by Pat Murphy
The wolves howled again and Malila responded.
When Malila howled, Sarah was not with the rest of the pack. She and Beka had been wandering along the edge of the creek—Sarah was foraging for greens while Beka hunted for mice and rabbits and other small game. Beka was four years old, an adult wolf. When Sarah strayed from the pack, Beka came along, more often than not.
That day, their trail had crossed that of three white men, traveling up the mountain. Sarah had followed them for a time, out of curiosity. Beka had tagged along.
Sarah didn’t like the smell of the men: they reeked of tobacco and gunpowder. When the men had made camp on the creek, she had lost interest. When Rolon howled, summoning the pack, she and Beka were heading back to rejoin them for the evening hunt. She and Beka had responded to the pack’s howl—and then Malila had responded as well.
Beka had headed straight back to where the pack waited. She had spent the day exploring with Sarah and was eager for the hunt. But Sarah had delayed, following the sound of Malila’s voice until she could see the light of the campfire. There, she hesitated, testing the breeze. She knew by the scent that a man and a woman sat by the fire. No tobacco, coffee, or whiskey—scents that predominated at the camp of the miners. Just the warm aroma of acorn mush.
She crept closer, curious about the pair of Indians. She could hear their voices, soft and guttural, blending with the croaking of frogs in the swamp. The moon had not yet risen and darkness hid her as she moved silently through the trees. Crouching behind a low shrub, she listened to the Indians’ voices, though she could make no sense of the sounds they made. From her hiding place, she could see the man’s back and the woman’s face. She watched as the woman lifted her head to howl again.
Miners sometimes howled to the wolves, but their howls would not have fooled the most simple-minded wolf. They sounded like wolves to no one but themselves.
But this woman truly howled like a wolf. Her voice was rich and low, carrying a wealth of meaning. I am here, she was saying. I am resting, not hunting. I will not interfere with you, but I am here.
While Sarah watched, the woman stood up, said something to the man, then walked away from the fire, into the darkness. She was walking toward Sarah, her head up, her eyes wide, staring into the darkness.
Sarah stayed where she was, confident that the woman could not see her, wondering what the woman would do. She posed no threat; she had no weapon that Sarah could see.
The woman stopped just a few yards away from Sarah. For a moment, she stood motionless. Then she began to sing.
Sarah had heard miners singing around their campfires. She had heard Indians chanting and singing as they gathered acorns in the fall. But she had never heard a song like this. It rose and fell like a mother’s lullaby, like the whimpers with which a mother wolf comforts her pups in the den. A human voice, singing like a mother wolf.
Sarah lay in the shadows, listening to Malila sing.
The Gold Rush brought all kinds to California. There were good men who were willing to work hard and hoped to get rich from their labors. And there were bad men—gamblers, swindlers, cutthroats, and thieves—who hoped to get rich without working quite so hard.
The men that Sarah had observed earlier were of the second variety. Joseph, Andrew, and Frank, three brothers from Missouri, had traveled overland to California. Unlike most emigrants, they had profited by their journey, stealing horses from one wagon train and mules from another.
The brothers thought California was a fine place. There were plenty of men with money in the gold country, just waiting to have that money taken away. That night, the brothers were particularly cheerful. Along a lonely trail, they had found a man prospecting alone. Without a pang of conscience, they had whacked him on the head, taken his gold, his grub, and his pack mule, then tumbled his body into a gully, leaving him for the coyotes to dispose of. Among his provisions, they had found two bottles of whiskey, and that had made them quite jolly. That night, they drank themselves to sleep.
In the morning, they did not feel nearly so cheerful. “Where is that mule?” Joseph snarled. He was the oldest brother and, as such, he had claimed more than his share of the whiskey. That had been very well the night before, but now his head was aching. His temper was not at its best (and truth be told, his temper was never very good). “I told you to tie it up last night, Frank.”
“I reckon it pulled up its stake and wandered off.” Frank, the youngest brother, could not remember whether he had ever tied up the mule, but he suspected that he hadn’t. If he had gone off to tie the mule, he would have missed his turn at the whiskey bottle.
