by Pat Murphy
She didn’t come back. He lost her trail on a granite slope and could not find it again. He spent a day by the lake, searching for the little girl without success. Then he packed the venison on his two mules and headed to Downieville, the nearest large town, to sell his meat and tell his tale.
Jasper Davis was having lunch at Downieville’s Lucky Dog Saloon. The primary purpose of this thriving establishment was to relieve miners of their gold while providing them with food, alcoholic beverages, and entertainment (in the form of gambling).
Jasper had provided half the capital for the establishment of the saloon and now he was entitled to half the profits. For Jasper, this had proven an extremely profitable investment. He was well on the way to becoming a prosperous businessman, and that was quite useful. Once he was known to have a successful business, no one would question his free-spending ways.
“I’d recommend the venison steak.” Samuel, Jasper’s partner and the man who managed the saloon’s day-to-day operation, pulled up a chair and sat down at Jasper’s table. “A mountain man just came down from the high country. Had venison to sell and a crazy story to tell.”
“What sort of story?”
“Claims he saw a little white girl romping around by a lake in the high country. Just a slip of a girl, wearing nothing but a petticoat. Claims he saw a wolf stalking her. He shot the wolf—has the skin to prove that—but the little girl ran away and vanished in the woods.”
Jasper frowned. He didn’t like the sound of this. “Probably just an Indian brat.”
Samuel shrugged. “That’s what I said. But he says this child had a head of curly red hair and the face of an angel. He swears that she was no Indian. I think maybe he’s been in the hills too long.” Samuel jerked his head toward the bar. “That’s the fellow. Goes by the name of Socks.”
Jasper eyed the man who was leaning on the bar. Jasper thought it was unlikely that the daughter of Rachel McKensie had somehow survived for months in the wilderness and had made her way to a lake many miles from Grizzly Hill. But the story made him uneasy. This hunter claimed he had seen a redheaded child. Rachel McKensie had been a redhead. Jasper remembered Rachel’s hair quite vividly; he had thought as he scalped her that those curly locks would have made quite a prize for an Indian brave.
Jasper was a thorough man. He disliked having any loose ends. He wished that he had found the child when he had murdered Rachel and her husband. If he had, he would have made a clean sweep of it. No loose ends; no unfinished business. But perhaps luck had presented him with an opportunity to take care of this loose end.
“Is he going hunting again?” Jasper asked.
“He didn’t say.”
“Might be nice to have a regular supply of fresh venison,” Jasper said. “If he were willing…”
“I reckon that would be good,” Samuel agreed.
“Let me talk to the fellow and see what I can work out.” Jasper got to his feet slowly and strolled over to the bar.
A few hours later, after several drinks and a couple of fine venison steaks, Jasper and Socks were the very best of friends. Jasper had heard the story of the angel child in the forest several times in its entirety—from the moment Socks spotted the child to the moment he lost her trail on the granite slopes beyond the lake.
“Poor little girl,” the mountain man repeated. “All alone out there. I called and called.” He shook his head, made melancholy by the memory and the whiskey.
Jasper nodded sympathetically, though he thought the man was taking the matter far too much to heart. Like many of the men who had left civilization behind, Socks was excessively tenderhearted on matters related to home and family. The sight—or the imagined sight—of this girl child had awakened in him a wistful longing, as if by saving this little lost girl he could somehow redeem himself.
Socks drained his glass. “I reckon when I go hunting again, I’ll go back to the lake. Maybe I’ll find her.” He brightened at that prospect.
“Would you mind if I came along?” Jasper asked. “It touches my heart to think of that little girl out there alone. I’d sure like to help.” By the end of the evening, after finishing a bottle of whiskey together, Jasper and Socks were partners, dedicated to finding the lost angel child and bringing her back to civilization. Two days later, Socks led Jasper to the lake, where they made camp and began their search.
For the next two weeks, they searched the area surrounding the lake. While he was searching, Socks hunted for deer. In that time, Socks found only one indication of the little girl’s presence. On a manzanita bush not far from the lake, he found a tiny scrap of white lace. “I reckon it’s a bit torn from her little petticoat,” Socks said. He held the delicate lacework pinched between grimy, callused fingers. “I reckon that proves she was here.”
