Chapter 3: El Reino Nino

Johnny plodded along the stream, that within a days time was no longer a stream, its waters sucked up be the thirsty ground and burned away by the angry sun. At the end of that first days walk, Johnny turned and looked at the horizon behind him. It appeared to have risen, Johnny was walking downhill. He made camp next to some huge boulders and scrubby looking trees and brush, starting a fire with bark and branches from the trees. Then he located a pool of water that had not yet given up to the high desert. After filling his canteen and drinking, he removed his boots and plunged his feet into the tepid water, breathing an audible sigh of relief. After the long days walk, his feet felt rather like the thought the embers in the fire might feel, baked and crumbly. But, in a little while, his feet began to feel better and he got up to prepare his dinner and prepare a place to sleep, but he didn't put his boots back on; nope, he didn't do that. After he ate, he lay down by the fire and almost immediately fell asleep.1

Johnny awoke just before dawn in the morning, springing to his feet and then almost immediately sitting down again, it seems his feet weren't quite ready to support him yet. After a few minutes he tried again, this time arising slowly and gingerly, making little baby steps as he crossed over to the pool of water. The pool had subsided somewhat during the night, but was still there, and this time it was cool, very cool to the touch. Johnny drank, washed his hands, and then once again sank his abused feet below the surface, feeling the cold shock of the water all the way to the top of his head. Eventually, he reluctantly arose again and clambered out of the pool, where now the cool morning air caressed his skin, seeming to heal him, inside and out. It was time to break camp once again and continue his journey to wherever and whatever his life took him.2

His first attempt at putting his boots on didn't go to well, though, it seems his feet had swollen somewhat over the course of the night and were extremely tender to the touch. But Johnny was determined and he knew that leather stretched a little bit, so he doused his boots in the water to help them slide some, and tried again..., again..., and yet again. Finally, they popped on his feet and Johnny was at last ready to go, although years later when he thought back about that morning, he wasn't sure if it was a matter of his boots stretching, or his feet compressing that allowed him to at last don his boots, nor did it matter much, he realized. He had just won a little, hard-earned victory in his journey through life, and learned a lesson as well. The lesson he learned that morning had nothing to do with luck or fate, but it would serve him well for the rest of his life; it was something about try, trying again.3

With his boots back on at last, Johnny packed up the few meager possessions he had, and began walking again. Johnny had heard his daddy remark one day [was it the day he abandoned Johnny?] that a "good" man could walk about 4 miles in one hour. He had no conception of how far a mile was, but he figured it was a pretty fair distance. He had a better idea of how long an hour was, having also heard from someone that there was 10 hours at least in a "good day's work", and Johnny guessed that that meant from sun-up to sun-down, although he wasn't for sure about that. He didn't know anything about math yet, or how to use it, so he just settled on the idea that a "good man" could walk a "fur piece" in day. However, Johnny also knew that he was no grown man yet, and he knew he couldn't keep up with one very well from having to hurriedly try to keep up with his father on occasions when Johnny's father allowed him to go some place with him. He realized he was still a small boy and one with sore feet as well, so he just tried to make some progress every step, every hour.4

He had to stop and rest more often today, it was just too painful to go and go and go like he had the day before. One time he came upon a low, sturdy looking tree with reddish bark, and Johnny took advantage of the shade it offered and rested beneath its branches and leaves. Johnny propped his feet up and, without realizing he was doing so, he drifted off to sleep. When he awoke, the sun was getting low, so the tired Johnny decided he might just as well make camp right there for the night, where he at least had a little shelter. There was some deadwood lying on the ground from the tree he had napped under, including one rather large branch that looked like it had been sawn off by one of nature's saws, a bolt of lightning. He gathered up the ones that were light enough for him to carry, dragging them away from the tree proper, and built a fire.5

