Authors: Pat Murphy
He expanded his search and found William’s body beside the stream below the tent. Like the woman, William had been shot and scalped. Still no sign of a child.
Long ago, in another life, Max had had a daughter. He did not like to think of that time. But now, as he searched for the lost child, he could not help imagining his own daughter, lost in the wilderness. She would be weeping; she would be frightened.
“Sarah!” he called. “Sarah! Where are you?”
After an hour of searching, he shook his head. There were so many places a child could hide. Alone, he could search this wild countryside for hours without covering it all. He needed help. At last, he took the mule’s lead and headed down to Selby Flat.
In 1850, Selby Flat was inhabited by three hundred or so men and three women. For a mile or so along the shores of Rock Creek, miners had built cabins and shelters and shacks, constructing them of canvas, of logs, of brush, of stones yanked from the hillsides.
The path that meandered among the shacks was muddy when it rained and dusty when it didn’t. At night, it was a dangerous place to stroll. On either side of the path were so-called coyote holes—some of them ten feet deep—remaining from mining operations. Drunken miners regularly tumbled into these pits as they wandered in search of their cabins. The hills on either side of the creek were riddled with long burrows dug by miners in search of gold.
That Sunday afternoon, a dozen miners lounged on a patch of gravel and sand beside Rock Creek. The surrounding boulders were draped with cotton shirts and canvas trousers, washed in the rushing water and now drying in the sun. For the past hour, the men had been sitting around in their underdrawers, idly discussing the latest excitement in the town. Four days before, two armed men had held up the stage, shot the driver, and stolen a shipment of gold headed for San Francisco.
A fellow named Arno had gone missing at about the same time. Most of the miners figured that Arno, with the aid of a confederate, had stolen the gold. The identity of the confederate was a mystery.
There was no sheriff in Selby Flat. No sheriff, no judge, no official representative of the law. A jury of miners dispensed a rough sort of justice, subject to the consent of the general population. Stealing was punished by whipping and banishment. Murder—unless it was in self-defense—was punished by hanging. A posse of miners had set out to look for the stagecoach robbers, but they’d lost the trail and given up after two days, returning to their claims.
“I’d guess Arno’s halfway to Mexico now,” suggested Jasper Davis, a tall blond miner. “He and his partner took that gold and headed south.”
“I reckon you could be right, Jasper,” allowed Johnny Barker. “If he were holed up around here, folks would have seen him for sure.”
“I was riding down the trail from Grizzly Hill at about the time they were holding up the stage,” Jasper continued. “I suppose I’d have seen them if they went up that way.”
“I just keep on wondering who his partner was,” a third man said. “Arno wasn’t bright enough to plan a robbery on his own. And he didn’t seem to have any good pals.”
“I saw you and him drinking together one time,” Johnny said, looking at Jasper. “A couple of weeks ago, at Selby’s Hotel. Did he say anything about a partner?”
The blond man frowned. “You know, now that you mention it, he did mention that he had a partner down Hangtown way, where he was mining before. He said something about him going prospecting and his partner following along after.”
“Prospecting?” Johnny snorted. “Checking out the stage, more likely. Prospecting for a good time to rob it.”
It was then that Max came down the dusty trail from Grizzly Hill, leading his mule. “Rallo,” he called to the men by the creek. “A man and a woman have been murdered up the trail a piece. Their little girl is lost in the mountains. I’m going to Selby’s barroom to gather a search party. Pass the word.”
“A woman? Murdered?” Jasper said, but Max had already moved on, tugging on the mule’s lead. The men dressed and followed.
Several buildings in Selby Flat offered lodgings for transient miners: a log cabin with a bunkroom had beds for a dollar a night; a large canvas tent provided space on a dirt floor for half that price. Selby’s Hotel, located at the center of the encampment, was the biggest and best of the miners’ hotels.
Selby’s was a sprawling structure built of logs and roofed with thick brown canvas. It was a palatial establishment by the standards of the area. First-time visitors, stepping off the dusty (or muddy) path into Selby’s barroom, had been known to stop dead in their tracks, frozen in place by its unexpected opulence.
The walls were hung with pale pink calico that had been printed with roses of every size and variety, ranging from delicate blossoms smaller than a baby’s thumb to cabbagelike blooms the size of a man’s head. The cloth draped elegantly around a massive mirror, brought all the way from New York to San Francisco by ship, and from San Francisco to Selby Flat on the back of a mule.
