The Big Wander Page 6

  “They said ’yes’!”

  “That’ll be about it. I know these people.”

  “Horses,” the old woman said helpfully. “Horses.”

  “Horses!” Clay declared. “Something about horses!”

  “Paiute,” her husband added helpfully.

  “Paiutes! That’s an Indian tribe—I’ve heard of them. Paiute horses. My uncle must be riding Paiute horses….”

  The old people couldn’t keep this up. They would smile apologetically and look at the floor, and then look away. Almost like they’d been cornered and had to get free, they turned and went. Clay tried to hold on to them. He ran after them keeping up a stream of questions as they stepped briskly now for their old truck. His manner only seemed to hasten their departure. He couldn’t believe it, but he had to watch their truck disappear in the dust.

  Clay looked back to Weston still standing on the porch. Weston hadn’t seemed to be of much use at all. “You let them go!” Clay cried, all exasperated. “They know about my uncle! They’ve seen my uncle!”

  “Now that’s really something,” Weston said, settling back in his rocking chair.

  “You know these people? You know where they came from?”

  “Why sure. Pull up a seat and I’ll tell you all about it. Their name’s Yazzie. They don’t trade as much here as they do over at Navajo Mountain Trading Post, but I see ’em from time to time. Their grandson about your age speaks good English, and so does his dad. Too bad they weren’t with the old people today.”

  “She said ‘horses.’ What did she mean?”

  “She seemed to connect your uncle and horses…. Maybe they knew about him being in the rodeo. Can’t say. But I can tell you what they meant by ‘Paiute.’ They were telling you where they saw him—at Paiute Creek. That’s these people’s sheep camp where their family spends the summer. They weren’t leaving you high and dry. They wouldn’t have said ‘Paiute’ just to say where they’re from, because they know full well I already know that. They told you where they knew your uncle from, I’m sure of it.”

  “Then he’s there now!”

  “Could be, or else he passed through there some time ago.”

  “He’s there now! Why else would they mention it! And ‘horses’—maybe he has a horse now instead of only the burro. Maybe that’s what they meant. So where is it, their sheep camp?”

  “A little over halfway between here and Navajo Mountain. As the raven flies, maybe thirty miles.”

  “Can I call right now? Go over to Goulding’s and call? I could talk to that boy who speaks English, or his father.”

  Weston laughed out loud. “That’ll be the day. Not only is this the Navajo Reservation we’re talking about, it’s the most remote part of the reservation. Call ’em up—that’s a good one.”

  “How close can I get on a road?”

  “About right here. A couple miles closer if you went way clear around to Navajo Mountain Trading Post. I’m not sure you get the picture, son. That country’s too rugged for roads—it’s all up-and-down and every-which-way. People around here call all that country ‘the Back of Beyond.’ Nobody even lives out there year-round, only in summer. Sure makes me wonder what your uncle’s doing out there…. Every decade or two a white man will drift in there looking for Hoskininni’s lost silver mine, the one they call Pish-la-ki.”

  “Maybe he’s found their silver and they’re … hostile.”

  “Hostile! On the warpath you mean? That’s another good one!”

  “Well, where’s the closest phone to their camp?”

  “Navajo Mountain Trading Post.”

  “Then that must be where my uncle called me and my brother from, back when he called us in Seattle. But it doesn’t sound anything like ‘Restaurant Hay.’”

  “Come again?”

  “That’s all right. Never mind. How long would it take me to get to Paiute Creek … to the sheep camp … if I walked and led the burro…. I’m a good hiker.”

  “You’re thinking so fast your brain’s going to burn up. I rode a horse, led a packhorse from here all the way to Navajo Mountain when I wasn’t much older than you…. I suppose it would take you three or four days on foot.”

  “I could do it! I can read maps and all that—couldn’t I do it?”

  “I imagine you could, but doing it alone’s the risky part. Nobody to help if you get into any trouble, you know what I’m talking about? What if you slipped and fell or something?”

  “But you did it yourself—you’ve crossed through there, other people have crossed through there alone. My uncle did.”