The orange orb of the sun dropped rather quickly as he was building the fire, and by the time the fire was roaring and crackling, night had fallen around Johnny. About that time, he heard a wolf howl somewhere in the far off hills, and it reminded Johnny that, while he had done all right so far, he was still pretty much defenseless out here in the desert wilderness. He thought he'd best do something about that pretty quick, so he sat down and pondered about what he might go do to give a little boy like him some added protection. The fire itself was pretty good protection at night as most animals of the wild were leery of it, but there were a few that weren't, like Gila Monsters, for instance, who were known at times to seek out the warmth offered by the glowing fire for their reptilian bodies. In addition, wolves and coyotes unable to find sufficient food during scant times would often overcome their fear of the flames when intoxicated by the smell of warm blood. So it was that little Johnny set about finding something he could fashion a crude weapon from, something that might give him at least a fighting chance in the event of an attack.6

Walking around his camp, he repeatedly was kicking branches from the tree out his way, while kicking some of them close to the fire so they would be handy later on to add to the forever-hungry flames. All at once, an idea came to him so suddenly it was like someone lit a lantern in his head, and he picked up one of the branches and examined it. The wood was hard, tough, and very resilient; when you threw it on the fire, it burned slowly, lasting much longer than softer woods did. Taking out his knife, Johnny also discovered that it was hard to cut and required a lot more effort to carve than most wood did, resisting the penetration of his blade. So it was that he found a particularly straight piece of the wood, about an inch thick and maybe 4 to 5 feet long. Johnny hefted it in his right hand and made a "pretend" throwing motion with it, and found that its weight was well within his handling capabilities. He sat down beside the fire and began working on one end of the stick, thinking of making a spear somewhat like those that the Indians used for protection and hunting. The wood was so tough that it was hard, laborious work, pretty much like everything else Johnny had discovered in this life so far, but he stayed at it. By the time he was so sleepy he just couldn't keep his young eyes open any more, he had finished his spear, and he looked at it admirably. Johnny had whittled a fine, sharp point on the branch and testing it with his finger; he found it to be quite sharp. Proud of himself, and proud of his work, he fell over onto his back, and went fast, fast asleep... 7

Just before daybreak in the morning, Johnny awoke from dreams about spiders and wolves, and groggily looked around. From little scurry tracks on the ground, he could tell that there had been tarantulas visiting during the night, as there most often was here in the desert. Most were seeking water to drink, and Johnny had turned a concave rock upside down and poured some water in it for his "friends" to drink while he slept. He saw an abundance of tracks around the rock and near all the water was depleted, and Johnny smiled, knowing that his meager attempt at sharing the wilderness had been successful.8

It was very cool this morning, cooler than normal, so he stoked up the fire one more time for the additional warmth. Johnny could sense that the season was beginning to change and that it wouldn't be long before he would need some warmer clothes to keep him comfortable. Besides, the clothes he was wearing now he had near outgrown, his ankles protruded from the bottom of his jeans, and his shirt was uncomfortably tight across his chest. "Sigh", thought Johnny, "yet another problem to work on". 9

Then Johnny remembered the spear he had fashioned the night before, and put thoughts of better clothes from his head for the time being. He eagerly anticipated the rising of the sun so that he might take his new weapon out into the desert and give it a try or two. Before long, it was light enough to see, and Johnny ventured away from his camp a short ways, walking in a circle looking for some targets on which to practice. Spotting a barrel cactus about 20 feet away, he drew back his spear and let it fly, missing his target about 3 feet to the left. "Not too bad," he thought, "not good enough but not too bad". He retrieved his spear, and walked back to his original location to try again, this time missing just one foot to the right. But he noted that the spear was flying long and true, and would be an effective weapon if he learned to be more accurate with it. So Johnny collected his spear once again, and went back to take another shot. This time he split the cactus right in the middle, and he jumped up and down for joy. However, he knew in his youthful wisdom that one shot does not a life make, so he continually practiced, walking around and around, and picking different targets at varying distances for the next hour or so. Much to Johnny's surprise, he never missed again, and began to have faith not only in his new spear, but in himself as well. When at last he spun with his back to a cactus and cleanly picked a blossom from it with his spear from 30 feet away, he decided he had learned enough for one day. It was a practice session that was to serve him well later on, although he had no way of knowing it at the time. Johnny brimmed with confidence as he packed up for another day's walk, for he had discovered he had something that the grown-ups liked to call "eye and hand" coordination. Johnny truthfully had no idea what that really meant; he just knew that to him it meant he was good at throwing spears.10

