Authors: Pat Murphy
“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, giving 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 your 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.
In solitude, she wept and prayed for her grandfather, who lay dead in the swamp. She thanked the great wolf for sending Sarah to save her. She prayed for her people, who hid in the mountains, asking that the mountains keep them safe from white men who might come for revenge.
She was finishing her prayers when she heard a sound behind her. The wild girl stood beside the creek. The carcass of a dead marmot, slain by a well-aimed stone, dangled from her hand.
The marmot had been gutted; Sarah had eaten her fill of the tender internal organs. Among the wolves, eating was not a social activity, but something that was best done alone. She had brought the remainder of the carcass to the Indian woman as a wolf might bring meat to a puppy.
Malila’s actions when Sarah gave her the carcass puzzled the wild girl. Rather than eating her fill of the fresh meat, Malila first gathered bits of wood. A tough old pine tree that clung between two boulders just up the stream offered a few dead branches.
Malila made a small pile of kindling in a wind-sheltered hollow. With flint and steel from the pouch at her belt, she made sparks that fell on the dry kindling. She blew on the tiny flame, building it up into a small fire, over which she roasted the marmot meat.
Sarah watched the flames in amazement. She had seen fire before. She remembered when a rapidly burning wildfire set by lightning had swept through the foothills, burning the grass and dry foliage and leaving the trees untouched. Sarah had learned to avoid the leaping flames of wildfires. She had also seen distant campfires, but she had never been so close to one.
The scent of the roasting meat tickled her nose. The Indian woman sliced a piece of meat from the carcass and offered it to Sarah. Startled, Sarah accepted the meat.
Malila cut another piece of meat for herself. Rather than turning away to eat her meal in solitude, Malila ate in front of Sarah, as if certain that Sarah would not challenge her and take the food. She ate with her knife, slicing off bits of meat that she could pick up and eat with her hands. Sarah followed her example, relishing the unfamiliar flavor of cooked meat.
While they ate, Malila studied Sarah. “You are a very powerful spirit,” Malila said, “and you are also a young girl.” She frowned. “Your hair is like a white man’s hair. Did the white men bring you here?” Sarah looked up from the leg she was gnawing, listening intently. “I wish I could talk to you,” Malila said.
“Talk,” Sarah repeated after Malila. “Talk to you.” She smiled happily, obviously pleased to be making sounds.
Malila leaned forward. She could teach this wild spirit to speak. Her eyes on Sarah’s face, Malila pointed at the meat roasting on the fire, then at the meat in the girl’s hand. “Meat,” she said in the language of her people. “Meat.”
Sarah’s smile broadened, and a look of understanding brightened her eyes. She repeated the word after Malila.
For the next hour, they sat by the fire and Malila taught Sarah words, simple nouns. Fire. Tree. Leaf. Grass. Sand. Water.