The Wild Girl (28 page)

A short barrel-chested man, carrying an old Winchester repeating rifle, swaggered to the front. One side of his face was horribly disfigured; the cheek and jaw scarred and missing flesh, one eyelid drooping lifelessly.

“Yo Indio Juan,”
the man said, with a crooked smile, and Jesus uttered a kind of involuntary choking sound. The man laughed at the boy’s terror.

Indio Juan approached Margaret on her mule, grabbed her by the arm, and dragged her out of the saddle. He took a handful of her hair in his fist and pulled her close to him as if to study her with his good eye.

“Good Gad!” Mr. Browning shouted, dismounting clumsily and moving toward the man. “Unhand the young lady immediately, sir!” But before Mr. Browning could take three steps, another of the Apaches moved up behind him and clubbed him over the head with a rock. Mr. Browning collapsed in a heap. Margaret cried out. The girl lowered her knife, and I jumped off my mule and went to him; he was unconscious but still breathing, blood welling up through the hair on the back of his head. I pointed at her. “This man fed you,” I said. “He cared for you when you were sick. He saved your life. And this is how you repay him? Tell her that, Joseph!”

“And this woman, too,” I said, pointing to Margaret. “We are your friends. We did not come to hurt you.
Somos sus amigos
. Tell him to let her go.”

“It’s all right, Ned,” Margaret said, staring defiantly at Indio Juan, who still held her by the hair. “I’m all right. It’s not the girl’s fault. She can’t do anything. This one is in charge.”

Joseph spoke then, in a low, calm voice; he spoke in his strange oratorical way, and as he did so, the one called Indio Juan released his grip on Margaret and all listened to the old man. And after a moment, Albert began translating for us:

“‘I am
ch’uk’aende,
the only true Chiricahua. In the old days I lived in this country with the People. My name is Goso and I was married to the one called Siki and I had three children with her in these mountains. Later I surrendered with old Nana, to the
nantan lupan
. Surely, the old people among you still tell the stories of those days, of the
nantan lupan
and Geronimo, Mangus, and Nana. Surely I have relatives here still among you who will remember the warrior named Goso. Now I have come back to die in these mountains where I was born. You may kill me right now if you wish. I am an old man and I have lived too long already; I have outlived four wives and most of my children and many of my grandchildren. I am not afraid to die. But why kill these White Eyes and this Mexican boy, and my grandson, who is also
In’deh
? They have done nothing but come here with me. They have done nothing but save the life of this girl, who was dying in a Mexican jail. They have done nothing but bring her home to the People. For that, rather than hitting them over the heads with stones, you should hold a feast in their honor.’”

Indio Juan laughed derisively then and approached the old man.

“‘A feast you say, old one? For the White Eyes and the Mexican boy, and this reservation
In’deh
? Yes, this is a fine idea. And if you have not lived so long among the White Eyes yourself that you have forgotten the ways of the People, you will remember that our women will dance all night with the men we take prisoner. And in the morning when all are weary of dancing, they will kill them. We will keep the boy, and if he stops crying and seems useful to us, we will allow him to live with us. As the Huerta boy lives with us. I myself will keep this White Eyes woman as my slave, and she will bear my Apache children, in the same way that your Mexican slave woman bore your children. For the ways of the People have not changed. And we are few now and fewer all the time. We always need women and children. As for you, old man, we will see if any of our old people remember you. And what stories they have to tell of you.’”

They helped themselves to some of our food first, then mounted our mules and donkeys and herded us along on foot. We had managed to revive Mr. Browning, but he was weak and disoriented and had difficulty keeping up. Joseph told us that the Apaches would kill him if he held us up, and so Albert, Tolley, and I took turns helping him down the trail. “I’ll be quite all right, sirs,” he said gamely. “Just need to get my legs back under me. Oh dear, I’m afraid that I have rather a knot on the back of the old noggin.”

“That was very chivalrous of you to come to my defense, Mr. Browning,” Margaret said. “I noticed that none of the other men did. Thank you.”

