"I loved him." "He was my master." "How did you know where he was?" "There could be only one place for him:" "His favorite path in the foothills." "We found Master Sun's body in a comfortable position his back resting against the boulder staring down at our valley." "His face glistened in the frost." "But his lips were black from the poison of the wild berries." "Everyone loved him." "Why did he take his own life?" "Yin and yang?" "The "yes" and the "no."" "In him, the "no" conquered." "But I sensed that he was in harmony." "Perhaps he looked down into our valley knowing that soon he would have to leave it." "But instead of the beauty we observed he saw ugliness." "How is that possible?" "He looked with his eyes and we look with ours." "You just gonna stand there?" "Don't they put any value on human life where you come from?" "So you just stand there and watch the show." "Well, find something else for your entertainment." "Sir?" "You're a little late, ain't you?" "Three, four years late." "I am late?" "Railroad's built." "China boys done gone on." "Don't worry about it, though." "Everybody around here's a little late." "Sir?" "Yeah, I'll serve you." "What do you want, a beer?" "Work." "Work?" "That's a dumb thing to say." "l could sweep the floor." "I do that." "Could I have a glass of water, please?" "Have to charge you for it, same as whiskey, 1 0 cents a glass." "I guess you are a businessman." "Nathaniel!" "You give my Chinese friend here a drink." "He wants water." "Well, give him a water." "Welcome to Mountain Creek." "We're going through kind of a dry spell here." "Dry spell?" "Where you digging?" "Digging?" "Those smart ones of us, the ones who stayed around we kind of figure that the mother lode she's still around here somewhere, probably laughing at us." "Only thing is, none of us has ever stumbled across it." "Who is Mother Lode?" "You look like a rice paddy on the outside." "But you've got a brain working inside, ain't you?" "Where you digging?" "I am not a miner." "Where are you digging?" "I'm sorry. I would not know where to dig or what to dig for." "Ground around here is full of nothing but worms." "That's a lie." "Gold's gone, silver's gone." "A lie!" "Gambling houses, fancy houses..." "...banks, they're all gone." "Then how come you're still here?" "In a year or two, this will just be a ghost town." "The mother lode is here." "Somewhere." "Mr. Bates if you had anything of value in your room I'd go up there right now and tear it to bits." "But you don't have anything of value, do you?" "We are gonna come back." "We're gonna be a city again." "Surely a man who could carve so beautiful a boat could carve another." "My papa was a whaling man." "Bates, he sits up there in his room and waits for some guy poking around in an abandoned mine to stumble onto something big." "Then he'll swoop down and claim-jump." "That's his game, claim-jumping." "Bates, he never hit it big." "Somebody else had to do it for him." "Family portrait?" "Yes." "You ever see the--?" "I didn't mean to yell at you." "You ever see the man?" "No." "A proud father." "You are the child?" "You ever see the man?" "Your father." "No." "I'm Andy Dortminder." "I am Caine." "You are all right?" "Why wouldn't I be all right?" "l am glad." "Caine, why wouldn't I be all right?" "Then it was true." "Every once in a while, I can't tell whether something's really happening to me or I'm just imagining it." "Hey." "If that was really happening to me how come you didn't jump up and help me?" "Perhaps you saw a world which I did not see and wished to enter." "Yeah." "Young people, you will venture out into the forest and go to a certain clearing." "The clearing will be easy to find." "It is marked on this map." "You will go on horseback." "The horse is experienced in these matters." "Once there, you will dismount." "Face the clearing across the water." "Watch very carefully." "Something will happen." "What will happen, master?" "Afterwards you will return here and tell me one by one exactly what you saw." "is this a game, master?" "Did I say it was a game?" "But if it is not a game, what is it?" "lt is what I have described." "A test?" "A journey to the clearing in the forest." "No more today, Bates." "I had enough of you." "I pay my tabs, don't I?" "I've been looking for that man." "He prospected these mountains once, he may be doing it again." "What about him?" "I got a message concerning his family." "Well, I ain't seen him, oh, since things were booming a few years back." "Hey, now, don't you walk away from Bates, you hear?" "Now, I'm not through with you." "Thank you for the water." "You know him?" "We met on the trail." "Where you digging?" "I'm looking for a man, not gold." "Him?" "That prospector?" "He wants gold as bad as I want him." "What are you doing here?" "Walking." "Picking these roots." "You're lying." "Like an animal." "It's good." "Chinaman." "You're observant." "Well...." "You scared me." "Nobody comes this way." "I'm Alonzo Davis." "I am Caine." "You must be hungry, stumbling along, grubbing for roots like a goat." "I seek work." "Railroad gangs left here a long time ago." "So I was told." "Did you ever work a mine?" "ls that what you do here?" "This is my claim you're standing on." "You gotta find gold before you can mine it." "lt is difficult." "Oh, it's here. I know it. I can smell it." "You know, I've been hungry myself