Time of the Wolves

by Marcia Muller

  Ben Whitesides took to returning home for his midday meal to reassure himself of Lydia’s safety now that the days of her confinement approached and she was no longer able to come to the store. She was agreeable to the arrangement, but it meant taking care that Curious Cat departed before the time Ben customarily arrived. On a stifling day in mid-August, however, she let awareness of the hour slip away from her. She and Curious Cat were taking cornbread from the oven when Ben came through the kitchen door.

  Ben saw the squaw immediately. He stopped, suddenly pale, his hand on the doorknob. Curious Cat seemed frozen. Lydia herself could not move or breathe. The sweat that beaded her forehead and upper lip felt oddly cold. The hush was so great that she could hear the mantel clock ticking in the parlor.

  Ben’s eyes were jumpy, wild. Lydia knew he did not comprehend that he had walked in on a peaceable scene. She put out a hand to him, opened her mouth to explain.

  The motion freed Curious Cat; she slipped over toward the window. Ben’s glazed eyes jerked after her, and his hand moved under his coat, to where he had taken to carrying his pistol.

  Curious Cat gave a guttural cry and began scrambling onto the sill. Lydia’s gaze was transfixed as Ben took out the gun. Then she heard a tearing sound and whirled. Curious Cat’s skirt was caught on a nail, and she was struggling to free it. Lydia swung back toward Ben. He was leveling the pistol at the squaw.

  “No, Ben!” she cried.

  He paid her no mind.

  “No!” Lydia flung herself at him.

  Ben jerked the gun up. A shot boomed, deafeningly. The room seemed to shake, and plaster showered down from the ceiling.

  Lydia crumpled to the floor, and cowered there, her ears ringing. The plaster continued to rain down, stinging the skin of her arms and face. When she looked up, she saw Ben standing over her. He was staring at the gun, his whole body shaking.

  “Dear God,” he said in a choked voice. “Dear God, what I might have done!”

  Lydia turned her head toward the window. Curious Cat had gone.

  After that day Curious Cat came no more, and a silence descended upon the Whitesides’ home. A familiar but unaccustomed silence during the days as Lydia went about her household tasks alone. An unnatural silence at night, between herself and Ben.

  Once his shock had abated, Ben had become angry and remained angry for days. When the anger faded, he was left with a deep sense of betrayal at Lydia’s months-long deception, a hurt that shone in his eyes every time he looked at her. Lydia’s pain was twofold: by lying to Ben she had put a distance between them just before the birth of their child, when they should have been drawing closer than ever. And she had exposed Curious Cat, her only friend, to danger and humiliation.

  During the stifling late-summer nights she lay huge and restless in the double bed, listening to Ben’s deep breathing and thinking of how she had wronged him. Then her thoughts would turn to Curious Cat, and she would wonder how her friend was faring. She feared that, like Ben, the squaw thought she had betrayed her, somehow held her responsible for the near shooting. But mostly she pictured Curious Cat as lonely, exiled once again to her life among the unaccepting Kaws.

  Even the now-strong movements of her unborn child failed to cheer Lydia. She felt incapable of facing the momentous event ahead. Not the birth itself, that was painful and dangerous, but physical ordeals had never daunted her. What she feared was that she might not be wise enough to guide the small and helpless life that would soon be placed in her hands. After all, if she had so wronged her husband and her only friend, how could she expect to do the right things for her child?

  On a brilliant September morning Curious Cat came again. She slipped through the kitchen window and dropped to the floor as Lydia was shelling a bushel of peas. When she saw her Indian friend, Lydia felt her face flush with delight. But Curious Cat did not smile. She did not check the baking bread or peer into the larder. Instead, she stared at Lydia, her face intense.

  “What is it?” Lydia asked, starting to rise.

  Curious Cat came to her, placed her hands on her shoulders, and pushed her gently into the chair. She squatted on the floor in front of her, eyes burning with determination.

  “You help,” she said.

  “Help? Yes, of course. What . . . ?”

  “You tell. Save people.”

  “Tell what? Who?”

  Curious Cat’s gaze wavered. For a moment Lydia thought she might run off. Then she said: “Cheyenne. Many. Come White Tail, talk war.”

