The Wild Girl (21 page)

They already had their mules saddled, and a burro loaded with packs. Behind the burro they’d rigged up a travois to carry the girl—a stretcherlike affair that consisted of a piece of canvas lashed to pine poles.

We met Margaret as planned, and all rode into town together. Word had gotten out about our mission and a small group of townspeople had already gathered in the plaza. Chief Gatlin, Colonel Carrillo, and Mayor Cargill were waiting for us in front of the jail. With them was Billy Flowers, the old lion hunter who had caught the girl. He is a tall, gaunt, white-bearded man with fanatical blue eyes, who looks like he has wandered right out of the Old Testament.

“Mr. Flowers will be trailing your party into the Sierra Madre,” Chief Gatlin explained after all the introductions had been made. “He will provide our contact with you. He knows the country and will report back to the expedition.”

“Does the old savage speak English?” Flowers asked, nodding toward Joseph, who had stayed back with the animals.

“His name is Joseph Valor,” Albert said. “He is my grandfather. He was a prisoner of war of the American government for seventeen years. Which was sufficient time to learn your language. Even for an ignorant savage.”

“And is your grandfather now a Christian?” Flowers asked.

“He was baptized into the Dutch Reform Church at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, in 1903,” said Albert.

“That’s fine,” Flowers said, nodding.

“But only because he enjoyed the church social activities,” Albert added. “He accepted your God so that he could play Saturday-night bingo.”

Flowers looked hard at Albert. “And what about you, son?” he asked.

“I was educated by your reverends at Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania,” said Albert. “They took us away from our families, cut our hair, and dressed us in white-man clothing. They beat us if we were caught speaking our own language, and they taught us about your God.” Albert smiled. “Why I’m almost as white as you, old man.”

“And did the reverends teach you to accept the Lord Jesus as your only true savior?”

“What is this, Mr. Flowers?” interjected Margaret. “Are we all going to be interrogated about our religious affiliations? Or just the Apaches?”

“I like to know who I can trust, young lady,” Billy Flowers said.

Gatlin had sent a truck down from camp, loaded with the rest of our gear and food supplies, and two men now transferred this into the panniers on our pack animal. They slid rifles into scabbards on my, Albert’s, and Joseph’s mules.

A few minutes later the sheriff came out of the jailhouse, carrying the girl, still curled in a fetal position and wrapped in a blanket. He was followed by the town doctor.

They laid her on the travois, securing her there with leather thongs. Joseph knelt beside her and began to speak in a low, chanting voice. He opened his medicine pouch, took a pinch of powder from it, and sprinkled it over her.

“Does this man have any medical experience?” asked
el doctor
in perfectly enunciated English.

“Yes,” Albert answered, “he’s an Apache medicine man. Fully accredited by the tribal medical board.”

The doctor didn’t appear to have much of a sense of humor. “Aboriginal quackery is not medicine,” he said severely, “and will not cure this girl.”

“Yes, well, it doesn’t look like your medicine has helped her much, either, does it?” said Albert.

Just then the sun crested the river bluffs, flooding the plaza with clear morning light, and in that precise moment, as the sun illuminated her face,
la
niña bronca
opened her eyes. It was surely nothing more than a coincidence, perhaps simply a result of her having been moved outside, the sunlight striking her face after the darkness of the jail cell. But at the time it seemed to all present that Joseph’s magic powder and his strange guttural incantations had not only resurrected the girl, but had brought the sun itself forth. There arose an appreciative murmuring from those in the plaza who had witnessed this miracle.
El doctor
scowled disagreeably at their effrontery, as if in a kind of professional snit.

Albert laughed and raised a fist in the air. “Aboriginal quackery strikes again!” he said. “There’s your newspaper headline, White Eyes,” he said to me. “‘Heathen Sun God Restores Life to Dying Girl.’”

“I like it, Albert,” I said.

The girl looked around her, panic beginning to flood her eyes. She stretched out of her fetal position, straining against the leather thongs. But Joseph took her by the shoulders and spoke firmly to her and held her until she relaxed and closed her eyes again.