  “True enough,” Weston said, his gaze drifting off toward the canyons. “True enough. And I could help you get ready. Now why don’t we think about something else for a while here, like fixing something to eat? We can work on this tomorrow.”

  It had gotten late by the time they finished supper. Looming to the west in the twilight, Navajo Mountain beckoned. Clay couldn’t sleep. How could he with so many plans to make. Nothing could stop him now, he could see that. Weston would help him, he said he would.

  He would have to make a plan, a way for Weston to know he had made it safely. When he got to the trading post at Navajo Mountain he could call back over to Goulding’s. They could get word to Weston that he was okay. He thought about how much time to allow. If they didn’t hear from him in eight days, he decided, that’s when someone should come looking for him. From what Weston had said, eight days would give him time to find his uncle and to ride on in to the trading post, plenty of time. It would work out perfect.

  He’d buy another two-quart canteen and that would make three. He’d take the backpack along in case the burro went lame or something. In the empty backpack he had his scout survival kit. He’d buy all the supplies he needed right here in the trading post, he’d pack that burro and throw the slickest diamond hitch this country has ever seen.

  Mike, he thought. Do I tell Mike? Maybe I should go to Goulding’s in the morning, maybe I should go tonight and be there at the phone in the morning to catch him before he goes to work. I can tell him I know where Uncle Clay is and tell him to get back out here and join me.

  But he won’t. He won’t leave Sheila, he wouldn’t come all the way back out here. And then he wouldn’t like the idea of me taking off by myself. Better not to tell him. If I wait I’ll be able to call him from Navajo Mountain Trading Post, say hello, and then put Uncle Clay on the line. That’s the way to do it. I wish I could see the look on his face!

  But I can tell Marilyn. I can tell her everything.

  He wrote into the night. Finally his weariness caught up with him and he brought his letter to a close:

  In a few days I’ll find my uncle. It’s going to be a great moment when I come walking into that sheep camp. Please write me directly at Navajo Mountain Trading Post, Navajo Mountain, Arizona. I can’t imagine what’s happened to your other letters—I’ve been wondering if you received my picture alongside Pal. I’m going to ask Weston to forward my mail to Navajo Mountain as soon as anything arrives. I’ll be thinking of you. Do you know that song, “Cast Your Fate to the Wind”? Think of me out there in the Back of Beyond, Marilyn. I’ll be thinking of you. The Big Wander continues!

  Lovingly,

  Clay

  9

  Clay woke with a start, wakened out of his fitful sleep when the back of his mind told him he wasn’t just dreaming about monsters, that one was actually right next to him in the dark breathing down his neck with a wheeze and a rattle and a roar. He had no idea where he was or what was happening. It was pitch-black and something very large and not human and very much alive was right there next to him. He tore his way out of his sleeping bag, and seeing the dim form of a doorway in the darkness he scrambled for it, remembering that he was alone in the wilderness and had gone to sleep inside a long-deserted hogan.

  Outside, he didn’t go far. A sudden pain in his foot stopped him and reminded him he was barefoot. In the light of the crescent moon he c
ould make out that some small something had attached itself to his foot. A cactus.

  He turned around to look at the hogan’s doorway and saw the silhouette of a burro’s face and long ears looking out at him. “Oh, it’s only you, Pal,” he said into the night. “Good grief. Don’t scare me like that.”

  He’d forgotten he even had a burro, or left her on a rope long enough so she could come inside. Well, now he knew they sometimes do sleep lying down. Clay laughed at himself out loud, but the sound of his own voice being extinguished by the darkness and evoking no reply hardly reassured him. He shivered all the way through his spine. Was it the desert’s night air or his own fear? He’d never felt like this when he was out with Mike.

  Mike. His brother had no idea he was out here. “You’ll be safe here,” he remembered his brother saying when he agreed to let him stay behind at Goulding’s. “Don’t make me regret this.”

  The burro came outside the hogan and Clay ducked back in and fumbled for his flashlight. Carefully he pulled the cactus segment free of his toe. Now it was stuck to his finger. He shook it loose and it stuck to one of the poles in the hogan’s cribwork roof.

