The Black Stallion Legend (14 page)

Screaming in fear, the Black bolted forward, and Alec cried out in defiance of the holocaust.

Then the great curtain of fire overhead grew paler. It slowly turned the land below to a deep copper color with a heavy purple tint that reminded Alec of a dreadful shade of blood, belonging to the last hour of the world.

The sky became dark, making it difficult to see the way ahead. Alec brought the Black to a halt, fighting the stallion, who wanted to run on. Above, the arc of dull flame was only a dim ghost of its former self, and the night became very still and cold.

Alec couldn’t believe the air could have changed so rapidly with the darkening sky. Where had the intense heat gone? The night had sunk into frigid black.

Then from somewhere behind him Alec heard muffled voices, followed by loud cries.

“Lead us!”

Alec looked back but could not see the Indians in the dark. He held on to the Black, his thoughts chaotic as he tried to overcome his sense of desolation as well as guilt for leaving them behind.

He could be of no help to the Indians, he told himself. He could do nothing for them. Their fate was no different than his own. It was only a question of time for all of them.

A growing sense of numbness came over Alec. It was a feeling he did not understand but did not challenge. He couldn’t account for what he did, but
moments later he found himself riding back toward the Indians.

Somehow, what he was doing seemed strangely right to him now. It was as if he were suspended in a dream, viewing everything quite calmly when he should have felt only fear in what he had to do … 
return to the sacred pueblo
.

The Indians came running toward him, driving their sheep and village dogs before them. Turning the Black, Alec led them through the night and icy cold.

As Alec led the Indians from the mesa, he found that there was no escape from the holocaust. Exposed as they were, with the ground heaving beneath them, he became swathed in terror. He clung to the Black’s neck, dazed and exhausted, knowing that when death came it would be at his horse’s side.

His eyes turned to the heavens again, and he hoped he had the will to live. The night curtain had opened and he saw stars. Then the starlight dimmed altogether and deep blackness fell once more upon the earth. A vast rain came and Alec clung more tightly to the Black’s neck in the drenching downpour. The rain was accompanied by a fierce gale and hundreds of lightning flashes, which seemed to sweep downward in a great shower of flame. Then they were gone and darkness fell once more over the land.

Terrified, Alec waited in the dark. He heard the cries of the Indians behind him but it was useless to try to see them. The blackness, and all that was happening
to him, was brutal to his senses. And yet, as he sat on the Black, he took courage in the strength of the great stallion who carried him.

Clouds of vapor rose about them and Alec could hear the tumbling rockslides and avalanches roaring down the mountainsides beyond. He no longer felt any fear of whatever lay ahead. All that was happening to him seemed unavoidable and, somehow, necessary. He closed his eyes in a state of drowsy semi-consciousness. His languor, he knew, must be from the gases rising from the earth, for they made it difficult to breathe. Again he heard the Indians calling to him but he didn’t listen to their cries. Solitude and dreariness had replaced his feelings of fear and horror, and for that he was grateful.

The Black moved on as the night lightened from the flares of new explosions. Loud booms shattered the stillness. In the distance Alec saw the towering cliffs of the mountains tremble and then dissolve into a mass of tumbling rocks.

Why would anyone, even the Indians, believe there was a safe haven within that mass of falling stones?

Alec knew there was no rational answer to his question. He held tight to the black mane as more explosions followed. And within the flaring light he saw a fearsome sight.

Coming across the plain, running toward him, was a legion of painted bodies and faces. The loco brothers! Alec caught his breath sharply as the figures grew steadily before his eyes, a monstrous mob he thought he’d left behind forever! They came ever closer, huge eyes staring wildly at him.

Cold with fresh horror, Alec stared back at them.
Then, suddenly, he realized that the eyes staring at him were not hostile but tortured with despair and hopelessness, no different from his own.

Silently, Alec watched them fall in line behind him and the village Indians. Whatever their beliefs had been, they now sought safety in an ancient Indian prophecy.

