Chapter 13
"KBYO, Seattle. what is it, a TV channel?" Gideon asked, looking at the return address on the thick envelope Abe had wordlessly handed to him after listening absorbedly to his account of the past three days in the Quinault Valley.
"Radio," Abe said. "You sure you don’t want some honey cake? It goes good with the tea."
"No, thanks." He pulled the stapled sheaf from the envelope and looked at the title on the first page: The Joe Ambeau Show, February 28, 1982. "Is this a script?"
"A transcript. I just sent for it. I remembered a few months ago I was listening to this talk show—"
"You listen to talk shows?" Gideon was unable to keep the disapproval from his voice.
"Why not?" Abe looked honestly surprised. "I’m not interested in my own culture? I’m only supposed to listen to Ph.D.s and professors? Truck drivers and old ladies ain’t worth my time? Gideon, you got elitist leanings, you know that? For an anthropologist you got some funny ideas. Did I ever tell you?"
"Many times."
"It’s not a joke," Abe muttered. "Go ahead and read. Start on page seven, where the check is."
Gideon found Abe’s spidery red mark and settled back in his chair.
Mr. Ambeau: Joe Ambeau. You’re on the air.
Caller: Hello, Joe? Am I on?
Mr. Ambeau: You’re on the air, ma’am. Go ahead.
Caller: I just wanted to tell you that there are creatures that we don’t know about that hide in the rain forest. But they’re not like gorillas, they’re just funny little brown men.
Mr. Ambeau: Ma’am, we’ve been on this subject all morning, and I’m getting just a little tired of it. So here’s a notice to you and any other kooks out there. Unless you can prove what you’re talking about, don’t bother me or our listeners with any more fairy tales about monsters in the woods.
Caller: But I do have proof, Joe.
Mr. Ambeau: And what kind of proof would that be?
Caller: I wrote down what they said in my diary, which I just happened to have with me.
Mr. Ambeau: Happened to have with me. Uh-huh. This wouldn’t by any chance be my old friend who saw the giant flying saucer land at Copalis Beach last summer, would it?
Caller: Well, yes.
Mr. Ambeau: I thought so. It’s Looney Tunes time again, folks.
Caller: Now, Joe, don’t be funny. I was near that old trail they closed up, near where Seldes Creek runs into Finley Creek, panning for gold a few summers ago—
Mr. Ambeau: Panning for gold. Yes, uh-huh.
Caller: Yes, and I got a little lost, and I fell asleep, and I heard some voices—
Mr. Ambeau: Glory, hallelujah.
Caller: And so I opened my eyes, you know, just a little? So they wouldn’t know I was awake. And I saw them sort of sneaking among the trees, looking at me.
Mr. Ambeau: That’s really fascinating, ma’am. I could just sit and talk with you all day, but we only have another thirty seconds.
Caller: Well, I lay there very quiet, and I heard what they said. One of them, anyway, a little old man. He said, "kooknama reemee."
Mr. Ambeau: I see. You sure these were little brown men? You sure they weren’t little green men from that flying saucer of yours? Wearing space suits?
Caller: Oh, no, they were little brown men. And all they were wearing were little aprons, sort of.
Mr. Ambeau: Gotta go, dearie. Time for a commercial. Give us a call next time the moon’s full, hear, now?
When Gideon looked up, Abe said, "So what do you think?"
"I don’t know. It might be true, but—forgive my elitist leanings—my credulity is not enhanced by the flying-saucer bit."
"Good," Abe said. "A nice, healthy skepticism. Now, the first question is: Is there such a place as—what was it?—where Seldes Creek runs into Finley Creek?"
"The answer is yes."
Abe’s moist eyes widened. "You know this?"
"No, but I can see you have a topographic map unrolled on the dining-room table, and something tells me that you’re about to lead me over there and show me that, verily, there is such a place." But it wasn’t only that. Finley Creek had a familiar ring.
As soon as Abe jabbed his finger onto the map, Gideon remembered. And he knew they were onto something. "That’s where Pringle found the spear head; right where you’re pointing!"
Abe clucked softly. "So. What do you think of that? You wouldn’t happen to remember where those two hikers got lost five or six years ago? The ones who got killed?"
"I don’t think I ever knew. They were found in the cemetery. That’s only a few miles from there."
"I did a little looking in the old newspapers. It looks like they were both on a new trail that just opened up, the Matheny trail, that runs from the Queets River—what a name—all the way up Matheny Creek"—his finger slowly traced the line from left to right—"and then to this North Fork Campground along Big Creek. In between, for a few miles, it runs—guess where?—down Finley Creek."