  Clay got back in the mummy bag and zipped it all the way up. He could turn back, he considered. It had taken so long to get packed he’d only made it around the north end of Hoskininni Mesa. He could be back at Oljeto by afternoon. He could go back to work there or even back at Goulding’s, and have word sent somehow to his uncle to come visit him.

  What would Weston think about him quitting? The old man had even worked on Pal’s feet, which hadn’t made the burro happy. Weston hadn’t been sure Pal’s shoes would stay on, and he said there’d be a world of bare sandstone to cross….

  He tried his belly, his side, his back. His wadded-up jacket felt more like a stone than a pillow.

  The night air in the desert had a bite to it. Still, the cold didn’t compare with the North Cascades, or even the damp woods along the coast. He had to smile thinking about all those freezing nights when he was out with Mike in the old days. Mike had told him that he’d heard you slept a lot warmer in a sleeping bag if you slept with no clothes on at all. It was hard to follow, but Mike had some explanation for the science of it. So he’d followed Mike’s lead, and he’d shivered all night long—for years. He never slept at all unless in fits. It was Mike who eventually experimented with sleeping with his clothes on, and suddenly the old science was overthrown.

  For a long time after that, Clay remembered, he’d slept in every layer he had until he was so bulky he couldn’t roll over, until he was so warm he thought he’d roast.

  Pish-la-ki, Clay thought. The name popped into his head like a magic word. Abra-ca-dabra, pish-la-ki. The lost silver mine of none other than the legendary Hoskininni. He could picture his uncle digging with a pick deep inside the mine, working only at night and by the feeble light of a headlamp. Uncle Clay might do that; treasure would appeal to him. Or perhaps the silver was already melted into bullion, and Uncle Clay had discovered its hiding place, and the Navajos have caught him with all those silver bars. Weston had laughed, but the Navajos might not think it was so funny. Maybe they had him locked up in a cage in their sheep camp … but then why would the old Navajos have drawn attention to his picture at Oljeto … that still didn’t explain about horses or Restaurant Hay….

  Clay had almost drifted off to sleep when he heard the scampering of little feet on the dry leaves that had blown into the hogan. His flashlight revealed a cactus mouse with its outsized hind legs hopping around the dusty floor. He ushered it outside and was almost asleep again when sudden barks shattered the stillness not far away at all. He bolted upright. It wasn’t but a second until the barks became yips and the yipping shifted into quavering sirens climbing higher and higher in pitch, as maybe a half-dozen coyotes harmonized like a band of lunatics and brought the hair rising on the back of his neck. Barks, yips, howls, and then only the quavering sirens wailing in the night, reminding him just how alone he was and how little he knew.

  As suddenly as it had begun, their singing ended. Clay reassured himself that the coyotes wouldn’t come after him. It was a good thing they thought he was so powerful. He wasn’t going to tell them any different.

  Almost asleep again, he thought he heard a faint whimpering outside. No, he thought, lifting his head. Just my imagination.

  But as soon as he put his head back down he heard it again. This time louder, at the doorway.

  A patch of white. A little ball of white. Clay flicked his flashlight on, and its beam fell on a tiny dog trembling and wanting to come in. A tiny curly-haired white dog with brown ears and brown patches over his eyes like question marks. “Come on in, little guy,” he said reassuringly. “Did those coyotes scare you too? You can come in.”

  The little dog came in with his head almost on the ground and wagging his long tail hopefully.

  Clay went to the door. No sign of any people, just the night and the stars. “Where did you come from, little guy? Did someone leave you alone out here?”

  Clay stayed up talking to the dog and petting him, and listening to his whistling breath as the dog fell happily asleep. “Curly,” Clay said aloud. “I’ll call him Curly.” He fell asleep with the dog’s paw on his hand, and he woke a few hours later looking into the dog’s bright black eyes, alert and friendly. Curly’s tail was beating out a rhythm on the dusty floor.

  He mixed up some powdered milk and made pancakes, plenty of pancakes with canned peaches he diced and added to the batter just for the occasion. Mike would have been impressed. Curly liked the pancakes just fine and ate like he was starving, which he probably was.

