The Wild Girl: The Notebooks of Ned Giles, 1932

by Jim Fergus

  The water of the spring was warm and soft, oily with minerals, and I sank gratefully into it. People must have been bathing here for thousands of years and all along the edge of the pool there were well-worn rocks that looked like they had been placed to provide seating. These were sculpted smooth by time and the action of the minerals and perhaps the gentle friction of a millennium of naked buttocks. No wonder the first people had settled here in this little valley, with its river and hot springs, good grass for stock and rich soil for crops, protected on one end by the high bluffs with their network of caves to provide lodging. It was a paradise. What more could you want than this?

  I lay back against the rocks beside the girl and fell almost instantly asleep, as if all the exhaustions and terrors of the last days had been suddenly released by the soothing waters. I don’t know how long I slept, but I woke to a distant roll of thunder, and I felt truly rested for the first time since I could remember. It was late afternoon, and the sky was darkening with colossal storm clouds building to the south. The girl was gone. I looked into the meadow to see that the mule still grazed placidly and then I scanned the bluffs and saw smoke rising above one of the caves. I got out of the pool and sat on the still sun-warmed rocks to let myself dry for a moment. I dressed and picked up my saddlebags and followed the path up the bluff.

  The girl had made a campsite in the cave, with a sleeping place of pine needles and grass, covered with blankets and deer hides. She had a fire burning and meat roasting, a tin pot of beans bubbling and another with what looked like some kind of corn mush. She had an iron skillet on which a stack of fresh-made tortillas were warming. And she had a tin coffeepot.

  “Where did you get all this?” I asked.

  “We cache provisions in this place,” she said.

  It occurred to me that this was the same place I had flown over with Spider King, and now I wondered if some of the gear had come from the raid on Colonel Carrillo’s party. “Did you kill those men back there?” I asked her again. I wonder why it even matters to me. Am I trying to civilize the girl, who sees nothing morally wrong in the butchery of her enemy? Do I need to be reassured that she is somehow incapable of such an act, this slender fierce warrior girl, even though she clearly is not? And what difference does it make, finally? The elegant, beautifully educated Colonel Carrillo, with his fine dress uniform and pomaded black hair, would certainly kill her given the chance, would take her scalp as verification in order to collect the bounty. Both my own people and the Mexicans have been butchering our natives for centuries. How many Apache babies have been slaughtered by our soldiers? Yet only the atrocities of the conquered are referred to as criminal acts; those of the conqueror are justified as necessary, heroic, and, even worse, as the fulfillment of God’s will. What difference, finally, between the civilized man and the savage?

  “It was Indio Juan’s raid,” the girl repeated, not defensively but as a simple statement of fact.

  “Okay,” I said, and I did not ask her again.

  We ate our meal sitting in the entrance of the cave, looking out over the valley as the blue-black storm clouds, lit by sustained flashes of lightning, moved across the mountains, pushing gray undulating curtains of rain ahead of them, the deep rumbling closer and louder, sounding as if it issued from the belly of the earth itself. I had the strangest sense then that we were the last human beings on earth, that the others all lay dead back there on the trail, consumed by buzzards, and we were all that was left, the last and the first people, Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, an Indian girl and a white boy. We would stay right here and begin our own race of man. We would do better this time.

  But then someone would come along and try to take away our poor possessions, or our home, and we would have to defend it and ourselves; we would have to kill them or be killed and the wars would begin all over again. What had become of the “first” people who lived here thousands of years ago? I had once asked Margaret. She said that scientists didn’t know exactly, but indications were that for some reason or other their economy and social structure had broken down, possibly as a result of some sort of climatological shift or event, until they descended into chaos and internal strife, and finally self-destructed. But it was also quite possible that their land had simply been invaded by a more powerful race of man, and they had been killed off or absorbed by the invaders.

  The sky went black and the rain came all at once with a thunderous crash of lightning. We moved farther back in the cave to lie together on the sleeping place. I took the girl’s clothes off, and my own, and covered us with a blanket, and put my arms around her and held her, breathing deeply of her scent, the scent of the mountains and the rain and the faint ozone scent of the storm. We were warm, dry, and snug here with the roaring deluge outside. Every few moments a flash of lightning illuminated the inside of the cave.

  There was no sense of urgency this time and we took our time exploring each other, sometimes shyly, sometimes wantonly. I don’t know if she’d ever been kissed before as a woman, because she didn’t seem to even know how to do it. And maybe this is how it begins, this is how new races are born, a couple of kids together, touching each other, putting their hands and their mouths on each other, learning to love all over again, with no memory of the carnage of yesterday, and no thoughts of tomorrow.

  We lay together like that all night. We slept and woke to love again and fell asleep holding each other. And we talked a little in our new language, part Apache, part Spanish, part English, a language of our own creation that only we would understand.

