by Pat Murphy
Sarah watched, sorting out the hierarchy in this strange pack. The Professor was clearly the alpha male. All of the dogs deferred to him. So did Cassidy and, as near as she could tell, Ruby. At a guess, she figured that Ruby was the alpha female—she deferred to no one other than the Professor. Among the dogs, the smallest white poodle appeared to be the ranking female.
In the few hours of daylight that remained, the Professor worked with his poodles, who had been misbehaving lately. In the act’s finale, the dogs were supposed to form a pyramid, with the three standard poodles as the base, the two miniature poodles in the second tier, and Snowflake at the top. Lately, Pepper, the black standard poodle, had taken to wandering out of place when the pyramid was almost complete. At the last performance, Pepper had decided to lie down without warning and the pyramid had collapsed into a heap of squabbling dogs.
The ensuing dogfight had delighted the miners at French Corral. Betting had been fierce. When Snowflake, with a feistiness that belied her size, chased all the larger dogs out of the ring, a short fellow who had bet heavily on the small dog won the pot. Though the audience had been more than satisfied with the performance, the Professor had not been happy. He was determined to put the dogs through their paces until Pepper behaved.
Meanwhile, Cassidy mounted the white mare and rode at an easy gallop around the perimeter of the meadow. They circled the meadow once, then twice. On the third circuit, Cassidy began to practice his trick riding, striking a series of poses on the mare’s back. He started astraddle, then hung off to one side, like an Indian avoiding cavalry fire. He returned to his initial position, then pulled his legs up and stood easily upright, steady as you please. He leaned down and placed his hands on the horse’s back, kicked up his legs, and stood on his hands, as relaxed as if he were on the solid ground.
From her perch, Sarah watched him ride. She was aware, as she watched, that he had another observer. When she climbed the tree, she had caught the scent of a mountain lion, sleeping in a tangle of bushes at the edge of the meadow. Sarah’s keen eyes caught a flicker of movement—the twitching of a tawny tail—and she realized the lion was awake. He was watching the horse and rider with great interest.
The mare completed another circuit of the meadow. Cassidy was shifting from a handstand to a headstand when the mare passed the big cat’s hiding place. At that moment, the lion leapt out, intending to pull the horse down. The mare shied, dancing to one side as the cat bounded after her. The lion’s claws raked the mare’s hindquarters, but failed to get a purchase.
Jerked to one side, Cassidy lost his balance, falling as the horse moved beneath him. A trained acrobat, Cassidy tried to get his legs beneath him, but there was too little time for that. He landed awkwardly, catching his full weight on one leg, which twisted beneath him.
Looking down on the scene, Sarah shook her head, scornful of the big cat’s hunting technique. The lion had attacked too soon. If the hunter had waited, he would have been just behind the horse, taking the prey by surprise.
The mountain lion yowled in frustration as the mare raced across the meadow faster than the cat could follow. Behind the lion, Cassidy was struggling to his feet. When he put weight on his left foot, he collapsed again. Sarah watched with keen interest to see how the man would deal with the lion.
The lion turned to face Cassidy just as he struggled to his feet again, putting as little weight as possible on his twisted ankle. His uncle, Thaddeus Orton, had been a lion tamer. As a lad, Cassidy had assisted his uncle with the big cats. “Never show them you’re afraid,” Thaddeus had told his nephew. “That’s the key.”
Keeping that advice in mind, Cassidy glared at the mountain lion. He had no weapons: His pistol and his buck knife were in the wagon. He struggled to his feet, facing the lion empty-handed.
The lion watched the man through slitted eyes his tail twitching in the meadow grass. Cassidy watched, helpless, as the lion gathered his hindquarters beneath him, preparing to spring on his prey.
At that moment, Sarah tossed her lariat from the cottonwood tree. Its loop settled neatly over the head of the crouching lion. As the cat pulled forward against the lariat, Sarah looped the rope over the branch where she had been sitting and put her full weight on the rope, pulling the big cat backward as she lowered herself to the ground.
