by Pat Murphy
—Mark Twain
FROM THE TOP OF A SUN-WARMED granite boulder, Sarah watched the man who sat by the lake. She had been watching him, on and off, for the past two days, leaving only to hunt, and returning to find the man still there. He puzzled and intrigued her.
Most people that she had followed over the years were very busy. The Indians hunted, fished, and gathered plants for food. The miners scratched holes in the dirt and mucked about in the streams and rivers. She did not know why they did the strange things that they did, but they were always busy, always doing something. Though this man looked like a miner, dressed like a miner, smelled like a miner, he seemed to spend most of his time sitting in the sun, doing just about nothing. Sometimes he stared at a small rectangular object for hours at a time; sometimes he seemed to be moving a stick, as if making marks on a different rectangular object. And sometimes he just sat and stared, watching his mule graze in the meadow, studying the surface of the lake, the mountains that surrounded it.
Once, early in the morning, she watched him sit quietly, staring at a doe and fawn that grazed in the meadow. At first, she thought he was stalking the deer, but he did not move, did not approach the animals. At last, when the wind shifted, the deer caught his scent and bounded away. He made no move to chase them.
At night, he slept in a canvas tent beside the lake. In the early morning, he fished in the lake’s cool waters. Sometimes he cooked biscuits—she could smell the tantalizing aroma drifting across the lake. On the second night he was there, she sneaked into his camp. By the remains of his campfire, she found a few broken and burned pieces of biscuit, which she devoured. Bread was a rare treat, and she relished it when she found it. The rectangular things that the man stared at each day were hidden inside the canvas tent, protected from her curiosity. She slipped away, still curious.
Sarah was twelve years old, a well-armed, young savage. She wore a knife at her belt and carried her lariat, her bow, and a quiver filled with arrows slung over one shoulder. In warm weather, she wore moccasins and a pair of men’s trousers, cut off at the knee and held up with suspenders. She liked the trousers because she could carry stones in the pockets. In cold weather, she wore moccasins, long trousers, and a rabbit-skin cape, a gift from Malila.
She knew the ways of the wolves. She knew something of the ways of Indians, for she had continued to visit Malila over the years. Learning to speak the Miwok language had satisfied some urge within her that the language of the wolves had not. But though she visited the Indians and watched the white men, she always returned to the wolf pack. They were her family. Beka remained her frequent companion, following the girl on many of her long journeys away from the pack.
Sarah stretched in the sun, lazy and warm. She and Beka had gone hunting at dawn. One of her arrows had brought down a fat marmot. She and Beka had breakfasted on its warm flesh. Then Sarah had come to the lake, to see what the man was doing. Beka, not sharing Sarah’s fascination with the human who camped by the lake, had wandered off to explore, while Sarah continued to watch the man.
He was moving the stick again—for most of the morning he had alternated periods of staring at the lake with bouts of scribbling.
Max sat on a broad granite slab beside the lake, writing a letter to Audrey North. “I have fled to the mountains,” he wrote, “escaping the eager, young men who come to the gold fields with copies of my book tucked under their arms. Everywhere I go, I see young men dressed in sensible canvas trousers and cotton shirts, carrying precisely the make of shovel and pick and canteen I recommended, with their scarves tied just like the miner in the sketch on page 5 of A Young Man’s Guide to Gold Fields. I know that if I were to look in their packs, I would find all the items from the checklist on page 45 of A Young Man’s Guide to Gold Fields.
“They are all dreadfully earnest young men. They make me feel quite ancient and creaky. I feel quite spry for my advanced age of forty-one, but they treat me with such deference, asking my advice on any number of things that I have no business advising them on. I confess, they bring out the worst in me. A sweet-faced young fellow asked me the other day which hotel I would recommend, and I sent him to one right next to the lodge of E Clampus Vitus, where the sound of the Clampers’ drunken hilarity was sure to keep him up all hours. Damned if he didn’t come back the next day to thank me. He had, it seemed, joined the Clampers and had a fabulous time. Ah, for the stamina of youth.