It was clear that in her weakened condition, the girl could not survive a long journey. And so it was decided that we would take her east into the foothills, just far enough from town to find a suitable place to camp. There we would rest a few days, trying to nurse her back to health. Billy Flowers would follow us, keeping far enough behind that his presence would not be obtrusive.

“If the girl is still alive, and sufficiently recovered to travel,” said Colonel Carrillo, “we will send you on ahead with her to attempt to make contact with the bronco Apaches. If she does not survive, you will rejoin the expedition.”

“She will be dead within three days,” the doctor pronounced solemnly. “She is already severely dehydrated.”

“You almost sound like you want her to die, Doctor,” Margaret said. “So that you’re not upstaged by an Apache medicine man.”

“Just remember,” Billy Flowers said, “in the off chance that she recovers, the first thing she’s going to do is run off.”

“Maybe not,” Margaret said. “Maybe she’ll find that she’s among friends.”

“Either way, Miss Hawkins,” Flowers said. “I caught her once, I can catch her again.”

Margaret laughed. “And you, Mr. Flowers,” she said, “sound like you almost want her to run off. So that you can chase her again. It’s amazing the power this one poor child exercises over grown men.”

We were just preparing to ride out when a commotion arose on the far end of the plaza, a clattering of shod hooves on brick and a high, familiar voice crying
“Hiiiiii-yooooo.”
Everyone looked up to see Tolbert Phillips Jr., mounted on one of his prize polo ponies, gallop grandly into the plaza. He reined up, his horse stopping on a dime and whinnying as if on cue; Tolley took his pith helmet off and waved it in the air. Behind him, trotting clumsily on his mule, and leading another pack mule, outfitted with panniers stuffed to capacity, came Harold Browning. Now Tolley spurred his mount on again, galloping toward us.

Margaret started laughing. “God, isn’t he a terrific horse’s ass?” she said.

Tolley reined his horse up short in front of us, kicking up a cloud of dust. “Good morning, gentlemen,” Tolley said. “Ladies. As you can see, I’ve decided to cast my lot with the advance guard. Terribly sorry to be late. Had a bit of trouble getting out of bed this morning. Damned chilly, wasn’t it? And I was up half the night trying to decide how to pack for our little mountain idyll.”

“Traveling light, are you, Tolley?” I said.

“Just because we’re entering the heart of darkness,” he said, “doesn’t mean we have to be barbarians ourselves.”

“Mr. Phillips,” said the mayor, “I don’t see how the expedition can possibly spare you, sir. Nor could we guarantee your safety were you to leave us. Your father would have our hide if anything happened to you.”

“Nonsense,” Tolley said. “My father would love nothing more than for me to be captured by the Apaches. Tortured? Staked to an anthill? I can just hear him now: ‘That’ll make a man out of you, Tolbert.’ And don’t worry, Mayor, even if I vanish without a trace in the Sierra Madre, you’ll still get your thirty dollars a day. My father is good for it.”

The mayor laughed nervously. “Well, of course he is, son. Never any doubt in my mind about that.”

By now poor Harold Browning had reached us, huffing and puffing and bouncing painfully in the saddle.

“How nice to have you join us, Mr. Browning,” Margaret said.

“The pleasure is entirely mine, miss,” he said gamely.

“Gentlemen,” Tolley said. “Just so that we have our chain of command straight, may I assume that as the sole
paying
member of your volunteer army in the present company, I shall be in charge of this mission?”

“Why, yes, Mr. Phillips,” said the mayor, looking for confirmation from Gatlin and Carrillo. “I would assume so. Chief? Colonel?”

Gatlin chuckled deeply. “Well, let’s see,” he said, looking us over, “we’ve got a woman, a city boy, pair a’
injuns,
a dying savage girl, and an English butler. Hell, if the pervert wants to be in charge of this little troop, I have no objections. You, Colonel?”

