The Wild Girl

by Jim Fergus

  We pitched camp some distance back from the canyon at the edge of the pine forest, built fires, and made our dinner. The Apaches camped a bit off by themselves, and after dinner, Tolley, Albert, Margaret, and I went to speak with Charley, to see if we could get a sense of why we had taken this route and where we were headed tomorrow.

  “Charley sent two boys ahead this morning to scout,” Joseph explained as we sat around their fire. “They report that the lion hunter has led the soldiers a different way, and so Charley has taken this trail in order to intercept them.”

  “And did the boys see Indio Juan?” Albert asked.

  “Yes, they report that Indio Juan and his men are following the expedition,” Joseph said. “At night they steal stock and whatever provisions they can from the Mexicans and the White Eyes. They have killed two guards so far.”

  “How long before we reach them?” Margaret asked.

  “They are less than a day’s ride from us,” Joseph said. “We will find them tomorrow.”

  Chideh and I have camped a little away from the others. Some have hung blankets or pieces of oilcloth between the trees or bushes to make rough shelters for the night. But we are sleeping in the open. The night sky is clear and moonless with so many stars visible that it’s difficult to identify the constellations, vast masses and dizzying swirls of them. We lie on our backs, huddled under a blanket, looking up at the stars. We don’t have enough language between us to have much of a conversation about astronomy, and I don’t know what her people think about the stars, or what myths and superstitions they have devised to explain the heavens. I wonder if they make her feel as small and as insignificant as they do me; I sense by the way she holds on to me that the sheer enormity of the universe, the cold indifference of the stars, frightens her … as it does me. I wonder if they give her the same sense of vertigo, the same hollow pit in her stomach, as if the night sky threatens to suck us off the earth and absorb us like specks of dust.

  A shooting star blazed across the sky, its long tail burning bright, and just as suddenly extinguished. The girl raised her hand and traced the trajectory of it with her finger, running it all the way down to earth.

  “There,” she whispered, pointing. “The enemy is there.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “This is why the stars fall at night,” she said. “To show the People in what direction our enemies lie.”

  UNDATED ENTRY

  In fact, the shooting star did point to the location of the expedition. We departed our campsite by the waterfall at dawn and traveled hard all day, keeping up a punishing pace, mostly downhill through increasingly rough country. By late afternoon we had reached the eastern foothills of the sierra, which looked out over a broad plain. Down below we saw them, moving along the edge of the plain like tiny toy soldiers, their passage marked by a small raising of dust. Billy Flowers and Colonel Carrillo must have thought that they would make better progress in the flats than they could in the mountains and had elected to go the long way around, to approach the ranchería from the south. They had obviously not bargained on the Apaches coming to them.

  Shortly after we spotted the expedition, Indio Juan met us on the trail with his small band. The Apaches all dismounted for a tense conference. Juan swaggered and postured in his maniacal way, proudly displaying two fresh scalps he claimed to have taken off soldiers. He remained intractable about giving up Geraldo Huerta and he and Charley exchanged heated words. We stood some distance off and kept silent, trying not to even look at Indio Juan. He is so crazy and volatile that just a glance can set him off. At one point he walked over to Margaret and put his face up close to hers and whispered something the rest of us couldn’t hear. Margaret colored and clenched her teeth. Albert immediately stepped toward her to intervene, and Indio Juan whirled on him with his knife drawn, smiling wickedly, as if he had just been looking for this excuse. Charley spoke sharply, and in that same moment Tolley, who was still mounted, drew his rifle from the scabbard and cocked it. Only then did Indio Juan back down. He spoke derisively to Charley.

  “What did he say?” I asked Albert.

  “He said now that Charley rides with White Eyes, he has grown weak.”

  Indio Juan remounted and wheeled his horse around, and he and his people galloped off.

  It was decided that Tolley, Margaret, and I would ride down to make contact with the expedition. We would take Jesus with us and leave Albert and Joseph with the Apaches. We asked Charley if we could take little Geraldo, in order to show his good faith.

