The Best of Edward Abbey Read Online Free PDF Page B

boulders to the cabin where Lee waited for us in the welcome glow of the lamp.
    “What’s wrong?” Lee said, wiping a tin plate with a bandana.
    “He saw it.”
    “Saw what?”
    “The lion.”
    “Ah …” said Lee. He looked at me and smiled, his deep eyes tender. “You’re a lucky boy.” He gripped my arm. “How about a cup of your grampaw’s coffee?”
    “Yes,” I said calmly. “I can drink anything.”
    A little later all three of us went back to the spring, with both buckets, and looked around. Lee even climbed up to the ledge above the spring but by that time it was too dark to see any tracks. We went back up the trail, watered the horses, built a little squaw fire outside between the cabin and the corral, and unrolled the sleeping bags which the old man kept in the cabin. We sat around the fire for a while after that, watching the moon over the eastern ranges, and talked of the lion, the lost horse, the next day’s work, in which Lee announced he would not be able to join—he was leaving us in the morning. But he promised to come back to the ranch in two or three days.
    “What does a mountain lion sound like?” I asked.
    “Well,” Grandfather said, “like a woman. Like a woman screaming. How would you describe it, Lee?”
    Lee considered. “Compadres, a lion does sound something like a woman. Like a vampire-woman wailing for her demon lover.”
    “Are we going to hunt the lion, Grandfather?”
    “No, we’ll let well enough alone. If we don’t hunt him why he won’t hunt us. Besides, it’s the only lion left on the place. I can’t afford to lose him.”
    “Do you think he’s watching us now?”
    “I wouldn’t be surprised.”
    Nobody said anything for a minute or so. The moon crept up into the stars. I added more sticks to the fire.
    Grandfather stretched his arms and yawned. “I don’t know about you fellas but I am tired. Anybody want to sleep on the cot inside?”
    Lee grinned. “Is there room for all three of us?”
    “Not with me in the middle there ain’t.”
    “Then let’s all sleep out here.”
    “By the fire,” I said.
    “You boys do that,” Grandfather said, “but somebody might as well use that cot. I’ve been sleeping on the ground for about seventy years now, give or take a few.”
    “You ought to be used to it,” Lee said.
    “I’m used to it. But I never did like it much.” Picking up his bedroll, the old man walked toward the cabin door. “Goodnight, gentlemen.”
    “Goodnight,” we said.
    Lee and I shook the scorpions and black widow spiders out of the sleeping bags, spread them on the ground close to the fire, removed our boots and hats and crawled inside. We did not use our saddles for pillows. A saddle is hard enough just to sit on.
    At first I lay on my side, gazing at the coals of the burning pine. Then I lay on my back and stared straight up at the stars. The flaming blue stars. Out in the little park the horses stumbled around, munching grass, and I heard one of them staling on the hard ground. A meteor stroked quietly across the sky.
    “Lee?”
    “Yes?”
    “Up there on the peak: Was it—something like the lion?”
    He did not answer at once. “Would you mind repeating that question?”
    “What you found up there—was it something like the lion?”
    “Oh. Yes. Yes, Billy. It was something like the lion.”
    I thought about that as I looked straight up at the stars. The marvelous stars. A marvelous day. The stars became dimmer as I watched them, as if they were drifting farther and farther away from us. I closed my eyes and slept and dreamed of the missing pony, fireflies, a pair of yellow burning eyes….

FROM
Desert Solitaire
(1968)

Cowboys

    J une in the desert. The sun roars down from its track in space with a savage and holy light, a fantastic music in the mind. Up in the mountains the snow has receded to timberline—Old Tukuhnikivats and the other peaks take on a soft spring green along their flanks; the aspen is leafing out.