The Joshua Tree Page 14

  its

  children.

  Wm. S.

  Desert holly or sheep-fat you’ll call it down in Kern County, but here it’s just saltbush. The Cahuillas, you’ve seen them grinding the seed in their metates, cooking the meal in salted water, and the ground roots pasted with spit onto ant bites.

  In the saltbush, beyond the Tule springs, going after his burro in the morning half-light, he said, that’s where Michael Carroll come up on it. South of Furnace Creek, you’ll remember, Willy boy, maybe twenty miles. Some time January, come into your Golden Girl camp all excited. Wouldn’t go back but told you just where and you hadn’t much else on your mind so’s before long you packed up and went for to see for yourself.

  Back in the saltbush, poke around. Sun’s gone and the light’s a sort of blue and it doesn’t help to know what you’re looking for. White is going to be awful white. Half dug up, it’s over there, coyotes and Carroll who said he was pressing or he’d done it himself. Not above looking over your shoulder yourself and wondering how long the light’d last: might not do in the dark and camp wasn’t quite hard by.

  shearings

  pinned in

  the album

  strength

  to the

  Missis

  Not much to dig, never was more’n a foot or so deep. Bones, white where the sand had blown off, browner when you dig down. Lying there, all doubled up like a jackknife, dumped in, feet higher’n head. Long brown hair, goes on growing when they die, sheriff said – you’d hadn’t the experience – stuck to the skull here and there. And the hole knocked through, shape of the head of a prospector’s hammer. Striped trousers plenty oversize by now and the number-seven prospector’s boots. Under the saltbush, towels – one-blanketers’d take the damndest things – and a pick and a shovel, chewed piece of a valise. Over there by the greasewood a little pile of sticks, rats’d never do. Poke and there’s a bit of canvas. Blood stains and F.H.

  Berryman or Dusty Rhodes Titus, the Desert Post, or one of the others or some fellow nobody ever’d missed? Mule-wagon tracks near, in from the Bennett Well road.

  Kind of creeps on the shoulder blades. No harm in looking behind you, more’n once, never can tell. While you’re wrapping the skull – just fell loose – and the bit of hair in the towel. Take it right in to Los Angeles, be going on mine business.

  labor

  to

  dust

  treasure

  to

  dust

  Nothing to dig for here, that’s clear enough. Not like Old Man Lee, Lee brothers’ dad, them fellows who located the Lee district. He’d dug and dug round Salt Creek, for years, looking for the emigrants’ treasure they’d buried forty years back when they’d knowed they was done in for water and grub. All of’m dead, down by Salt Creek, fifty-two, bones strewn by the coyotes. Found three miles of logging chains near Keane Springs they’d left when the weight bogged them in the sand. Back in ’sixty, figures. Used the chains to lower their wagons and horses down the cliffs into the sink. Be you, Willy, to find the treasure, lying right there in that leather sack Indian Mary showed you. Up at Ash Meadows, the daughter of the Paiute some said’d massacred the lot. And for two horses, a good hundred and fifty dollars in those parts, she’d traded you that gold watch, Howard, full-jeweled, in the hunting case, which they’d got so excited about in Rhyolite when you’d showed it. Lot of other jewelry, diamonds, too she’d not give up, and she’d said how the old brave had sworn her never to show none of it to a white man and how now she’d be cursed.

  That’s what it’s like in the saltbush, or when you run clean out of that too and it’s just sand and devil’s salt. You’d know, Willy my boy, you’d know all right. Ghosts aplenty, even when the sun’s straight up and the wind don’t hardly whisper. Ghosts of the fools and the heroes who got themselves burned and thirsted and hungered to death, or maybe an arrow through their ribs or lead or a hammer in their skull.

  soft rain

  deep well

  Robin

  Robin

  lakes

  Distance just don’t stop out there, keeps on stretching ahead. Thin boots and you’ll dance on the burning black cakes of mud, no blanket and the shivering can kill you with the night wind roaring down on you from the Panamints. It’s the thirst though, mostly, most part of the ghosts are dead of the swollen tongue and the lips all blistered black and the skin cracked dry and the desert whirling and whirling till your legs cave under and there’s no getting up and crawling’ll get you a few yards to die, if you’re lucky, under a grease wood before the coyotes start tearing at you. You’ll know, Willy, and it’s many you’ve saved from just that. Two down in the Mohave, remember them?, and two more up in Wingate, the fellow at Hidden Springs who’d never have found water, how many in the Valley?

  to ice

  to snow

  There’s ghosts aplenty, but not of Willy Speare. Know the springs and the coyote wells and where to drop a rabbit or a kit fox or a coyote, old Tom had taught you well, know where to find a bit of shade when the sun’s getting heavier than you like, know the eye’s a liar for distance in the Valley and the shimmering can move a mountain twenty miles. Then it’ll be mostly all right. More’n that. It’ll be home, for a good stretch of years, though maybe not much longer. Under a tarp tent, or often as not the sky, or a dugout and a bit of corrugated and the powder boxes.

