The Wild Girl (27 page)

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.

“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)

Joseph was right, we never heard or saw them coming, they were simply there, above and behind us. Ahead of us. Atop us. We were riding single file up the face of a steep canyon wall. On the other side was a nearly sheer drop-off into a river gorge hundreds of feet below, so far down that although we could see the churning, rushing white water, we could not hear it. Tolley was riding ahead of me, and I saw the figure leap upon him from the rocks above, but before I could even cry out to warn him, I felt one of them drop onto my own back, light as a cat pouncing. And then I felt the knife blade at my throat, the slightest pressure, and I smelled her unmistakable scent, her wildness, and I knew in that instant that I was going to die at the hand of
la niña bronca
. Tolley fell from the saddle uttering a small surprised cry, the Apache on his back like a small troll, the two of them rolling on the ground, the nimble troll coming up on top, picking up a rock to smash in Tolley’s skull. His now-riderless horse panicked, reared, and whinnied, one hoof coming down to strike a glancing blow to the Apache’s shoulder, entirely by accident, knocking him off Tolley, who scrambled to his feet and tried to grab hold of the reins. But the horse, wild-eyed, reared again, lost his footing, and teetered backward, falling off the trail, landing on his back on the rocks, then flipping over, and falling, falling off the sheer face of the canyon wall, falling into the gorge, falling and screaming as he fell twisting through the air. How will we ever forget the sound of Tolley’s horse screaming all the way down to the rocks below?

Then came the distinctive ratcheting of rifles being cocked, and several others were ahead of us on the trail, above us in the rocks, and behind us. Tolley had raised his arms in surrender to the man who had knocked him from his horse . . . except now I saw that it was actually a woman, dressed in high-topped moccasins, and a breechcloth. I was able to turn my head just enough to see that a young man sat behind Albert on his horse, holding a knife to his throat, and a young boy behind Joseph, also with a knife at his throat. Margaret, Mr. Browning, and Jesus remained unguarded, but none of them had weapons, a fact the Apaches must already have known. In any case, there was nowhere for them to run.

Jesus began to whimper softly, captured by
los Apaches,
his worst nightmare come true. He spoke in blubbering Spanish:
“Salvamos tu vida,”
he said. “We saved your life, we took you away from the jail where you were dying,
nosotros te cuidamos bien,
we took care of you. Why do you do this to us now?”

From behind me came the answer, and I knew for certain what I had already known, that it was the girl herself holding the knife at my throat.
“Si no dejas de llorar, mexicano cobarde, te mataremos,”
she answered without pity
.
“If you do not stop crying, Mexican coward, we will kill you.” And Jesus stopped crying.

The others came forward now; moving as soundlessly as dream people, they slid the rifles and shotguns from the scabbards on our saddles. The girl took the knife from my throat and slid off the back of the mule, as did the boy behind Joseph and the young man behind Albert.