  We rose at dawn this morning and bathed again in the hot spring and built a small fire to warm some food from the night before. We don’t have to talk about it; we both know that we have to go back to the ranchería today. Last night existed in that perfect all-consuming limbo time, the pure uncomplicated space carved out by love and desire when there is nothing else on earth. I wish we could live forever in that moment, or at least just a little longer. But in the real world, I have Margaret to worry about. And, in any case, neither of us can walk away from our old races just like that, not just yet. It is far too complicated by the light of morning; we have friends and family and responsibilities to attend to. Our respective armies prepare to march against each other, and though we are powerless to prevent this, neither can we ignore it.

  We packed some food for the trail and cached the cooking utensils and the staples, the dried beans, some dried corn and jerky, the flour and coffee in a niche in the rear of the cave. We covered it carefully with rocks so that animals couldn’t dig it up and you’d have to know where to look for it. Maybe we will come back here when everything is over, or someone else who knows where to look will stop here for the night, uncover the cache and appreciate it for giving them sustenance, treat it respectfully and perhaps even add to it. In this way the girl tells me the People have lived for a long time.

  In a few minutes we will saddle the mule and ride up out of the valley. We both have the sense that things are coming to an end and will have to begin again.

  28 JUNE, 1932

  We rode into the ranchería at midday yesterday. Of course, the Apaches had been alerted by the scouts and all knew we were coming. Some of the children had run out to meet us on the trail and escort us in, and as we entered, others came out of their wickiups to watch us pass. I saw that some of the men wore new Mexican army hats and coats, others the hats and clothes of our dead volunteers, the spoils of war. No one molested me; for the time being anyway, it seemed that I could come and go among worlds with impunity.

  I wanted first to see Margaret, and the girl led me directly to the white Apache’s wickiup. Before we had even dismounted, Margaret herself came out of the wickiup. She was dressed in Apache fashion, in moccasins and a brightly patterned, loose-fitting blouse and skirt of Mexican fabric. We looked at each other for a long time before speaking.

  Finally I said: “I came back to get my camera.”

  “I figured you would,” she said, smilin
g. “Why do you think I hung on to it? I knew you weren’t going to come back just for me.”

  I slid off my mule and we embraced.

  “Are you okay, Mag?”

  “I’m alive, little brother.”

  “That’s not what I asked.”

  “I’m alive and I’m not living in Indio Juan’s wickiup,” Margaret said. “In this world, that’s okay.”

  “What happened to your face?” I asked.

  “A little unpleasantness early on.” She shrugged.

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means that once I accepted the fact that I’m a slave, things have been better. Mostly I do chores, fetch water, gather firewood, that sort of thing. And as long as I do what I’m told, they pretty much leave me alone.”

  “A slave?”

  “They’re just like us that way, Neddy,” she said. “Despite all the vast cultural differences, it seems to be common human nature to turn the weaker sexes and races, not to mention conquered peoples, into servants.” She laughed bitterly. “That’s been one of my great anthropological discoveries of the past week.”

  “Tell me about Mr. Browning, Mag.”

  Margaret looked away from me. She shook her head and tears began to well up in her eyes. “I tried, little brother,” she said. “I tried to keep him alive.”

  “I know, Mag,” I said. “I know you did.”

  “He was so brave and strong, Neddy.”

  “Joseph?”

  “Joseph is okay,” she said. “Thank God he’s been here with me. Without him I’d certainly be dead.”

  “We never should have left you here, Mag,” I said. “I’m so sorry. I thought the girl would be able to look after you.”

  “She did, Neddy,” Margaret said. “She did everything she could. It was my choice to stay. I couldn’t have lived with myself if we’d left Mr. Browning to die here alone. I’m glad I was with him at the end. I think I brought him a little comfort. And I’m okay, really I am. And to answer the big question that’s on your mind, and that you’re too damn polite to ask, no, I have not been ravished by the savages.”

  “That’s a good thing, Mag,” I said. “Where’s Charley?”

  “He left here this morning with Joseph,” she said. “I don’t know where they went.”

  “Carrillo and some of his men were attacked,” I said.

  “I know, believe me,” she said. “They danced all night over the scalps. I couldn’t stop myself from trying to identify the hair they were waving.”

  “Was Charley involved?”

  “No, he was against it,” Margaret said. “It was Indio Juan. All Charley wants to do is keep away from the whites and the Mexicans. That’s how he’s survived here for fifty years. Through avoidance and nonengagement. It’s Indio Juan who’s causing all the trouble now.”

  “I’m going to get you out of here this time, Mag,” I said. “I promise. I won’t leave you again.”

  “Well, you’ll have to discuss that with the big guy, little brother,” she said. “The Apaches are quite possessive of their slaves. You know, it’s so hard these days to find good domestic help.”

  “Carrillo and his soldiers are going to get here one way or another,” I said. “Flowers knows the way up.”

  “Where’s Albert, Ned?”

  “With the expedition. He’d have come, but I left without telling him.”

  “And Tolley?”

  “Tolley quit, Mag. He had some important shopping to do to get ready for fall semester at Princeton.”

  Margaret smiled forgivingly. “Yeah, it’s always such a crunch to get everything done before the end of summer vacation, isn’t it?”

  “After the attack on Carrillo, the rich boys fled like rats from a sinking ship,” I said.

  “Who can blame them?”

  “I can blame Tolley for bailing out on you and Mr. Browning.”