When Alec neared the mountains, he found that the canyons looked so much alike he could not distinguish one from another. Which one had he used the day before? Or had the numerous rockslides already closed it?

There was a narrow rift directly ahead and Alec rode toward it. As the walls closed over his head, Alec’s gaze turned upward at the towering rock. He thought he had chosen the right canyon, leading to the sacred pueblo, but he couldn’t believe they would find safety there. The wonder of it was that they had managed to travel this far without being killed.

Beyond, as the canyon widened, Alec saw ground vents spurting geysers hundreds of feet in the air, and the smell of sulfur was strong. The Black came to a sudden stop within the murky veil of vapors, his nostrils quivering. He did not like the smell of fumes any more than Alec did. But he went forward with the pressure of Alec’s legs, his hoofs ringing as they struck the stones.

The earth tremors started again, and Alec heard the Indians screaming for him to wait for them. He looked behind and realized that the cries were coming from the painted ones who were far behind in the rear. The main group had stayed close to the stallion’s heels, afraid of losing him.

Behind him, Alec saw the walls of the rift tremble with the sharp earth tremors; then, suddenly, the cliffs toppled in, vanishing completely and pouring tons of stone upon those who had lagged behind!

Shocked by what he had witnessed, Alec sent the Black forward at a run. He knew there was no turning back now,
ever
.

Alec recognized the area despite the eruptions. Light played across the sky and he saw that the streambed was not where it had been. Its course had been altered by the quakes. Neither was it dry any longer but half-filled with water from the snows that had cascaded down the mountainsides and melted from the intense heat below.

Alec knew he had no choice but to go forward. He urged the Black on into the shallow water, and the Indians followed. Carefully they picked their way up the streambed, through the long, narrow chasm that Alec had traveled once before.

Finally, in the light of the continuing explosions outside, Alec saw the huge amphitheater of the sacred pueblo ahead. Its grass was as green and lush as when he had left it. To either side the cave dwellings rose tier after tier above the pueblo floor, as secure as they had ever been despite the upheaval of the world outside.

Alec shivered at the knowledge that the sacred pueblo might well be the safe haven the Indians had prophesied. He rode the Black forward as the light faded and the night once more became intensely dark and silent.

For what seemed endless hours, Alec stayed close beside his horse. The Indians had left him to seek security deep in the cave dwellings, and for that he could not blame them.

Many thoughts crowded his mind, but he was able only to stare into the darkness. Would the Indians find their new world? And what about his own world? What
was
happening outside the sacred pueblo? The night had become uncannily still.

Later, how much later he didn’t know, Alec found himself walking up the path to the dwelling into which the Indians had gone. It was a tremendous cave, dimly lit from the light of a fire coming from beyond. He went deeper, the dust swirling about his feet and his footsteps echoing softly from the walls.

He found the Indians in a large, circular room, sitting about a great fire, the smoke going up a stone chimney. Splintered, ancient ladders lay broken against
the walls, all rising story after story to still more chambers, which loomed above them.

Alec’s gaze was attracted to the drawings on the walls of the large room, all showing a lithe, red-skinned people wearing fine, delicate jewelry. In the drawings, too, were sophisticated weapons lying on the ground, and tools and artifacts, all definite examples of an advanced Indian culture.

Was the small group of Indians seated around the blazing fire all that was left of such people?

Alec remained where he was. Who could understand the true meaning of everything these people had endured? What came after the end? A new beginning as they believed?

The smell of their cooking and sounds of life finally penetrated Alec’s senses. He walked forward and they raised their poles in greeting. For the first time Alec was aware of the prayer sticks and clan feathers they had brought with them.

The boy, Alph, rose from where he sat beside his parents and moved over to Alec. “Stay with us,” he said. “We will greet the new world together.” His thin arm went around Alec’s waist, pulling him toward the fire. “We will eat and be strong. Then when the new day comes we will begin planting our crops.”

