The Wild Girl

by Jim Fergus

  “Maybe Albert is just one of my research subjects,” Margaret said, “and I’m observing him, and it’s not personal at all. Didn’t that ever occur to you?”

  “Well, I suppose that’s possible,” Tolley said. “It’s true that both you and Giles are rather similar that way. Both observers rather than participants. He sees the world through a camera lens. You see it through the impartial eyes of a scientist. But you’re both on the outside looking in and neither of you sees it as it really is.”

  “Oh? And how is it, really, Tolley?” I asked. “For someone on the inside like yourself.”

  “A lot bigger than can ever be contained in your viewfinder, mi amigo,” Tolley said. “And bigger than can be contained in the morphological study of verbs, darling. Big, messy, and complicated.”

  “What do you know about the ‘real’ world, anyway, Tolley?” I asked. “You’re a rich kid. Look, you can’t even come into the Sierra Madre without bringing a valet to protect you from it.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong, old sport,” Tolley said. “When you’re as different as I am, nothing can protect you from the realities of the world. Not money. Not even a butler. Do you know that I’ve been arrested three times already, just for frequenting clubs where my ‘kind’ congregate? Some of my friends have gone to prison simply for being themselves. That’s living on the front lines, not hiding behind a camera like you, or being an objective observer of other people’s cultural practices, like Margaret. You’re both really glorified voyeurs.”

  “So how come you didn’t go to prison with your friends, Tolley?” I asked.

  He smiled. “In order to avoid the disgrace it would cause the family name,” he said, “Father makes a generous contribution every year to the greater Philadelphia Police Benevolent Association.”

  “I rest my case,” I said. “Let’s face it, we’re all outsiders looking in, you included, Tolley. We’re just looking at different things.”

  4 JUNE, 1932

  Today we came upon our first sign of the Apaches. We rode into a clearing on the crest of a hillside, and there we found several crude rock pillars, built of stones stacked on top of one another, three feet or so high and spaced about twenty yards apart. Joseph dismounted and knelt by one of them, examining it. He spoke to the girl.

  “What are those?” I asked Albert.

  “We are in Apache country,” he said.

  “You mean they’re some kind of boundary markers?”

  “Apaches do not make boundaries,” he said. “White Eyes make boundaries. These are used for another purpose.”

  We have camped for the night in the clearing not far from these stone monuments. There is a distinct chill in the high mountain air, and a certain sense of foreboding among us, as if the markers themselves have the power to create climate and mood. And perhaps this, then, is their purpose, to warn off intruders. There was even some discussion about whether or not we should avoid making a fire tonight for fear of giving away our location, until it was pointed out that we are trying to make contact with the Apaches, not avoid it. In any case, Joseph now tells us that he has seen signs of the Apaches for the past two days, and that they have known of our presence for at least that long, that they know exactly how many we are and that we are traveling with the girl.

  “How do you know all this, Joseph?” I asked. “Why didn’t you tell us before?”

  “The signs were there for you to see,” he said.

  This information put us even more on edge, and that night around the campfire we decided that we should begin posting a guard at night.

  “And what will you White Eyes do,” Albert asked, “if a wild Apache sneaks into our camp while you’re on guard duty?”

  “I don’t know, Albert,” I admitted. “I’d probably ask him to pose for a photograph.”

  “Yeah, and I’d want to interview him for my thesis,” Margaret said.

  “What about you, Mr. Browning?” Albert asked.

  “I am not a violent man by nature, sir,” Mr. Browning said. “I would probably try diplomacy. Perhaps I’d offer him a spot of tea. When I was in Kenya with my former master, Lord Crowley, I found that a cup of tea provided a wonderful icebreaker with the natives.”

  “We’re a dangerous bunch, all right,” Margaret said. “What would you do, Tolley? Try to have a peek under his breechcloth?”

