The Wild Girl (26 page)

“No, I’m an only child,” she said. “And as far as I know, my father is still alive.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that I don’t have any contact with him any longer,” she said coolly. “Last I heard he was still alive.” And then she quickly changed the subject.

Margaret, too, is taking extensive notes now. “It would be interesting to compare our notebooks, wouldn’t it, Neddy?” she said one evening around the fire. “One from the point of view of an artist, the other from that of a scientist.”

“I’m not an artist, Mag,” I said. “I’m a journalist. A workingman, as Big Wade puts it. My photographs and my notebooks just tell what happens.”

We had found level ground on the summit of a
cordón
and there we were camped for the night, with a view out over the closely timbered mountains, superimposed one upon the next, pine-covered hills and plateaus, the sharp, serrated rock crests of the sierras, looming overhead now, as if they might fall down and crush us.

“Just out of curiosity, Mag,” I asked, “are your notes all scientific data? Or do you make personal observations?”

She thumbed through her notebook. “Not unless you consider notes on verb morphology to be personal, sweetheart,” she said.

“God,
give
me that,” Tolley said, pretending to lunge for her notebook. “Verb morphology is my passion.”

Margaret ignored him. “I’m mostly trying to learn enough Apache from the girl and from Joseph to understand how the language and the culture have evolved differently among this isolated band than among the reservation Apaches over the past half century,” she said. “I’m hoping to make that the subject of my doctoral thesis.”

“Oh,
please,
Margaret,” Tolley said. “Do you expect us to believe that you haven’t made a single entry about your lover boy here? ‘Dear Diary,’” he said, adopting his most mincing tone, “‘It’s official, I’m in love with A.V. . . .’ We always use initials in our diaries,” Tolley said in an aside, “in case our parents ever read them. ‘He is such a darling boy. I just get all squishy inside when I’m around him.’”

Margaret smiled with tolerant amusement. “These are my professional notebooks,” she said. “I keep them separate from my personal life.”

“Oh, who are you kidding, darling?” Tolley said. “You’re supposed to be studying the Apaches, not doing it doggy style with one.”

“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.”

“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.’”