The Haunted Mesa (Louis L'Amour's Lost Treasures) Page 4

  And after that? He shied from the question. By that time he would surely have found Erik or some communication from him.

  He took up the daybook again.

  Later. Desperately, I have tried to resume work on my plans, trying to keep my thoughts away from the odd circumstances, but my thoughts refuse to concern themselves with the mundane problems of construction.

  Suddenly Chief began barking furiously, and seizing a club, I dashed outside. My appearance seemed to lend him courage, and leaping into the kiva he charged toward the blind window, only it had changed. The back of the niche was now a thick oily-looking cloud, which did not enter the kiva, but remained in the window frame.

  Chief charged the window, barking furiously. I yelled at him to come back, and when he did obey I dropped into the kiva to collar him. Assuming I was with him he leaped through the window, and his barking faded into the distance.

  Chief was gone! But gone where? The window was on the cliff’s edge and leaping through he must have fallen several hundred feet to the rocks below.

  Yet he had not fallen. I had distinctly heard him barking away into the distance, obviously chasing something, or somebody.

  For a long moment I stood riveted to the spot. “Frozen” might have been a better term, for I was cold, utterly cold. Turning, I climbed clumsily from the kiva, skinning my knee in the process.

  Stumbling, I went back into my camp in the ruin and sat down on my cot. I wiped my hand over my face. Despite the coolness of the morning I was wet with sweat.

  Sanity. I must cling to sanity. Reason, logic, common sense.

  Something had happened I could not explain. Naturally, I had heard of mysterious disappearances. There had been the case of the man crossing an open field in full view of several people and vanishing before their eyes. There was also the story of a man who had gone to a spring for water. His tracks were plainly visible in the fresh-fallen snow but they ended abruptly, short of the spring. The bucket was there, lying on its side. The man was gone. Faintly, his voice was heard, calling for help. Gradually the voice weakened and after a while was heard no more.

  It was a long time before I could shake off the fear that gnawed at my guts. I realized now that I had never been truly afraid before. Had it not been for Chief, I would have abandoned the place at once, never to return or even to repeat the story. Yet Chief was a good and faithful beast and he would not have ventured into the kiva or through the window had he not believed I was with him.

  All right, I would begin there. Something had happened, which I did not understand, yet we deal with forces every day which most of us do not fully comprehend. How many of us who turn the dial of a radio or television can explain the principles of either?

  My dog had vanished. If he had gone through that window he had gone into something or somewhere. I must recover my dog. If it meant going into that somewhere, then it must be done.

  He had leaped through and I had heard him barking. Hence, the process of passing through had not changed him. He could still bark and he retained the incentive to bark, so whatever he passed through had not altered him physically, nor had his mental attitude been changed.

  My pencil had been taken but a gift left in exchange. Hence, whatever was on the other side of the window could reason, had ethical standards of a sort, and might be reached by some means of communication. I then took the first sensible, logical step. I went back to the kiva and called my dog.

  Nothing happened. Could sound reach beyond the barrier? Suppose I went through? Could I get back?

  Returning to my drawing board I sat down, and using a notepad I tried to reason it through. Common sense warned me to sit tight. If Chief could return, he would. It might be a day or it might be two. The “window” was obviously an opening to something, perhaps another dimension, perhaps a world coexistent with our own.

  Did I believe that? I had not sufficient information to make a decision, but what other explanation was there? I knew the idea had been around for thousands of years, and certain speculations in contemporary physics seemed to allow for the possibility, at least. And that opening obviously led to somewhere.

  Moreover, whoever had drawn that red line on my blueprint had obviously wanted such an opening.

  Why? And why had it been so carefully closed up in the beginning? Had there been something over there they feared? Or an attempt to keep our two worlds separate?

  The Hopi Indians, I understood, believe this to be the Fourth World. The Third World, which they left to come into this through a “hole in the ground,” had been evil.

  What evil? Was it a thing? A being? Some tangible force? Or was it a state or condition? I knew too little of their beliefs to venture an opinion, but knew they had some affinity with what the Navajo called the Anasazi, the Ancient Ones.

  Did some monstrous thing lurk beyond that window? Had the kiva been filled in to keep it out?

  CHAPTER 5

  Who drew the red line on my plans? Obviously, somebody on this side, somebody who wanted a way back.

  The taking of my pencil seemed more the act of a child, or someone desperately in need of a way to communicate.

  Was there not another opening? After all, how did the person who drew the red line get over here?

  But all this was mad! Mad! What I needed was somebody like Mike Raglan who was familiar with the literature on this sort of thing.

  Monday. Much has happened. I awakened the other morning to find my drafting pencil returned with the point worn down to where it could no longer be used.

  For a moment or two I was puzzled. Then it hit me: Suppose whoever took the pencil did not know how to sharpen one? On a hunch I sharpened the pencil, then stood it erect in the dime-store sharpener and left it, along with a couple of extra pencils.