  “Very funny, darling,” Tolley said. “As a matter of fact, I would raise my hand in the sign of peace to show the fellow that we are here in a spirit of goodwill. And I would say”—Tolley drew himself up—“Chuu ilts’ee’a.”

  Margaret started giggling, and even Albert laughed. “He would either kill you where you stood, Tolley,” Albert said, “or he would roll on the ground in laughter.”

  “I’m hoping for the latter,” Tolley said. “Because it’s the only thing I know how to say in Apache. I made your grandfather teach it to me so that when I go home I can amuse my friends with my command of the Apache tongue.”

  “Okay, let the rest of us in on the joke,” I said. “What does that mean?”

  “Roughly translated,” Margaret said, “it means, ‘My penis is stiff.’”

  And so, as usual we leave it to Tolley to provide the comic relief for our collective tensions. But the fact is, we’re all on edge. Throughout this conversation, Jesus had remained quiet and thoughtful and had not joined in the laughter. “And you, boy?” Albert asked him now. “Speak up. What would you do if an Apache warrior snuck into our camp tonight?”

  “I would be very, very afraid,” Jesus answered in a small, deathly serious voice.

  I drew the first watch tonight and so I sit by the fire passing time with my notebook, trying to keep my eyes open …

  5 JUNE, 1932

  The girl is gone. She left in the night. We don’t know on whose watch she slipped away … it hardly matters.

  “Do you know where she went, Joseph?” I asked the old man.

  “She has returned to her people,” he answered.

  “And you didn’t hear her go?”

  “Do you not see that la niña bronca moves like a spirit?” Joseph asked, and we all know what he means. “It is the way the People once lived, a Power we once had, but have lost in your world. It does not exist any longer on the reservation except among a very few old ones. But the People here still possess the Power. You will see. If they choose to reveal themselves to us, we will not hear them come, they will simply appear before us.”

  Jesus crossed himself and whispered a small invocation. Such talk only confirms the folk superstitions upon which he was raised, the notion that the Apaches are supernatural bogeymen.

  “Why don’t we just go right to them,” Margaret said, “rather than waiting for them to come to us?”

  “Why would we want to do that?” Tolley asked. “Without the girl in our possession, we have no bargaining power whatsoever. Our orders now are to notify Billy Flowers of her escape. And then get the hell out of here. This place is beginning to give me the willies.”

  “Are you really willing to turn Flowers and his dogs loose on her, Tolley?” Margaret asked.

  Even Mr. Browning, alarmed at this notion, spoke up then. “I should not advise it, sir,” he said, “really I shouldn’t.”

  “Joseph, you can track the girl, can’t you?” I asked.

  “It is better that you turn back now,” Joseph said. “If the girl has found her people, they will not allow you to follow them.”

  “But how can you know she’s already found them?” I asked. “Flowers’s dogs could run her down in hours. I say we keep moving.”

  “You seem to forget, Giles,” Tolley said, “that I am the commanding officer of this little detachment. I give the orders, not you.”

  “Look, Tolley,” Margaret said. “We can’t take a chance on letting Flowers catch her. You know what his dogs would do to her. I’m with Ned.”

  “This is mutiny,” Tolley said. “I could have you all court-martialed.”

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p; “Okay, sweetheart, consider us under house arrest,” Margaret said. “We’ll turn ourselves in when we get back to the expedition. In the meantime, let’s get moving. We’re wasting time.”

  We didn’t get far. We had only traveled a few hours, and had stopped to eat a bite, when we heard the ghostly rattling of chains announcing Billy Flowers and his dogs. A moment later the hunter rode up on his white mule, the chained dogs, lean and muscled, trailing behind him.

  He did not dismount, but sat his mule, looking down upon us like Moses atop Mount Sinai, the shadowed sun streaming through the timber above, backlighting his long white hair and beard, his eyes burning bright. “You have let the heathen girl go,” said Billy Flowers.

  “She ran off in the night,” Margaret answered. “How did you know?”