“Well, I reckon you’d better go find it,” drawled Andrew, the middle brother. He was the smallest and the smartest of the three. Joseph was a large-framed man, tall and broad-shouldered, with hands large and strong enough to strangle a bear. Frank was shorter and softer, a big-bellied youngster with a hint of a whine in his voice. Andrew was shorter than either of them, a slender man who made up for his lack of size with cleverness, a sharp customer who cheated at cards.
“You’d best help him,” Joseph said. “That boy can’t find his own arse with both hands.”
Andrew grinned. Frank wasn’t the sharpest lad, particularly after a night of drinking. Besides, Andrew thought it would be wise to avoid Joseph’s company until he downed a few cups of the poisonous brew he called coffee. “Sure enough,” Andrew agreed.
While Frank and Andrew were saddling their horses, the mule announced its whereabouts. From up the creek came a great braying noise, the sort of ruckus that only a mule in trouble can make. As Frank and Andrew rode toward the noise, the ground grew swampy; their horses splashed through muddy water, and the air stank of rotting vegetation.
Andrew caught a glimpse of the mule up ahead. An old Indian man was holding the animal’s bridle, urging the animal forward. The old man was muddy; Andrew reckoned he’d been in the mud with the mule. An Indian girl was swatting the mule’s rump with a switch. Andrew could hear the Indians talking to the mule, jabbering in that incomprehensible language of theirs. As An drew watched, the mule lunged forward, pulling itself from the mud. The old man shouted something; it sounded triumphant to Andrew.
Then a rifle cracked and the old man fell, collapsing into the mud. Blood spread across the rabbit-skin cloak that covered his chest.
Andrew glanced at Frank, who was lowering his rifle. “That Injun was stealing our mule,” Frank said.
Andrew nodded. He thought it was more likely that the Indians were just freeing the mule from the mud, rather than actively stealing it, but Frank wasn’t in a good mood and it made no sense to argue. At least he’d waited until the Indians got the mule out of the mud. Andrew didn’t like to get dirty.
The Indian girl was cradling the old man’s head, jabbering away. Her eyes were wide; her face was wet with tears.
Andrew watched as Frank rode up beside her. For an Injun, she was pretty, he thought. She wore a rabbit-skin cloak that hid her breasts. That was too bad. The Injun gals down in the valley didn’t bother to cover their breasts at all, and that was nice. But her skirt was barely down to her knees, showing off muscular legs. Nice. It didn’t leave too much to the imagination, and Andrew had a good imagination.
“Might as well save your breath,” Frank was telling the girl. “I reckon he’s dead. He should never have tried to steal our mule.” She stared at Frank as he swung down from his horse, took the mule’s lead, and tied it to the back of his saddle. She said something in the Indian language, then she was on her feet, pulling a knife from her belt, lunging for Frank.
Frank sidestepped her lunge and grabbed her knife hand, twisting it around behind her back. Andrew smiled. His little brother was big and dumb, but he had years of experience in barroom fights. This little lady would be no match for him.
Frank took the knife away, twisting her arm cruelly, then pushed her, adding to her momentum so that she tumbled forward into the mud. As she fell, her skirt rode up, giv
ing Andrew an even better view of her legs. Very nice. It had been months since he’d had a woman.
Then she was rolling, fast as a cat, and going for Frank again. Lots of spunk, but not much sense. Frank sidestepped her charge and caught her with a backhand that sent her reeling into the mud again.
“Go get her, little brother,” Andrew called, urging his brother on. When Frank went after her, she rolled to one side. He turned to follow. His feet slipped on the slick mud, and he fell, landing in the mud with a splash.
The woman was going for Frank then, her knife ready. Andrew lifted his rifle. A pity to shoot her—a waste—but he had to save his fool of a brother.
Sarah watched from her hiding place in the branches of an oak tree. She had rejoined the pack the night before, but had returned to the Indian camp before dawn, drawn by curiosity.
Sarah had watched the Indians drag the mule from the mud, had seen Frank shoot Hatawa and fight Malila. It was very puzzling. She could not understand the relationships among these people. She did not understand what was going on.