  “You bring back six strong horses,” he said, “and the word of their chief that in return for giving up the boy, the soldiers will leave our country. Only then will we give them the boy.” Charley doesn’t seem to understand that the Mexicans don’t think of this as the Apaches’ country.

  And so we rode down out of the foothills to the plain below, which lay like a great undulating sea at dusk, the shadows of clouds scudding in dark patches across the pale green summer desert. The expedition had pitched camp for the night out in the open, rather than up against the foothills, which seemed odd to us at first. But then we realized that they had probably done so in order to be able to see all who approached from any direction. We carried a white flag of surrender to alert the guards that we were friendly. Anyway, who could mistake Tolley’s white buckskin getup.

  “You were a regular gunslinger back there, Tolley,” I said to him. “The way you pulled that rifle on Indio Juan.”

  “My hero,” Margaret added.

  “You know, when you wear the clothes,” said Tolley, “you have to fill them. That’s what I love about fashion. It can make a new man out of you. I thought to myself, ‘Now what would the old injun fighter Buffalo Bill do in this situation?’ And, of course, the answer was instantly apparent.”

  As we approached, we called out to identify ourselves to the guards, who recognized us and called back, waving us in.

  The Great Apache Expedition has clearly lost a considerable amount of its luster and is a far more spartan affair out here in the middle of the Chihuahuan desert. All but a handful of the American volunteers have dropped out by now, and those who remain are no longer the polo crowd but a few of the more hard-core retired military men. Gone, too, are the days of catered dinners and full bars; everyone has the lean, grizzled, dusty look of subsistence about them. Morale is low, and the fear level high. Besides the nearly nightly pilfering and theft of stock by Indio Juan and his warriors, no matter what precautions are taken, two soldiers, whose scalps Indio Juan so proudly displays, have been murdered, and the constant harassment is clearly taking its toll on everyone. The enemy has come to seem like a ghost who strikes in the twilight of dawn and against whom there is no defense.

  We were taken directly to see Colonel Carrillo in his tent, and moments later were joined there by Chief Gatlin, Billy Flowers, and Señor Huerta. Gatlin was unshaven and hollow-eyed; the expedition has hardly turned out to be the promotional bonanza for the city of Douglas that the Chamber of Commerce had envisioned, and as its chief architect, he will certainly be held responsible for the fiasco. Even the resplendent peacock Colonel Carrillo, so generally elegant and immaculately attired, appears frayed and harried. Only Billy Flowers looks unchanged, his bright blue eyes undimmed. A man clearly accustomed to a life of hardship and deprivation, he seems, within the hard shell of his severe biblical stoicism, entirely impervious to the reduced circumstances of the expedition.

  Fernando Huerta wept and thanked us profusely when we told him that his son was nearby, alive and well, and that the Apaches were willing to trade for him.

  “You will bring the renegades here tomorrow morning,” Carrillo said. “Unarmed. They will give up the boy and at that time we will accept their unconditional surrender.”

  “That’s not exactly the arrangement, Colonel,” I explained. “They want six good horses and assurances that you won’t pursue them. And they want the bounty on Apache scalps lifted.”

  Carril
lo took this in for a moment, and then in a very low voice he said: “Young man, after all this, do you think that I am going to allow the Apache devils to dictate the terms of the boy’s release to me?”

  “Yes, sir, if you want the boy back, I think you would do that.”

  “Why risk the boy’s life,” Margaret asked, “when the Apaches are willing to give him up for six horses?”

  “For God’s sake, Colonel,” Señor Huerta said angrily, “I will give them the horses myself.”

  Carrillo wheeled on Señor Huerta. “No, señor, you will not,” he snapped. “May I remind you that you came to the presidente for his assistance after your own efforts to rescue your son failed. This is a Mexican federal military campaign. And our government does not negotiate with criminals. They return the boy and surrender unconditionally. Those are my terms.”