Finally, when it was clear that they would find nothing more, Socks packed the deer carcasses back to Downieville. Jasper left the mountain man there. “If you find that little girl, let me know,” Jasper told Socks when he bid the mountain man farewell. “I know folks who would take her in, raise her proper.”
The mountain man nodded, convinced that Jasper was a fine fellow, with the child’s best interest at heart. “I’ll sure do that,” he told Jasper. Jasper rode back to Selby Flat, still plagued by that niggling doubt, the uneasy possibility that someone might know his secret.
At that time, Max was working a claim on the North Fork of the Yuba River with Henry Johnson, the earnest young New Englander who had thought that Sarah had been adopted by Indians. Max and Henry had a canvas tent for a shelter, and they cooked over a fire by the creek. Their camp was far from any other miners, and Max liked it that way.
As long as the weather held and the claim kept paying, it wasn’t a bad life. They woke up with the sun, ate a breakfast of cold pork and biscuits, then set to work shoveling dirt into their long tom, a wooden cradle through which the creek flowed. The moving water washed away lighter sediments, leaving gold dust caught in the riffles of the cradle.
At midday, they stopped for another bite to eat and a bit of a rest, then they got back to work. When the sun reached the top of the ridge, they quit for the day and measured their take.
While Henry occupied himself with the gold, Max made dinner. After dinner, Max would lean back against a boulder that retained the heat of the afternoon sun and sketch. He sketched the river, striving to capture the way the light played on the water’s surface. He sketched the hills with their rich texture of pines and aspen. He sketched Henry, head tilted back, a haze of pipe smoke around him, writing a letter to the folks back home. It was a fine way to relax.
Sometimes, inspired by Henry’s example, Max wrote in his notebook. If he’d had anyone back home to write to, he would have written a letter. But he had no family, so he wrote for himself, describing the clean air, the golden afternoons, the soothing rush of water past the door of their tent.
It was peaceful there in the mountains. Each Sunday afternoon, Henry went to the trader at Downieville for supplies, that being the nearest outpost of civilization. Max, having little use for civilization, stayed in camp.
One Sunday afternoon, Henry returned from his weekly trip with a melancholy expression.
“What’s the trouble, partner?” Max asked. He was lounging in the shade of a yellow pine, having passed the afternoon sketching. As a rule, the weekly visit to Downieville left Henry broke, but cheerfully drunk. “Why the frown?”
Before he answered, Henry unstrapped the supplies from the mule’s back. He set the pack on the flat boulder that served as their kitchen table, as it was situated right next to the fire pit that served as their stove. Then he took a seat on a boulder not far from Max.
“I got to drinking with a fellow,” Henry said in a low voice. Max nodded. “I see. That’s usually not the sort of thing that gets you down.”
Henry shook his head. “This fellow had been hunting and he saw the strangest thing.” Then Henry told Max about Socks and what he had seen. “A little g
irl, alone in the woods,” Henry said. “He knew she wasn’t an Indian, by her curly red hair.”
Max put down his notebook and sat up, giving Henry his full attention. “A little white girl with curly red hair?” he asked.
Henry nodded. “I wondered if it might be the daughter of the woman who was murdered.”
“Sarah McKensie.” Max frowned. The lake Henry had described was many miles from Grizzly Hill, where Rachel and William McKensie had been killed. But it seemed strange that this phantom child had red-gold curls. Rachel McKensie had mentioned her daughter’s red-gold curls in her letter.
“That’s it. Sarah McKensie. Maybe she was adopted by Indians and they took her up there. But he said he didn’t see any sign of Indians.”
“He looked?”
“Looked high and low. Then he went back a second time with that fellow from Selby Flat, Jasper Davis. They both looked, and they couldn’t find hide nor hair of her.” Henry sighed. “Maybe it was just his imagination. A man can get to imagining things up there alone. A dream, maybe.”
“Maybe,” Max said. “Now you say that he shot a wolf that was stalking her?”