As Johnny was breaking camp, he had another idea, and he found another long and straight branch from the tree, and some shorter, more slender ones to take with him. Although he had some cord in a ball in his backpack, he pulled some green, pliant vines from the tree and used those to tie his collection of sticks into a bundle, leaving a loop to drape over his shoulders so that he might carry the bundle with ease. He rightly figured that he could probably use the cord for something more important later on, and, getting another idea, [Johnny was full of them now]; he wished he had some thread and a needle as well. Then, his camp being "broken" and the fire extinguished, Johnny started walking again, following the streambed as usual.11

Mile after mile he walked along, but this time he kept his "Old Timer" busy as he did so. He took out the smaller sticks at first, one by one, and hewed them off to approximately the same length, using his first one to measure the others by. Then he took them out again in the same manner, and carefully put sharp points on them as he had his spear. The work on the shorter branches went much quicker than the work on the spear had, and soon he was finished with them. He then took out the bigger piece and began trimming on it, peeling the bark of it first, wanting it to have a smooth, slick surface. Johnny then measured the bough along side his body, wanting it to be long enough to perform its function, but not so long that it was cumbersome to carry. Presently he decided on a length, and cut the branch as squarely as he could according to his height specification. With that done, Johnny trimmed out notches in both ends of the branch in the pattern of an “X”. Looking upon his work, he was satisfied with it, and put the branch away; he would continue with it later that afternoon when he made camp again, and was sitting down.12

Looking up at the streambed he was plodding along, Johnny was surprised to see pools of water turning up again here and there, in spite of the fact that there had been no rain since that last shower that he had welcomed so much. Peering into the distance far ahead, he could see a thin veneer of green spreading over everything; looking behind he saw only the rugged hills and mesas of the arid desert, brown and red, and yellow like gold. It came to Johnny then that he really was making a lot of progress, and heading generally downhill in the direction of a wet [at least, compared to the desert] valley. This was a welcome observation for Johnny, for he realized that his #1 priority, water, would become less of a problem the further he walked.13

Looking to the side, he saw another of his priorities, food. There was a jackrabbit squatting beneath a bush, eating berries. Johnny pondered upon some way to capture the rabbit; he enjoyed all the snake he had been eating, but some rabbit would surely taste good tonight, roasted over the fire. He finally realized he was going to have to use the spear; it would leave a gaping hole in the rabbit, but it was all he had, the destruction of part of the rabbit's flesh was something that Johnny would just have to deal with. And so, Johnny crept closer to where the rabbit sat, busily munching its dinner. As he got closer, Johnny realized that he had been in the desert so long that he was almost a part of the natural landscape, burnt brown by the sun to the color of the ground, and smelling just as feral as the wild animals he lived among. So it was that Johnny got closer to his prey than even he thought he would before finally hurling his weapon with all his might at the witless rabbit.14

Johnny's aim was deadly with his homemade spear, and he walked up to where the now lifeless rabbit lay. In spite of himself, Johnny shuddered...it was his first kill. He didn't know for sure if there would be others, but in the back of his mind he figured there probably would; perhaps even bigger, more dangerous things. But in his mind, he realized that no matter how more kills there were, no matter how big or dangerous the adversary might be, he would never forget this one, his first...15