  Tolley surprised everyone by laughing at that moment, his high whinnying laugh. “Have you lost your mind, Colonel?” he said. “Why in the world would they give the boy up and surrender themselves to you now? You remind me of Custer’s famous last words at the Little Bighorn: ‘We’ve got them now, boys!’”

  Carrillo’s face darkened in rage. “Your father’s money may allow you to address people in this manner in your own country, Señor Phillips,” he said in a low threatening voice. “But you are in Mexico now, and you are here at the pleasure of the presidente. I will have you stood before a firing squad and shipped home to your father in a box before I will tolerate your disrespect.”

  “Let’s all calm down,” Chief Gatlin said in a conciliatory tone. “It’s been a long campaign for everyone. We’ve lost men. Everyone is tired. Everyone wants to go home. Toward that end, Colonel, may I respectfully suggest a compromise?”

  Carrillo looked at him, his dark eyes shining with an unnatural fervor. Tolley had clearly touched a nerve, and the colonel’s own military career was probably at stake with the success or failure of the Great Apache Expedition.

  “Is the white man you claim to be Charley McComas still with the Apaches?” Gatlin asked us.

  “Yes,” Margaret answered. “He’s their leader. But it’s the Apache called Indio Juan who is killing your men, Colonel, not Charley.”

  “Charley, is it now?” Gatlin said with an amused smile. “How nice that you’re on a first-name basis, Margaret. I’m beginning to wonder whose side you folks are on.”

  “We’re on the side of all those,” said Margaret, “—white men, Mexicans, and Apaches—who won’t die if we negotiate a fair and peaceful conclusion to this.”

  “Which will be exactly the result of my compromise,” Gatlin said. “I understand your reluctance to negotiate with the savages, Colonel. But why not accede to their demand for the horses in return for the boy, on condition that their leader, the white man, comes in alone and unarmed for the exchange? I want Charley McComas alive. I want to take him back across the border to his own people. That’s two kidnap victims saved from the clutches of the savages—one American boy and one Mexican boy. What more fitting conclusion than that to our noble mission?”

  “Charley McComas hasn’t survived up there for fifty years by being stupid,” Margaret said. “Why would he agree to come in with the boy to get the horses alone and unarmed?”

  “Because you’re going to convince him to come in, Margaret,” Gatlin said with a small thin-lipped smile. “That’s why.”

  “Fuck you, Leslie,” Margaret said. “I’m not participating in your little plot.”

  “Yes, Margaret, you are,” Gatlin said. “As you clearly enjoy Charley McComas’s confidence, both you and Mr. Giles are going to participate. And as your own loyalty seems to have been somewhat compromised, Colonel Carrillo has given me an excellent idea to ensure that participation. The colonel is going to put all three of you—you, Mr. Giles, and Mr. Phillips—under house arrest. The charge will be collaborating with the enemy, a charge of which, under the circumstances, you are clearly guilty. In any case, you will be tried by a Mexican military tribunal, without access to an attorney, or to our own system of due process. Indeed, as the colonel points out, he has absolute authority in the field, and even without a trial, can order your execution by firing squad.”

  “Oh, nonsense,” said Tolley with a slightly uncertain bravado. “You can’t execute Tolbert Phillips Jr. My father has connections all the way to the White House. It would cause an international incident.”

  “You would be surprised, Mr. Phillips,” said Gatlin, “at how little influence your father has in a Mexican military court. At the very least you’d be facing a long prison sentence … ummm, ten, maybe twenty years, is that about right, Colonel?”

  “At the bare minimum,” Carrillo said. “And that is only if I decide not to have you stood up in front of the firing squad instead.”

  “Ten years in a Mexican prison taking it up the ass every day from half a dozen hardened criminals,” Gatlin said, shaking his head. “Even for a faggot like yourself, Mr. Phillips, I should think that might feel like a long way from home.”

  Tolley had gone quite white.

