Grayfox (6 page)

Pretty soon, my brain started to go dark, like a bad dream was fading away. I was still tumbling and rolling, but everything in my senses drifted into a slow, quiet distant haze, and finally into blackness.

I don't know how I had enough of my wits left even to think it, but the last thing I remembered was the notion that this was what it must be like to die.

And I thought,
That must be what's happening to me
.

The next thing I knew, everything was still black.

I woke up real slow, and everything was fuzzy and faint. Nothing meant anything. I couldn't see because of the dark, but even inside my head it was all scrambled and blurry.

Then I became aware of a faint smell, real far away somewhere. I recognized it, but at first I couldn't remember where I knew it from. And there was a strange sound in the background too.

I tried to make myself remember. Then images and reminders of my fall started to come back to me—I could remember going down, down, straight down. . . .

Then all of a sudden I knew the smell! It was smoke. And the sound was the low crackling of a fire. That was it—a fire and smoke!

I was coming awake so slow that everything was all confused. Though my brain was trying to put together the puzzle of what had happened and where I was, it was having a hard time.

As soon as I recognized the sound and smell of the fire, the thought came to me,
I did die!
I fell off the horse and died . . . and now I'
m in hell!
Then from out of nowhere came a thought of Pa and the horrible things I'd said to him the day I left Miracle Springs.
That's the devil's own fire for sure,
I thought then.
I'm in hell on account of what I said to Pa!

Suddenly I winced from a sharp throb in my leg.

My head must've been starting to wake up and work right then because right after that I thought,
But wait . . . I can't be in hell
if my leg hurts. If I'd died, my body
would still be lying out in the rocks of that ravine I fell into.

Gradually my eyes were starting to work too. Some light was coming into focus from the flickering fire. Everything was black except the red-orange of the low-burning flames.

I struggled to sit up.

“Lay still, son,” a voice said in the middle of the blackness.

My eyes shot open wide in terror at the sound. I had no idea who had spoken, and I couldn't see a thing. But my eyes must've been as big as a horse's!

It wasn't a voice you even thought about disobeying. It was strong, and not particularly gentle. Deep and almost gravelly. Again the thought went through my head that I'd died and gone to the fiery place. And if that was true, then I didn't want to stop and ask who the voice might belong to!

I did what the voice said and laid still a long time, wondering what would happen next. I was back to Rev. Rutledge's sermon. This time I didn't have any choice but to just wait!

“How you feeling, son?” asked the voice.

“Uh, all right . . . I reckon,” I answered. I was glad to find out my voice still worked. I guessed I wasn't dead after all.

“Where am I?” I asked.

“You're safe, that's where. You had a bad fall back there.”

It was all gradually coming back to me about the Paiutes, my plan to get up onto the plateau, the climb up the hill, the ride along the ledge, then the fall. Now I remembered why my leg hurt.

“Where's my horse . . . the mail?” I asked. “Gotta get the mail through. Is the horse safe?”

The voice laughed again, with the deep rumbling sound of boulders crashing down a hill after an earthquake. It was sure not anything like Alkali Jones's cackle! I'd never heard such a deep-sounding voice.

“That horse and whatever mail was on it is long gone, boy,” he said. “We're miles and miles from where you fell, and your horse was likely miles away before I got to you anyway.”

“The Indians . . . did the Paiutes get her?” I asked.

“Can't tell, son. Might be they did. I wasn't looking for your horse. I had my hands full just dragging you back up out of that crevice you got yourself into.”

“Are we safe from the Indians?”

“The Paiutes know better than to bother me. Besides, I've saved enough of their lives to keep me in their good graces for fifty years.”

“But . . . where am I?” I asked.

“Like I said, we're miles from where you fell. You're safe, that's all you need to know.”

“But I gotta get back . . . back on the trail. They'll be worried about me. I gotta see about the mail.”

The deep laughter rumbled out of the dark.

“Son,” the man said, “you're not going anywhere. Your leg's broken in two places. You're miles from the Express line. And even if you had a horse and you were healthy, we're snowed in.”