The mule, she supposed, belonged to the pack of men. She understood possession. If a wolf had torn a piece of meat from a deer carcass and run away with it, the meat belonged to that wolf, and that wolf would fight to keep it. Maybe the mule belonged to the men, and they wanted it back.
But the men had not indicated their desire. Frank had attacked without warning. As he rode up, he had been smiling, showing no signs of anger. He did not growl to warn the Indians away from the mule. He just lifted his rifle, the stick that killed at a distance, and the old man fell dead.
The woman’s attack on Frank made more sense to her. The woman’s anger was clear on her face before she attacked. She was defending the old man, who had been part of her pack. Though Sarah had not understood the words Malila said, her feelings were clear. Anger and hatred and pain.
She watched the fight between Frank and Malila. The man was big and slow and powerful, like the grizzly bear. The woman had to be fast. She had to keep out of his reach until she was ready to strike. Sarah liked this woman.
The woman was doing well—then Sarah saw Andrew raise his rifle. She had seen what rifles could do. Her reflexes were those of a wild creature; she saw the movement and acted, snatching a stone from her pocket and hurling it at Andrew’s head.
Years of hunting had given her a strong arm and a good aim. The stone struck Andrew in the temple, causing him to lurch in the saddle. He fired, but missed Malila. His horse, startled, reared back, throwing him from the saddle.
Sarah did not hesitate; her time with the wolves had taught her the virtues of immediate action. A hunter who hesitated went hungry. She sprang from her hiding place in the tree to land on Andrew’s back. Her knife blade glittered in the rising sun as she held it ready, baring her teeth and snarling to communicate her dominance.
If Andrew had indicated his submission by lying still and exposing his throat, she would have spared him. Wolves established their positions by fighting, but rarely fought to kill.
But Andrew did not know the rules. He knew only that the sport with the Indian girl had gone wrong; that he was being attacked by a growling savage child. He struggled, turning beneath his attacker, trying to shake her off. He reached upward, his thumbs ready to gouge out her eyes, his hands eager to throttle her senseless. But before he could reach Sarah’s face, her knife had slashed deep into his neck.
Her hands red with blood, Sarah stared down at Andrew’s body. She was hungry—she had not hunted that morning. But she did not lick the blood from her blade, as she would have if she had butchered a rabbit or a deer. The body reeked of tobacco and whiskey, bad smells that turned her stomach.
Still alert to possible danger, she looked to Frank. The big man lay still. Malila crouched in the mud beside his body. Her hands were covered in crimson blood.
While Sarah watched, Malila cleaned her knife on a tuft of grass. Sarah approved, knowing that Malila had also decided that the flesh was too tainted to eat.
Malila studied Sarah and said something that Sarah did not understand.
“Who are you?” Malila asked again. The savage girl watched her, but did not speak.
Such a strange child. Not an Indian and surely not a white girl. Her hair was a mass of red-gold curls, not the hair of any Indian. Her skin was bronzed from the sun. She carried herself with natural grace and dignity. Her eyes were bright and alert, shining with the spark of intelligence. She wore only a pair of white man’s trousers, raggedly cut off at the knees and held up with suspenders. On a belt, she carried a knife in a leather sheath.
The girl was watching Malila intently. Gracefully, she rose from her crouch and closed the distance that separated her from Malila with a few swift steps.
The girl was whining low in her throat. Malila stood frozen as the girl paced around her. She felt hot breath on her neck as the girl sniffed her, inhaling her scent. As the girl prowled around her, the sound became a humming, a song without words. Malila recognized the tune—the song that the wolf in her vision had taught her.
“The wolves,” Malila said. “You have come from the wolves.”
The girl stopped singing and stared into the swamp, in the direction of the men’s camp. Glancing at Malila, she started away through the swamp, leaving the mule and the horses. Malila hesitated, looking down at her grandfather’s body. The girl looked back at her and whimpered entreatingly, clearly asking Malila to follow, to hurry.
“Andrew! Frank! Where the hell are you?”
