“Come on in, son.”
“I am in.”
“Well, then, come on in farther, dammit.”
The visitor obeyed, staring at the stained long johns that were all that stood between the giant and nakedness of an unpredictable nature.
“What brings you to civilization, son, as the locals delude themselves into callin’ it?”
“You crazy big man?”
“Haw! Guess I shouldn’t laugh, though. Most folks’d agree with you. My name’s Malone. Amos Malone. Or Mad Amos Malone, if you prefers the colloquial.”
“I do not understand your words.”
“You got company. Folks can be weird about namin’ other folks. Unconventional I may be, but not the other. Leastwise, I think not.”
“Amos Malone, I have trouble. My people have trouble.”
“Well, now, I’m sorry t’ hear that. What did you say your name was?”
“Cheshey.”
“Okay, Cheshey. Now, if you’ll just tell me… Cheshey? You got a grandpappy called Ma-Hok-Naweh?”
“That is my grandfather, yes.” Cheshey began to feel more secure in this small dark room with the crazy big white man.
Malone turned reflective. “Good ol’ Ma-Hok-Naweh. Chief medicine man to the Papagos. Great man, your grandpappy. What brings his grandson so far north?”
“Do you know of the Big House that stands between here and the home of my people?”
“Casa Grande? Sure I do. A place full o’ long memories and much magic. Spirit home.”
Now Cheshey was nodding eagerly. “Crazy white men want to run the trail for their Iron Horse right next to it. Grandfather says the shaking the Iron Horse makes will make Big House fall down. If this happens, times will be made very bad for us as well as for white man.”
Malone frowned and stroked his impenetrable beard. “Sure as hellfire would. I’d heard that the new Southern Pacific was goin’ to cut north so they could make a station here in Phoenix. Goin’ to lay track right alongside the Big House, huh? We’d better do somethin’ about that right quick. Your grandpappy’s correct.”
“He waits for us at the Big House. He told me to find you here, said you would help. Would you really help us against your own people?”
“What makes you think the railroad men are my people, son? There’s only two kinds of folk in this world: the good folk and the bad folk. Mine’s the good folk. They come in all shapes and colors, just like the bad ones. Don’t never let nobody tell you different.”
“I will remember, Amos Malone,” Cheshey said solemnly. “You must come quick, while there is still time. You have a horse?”
“If you can call Worthless a horse. I’m comin’ as fast as I can, young feller-me-lad.” As he spoke, he was dragging on his buckskins, then the goatskin boots. When at last he was ready, he paused for a final lingering glance at the still-unused bed. “Real sheets,” he muttered darkly. “I almost made it. Them railroad people better listen to reason, ’cause I’m mad enough at ’em already.”
Of course, they didn’t.
“Let me make certain I understand you, sir. You want me to move the route of the line several miles eastward to make sure that the vibrations from passing trains won’t knock over a pile of Indian rocks?”
“That’s about the sum of it,” Malone agreed.
The foreman took his feet off the desk, rose, and stalked over to the wall where the map was hung. The only reason he didn’t laugh at his outlandish visitor outright was because he had the distinct feeling that to have done so would have been unhealthy. He would have to be satisfied with being in the right.
He ran one finger along the map.
“Look here, sir. I didn’t buy this godforsaken territory from the Mexicans, and I wouldn’t give you a mug of fresh spit for the lot of it! There’s nothing here but cactus, sagebrush, mesquite that sucks the water out of the earth, and Indians too poor to spit it back again. But buy it we did, and the Southern Pacific is chartered to span it from Texas to California. I aim to see that done exactly as laid out by the company’s surveyors.”
“But why d’you have to pass so close to Casa Grande?”
“If you must know, I think some fool with a sextant and too much time on his hands decided the old relic might be worth a passing glance from passengers.”
“Not if it falls down, it won’t.”
“That’s not my problem; that’s the Indians’ problem.” He walked back to his desk so he could be closer to the Colt that resided in the top compartment there. “Anyway, the decision’s already been made. What’s the big ruckus over an old stone tepee, anyway?”
“It’s not a tepee. This ain’t the Plains Country, friend. Big House is thousands o’ years old.”
“Sure looks it, but how do you know that?”
“You can taste it. The air in them old rooms reeks o’ antiquity. So do the red clay pots you dig up inside sometimes. It was built by a people the local Indians call the Ancient Ones. Still the tallest building in this territory, if you don’t count a few mission steeples. You go shakin’ it to bits, and there’ll be hell to pay.”
“Are the Indians making threats, Mr. Malone? I have the authority to request Army protection, if necessary.”
“No, they ain’t makin’ threats. I’m just relayin’ to you what ol’ Ma-Hok-Naweh told me last night.”
