The Dark Place

''Moona Kameemee?’”

''Kooknama reemee.' Now look here.'

Gideon followed the knobbly forefinger down the page to the last line, where it hovered. ''Ku'naamari'mi,’” Gideon read with interest. “Close enough.'

'And what does it say it means?” The forefinger shifted slightly.

Gideon read it aloud. “'Old woman.’ Son-of-a-gun. What kind of dictionary is this? What's the language?'

Abe closed the book so Gideon could see the plain gray paper cover: A Yahi Dictionary. Compiled by Edward R. Chapman. University of California Publications in American Indian Linguistics, Volume 13, 1914. “Fascinating, huh?'

'Yahi!” Gideon said, his blood stirred. “But that's...There aren't any more Yahi...” His hand went to his shirt pocket and found the small notebook there. He flipped rapidly through it, searching for the notes from his talk with Pringle. “Look at this, Abe: cara and sin-yah. See if we can find them.'

In ten minutes they had them both. In Yahi, kara was “please,” and ciniyaa was “no.'

'Well, well, well,” Abe said quietly.

'Abe...they speak Yahi. Yahi!” His mouth had gone dry. “How...who are they?'

'Don't get so excited,” Abe said, flushed and excited himself. “Don't jump so fast to conclusions. Listen, a minute ago in that notebook, when you were flipping, I saw a picture. Show me again.'

Gideon turned back to the drawing he had made of Pringle's baskets. “This?'

'Let's go in the library,” Abe said suddenly.

Abe had had the wall between the family room and the master bedroom knocked out—he and Bertha slept in the smaller bedrooms—and had created a huge room that he'd filled with secondhand metal library shelves, freestanding in rows as well as along the walls, and blocking the windows, so that the whole was satisfyingly like a fusty corner of the stacks in some graduate library of anthropology.

The books, some fifteen thousand of them, Gideon had once estimated, were shelved in amazing disorder of which only Abe could make sense: books behind books, books in piles on their sides, books overflowing onto the floor in three-foot stacks. Gideon strongly suspected the existence of a precise but arcane cataloging system specifically invented for the bafflement of visitors. If there were one, it had successfully baffled him.

He stood respectfully in the doorway while Abe scurried about the labyrinth. Every few moments there would be a “feh!” or a “phooey!” and Abe would scuttle sourly around a corner of the shelves to disappear down another cluttered lane. After a while, “bingo's began to outnumber “phooey's and Abe emerged regularly to put an old, dark, serious-looking volume in Gideon's hands. In ten minutes he had an armload.

Abe came out with a final thick book, frowningly plumped it on the top of the stack Gideon was holding, and looked at him as if he were startled to see him. “What for are you standing there like a shmegegge? Put them on the table so we can see.'

With the books on the dining-room table, Abe propped Gideon's open notebook in front of them and thumped it with his forefinger. “This basket pattern I've seen before.'

'But it won't tell us anything. Pringle said a student told him it's a California design. They must have traded for it.'

'Of course it's a California design. Any dope could see it's a California design. That's why these are California monographs we got here. So start looking.'

Right, Gideon thought. Any dope. He opened the volume nearest him, Material Culture of Aboriginal California, and turned to the index. “Basketry,” he read, “36—41, 122—23, 174—83...'

Abe wasn't bothering with indices. He was starting at the beginning of each book and turning the pages with amazing rapidity, using just a flick of the finger. After every fifteen or twenty flicks, barely pausing, he would moisten the finger with his tongue. He was in the middle of his third book as Gideon finished his first.

'Bingo,” Abe said. He turned the open book so it faced Gideon. “Is this it, or isn't it?'

It was definitely it: the same double, stepped columns of dark rectangles on a light background.

Abe's face was glowing. He closed the book so Gideon could see the cover: Basketry of the Indians of North Central California, Vol. VI. The Yahi.

'The Yahi,” Gideon murmured, conscious of the slow, powerful pounding of his heart. “But is it possible Abe? Ishi was the last. No one's ever mentioned a splinter group.'

Abe's voice was dreamy. “Five hundred miles they must have walked, always hiding. Over the mountains. Across the Columbia Gorge. Out of the land of Canaan, the warm, plenteous valleys of California, five hundred miles to the wettest, darkest place in America.'

'And one of the most isolated places in America. The settlers were hunting them down in the nineteenth century, remember, killing them off.” And the twentieth, according to Pringle.

'Hah,” Abe said softly, and Gideon could see how much he wanted to believe in the incredible possibility. So did Gideon. “Hah,” Abe said again, then shook his head. “No. No, it's too bizarre, too romantic. No.'

'I don't recall,” Gideon said, “that such pedestrian considerations ever caused you any concern before.'

Abe slapped the table with his hand. “Right you are. You're absolutely right. I think we got something here.'

He pointed suddenly at another book. “Hand me that, will you?'