Johnny had found a place in the rocks and was reloading his rifle and replacing the empty cylinder of his pistol with another. That was the old way, for when loading took time, a man who needed a gun often carried fully loaded cylinders that could be quickly put in place.
“Johnny.” Mike spoke loudly but he was watching Zipacna. “Get through the hole. You’ve no time.”
“I ain’t leavin’ you.”
“You’ve got to. When I get a chance I’ll make my break.”
“You have no chance,” Zipacna said. “Now I kill you!”
He took a quick, fencer’s lunge with his left fingers stiffly extended, stabbing for Mike’s eye. Mike ducked in time and the stabbing hand skidded around his skull. But those extended fingers were like steel.
Mike feinted, then smashed a left to the body and missed a crossing right to the chin. Zipacna stepped back, then another of those stabbing lunges. The stiff fingers hit Mike just above the eye and cut deep, showering him with blood. Zipacna sprang close and tried to throw him with a rolling hip lock.
Mike stabbed his own fingers down into a spot just above the hipbone, and Zipacna’s knees buckled. He fell and Mike fell with him. They both lunged to their feet, and Mike took a quick glance toward the place of the opening.
Zipacna struck again with the stabbing fingers, and again they cut deep. Blood streaming down his face, Mike dodged another stabbing blow and slipped inside, smashing both fists to the body, then whipping a right hook over Zipacna’s shoulder that split his cheekbone.
Zipacna staggered and Mike moved in, smashing another hook to the body, and then a left that crunched Zipacna’s nose. Zipacna staggered, then fell. Scrambling to his feet, he fought like a madman, clawing at Mike’s face with steellike fingers.
Mike slammed another blow to the body, but it was corded with muscle. Nevertheless, Zipacna winced at the blow, and Mike put everything he had into a right uppercut, turning his body with the weight behind it.
The fist collided with Zipacna’s chin. His feet left the ground and he came down hard.
Turning swiftly, Mike lunged for the opening he hoped was there.
In that flashing instant he saw that Johnny was gone, but just as he reached the spot, something thrown hard from behind struck him behind the ear.
He felt himself falling, and in that last instant of consciousness he lunged forward, then fell, face down. Something seized him violently by the collar and he was jerked along the ground. Desperately, only half-conscious, he tried to struggle, but the vicious grip on his collar would not yield. He was dragged roughly along the ground, and in that instant his last grip on consciousness failed.
*
Chapter 44
*
BLOOD.
There was blood on the ground where he lay. The side of his face was against the earth and his eyes were open and he was staring at blood on the grass, blood on the sand.
It was his blood. His mind told him that, although he could not have explained how he knew. He moved a hand, wanting to touch his face.
“Hey! He’s comin’ out of it! He isn’t dead yet.”
“Hard man to kill,” somebody said.
Somebody knelt beside him and gentle fingers touched his face. “He’s cut on the forehead,” somebody said, and then a woman’s voice said, “It was Zipacna.”
The voice was that of Kawasi.
“I’m all right.” He spoke aloud. “Somebody threw something, hit me on the back of the head.”
“You were hit, all right.” That was Gallagher speaking. “You’ve got a welt back there as big as both my fists.”
Struggling, Mike sat up. “I’m all right,” he repeated. “Something grabbed me back there.”
“It was Chief,” Gallagher said. “He pulled you through.”
“He what?”
“Grabbed you by the collar and pulled you through—just in time.”
Carefully, Raglan got to his feet. He swayed for an instant, then steadied himself. “Did anything else come through?” He looked at Kawasi. “I mean, except our crowd?”
“Nobody. Nothing.”
“Mike?” It was Erik Hokart. “Thanks. Thanks for both of us.”
“It was nothing,” he lied, “simply nothing at all.”
He looked around. “Where are we?”
Gallagher hooked his thumbs behind his belt. “On top of No Man’s, waiting for a helicopter to take us off.”
“Isn’t there a trail? There was supposed to be a trail.”
“There is one,” Gallagher said, “but we haven’t found it yet. You come over with me next week and I’ll hike it with you.”
His head throbbed with a dull, heavy ache. Tentatively, he touched his brow. It was caked with dried blood now. He had been cut to the bone at least twice.
He wanted to get cleaned up, and then he wanted to lie down. He just wanted to rest, to sleep. He wanted to sleep for a week. He said as much.
“Not yet,” Gallagher said, “I’ve got something to show you.”
He would not explain.
The helicopter took them back to the Haunted Mesa.
At the ruin, Erik began gathering his belongings, and Mike picked up his backpack. He could see his car, not too far away. “We’ll go back to Tamarron,” he said to Kawasi. “Erik, you’d better bring Melisande and come with me. You, too, Johnny. There’s plenty of room.”
“Mike?” Gallagher said. “Got something you should see. That there spacequake or whatever it was happened last night. Happened just after Chief pulled you through the hole. Seems like ever’body wasn’t so lucky.”
“What do you mean?”
Gallagher had been leading him toward the kiva. Now he lifted a hand and pointed.