The big cat stood with his hind legs on the ground, his forepaws dangling in midair, held up by the noose. He was choking, fighting for air. Sarah tied the free end of the lariat to a sturdy bush and went to where Cassidy stood unsteadily in the grass.
“Hallo,” Sarah said.
Cassidy stared. Sarah had grown from a wild child to become a savage woman of striking beauty. At sixteen years of age, she was slim and graceful and completely unconscious of her own beauty. Her canvas trousers, cut off at the knees, left her slim, muscular legs bare. She wore a red-cotton shirt, stolen from a wagon train, but she had not bothered to button it, the day being warm. As she moved, Cassidy caught tantalizing glimpses of her breasts. Her curly red hair was tied back with a strip of leather.
Sarah stared back. On his last visit, Max had spent some time attempting to teach her manners, telling her that she’d need them when she decided to leave the wilderness. She decided to apply one of Max’s lessons now. “How do you do?” She held out her hand.
Cassidy stared at Sarah and the grimy hand the woman had extended in his direction. “I’ve been better,” he murmured in astonishment. He took her hand, less to shake it than to assure himself that she was real. Holding her hand, he asked, “Who are you? Where the hell did you come from?”
Sarah regarded Cassidy steadily. The man was not following the script, as Max had explained it to Sarah. He was supposed to shake Sarah’s hand, and say, “Very well, thank you. How do you do?” Sarah shrugged, deciding to save Max’s lesson in etiquette for someone who responded appropriately. “I am Sarah. I came from that tree.” She pointed at the cottonwood. Glancing back, she noticed the mountain lion had slumped, dangling unconscious in the noose. Leaving Cassidy, she went to the rope and untied it, lowering the big cat to the ground. She slipped the noose off the animal’s neck. The lion shuddered as she did so, and took a gasping breath.
“What are you doing?” Cassidy shouted from behind her. “That beast will wake up and kill us all.”
Sarah shook her head and walked back to Cassidy, coiling the lariat as she did so. “He is a big coward,” she said. “He will run away as soon as he wakes up. He will not come back.”
Sarah saw no point in killing an animal that she didn’t plan to eat—and she knew from experience that mountain-lion meat was stringy and gamy. She had killed a rabbit earlier that afternoon and wasn’t hungry.
The lion staggered to his feet. As Sarah predicted, the big cat slunk toward the trees. He glanced back over his shoulder, then quickened his pace, loping away.
Cassidy heard dogs barking and looked toward camp. It had taken the Professor a few minutes to gather his forces, but now he was hurrying to the rescue, mounted on Ruby. The poodles ran ahead of the elephant, barking in three different pitches: low from the standard poodles, medium from the miniature poodles, and high-pitched yapping from Snowflake.
“Here comes the Professor,” Cassidy said. “A little too late, but heroic for all of that.” He glanced at the wild woman who had saved him and realized that she might not stick around for this questionable welcoming committee. He reached out and took hold of her hand. “I’m sure the Professor will want to meet you,” he said.
Though she could have easily freed herself from Cassidy’s grip, Sarah waited. These people and their animals intrigued her. She had never seen a pack of humans and animals traveling together like this. Perhaps they knew something about Max.
The poodles reached them first. The dog raced around and around Cassidy and Sarah, barking and sniffing the places where the lion had been.
Such strange creatures, Sarah thought. They smelled like dogs, but their hair was cut in outlandish pattern
s. Sarah took her hand from Cassidy’s and knelt in the grass to greet them, meeting each approaching dog with a stare that demanded respect. The dogs recognized her look and circled her, maintaining a respectful distance.
Sarah stood up as the elephant approached. Ruby knelt in the grass so that the Professor could climb down. The Professor spoke to Cassidy, but Sarah was staring up at the elephant.
Nothing in the enormous beast’s posture indicated that she was a threat. However strange this animal looked and smelled, she seemed relaxed, friendly. The poodles showed no fear of her, romping around her feet in the dry grass.
Sarah took a step toward Ruby, looking the elephant in the eye. Ruby’s great gray trunk snaked toward the girl. A puff of grassscented, elephant breath ruffled her hair. Sarah reached up and patted the trunk that was sniffing her neck. It felt warm and leathery.