  “Where you dismount to walk, her prints are missing,” Flowers said. “It took me longer to notice than it should have. Why did you not notify me?”

  “Because we’re going to find her ourselves,” I said.

  “I warned you that she would run off. Now my dogs will find her, while her trail is still fresh.” The old man’s hunting blood was clearly up, and we all had the sense that he had just been waiting for this opportunity to put his dogs down and run the girl to ground again.

  “You will return to notify the expedition immediately, Mr. Flowers,” Tolley said, striking his most imperious pose. “You will guide them back here while we will go after the girl.”

  Flowers looked down at Tolley with an expression of enormous contempt. “Are you giving me orders, Mr. Phillips?” he asked.

  “Captain Phillips to you, sir,” said Tolley, and despite the gravity of the situation, and the terrible weight of Flowers’s presence, we all had to work hard not to bust out laughing. “And I am in command here. Didn’t Colonel Carrillo make that perfectly clear?”

  “Tolley does have a point, Mr. Flowers,” Margaret said. “If you go chasing off after the girl now, how will the expedition ever find us?”

  “Because you will go back for them yourself,” Flowers said, “and the old Indian will lead them here. They are only a day’s ride behind us.”

  “No,” Margaret said, shaking her head. “That’s what we’re trying to tell you. We’ve come this far and we’re not turning back.”

  Billy Flowers considered this for a moment. “You’re a foolish young woman, Miss Hawkins,” he said. “You think this is a university field trip, don’t you? And that the noble savages are going to take you into their world, embrace you, let you study them like museum specimens.” He turned to Joseph. “Why don’t you tell these folks what your people are really like, old-timer?” he said. “Tell them about the darkness in your own heart before you were civilized yourself, before you were baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. Go ahead, tell them what they might expect if they meet up with the bronco Apaches. ‘The enemies of the cross of Christ: Whose end is destruction, whose god is their belly. Whose glory is their shame. Strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in their world.’”

  Seated cross-legged on the ground, Joseph seemed tiny and frail in comparison to Billy Flowers, mounted on his mule above. He did not respond but neither did he turn away from Flowers’s searing gaze.

  “What do you know about our people, anyway, you crazy old bastard?” Albert asked.

  Flowers reined his mule around. “All right,” he said. “If that’s how it’s going to be, I will go back for the expedition myself. But you best hope I return with them before you learn for yourselves what I know about the godless.”

  It is an odd thing, and I don’t know whether the others felt it or not, but watching Billy Flowers ride away in that moment, his dog chains rattling desolately, I suddenly experienced a terrible chill of vulnerability. He may be a zealot and half insane, but at the same time there has been something strangely comforting about having the old man trailing us all this time, as if God Himself has been watching out for us, keeping us safe. And suddenly we are all alone, in the heart of another God’s country.

  LA NIÑA BRONCA

  THE GIRL LAY AWAKE, HUDDLED UNDER HER BLANKET, LISTENING to the owl calling in the forest, a sound that terrified her. It was the worst possible sign, and she knew that someone was going to die. She knew that Indio Juan had been watching them for several days now, and that he would come into their camp in the night and kill these people who had saved her. She thought to talk to the old man about it, but even before they came upon the rock pillars, she sensed that he, too, was aware of the presence of the People. She thought that Indio Juan might spare the woman and the boy to make captives of them, but he would surely kill the men, including the old man and his grandson. They had all been kind to her and she did not wish for them to die; neither did she wish for the woman and the boy to be taken captive, for she knew what terrible things would befall them.

  And so she lay awake under her blanket, trying to gain her courage, listening to the hooting of the owl, the messenger of death. She was afraid of traveling in the night, especially with the owl abroad, for if she saw the owl in addition to hearing it, if she walked up on it or if it flew across her path, then it was she who would die. And yet she knew she could not stay here any longer, and that if she did, Indio Juan would come for her and cut the throats of these kind people in the night.