“That’s right. Then he tracked her up into the hills, where he found the tracks of other wolves. Poor little girl, surrounded by beasts.” “Well, there’s another theory for you,” Max said. “Romulus and Remus.”
“What’s that?”
“The legendary founders of Rome. As infants, they were left to die in the wilderness. But they were adopted by a she-wolf who had lost her cubs.”
“They were left to die!” Henry was outraged. “Where was this?”
“Ancient Rome.”
“Foreigners,” Henry said angrily. “You never know what they’ll do.” And he was off on a rant about the Chinamen who had staked a claim down the creek a ways. The miners in town were talking about running them off the land, but figured there was no need just yet.
Max wasn’t listening. He was wondering about little Sarah McKensie. Could the savage heart of a wolf have been touched by the little girl’s plight?
The next Sunday he went to Downieville with Henry. He found Socks in the local saloon, drinking up the last of his profits and planning another hunting trip. When he asked the mountain man about the little girl, Socks told the same story that Henry had related—a little girl running wild, a wolf nearby, a heroic mountain man, attempting to save the girl. Socks told also of his return to the lake, with Jasper Davis’s assistance.
Miners who had come into town for supplies gathered around the mountain man, buying him drinks and talking about the little girl in the mountains. There was a wistfulness about their talk, a sweet melancholy, as if the little lost girl reminded them of all that they had left behind. One man talked of his wife back home, another of his younger sister.
While they talked, Max sketched, capturing the faces of these hard-bitten men in a moment of sentimental longing. A man with a banjo played a few sad songs—about lost love, about going home, about the ones who were left behind. It was a sweet, sad, maudlin evening.
The next day, Max had a notebook filled with sketches and a head full of sadness. He told Henry that he couldn’t work that day, and he sat beneath the yellow pine tree and wrote about the night before, managing to be both sentimental and humorous as he told of how a lost child had touched the hearts of the hard-bitten miners and traders. He sent his writings, with the sketches of the men in the saloon, to the Nevada City Gazette.
7 THE BEGINNING OF A CORRESPONDENCE
“The reason I dread writing letters is because I am so apt to get to slinging wisdom and forget to let up. Thus much precious time is lost.”
—Mark Twain
“PICK UP YOUR FEET, Wordsworth,” Max told his mule. “No need to raise such a cloud of dust.” The beast paid him no mind, continuing to scuff its hooves through the trail dust.
The summer sunshine was warm on Max’s back as he came over the top of the ridge and headed down toward the trail that ran along the creek to Selby Flat. Just a couple more miles to go. The creekside trail was broad and flat, a pleasant change. For the past few days, he’d been climbing up and down ridges along ill-marked trails and bushwhacking through the chaparral.
The claim he’d been mining with Henry Johnson had played out a few weeks back. Though Henry had elected to stay in the northern diggings, Max decided to return to Selby Flat.
He followed the switchbacks down to the creek with a sense of relief. Soon, he could get a fine dinner and a good night’s sleep at Selby’s Hotel. Below him, he could see a mining camp—a tent by the creek, a long tom in the water, a trio of miners lounging on the rocks, enjoying an afternoon break.
“Hey, Max! Max—is that you?” One of the miners was waving. Max recognized Johnny Barker and returned his wave.
“Hello, Johnny. Working hard, I see.”
“Come on and join us,” Johnny called. “Tell me where you’ve been.”
Max stopped for a time, letting Wordsworth have a long drink while he chatted with Johnny. The miner introduced Max to his companions and they asked the usual questions and touched on the usual topics. How good were the diggings up north? Max said he had done well there. He and his partner had taken two thousand dollars out of the ground between them. Not the richest diggings, but not bad.
How rich was the ground here? Not bad; not bad. The miners were careful, not wanting to encourage him to stake a claim nearby. Nothing to complain about.
Then Johnny allowed as how he’d read Max’s article in the Nevada City Gazette. “You had half these boys weeping and the other half looking out for wolves and little girls,” Johnny said. “Was a sight to behold. You’ve got a way with words, partner.”