“Ruby likes you,” the Professor observed.
Sarah glanced at him. He smiled as he met her eyes, then he averted his gaze. Sarah returned his smile. Most humans stared, a threatening expression among the wolves. But the Professor clearly understood the proper way to behave. He was smiling; his hands were open; his stance was relaxed.
He met her eyes again. “Thank you very much for your assistance,” he said.
Sarah nodded. Max had, as part of his lesson in etiquette, instructed her on how to deal with thanks. “You are welcome,” she said formally. “Think nothing of it.”
The Professor nodded, still smiling. His eyes narrowed a bit as he sized her up.
Cassidy spoke up then. “Professor, this is Sarah. Sarah, this is Professor Gyro Serunca.”
The Professor tipped his derby hat. “Very pleased to make your acquaintance, Sarah.”
Sarah smiled, happy that this man was using phrases for which Max had prepared her. “Likewise, I’m sure.”
The Professor studied her for a moment. “Perhaps you would agree to accompany us back to our camp,” he suggested. “I would love to talk with you further.”
While the poodles romped around them in the grass, Ruby carried Cassidy back to camp with her trunk wrapped around the man’s waist, just as she had carried Lulu in past performances.
As they walked, the Professor asked questions of Cassidy. “What happened? I looked up and Lightning was running from a lion and you were on the ground.”
Cassidy described what had happened and how Sarah had saved him from the lion. “You were really quite magnificent,” Cassidy told Sarah. He was trying very hard not to stare at her legs. Such lovely legs. But their owner seemed rather fierce, and he did not want to give offense.
The Professor studied Sarah as they walked. “So, Sarah, tell me—you live alone in this charming wilderness?”
“I live with the wolves,” she said. “Beka is off hunting for quail.”
“With the wolves?” The Professor raised his eyebrows, beaming at her. “Beka is a wolf? That’s marvelous.”
“You’re the Wild Angel!” Cassidy said. “I’ve heard the miners talk about you. You come to rescue people in need.”
Sarah regarded him without comment.
“The Wild Angel,” the Professor repeated. “That would make a lovely stage name.” He nodded. “You must stay to dinner,” he told Sarah. “We must talk more. There are so many possibilities.”
Sarah hesitated. “Will you have biscuits?” she asked.
“If you want biscuits, I’ll make biscuits,” Cassidy said quickly.
“I will stay,” said Sarah.
It was curiosity that kept her there, as much as the promise of biscuits. She sat by the fire and watched as Professor Serunca ministered to Cassidy’s ankle with a Chinese liniment that reeked of strange herbs. He bound the injured joint with strips of linen, torn from a banner that had once said something about the merits of Chinese medicine (the letters had long since faded). While Cassidy made biscuits and fried salt pork, the Professor fetched the white mare (who had only run as far as the other side of the meadow) and treated the horse’s wounds with Chinese medicine and muttered words of comfort.
While they ate dinner, the Professor asked her what brought her down from the mountains.
“I’m looking for my friend Max,” Sarah told him. “Do you know him?”
“Max,” the Professor repeated thoughtfully. “I don’t believe I know the fellow.” He squinted at her, studying her face. “But perhaps we can help you find him. What does Max do?”
“He draws pictures,” she said. “He writes in a notebook.”
“I see. An artist, then. What does he do with these pictures?”
“Puts them in a book,” she said. “He showed me one.”
Cassidy had been listening carefully. Before he had left for California, he had done his best to research the place, gathering several popular accounts of travels in the gold fields. He had brought one of his favorites along. “Hey, Professor, I have a book by a fellow named Max Phillips…”
The Professor fetched the book from Cassidy’s rucksack. “In the Diggings, by Max Phillips,” Cassidy said, opening the book.
“There,” Sarah cried, pointing to the sketch facing the title page. “That’s the lake. Max drew that.” She smiled, remembering the sunny afternoon when Max had completed the sketch. She had taken him on a hike high above the valley to a place where the world opened beneath them.