  “War? Where?”

  “Now near Shady Bend. Be here two sleeps.”

  Shady Bend was in Lincoln County, on the other side of the Saline River. Two sleeps—two days—was what it would take a war party, traveling fast, to reach Salina. “They plan to attack here?”

  Curious Cat nodded.

  “Will White Tail join them?”

  She shook her head in the negative. “White Tail grows old. Tired of war. I come to tell you make ready. Save people.”

  “Why are you telling me? The Cheyennes are your people. They will be slaughtered.”

  Curious Cat fingered her buffalo horn necklace. Then she rose and was gone through the window.

  At first Ben was skeptical of what Lydia told him.

  “Why would this squaw betray her own people in order to save our town?” he asked. “I fear this is a false story . . . some sort of retaliation for my nearly shooting her.”

  “I think not. Curious Cat was badly used by the Cheyennes . . . her loyalty is no longer with them. She is Kaw now, and her husband White Tail wants no part of this war.”

  Ben was watching Lydia’s face, frowning. “How do you know so much about the squaw?”

  “She told me.”

  “How could she tell you? Indians can barely speak English. And surely you cannot speak Kaw or Cheyenne.”

  “Curious Cat speaks English well, and I know a fair amount of her language as well. We taught one another, and we used to talk often.”

  Ben’s face darkened. He did not like to be reminded of how the squaw had visited his house. “Perhaps you talked, but not of such important things as those. Of baking and spinning, yes. But of the squaw’s loyalty to her people, or White Tail’s feelings about a Cheyenne war? I think not.”

  Lydia felt her anger rise at his patronizing dismissal. “One does not need important-sounding words to discuss important things, Ben.”

  “I am only saying that it seems improbable. . . .”

  “Curious Cat and I may share a limited language, but we talked about anything we wished. And we did not hide our feelings within a cloak of silence.”

  Her husband looked as if he were about to make a sharp retort. Then he bit his lip, obviously understanding her reference to his recent silence. After a moment he said: “Do you really believe the squaw is telling the truth?”

  “I do.”

  “And you are certain her loyalty no longer lies with the Cheyennes?”

  “Nor with the Kaws. She feels alone in the world.”

  Lydia could see that Ben did not want to believe her, did not want to give up his conviction that all Indians were devious and sly. But he was a reasonable man, and, after thinking for a moment, he shook his head, looking ashamed. “I have placed little value on your friendship with the squaw, merely because she is of another race. Now I see what it means to you . . . and to her. Your Curious Cat does have loyalties, but they lie not with her people, but with you.” He reached out to stroke her cheek—something he had not done since he had found Curious Cat in their kitchen.

  Lydia touched his hand, knowing all was mended between them.

  Of course, the men of Salina were equally skeptical of the threat of Indian attack. But Ben Whitesides had the forceful qualities of a leader, and, once he had assembled them, his newfound conviction in the truth of Curious Cat’s story gave strength to his words. When the attack came, the town was prepared, and the Cheyennes were driven off.

  In the days that fo
llowed, many of the townswomen paid stiff formal calls on Lydia, to thank her for her part in the victory. The awkwardness was dispelled, however, when talk turned to her expected child, and several of the women returned bearing small gifts for the baby. Lydia knew Salina had finally taken her in on the day when Mrs. Ellerbee, wife of the bank president, hesitantly asked if she would consider joining a new musical society the ladies were thinking of forming. And while she realized she would never take as much pleasure in the ladies’ refined company as she had in the mornings she’d spent with Curious Cat, she assented readily.

  Curious Cat came one last time, on a day when wintry clouds lowered overhead. Lydia was tending to her newborn son in his cradle next to the stove, and she had to raise the window, which had been shut against the chill, to admit her friend.

  The squaw went immediately to the cradle. She stared at Ben Junior for a long moment, then said: “Fine papoose. Strong.” Quickly she moved on to the stove and inspected the bread that was browning there.

  Lydia said: “I’m so glad you’ve come. I’ve wanted to thank you. . . .”

