Clouds of vapor rose about them and Alec could hear the tumbling rockslides and avalanches roaring down the mountainsides beyond. He no longer felt any fear of whatever lay ahead. All that was happening to him seemed unavoidable and, somehow, necessary. He closed his eyes in a state of drowsy semi-consciousness. His languor, he knew, must be from the gases rising from the earth, for they made it difficult to breathe. Again he heard the Indians calling to him but he didn’t listen to their cries. Solitude and dreariness had replaced his feelings of fear and horror, and for that he was grateful.
The Black moved on as the night lightened from the flares of new explosions. Loud booms shattered the stillness. In the distance Alec saw the towering cliffs of the mountains tremble and then dissolve into a mass of tumbling rocks.
Why would anyone, even the Indians, believe there was a safe haven within that mass of falling stones?
Alec knew there was no rational answer to his question. He held tight to the black mane as more explosions followed. And within the flaring light he saw a fearsome sight.
Coming across the plain, running toward him, was a legion of painted bodies and faces. The loco brothers! Alec caught his breath sharply as the figures grew steadily before his eyes, a monstrous mob he thought he’d left behind forever! They came ever closer, huge eyes staring wildly at him.
Cold with fresh horror, Alec stared back at them. Then, suddenly, he realized that the eyes staring at him were not hostile but tortured with despair and hopelessness, no different from his own.
Silently, Alec watched them fall in line behind him and the village Indians. Whatever their beliefs had been, they now sought safety in an ancient Indian prophecy.
When Alec neared the mountains, he found that the canyons looked so much alike he could not distinguish one from another. Which one had he used the day before? Or had the numerous rockslides already closed it?
There was a narrow rift directly ahead and Alec rode toward it. As the walls closed over his head, Alec’s gaze turned upward at the towering rock. He thought he had chosen the right canyon, leading to the sacred pueblo, but he couldn’t believe they would find safety there. The wonder of it was that they had managed to travel this far without being killed.
Beyond, as the canyon widened, Alec saw ground vents spurting geysers hundreds of feet in the air, and the smell of sulfur was strong. The Black came to a sudden stop within the murky veil of vapors, his nostrils quivering. He did not like the smell of fumes any more than Alec did. But he went forward with the pressure of Alec’s legs, his hoofs ringing as they struck the stones.
The earth tremors started again, and Alec heard the Indians screaming for him to wait for them. He looked behind and realized that the cries were coming from the painted ones who were far behind in the rear. The main group had stayed close to the stallion’s heels, afraid of losing him.
Behind him, Alec saw the walls of the rift tremble with the sharp earth tremors; then, suddenly, the cliffs toppled in, vanishing completely and pouring tons of stone upon those who had lagged behind!
Shocked by what he had witnessed, Alec sent the Black forward at a run. He knew there was no turning back now, ever.
Alec recognized the area despite the eruptions. Light played across the sky and he saw that the streambed was not where it had been. Its course had been altered by the quakes. Neither was it dry any longer but half-filled with water from the snows that had cascaded down the mountainsides and melted from the intense heat below.
Alec knew he had no choice but to go forward. He urged the Black on into the shallow water, and the Indians followed. Carefully they picked their way up the streambed, through the long, narrow chasm that Alec had traveled once before.
Finally, in the light of the continuing explosions outside, Alec saw the huge amphitheater of the sacred pueblo ahead. Its grass was as green and lush as when he had left it. To either side the cave dwellings rose tier after tier above the pueblo floor, as secure as they had ever been despite the upheaval of the world outside.
Alec shivered at the knowledge that the sacred pueblo might well be the safe haven the Indians had prophesied. He rode the Black forward as the light faded and the night once more became intensely dark and silent.
SANCTUARY
21
For what seemed endless hours, Alec stayed close beside his horse. The Indians had left him to seek security deep in the cave dwellings, and for that he could not blame them.
