Chapter XII

I had learned the trick. And I knew that the way would be easier. Every succeeding journey will find less resistance. And so, as you will see, my journeys from San Quentin life into other lives were achieved almost automatically as time went by.

After Warden Atherton and his crew had left me it was a matter of minutes to let my body be back into the little death. It was death in life, but it was only the little death, similar to the temporary death produced by an anaesthetic.

Came the duration of darkness, and the slow-growing awareness of other things and of another self. First of all, in this awareness, was dust. It was in my nostrils, dry and acrid. It was on my lips. It coated my face, my hands, and especially the finger-tips. Next I was aware of ceaseless movement. I heard clash of iron tyres against rock and sand.

I opened my eyes. On the coarse blankets on which I lay the dust was half an inch thick. I was a child, a boy of eight or nine, and I was weary, as was the woman, who sat up beside me and soothed a crying babe in her arms. She was my mother; that I knew, just as I knew, that the shoulders of the man on the driver’s seat were the shoulders of my father.

When I started to crawl my mother said in a tired and querulous voice, “Can’t you ever be still a minute, Jesse?”

That was my name, Jesse. I did not know my surname, though I heard my mother call my father John. The other men addressed my father as Captain. I knew that he was the leader of this company.

I crawled out and sat down beside my father. My father had horses to his wagon. To right and left of us rode a dozen or fifteen men and youths on horses. Across their pommels were rifles. Our way was like a funeral march. Nobody laughed or smiled. Never did I hear a happy tone of voice. The faces of the men and youths were grim and hopeless. But I will not say that my father’s face was hopeless. It was grim and anxious, most anxious.

Suddenly our horses raised their weary heads and scented the air. The horses quickened their pace.

“What is it?” my mother asked from within the wagon.

“Water,” was my father’s reply. “It must be Nephi.”

And my mother: “Thank God! And perhaps they will sell us food.”

And into Nephi our great wagons rolled. The landscape was much the same as that through which we had passed. There were no trees, but there was water.

“That must be Bill Black’s mill they told us about,” my father said, pointing out a building to my mother.

An old man with sunburnt hair rode to our wagon and talked with father. The signal was given. Many women, all tired-faced and dusty like my mother, emerged from the wagons. Also poured forth many children. There must have been at least fifty children, and it seemed I knew them all of long time. The women began to cook supper.

While some of the men chopped sage-brush and we children carried it to the fires that were kindling, other men unyoked the oxen and let them stampede for water.

My father with several men, including the old man with the sunburnt hair, went away on foot in the direction of the mill. I remember that all of us, men, women, and even the children, paused to watch them depart.

While they were away other men, strangers, inhabitants of desert Nephi, came into camp. They were white men, like us, but they seemed angry with all our company. Bad feeling was in the air.

One of the strangers came to our fire, where my mother was alone, cooking. I had just come up with an armful of sage-brush, and I stopped to listen and to stare at the intruder, whom I hated, because it was in the air to hate, because I knew that every last person in our company hated these strangers.

This stranger at our fire had blue eyes. Mother did not greet him, nor did he greet her. He stood and glowered at her for some time, then he cleared his throat and said with a sneer:

“I bet you want to be back in Missouri right now.”

Mother answered:

“We are from Arkansas.”

“I guess you got good reasons to deny where you come from,” he said, “you that drove the Lord’s people from Missouri.”

Mother made no reply.

“And now,” he went on, after the pause, “you’re now coming and begging bread from us.”

“You lie!” I cried. “We aren’t Missourians. And we are not beggars. We’ve got the money to buy.”

“Shut up, Jesse!” my mother cried. And then, to the stranger, “Go away and let the boy alone.”

“I’ll shoot you, you damned Mormon!” I screamed and sobbed at him.

As for the man himself, my conduct had not disturbed him. At last he spoke, and he spoke solemnly.

“Like fathers like sons,” he said. “The young generation is as bad as the elder. The whole breed is unregenerate and damned. There is no atonement. Not even the blood of Christ can wipe out the iniquities.”

“Damned Mormon!” I cried. “Damned Mormon! Damned Mormon! Damned Mormon!”

When my father, and the men who had accompanied him, returned, all crowded anxiously about him. He shook his head.

