the Lonesome Gods (1983) Read Online Free PDF

the boy's mother?"
    "She was. We lost her, ma'am. I am taking the boy to his grandparents."
    There was a long silence. I sat in the shadow of a great rock with my eyes closed like Mr. Kelso. It was very quiet.
    Finney came down from his post and took a pull from a water bag. "Nothin' so far," he said to Farley. "We got us a good view from up yonder."
    "Want me to spell you?"
    "Sit tight. I'm good for a couple of hours longer." He glanced over at me. "Come up an' join me after you've et. You can help me look for boogers."
    "All right."
    .. you ran away into the desert?" Miss Nesselrode was talking to my father. "They pursued you?"
    "Yes, ma'am. There were many of them. They had men watching at the river crossings, in the towns, at the water holes."
    "However did you escape?"
    My father was growing tired. His voice showed it. "We have never escaped. We only believed we had, ma'am. Now I am taking his grandson back to him because there is no one else."
    There was another long silence, and then she said, "I could take him."
    My father's eyes opened and he looked at her and said, "Yes, I believe you would, but first ... first we must try his own blood, his own people."
    "Even if they hate you?"
    My father shrugged. "What is hate to me? What they feel toward me does not matter. It is my son who matters. He must have a home."
    Slowly the day waned on, and after we had eaten a little, I climbed the rocks to where Finney lay, taking his beef and bread to him.
    From the crest of the rocks, under some cedar trees, we could look out across a magnificent stretch of canyon s and broken, eroded land to where the river was. The mountains were blue with distance, and cloud shadows lay upon the desert.
    "It is so dry. How does anything live?"
    Finney wiped the crumbs from his lips. "They fit themselves to it, son. They adapt. The animals, the plants, all of them.
    "Ever see a kangaroo rat?"
    "No."
    "Well, he's sort of a ground squirrel, you might say. Has him a tail two, three times as long as his body, seems like. He can jump like you wouldn't believe.
    "Now, that there kangaroo rat, he doesn't drink. He gets all the moisture he needs from what he eats. An' off down south of here along the dry streambeds you'll find some trees called smoke trees. That's because from a distance they look like smoke. Well, you take a seed from one of those trees and plant it, and nothing happens. Something in that tree knows that seed will need water to grow, so the trees grow along the dry washes, and when they drop their seeds the seeds are washed away by flash floods, and while being washed away they are banged around by the rocks in the dry wash, smashed against one rock by another, rolled over, and banged again. Then, when that seed finally lodges somewhere, it will be along the bank of one of those arroyos, as we call 'em, and it will grow where from time to time it can get water." Finney nodded toward the desert. "Look yonder. Some folks start scannin' afar off, and gradually work closer an' closer to theirselves. I do it the other way because if somethin' is close, I want to know it. I look slowly from as far as I can see to one side, to as far as I can see to the other, right close in front of me. I look for movement or something that doesn't fit, some wrong shadow or something.
    "Then I look a little further out and sweep the field again with my eyes, and further and further until I'm at the limit of my vision, whatever that is.
    "Of course, you pay especial attention to good hiding places or ways that can be traveled without being seen.
    "This sort of thing you learn by doin'. Your pa, now, Farley tells me he's a first-rate desert man. None better, Farley says, an' from Farley that's high praise.
    "Well, you try to be better. You learn from him. Learn from the Injuns, they've done lived with it, an' maybe from me, Kelso, an' Farley."
    He glanced at me. "Is that Nesse!rode woman settin' her cap for your pa?"
    "No. I don't think so. She is just being