from time to time." "You wanna work with me?" "l would be grateful." "Now, I can't pay you much, but there's plenty to eat and if we strike it big, mister, we're both gonna be rich men." "With plenty to eat and work to do, I am already rich." "You're a strange fellow." "I heard out in California there was this man, he was so hungry that he was grubbing roots just like you but instead of a root, he yanked up a nugget big as a turnip." "Caine." "There's ore in them." "You go into town tomorrow and the assayer will give you a few coins." "l did not ask for pay." "l know you didn't." "I'm kind of curious to know how they assay out." "I go in there, he's gonna ask me more questions than I got answers." "I will say nothing, if you wish." "Thanks." "I ain't really found nothing yet." "Those rocks there anybody can scrounge around and find a few rocks." "Then why do you labor in a corner of the Earth which is abandoned?" "Well...." "You gotta understand, men panic." "Grown men, been to school, panic when somebody quits." "You know, since I've been 1 4, I've been thinking about the mother lode." "Somewhere there's this vein and all the other veins grow out of it." "Mother's children, huh?" "So far, we've been picking the children's pockets." "Even out there in California on the American River, near Sacramento." "That was a big child." "Maybe even the eldest son." "I shook hands with that eldest son." "Few bucks." "Somewhere...." "Somewhere there's the mother vein and I got reason to believe she's here." "What reason?" "Shape of the rocks." "You know, they say a good mule can smell water in the desert." "Well, right here I smell gold." "This all?" "Yep." "What did you give him for it?" "Few dollars." "What do you think?" "What do you think?" "I think there is a possibility that there is more where those came from." "I think there is a further possibility that those represent nothing." "They are what they are, a few pieces of rock." "Tiny bit of ore in them." "Brew, would you close up and start digging on the basis of this?" "This is my only suit." "I have no intention of getting it soiled." "He might have been dressed like that and he's 20 years older." "Please may I see it again, Andy?" "Yes." "Something about the eyes." "And the shape of the head." "A warrior." "A mercenary." "But there is no war and therefore he is poor." "He will see us." "We should get help." "We were told to stay and observe." "He's turned into a peacock." "A beautiful peacock." "Listen." "Coins are jingling in his pouch." "How could so beautiful a peacock have been the robber?" "Even if such magic is possible there is something wrong in the sense of order." "You drove my mother mad." "They got her in chains." "It's my son. 1 0 years." "They feed her like an animal." "I left my family." "I saw the beginnings of madness in this boy's mother." "l couldn't take the responsibility." "No." "That's true, boy." "My mother was normal till the day you left." "Taking her opinion. I can't blame you." "l wasn't a baby. I saw it." "The day you left, she fell down on the kitchen floor and pounded it and screamed." "She got so close to the stove her hair got on fire and I had to smother it." "When a man leaves for no reason, that can drive his wife to grief and madness." "I was a wildcat miner when she married me." "I was always on the go." "What would you have done?" "I am not you." "Or you." "You're working for him, you're afraid to say what you really feel." "Hey, you're a traveler." "Tell this boy what it's like to have itchy feet." "Why do you wish me to choose between you?" "You've gotta explain to my son how wrong he is." "You never loved me." "He ran away." "You want me to say, "You are right and you are wrong."" "I cannot." "They are friends." "They were friends before." "When the peacock was the man." "I tried to hang myself." "You know that." "Tried to strangle my own father." "What kind of son would do that?" "You have been angry for 1 0 years." "Or I'm my mother's son." "You are yourself." "I don't know who I am." "My own son." "I've been chasing dreams of gold for 1 0 years." "You think he's gone mad like his mother?" "Bates." "Bates." "That man from town?" "John Bates?" "He's coming. I seen him." "Right over here." "Right over here." "I saw him come down right there." "It's an awful feeling, ain't it?" "Waking up like that, all sudden-like." "You just close your eyes and go back to sleep while I take a close look at this gentleman over here." "Yeah." "No amount of beard can hide that face." "No amount of aging." "He's been showing your photograph around." "Why'd you come back, Alonzo?" "What did you find?" "Nothing." "There's a hundred empty holes around here." "Now, why this one?" "Maybe my scalp started to twitch when I walked by." "You got no right." "l got a right to look anywhere I want." "This ain't private property." "You're jumping my claim." "Your claim was declared null by the mining council two years ago." "That's a kangaroo court." "The law." "What did you find here?" "Nothing." "Everybody left these parts a long time ago." "But you came back, didn't you?" "You're a scavenger, Bates." "Waiting for hard-working people to find something, then moving in with your gun and taking their honest labor from them." "Whatever you find it's mine." "I'm grateful." "My son and me both." "You all right, son?" "You look into the fire and see