14 – Not my revolution, man
It was not a long climb, but a steep one, up a
path Lance had not seen from the road. It weaved between the cracks of stone as
if designed for secrecy, narrow enough to make them go single file.
Several
of the shadowy Indians lead the way, and several followed behind. Mike, Chris
and Lance like prisoners between.
It reminded him of patrol, of weeks out in the
muck and mire of swamp lands, climbing finally the hills along the Cambodian
border, always moving with one eye to either side. Waiting for the crack of
rifle fire or explosions of mortar, each step possible death.
"What's the matter?" Chris asked,
touching his sleeve.
"Nothing."
"You look bad."
"I'm worried about the others."
"If Dan was smart, he's long gone by
now," Mike said, from in front of Lance, huffing as the path took another
acute angle up.
The
air pressed cold and heavy against Lance's chest, too. He didn't seem able to
breathe well enough.
"Watch your step," one of the Indians
ahead of them said. "Rough ground."
Stony ground. Like broken teeth under foot,
poking through the bottoms of their shoes as they struggled to keep balance.
But even touching the rocks on either side shocked them with cold and sharp jabs.
Lance wished he had dug his gloves from his knapsack. Or a heavier coat. And
just when Lance thought he could go no more, the
ground
leveled and the path opened out into a gravel-filled space of about twenty
yards square.
"Well," Mike said, leaning on a
boulder. "It looks like Dan wasn't very smart at all."
The van sat at the far edge of the clearing,
its headlights illuminating the ruts of a more conventional dirt road up from below.
To Lance, the engine sounded worse for the climb. Dan, Sarah and Marie leaned
against its dented side.
"Mikie!" Marie yelped when she
caught sight of them and darted toward them with outstretched arms. "I was
so worried," she moaned and hugged him.
Their
Indian guards looked impatient, and the man who had brought them up the path,
motioned to keep moving.
"Not here," he said.
Mike sighed. Lance waited, but Sarah made no
similar effort to greet him, remaining where she was by the van till, he
reached her. She looked bored.
"Well, well," Dan said. "Fancy
meeting you people here. The question is why?"
"For your safety," the dark Indian
said.
"Our safety?" Chris said. "You
were supposed to meet us down mountain."
The Indian shook his head. It was hard for
Lance to see any of his features for the criss-cross of paint, though even in
the side glow of the flashlights, he caught high cheek bones and broad brows,
and the black hair framing a sun beaten face.
"Others
are on the road tonight besides the ones you sent away," the Indian leader
said.
"You know these people?" Dan asked,
pushing up his hat by the floppy brim.
"They are friends," Chris said, but
seemed most interest in the Indian's news. "Who else?"
"The police from what we can
gather," the Indian said. "At least, there are police cars among
theirs-- on both sides of the mountain."
"What?" Mike moaned.
"Where?"
"Along the road by which you would have
come down. They seem prepared to stop you once you cross over into
Arizona."
"Damn!" Mike said, slapping the side
of the van. "Isn't that just dandy! What the hell do we do now?"
"There are many roads through our land of
which the police know nothing," the Indian said.
"And you'll help us?" Mike asked.
"For Chris and you," the Indian
said, a slow smile rising to his lips. "Oh, don't be surprised. We know
who you are, Lost Dog, and of your anger."
Mike
didn't like or trust their Indian guides, but he let them lead him up a path deeper
into the mountain. The bowie knife Lance had passed back to him, poked through
his sleeve. What a knife could do against
rifles,
he didn't know. Nor did he know exactly what Chris had in mind, diverting them
here, but suspected the worst. And he was angry for letting it happen. Her
plots generally ended in misfortune.
"Where are we going?" Mike asked,
when the man paused near a small ledge. Beneath them, the gravel square showed
like a patch on the side of the mountain, colored only by the splash of the
still- illuminated van headlight. Around it showed the vague shapes of
Mike's
companions, stomping their feet against the cold. Yet, his gaze was drawn
beyond them, over the ridge to a cup in the tip of the mountain and a dawn
rising over the blue lip of a lake. A lake now frozen over, pine trees
encircling it like a wall.
Wisps of stream came and went with his
breathing, coming faster as he began to understand where he was.