Upon closer examination, Johnny saw that his aim was even better than he had expected; the point of his spear had pierced the rabbit right through the back of the neck, in a location that did minimal damage to the flesh and hide of the rabbit. He removed his spear, and taking his knife out once again, he headed and gutted the rabbit and removed his paws as well, keeping one for "good luck", he thought. Then he put the body of the rabbit in his knapsack to be finished later and walked away from the steaming pile of intestines, for he could already see buzzards circling above. He paused only to wash his spear in a pool of water, and then proceeded on his journey.16

About two hours later, he came upon another tree that had the additional security of some large boulders strewn around it, and decided he would pitch camp there. The tree was not of the same type he had camped under the night before, from its bark and leaves Johnny judged it to be some kind of oak, although it was not large like some oak trees he had seen. This one was short and squat and very heavy looking, its branches tightly wound. There didn't appear to be a straight branch on the tree; they wouldn't be any good for making anything useful, but Johnny knew they would make an excellent fire. He gathered up some of the fallen ones, and quickly piled them up to ignite them, leaving air holes between the branches and dry grass underneath for kindling. The branches were hard to get aflame, but once they started burning, they burned cleanly and with a sweet, pungent odor, and Johnny could hardly wait to get the rabbit into that heat and smoke and cooking.17

He removed the rabbit from his knapsack and skinned it, hanging the hide up in the tree to start drying, and then skewered the torso of the rabbit with a green sapling; suspending it over the fire on two "Y" shaped branches he had found, about six inches from the fire and right in the middle of the smoke. Johnny then started tending to the other "business" he had, taking the large branch out he had worked on earlier in the day. Removing the ball of cord from his sack, he wound it around and through the notches he had made in one end of the branch, and then started the other end through the notches in the other end, pulling and tugging the bough into a graceful arc before tying that end as well. When he had finished, Johnny looked at his product, and thought that he had made one of the finest bows he had ever seen, and slapped his knees in mirth. It wasn't as good or as big as the ones the Indians had, of course, but Johnny thought that for a little boy like him, it was just perfect.18

He had been periodically turning the meat while this was going on, and before long Johnny deemed the rabbit fit for consumption and removed it from the fire. Burnt on the outside, smoky hot on the inside, Johnny hungrily tore into it and ate it as if it was one of those fancy K. C. beefsteaks, only better. The only thing that was missing, thought Johnny, was some onions...He was full and sleepy by the time he finished his repast, and drifted off to sleep, where he dreamed of wild onions in a field full of rabbits and clover.19

The next morning, Johnny broke camp once again, and continued his journey down the streambed, but now he had extra baggage. Around his back and upon his shoulders was his new bow and arrows; on his spear he had tied the rabbit pelt to afford it the chance to dry a little more. As he walked, he kept bringing his bow to the front and practicing with it. He found that his new weapon shot quite hard, his arrows just a blur in the air and he was fairly accurate with it, but he knew it could be better. The arrows oft flew to one side or the other, sometimes missing their intended targets by wide margins, at other times striking them cleanly. Johnny knew that what he needed was some feathers for their shafts to stabilize their flight. Feathers, mmmmmm...mulled Johnny. Perhaps somewhere, he thought, the Indians always seemed to have plenty...20

His eyes locked on the thin green line of the horizon, Johnny walked along. The land around him was changing, seemingly with every step he took. Greener, greener, more pools of water in the streambed, less cactus and more shrubs and trees. Hearing a noise behind him, he turned and saw heavy-looking black clouds roiling across the highland from whence he had come, white light glowing occasionally in their midst. "It's raining up there", thought Johnny, though it was bright and dry where he walked. Johnny continued his walk; the next time he turned and looked, the black clouds had spent their life and disappeared, leaving only the yellow hotness of the day.21

As the surrounding country edged on toward greenness, Johnny began to see more life-signs; there was more spoor on the ground from a variety of creatures, and out of the corners of his eyes he began to catch glimpses of brown and white things scurrying through the brush. At length, he saw a couple of them plainly; pheasants, there were pheasants here. Johnny crept along the ground slowly, drawing his bow and arrows, and tried his luck at shooting one of them, but he could not get close enough to the skittish birds to have a decent shot; at least not with the barren arrows he was using. However, where there were pheasants, there were also feathers, he realized, and he shouldered his bow and kept on walking. 22