“They will not sell?” some woman demanded.

Again he shook his head.

A man spoke up. “They say they have flour and provisions for three years, Captain,” he said. “They have always sold it before. And now they won’t sell. And it is not our quarrel. Their quarrel is with the government, and they’re taking it out on us. It is not right, Captain. It is not right, I say. We have our women and children, and California is months away, winter is coming, and there is nothing but desert in between. We can’t face the desert.”

He broke off for a moment to address the whole crowd.

“Why, you all don’t know what desert is. This is not desert. I tell you, it’s paradise, and heavenly pasture. Captain, we must get flour first. If they don’t want to sell it, then we must just take it.”

Many of the men and women began crying out in approval, but my father held up his hand.

“I agree with everything you say, Hamilton,” he began. “We could wipe out Nephi very fast and take all the provisions we can carry. But we wouldn’t carry them very far. You know it. I know it. We all know it.”

His words were reasonable.

“We can’t afford to fight now,” father continued. “We’ve all got our women and children. We’ve got to be peaceable at any price.”

“But what will we do with the desert?” cried a woman who nursed a babe at her breast.

“There are several settlements before we come to the desert,” father answered. “We’ll have to go on, that’s all. Two days’ journey beyond is good pasture, and water. They call it Mountain Meadows. Nobody lives there, and that’s the place we’ll rest our cattle and feed them up. Maybe we can shoot some meat. And if the worst comes, we’ll keep going as long as we can, then abandon the wagons, pack what we can on our animals, and make the last stages on foot. We can eat our cattle as we go along. It would be better to arrive in California without a rag than to leave our bones here.”

I was slow in falling asleep that night. My rage against the Mormon had left my brain. I heard mother ask father if he thought that the Mormons would let us depart peacefully from their land. He answered her that he was sure the Mormons would let us go if none of our own company started trouble. But I saw his face at that moment, and in it was none of the confidence that was in his voice.

And I awoke to the old pain of the jacket in solitary. About me were the customary four: Warden Atherton, Captain Jamie, Doctor Jackson, and Al Hutchins. I cracked my face with a smile. I drank the water they held to me, refusing to eat bread and speak. I closed my eyes. But so long as my visitors stood about me and talked I could not escape.

“Just as yesterday,” Doctor Jackson said. “No change.”

“Then he can stand it?” Warden Atherton queried.

“Sure. The next twenty-four hours as easy as the last. He’s a wooz, I tell you, a perfect wooz.”

I awoke, lying upon a rough rocky floor, and found myself on my back. I opened my eyes. My shelter was a small cave, no more than three feet in height and a dozen in length. It was very hot in the cave. I wore no clothing save a filthy rag about the middle. I was very thin. I was very dirty. My long hair was all about my shoulders.

After a time I crawled to the entrance, and lay down in the burning sunshine on a narrow ledge of rock. It was a very hot day. Not a breath of air moved over the river valley on which I sometimes gazed. Hundreds of feet beneath me the river ran sluggishly. The farther shore was flat and sandy and stretched away to the horizon. Above the water were scattered clumps of palm-trees.

There were lofty, crumbling cliffs on my side. Farther along the curve, carved out of the living rock, there were four colossal figures. The figures sat, with hands resting on knees, and gazed out upon the river.

The hours passed while I roasted in the sun. All this I knew—colossal figures and river and sand and sun and sky—would pass away. Ah, I knew it so profoundly that I was ready for such sublime event. That was why I was here in rags and filth and wretchedness. I was meek and lowly, and I despised the frail needs and passions of the flesh. And I thought of the far cities of the plain I had known, of the last day so near at hand. Well, they would see soon enough, but too late for them. And I should see. But I was ready. I will arise, reborn and glorious, and take my rightful place in the City of God.

At times, between dreams and visions in which I was verily and before my time in the City of God. The penitent apostates should never again be received into the churches. Continually I returned to contemplation of the nature of the unity of God. I liked the contentions of my beloved teacher, Arius. Truly, if human reason could determine anything at all, there must have been a time, when the Son did not exist. There must have been a time when the Son commenced to exist. A father must be older than his son. To hold otherwise were a blasphemy.