Cassidy nodded, flipping through the pages until he reached the introduction, written by an editor at the publishing house. “Since the publication of A Young Man’s Guide to the Gold Fields, I have had the great pleasure of corresponding with Max Phillips,” Cassidy read aloud. “As Mr. Phillips is a man with no fixed address, I send my letters to Selby Hotel in Selby Flat, California. There, Mr. Phillips tells me, Mrs. Selby tucks them behind the barroom mirror to await his next visit. I have not met the redoubtable Mrs. Selby in person, but I have met her in the Mr. Phillips’s accounts of life in Selby Flat, and I feel I know her quite well.”
“Mrs. Selby!” Sarah was happy now. “Max told me about Mrs. Selby. She makes apple pie.”
The Professor nodded. “And she lives in Selby Flat. As it happens, we are on our way to Selby Flat for a performance. Would you like to come with us?”
Sarah hesitated only for a moment. Max had tried many times to persuade her to go with him to Selby Flat. The previous summer, she had promised him that she would accompany him the following year. “Yes,” she said. “And we’ll find Max.”
“If not, we’ll find out where he is,” the Professor said. “And perhaps, while we are there, you could join us in a performance. As the Wild Angel, I imagine you could be quite an attraction.” The Professor smiled at her. “I’m sure you’ve always dreamed of running away with the circus.”
Sarah frowned, confused.
Cassidy shook his head. “Professor, she was raised by wolves. She doesn’t know what a circus is.”
“She does now,” he said. “We are the circus, my child.” He lifted his hands in a grand gesture that encompassed Cassidy, the wagon, the animals. “We are the stuff that dreams are made of. The glitter and the glamour and the glory. Not for us the humdrum life of quiet desperation. I invite you to join us, to become a star glittering in the firmament.”
Sarah stared at him, wondering what he was talking about. She understood many of his words, but she got lost trying to follow the Professor’s rolling sentences. What did the stars have to do with any of this? She glanced upward, where the first stars glittered in the darkening sky. “A star?” she murmured.
“Of course you will be a star!” He leaned back on his elbows, gazing at the sky. “The brightest of all the stars in the heavens.”
She liked the Professor, even though she did not know what he was talking about. He reminded her a bit of Rolon—in charge of his pack but relaxed about his power.
“Of course, I can’t pay much,” he said, cocking his head and dropping his hands. “But surely you don’t care about that. A woman like you, a child of nature, doesn’t need muc
h money. Do you?”
He paused for her to respond.
Sarah frowned, struggling to come to grips with his meaning. Did she need money? “What is money?” she asked. This was not a word that Max had taught her.
The Professor smiled and raised an eyebrow. “Exactly,” he said. “What is money to people like us? Money comes and money goes.”
He reached out to Cassidy, smiling, with a hand that was apparently empty. When he took his hand away from Cassidy’s ear, it was holding a coin. “Money,” he said. “It comes…” He closed his hand around the coin, then opened his hand. The coin was gone.
“Where did it go?” she asked.
“It vanished into thin air. It’s magic.”
She studied his face. He seemed very amused. “You are lying,” she said softly, a little puzzled.
“Of course!” His smile broadened. “That’s what magic is—a lie that you choose to believe.” He snapped his fingers and the coin was back. “Reality and illusion—it’s all a sham. And in the end, money is the greatest illusion of all. I remember a time in Shanghai when I was dead broke, busted, not a nickel to my name. But fate smiles on people like us….”
The Milky Way was twinkling overhead when the Professor finished a series of stories about how fate had smiled on him and his company. “And now we have this! A Wild Angel who comes from nowhere to our aid.” He beamed at Cassidy. “It’s a wonderful world, is it not?”
Sarah was strangely content. She had understood little of what the Professor had been saying in words, but he treated her like a member of his pack; he welcomed her. That was good.
The fire had died to embers. The air was sweet with pine smoke. A chorus of frogs sang from the nearby creek.
“It is a wonderful world,” Cassidy agreed. “And a wonderful life.”
Sarah lifted her head. She was not listening to him. She was attending to another voice—the distant howling of a wolf, almost too faint to be heard. While the others watched, she lifted her head and returned the call with a howl that started low and climbed the scale to a high sustained note that sent chills up Cassidy’s spine.