"Grabbed you by the collar and pulled you througha" 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 wideeyed. "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 coulda""
Mike Raglan started the car. He looked over at Gallagher, extending his hand.
"I could," he said, "but who'd believe it?"
AUTHOR'S NOTE.
XIBALBA: also written as Shibalba, is frequently referred to in the Popol Vuh, the sacred book of the Quiche 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 the Author.
"I think of myself in the oral tradition a" of a troubadour, a village taleteller, the man in the shadows of the campfire. That's the way I'd like to be remembered a" as a storyteller. A good storyteller."
It is doubtful that any author could be as at home in the world recreated 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, assessment miner, and officer on tank destroyers 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 100 books is in print; there are nearly 230 million copies of his books in print worldwide, making him one of the best-selling 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) Jubal Sackett, 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 tradition forward with new books written by the author during his lifetime to be published by Bantam well into the nineties a" among them, four Hopalong Cassidy novels: The Rustlers of West Fork, The Trail to Seven Pines, The Riders of High Rock, and Trouble Shooter.
[08 Jun 2002] Scanned by pandor [09 Jun 2002] (v1.0) proofed and formatted by NickL