Over the lake, clouds drifted, like giant
islands of ice floating on a black sea. Yet, beyond the clouds, lights glowed,
the distant fires of Albuquerque light the horizon like a rising sun. To the south,
other more distant cities glowed. Only the north west was dark, as if the lake
would not allow light to flow over it, sucking it down deep into his blackness.
But it was the other peaks and the Indian lands beyond them which defied the
white man's lights, as if the old Indian nations still had power to resist.
"What
do you want?" Mike asked, more firmly, afraid to sink too deeply into the
vision.
The man ignored him, leaning on the stone and
staring out at the lake. "This is a holy place," he said. "it is
a place of watching and of peace. Our ancestors used it for ceremonies in
ancient times, before the white man, and for a while even when the white man
hunted below. Few outsiders have we allowed to see it."
"I'm impressed," Mike said, and was,
though his tone was bitter. "The question is, why me?"
The Indian leader looked at Mike, the dark
eyes like lakes themselves, shimmering with the distant dawn and lights of the cities.
There was pain in those eyes, and pride, and a deep bitterness which spread the
ache into Mike.
"You are a legend," the man said.
"Tales of your battles with the white man come to us from all directions,
the way such things did of warriors in other days."
"Stop it!" Mike barked, turning away
from the eyes and the lake to the cold reality of the stone behind him, his
voice echoing like a gunshot down in the valley beneath. "Chris has been
filling your head with bullshit. I'm no revolutionary. I'm out of the business of
fighting white men, black men, red men or green. All I want to do now is
survive. The old wars are over. Our people have proved they can't be won."
Disappointment flooded the face and eyes of
the Indian leader. It was a look Mike had seen previously in the eyes of the
Weathermen when he ceased his campaign of bank bombings.
But why, man? they'd asked him. Don't you want
to cure imperial oppression of the masses?
No, he told them. I just want to cure my own
pain.
"You're wrong," the Indian leader
said, his voice tighter than it had been. "The wars have just begun."
"Not the wars that count," Mike
said, staring down at his own shaking hands. "If you wanted to win you
should have killed the white man when he stepped from the boat. Now he's
entrenched. Can't you see the lights of his cities?"
"We see them," the Indian said,
kneeling before a flat stone. He unrolled a cloth of sticks, removing several.
A spark set them to flame. Mike smelled gasoline. "Even now our brothers
strike against his forts..."
"Your brothers. Not mine."
"There is our blood in you."
"And the stench of reservation. I won't
get trapped in this place the way my mother did."
"But you're already trapped," the Indian
said, looking up, the light of the fire catching in his eyes.
"Bullshit!"
This time the man looked angry. He stared down
into the fire, and when he spoke, his voice had an edge.
"I can see you're not ready to accept
us."
"Accept you? For what?"
"Chris said you would lead us."
"What?" Mike roared. "I ought
to... Lead you where? To slaughter?"
"They slaughter us now in their own
way."
"Slowly," Mike said. "By
abandoning you. But make a noise and they shall bring here the full weight of
their power and crush you like every other revolutionary-- like they crushed
the Black Panthers up north."
"We can shoot back," the Indian
said, his gaze fixed upon the flames, looking every bit the model of the
Weathermen and Panthers Mike had seen. Idealistically violent, yet ignorant of
the pale-faced monster he intended to challenge.
Mike groaned and leaned against the rock
behind him, looking back out at the horizon. "Look, friend, do what you
want. But I'm splitting this scene."
"Leaving? For where?"
"For the place where Columbus intended to
go. Somewhere across the Pacific where there aren't fifty million warrants
hanging over my head."
"You will change your mind," the Indian
said flatly. "You must."
"Like hell I will," Mike barked.
"Now are you going to tell us how to get out of here, or do we try and run
the cops down when we find them?"
The
Indian rose and kicked dirt onto the fire. He pointed northwest into the gloom.
"There is a road that way," he said.
"One they don't know about?"
"An old miners’ road," the Indian
said.
"Sounds impossible. We've got a VW van
not a covered wagon."
"It's possible-- with care. It will bring
you down to the highway beyond where they wait. But do not trust my words completely.
Travel at night. Hide the van during the day. All roads will be watched once
they discover they've been fooled."
Mike laughed. "Friend, they have always
been watched. Let's get back to the others."
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