  Pal came over and joined in, ate two or three before Clay sent her back to browsing for her own breakfast. After grazing on the sort of brush that made Clay’s mouth hurt just watching, the portly burro came back over and gingerly removed and chewed up the label from the peach can. Any sort of paper she considered a delicacy.

  Clay oriented his map with the biggest landmark around, the broad forested dome of Navajo Mountain rising to the west. “You just joined the Big Wander,” Clay told Curly. “Lucky for you, you found me. Lucky for me I found you. You may not believe this, but I was thinking about turning tail.”

  The dog lay down, ran his tongue up and across his rubbery black upper lip, and placed his two front paws barely on the map.

  “What do you think, Curly? Across the head of Copper Canyon—doesn’t look too steep—up and through the gap between No Man’s Mesa and Nakai Mesa, down into Nakai Canyon, up onto Paiute Mesa, and down into Paiute Creek to find the sheep camp. That’s how Weston said to go. And that’s where we meet up with Uncle Clay. Big black hat, on horseback or leading a burro. Chipped tooth … no, not the burro, the man. You ought to have a conversation with Hubcap Willie if you think I’m confusing. Hubcap was an old desert rat I met. Maybe that’s what I’m turning into, a desert rat. What do you say, Curly? We can do it!”

  The little dog barked sharply in reply.

  “That’s it, Curly. You and me, pardner.”

  10

  Half an hour down the bare slopes into upper Copper Canyon, Pal’s load shifted and pitched over on one side. A few more steps, and one pannier ended up practically underneath the burro. Clay’s empty backpack was dragging the ground.

  The burro was looking at him with undisguised disdain.

  “Sorry Pal,” Clay apologized. “I thought I had those belly cinches tight. I’ll never do it again.”

  There was nothing to do but unpack and start over, and it wasn’t much fun. As early as it was, the day was scorching already. Being pinned in one spot sure didn’t help.

  A minute after they’d started up again, Pal lay down. She was obviously having second thoughts about this expedition.

  It took some mighty pulling to bring her to her feet.

  A little ways farther, she lay down again.

  Clay looked for something to hit her with, to make her get back up, when he remembered, “Ne
ver strike her for she is a noble soul.”

  “Rise, noble donkey!” Clay commanded, pulling with all his strength on the halter and lead rope. “Help me, Curly!”

  The dog’s high-pitched barking did seem to help. As Pal rose to her feet, the burro’s lustrous eyes and droll mouth seemed to say, “Sure you know what you’re doing?”

  Clay pressed into the barrenlands hoping the day would produce a rain shower, but it hadn’t rained since he arrived at Monument Valley and this day was starting out like all the others with the sky nothing but blue. And he’d started on the last of his two-quart canteens already. Back in Oljeto he’d thought a gallon and a half was plenty of water. In the Cascades he and Mike had carried only a quart each.

  “This isn’t the Cascades,” he observed aloud, surveying the gravelly redlands around him and the slickrock monuments scattered here and there to the north and back to the east. “And this isn’t the movies either. We’d better find some water. Nobody’s going to come looking for us for seven more days.”

  It felt like the moisture was being sucked out of him by the minute. Now that he’d started thinking about being thirsty, his throat felt more and more parched. In the wide wastes of Copper Canyon, Clay found no water along the bottoms of the gullies. Thank goodness for my long sleeves and my hat and my trousers, he thought. You wouldn’t have a chance out here without them.

  “We could stand to find water anytime now, guys,” he told his companions.

  He wandered ahead into the heat of midday until he knew he didn’t have any choice, he had to get out of the sun. At last he found a bit of an outcrop with just enough shade for him and the dog.

  Clay crouched there all afternoon, moving by fractions of inches with the small piece of shade, and watched the moon set. Too bad the moon’s not up in the evenings and brighter, he thought. I should be traveling when it’s cool. Curly had his tongue out and was panting heavily. It was alarming to see how steadily the beads of water dropped from his tongue. The burro stood in the open with eyelids at half-mast.