“Perhaps you didn’t notice the knives they were holding to our throats, darling,” said Tolley.

“The very least I could do, miss,” Mr. Browning said. “I’ve never been able to tolerate the abuse of women, children, or animals. I’m terribly sorry about your horse, by the way, sir.”

“Yes, thank you, Mr. Browning,” Tolley said. “He was the finest polo pony in Father’s string. I’ll be catching hell for that . . . Such a ghastly sound he made plunging to his death, wasn’t it?”

“Catching hell from your father is the least of your worries, Tolley,” I said.

“True,” he said. “Albert, if I correctly understood your translation of the swaggering little toad, this evening we are to be the guests of honor at a feast, at which we gentlemen will dance the night away with our charming hostesses . . .”

“It’s an old Apache tradition,” Albert explained. “Captive men are made to dance all night. And in the morning the women kill them. In this way, they will take their revenge for the attack on their camp in which the girl’s mother and sister were killed.”

“How did you know her mother and sister were killed?” Margaret asked. “Why didn’t you tell us that?”

“We heard the girl talking in her sleep,” Albert answered. “We didn’t tell you because it is not your business.”

“Perhaps when they see what a perfectly delightful dinner companion I am,” Tolley mused, “they’ll reconsider the part about killing me in the morning.”

“Tolley, will you please, for once, just shut up?” Margaret asked.

“And you, of course, darling,” Tolley continued, “will be allowed to live—as the slave bride of our dashing captor, Indio Juan. Doting mother to his children . . . a whole brood of little brown babes . . .”

“You know, Tolley, if for some reason they don’t kill you,” Margaret said, “I promise you that I will.”

“I hate to say I told you so, people,” said Tolley. “But if you’d only listened to your
captain,
we wouldn’t be in this predicament in the first place. We’d be safely back with the expedition by now.”

“Shut up, Tolley,” I said.

It was a long, grueling day of travel, south through increasingly steep, rugged country. We stopped only once and were each given barely a mouthful of water. Mr. Browning’s condition continued to deteriorate and it was necessary for two of us to take turns supporting him between us. We had tried to bandage his head with a torn-up shirt but the blood had soaked through. He asked us several times to leave him by the side of the trail.

“Nonsense, Mr. Browning,” Tolley said. “If you think I’m going among the wild Apaches for what may well be my last dinner dance without my valet to dress me, you are sorely mistaken, my good man.”

“Yes, very well, sir,” poor Mr. Browning mumbled. “I am at your service, sir.”

We traversed several
cordones
and traveled up another very steep
cañón,
through a pass that dropped back down on the other side into a small fertile river valley, surrounded by forests of pine, oak, and cedar. Clearly some signal must have been given to announce our approach because a group of children met us down the trail, half a dozen lithe brown beings, who themselves seemed to fade out of the trees like wildlife, so that one minute we saw nothing and the next they had appeared in exactly the same place. They followed along silently, somberly, and not until we approached the outskirts of the
ranchería
itself did they become bolder, running up to inspect us from a closer vantage point and beginning to chatter excitedly, a few of them leaping up behind the riders of the mules and burros . . . such an odd, otherworldly way they have of moving, like spirit beings.

There appear to be fewer than three dozen people in residence in the
ranchería,
which is set on the north side of a small brook, spilling into the main river. Behind the
ranchería
the valley narrows into a canyon, the walls of which are striated with ledges and pockmarked with the cave dwellings of the “first people.” There is an eclectic hodgepodge of lodgings, everything from what look like old canvas army tents much patched with various fabrics, to brush wickiups, to crude mud huts with thatched roofs. From all of these structures people now ventured forth to hail the returning party. They were dressed in equally diverse clothing—shirts and dresses of calico and various brightly colored Indian fabrics; some of the old men and boys wore Mexican or American army jackets; some wore trousers, others breechcloths; some wore Mexican riding boots, others high-topped moccasins; hats and bandannas; most of the women wore jewelry—silver medallions and strings of beads around their necks, bangles and bracelets on their wrists and rings on their fingers. Beyond the sheer color and spectacle of the moment, I couldn’t help but notice how few of these people were young men; they seemed to be mostly women, a few old men, and a number of children of various ages. The handful of warrior-aged men and older boys seemed to be concentrated in the band that had captured us, who now led us triumphantly into the
ranchería
.