Many thoughts crowded his mind, but he was able only to stare into the darkness. Would the Indians find their new world? And what about his own world? What was happening outside the sacred pueblo? The night had become uncannily still.
Later, how much later he didn’t know, Alec found himself walking up the path to the dwelling into which the Indians had gone. It was a tremendous cave, dimly lit from the light of a fire coming from beyond. He went deeper, the dust swirling about his feet and his footsteps echoing softly from the walls.
He found the Indians in a large, circular room, sitting about a great fire, the smoke going up a stone chimney. Splintered, ancient ladders lay broken against the walls, all rising story after story to still more chambers, which loomed above them.
Alec’s gaze was attracted to the drawings on the walls of the large room, all showing a lithe, red-skinned people wearing fine, delicate jewelry. In the drawings, too, were sophisticated weapons lying on the ground, and tools and artifacts, all definite examples of an advanced Indian culture.
Was the small group of Indians seated around the blazing fire all that was left of such people?
Alec remained where he was. Who could understand the true meaning of everything these people had endured? What came after the end? A new beginning as they believed?
The smell of their cooking and sounds of life finally penetrated Alec’s senses. He walked forward and they raised their poles in greeting. For the first time Alec was aware of the prayer sticks and clan feathers they had brought with them.
The boy, Alph, rose from where he sat beside his parents and moved over to Alec. “Stay with us,” he said. “We will greet the new world together.” His thin arm went around Alec’s waist, pulling him toward the fire. “We will eat and be strong. Then when the new day comes we will begin planting our crops.”
For what seemed endless hours, Alec sat beside Alph listening to the Indians’ prayers to their many gods—the Sun, the Moon, Earth and Stars—as well as to all the Spirits that could be manipulated through their rituals to provide them with their needs.
The night seemed to be never-ending. Often Alec would awaken from fitful moments of sleep to go to the Black, not only to make certain his horse was all right but to touch him, as though the stallion were the only reality he had left in his world. Then Alec would return to sit with the Indians and listen to their prayers and hopes for the better world to come.
During this time Alec’s mind wandered between reality and a dream. Was it somehow the same for him as it was the Indians? Had he wanted to be free from the cruelty of a world that had taken Pam from him? Was that what had brought him here?
Finally Alec staggered to his feet. “Running away, like dying, is easy,” he said aloud. “It’s the living that’s hard.” His answer, the only answer to all the pain he had suffered, was to go on. To refuse to leave the safety of the sacred pueblo was to run out on the only world he had.
Alec was on his way out of the cave when he felt Alph’s arms around him, attempting to hold him back.
“I’m going,” he told the boy. “I’ve got to find out what’s left of my world.”
“There is only death outside the pueblo,” Alph pleaded, his dark eyes seeking Alec’s. “The new day is almost here. You must stay. You are one with us.”
“I’ve never been what you think I am,” Alec said. “Neither is my horse …”
“That is only what you want to believe. It is not so,” Alph said solemnly.
“It is all I know to be true,” Alec answered, shrugging off th
e boy’s hands. “I can’t think of it any other way.”
“Then you will see for yourself,” Alph called after him.
Moments later Alec stumbled from the cave. How many hours had it been since he’d reached the pueblo? He’d lost all track of time. His eyes turned to the narrow opening above and he saw an ever-brightening patch of gray in the sky. Perhaps Alph was right and the new day was at hand after all.
Not Alph’s new day, he reminded himself, but the new day of his own world, not one of an ancient Indian prophecy.
A soft wind stirred as Alec made his way down the path to the floor of the pueblo. The Black grazed nearby, and just beyond in the ever-growing light Alec made out the dim figures of the grazing sheep.
Alec moved forward, knowing he had to go on, that he mustn’t stay. Step by step, he made his way to the Black and threw his arms around the stallion’s slender neck. “As long as I’ve got you,” he said, “we’re going to find our way out of here, Black. We’re going home …”
“THERE IS ONLY DEATH OUTSIDE”
22
Leaving the sacred pueblo through the narrow chasm, Alec was amazed to find he could look out over the land. The walls of the outer canyons were gone! The morning light was dim but bright enough for him to make out a desolate world. The flattened earth looked dreadful, wrapped in gloom, even death.