nothing." "My mother used to sit in the kitchen for hours and stare into the stove." "It frightened me." "Then one day, I started doing it." "Staring into the flames trying to see what she saw." "What do you see, son?" "Lights." "Millions of lights." "That's part of it, ain't it?" "Looking into fire." "Looking for...." "l don't know what." "When I was a child I saw a salamander." "Strange beast." "He did not know what was to become of him." "He was ugly." "And some men threw him in the fire to die." "But the fire did not destroy him." "It tested him and made him strong." "Was he still ugly?" "I do not know how the salamander saw himself." "Remember the forks in the road?" "When you was a boy." "You used to say:" ""No need to get lost." "One way leads home...."" ""The other to the sawmill."" "I used to tell him, "Don't be afraid, son." "Take the wrong turn and all you gotta do is wait till one of them workers is finished and ask him to walk you home." "They all can do it."" "Ain't no one to walk me home." "Where will you go, son?" "Don't matter much, does it?" "I can't tell what's real from what's in my mind." "You know there is a difference." "That is more than many people understand." "All I know is I'm losing my mind." "Then a tattered man came into the clearing and started to rob the mercenary but the mercenary woke up and the tattered man grabbed his sword and struck him." "How many times?" "Two." "No, three." "Which?" "Two or three?" "Two." "Go on." "Then the tattered man robbed the mercenary and ran behind a bush." "But a peacock came out the other side as if he was changed into a peacock." "Then a traveler came into the clearing and the peacock ran behind a bush and became the robber again." "You left out the fact that the tattered man started to rob the mercenary which woke him up." "You saw the tattered man strike the mercenary on the neck and cut off his head." "He did not." "You failed to observe the purse which, around the neck of each gave the illusion that a man became a peacock." "Are you real or part of the lights?" "You tell me." "I told them you're part of the lights in my mind." "They can't understand what's happening to me." "l'm talking to you." "Yeah." "You just tell me did they find the mother lode?" "You're not real and I'm talking to you." "Well, you tell me what they found and I'll just disappear." "Caine." "Caine!" "l saw him." "Bates?" "I don't know." "I talked to him, I saw him but I don't know if he's real." "Kill me, please." "Your mind is troubled because you do not know if what you see is real." "That is true of me too." "You?" "The sky is blue." "I see it." "You see it." "But how can I know what is in my mind is like what is in yours?" "What is real?" "I know how it is with my mother." "She has visions." "And they're not real." "Her mind is not at peace with itself?" "That's what I'm afraid of." "Why?" "is it not a child's fear to make things of terror out of nothing but innocent darkness?" "You did not fail." "I did not see what you sent me to see." "What you saw or did not see in the clearing is not important." "Then why did you send me?" "When old Master Sun looked down into our valley and saw ugliness he revealed something about himself to himself." "He did not like what he revealed." "But I saw evil in the peacock that it was the robber." "Yet the peacock contained no evil at all." "You saw what your eyes told you." "But, master, what I saw was not real." "You made it so." "As Master Sun saw ugliness where nothing exists but a valley." "I found her!" "I found her!" "I found the mother lode!" "On the top, across the river, I was watching where he said he saw Bates." "There was no one there, but I saw the rocks." "Saw the rocks glint and they're the same shape as these." "Come on, inside. I know I'm right." "Look at that." "Looks like that vein just wore out, don't it?" "No, sir." "She didn't." "She turned up." "Not down, like you'd expect." "Up." "We've been digging for the exercise." "We're all gonna be rich men." "Finally, I'm rich." "It's nothing." "Cheap circus stunts." "Every claim-jumper in these hills has tried it." "Somebody was out there, son." "Now, this shaft is like a flue in a fireplace." "Sucks all the smoke in." "All we gotta do is smother it." "Won't take a couple minutes." "Don't you talk to me anymore about madness." "l did see him." "Yeah." "Bates." "Well, he ain't gonna steal this from me." "Andy." "Pa, are you all right?" "Andy, after you were born-- lf l hadn't chased you all over the country...." "Your mother worshiped your father." "Made me sick with jealousy." "I wrote to him out in the East told him your mama wasn't a good wife and she never knew why he turned so cold on her." "l wanted her all to myself, you see." "She never told me." "I got her all to myself. I...." "Responsibilities." "I left her." "And that was too much for her, do you see?" "Both the men in her life left her." "Don't go." "Don't go." "Andy, what do you see?" "Lights." "Millions of lights." "Andy, the lights are fire." "We must go through." "What do you feel?" "Hot." "It will burn." "The fire's real?" "Who made the fire?" "The man I saw at the bridge." "Bates." "Bates." "He killed my father." "Yes." "He wants to kill us." "He's as real as I am, as you are." "Yes." "You will go to see your mother now?" "I don't know. I want to but maybe she wouldn't know me." "You will know her."