  “And so, Margaret, and Mr. Giles,” Gatlin continued, “I believe that the colonel might consider dropping all charges against you and your friend if you were to agree to bring Charley McComas in with the Huerta boy. It would be a way to negotiate a fair and peaceful conclusion, as you yourself put it, Margaret, a way to save your own skins, and to avoid a great deal of bloodshed in the process.”

  “Tomorrow morning, Mr. Giles,” Colonel Carrillo said, pivoting on his toes like a bullfighter, “you and Miss Hawkins will lead us to the Apaches. You will enter their camp alone, bearing a white flag. You will tell them that we have agreed to their demands and you will escort the boy and the white man out to us, under whatever pretext is necessary. Mr. Phillips will be waiting here for word of the successful completion of your mission.”

  As the sergeant led us from Carrillo’s tent, we looked at one another in stunned silence. Tolley spoke first.

  “If I hadn’t listened to you, Giles,” he whispered, “I would be in New York right now, staying in Father’s suite at the Waldorf and being fitted at Brooks Brothers for my fall wardrobe. Instead I’m going to be stood in front of a firing squad in the middle of the Mexican desert.”

  “Carrillo is not going to execute you, Tolley,” Margaret said. “It’s a bluff. He wouldn’t dare.”

  “Yes, well, the alternative does not sound much more attractive, does it, darling? And by the way, old sport,” he said to me, “I might just remind you that you’re rather an adorable little white boy yourself, and your own charms will certainly not be lost on the Mexican prison population. My father may be able to pull some strings to get me out, but who’s going to come to the poor orphan boy’s aid?”

  We were split up then, Margaret and Tolley taken to their separate quarters, and I back to Big Wade’s “press” tent, where I make these entries by the light of a lantern. A soldier stands guard by the entrance.

  Jackson himself has lost a great deal of weight in the weeks since the expedition departed Douglas, and actually looks healthier than I’ve ever seen him.

  “It’s not easy to get a drink out here, kid,” he said. “I’ve had to ration myself to whatever rotgut I can lay my hands on in the villages we pass through. And just try finding a decent cigar.” He held out the unlit butt he was chewing. “Look at this piece of shit. I swear the Mexicans roll cow shit up in cornstalks and call it a cigar.”

  “You look good, Big Wade,” I said.

  “What’s with the guard, kid?” he asked. “What kind of mess have you gotten yourself into this time?”

  I told Big Wade everything. And when I had finished, he shook his head. “Didn’t I tell you not to get involved?” he said. “Didn’t I tell you just to do your work? That your only concern is to get the shot?”

  “Hey, look,” I said, holding out the camera bag. “I got the Leica back. And I got the shot. Wait’ll you see this film, Big Wade, you’ll be proud
of me.”

  “What are you going to do, kid?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “You don’t think Carrillo would really execute Tolley, do you?”

  “I don’t think so,” Big Wade said. “But, hell, this is Mexico, anything can happen. And as Gatlin said, whether they execute him or not, they can make a world of trouble for you kids. Look, everyone’s tired and frazzled, nerves are on edge. Carrillo has lost men, and every night it seems like the Apaches manage to sneak into camp, pilfer supplies, steal horses and mules. They already slit two guards’ throats. And scalped them. It’s spooky as shit, they’re like fuckin’ ghosts the way they got the run of the place.”

  “That’s just how they are, Big Wade,” I said. “Like ghosts. Even when you’re among them, they come and go like ghosts. They’re not like us.”

  “No shit.”

  “It’s how they’ve survived all these years up here,” I said.

  “What about Charley McComas?”

  “He’s just as Apache as they are,” I said. “It’s strange because he’s a huge man, maybe six-four, six-five, with long hair and a beard … Tolley says he looks like an Irish cop in need of a haircut and a shave … but he’s just like one of them, and after a while you don’t even think of him as a white man, or see him as being any different from the others. And they don’t see him any differently, either. He’s not going to surrender to Carrillo, Big Wade. That much I know for sure.”