  “I can’t,” Margaret said. “What was he supposed to do, come back here and let them dangle his head over the fire again?”

  “I didn’t expect him to come back here with me,” I said. “But he could have stayed with the expedition and seen this through to the end. By the way, Mag, I love the new getup.”

  “Becomes me, doesn’t it?” she said. “God, if only my colleagues at the university could see me now … Oh, where are my manners … won’t you come into my humble abode?”

  The inside of the wickiup was covered in hides and blankets and wasn’t at all uncomfortable. We sat down and Margaret handed me my camera bag. “I made a few entries in your notebook, little brother,” she said smiling. “Just to keep you up on what’s been was going on around here …” And then suddenly she began to weep, great inconsolable sobs, her body convulsing. I took her in my arms and held her, and when her tears had subsided a bit, she pushed away. “God, I’m sorry, I don’t know where that came from, it just snuck up on me. I’ve been okay, really, I have. I’ve been strong, Neddy.”

  “You’re a rock, Mag,” I said. “You have nothing to apologize for. I don’t know any man who’s stronger.”

  “I thought I would never see you again,” she said. “I thought this was going to be my life. And who knows, maybe it still is. The thing I’ve learned is, I can survive. You know what’s most terrifying, Neddy? Is what we’re willing to endure to do that. How adaptable we are. I’m a professional, I nearly have a doctorate degree, for Christ sake. And yet after a little over a week here, I’m getting rather accustomed to living with these people, to being their slave. And it’s not really that bad. They treat me pretty well … I even catch myself being grateful to them for that, for not treating me worse, you know, or even killing me. Do you understand what I’m trying to say?”

  “I think so, Mag.”

  “I danced with them over the scalps, Neddy.”

  “What choice did you have, Mag?” I asked.

  “It’s more than that,” she said. “I started to identify with them, I got caught up in the celebration of their success. I liked it.”

  “Well, then maybe we’d better just stay right here,” I said jokingly.

  “You think we have any choice in the matter, Neddy?” Margaret asked, dead serious. “They’re not going to let us go again. You understand that, don’t you?”

  “The expedition will come for us, Mag,” I said. “You’ll see.”

  “Oh Christ, Ned!” she snapped. “Are you just trying to cheer me up, or are you really so damn naive? You saw yourself what happened to Carrillo’s men. You think these people are going to just sit here and wait for the Mexican army to show up in their camp and then dutifully hand us over and surrender?”

  “What do you think is going to happen?”

  “I think Indio Juan will ambush them again … and again,” she said. “I think he’ll kill every Mexican soldier and every gringo he can before they even get here. If they even get here. And in the meantime, I think Charley will take his band somewhere else, farther south, deeper yet into the mountains. He has other rancherías, even more remote and just as inaccessible as this one. And the thing is, Neddy, they’re going to take me with them. I’m a captive, I’m their property now.”

  “I came back for you, didn’t I, Mag?” I asked. “Just like I said I would. And one way or another, I’m not going to let that happen.”

  8 JULY, 1932

  I have been over a week now at the ranchería. Maybe it’s just the lull before the storm, but it’s been a quiet, peaceful time. Indio Juan has been gone since before my arrival. His scouts have reported back that the expedition has not moved from its base camp; rather than risking the loss of more men, Carrillo is clearly taking his time to formulate a new plan. Also it’s likely that the monsoon weather has kept them pinned down, as travel in the mountains this time of year is problematic.

  Due to the heavy rains, many of the people have moved out of their wickiups, which are impossible to keep dry, and taken up lodging in the elaborate network of ancient cave dwellings on the bluffs above the valley. Chid
eh and I are settled in one of these. It is a crude habitation by any modern standards, but warm, dry, and cozy inside. Life among these people strikes me a bit like a perpetual camping trip and I can see how seductive it could be, especially to a young boy taken captive from the civilized world. When I was a kid growing up in Chicago, I read all the books and periodicals about the Old West I could get my hands on. I read about the Indians and trappers and mountain men, and I dreamed of this wild life. Little did I imagine …

  For the most part the people have been guardedly friendly to me, though I seem to occupy an uncertain role in their minds. While they’re quite used to the men taking wives from other tribes and races, clearly an adult White Eyes moving into the band as the “husband” of one of their young women is without precedent. I’ve started exposing some film again, having “borrowed” some additional rolls from Big Wade when I was back in camp. It’s a great relief and I think that I’ve made some startling images here. I don’t care what Margaret says, wasn’t it Confucius who said “A picture is worth a thousand words”? But when I pointed this out to Margaret, she answered. “Yeah, but didn’t Franz Kafka say: ‘Nothing is so deceiving as a photograph’?”

  Charley and Joseph returned to the ranchería two days after the girl and I arrived here. The old man came directly to see me.

  “My grandson is well?” was the first thing he asked.

  “He’s fine,” I said. “Where have you been?”

  “I took Charley to show him the Mexican soldiers and the White Eyes of the expedition,” he said.

  “You went down there?” I asked. “What for?”

  “So that Charley could see how many of them there are,” he said.

  “Did you tell him that he should give himself up?”