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The moon turned the horses and
mules silver with its magic. It gave the packer an unspoken pleasure
to look back on a sinuous Sierra snake of eleven animals stretched
in a flexible line nearly 150 feet long behind him. And he looked
up, straight up on the peaks of Kearsarge where the snow fields
always left behind shady patches of dirty white, up where the Inyo
moon splashed them with a dream brush and made old secrets come to
life.
* * * *
“You’ve heard of the ghost of Kearsarge,” the old man said.
“Everyone knows about her.” The packers at the table at the ranch
looked at each other.
“What ghost?” one asked.
“Just the old lady,” the man said, with laughter in his dark Paiute
eyes. “She doesn’t hurt nothing, you know. Just sings a little.”
The evening was dark at the ranch, and the table lamp splashed
shadows of the assembled weary cowboys on the kitchen walls as they
sipped coffee. It was always good to hear the stories the old man
told, coming over from his own small cabin here on the reservation.
“I never heard nothing about a ghost lady up Kearsarge,” said the
cook.
“That’s what they say,” said the old man. “Ever since there was a
town up there. Used to be the mine up there, you know. Big one. Then
there was a big dance in town one Christmas time, it was. Long time
ago. Before my time.
“Anyway, everybody went to
Independence to dance, you know, except the caretaker and his wife.
Avalanche got ‘em. They were the only ones. Everybody else went to
the dance. Can’t remember what year it was. That mine was working
then, though.”
Nobody spoke while the old man sipped some coffee. “You boys ever
hear her up there at night? You can hear her. That’s what they say,
anyway. Avalanche took her head off, you know. Never did find it.
They say she calls for her head at night when there’s a moon.”
“At Kearsarge?”
“Yeah, you know where those old foundations are? That’s where the
little town used to be. Where the stock trail leaves the Onion
Valley road. Looking for her head. That’s what they say. Looking for
her head.”
* * * *
[to top of second
column] |
The first foundations of Kearsarge
glowed in the moonlight, little more than deliberate rock piles and
scattered timbers now. The packer steered Brownie around the first
and left the little stretch of dirt road again to follow the creek
up the canyon. More foundations glowed, their old stones like
age-worn teeth, and the wind came down from the snow patches cool
and quiet. The packer thought he heard something, once. Just once,
but he wondered about it, anyway. Maybe it was a night bird. Maybe.
Looking back, the cluster of lights that was Independence had now
shrunk to a small glowing nucleus in the moonscaped miles below.
He rested the stock on the first
switchback above the old ghost town and pulled on his jacket. It
helped.
* * * *
“Your granddad told us there was a spook up at old Kearsarge,” the
packer said as they walked along the irrigation ditch that one
night, a time back. “Grandpa
knows a lot,” she said, squeezing his hand. “It’s probably true.”
He saw her eyes then, in the glow of a nearby streetlight there in
town, as they walked. The desert night warmed them and made them
both think of things long past and yet to come.
“You don’t think he was just trying to b.s. us into being scared?”
“Not Grandpa. He knows a lot.”
“Umm,” the packer said.
“You like him?”
“Sure. Great guy.”
“He likes you, too. He likes you a lot, I know. So does my mom and
dad.”
“Very nice people, your mom and dad.”
She smiled up at him and he could see the pretty eyes again, the
ageless eyes that spoke so much of generations of desert and
mountain people, despite her youth.
“You like kids?” she asked. [Text from file received from
Slim Randles]
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