Frightened by the angry shout in the distance, Malila hurried after the savage girl. In shock, still reeling from her grandfather’s death, Malila followed the girl through the swamp.
The ground was treacherous, pocked with mudholes like the one that had captured the mule. But the wild girl knew her way. She followed a circuitous route, leaping with confidence from one patch of solid ground to the next. Once, she climbed an oak and made her way along the spreading branches to another patch of firm ground. The shouting of the white man faded in the distance.
Hours later, Malila collapsed beside a creek. The wild girl crouched beside the running water. She drank like an animal, lowering her mouth to the water.
“Where are we going?” Malila asked the wild girl. The girl studied her with an expression of intelligent concentration, but said nothing.
“What is your name?” Malila asked. No answer. She pointed at herself. “Malila,” she said. “That’s my name. Malila.”
Sarah tilted her head, watching Malila.
“Malila,” the Indian woman repeated.
Sarah listened to the sounds that the Indian woman made, then tried to shape her lips to make the same sounds. “Ma,” she said, a sound she remembered from long, long ago, when the one called Mama had taken care of her. “Ma.”
The woman nodded. “Malila,” she repeated.
Sarah struggled with the second sound, a sweet, high sound like the cheeping of the finches in the brush. “Ma…li,” she managed. “Mali.”
Again the woman nodded.
The third syllable came easily—it was a combination of the first one and the second one. “Ma…li…la,” Sarah said triumphantly, a strange collection of sounds. Sarah grinned. “Malila,” she repeated.
Then the woman pointed to Sarah and asked something. Sarah did not understand the words, but she understood the question. “What is your name?” the woman was asking.
Her name among the wolves was not just a collection of sounds, but something more comprehensive than that. She was identified by her scent, by her position in the hierarchy, and all of that could not be contained in a sound.
What was her name? What sound was her own? Speaking with Malila reminded Sarah of that time long ago when she lived with the woman she called Mama and the man she called Papa. Those people had a name for her. They called her by a collection of sounds that began with a hiss like a snake and ended with the same sound that ended Malila’s name.
“What’s yo
ur name?” Mama had asked her long, long ago. “What’s your name?”
“Sarah,” she told Mama.
Mama had laughed and clapped her hands. Sarah. That, Sarah thought, was her name among people.
Slowly, with great care, Sarah pronounced the syllables that had delighted Mama so long ago.
“Sarah,” Malila repeated, studying the savage girl and remembering the stone that had become a wolf in her vision quest.
In the language of Malila’s people, the word “sara” meant “stone.” Sometimes, the word was used as a name, and it was a name of great power. The spirits that lived in stones were powerful and generous. When stones were struck together in the proper way, the spirits provided sparks which gave the Indians fire. Other stones, treated differently, became arrowheads and knives and other tools.
This savage girl was a wolf and a stone, and she had come to Malila when she needed help. Malila bowed her head, overwhelmed by all that the name implied.
Sarah studied Malila for a moment. The Indian woman was tired, she recognized that. It did not make sense to her; their travels that day had not been particularly strenuous when compared with the travels of the pack. But she could tell that Malila was tired.
Sarah herself was hungry. She had not fed that day, except for a few bites of miner’s lettuce, picked on the run. It was midday. As they traveled, she had seen many fat marmots among the rocks. These animals, common on the rocky slopes of the Sierras, were similar to woodchucks, living in burrows in the rocks. They made good eating.
With gestures, she made Malila understand that she was to stay there, in the rocky grotto by the creek. Sarah scrambled up the rock face. Before Malila could speak a word, she was gone.
Malila waited by the stream, listening to the water babble over the boulders. The wild girl had taken her by unfamiliar ways, but Malila knew that they were heading in the general direction of her village. She recognized the sloping mountain that her tribe called Eagle’s Head. The village was tucked into a valley at the foot of that mountain.
At rest for the first time in hours, she washed in the stream, using tufts of the hardy grass that grew among the boulders to scrub her hands, washing away the blood that darkened her fingernails. The white man’s blood, she thought with a shudder. She cleaned her knife and brushed dried blood from her rabbit-skin cape.