Before too long, his patience was rewarded, and Johnny found a mound of feathers on the ground where something else had made a kill, perhaps a coyote or a young wolf. Johnny stirred amongst the feathers, and gathered enough usable ones to outfit four or five of his arrows. Putting them in his pocket, he would put them in place tonight when he camped. The sun was sinking now, and it wouldn't be too long before he would need to locate his nights "lodging", he knew.23

However, Johnny would have other things to deal with first...He could hear a faint rumbling somewhere far behind him, and he began to feel a slight tremor in the ground. Johnny turned and squinted back the way he had come, but he could see nothing at first. Then, all at once, he did; he could see sunlight shimmering off something in the streambed in the distance, and in a flash, Johnny realized what it must be. Water, he was seeing water, there was a torrent of it racing down the streambed at him, released by the dark rain-clouds he had seen in the mountains earlier! He must find higher ground...24

Johnny spied a small sandstone hillock about 100 yards off to the side, and he made a mad dash for it! The rumbles got louder and louder, and just as Johnny reached the hillock and started scrambling up the side of it, he felt the rushing torrent hit his boots and his lower legs, nearly pulling him from the gritty sandstone hill. Then, his clawing fingers found a cleft in the rock, and locked he locked onto it, barely pulling himself up in time before the clinging wave carried him away. One foot found a small ledge, then the other foot found another, and soon the near breathless Johnny found himself on top of the hillock, watching the raging water race by.25

As he watched, the angry stream continued to climb up the side of the hillock, and Johnny still feared for his safety. But then the water became quiet and stopped rising about halfway to him, and then started to run back the other way, its forward energy spent. The going down was a lot slower than the coming up, however, and all Johnny could do was sit there for a couple of hours while the water slowly drained away. 26

As Johnny watched, he began to note some changes in the landscape; some things that were different now than they were before the wall of water had come rushing down the streambed. The base of the sandstone hill upon which he perched was smaller now, having been eroded by the relentless water, and a little ways downstream a small tree and some shrubs that had been there before were now gone. On past that, a place where the streambed had made a gentle curve to the left, the curve was wider and longer, and seemed to be deeper as well. Indeed, the ground right below his feet that had been littered before with dead fauna and small pebbles and various twigs and branches, was as clean now as if someone had swept them with a broom. The sandy soil was rippled now, resembling a washboard, and looking for the entire world like the bottom of a wide, fast river...and Johnny shook his head in amazement at the power of the running water.27

The sun had been sinking fast while Johnny had been watching the water and viewing the changes, and only a few vestiges of sunlight remained now. He surveyed the wet, muddy scene before him, with puddles standing everywhere, and the stream itself still brimming and gurgling, and decided he might just as well spend the night on top of the hillock, without the benefit of a fire. The desert had just received a welcome drink, and seemed to be at peace for the while, and Johnny didn't think there would be any problems with predators tonight. The creatures of the night, with their bellies full of water and drowned game seemed unlikely to Johnny to be concerned about a young traveler with a spear in his hand. So he took off his wet boots and socks, and stuffed his hat under his head and drifted towards sleep. His last thought before he nodded off was that the next time he saw rain in the mountains, he was going to be better prepared...28

Glimmering rays of sunshine awoke Johnny the next morning. The warmth of the rising sun felt wonderful to him, it had become quite cool during the night, and although he had not awoken, he could remember shivering in half-sleep, and wishing the sun would hurry up and rise. As was his habit, Johnny just barely slotted his eyes open upon awakening, not wishing to stare at the full strength light until his eyes adjusted. Much to his surprise, through his half-lidded eyes he saw a prairie dog sitting on his chest, munching away at a nut of some kind. The rodent had undoubtedly found Johnny's body to be a welcome source of heat during the night, and had decided to camp there. In spite of himself, Johnny started to giggle, and when he did, the prairie dog realized that it wasn't just a hot spot on the ground he had been nesting on, and panically bolted away, leaving little rodent paw prints in the still soft ground.29