  windmills

  frogs

  the

  Volga

  There’s the ghosts of Dan Mullan’s friends. Tells the story while you’re sitting helpless and remorseful under the Bullfrog barber’s razor. Yup, take’r clean off; not touch nothing else, though, be needing the mustache and the long hair still. Slicked up for going East . . . Jenny, Jenny, will you be at the ball? . . . Naked and pale like a baby, you’ve lost your old friend, Willy boy.

  reeds

  skunks

  a case of

  White

  House

  milk

  Dan Mullan he’d knowed the Valley some. Must’ve been other routes, though. Headed out with two greenhorn fellows after gold. From Bullfrog, in the summer, for the Panamints, pack train of burros. Got himself lost in the Valley sand. Hot so’s they could hardly drink the water in their canteens. You’ll know how that can be. Lost, and they pull into a canyon for some degree of shade, five o’clock maybe on the second afternoon. One fellow left about dusk on foot to search out water, never did come back. Next morning the other left, looking for his friend. Never showed up, neither of them, till prospectors found them few days later mostly eaten up, not far apart either, from the tracks you could see they’d never known it. Dan Mullan he fired his revolver now and then and built himself bonfires as signals. Two days more, a swallow or two left, maybe half a pint, canteen in the shade of a rock, provisions piled some protected from the sun. The burros had already wandered off looking for water, never turned up again . . . Plenty wild ones still, Willy, or have they shot them all too for fox food? . . . Must of gone delirious, but he wakes one morning and sees things clear and takes a raisin or two and another swallow of water. Dozes, wakes again to noises and sees shaggy-tails, rats, and he’s too weak to move now or even yell. Busy taking off every last bit of grub, piece by piece, bringing pebbles and twigs in trade. And they knock over his canteen. Next he knows he’s slung on a Mexican’s burro, howling like a coyote. Months before he got his right mind back.

  First time you’d known of trading rats, where was it? back in Arizona Territory? when your boots were gone and some fellow’s thrown-away hat in their place, your apples gone and onions instead. And you’d got pistol mad and there’d of been some, more’n some, shooting if they hadn’t showed you the tracks.

  wind

  in the

  mane

  Arizona. Jerome, alone in the desert, though they’d no lions that you ever saw, nor any Bibles either for that. You’d told her that and she’d laughed so pretty. Down by the river bank, where you’d told h
er and you took her hand and her laughter changed and your heart turned all to ice. Will she be there, Willy boy? Oh Jenny, Jenny, will you be at the ball?

  away

  All slicked up for going East, outfitted, grubstaked to look for greenbacks in the East. Riderson, powder people, got you mostly talked into it, C. P. Riderson, whatever that fellow Hatch telegrammed them. Hatch, engineer fellow, down from Lead, South Dakota, to expert the Golden Girl, with grub and equipment piled about. Came in to Ludlow on the Santa Fe, transferred to the Tonopah and Tidewater being built. Up to Salt Spring, still constructing in the Amargosa Canyon. Came up in a borax wagon and twelve mules, men and supplies, up through Saratoga on the south road into the Valley. Kind of sketchy, your trail up One-Man Canyon, hadn’t figured on the likes of them. Bit of jolting didn’t much relish, and Speare’s Camp conveniences weren’t famous, least not to your hearing.

  So Hatch he takes one look up the hillside, next morning, where you point out the mouth of the Golden Girl, says, “It’s too far away, we’re not interested.”

  lunchpails

  Doesn’t even trouble to go into the mine. Just takes up and gets set to take off. Gets the borax wagon filled with grub and hay. Seems like a poor way not to sell, nor would you want your reputation suffering from wrong impressions he might be going to send East. Thirty-thirty, that’ll hold him adequate, hold him while you get out ahead, unload that grub too, hardly seems right to haul it all the way out again. One bag of oatmeal, hundred pounds, that’s a lot of oatmeal, keep the camp and the Indians in the neighborhood going for a good piece.

  in the

  orchard

  So’s you’re out to the Silver Lake telegraph office and Riderson replies you’d done right by Hatch and he wants the mine, Hatch or no Hatch. Which makes you wonder why in the first place . . . but no matter.

  So they’ll have you go East, fix the deal, and that’s what you’d have too. Twenty-eight years you’ve got, gold and greenbacks in your jeans, and you’d not been East – except for Ellis Island and the heifers and Ma still smelling of lye soap made from the drippings. Best get slicked up.

  Wine, T. J. Wine, you’ll be going with him, company. Finest fellow you’ll be likely to know. Yankee fellow, real Yankee, Sommersworth in New Hampshire.

  away

  Gnädiges Fräulein Lily. You’ll come with me, won’t you? Help me with my German, Hamburg, till I get it straight again. And we’ll go to the Volga where the cream’s so thick. And we’ll go to Siberia where the radio rays’ll melt the arthritis. And to India, they know, they know about the human soul when no one here would. You’ll come, won’t you, Lily?

  Wine, been Weinberg and he’d changed it. Promoter, rich, but he must’ve wanted to be richer. Poked around plenty in Death Valley. Come up on him when he’s staying with Scotty down at his camp at the mouth of One-Man Canyon. But he’d figured Scotty pretty well by then and it didn’t need Wingate the next year to be convinced. Inventor too, he’d got an auger that’d make a square hole; that’s some trick.