  When she thought they were all asleep, she slipped from her place without making a sound and moved past them, quiet as a ghost. The girl-boy, as she thought of the one they called Tolley, was on guard duty by the fire but he had fallen asleep and the fire had burned down to embers. He would have been the first to die. As she passed by the old man, she looked down at him and saw that he was awake and that he was watching her. They looked in each other’s eyes, but they did not speak, and she knew that the old man understood and would not stop her from leaving. Good-bye, Grandfather, she said, using her hands to make the sign talk. I will come with you, child, he answered with his hands. No, you must go back, she signed. You must take the others back.

  A three-quarter moon had risen to light her way and the trees cast dark shadows across the forest floor. The owl hooted rhythmically, his voice filling the forest, and she tried to identify where the sound was coming from so that she could avoid walking close to it, but it seemed to be coming from all around and from no particular direction. She was afraid and she began to run in a light jog, her feet barely grazing the ground.

  She knew this country well and knew the spring by which Indio Juan would be camped. But before she reached it, she saw the outlines of the people moving toward her through the forest, moving in and out of the shadows ahead, and then one of them stepped out in front of her and her breath caught in her throat, but she did not cry out. It was Indio Juan. He took hold of her arm and put his face up close to hers. “I was coming for you,” he said, smiling crookedly. In the moonlight the dead side of his face, paralyzed in childhood by the snake venom, had a faint waxy sheen, the corner of his eye and mouth downturned.

  “Yes,” she said. “I know. And so I have come to you.”

  “You ride with White Eyes and Mexicans now,” he said.

  “And In’deh,” she added.

  “Reservation Apaches are not In’deh,” he said.

  “The old one is ch’uk’aende,” she said. “He knows this country.”

  “He scouts for the White Eyes and the Mexicans.”

  “He brought me home,” she said. “I was captured because you left me behind; you left my mother and my sister and the others behind to be killed by the Mexicans. The old one took me away from them and brought me home.”

  “They have fine horses and mules and many provisions,” Indio Juan said.

  “Yes, that is so.”

  “We will make a raid upon their camp tonight.”

  “No,” she said. “In the morning they will leave this country. I do not wish them to be harmed.”

  Indio Juan laughed scornfully. “You do not wish them to be harmed?” he mocked.
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br />   “We will travel south to the ranchería of my grandfather,” the girl said. “I will tell him that his daughter, my mother, and his granddaughter, my sister, are dead because you left us behind for the Mexicans. I will tell him that these people rescued me and brought me home and I promised them that they would not be harmed. And if you kill them now, my grandfather will be very angry.”

  “I do not fear your grandfather,” said Indio Juan boastfully.

  “Yes, you do,” said the girl. The others had faded out of the shadows now and gathered quietly behind, listening, half a dozen young men hardly older than boys, and two women, one a Mexican captive named Francesca, taken many years ago as a child, and now as Apache as any of the others, the other the hawk-faced one they called Gent, tuuyu, the “ugly one,” all that was left of Indio Juan’s band.

  “Let us leave them alone tonight,” said Francesca, who was carrying Indio Juan’s child. “And if they turn back in the morning, we will let them go. But if they try to follow us, we will take their fine horses and mules, and we will do as we wish with those who ride them.”

  This compromise seemed to satisfy Indio Juan. It was true that he had the snake sickness and was always unpredictable, but he also feared her grandfather. “Agreed?” he asked the girl.

  She nodded.

  She returned with them to their camp, trying to avoid Indio Juan, trying to avoid even looking at him. She wondered now that she was back how long it would be before he claimed her as his wife. She went off to sleep beside the woman, Gent, tuuyu, the others oddly shy and uncertain with her, as if they feared that in her time among the White Eyes and the Mexicans, she had been tainted.

  She lay awake, unable still to sleep. From the forest came the deep reverberating hooting of the owl.

  THE NOTEBOOKS OF NED GILES, 1932

  NOTEBOOK V:

  Captured

  (UNDATED ENTRY)