Alec stared, passing a hand over his forehead, confused and dazed by what he saw. It all seemed a gigantic dream, a terrible journey through space and time.
How had they survived such a catastrophe even within the confines of the pueblo? Alec gazed in shock at the shattered fragments of rock and debris. Then his wits came slowly back to him, and with it the reality of things.
It was no horrible dream. It had happened, all of it—the end or the beginning of whatever it might be. For comfort, Alec’s arms tightened around the neck of his horse, holding him close.
Alec rode on beneath a sky that was brown-black and a sun that was a dim red glow in the east. Listening, he could hear nothing in the dead silence except his own heavy breathing and the click of the stallion’s hoofs on stones.
“Black,” he said aloud, “from the beginning I had no right to take you with me.”
The stallion’s ears turned with the sound of Alec’s voice. Then his lofty head turned as well, the large eyes rolling, showing for an instant the crescent white eyeball. A loud snort came from the wet lining of his flared nostrils, as if he understood but would have had it no other way.
A cold wind struck at them and Alec felt the sting of grit against his face. He hunched over, close to his horse’s neck, letting the Black find his way through the strewn stone and crumbling debris. He tried to talk to his horse but the grit blew into his mouth when he opened it. So he remained silent, holding the stallion to a walk, trying to see into the wind. As the gusts continued, he tore off what was left of a ragged pant leg and, making a crude mask, covered his face with it.
The minutes lengthened into hours as the stallion scaled the twists and folds of stone, his hoofs kicking up huge clouds of dust. Alec rode with jaws clamped shut to keep his teeth from chattering in the cold. His eyes ached and stung. It was worse for his horse, he knew. Yet they kept going, their bodies stiffening from the cold despite their labors.
Alec looked longingly for the sun, hoping it would bring the true day. It was up there somewhere but it was wasted and sickly behind the brown sky. He could see its edges from time to time, cutting wan patches of broken morning light.
Finally the sky turned amber above the dust-laden air, becoming ruddy and red-edged. It continued to pale, and suddenly darkness left the land as the sun appeared like a round burning hole in the thick dust.
In the first reaching rays of the sun, Alec could find nothing of what he had known before. There was only a dead and ravaged land as far as he could see. The earth was clogged with ash and debris. Trees were uprooted and lying in tangled heaps, their trunks burned and stripped clean. Devastated by violent upheavals of the earth, all the land had an unreal, blasted appearance.
Even the mountains were nothing he had known before. Their summits had collapsed into great steaming depressions with craters gaping miles wide. There was no longer any snow or ice, only gashed remains of the eruptions that had taken place. Domes and peaks had been torn away, and even as he watched, great rock avalanches slid down the sides of remaining cliffs.
The destruction of the land was complete and Alec recalled Alph’s warning: “There is only death outside the pueblo.”
Alec’s gaze continued to sweep across the gray and lifeless terrain before him. Could anyone, anything, have survived the awesome force that had caused such destruction?
“But we’re alive, Black,” he told his horse. “You and I … we’re going to find someone, somewhere.”
Alec rode for a long while before he spotted what looked like the remains of a trail leading down a ridge. Flowing mud and debris poured down to either side of it, but he believed that if he followed it, he might find safety below.
Reaching the trail, he looked for footprints, hoofprints, tracks of any kind. He wished he could find just one person, one animal, alive, so he would know he was not alone in his world.
Hearing the rumble of thunder overhead, Alec looked up to see huge, dark clouds sweeping across the sky, driven by what seemed to be hurricane winds. Soon the clouds would blot out the sun and it would be dark again. He moved the Black on while there was still enough light to see his way.
