to disappear at about that time. Other old articles confirmed in macabre detail Abe's statement that by no means were all the murders and mutilations in Old California perpetuated by whites.
Gideon had just about decided he'd chosen the wrong book for relaxing with when he came upon a 1919 article called “My Indian Friend Denga,” in which a St. Louis woman recalled her childhood in Red Bluff more than fifty years before. Her father and mother had run the general store in the little northern California town, and she had gotten to know some “city” Yahi who sometimes did odd jobs for the store, taking their pay in flour and tea. She had made friends, after a fashion, with one of the Indian children, and had even learned some Yahi, a feat that impressed Gideon considerably.
The affectionate, rambling story was a pleasant counter to the newspaper stories but provided little pertinent information until the last two pages:
I remember the last time I saw Denga. He came to the yard in back of the store with his uncle, old One-ear. I thought it was strange that One-ear didn't leave him there to play with me, and go inside to help my father, but the two of them just stood there. Denga's eyes were full of tears, and One-ear was very serious. “Denga cannot play anymore,” One-ear said. I was surprised, because that was the first time he ever really said anything to me. Usually he just grinned and shuffled his feet. I guess he finally figured out I could understand Yahi.
'Is he sick?” I asked.
One-ear looked confused, and I thought maybe I hadn't used the right words. “Not sick,” he finally said. “We have to go away.'
At that Denga started to cry. “I have to go to the Dark Place,” he said.
One-ear kind of shook the boy's shoulder to make him stop blubbering, and just then Father came to the back door and called One-ear to help him with something. The old Indian went to the door, dragging Denga by the arm, but Father separated them and took One-ear inside. Denga just stood by the door, trembling and miserable. I ran right up to him and asked him what in the world it was all about.
That started him crying again. “We're never coming back here. We have to go away forever.'
'But where is the Dark Place?” I asked him, thinking maybe he meant they were going to die. “Is it Heaven?'
He looked sideways at the ground. That's the way they said no. Then he said, “It's far away, on the other side of Mount Lassen. There are no people, and the ferns are as big as trees, and the trees are as tall as mountains, so tall that you can never see the sun, and day is the same as night. And the air is made of water, and it rains all day long.'
It sounded awful. “But why do you have to go there?” I asked him.
'So the saltu can't find us.'
Saltu was their word for white people, and it was the first time I'd heard that the Yahi had any reason to be afraid of us.
Of course, later on I found out that they had plenty of reason.
One-ear came out then and glared at Denga; he knew he'd been telling tales. He stared hard at me, with a strange look on his face, as if he wanted to ask something, but then he just took hold of Denga's arm and dragged him away. Naturally, at the time I didn't believe the story of the Dark Place, but then Denga didn't ever come back, and neither did the others. Father must have thought I knew something about it, because he kept asking me where they'd gone, but I remembered that last begging look of One-ear's and held my tongue. Until now, fifty-two years later, I have kept that story locked in my heart. The Dark Place no longer sounds awful to me. It sounds like a good place to be, cool and dim and calm. I like to think of my little friend Denga there, and ugly old One-ear, beyond whatever earthly or heavenly mountain range it lies, enjoying the tranquil, halcyon days denied them in their ancestral homeland.
With an odd tightening in his throat, Gideon closed the book and laid it on the rim of the tub. He stepped out of the cooling water, put on a warm velour robe, and went into the kitchen to prepare another pot of tea, but changed his mind. Turning up the robe's collar, he opened the cottage door and stepped into the night. There was no wind, but a cold, velvety mist, smelling of the ocean, drifted in the air. The night was at its blackest and most silent, so that the gentle hissing of the tide on the pebbles of the beach forty feet below seemed much closer, like old leaves rustling a few inches from his ear. Far away a night bird, an owl, hooted twice, mournful and hollow. Much nearer, in the water, there was a sudden small splash, and then a scrabbling sound. Then the slow flapping of big wings. Another night hunter, this one finding its prey.
His hair was wet with mist, and droplets had collected on his eyelids. He stood looking down at the black water he could not see. The Dark Place. The name echoed in his mind, doomful and sinister, melancholy and strangely beautiful. He shivered again, not from the cold this time.
Tranquil, halcyon days. He smiled grimly to himself. Over a hundred years of self-imposed isolation, over a century of fear and loneliness and privation. He tried to imagine the appalling significance of the new trail to them. To what horrendous proportions must the stories of the saltu have grown in four generations of retelling? What must have gone through their minds when the snorting, snuffling bulldozers and shrieking saws came and cut a swath along Finley Creek, perhaps within sight of the village that had been their home beyond the memory of many of them, or of their fathers’ memory?
The machines would have gone away after a while, but then the walkers would have begun to come, not with frightening monsters that ripped the trees groaning from the earth, but alone and vulnerable. And the Yahi had killed in desperation and killed again. The walkers had stopped coming. Then the girl had somehow stumbled onto their little territory, and once again they had killed. And now, after over a hundred years, the