"Why doesn’t it show on the map?"
"It’s not there anymore, not officially. It opened up in 1976 and inside of a month those guys disappeared. They closed the trail—a good thing, it looks like—and they never bothered to reopen it. Now the Park Service says it ain’t really necessary, and they ain’t got funds to maintain it, and so on and so forth. So it’s not on the map, and the signs are all down, and it’s all overgrown, and nobody knows it’s there. If you want my opinion, Mr. Skeleton Detective, that’s where your Indians are."
"But what about the ledge we found? That was up on Pyrites Creek, over ten miles away. So was Claire Hornick’s body. And that’s where Pringle found two of his points. You’re not going to say there are two groups in there, are you?"
Abe waved off Gideon’s comments. "Use your noodle. Think about what you know about the Yahi—"
"What do the Yahi have to do with it?"
"I’m just giving you an example," Abe said. "Keep your shirt on. When the Yahi were hiding in California all those years, they had two villages. In the summer they lived up on Mount Lassen, where it was nice and breezy. In the wintertime, they came down and lived in the valleys. Much warmer. Why shouldn’t these Indians do the same thing?"
"You think the ledge on Pyrites Creek is their summer home, and when it turns cold they move down to Finley Creek?"
"Why not? And if you do a little checking, which I did, you’ll see that the two hikers on the Matheny trail, they got killed in the winter, when the Indians would have been there, near this Finley Creek. But the Hornick girl, according to you, she’s dead two weeks, right? Late summer. The Indians would still be there." He pointed at Pyrites Creek. "But now that the weather’s all cold and crummy, you can bet your life they went lower down, where it’s not so cold. Here." The finger thumped Finley Creek.
That would explain why the ledge had been deserted. The Zanders must have happened on it just after the Indians had left. The same day, apparently, if they’d smelled smoke. The Zanders had been lucky.
"Why are you looking so glum?" Abe said. "Cheer up. Now I really got something to knock your block off. Come."
Gideon followed Abe back into the study. Abe whistled tunelessly under his breath, a sure sign he was enjoying himself. The old man seated himself stiffly in one of the wing-backed chairs in front of the wall with the photographs and reached for a book at his side. "Come look."
Gideon pulled up the other chair. The book was a bilingual dictionary: one column was English, the other an unfamiliar language, definitely not Indo-European.
"The lady of the talk show," Abe said. "You remember what she said the old man said?"
"’Moona Kameemee?’"
"’Kooknama reemee.’ Now look here."
Gideon followed the knobbly forefinger down the page to the last line, where it hovered. "’Ku’naamari’mi,’" Gideon read with interest. "Close enough."
"And what does it say it means?" The forefinger shifted slightly.
Gideon read it aloud. "’Old woman.’ Son-of-a-gun. What kind of dictionary is this? What’s the language?"
Abe closed the book so Gideon could see the plain gray paper cover: A Yahi Dictionary. Compiled by Edward R. Chapman. University of California Publications in American Indian Linguistics, Volume 13, 1914. "Fascinating, huh?"
"Yahi!" Gideon said, his blood stirred. "But that’s…There aren’t any more Yahi…" His hand went to his shirt pocket and found the small notebook there. He flipped rapidly through it, searching for the notes from his talk with Pringle. "Look at this, Abe: cara and sin-yah. See if we can find them."
In ten minutes they had them both. In Yahi, kara was "please," and ciniyaa was "no."
"Well, well, well," Abe said quietly.
"Abe…they speak Yahi. Yahi!" His mouth had gone dry. "How…who are they?"
"Don’t get so excited," Abe said, flushed and excited himself. "Don’t jump so fast to conclusions. Listen, a minute ago in that notebook, when you were flipping, I saw a picture. Show me again."
Gideon turned back to the drawing he had made of Pringle’s baskets. "This?"
"Let’s go in the library," Abe said suddenly.
Abe had had the wall between the family room and the master bedroom knocked out—he and Bertha slept in the smaller bedrooms—and had created a huge room that he’d filled with secondhand metal library shelves, freestanding in rows as well as along the walls, and blocking the windows, so that the whole was satisfyingly like a fusty corner of the stacks in some graduate library of anthropology.
The books, some fifteen thousand of them, Gideon had once estimated, were shelved in amazing disorder of which only Abe could make sense: books behind books, books in piles on their sides, books overflowing onto the floor in three-foot stacks. Gideon strongly suspected the existence of a precise but arcane cataloging system specifically invented for the bafflement of visitors. If there were one, it had successfully baffled him.