Where the window had been there were some fallen stones, and behind them an intact stone wall. Intact but for one thing.
A human body cannot pass through a solid. Or can it? The brick wall was there, and in the middle of it was Volkmeer’s head, a shoulder, and one arm with a grasping hand.
The stones of the ancient wall, apparently undisturbed for centuries, were built around him, perhaps even through him. Somewhere on the other side was the rest of him, the part that did not make it through.
Volkmeer was dead. To all intents and purposes he might have been dead, almost mummified, for centuries.
“Try explaining that,” Gallagher said. “Just try.”
“You explain it,” Raglan said. “I’m a stranger here myself.”
They stood silent for a minute, and then Gallagher said, “Eden’s gone. Deeded the place to Mary and just pulled out.”
At the helicopter Gallagher said, “Want me to fly you back?”
“We’ll drive,” Raglan said, “But thanks.” He paused a minute, then said, “Gallagher? Did you ever make fire with a bow and blunt arrow?”
“Sure. Lots of times when I was a youngster. An old Paiute showed me how.”
Mike Raglan walked out away from the ruin, and thrust a stick in the ground, tying a red bandana to the end. “They should be able to see that,” he said.
At the base of it he placed a crude bow, fashioned from a somewhat bent stick and a piece of rawhide, which he looped around a blunt arrow. Taking a short board from the ruin he gouged out a hole to receive the end of the arrow, then cut a notch from the hole to the edge of the board. In the hole he placed a few shavings; at the notch, the tinder for a small fire.
From his backpack he took a small magnifying glass and placed it on the top of a rock nearby.
Gallagher shook his head. “What’s all that about? I don’t get it.”
“For the Saqua,” Raglan said. “They need fire, they worship fire, but I don’t believe they know how to make fire.”
Kawasi was waiting for him at the car. Melisande and Erik were in the back seat.
Gallagher had walked over with him. “You’re leaving, then?” He waved a hand. “What about all this?”
“All of what?” Mike Raglan looked at him
wide-eyed. “I don’t know what you are talking about, Gallagher. Erik thought about building a house out here but changed his mind. We came out to get him. That’s all there is.”
“Are you crazy? You’ve got the greatest story ever. You could write a book, you could—”
Mike Raglan started the car. He looked over at Gallagher, extending his hand.
“I could,” he said, “but who’d believe it?”
The End
Author’s Note
*
XIBALBA: ALSO WRITTEN as Shibalba, is frequently referred to in the Popol Vuh, the sacred book of the Quiché Maya, as the lower regions where lived tormentors of men, and a home of all things evil. It is mentioned in The Annals of the Cakchiquels as an underground place of great power and splendor.
HOUSE OF GLOOM: in Xibalba, a place of darkness and shadows, known to few, feared by all.
LORDS OF XIBALBA: referred to in the Popol Vuh as promoters of evil and destruction.
VARANEL: the Night Guards, soldiers of the Lords of Xibalba.
ZIPACNA: a mythological figure of great power, finally destroyed, or at least defeated, by Hunahpu.
ANASAZI: We do not know what the cliff dwellers called themselves or what they were called by their neighbors. The name is of Navajo origin and was given to the ancient ones who preceded the Navajo in the Four Corners area. That there was trade and communication between the Anasazi and the Maya is well established. Mummified parrots from Central America have been found in Anasazi graves. Archaeologists have been slowly piecing together the story of the cliff dwellers from fragments of pottery, weaving, sandals, and such, but they are hampered by the thoughtless vandalism of pot-hunters, who by removing a pot from its place of discovery make it impossible to place it properly in history. Often it is similar to removing several key pieces from a jigsaw puzzle, then expecting the puzzle to be completed.
Much fine, painstaking work has been done, yet we have only begun to learn what the Anasazi have to teach us. I, for one, believe man’s life on this continent and our neighbor continent to the south is much, much longer than has been surmised.
About Louis L’Amour
*
“I think of myself in the oral tradition—
as a troubadour, a village tale-teller, the man
in the shadows of the campfire. That’s the way
I’d like to be remembered as a storyteller.
A good storyteller.”
IT IS DOUBTFUL that any author could be as at home in the world re-created in his novels as Louis Dearborn L’Amour. Not only could he physically fill the boots of the rugged characters he wrote about, but he literally “walked the land my characters walk.” His personal experiences as well as his lifelong devotion to historical research combined to give Mr. L’Amour the unique knowledge and understanding of people, events, and the challenge of the American frontier that became the hallmarks of his popularity.
Of French-Irish descent, Mr. L’Amour could trace his own family in North America back to the early 1600s and follow their steady progression westward, “always on the frontier.” As a boy growing up in Jamestown, North Dakota, he absorbed all he could about his family’s frontier heritage, including the story of his great-grandfather who was scalped by Sioux warriors.