And I remembered back to my young days when I had sat at the feet of Arius, who had been a presbyter of the city of Alexandria. Yes, I had been to the Council of Nicea. And I remembered when the Emperor Constantine had banished Arius for his uprightness. And Arius died in the street. I said, and so said all we Arians, that the violent sickness was due to a poison.

And here I muttered aloud, drunk with conviction:

“Let the Jews and Pagans mock. Let them triumph, for their time is short. Their time is short, and for them there is no time after time.”

I talked to myself aloud a great deal on that rocky shelf overlooking the river. I was feverish, and I drank water from a stinking goatskin. There was food, lying in the dirt on my cave-floor—a few roots and a chunk of mouldy bread; and I was hungry, although I did not eat.

When the sun set, I took a last look at the world. And I crawled into my hole and ebbed down into the darkness of sleep.

Consciousness came back to me in solitary, with the quartet of torturers about me.

“Blasphemous and heretical Warden of San Quentin,” I gibed, after I had drunk deep of the water they held to my lips. “Let the jailers and the trusties triumph. Their time is short, and for them there is no time after time.”

“He’s out of his head,” Warden Atherton affirmed.

“He’s mocking at you,” was Doctor Jackson’s judgment.

“But he refuses food,” Captain Jamie protested.

“Huh, he could fast forty days and not hurt himself,” the doctor answered.

“And I have,” I said, “and forty nights as well. Do me the favour to tighten the jacket and then get out of here.”

The head trusty tried to insert his forefinger inside the lacing.

“It’s impossible,” he assured them.

“Have you any complaint to make, Standing?” the Warden asked.

“Yes,” was my reply. “On two counts.”

“What are they?”

“First,” I said, “the jacket is abominably loose. Hutchins is an ass.”

“What is the other count?” Warden Atherton asked.

“That you are conceived of the devil, Warden.”

Captain Jamie and Doctor Jackson tittered.

Left alone, I strove to go into the dark and gain back to the wagon circle at Nephi. I was interested to know the outcome of that drifting of our forty great wagons across a desolate and hostile land, and I was not at all interested in what came of the mangy hermit. And I gained back.

But here I must pause in the narrative, my reader, in order to explain a few things and make the whole matter easier to your comprehension. This is necessary, because my time is short.

Life cannot be explained in intellectual terms. When we are so ignorant of life, can we know death? Matter is the only illusion. It is life that is the reality and the mystery. Life is vastly different from mere chemic matter. I know. I am life. I have lived ten thousand generations. I have lived millions of years. I have possessed many bodies. I am life.

Look here. This finger of mine—this finger is not I. Cut it off. I live. The spirit that is I is whole.

Very well. Cut off all my fingers. I am I. The spirit is entire. Cut off both hands. Cut off both arms. Cut off both legs. I, the unconquerable and indestructible I, survive. Clip my hair. Shave from me with sharp razors my lips, my nose, my ears. I will still exist, unmutilated, undiminished.

Oh, the heart still beats. Very well. Cut out the heart. I have not perished. Only the body has perished, and the body is not I.

Have I not shown you, my reader, that in previous times, I have been Count Guillaume de Sainte-Maure, and the boy Jesse, whose father was captain of forty wagons in the great westward emigration? And, also, am I not now, as I write these lines, Darrell Sanding, under sentence of death in Folsom Prison and one time professor of agronomy in the College of Agriculture of the University of California?

Matter is the great illusion. That is, matter manifests itself in form, and form is apparitional. Where, now, is the body of Guillaume de Sainte-Maure that was thrust through on the grass so long ago by de Villehardouin? Where, now, are the forty great wagons in the circle at Nephi, and all the men and women and children and cattle? All such things no longer are, for they were forms, manifestations of matter. They have passed and are not.

The spirit is the reality that endures. I am spirit, and I endure. The form of me that is my body will fall apart when it has been sufficiently hanged by the neck. In the world of spirit the memory of it will remain. Matter has no memory, because its forms are evanescent.

In all my journeys through the dark into other lives that have been mine I have never been able to guide any journey to a particular destination. Thus many new experiences of old lives were mine before I returned to the boy Jesse at Nephi.