  In the morning they were gone, and so was an old sweater, a cardigan. It had been hung over a camp chair nearby. For a moment I was irritated. Old as it was, I liked that cardigan. It was cashmere and warm.

  This morning, to my surprise, I found my old sweater returned, and beside it, folded neatly, was another sweater. This was entirely new, a dark brown across the shoulders bleeding to a lighter, then still another lighter shade.

  To my surprise the sweater fitted to perfection. Where the brand name had been in the collar of my sweater there was a sunflower worked in gold thread!

  Wednesday. Cleaned last of the earth from the kiva. Now I must study the paintings. I have deliberately avoided them until they could be examined in their entirety.

  Thursday. Awakened to find a sunflower on my desk! If I am haunted it is by gentle creatures, indeed!

  This afternoon, suddenly, there was Chief! He stood looking at me and only when I called his name did he approach me, but once he was close and got my smell in his nostrils he was excited as a puppy. Tucked behind his collar was a sunflower!

  To say that I was startled would understate the case, for Chief was a one-man dog to such a degree that nobody could touch him but me. If I was present to admonish him he would sometimes permit liberties from a vet, but only sometimes. Yet somebody had obviously placed that sunflower where it was.

  Nonetheless, I am uneasy. I am half-inclined to give up my project and return to the normal and everyday. Not for more than a week have I enjoyed a decent night’s sleep.

  All morning I struggled to recall what I had heard about other dimensions, parallel worlds and their possibilities. I could remember nothing definite and began to realize how such specialization as mine could be sadly limiting.

  Mike Raglan put down the daybook and walked again to the window. Erik Hokart was not a man given to wild flights of imagination. He was an acknowledged authority in several aspects of electronics, as well as having considerable business acumen. His foresight and his patents had earned him a considerable fortune, all based
upon simple logic.

  He was not the sort of man to overlook much of anything, and not likely to be tricked. The nearest town was, Mike believed, not closer than eighty or ninety miles, and nobody lived in the vicinity. South of the river there were a couple of trading posts, and some scattered Navajos, but they were a people who minded their own affairs.

  So what was happening? Hokart evidently had begun to believe in the existence of a parallel world of some sort, and whatever was going on was important enough to someone to send a goon after Hokart’s daybook.

  Where was Erik? Who was the girl who delivered the book? And who was the man who came to retrieve it? What of the kiva?

  “I’d better get out there,” Mike Raglan said, speaking aloud. “I’d better get right to the spot. If Erik is not there…”

  He spread out a map of the Four Corners area and studied possible routes. Getting to where Hokart was constructing his home was not easy. It was remote country, and although the roads were generally good most of them were unsurfaced. There was no road leading right to Hokart’s place, which was one of the attractions for him. He enjoyed being alone.

  Erik had, Mike knew, planned on coming and going by helicopter, at least during the construction phases. What materials he would need would be delivered by the same means.

  He remembered Erik’s discovery of the mesa. He had been flying low over the area when he saw that flat-topped mesa, different from any around it. The top gave the appearance of having once been cultivated, but long ago. The position, the view in all directions, the isolation of it had immediately seized his attention. From that moment Erik Hokart had thought of no other place. “I can use the native rock,” he had said. “There’s plenty of good building material around the base of the cliff.”

  Time was no object and he had resolved to build it himself, as he wished.

  Erik had always been one to do things his own way, but this time he had run into something totally unfamiliar, something for which he was not prepared.

  Uneasily, Mike ran over the events in his mind. Erik had no friends who were inclined to practical jokes, nor was there anyplace close around where anybody could stay unless willing to camp out under rigorous conditions.

  Slowly, thinking all the while, Mike Raglan began putting his gear together. To what he had already assembled he added binoculars. Yet he found himself curiously reluctant to leave Tamarron, knowing that once he returned to the area of Hokart’s house he was committed.

  For nearly twenty years he had been investigating mysteries, exposing frauds, venturing into little-known areas of thought, yet this time he felt he was walking on the brink of something to be feared. This was truly the unknown.

  Yet why should he feel that way? What evidence did he have?

  Sitting down, he wrote a careful outline of what had transpired and what he was about to do. If anything happened to him there must be a record, some evidence he could leave behind. He had a feeling he was going off the deep end. He would leave his notes with the daybook, and leave them in a safe place.

  He took up the daybook again.

  Was I afraid? Nothing fearsome had happened, yet I was dealing with the unknown, with a whole new set of principles and ideas of which I knew nothing.

  I tried to think of it as a hoax, yet I could not. I remembered Mike saying that when dealing with what people called the supernatural, some background in legerdemain was essential. A scientist searches for truth and is not skilled in trickery or deception.

  Many things that might seem miraculous can be duplicated by any working magician, as the marvelous is his professional occupation. Those who wish to find miracles are easily imposed upon, for they come with a mind prepared for belief.

  Saturday. Again a restless night. There were vague stirrings in the darkness and Chief lay close beside me, occasionally growling, sometimes whining. After awakening in the morning I lay still for some time, thinking. Suddenly, my mind was made up. I was getting out. I would leave today. I would take my personal gear, leave the rest, and simply get out of here.