Spurred by an eager curiosity and desire to broaden his horizons, Mr. L’Amour left home at the age of fifteen and enjoyed a wide variety of jobs including seaman, lumberjack, elephant handler, skinner of dead cattle, miner, and an officer in the transportation corps during World War II. During his “yondering” days he also circled the world on a freighter, sailed a dhow on the Red Sea, was shipwrecked in the West Indies and stranded in the Mojave Desert. He won fifty-one of fifty-nine fights as a professional boxer and worked as a journalist and lecturer. He was a voracious reader and collector of rare books. His personal library contained 17,000 volumes.
Mr. L’Amour “wanted to write almost from the time I could talk.” After developing a widespread following for his many frontier and adventure stories written for fiction magazines, Mr. L’Amour published his first full-length novel, Hondo, in the United States in 1953. Every one of his more than 120 books is in print; there are nearly 270 million copies of his books in print worldwide, making him one of the bestselling authors in modern literary history. His books have been translated into twenty languages, and more than forty-five of his novels and stories have been made into feature films and television movies.
His hardcover bestsellers include The Lonesome Gods, The Walking Drum (his twelfth-century historical novel), Haunted Mesa, Last of the Breed, and The Haunted Mesa. His memoir, Education of a Wandering Man, was a leading bestseller in 1989. Audio dramatizations and adaptations of many L’Amour stories are available on cassette tapes from Bantam Audio publishing.
The recipient of many great honors and awards, in 1983 Mr. L’Amour became the first novelist ever to be awarded the Congressional Gold Medal by the United States Congress in honor of his life’s work. In 1984 he was also awarded the Medal of Freedom by President Reagan.
Louis L’Amour died on June 10, 1988. His wife, Kathy, and their two children, Beau and Angelique, carry the L’Amour publishing tradition forward.
Bantam Books by Louis L’Amour
NOVELS
Bendigo Shafter
Borden Chantry
Brionne
The Broken Gun
The Burning Hills
The Californios
Callaghen
Catlow
Chancy
The Cherokee Trail
Comstock Lode
Conagher
Crossfire Trail
Dark Canyon
Down the Long Hills
The Empty Land
Fair Blows the Wind
Fallon
The Ferguson Rifle
The First Fast Draw
Flint
Guns of the Timberlands
Hanging Woman Creek
The Haunted Mesa
Heller with a Gun
The High Graders
High Lonesome
Hondo
How the West Was Won
The Iron Marshal
The Key-Lock Man
Kid Rodelo
Kilkenny
Killoe
Kilrone
Kiowa Trail
Last of the Breed
Last Stand at Papago Wells
The Lonesome Gods
The Man Called Noon
The Man from Skibbereen
The Man from the Broken Hills
Matagorda
Milo Talon
The Mountain Valley War
North to the Rails
Over on the Dry Side
Passin’ Through
The Proving Trail
The Quick and the Dead
Radigan
Reilly’s Luck
The Rider of Lost Creek
Rivers West
The Shadow Riders
Shalako
Showdown at Yellow Butte
Silver Canyon
Sitka
Son of a Wanted Man
Taggart
The Tall Stranger
To Tame a Land
Tucker
Under the Sweetwater Rim
Utah Blaine
The Walking Drum
Westward the Tide
Where the Long Grass Blows
SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS
Beyond the Great Snow Mountains
Bowdrie
Bowdrie’s Law
Buckskin Run
Dutchman’s Flat
End of the Drive
From the Listening Hills
The Hills of Homicide
Law of the Desert Born
Long Ride Home
Lonigan
May There Be a Road
Monument Rock
Night over the Solomons
Off the Mangrove Coast
The Outlaws of Mesquite
The Rider of the Ruby Hills
Riding for the Brand
The Strong Shall Live
The Trail to Crazy Man
Valley of the Sun
War Party
West from Singapore
West of Dodge
With These Hands
Yondering
SACKETT TITLES
Sackett’s Land
To the Far Blue Mountains
The Warrior’s Path
Jubal Sackett
Ride the River
The Daybreakers
Sackett
Lando
Mojave Crossing
Mustang Man
The Lonely Men
Galloway
Treasure Mountain
Lonely on the Mountain
Ride the Dark Trail
The Sackett Brand
The Sky-Liners
THE HOPALONG CASSIDY NOVELS
The Riders of the High Rock
The Rustlers of West Fork
The Trail to Seven Pines
Trouble Shooter
NONFICTION
Education of a Wandering Man
Frontier
The Sackett Companion: A Personal Guide to the Sackett Novels
A Trail of Memories: The Quotations of Louis L’Amour, compiled by Angelique L’Amour
POETRY
Smoke from This Altar
THE HAUNTED MESA
A Bantam Book / August 2004
PUBLISHING HISTORY
Bantam hardcover edition published May 1987
Bantam paperback edition / May 1988
Bantam reissue / August 1994
Bantam reissue / March 2002
All rights reserved.
Copyright © 1978 by Louis & Katherine L’Amour Trust
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except
where permitted by law. For information address:
Bantam Books New York, New York.
Bantam Books and the rooster colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Please visit our website at www.bantamdell.com
eISBN: 978-0-553-89919-1
v3.0