baling wire from the rafters to make life more difficult for the mice and squirrels. A pot of coffee simmered on the stove.

“That smells good,” Lee said.

“Ain’t quite ready yet,” the old man said, stirring the corned beef with a fork. He handed me the empty water bucket. “Billy, would you mind filling that? We’ll be ready to eat as soon as you get back.”

“Yes sir.” I swallowed my disappointment, took the bucket, left the cabin and walked along the footpath toward the spring at the head of the ravine. The path led downward along the base of a cliff, winding among boulders big as boxcars and under tall stately yellow pines, until it reached a sort of glen or grotto in a deep fold of the mountainside. The air felt cool, the light was green and filtered down in there—I thought of the lion. I knelt by the sandy basin of the spring and drank from my cupped hands before filling the pail. The glen was very quiet; I could hear no breeze, no bird cries, no sound at all except the gentle purr of the water as it glided over moss-covered rocks and sank out of sight into the mud and weeds below the spring.

I returned to the cabin, the bucket of water pulling down my arm and shoulder. Grandfather was dishing out the food into tin plates and pouring the coffee. Lee stood near the corral, feeding grain to the horses.

“Come and get it!” Grandfather shouted. To me he
said, “Put the water on the stove, Billy, and bring your plate outside. Too hot to eat in here.”

The three of us sat on the grass against the cabin wall, in the shade, and faced the sunlit world below. We were all silent for a while and too busy to admire the spectacular view, eating what I thought was probably the best meal I had ever had in my life. Later, after second helpings all around, full and comforted, we set our plates aside and began to talk and look at things again.

“How could I forget my cigars.”

“Have a tailormade,” Lee said, offering a cigarette to the old man.

Grandfather examined the cigarette. “They say women enjoy these things.”

“That’s right,” Lee said, “and I enjoy women.” He offered his pack to me. “Cigarette, Billy?”

I hesitated. I wasn’t allowed to smoke, of course. Besides, I preferred the corncob pipe I had hidden in my suitcase back at the ranch-house.

“Put them back,” Grandfather said. “Don’t give the boy one of those.”

“Why not?”

“It’s a filthy, evil, despicable habit, a disgrace to the human race.” Grandfather lit his cigarette and took a deep drag. “He’s too young. Put them back.”

They smoked. I pulled a stem of grass and chewed on it and looked. There was much to look at from where we sat. With the great mountain at our backs, we had a full and open view to the north, east and south—one-half the known world. I could see four different mountain systems, not counting the one holding me up, the lights of two cities, and about seven thousand square miles of the desert in between. I saw the San Andres Mountains rolling north, the Sacramento Mountains beyond Alamogordo, forty miles away to the northeast, the Guadalupe Mountains some eighty miles due east and the Oregon Mountains and the hazy
smudge of El Paso far to the south, with the deserts of Chihuahua spreading toward infinity beyond.

The sun dropped lower. I saw the shadow of Thieves’ Peak creep across the plain toward Grandfather Vogelin’s ranch, toward the village of Baker, toward the Guadalupe Mountains, reaching out to meet the curtain of darkness coming toward us from the east.

“Grandfather?”

“Yes?”

“Did you ever climb the mountain?”

“What mountain?”

“The one above us. Thieves’ Mountain.”

“No, can’t say I did. And I never will. This cabin here’s high enough for me. About as close to Heaven as I ever want to get. You can bury me here.”

“We’ll need dynamite for that,” Lee said.

“Here Lies John Vogelin: Born Forty Years Too Late, Died Forty Years Too Soon,” Grandfather said.

“Why forty years too soon?”

“I figure in forty years civilization will collapse and everything will be back to normal. I wish I could live to see it.”

“Why? You’d be right back were you started from.”

“I’d like that. That’s the place to end up.”

“Don’t you want to get ahead?” Lee grinned at me.

“I’d rather stay behind. I already got a head.”

“You already got a behind, where your head ought to be.”

“Don’t confuse me. It took me seventy years to figure this much out. Who’s going to water the horses?”

Nobody spoke. I stared out at the approaching union of light and dark. Lee and Grandfather stared at me.

“Okay,” Grandfather said, “we’ll try again: who’s going to wash the dishes?”

“I’ll water the horses,” I said.

“Fine. If you start right away you’ll still have time to wash the dishes.”

“I’ll light the lamp for you,” Lee said, “when you’re
through watering the horses. So you don’t have to wash the dishes in the dark.”