There arose from those coming out of their lodgings a strange ululation sound to welcome the returning war party, a sound that seemed to issue from deep within their chests, rising from their throats like a bird’s warbling, echoing off the canyon walls, a sound so primeval that it sent chills up our spines.

“God, isn’t it incredible?” Margaret marveled. “It looks like an encampment of gypsies, doesn’t it?”

“It looks like an Hieronymus Bosch painting of hell to me,” said Tolley.

Jesus began to weep softly, overwhelmed by fear and fatigue, by the sheer strangeness of this place and of these people, such as none of us had ever witnessed before. Now Albert knelt down in front of him. “Listen to me, boy,” he said, taking him gently by the shoulders. “There is nothing that Apaches despise more than crybabies. If you do not stop now, they are going to kill you. And they will torture you first. Do you hear me?”

Jesus nodded his head, choking back sobs.

A number of the Apaches approached closer now to inspect us. They were particularly fascinated by Margaret’s blond hair and there seemed to be some squabbling over the rightful ownership of Jesus. Two old women held a spirited exchange, until one of them spoke to him in Spanish.
“Usted vendrá a vivir conmigo en mi choza, chico,”
she said. “You will come to live in my hut, child.”

“Sí, señora,”
Jesus answered politely, nearly gratefully. As the old woman led him away, the boy looked back over his shoulder at us plaintively. “Señor Ned . . .” he said, raising his hand in a small, uncertain wave.

“You’ll be okay, kid,” I called after him. “Don’t worry. I’ll find you.”

Indio Juan approached now to claim Margaret, but before he could do so,
la niña bronca
came toward us through the crowd. Walking beside her was the strangest Apache we had seen yet.

“Good Christ!”
whispered Tolley. “Who in the hell is this big drink of water?”

The man was dressed like the others, in moccasins, leggings, a breechcloth, and a loose-fitting gingham shirt. He wore a faded blue bandanna tied on his head. But compared to the others he was a giant, well over six feet tall. But this still wasn’t the thing that set him most apart from the others. No, the strangest thing about him was that he was a white man. He had long reddish blond hair that spilled down his back and over his shoulders, and a long red beard that hung nearly to his waist and was just beginning to be tinged with white. He was not a young man by any means, perhaps in his fifties, his naturally fair skin ruddy and weather-beaten from a lifetime of exposure to the elements.

The giant redheaded white man approached Indio Juan, towering over him, and spoke to him in a deep voice. Indio Juan spoke angrily back to him.

“The white Apache says he is taking Margaret for himself,” Albert translated. “Indio Juan answers that it was his raid and that by rights she belongs to him.”

“Aren’t you the lucky one, darling?” Tolley said. “All the men squabbling over you. But the real question is, what is a white man
doing
here?”

“He is not a white man, Tolley,” Albert said. “He is a white Apache. Probably taken captive as a child. Look at the others. Do you not see that there are also those with Mexican blood among them?”

Joseph spoke up then: “He is called Charley,” he said.

“How do you know that?” I asked.

“Because I caught him myself when he was a boy,” said the old man.

Albert continued to translate for us. “‘It is my granddaughter’s wish that the White Eyes woman comes to live with us as our slave,’” the white Apache said to Indio Juan. “‘It was her raid as much as yours. It was she who led you to them. Therefore she claims this woman as her captive.’”

Indio Juan regarded the white Apache with murderous eyes. The big man stared down upon him. There was clearly bad blood between them.

“‘I have spoken,’” the white Apache said.