  Good times, that trip, a fine fellow, human, you couldn’t imagine, from the East. All slicked up, but your hair’s still down to your shoulders and you’ve got a fancy cowboy shirt and a tailored buckskin and your boots and a stiff new hat and your pistols and your rifle, and you’ll show them a thing or two back East.

  hurdy-gurdy

  monkey

  on a

  string

  gypsies

  their

  performing

  bear

  Shooting practice, every stop along the line, Santa Fe, for the leg-stretching and the grub at the station restaurant. Get a bit of a crowd and some bets, and Wine to stand behind you so’s nobody’d notice. Practice for Boston where Wine had got them already primed. Wasn’t exactly cheating, not like Buffalo Bill and the wooden bullets, just a kind of trick. You’ll be showing them. First thing when you get there, almost. The Boston Gun Club, Wine and his long-haired fellow from California. Bets. Watts the Chief of Police and some fellow Glidden and the whole Club turned out. Beat’m, cleaned them pretty good, with that trick of yours to make sure. Wine right close behind you so’s they couldn’t see you’d had your knee wedged and propped in under the shooting-gallery bench; cuts the weaving so you’ll get a good bead.

  And that’s just the beginning. The ball, it’ll be later, so you’ll not be thinking too much of Jenny at first. Jenny at the piano smiling to you over her pretty shoulder. There’s your historic tour, with Longfellow’s house, and Harvard where Ed Lemmon’s a professor who’s to be president of your Speare Gold Mining Company and who’s done a bit of prospecting himself; but no, guess it must be Technology where he’s at. And there’s Bunker Hill right next to the rooming house where they’ve put you up, and the Massachusetts State House which isn’t much. And at Harvard they take you to see Tom Lawson, big promoter, and you go through three outside doors and offices before you reach him and he’ll be asking all about Death Valley gold.

  the hand

  to cuff you

  lye

  flour

  Ed Lemmon, who’s something to do with a paint company too and you’ll never get it quite figured. He’s the boss at first. And he and the group, that fellow with the textile mill, they put up fifty thousand dollars and they want to get in and out quick at the Golden Girl and you’re sour and plenty sore because that’s no way to develop a mine. So Riderson, they kind of take over.

  law

  Speare Gold Mining Co., Office, No. 80 State Street, Mines in the Funeral Mountains, Death Valley, California, 65 Claims, William Speare, Field Expert, Boston, Massachusetts. Card and all.

  corruptions

  desert

  And Wine, he’ll be taking you up to New Hampshire, there on Lake Winnipesaukee, where he’ll take you over to the party at the Colonel’s. Horse buggies and automobiles, brass all shined up good, by the dozen. Little girls opening the gates, and the band and the fireworks and the duckpins down by the lake and the fancy guest houses and all the servants and the swimming which is something you’ll not be bet to do and they get you to put on some shooting and you talk it up good and they heave up bottles and you bring them down without any wooden bullets. The yacht the Colonel has, steaming and tooting among the islands and the dance out by a lighthouse he’d built. And they play Jenny’s music, waltzing and whirling and so sad it’s lucky it’s dark. And on the way back in the dark they see a swimming deer and you wouldn’t shoot a deer like that and they pull on the steam whistle and careen around and run him down to his screaming fear and you’re plenty mad.

  antelope

  bones

  Is it the next day? Wine, he takes you someplace and there’s the professor, Lopliss, and he and Wine talk about the hypnos’ and before you hardly know you’re in it too and they’ve taught you a bit of it too. Still don’t use it much, seems kind of unnatural, though Wine he says he only does it for knowledge and for benefit. Kind of thing they’d do in the East, though. Don’t like it much, hypnos’.

  Woodes, he’s the one, editor of that Boston newspaper, he’s the one who’ll be doing the ball for you, at the Young’s Hotel. They’ll not tell you much but you give them Jenny’s name and her address and they say they’ll be sure she’ll be there and she couldn’t help but know you’re in Boston what with all the newspapers writing about you and the photographs and Wine talking things up more than a little.

  Your wavy hair and your mustache waxed and your pistols shined up – so’s your boots – and a black suit that’s just a little less city swell than Woodes’s own. The champagne, and the long table covered with little bites that don’t seem much, the orchestra playing very dignified and they get to that same waltz again and again. Jenny’s waltz.

  But Jenny, she’ll never come, and the best you knew of Jenny was down by the river bank.

  Boston. It hurts, Willy, it hurts you deep and you’re going to be back and it’s going to hurt some more. And never will you see Jenny again, thou
gh you heard for certain she got the invitation.

  corruptions

  It hurts, and it seems like they want it to. When they whisper behind they make sure to whisper loud, “Outlandish,” and “What will they think of next?”

  city

  citizen

  bones

  Wine, he gets it too, with the talk about Jews, though a finer man there never was, Yankee, real Yankee.

  Like they’ve got something you haven’t now nor ever will have. Like you’re a part of something naughty they don’t tell their wives about. Like the effort’s not really worth it and it will be a considerable relief when they’ve seen the last of you. Protecting and protecting, all fixed up in their big houses and their big families, preserved.