His belly still shaking with mirth, Johnny donned his socks and boots once again [still damp], and slid off the hillock. Once on the ground, he was amazed at the number and variety of footprints he found, everything from different kinds of birds, to small rodents, to rabbits, and perhaps some small dog-like prints that may have been coyotes as well. In addition, over by the stream, which still held water, he found some bigger, dog like prints...it seemed like Mr. Wolf had come by for a clandestine visit too. With this revelation, Johnny's laughter ceased, but he was unscathed, unharmed; he could only imagine that the wolf had just come by for a drink of water, and then went on. In the back of his mind, a nagging thought bothered Johnny, a wolf alone? Didn't they usually run in packs? But then, he remembered he was all right, and his good humor returned, albeit somewhat shakily. However, he vowed that it would be a long time before he ever slept in the desert without a fire again, if he could help it.30

Looking around, Johnny decided he would stay here for a while, and work on fitting his arrows with the feathers he had found, and then try them out hunting for rabbits or pheasants. He was, after all, very hungry now, having not eaten since early the previous day and his young body felt the need for nourishment.31

It was growing quite warm already, so Johnny sat in the shade of the sandstone hillock to finish his arrows. As he worked, every once in a while he looked up at the hillock, his bed for the previous night, and he realized that while he was up there he had felt rather like a king on his throne, surveying all his land and all his subjects. Johnny smiled at this revelation, and took his little knife and carved his name in the soft sandstone. He knew that the next time there was rain in the mountains and the water came again, his name would be erased; but for now, this place was his, and his alone. Well, his and a few thousand desert critters, he thought with a chuckle.32

And then he had another thought; this place was special, special to him at least, and needed a name. Johnny had learned a few words and phrases of Spanish in the place he had lived before being left to go it alone, a place called “El Paso”. Most of his friends there were Spanish, as was most of the neighborhood he and his parents lived in. He, of course, had learned the “dirty” words first, from the older boys around who were always teasing the younger ones; words like “ca-ca” and “coola”, and “pinoche”. That last word Johnny wasn’t too sure about, all he knew was that it had something to do with girls and that the boys all laughed when some one said it. Johnny had laughed also; he figured it was what you were supposed to do.33

Eventually, though, he learned more Spanish than that, and he decided to name his emergency campsite “El Reino Nino”, or The Boy Kingdom. Having decided that, be brought out his pocketknife once again and carved it into the sandstone rock as well, right under his name.34

His hunger gnawing at him, he then went out and began his hunt. Early on, he spotted a rabbit and then a pheasant, but both were too far away to hit, though Johnny tried, his arrows clattering noisily to the ground after missing their targets. But snakes were easy to find, having all gone to higher rocks to avoid rushing water. He quickly nabbed a couple of them, and then returned to his kingdom and built a fire and cooked them. He felt like a ravenous wolf, and ate like one as well, licking his chops as he filled his gut. Full and drowsy after his meal, he stoked up the fire and did something he hadn’t done is a long time…he took a nap. When he awoke, it was twilight already, and Johnny realized it wasn’t any use trying to go anywhere now, so he gathered firewood for the night and stayed right where he was. That night he dreamt of being a monarch on a throne and smilingly wisely as his subjects paid homage to him, his trained wolf pack at his side, ready to do his bidding.35

In all, Johnny spent three more nights there, and when he finally left on the 4th morning, he did so with a small tear in his eye. For just a little while there he had felt at home, even though he was alone. His “El Reino Nino” seemed mystical, even magical, to him and he regretted leaving.36

When he was about 100 yards away, he turned and took one last look, especially at the sandstone hillock that had saved his life on that first night.37

“I’ll see you again someday,” Johnny said, and he meant every word of it.38