As the great clouds passed overhead, the pale sky turned inky black. There was only a sliver of light on the horizon to the east. Alec rode toward it, guiding his horse carefully, cautiously. A cold wind swept over him and then a fine rain fell.
The rain came down heavier, matting the ash that covered the way before them. The Black’s strides faltered, then the stallion stumbled and Alec knew the ground was shifting beneath his hoofs. The horse plunged down the ridge, his way strewn with logs, until he finally reached the bottom.
“Good fellow, good fellow,” Alec said. “You made it. It’s got to be easier from now on.”
Alec rode on, glad for the rain, which cleared the air temporarily of ash and gas. Straining, he pulled clean air into his tortured lungs and knew the Black was doing the same.
Hours later the sun set in the colorless sky and dusk fell upon the ravaged land. Alec didn’t know how long he’d ridden when suddenly the Black snorted loudly. Before them Alec saw a sickly lake of gray-brown water where the flow of melted snow had been blocked by mud and the trunks of countless trees.
Reaching the water, Alec slipped off the Black. He felt sick from the vapors that had filled his lungs and parched his throat. He held on to the stallion, both hands around him, his head resting against the hot, sweated side. The rise and fall of his labored breathing matched the horse’s. He shook his head, trying to clear it, but his hands trembled and his stomach burned. Gagging, he vomited bloody froth into the dirty mud beside him.
The Black lowered his head to the water, and Alec heard the pulling suck of his lips as the fluid gurgled up the rings of his throat. It sounded good. It sounded wet. Alec decided to take his chances too, for he couldn’t feel worse than he did. He dropped to his knees and lowered his head to the water. He tasted its muddy, tepid wetness, letting it run over his tongue and down his throat. He raised his head as his horse did, then dipped to drink again, not swallowing the tepid water this time but rinsing his mouth and squirting water.
Moments later, knowing they could go no farther that night, Alec pulled a canvas bag of parched brown corn from his pocket and, cupping his hand, offered it to his horse.
“Just a little, Black, only a little,” he said.
Then, when he took his empty hand away from the soft lips of the Black, he filled it again with corn and wetted it with water. He ate his skimpy meal, knowing there was only enough corn left for another day.
The food stuck sour in his throat as he lay still on the ground, thin
king how it had been at home with his horse rubbed down and fed, safe in a stall with clean straw, close beside a tack room with saddles and bridles and the smell of clean, polished leather. Then Alec fell asleep and dreamed as he had not dreamed in years.
He was a small boy and wanted a horse of his own very much, but he lived in a city and could not have one. Then something wonderful happened and he was riding a great, black horse. Someone said in his dream, “You will never be able to ride that horse. You cannot keep him.” He cried because he wanted to ride the black horse very much …
Alec awoke with a start and there were tears on his cheeks from his dream. He knew it was time to get up and soak his head in the water. There was no need to go back so far, even in dreams.
It was shortly before daybreak, the coldest time of the darkest hour. He got to his numbed feet, shivering and stretching to ease the stiffness from his legs and back. The Black was standing nearby and Alec went to him, holding him close for his love and the warmth of his body.
“It was no dream,” he said softly. “You’re here, and we’re going to find our way out somehow.”
Alec mounted his horse and rode from the clearing. By dawn he was climbing the strewn gullies that rimmed the edge of what was left of the trail, his breath smoking in the cold but clean air.
An hour after daylight a strong wind came up and swept across the ravaged land. It blew over the tumbled stones of the mountains and across the bare land, but none of it was as bad as the day before. The trail led downward, ever downward, toward the desert, where Alec knew they would find warmth and, he hoped, peace and safety.
The desert loomed before Alec in a fluid tremor of heat, but he welcomed the warmth after the numbing cold he had felt for so long. As the hours passed and the Black traveled through the ever-mounting warmth, Alec knew he wasn’t thinking clearly anymore. He had trouble focusing his eyes on the rutted trail ahead. He didn’t have to see, he told himself. His horse knew where he was going.