For what seemed endless hours, Alec sat beside Alph listening to the Indians’ prayers to their many gods—the Sun, the Moon, Earth and Stars—as well as to all the Spirits that could be manipulated through their rituals to provide them with their needs.

The night seemed to be never-ending. Often Alec would awaken from fitful moments of sleep to go to the
Black, not only to make certain his horse was all right but to touch him, as though the stallion were the only reality he had left in his world. Then Alec would return to sit with the Indians and listen to their prayers and hopes for the better world to come.

During this time Alec’s mind wandered between reality and a dream. Was it somehow the same for him as it was the Indians? Had he wanted to be free from the cruelty of a world that had taken Pam from him? Was that what had brought him here?

Finally Alec staggered to his feet. “Running away, like dying, is easy,” he said aloud. “It’s the living that’s hard.” His answer, the only answer to all the pain he had suffered, was to go on. To refuse to leave the safety of the sacred pueblo was to run out on the only world he had.

Alec was on his way out of the cave when he felt Alph’s arms around him, attempting to hold him back.

“I’m going,” he told the boy. “I’ve got to find out what’s left of my world.”

“There is only death outside the pueblo,” Alph pleaded, his dark eyes seeking Alec’s. “The new day is almost here. You must stay. You are one with us.”

“I’ve never been what you think I am,” Alec said. “Neither is my horse …”

“That is only what you want to believe. It is not so,” Alph said solemnly.

“It is all I know to be true,” Alec answered, shrugging off the boy’s hands. “I can’t think of it any other way.”

“Then you will see for yourself,” Alph called after him.

Moments later Alec stumbled from the cave. How many hours had it been since he’d reached the pueblo? He’d lost all track of time. His eyes turned to the narrow opening above and he saw an ever-brightening patch of gray in the sky. Perhaps Alph was right and the new day was at hand after all.

Not Alph’s new day
, he reminded himself,
but the new day of his own world, not one of an ancient Indian prophecy
.

A soft wind stirred as Alec made his way down the path to the floor of the pueblo. The Black grazed nearby, and just beyond in the ever-growing light Alec made out the dim figures of the grazing sheep.

Alec moved forward, knowing he had to go on, that he mustn’t stay. Step by step, he made his way to the Black and threw his arms around the stallion’s slender neck. “As long as I’ve got you,” he said, “we’re going to find our way out of here, Black. We’re going home …”

Leaving the sacred pueblo through the narrow chasm, Alec was amazed to find he could look out over the land. The walls of the outer canyons were gone! The morning light was dim but bright enough for him to make out a desolate world. The flattened earth looked dreadful, wrapped in gloom, even death.

Alec stared, passing a hand over his forehead, confused and dazed by what he saw. It all seemed a gigantic dream, a terrible journey through space and time.

How had they survived such a catastrophe even within the confines of the pueblo? Alec gazed in shock at the shattered fragments of rock and debris. Then his wits came slowly back to him, and with it the reality of things.

It was no horrible dream. It had happened, all of it—the end or the beginning of whatever it might be. For comfort, Alec’s arms tightened around the neck of his horse, holding him close.

Alec rode on beneath a sky that was brown-black
and a sun that was a dim red glow in the east. Listening, he could hear nothing in the dead silence except his own heavy breathing and the click of the stallion’s hoofs on stones.

“Black,” he said aloud, “from the beginning I had no right to take you with me.”

The stallion’s ears turned with the sound of Alec’s voice. Then his lofty head turned as well, the large eyes rolling, showing for an instant the crescent white eyeball. A loud snort came from the wet lining of his flared nostrils, as if he understood but would have had it no other way.

A cold wind struck at them and Alec felt the sting of grit against his face. He hunched over, close to his horse’s neck, letting the Black find his way through the strewn stone and crumbling debris. He tried to talk to his horse but the grit blew into his mouth when he opened it. So he remained silent, holding the stallion to a walk, trying to see into the wind. As the gusts continued, he tore off what was left of a ragged pant leg and, making a crude mask, covered his face with it.