He stood respectfully in the doorway while Abe scurried about the labyrinth. Every few moments there would be a "feh!" or a "phooey!" and Abe would scuttle sourly around a corner of the shelves to disappear down another cluttered lane. After a while, "bingo’s began to outnumber "phooey’s and Abe emerged regularly to put an old, dark, serious-looking volume in Gideon’s hands. In ten minutes he had an armload.
Abe came out with a final thick book, frowningly plumped it on the top of the stack Gideon was holding, and looked at him as if he were startled to see him. "What for are you standing there like a shmegegge? Put them on the table so we can see."
With the books on the dining-room table, Abe propped Gideon’s open notebook in front of them and thumped it with his forefinger. "This basket pattern I’ve seen before."
"But it won’t tell us anything. Pringle said a student told him it’s a California design. They must have traded for it."
"Of course it’s a California design. Any dope could see it’s a California design. That’s why these are California monographs we got here. So start looking."
Right, Gideon thought. Any dope. He opened the volume nearest him, Material Culture of Aboriginal California, and turned to the index. "Basketry," he read, "36—41, 122—23, 174—83…"
Abe wasn’t bothering with indices. He was starting at the beginning of each book and turning the pages with amazing rapidity, using just a flick of the finger. After every fifteen or twenty flicks, barely pausing, he would moisten the finger with his tongue. He was in the middle of his third book as Gideon finished his first.
"Bingo," Abe said. He turned the open book so it faced Gideon. "Is this it, or isn’t it?"
It was definitely it: the same double, stepped columns of dark rectangles on a light background.
Abe’s face was glowing. He closed the book so Gideon could see the cover: Basketry of the Indians of North Central California, Vol. VI. The Yahi.
"The Yahi," Gideon murmured, conscious of the slow, powerful pounding of his heart. "But is it possible Abe? Ishi was the last. No one’s ever mentioned a splinter group."
Abe’s voice was dreamy. "Five hundred miles they must have walked, always hiding. Over the mountains. Across the Columbia Gorge. Out of the land of Canaan, the warm, plenteous valleys of California, five hundred miles to the wettest, darkest place in America."
"And one of the most isolated places in America. The settlers were hunting them down in the nineteenth century, remember, killing them off." And the twentieth, according to Pringle.
"Hah," Abe said softly, and Gideon could see how much he wanted to believe in the incredible possibility. So did Gideon. "Hah," Abe said again, then shook his head. "No. No, it’s too bizarre, too romantic. No."
"I don’t recall," Gideon said, "that such pedestrian considerations ever caused you any concern before."
Abe slapped the table with his hand. "Right you are. You’re absolutely right. I think we got something here."
He pointed suddenly at another book. "Hand me that, will you?"
As Gideon did so, he saw that it was Yahi Archery by Saxton Pope.
Abe flicked rapidly away. Halfway through, he stopped and stared. "This settles it."
On page 119, in neat, economical lines, was a drawing of a Yahi point. It was an arrow, not a spear, and it looked like stone, not bone, but the shape and the technique of manufacture were unmistakably the same as the ones in Pringle’s collection, the one the Zanders had found, and the one in Norris Eckert’s seventh thoracic vertebra.
"That settles it," Gideon agreed. He drew a deep breath. "The Yahi." They were both quiet for a while, lost in their own thoughts. Then Gideon spoke. "Abe, something’s wrong. The Yahi were never a vicious people, and everybody who wrote about Ishi was struck by what a gentle, kind person he was. And Pringle’s story suggests the ones he saw weren’t exactly ferocious. But the ones in there now—they’ve murdered at least three people, probably more—all harmless campers or hikers. One was a young girl—"
"Listen, Gideon, in the 1850s they weren’t exactly angels. Believe me," he said, as if he’d been there, "all the atrocities weren’t on one side. Besides, who knows what their minds are like? A hundred years of isolation, of fear, of hate. Who can tell what goes on in their heads?"
"Abe," Gideon said suddenly, "I’d like to borrow these books, at least the ones that deal with the Yahi, if that’s all right with you."
"You mean tonight? What’s the hurry? You got till next spring."
"No. The FBI will want to find them long before that. I think the best thing would be for me to tell John Lau what we know, and then go in with them, or maybe a little before, to sort of smooth the way, open communication, that kind of thing…" He waved his hand uncertainly.