“How strange it is to have struck paydirt in a profession I would have thought even chancier than mining. In your last letter, you protested that my book would have succeeded without your assistance. Though I hesitate to question your expertise in the area of publishing, I beg to differ. Without your encouragement and assistance, I would still be writing an occasional article for the Nevada City Gazette. If you hadn’t shown my essay to your editor, I would certainly never have written a book that has garnered me more gold than all my mining efforts.
“I have begun work on my next book—at least that is the excuse I have given for fleeing the questionable civilization of Selby Flat and camping at this remote lake. It is a beautiful spot. The other morning, I sketched a doe and her fawn, grazing not one hundred yards from my tent. So far, I have spent more time fishing and sketching than I have writing, but I have great hopes. It seems to me that writing is a bit like prospecting in that regard: One must always have great hopes.”
Max stopped there, putting his pen down. He leaned back on the sun-warmed granite, contemplating the play of light on the water of the lake. The morning mist had burned away while he had been writing. The still blue waters of the lake reflected the mountains and the pines. It was time to be moving.
He had decided to hike around the lake to reach the bare granite slopes on the far side. From that location, he wanted to sketch his camp, a lonely tent beneath towering pines. Besides, he thought that the fishing might be better there. So he packed his fishing pole and his notebook in a rucksack, put on his hat, and set out around the lake.
Halfway around the lake, the granite slope rose to a sheer cliff. Here and there on the cliff face, bushes and trees clung to cracks and ledges, forming patches of green and brown against the gray of the stone.
A dense thicket of thorny bushes grew at the base of the cliff, leaving a narrow patch of marshy ground at the edge of the lake. Max had the choice of picking his way through the brambles or squelching through the mud. He chose the mud, though he saw a patch of broken branches where some large animal had chosen to blunder through the bushes.
His boots sank in the mud and he could feel cold lake water seeping in through the seams. The bushes leaned out toward the water and he had to step carefully over the branches. It was slow and unpleasant and he was wondering if he had made the right choice when he reached a dead end. There, the bushes grew down to the water’s edge, forming a thorny barrier to further progress. He could try to hack his way through brambles, he could go for a swim, or he could turn back. He was considering these options when he heard the sound of a large animal crashing through the brush behind him.
Startled, he turned to face the sound. A grizzly, a beast with a reputation for a ferocious and unpredictable nature, burst from the bushes and glared at Max with angry, red-rimmed eyes. The animal stood by the lakeshore, blocking Max’s retreat to his campsite.
Max backed away until the barrier of bushes made further retreat impossible. There, he froze, hoping the bear would return to the bushes from which it had come. He had no rifle, no pistol at his side.
Staring at the bear, he remembered what he had written in the Young Man’s Guide. He had advised would-be miners against carrying firearms. “A pistol seems like a useful weapon,” he had written. “That is, it seems useful until you bet your life on it. Then the persnickety thing misses fire, blows up in your hand, or sends its bullet a country mile to one side of target. A beginning marksman can hit a target with a pistol—as long as the target is at least the size of a barn and the marksman is no more than ten paces awa
y. As for the rifle, it can be a fine weapon in the right hands. If you’re handy with a rifle, you already know that. Mine aren’t the right hands. If you’re a city-bred fellow, yours may not be the right hands either. More greenhorns end up shooting themselves in the foot with their newly acquired rifle than ever hold off a ravaging wolf or a charging bear.”
It was good advice, he thought. He stood by that advice. It was fine advice for all the young men who were coming west. But as a man who had been in the West for some time, he wished he had not followed that advice.
The bear reared onto its hind legs, roaring a challenge to the puny man who had disturbed its rest. As the beast moved, Max saw the dark slash of an unhealed wound in its powerful shoulder. The animal had been injured. Probably, Max thought, by some fool of a greenhorn who had armed himself, not following Max’s advice. Now the animal was wounded and angry, and Max had, unwittingly, disturbed its rest.
From a ledge no more than fifteen feet above Max’s head, Sarah watched the man with interest. She stood on the leaning, twisted trunk of a pine tree that had managed to take root in a crack in the granite. Her back was braced against the rock. She had followed Max around the lake, taking cover behind boulders and brush, moving as silently as a mountain cat.