“Ma-Hok… you mean that old savage who’s been living up there?” The foreman smiled. “I think we can handle any attack he might mount.”
Malone leaned forward and put a big hand on the desk. The wood creaked under the rough, callused skin. There were some mighty peculiar scars in the skin between the thumb and big finger. “Listen, friend, I don’t think you understand me. You’re not just dealin’ with one senior shaman. You’re dealin’ with the Ancient Ones. Now, if’n I was you, I’d make it a point to shift the line a mile or so to the east.” Having had his say, he turned without a good-bye and strode out.
The foreman was glad to see him leave. It would make a good story to tell the work gangs. Mountain men were kind of rare hereabouts, and it wasn’t every day you got a visit from one big as a house and crazier than a bedbug.
It was cold in the desert that night. In the Sonoran summer you prayed every day for the heat to dissipate, and then in the winter you prayed for it to return. Those who survived and prospered in such country realized early on that whatever deity was involved, it had made its decision about the land a long time ago, and constant pleading for change would get you nothing but a sore throat that no change in the weather would make any better.
At Malone’s back, Casa Grande—the Big House—the place of the Ancient Ones, rose four stories toward the new moon. Windows like square black eyes gaped at the clouds milling uncertainly overhead. A big rattler slithered into a crack in the caliche, and Malone listened to the final surprised squeak of a startled kangaroo rat.
For a while he concentrated on listening to the sounds of the snake swallowing. Then he let his gaze come to rest on the figure seated across the small fire from him.
Ma-Hok-Naweh’s age was unknown save to himself and a few intimate friends. A true shaman keeps his real age private, which is understandable since it’s the age not of his body but of his soul. Malone held Ma-Hok-Naweh in high regard. He was a true medicine man, not an accomplished fake like Broken Water of the Ute.
A few ribbed saguaros stood sentinel behind the old man, guarding him from the night. At their bases, lines ran through the sandstone, across his face, to continue down into the stone on which they sat.
“The Ancient Ones are restless. They are restless because they are frightened for their house in this world.”
As Ma-Hok-Naweh spoke, his grandson Cheshey sat cross-legged nearby, watching and listening without comment. A wise boy. Like his grandfather and like Malone, he wore only a breechcloth and the ever-present headband.
“How will the Ancient Ones make their fear known?” Malone asked.
“I cannot tell, my friend.” The shaman studied the sand pictures before them, watching as the wind played with the granules stained that afternoon with fresh vegetable dyes. As the sand shifted, the earth shifted with it, for the sand is of the earth and knows its ways. “All I know is that it will take the form of the white man’s own medicine, but seen through the eyes of the Ancient Ones.”
“Will many die?”
Again the old eyes examined the play of wind and sand. “It may be. I am saddened. Though I argue with the white man’s steel trail, I do not wish to see him die. There are many who are like well-meaning but ignorant braves, who only follow the orders of their chief, he who makes war upon the land, and question not what he says.”
Now the moon was hidden by dark clouds, and the rumble of approaching thunder rolled over the paloverde and the thornbushes.
“Can nothing be done?”
“Not by this old one. Perhaps by you, if you would wish to try. You know the white man’s ways as well as our ways. The spirits might look kindly on you as an intermediary. With help and will, you might do something.”
Carefully he reached down and collected a handful of green sand and put it in a small leather sack. He did the same with a palmful of ocher grains. Malone accepted both sacks and put them aside.
“Keep them apart, for they contain both life and death,” Ma-Hok-Naweh admonished him. “You know the words. Use the sand and the words together and you may turn the unrest of the Ancient Ones. Do not be startled by what you may see. Remember that it is only white man’s medicine as seen through the eyes of my ancestors. And if you cannot work this thing, get out, get out quickly, my friend!”
Malone rose, his near-naked body massive against the ancient wall behind him. “Don’t worry about that, old teacher. I don’t aim to die fer no damn-fool railroad man. But maybe I kin save his braves in spite of themselves.”
Ma-Hok-Naweh stared worriedly at the sands as his friend dressed, mounted, and rode off toward the south, toward the railhead. After a while his grandson spoke for the first time all evening, his voice a whisper as befitted the enormity of the occasion.
“Do you think he can do anything, Grandfather?”
“No, I do not think so. But he is a strange man, this Amos Malone, even for a white man. It may be that I am wrong and that he can do something. Also, you must always remember that he is crazy, and that is a great help in dealing with the spirits.” Ma-Hok-Naweh looked to the ground. Dark spots began to appear on the dirt. “Now help me inside the Big House, grandson. It is the best place now for me to be.”
The boy looked around uneasily. “Because the wrath of the Ancient Ones is upon us?”
“No, you young fool. Because it is starting to rain.”