Mrs. Selby took very good care of that mirror. Every morning she wiped away the dust and polished the glass. Then she polished the cut-glass decanters and the jars of brandied fruit that stood on the shelf in front of the mirror. The floor was dirt, of course, but that dirt was hard-packed and Mrs. Selby swept it each morning. The room was furnished with benches and tables constructed from rough-cut planks. Mrs. Selby had wanted nicer furniture, but she made do by draping the tables in bright red calico to hide the rough wood.
By the time Max reached Selby’s, word had spread, and the room was crowded with men who wanted to know what had happened. When Mr. Selby called for quiet, Max stood by the grand mirror and described what he had found up by Grizzly Hill.
Death was common enough in the mining camps. Men got drunk and fell in the creek and drowned. Men didn’t hear the warning rattle of a sidewinder, got snakebit, and died of the poison. Men got into fights and sometimes killed each other for gold. Mexicans killed white men and white men killed Mexicans and both killed Indians and Chinamen. A man’s murder was unfortunate, but nothing to make anyone hurry down the trail.
A woman’s murder, however, was something else. There were few women in California—three in Selby Flat, half a dozen in Nevada City. There were more down in Sacramento and San Francisco, but those cities were a long way off. Men would travel fifty miles on foot to eat an apple pie made by Mrs. Selby, a matronly woman with a broad pleasant face that no one would call beautiful. Women were precious; women were rare. A woman’s murder demanded action.
It was a rough crowd that filled Selby’s barroom. Men from every walk of life had come to California in search of gold-farmers who had abandoned the plow, husbands who had abandoned their wives, sailors who had abandoned their ships. Rascals and heroes, wise men and drunkards. All of them sat silent as Max told of the dead woman who lay by the side of the creek. He read Rachel’s letter aloud: “I think this place will be good to us. I just know that we will find a rich claim here, and I’ll send you gold nuggets the size of goose eggs. I hope…”
Rachel’s last words hung in the air as Max put the letter down. For a moment, each man in the room thought of his own hopes and dreams. I hope I’ll be rich. I hope I’ll be happy. I hope that my sweetheart will still be waiting when I get back to the States. I hope that I get out of these mountains alive.
A moment later, the miners were all talking at once—shouting about finding the murderers, about justice, about honor. One man was sure that Indians killed the woman. He’d seen some Diggers up that way not a month ago. It must have been Mexicans, shouted another. You couldn’t trust Mexicans around a white woman. They had to form a posse and catch the killers and string them up, showing them that this was a civilized place.
Then Mrs. Selby’s voice cut through the babble. “That poor little girl,” she said, her voice breaking. Her hands were knotted in her apron; her broad face was wet with tears. “She’s in the mountains with the wild beasts. You’ve got to find her.”
“We’ll find her, ma’am,” called Jasper Davis. He had climbed onto a bench and was standing above the crowd. “I’ll lead a search party. We’ll start tonight. Who’s with me?”
Max stood at the back of the room with Mr. Selby, watching the miners crowd around the man, ready to rescue the poor little girl and bring her to Mrs. Selby’s motherly arms. “Who is that fellow?” he asked Mr. Selby, gesturing at the blond man.
“His name’s Jasper Davis,” Mr. Selby said. “He came here a month ago from Sacramento. A few days back, he struck a rich streak up the creek a piece. He’s a good fellow.”
Max nodded, accepting the information but reserving judgment on whether Davis was a good fellow or not. Mr. Selby’s estimation of a fellow’s goodness depended more on the man’s financial stability than on any other characteristic.
Outside, the sky had grown overcast. The clouds had darkened from the pale gray of granite to an ominous gray-black. As the miners shouted about how they would find the little girl and hang the killers, the first drops of rain began to fall.
Sarah was as Mrs. Selby had said, in the mountains with the wild beasts. The wolf pack had taken shelter in a grove of pines. Wauna lay down close to the trunk of a tree, and the girl sat on the carpet of pine needles beside her, surrounded by wolves.
“Dog,” she said to Wauna, testing one of the sounds that her parents had taught her. The wolf made a low whining noise in her throat, and Sarah responded with a whimper of her own.