From this vantage point, Sarah had watched with amazement as Max blundered past the sleeping grizzly. The man was as foolish as a pup just out of the den. How could he be unaware that a wounded bear was sleeping nearby? The air reeked of bear and of blood. The bushes had been broken where the bear had barged through them. Was he half-asleep to miss these warning signs?
In the wilderness, such inattention usually resulted in death. But Sarah was curious about Max. If she did not rescue him, that curiosity would never be satisfied.
When the bear reared, he was just below Sarah. Before the animal could drop to all fours and charge the man, Sarah tossed her lariat. The loop of rope settled over the grizzly’s mighty shoulders, tightening as the bear pulled against it. Sarah had looped the end of the lariat around the trunk of the pine tree, knotting it securely in place.
Feeling the pressure of the rope around his shoulders, the bear roared again and lunged against the restraint. The pine creaked, but held for the moment. The lariat, a stout cord braided of seven strands of buckskin, held firm for a moment.
The bear lunged again, throwing the entire weight of his body against the rope. The rope held, but the pine tree to which it was secured did not. The tree’s roots were shallow, and the bear’s lunge pulled it free of the cliff and sent it crashing down into the bushes below.
Sarah, feeling the trunk give way beneath her feet in the instant before it fell, leapt to one side, finding a foothold on another ledge. From there, she took in the situation at a glance. The grizzly was facing away from her, offering no good targets for her arrows.
The man was staring up at her. His hands were empty. It was that, in the end, that saved him. If he had lifted a rifle to fire at the bear, she would have left him to his fate. She did not like white men and their killing sticks. But he had no rifle.
The bear was biting at the rope that bound him. As Sarah watched, the strands of leather parted, giving way beneath his jaws. In a moment, the bear would be free. Then he would reach the man and crush him with a single blow.
Before that could happen, Sarah called to the bear in the language of Malila’s people. “Hey, Grandfather, you foolish bear, leave that man.” From her pocket, she snatched up a stone and hurled it at the bear, striking the animal square in the head. “Fight me. I am the mightiest of the wolves. I am here to do battle with you.”
The bear shook his head, angered by the blow. He turned away from Max, searching for the source of the rock and the shouting. Sarah waved her arms.
Max watched in awe. A slip of a girl, no more than a dozen years old, taunted the grizzly. An extraordinary girl—lithe and graceful, was dancing on a ledge so small that many men would have found it a terrifying place to stand still. Sunlight glistened on her golden skin, revealing well-developed muscles. Her hair was a halo of red-gold curls, a burst of glory against the gray granite.
As Max stared, she hurled another stone at the bear, laughing and shouting as the beast clawed at the cliff face, reaching up with powerful paws to swat at this pest. His blows fell just inches below her dancing feet.
The pine tree had fallen at the foot of the cliff. Scrambling with his hind feet, the grizzly gained a foothold on the fallen tree and lunged upward, reaching the ledge where the girl stood. But she was no longer there. An instant before the bear’s paw swept across the ledge, she had stepped upward to a tiny foothold a few feet higher than the ledge. With one foot on the rock and one arm hooked around the branch of a bush that clung to the cliff, she was lifting her bow, stringing an arrow. At the same time, the bear was gathering himself to lunge again.
The girl released her arrow, which embedded itself in the animal’s shoulder. The bear roared, biting at the arrow, then swatting at the cliff with its mighty paws. The girl, standing just beyond the bear’s reach, calmly strung another arrow.
Again, she lifted her bow and made a clean shot to the animal’s right eye from a distance of a few feet. The bear roared again. Pawing at its eye, the beast fell backward away from the cliff.
Max heard bushes snap as the bear’s body crashed into the thicket. The sound of the crash echoed from the cliff face.
Then there was silence. In the sudden hush, Max stared up at the girl on the cliff. She met his eyes, regarding him with steady confidence.
“Hello,” Max called, his voice uncertain. “Who are you?”
Still, the girl regarded him steadily, her brow furrowed slightly as if trying to make sense of his words. Then she glanced downward and made a growling, barking noise. Without looking at Max, she stepped down to the lower ledge, then dropped from his view behind the bushes.