"Sure, that kind of thing," Abe said, imitating the vague gesture. "You sure you know what you want to do?"
"No."
Abe chewed the inside of his cheek. He pointed at his glass of tea. "I don’t want any more of this stuff. I want some Wild Turkey. A double. You, too. You know where it is?"
When Gideon returned with the bourbons they clinked glasses in a silent toast.
"What a thing," Abe said.
"What a thing," said Gideon.
"All right," Abe said, businesslike. "Let’s think about what’s going to happen after you find them. You and the FBI."
"I’ve been thinking. I can’t believe the government would want to put them in prison. And they can’t just let them stay out in the rain forest, obviously. For one thing, they’re dangerous, and for another, it would be inhumane to leave them in that climate. I think it would be good if you started talking to some of your contacts in the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Maybe it’s possible to get them some small piece of land of their own, off in a wilderness area."
"A reservation? Gideon, you take primitive people from their own land, no matter how hot, or cold, or wet, or dry, and put them someplace else, even with all the modern conveniences, and they wither away. You know that."
"Yes, I know that, but they’re already withering. And what’s the alternative? Lock them up in some big concrete building? They’d die for sure. This way we might be able to save them. Not just the people, but what’s left of the culture."
"Maybe," Abe said doubtfully. "All right, I’ll talk to the BIA, but I don’t know. Maybe it takes an Act of Congress to create a reservation. And this would be a pretty funny reservation. You couldn’t let them leave it."
"It’s a pretty funny situation." Gideon looked at his watch. "Eleven-thirty. It’s been a full day, Abe. I’m going to be getting along."
"Finish your bourbon. You can’t waste Wild Turkey."
They touched glasses one more time. "Here’s to Ishi," Abe said.
"And the Yahi."
They drained their glasses.
It was midnight when Gideon got back to the cottage, but his mind was too active for sleep. He turned on the small electric wall heater against the damp chill that had been building up during the past few days, pulled on an old woolen sweater, and sat down at the little Formica table with Abe’s books spread out in front of him. In a few seconds he was up again, hunting for the tea kettle. He had been the kind of child who ate his vegetables and potatoes first, so the meat could be looked forward to all through the meal. He was the same kind of adult, and to hold off the pleasures of research a little longer he brewed a pot of Earl Grey tea—he’d gotten some for himself when he’d bought Pringle’s—and rummaged in the refrigerator, finally bringing out an apple. Then, humming, enjoying the feel of the rough, warm sweater in the cool room, he sat down again and began.
He started with a dull article on Yahi technology, moved on to a scholarly and interesting paper on social norms, and then spent three painstaking hours with the incredibly complex Yahi language. By 4:00 a.m., although pleased with the linguistic progress he’d made, he was too tired for any more serious study. He threw down his pen, rubbed his eyes, and stretched. His bed was neatly made and beginning to look inviting, but he knew he still wasn’t relaxed enough to sleep. What he needed, he decided, was a hot bath. A hot bath and some easy reading, something to browse in. He turned on the tap and, yawning, reached for one of the volumes he’d thus far ignored, Indian Days in Old California, a 1920 collection of popular observations and reminiscences, no doubt one of the many stimulated by Ishi’s startling appearance a few years earlier.
Once settled in the deliciously hot water, he opened the book, drying his hands first so he didn’t wet the old paper. The first section consisted of pieces written in the 1860s. One was a newspaper account of the bloody killing and scalping of a Yahi family who had stolen a sheep. The next two were more of the same, and the fourth was a learned endorsement of an 1861 court case in which it had been decided that the legal principle of "justifiable conquest" applied to the appropriation of Indian land by white settlers. It was no wonder that the Yahi had chosen to disappear at about that time. Other old articles confirmed in macabre detail Abe’s statement that by no means were all the murders and mutilations in Old California perpetuated by whites.
Gideon had just about decided he’d chosen the wrong book for relaxing with when he came upon a 1919 article called "My Indian Friend Denga," in which a St. Louis woman recalled her childhood in Red Bluff more than fifty years before. Her father and mother had run the general store in the little northern California town, and she had gotten to know some "city" Yahi who sometimes did odd jobs for the store, taking their pay in flour and tea. She had made friends, after a fashion, with one of the Indian children, and had even learned some Yahi, a feat that impressed Gideon considerably.