“Snowed in! Where in tarnation are we?”

“It'll all make sense in the morning.”

“Why is it so warm if . . . ?”

“Just hold your questions till morning. You hungry? You oughta be—you been out for two days.”

“Two days! What have I been doing, just lying here?”

“That's right, son. I dragged you up here, splinted your leg, made you as comfortable as I could, and then just waited. I could tell you were a strong little rascal and you'd wake up. So . . . you hungry?”

“Yeah, reckon I am,” I admitted.

He handed me something in a bowl, a spoon sticking out from it. I could hardly see, even with the fire, but it smelled good. I picked out some chunks of meat in a kind of gravy and started munching on them. I didn't realize how hungry I was until the smell of that stew hit my nostrils and I tasted the meat. The bowl was empty inside a minute.

“More?” said the man.

“Yeah,” I answered, handing him the bowl. “What is it?”

“Rattlesnake.”

I gagged and turned away.

Again I heard the laugh from the other side of the fire. “What's the matter, son? You never eaten snake before?”

“No, and I got no intention of eating it again,” I said.

“You'll die if you don't. It's about all I eat most winters up here, so you better get used to it.”

“Where do you get them?” I asked. “There ain't no snakes in winter.”

“Ah, you just have to know where to look. I do. I find them hibernating in their dens. They're sleepy and cold. I kill ten, maybe twenty of them if I spend a morning at it. Then I skin them and cut up the meat, stash it in the snow to freeze. Keeps me in meat all winter long. Then I just take out and cook whatever I need.”

“That's all you eat, and you stay alive all winter?” I asked. “This is the high desert. No man can stay alive out here in summer or winter.”

“You must figure I'm a ghost then,” he said, “because I've been living off the hills here for eight years. There's food in the winter, water in the summer. Plenty for a man to live on—if the man knows how to find the provision the Maker put in the desert. No big secret to it. You just have to have the right kind of eyes to see what most folks can't.”

“Which you got?”

“I'm alive, son,” was all he answered.

Gradually I drifted back to sleep. I hadn't felt any hurting in my leg the whole time, not since that first stab went through it when I woke up. He'd said it was broke in two places, but it hadn't struck me yet to wonder why I wasn't screaming in pain from it.

When I woke up again, it wasn't so black anymore. But it wasn't light either. There was just an eerie glow coming from one direction and total blackness from the other.

I shook myself awake, more quickly this time. Now I could feel my leg, both hurting and cold, but on the whole I felt a lot better. The snake meat must've done me some good, as much as I hated the idea of eating it. I pulled myself up on my elbows and glanced around. Whoever my rescuer with the deep voice was, I didn't see him anywhere.

My mind hadn't been working altogether right before. I'd felt warm, but I hadn't paid much attention to where I might be. Now it was obvious that I was inside a huge cave. The fire was still burning, though my leg was freezing.

Then I heard footsteps and suddenly got scared. Whoever it was I'd been talking to in the middle of the night, I still hadn't seen him, and the tone of his laugh hadn't been all that pleasant. 'Course, if he'd wanted to kill and skin me to put in his rattlesnake stew, he'd already had two days to do it, so I don't reckon there was anything to worry about. But I couldn't help feeling nervous.

“Sleep good, son?” he said, coming toward me and sitting down on the opposite side of the fire.

The sound of his voice settled me down some. It didn't sound so bad in the light of day, if that's what the dusky half-light in the cave could be called. But when I actually set eyes on the man, my first impression did not make me feel too confident about my future safety. He
looked
like the kind who might cut me up and freeze my meat to go along with his chunks of snake!

His face was thin and long, and especially in the flickering light of the fire you could see its strong lines—sunken-in cheeks that you could see even behind the full beard, high cheekbones, a sharp jaw and chin. His whole frame was lean but not what I'd call skinny.
That's how his face was too. There was no fat, just muscle and bone and hardiness. He looked strong and tough, like he'd been in a few tangles and probably given the other fellow the worst of it. He had lots of hair going all over the place, though it wasn't as gray or tangled as Alkali Jones's. The beard was black.