Max smiled, acknowledging the compliment.
“You reckon that little girl could really be living with wolves?” Johnny asked.
Max shrugged. “It could happen. It’s a strange world.”
“That it is. Hey, when you get to Selby Flat, you’d best go to Selby’s Hotel, first thing. Mrs. Selby has a letter for you. I reckon she’s burning with curiosity about what’s in it. She asks about you all the time.”
“Maybe she just misses my charming smile,” Max said. Johnny laughed.
The miners invited Max to stay to dinner, but he continued down the trail, curious to see what was in the letter. It was late in the afternoon when he reached Selby’s Hotel. He noticed that a wanted poster with his portrait of Arno was tacked to the outside wall of the hotel. It had already started to tatter and fade. Max put Wordsworth in the corral and stepped into Selby’s.
The sweet smell of warm apples and cinnamon filled the room, which was crowded with miners. Max spotted Jasper Davis on the far side of the room. Jasper waved Max over to the table where he sat alone. “Rallo, Max,” Jasper called. “I reckon you came all the way from Downieville for a piece of Mrs. Selby’s apple pie.”
Max sat down at Jasper’s table. Socks had told Max of how concerned Jasper had been for the little lost girl, leading Max to think he must have misjudged the man. “That Pinkerton fellow’s been here,” Max said. “Saw the wanted poster outside.”
Jasper nodded. “No one’s seen hide nor hair of Arno since the robbery. I figure he headed to Mexico.”
Max nodded. “Maybe that Pinkerton fellow will go after him.” Jasper laughed and shook his head. “No, that fellow plans to stick around. Told me he was thinking Nevada City might be a nice place to settle down. They’re looking to appoint a town marshal, and he figures on applying for the job.” Jasper leaned toward Max. “You know, I saw that piece you wrote for the newspaper. Real nice what you had to say about that little girl. Do you really reckon she could have been taken in by a pack of wolves?”
Max shrugged. “Could be.” He had been asked many times about Romulus and Remus; he was used to the question.
“So when she ran away, she ran off with the wolves,” Jasper continued.
“I suppose so.”
Jasper nodded thoughtful
ly. “So if a man tracked the wolves, he might find the little girl.”
“Why yes, that could be.” Max studied Jasper’s face. Surely the man’s interest in rescuing Sarah was admirable. But there was still something about Jasper that struck Max wrong. Something about him reminded Max of acquaintances back in Chicago who were on the shady side of the law, individuals who were humbugs and frauds and always on the dodge.
Max did not have an opportunity to analyze Jasper’s interest in Sarah any further just then. Mrs. Selby had emerged from the kitchen and spotted him. “Max!” she called, bustling across the room while drying her hands on her apron. “Oh, Max, I’m so glad you’re back. I have a letter for you.” She pulled a battered envelope from where she had tucked it behind the mirror and brought it across the room to him. “It’s from Audrey North, the sister of that poor murdered woman.”
Max tore open the envelope and read the enclosed letter, written in a bold hand.
I am grateful to you and to the men of Selby Flat for all your efforts on behalf of my sister and her husband. I thank you for writing to tell me of my sister’s fate. Were it not for your kind letter, I would never have known what happened to her. I would wait for news of her, always hoping, always disappointed.
I find it comforting that my sister’s last letter was so optimistic and hopeful. My sister had an adventurous spirit. I take comfort in knowing that she was happy before her death.
In my heart, I cannot believe that little Sarah has perished. I cannot imagine that anyone, however depraved, could murder a child so sweet and innocent. You say it is unlikely, but I choose to believe that little Sarah is alive. I picture her living with some savage tribe, adopted as their daughter, her curly hair tamed with bear grease, her pale face standing out in a clan of ruddy faces. Perhaps I am being foolish, but I trust my heart and my heart tells me that she cannot be dead.
I have a request to make of you. I have no right to ask—you have already been so kind—but I will ask, even so. Please write again, if you are moved to do so. Tell me of California, so that I might understand the strange place to which my sister traveled. If you hear any news of my niece, please let me know.
