California

Previously:

In Nevada, The Traveler kills a cheating gambler and hurriedly leaves town.

Chapter 31

It was fall by the time I reached California, as far west as you could go without getting your feet wet.

The gold rush was in full swing. I had traveled across a thousand miles of barren land. I slept alone under the stars. I felt the earth tremble beneath my feet as vast herds of buffalo swept by. I faced Indians and rode with the Calvary.

I reminisced about my life. I remembered Running Horse left a piece of his flint knife in my chest. I remembered that Elijah Benson fought the same battle seventeen times. I remembered McPherson, and what we did there. I thought about Captain Jeremiah Springs. He couldn't be killed by Indians, so he killed himself. I remembered a young cowboy, who was lucky enough to survive a stampede, only to be crushed while loading a steer into a railway car.

I thought about Inga and the eight years we spent together. In my old age, I was sorry that I hadn't marked her grave. Someday, I might want to visit her. Someday, I wouldn't mind laying down beside her.

I remembered Bear Who Cries, the only man who had seen more than me. I wish I had been Indian and been able to learn the things he tried to teach me. Being white isn't all it's cracked up to be.

Sometimes, I remembered things I didn't want to. Everyone does. It's what keeps a man humble. If he only remembered the good things, he would begin to think too highly of himself.

-------       -------       -------

Finally, I came to a bustling gold-rush town. People dreamed of striking it rich in California and went to bed hungry. They had risked everything, and traveled thousands of miles, only to find fool’s gold. At the end of the day, all they had was a pan full of pebbles and sand.

Men lost their lives fighting over a glittering rock that turned out to be worthless. Mothers and daughters went to work in brothels to pay for their men's foolishness. Utah seemed far away.

But there was more to California than the madness of greed. There was a land here, valuable in its own right. Fertile fields as far as the eye could see. Someday, men might learn to farm it, instead of digging it up in a search for easy money. In the west, nothing came easy. I had learned that.

In California, I looked out at the ocean and saw more water than I knew existed. I turned around, and looked back east, and thought about all the things I had seen. A lifetime wrapped up in dusty images. I think what I remembered most about the west was the dust. The never-ending dust, - and Sarah.

This was the west for me, Wade Thompson, a drifter who lived long enough to see the old west disappear.

The End