  Curious Cat cut her short with a gesture of dismissal. She looked around the kitchen, as if to fix it in her mind. Then she said: “Come for good bye.”

  “But there’s no need! You are welcome here anytime.”

  The Indian woman shook her head sorrowfully. “White Tail go north. I go with. One sleep, then go.”

  Lydia was overcome with a sharp sense of loss. She moved forward, taking the other woman’s hands. “But there is so much I must say to you. . . .”

  Curious Cat shook her head again. “One sleep, then go. Come for good bye.” Gently she disentwined her fingers from Lydia’s. Lydia knew Curious Cat was not one for touching, so she let her go.

  The Indian woman glanced at the cradle once more. “Fine papoose. You raise him strong. Brave.”

  “Yes. I promise I will.”

  Curious Cat nodded in satisfaction. Then she put her hands to the buffalo horn necklace she still wore and lifted it over her head. She lowered it over Lydia’s curls and placed it around her neck, smoothing the collar of her dress over it.

  “White sister,” she said.

  Tears rose to Lydia’s eyes. She blinked them away, unable to speak. She had no parting gift, nothing so fine. . . . And then she looked down at her bodice, secured by the soapstone brooch etched with the tree of the prairie, Ben’s birthday gift to her. He would approve, think it fitting, too.

  With fumbling fingers Lydia undid the brooch and pinned it to the faded calico at Curious Cat’s throat. “Not white sister,” she said. “True sister.”

  The Lost Coast

  California’s Lost Coast is at the same time one of the most desolate and beautiful of shorelines. Northerly winds whip the sand into a dust-devil frenzy; eerie, stationary fogs hang in the trees and distort the driftwood until it resembles the bones of prehistoric mammals; bruised clouds hover above the peaks of the distant King Range, then blow down to sea level and dump icy torrents. But on a fair day the sea and sky show infinite shadings of blue, and the wildflowers are a riot of color. If you wait quietly, you can spot deer, peregrine falcons, foxes, otters, even black bears and mountain lions.

  A contradictory and oddly compelling place, this seventy-three-mile stretch of coast southwest of Eureka, where—as with most worthwhile things or people—you must take the bad with the good.

  Unfortunately on my first visit there I was taking mostly the bad. Strong wind pushed my MG all over the steep, narrow road, making its hairpin turns even more perilous. Early October rain cut my visibility to a few yards. After I crossed the swollen Bear River, the road continued to twist and wind, and I began to understand why the natives had dubbed it The Wildcat.

  Somewhere ahead, my client had told me, was the hamlet of Petrolia—site of the first oil well drilled in California, he’d irrelevantly added. The man was a conservative politician, a former lumber company attorney, and given what I knew of his voting record on the environment, I was certain we disagreed on the desirability of that event, as well as any number of similar issues. But the urgency of the current situation dictated that I keep my opinions to myself, so I’d simply written down the directions he gave me—omitting his travelogue-like asides—and gotten under way.

  I drove through Petrolia—a handful of new buildings, since the village had been all but leveled in the disastrous earthquake of 1992—and turned toward the sea on an unpaved road. After two miles I began looking for the orange post that marked the dirt track to the client’s cabin.

  The whole time I was wishing I was back in San Francisco. This wasn’t my kind of case; I didn’t like the client, Steve Shoemaker; and even though the fee was good, this was the week I’d scheduled to take off a few personal business days from All Souls Legal Cooperative, where I’m chief investigator. But Jack Stuart, our criminal specialist, had asked me to take on the job as a favor to him. Steve Shoemaker was Jack’s old friend from college in Southern California, and he’d asked for a referral to a private detective. Jack owed Steve a favor; I owed Jack several, so there was no way I could gracefully refuse.

  But I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong with this case. And I couldn’t stop wishing that I’d come to the Lost Coast in summertime, with a backpack and in the company of my lover—instead of on a rainy fall afternoon, with a .38 Special, and soon to be in the company of Shoemaker’s disagreeable wife, Andrea.

  The rain was sheeting down by the time I spotted the orange post. It had turned the hard-packed earth to mud, and my MG’s tires sank deep in the ruts, its undercarriage scraping dangerously. I could barely make out the stand of live oaks and sycamores where the track ended; no way to tell if another vehicle had traveled over it recently.

