Part 15 (1/2)
Ali answered, ”For the past two years, I've been here in California.”
”_Hmm-ph._ Didn't know they landed any such critters out thisaway.”
”They didn't,” Ali informed him. ”Lieutenant Beale brought twenty-five camels with him when he surveyed the wagon road from Fort Defiance.”
”_Wagh!_” Hud Perkins e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. ”Then 'tis so!”
”What's so?”
”I heard tell of such when I was leavin' Santa Fe to come here,” his host informed him. ”Some fool, 'twas said, was goin' from Fort Defiance to Californy, usin' camels to lay out a road. Not many believed it. Of them as did, n.o.body thought the camels would get a pistol shot from Fort Defiance.”
”It's true,” Ali said. ”I was with the expedition.”
”Well tie that one!” Hud Perkins marveled. ”So camels did come to Californy! What happened to 'em?”
Ali had no immediate answer, for after reaching California, nothing worthwhile had happened. The camels had been shown in various places, including Los Angeles, and had attracted the usual onlookers and sparked the usual stampedes. A few months after arriving, Lieutenant Beale took fourteen of the animals and started back along the surveyed road.
The rest of the herd, with Ali as keeper, had been sent to and was still at Fort Tejon, where Army bra.s.s amused itself by putting camels through the usual meaningless paces. Seeing no opportunity for a change, and with all he could stomach of Fort Tejon, Ali had taken Ben Akbar and departed.
Ali answered his host, ”They're at Fort Tejon.”
Hud Perkins snorted. ”Don't blame you for leavin', got no use for Army posts myself. You goin' east?”
”Not all the way,” Ali said. ”Too far east is no better than too far west. I think I'll go back along the road. I saw a lot of free country there.”
Hud Perkins was silent for a long while, then he said quietly, ”You saw it two years ago.”
”But--” Ali was startled. ”It isn't all taken?”
”I don't know,” Hud Perkins spoke as a bewildered old man who no longer knew about anything. ”Was a time when I figgered the West'd never settle an' a man would always find room. But--Anyhow it's two years since I come out.”
Ali asked gravely, ”Have there really been so many others?”
His host answered moodily, ”I've seen a pa.s.sel of wagon roads opened up.
Whenever there was one, people boiled along it like water pours out of a busted beaver dam.”
The specter Ali had seen lurking behind the wagons at Beale's Crossing was again present and again threatened panic.
”Perhaps,” he said doubtfully, ”I'd better go somewhere else.”
”If you can still find such a place,” Hud Perkins replied. ”Still, like I said, it's two years since I come out. I could be wrong. Why not find out?”
”How?” Ali asked.
”Ride back along the road,” Hud Perkins advised him. ”See for yourself if it's what you think it is. It's the one way you'll ever know.”
Ali said, ”I'll do it.”
When the leading team of mules swung around the sandy b.u.t.te, Ali turned Ben Akbar away from the road. It was somehow different from the numerous times he'd swung to one side or the other, so that wagons might pa.s.s without the panic that always resulted when livestock met a camel. This time there would be no turning back.