  Knowing Chief, Mike was worried. He was a proud, fierce dog, afraid of nothing, yet now he was acting in ways totally unlike himself. Ordinarily, Chief would have charged anything that came near, be it man, bear, wolf, or whatever. If he was not doing so there was something of which he was afraid, something that disturbed the dog’s deepest instincts.

  Suppose Erik was right and he had discovered a way to another dimension? Obviously, the dog had passed through and returned unharmed in any physical way, so a man might do the same thing—a man or a woman.

  Who was leaving the sunflower insignia? The actual flowers? Who had taken the pencils, and for what reason?

  Tomorrow, Mike decided. He would go tomorrow. He would set out bright and early, leaving the daybook and his notes in some secure place. Best of all, he thought, he could mail it to an old friend formerly with the FBI, to be acted upon in case of Mike’s disappearance.

  He loaded his four-wheel-drive car with a sleeping bag, some trail rations, extra water, and the extra ammunition he’d brought along.

  Then he sat down and stared out the window, seeing nothing, not even the snow or the magnificent cliffs that bordered the highway. He saw only himself and what lay ahead. The truth of the matter was, he realized, he did not want to go. Was he losing his zest for adventure? His curiosity about the unknown? Or was he afraid of finding something that would upset his easy world?

  From childhood we have learned to adjust ourselves to three dimensions; it is a world we understand, and in which we are at home. New ideas keep invading our complacency, and slowly, steadily, our world has broadened and grown more complex. Once, a man had only to adjust to his small village or town, the people around him, and the street on which he lived. He had to adjust to the power, the king, the lord of the manor—whoever it was who controlled his world. Within these limits he was comfortable.

  Soldiers and sailors returned with stories of the far places, of lands different from our own, and slowly the world grew wider. Most of what men heard they only half believed. Then the world began to broaden swiftly. From slow-moving sailing craft to transatlantic steamers and then to flying, men crossed new boundaries.

  World War II had taken young Americans to the far corners of the earth, and suddenly farm boys from Kansas or Vermont were talking easily of Burma, Guadalcanal, and Morocco. They were at home in places their fathers could not have found on a world map, and with the end of the war, suddenly, planes were flying everywhere.

  People who a few years before might have spent a rare winter in Florida were now doing business in Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and Oman. Children were growing up who used computers as easily as their fathers had used a fountain pen. Drastic changes were taking place, and the speed of invention and discovery had increased manyfold.

  Now we had put a man on the moon, had sent spacecraft to check on the outermost planets—spacecraft that now had gone on into infinite space beyond the solar system. And Einstein and the quantum theory were injecting strange new possibilities into our narrow world.

  The man who sat before a television set with a can of beer to watch a football game rarely realized that the world was exploding around him. The convenient horizons were disappearing, and the jobs at which he worked were being eliminated by progress. Changes that had once needed centuries were now happening almost overnight, and the jobs available were calling for greater expertise. The common laborer who had been with us forever was finding himself on skid row with no place to go, and no possibilities of work.

  A few things remained constant. The earth under his feet, the sky overhead, the road down which he could drive. For centuries there had been tales of other worlds, and people had read them or listened to them or watched them on The Twilight Zone, interested and amused but never taking them very seriously.

  It was always an
amusing subject for casual conversation among friends, and offered room for speculation. Occasionally there had been stories of mysterious disappearances, usually explained away with bored amusement by some scientist with too much else on his mind.

  To deal with the expanding world around us was quite enough. Mike Raglan found no place in his thinking for yet another dimension, for a world here, right alongside our own. He was not mentally prepared to deal with it. He could understand the possibilities without knowing any more about the physics of it than the average man who can’t explain how his television set works.

  Mike Raglan did not want there to be another dimension. He did not need one. He was having trouble enough dealing with the three he had. Yet he remembered primitive people with whom he had dealt who accepted such ideas, who did not even think of them as a cause for wonder. Often their language could cope with such ideas with no adjustments whatsoever, and the same was true of their thinking.

  What of the Australian aborigines and their “dream time”?

  Mike picked up the daybook. Reluctantly, hesitantly, he turned the pages to where he had stopped reading.

  Immediately, I gathered what was important to me. My plans, notebooks, and the few books I’d brought along for reading. A half-dozen books I would leave, for one day I might return, briefly at least.

  It is not easy to see a dream die, and this home upon the mesa was a dream I’d had since boyhood. Suddenly, reluctant to go, I glanced around.

  And there she stood.

  CHAPTER 6

  My first impression was that she did not look like a girl who would leave a sunflower on a man’s table, nor put one behind a dog’s collar.

  My second impression, simultaneous with the first, was that she was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen.

  She stood just outside my door in the sunlight. Her hair was very black, parted in the middle and done in two knots on the back of her head. Her skin was the color of old ivory, her eyes very large and dark.