Wauna leaned close to sniff the girl’s face. Sarah grabbed the ruff of fur at the wolf’s neck and used it to pull herself to her feet. When Wauna licked Sarah’s face, the girl lost her grip on the wolf’s fur. She fell into a sitting position, still holding her hands out to the wolf.
After two days of suckling at Wauna’s teats and sleeping beside the female wolf, Sarah smelled of milk and wolf, just like any wolf pup. While the girl sat in the litter of pine needles that covered the ground, Wauna licked her face, washing her clean. Sarah closed her eyes. Her memories were vague and muddled, but the touch of Wauna’s warm, wet tongue was like the cloth her mother had used to wipe her face each night, rubbing away the dirt with water warmed on the campfire. “Mama,” she murmured, and Wauna responded with a whimper, licking away the salty tears that rolled down the little girl’s face.
Thunder rumbled, a warning of the storm to come. Overhead, the branches of the pines lashed in the cold wind that blew down the mountains, where winter snow still lingered. Sarah shivered and Yepa, a young female wolf, moved to sit close beside her, blocking the wind. Yepa, Wauna’s daughter from the year before, had helped her mother care for the litter of pups, watching over the youngsters, letting them chew on her ears and pounce on her tail. This new youngster was strange, but when Wauna accepted her as a pup, Yepa did the same. She tolerated this pup’s behavior, just as she had indulged the pups that now lay dead in the valley.
Seeking warmth, Sarah huddled between Wauna and Yepa, snuggling against their warm fur. Lightning flashed, illuminating the snowcapped mountains that surrounded them. The thunder rumbled again, and Wauna cocked her ears, listening to the mighty growls from the sky. Lightning flashed white, like sharp teeth in a dark mouth. Thunder growled and barked. Wauna nuzzled Sarah’s ear, whimpering low in her throat.
A few feet away from Wauna, Rolon answered the thunder with a low bark and a whimpering growl. Then he lifted his head and howled, a long, lonely wail that echoed from the mountains. Wauna joined in, singing on a higher note that blended with Rolon’s. Then Yepa and Duman and Ruana and Dur, all Wauna’s children from the previous litters, joined in. Omuso, an older male, came in late, joining the chorus.
Mountain men say that wolves howl like devils, like banshees, like the lost souls in hell. They say the sound is dreadful, terrifying, unimaginably frightening. They shiver when they hear the wailing of the wolves, touched by a chill of the spirit. These men huddle by their fires, fearing the darkness of the mountains that surround them, fearing the wilderness that they hope to tame.
Surrounded by howling wolves, Sarah stared up at the night sky, mesmerized by the flashing lightning. The song of the wolves filled her with a strange feeling, a sense of urgency that made her heart pound faster. This feeling did not come with words—she had few words. But she remembered the touch of a wet cloth on her face, her mother’s hand stroking her hair, her father’s low voice singing her a lullaby, wordless memories that filled her with sorrow and passion.
When Wauna lifted her head to howl again, Sarah turned her face skyward and joined in with a wild young cry, a high note that rose above the others. If any mountain men had been listening, they might have wondered what new terror had joined the pack, a frightening creature with the shrill voice of a child. But there were no men to hear. Sarah clutched the neck of her adopted mother and howled, her face wet with tears and rain.
“The calamity that comes is never the one we had prepared ourselves for.”
—Mark Twain
T
HE MINERS FROM SELBY FLAT
were delayed by the storm. By the time the pounding rain let up, night had fallen. They left town at first light, but it was a long and muddy trail from Selby Flat to the McKensie’s camp on Grizzly Hill. Beside the South Fork of the Yuba River, the rain had washed out the trail and the men had to climb high on the riverbank to make a new one.
Late in the afternoon, they reached the canvas tent where Rachel lay. Her body was still wrapped in the quilt, as Max had left her. The men stood beside the creek, surveying the wreckage that surrounded the tent. Now that they had reached their goal they were uncomfortable and uncertain of how to proceed.
“I came through here last Friday,” Jasper said. “I must have seen them just before the Injuns got them.” He frowned down at the quilt-wrapped body, his jaw set in a grim line. “I talked to her husband; I didn’t talk to her, didn’t see the girl. If I’d been a little later, maybe I could have helped.”