I couldn't tell a bit how old he might be. A beard always makes a man look older. And in the darkness of the cave, for all I could tell, the man might have been anywhere from thirty to fifty. He seemed to still have his teeth, every once in a while one of them would catch a shine from the flames.

He tossed a piece of wood on the fire, and sparks danced up from the disturbance.

“Where do you get wood around here?” I asked.

“Spend my summers gathering wood for winter, spend my winters storing away snow water down in the cave for summer. Everything you need's out here, son.”

Now for the first time I looked in the other direction, toward the lightness. We were some thirty feet from the opening of the cave, but I couldn't see out.

“Why is the light so pale?” I asked. “Is the sun just coming up?”

The deep laughter came again. “Don't you know what you're looking at there, son?” he said. “That's snow—solid snow! Only lets in a bit of light.”

“Snow . . .” I said. “But why is it there?”

“We're snowed in! I told you that last night. There's twenty feet of snow over the whole mouth of the cave. You're not looking at daylight, son, you're looking at a snowbank—from the inside!”

I lay quiet for a while, trying to take in this sudden new development, although I still didn't realize the full extent of what his words would mean. As it turned out, I didn't see the real light of day for two weeks, when we dug our way out after it had half melted down. And it wasn't the only time we got snowed in that winter, either!

“Is that why my leg's so cold?” I asked after a minute or two.

“In a manner of speaking, I suppose you'd say that.”

“How do you mean?”

“I mean you're cold from the snow, all right—but not because it's out there.”

“Where then?”

“Look down at your leg, son. I been packing that broken bone in snow on and off since the minute I got it splinted. That's the cold you're feeling, to keep it from swelling up, and that's why you'll keep the leg and be walking on it inside a month.”

“So that's why it doesn't hurt . . . and it's all numb.”

“Another day or two, and it'll be out of danger. It won't need the snow after that. Then we'll make you some kind of a crutch to go with the splint so you can hobble around some. Why, you'll be good as new come spring.”

“Spring!” I protested. “I can't stay here till spring! I've got to get back.”

“I told you before, you're not going anyplace anytime soon. Now, if we get a break in the weather and if you can get around on that leg—if you're of a mind to, then I'll take you down the mountain. But until then, you just better figure on getting used to this cave. It's going to be your home for a while, there's no getting around it.”

Again I was quiet, thinking about what he'd said.

“What's your name, son?” the man asked.

“Zack . . . Zack Hollister,” I answered.

“Well, Zack Hollister, I'm Hawk Trumbull.”

“Why Hawk?” I asked.

“It's a name the Paiutes gave me. That was years ago.”

“Are you . . . friendly with the Paiutes?” I asked.

The man called Hawk laughed again—I was starting to get used to him laughing. “No one is what you'd term
friendly
with them. They're not even friendly with themselves! Let's just say I know how to get along with them.”

“That's more than the Pony Express does.”

“I've got some advantages the Express doesn't have. I know some things the Paiutes need to know and where to find certain things they need. So they tolerate me, mostly for what I can do for them—you hungry?”

“Yeah . . . yeah, I reckon I am,” I answered. “But don't you have anything besides rattlesnake to eat?”

Hawk chuckled. “The day'll come when you'll eat my stew and love every bite! But winter's not all the way here yet, so I've got a few things you might like better. I might even make you some biscuits one of these days. There's nothing like biscuits cooked on a stick over an open fire. How about some coffee?”

I suddenly realized the smell of fresh-boiled coffee was all around. I don't know how I didn't notice it before. It smelled just like home!

“Sure . . . do you have everything in here?” I added as he handed me a hot tin cup.

“Everything I need. No luxuries. But food and warmth and shelter, and lots and lots of room to myself. Hundreds of miles to call my own, and I learn something new from it every day. There's no life like it, son.”

“Learn . . . learn what kind of stuff?” I said, taking a sip of the steaming black brew he'd made.

“About the world, about life, about myself. Mostly about the Creator.”

“You mean God?”

“That's who I mean, son.”