A warbler trilled in the sudden silence. In the lake, a fish jumped, landing with a splash. Insects buzzed in the bushes. Max took a deep breath, drawing sweet air into his lungs. For a moment, he wondered if the whole incident could have been his imagination. Had he somehow dreamed of a savage girl who had rescued him from death? Moving slowly, Max made his way through the bushes to the foot of the cliff.
Sarah climbed down from the cliff to meet Beka, who had returned to the lake in time to see the grizzly fall. Now, Sarah thought, she and Beka would feast on grizzly meat. They could summon the pack to join the feast, for this carcass could provide enough meat for all.
She heard the man corning through the bushes toward the fallen bear, as clumsy as a bear himself. Would the man fight for a possession of the carcass? She didn’t think so. He would not, she thought, stand a chance against the weakest member of the pack.
She dropped to the ground by the great body of the bear. Matter-of-factly, she strode to the animal’s head to reclaim the arrows that were buried deep in the animal’s shoulder and eye. She tugged them free, then joined Beka, who was ripping at the bear’s exposed belly. Sarah drew her knife and used the sharp blade to slit open the abdominal cavity. She would skin the beast later and take the hide to Malila. The Indian woman would like that. While Beka chewed on the intestines, Sarah sliced off a fist-sized piece of the bear’s liver.
When Max came through the bushes, that is how he found his rescuing angel. She was sitting on the bear’s shaggy haunch, happily gnawing on a piece of liver. Her face and hands and naked chest were smeared with fresh blood. At her feet, a wolf was tearing at intestines dragged from the bear’s belly. The air reeked of blood and death.
As Max stepped into sight, both the girl and the wolf stopped their feeding. The wolf stared at him. Sarah dropped her free hand to her knife and studied him with eyes as blue as the mountain lake.
Max stood very still. He had to find out who this girl was. “I’m Max,” he said to Sarah. “Who are you?”
Sarah stared at the man. She didn’t understand his words, but she knew that he was speaking in w
ords. Rather than growling to warn him off, she spoke to him in Malila’s language. “This kill is mine. If you are hungry, you may eat, but you may not carry any meat away. The kill belongs to my pack.”
Beka had risen to her feet, her eyes fixed on the man. She began to growl low in her throat, warning the man to leave now. Sarah slid off her perch on the boulder and squatted by the wolf, placing a hand on the animal’s head. The growling subsided.
“I’ll go back to camp,” Max said, feeling foolish. “Why don’t you stop by? I’ll make biscuits.” He backed away, keeping his face to the strange pair until the bushes hid them from sight.
Back at camp, the incident seemed like a nightmare. A terrifying bear, a rescuing angel, a savage wolf. But it was a dream that echoed Socks’s vision of many years before. A savage girl and her wolf companion, living far from civilization.
Max washed the cuts and scratches he had gotten from the bushes. He felt cold, even after he took off his wet boots, pulled on dry socks, put on his buckskin jacket. He sat on the granite slab beside the lake, warming himself in the sun. When his hands finally stopped shaking, he took up his pencil and drew the image that had burned itself into his mind.
He drew a young girl, dancing on a tiny ledge. Her face was beautiful, the features delicate and aristocratic. She was on the edge of puberty, her naked breasts just beginning to bud, her youthful body starting to take on a woman’s curves. A smiling girl, innocent and free. Below her, a snarling bear reached up, striving to swat the girl from her perch, to crush that young body. The beast’s curving claws glinted in the sun. The finished picture made Max shiver again, remembering that moment when it all seemed hopeless.
He turned the page and drew again. This time, the bear lay fallen in the bushes. He drew the savage bear’s claws, harmless now. The mighty paws were still; the beast had been conquered. The girl sat on the beast’s shaggy side, as comfortable as a lady in her drawing room. Her ragged trousers showed her muscular legs. The dark liver in her hand dripped blood onto her naked chest. But she was not concerned with her lack of clothing; she was not bothered by the blood. She was smiling. Innocent and triumphant.