The colonel smiled sardonically. “Captain Phillips,” he said with a brisk salute, “I appoint you commanding officer of this company.”

“Splendid!” Tolley said. “Let’s be under way, then, shall we? We have an important mission to accomplish. And by the way, Chief Gatlin, speaking of perversion, I’ve gotten to know a few of the girls in your pimp stable, and I think that the mayor and the good citizens of Douglas will be interested in learning what their chief of police has been up to . . . south of the border . . . if you understand my meaning. Wouldn’t do the expedition a bit of good, if that were to get out in the newspapers. It’s a conversation we must all have upon our return.”

Gatlin’s face darkened and he did not respond.

“Company, move out!” Tolley called. “Look sharp, there, men! Woman!”

“Oh brother, Tolley,” I muttered. “We’re happy to have you along, but you’re dreaming if you think anyone’s going to take orders from you.”

“You heard the colonel, Giles,” Tolley said. “That will be Captain Phillips to you from now on. And don’t make me cite you for insubordination before we’re even under way.”

And so we started off down the street, the scouts Albert and Joseph leading the way, the travois with the girl bouncing lightly behind their pack mule. Behind them, Margaret and I rode on either side of Tolley, with Mr. Browning leading his pack mule bringing up the rear. Some of the crowd began to follow us, but quietly this time, even the boys and the town dogs keeping a respectful distance. It was as if the girl had become a kind of town mascot, and they were sorry to see her leave. They dropped off one by one as we reached the edge of the village.

We were just about to cross the wooden bridge over the river, when I heard,
“Señor, Señor Ned, wait, wait for me!”
and turned to see Jesus riding toward us on a burro. The burro trotted along at a brisk, rough gait, the boy kicking his flanks and swatting the animal on the rump with a leafy branch.
“Wait for me, Señor Ned, I come with you.”

“What are you doing here, kid?” I asked when he caught up to us. “Didn’t I tell you to stay with Big Wade?”

“I come with you,” he said.

“Where did you get the donkey?”

“I borrow him from the corral.”

“You mean you stole him.”

“I borrow,” he insisted. “I give him back when we return.”

“You’re not coming with us, Jesus,” I said.

“Yes, I come with you,” he said.

“I mean it, kid, I want you to go back.”

“You cannot make me,” the boy said. “I come with you.”

“Get lost.”

The boy dropped back and continued to follow us at some distance behind. I turned in the saddle and waved him away crossly, but he only looked back at me obstinately.

We crossed the bridge and followed the dirt road until it dwindled down to a trail, which rose winding into the hills, and as it gained elevation, dwindled to an even fainter game trail. As we quit the lush river bottom, the landscape changed quickly. We rode through scrub oak and mesquite thickets, across rocky hillsides studded with yucca and agave plants, the improbably green valley of the Bavispe snaking away below us. In the faint middle distance ahead, the massive, steep-tilted broken masses of rock and serrated hogbacks of the Sierra Madre proper rose up above.

Where the trail became too rough for the travois, we stopped and Albert Smith and I dismounted, unrigged the poles from the mule, and put them over our shoulders to bear the Apache girl aloft like an Egyptian queen; she seemed nearly weightless.

We didn’t travel far, coming up over a ridgetop and down into a small valley formed by a tributary of the big river, where we stopped to make camp on the edge of a grassy meadow. The meadow is watered by a spring trickling out of the rocks at one end, and forming a series of pools spilling one into the next. At our approach, a flock of great blue herons flushed off the pools, a half dozen of the gangly, leggy birds, their wingbeats heavy, their strange warbling cries.

“The girl must have water,” said Joseph. “The Mexican doctor is right. She will die if she does not drink.” He gathered the girl up in his arms and carried her to the largest of the pools, squatted down, and laid her on her back in the water. Her eyes were open but she did not appear to see. Joseph held her there, speaking to her softly, and then he simply released her in the water. For a moment she floated there on her back as if weightless. And then she began to sink beneath the surface.

“What in the world are you doing?” Margaret said, moving toward the girl. “She’s going to drown.”