  When I reached the end of the track, I saw one of those boxy four-wheel-drive wagons—Bronco? Cherokee?—drawn in under the drooping branches of an oak. Andrea Shoemaker’s ? I’d neglected to get a description from her husband of what she drove. I got out of the MG, turning the hood of my heavy sweater up against the downpour; the wind promptly blew it off. So much for what the catalog had described as “extra protection on those cold nights”. I yanked the hood up again and held it there, went around and took my .38 from the trunk and shoved it into the outside flap of my purse. Then I went over and tried the door of the four-wheel drive. Unlocked. I opened it, slipped into the driver’s seat.

  Nothing identifying its owner was on the seats or in the side pockets, but in the glove compartment I found a registration in the name of Andrea Shoemaker. I rummaged around, came up with nothing else of interest. Then I got out and walked through the trees, looking for the cabin.

  Shoemaker had told me to follow a deer track through the grove. No sign of it in this downpour, no deer, either. Nothing but wind-lashed trees, the oaks pelting me with acorns. I moved slowly through them, swiveling my head from side to side, until I made out a bulky shape tucked beneath the farthest of the sycamores.

  As I got closer, I saw the cabin was of plain weathered wood, rudely constructed, with the chimney of a woodstove extending from its composition shingle roof. Small—two or three rooms—and no light showing in its windows. And the door was open, banging against the inside wall. . . .

  I quickened my pace, taking the gun from my purse. Alongside the door I stopped to listen. Silence. I had a flashlight in my bag; I took it out. Moved to where I could see inside, then turned the flash on and shone it through the door.

  All that was visible was rough board walls, an oilcloth-covered table and chairs, an ancient woodstove. I stepped inside, swinging the light around. Unlit oil lamp on the table; flower-cushioned wooden furniture of the sort you always find in vacation cabins; rag rugs; shelves holding an assortment of tattered paperbacks, seashells, and driftwood. I shifted the light again, more slowly.

  A chair on the far side of the table was tipped over, and a woman’s purse lay on the edge of the woodstove, its contents spilling out. When I
got over there, I saw a .32 Iver Johnson revolver lying on the floor.

  Andrea Shoemaker owned a .32. She’d told me so the day before.

  Two doors opened off the room. Quietly I went to one and tried it. A closet, shelves stocked with staples and canned goods and bottled water. I looked around the room again, listening. No sound but the wail of wind and the pelt of rain on the roof. I stepped to the other door.

  A bedroom almost filled wall-to-wall by a king-size bed covered with a goose-down comforter and piled with colorful pillows. Old bureau pushed in one corner, another unlit oil lamp on the single nightstand. Small travel bag on the bed.

  The bag hadn’t been opened. I examined its contents. Jeans, a couple of sweaters, underthings, toilet articles. Package of condoms. Uhn-huh. She’d come here, as I’d found out, to meet a man. The affairs usually began with a casual pick-up; they were never of long duration; and they all seemed to culminate in a romantic week-end in the isolated cabin.

  Dangerous game, particularly in these days when AIDS and the prevalence of disturbed individuals of both sexes threatened. But Andrea Shoemaker had kept her latest date with an even larger threat hanging over her: for the past six weeks, a man with a serious grudge against her husband had been stalking her. For all I knew, he and the date were one and the same.

  And where was Andrea now?

  This case had started on Wednesday, two days ago, when I’d driven up to Eureka, a lumbering and fishing town on Humboldt Bay. After I passed the Humboldt County line, I began to see huge logging trucks toiling through the mountain passes, shredded curls of redwood bark trailing in their wakes. Twenty-five miles south of the city itself was the company-owned town of Scotia, mill stacks belching white smoke and filling the air with the scent of freshly cut wood. Yards full of logs waiting to be fed to the mills lined the highway. When I reached Eureka itself, the downtown struck me as curiously quiet; many of the stores were out of business, and the sidewalks were mostly deserted. The recession had hit the lumber industry hard, and the earthquake hadn’t helped the area’s strapped economy.