The affectionate, rambling story was a pleasant counter to the newspaper stories but provided little pertinent information until the last two pages:
I remember the last time I saw Denga. He came to the yard in back of the store with his uncle, old One-ear. I thought it was strange that One-ear didn’t leave him there to play with me, and go inside to help my father, but the two of them just stood there. Denga’s eyes were full of tears, and One-ear was very serious. "Denga cannot play anymore," One-ear said. I was surprised, because that was the first time he ever really said anything to me. Usually he just grinned and shuffled his feet. I guess he finally figured out I could understand Yahi.
"Is he sick?" I asked.
One-ear looked confused, and I thought maybe I hadn’t used the right words. "Not sick," he finally said. "We have to go away."
At that Denga started to cry. "I have to go to the Dark Place," he said.
One-ear kind of shook the boy’s shoulder to make him stop blubbering, and just then Father came to the back door and called One-ear to help him with something. The old Indian went to the door, dragging Denga by the arm, but Father separated them and took One-ear inside. Denga just stood by the door, trembling and miserable. I ran right up to him and asked him what in the world it was all about.
That started him crying again. "We’re never coming back here. We have to go away forever."
"But where is the Dark Place?" I asked him, thinking maybe he meant they were going to die. "Is it Heaven?"
He looked sideways at the ground. That’s the way they said no. Then he said, "It’s far away, on the other side of Mount Lassen. There are no people, and the ferns are as big as trees, and the trees are as tall as mountains, so tall that you can never see the sun, and day is the same as night. And the air is made of water, and it rains all day long."
It sounded awful. "But why do you have to go there?" I asked him.
"So the saltu can’t find us."
Saltu was their word for white people, and it was the first time I’d heard that the Yahi had any reason to be afraid of us.
Of course, later on I found out that they had plenty of reason.
One-ear came out then and glared at Denga; he knew he’d been telling tales. He stared hard at me, with a strange look on his face, as if he wanted to ask something, but then he just took hold of Denga’s arm and dragged him away. Naturally, at the time I didn’t believe the story of the Dark Place, but then Denga didn’t ever come back, and neither did the others. Father must have thought I knew something about it, because he kept asking me where they’d gone, but I remembered that last begging look of One-ear’s and held my tongue. Until now, fifty-two years later, I have kept that story locked in my heart. The Dark Place no longer sounds awful to me. It sounds like a good place to be, cool and dim and calm. I like to think of my little friend Denga there, and ugly old One-ear, beyond whatever earthly or heavenly mountain range it lies, enjoying the tranquil, halcyon days denied them in their ancestral homeland.
With an odd tightening in his throat, Gideon closed the book and laid it on the rim of the tub. He stepped out of the cooling water, put on a warm velour robe, and went into the kitchen to prepare another pot of tea, but changed his mind. Turning up the robe’s collar, he opened the cottage door and stepped into the night. There was no wind, but a cold, velvety mist, smelling of the ocean, drifted in the air. The night was at its blackest and most silent, so that the gentle hissing of the tide on the pebbles of the beach forty feet below seemed much closer, like old leaves rustling a few inches from his ear. Far away a night bird, an owl, hooted twice, mournful and hollow. Much nearer, in the water, there was a sudden small splash, and then a scrabbling sound. Then the slow flapping of big wings. Another night hunter, this one finding its prey.
His hair was wet with mist, and droplets had collected on his eyelids. He stood looking down at the black water he could not see. The Dark Place. The name echoed in his mind, doomful and sinister, melancholy and strangely beautiful. He shivered again, not from the cold this time.
Tranquil, halcyon days. He smiled grimly to himself. Over a hundred years of self-imposed isolation, over a century of fear and loneliness and privation. He tried to imagine the appalling significance of the new trail to them. To what horrendous proportions must the stories of the saltu have grown in four generations of retelling? What must have gone through their minds when the snorting, snuffling bulldozers and shrieking saws came and cut a swath along Finley Creek, perhaps within sight of the village that had been their home beyond the memory of many of them, or of their fathers’ memory?
The machines would have gone away after a while, but then the walkers would have begun to come, not with frightening monsters that ripped the trees groaning from the earth, but alone and vulnerable. And the Yahi had killed in desperation and killed again. The walkers had stopped coming. Then the girl had somehow stumbled onto their little territory, and once again they had killed. And now, after over a hundred years, the saltu stalked them again.
This time, however, there would be no bloodshed and mutilation. Not if he and John got there before the reward-seekers and the Bigfoot hunters. And they would, because Gideon knew where they were.
He went back into the cottage but stood at the open door to inhale the misty, salt-laden air one more time before he finally lay wearily down. He fell asleep quickly and slept through the gray dawn and long into the drizzly morning.