Authors: Pat Murphy
“Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please.”
—Mark Twain
M
ICHAEL DAY, A MAN GENERALLY
known as Socks, wasn’t looking for a lost child. He wasn’t looking for gold either, though he wouldn’t have complained if he had stumbled across a rich pocket. But he wasn’t a miner—he had spent a few days working a rocker and the work didn’t appeal to him. He wasn’t inclined to spend his time standing in mud, shoveling mud, staring at mud, and hoping to spot a glimmer of gold.
No, Socks was hunting for deer and packing the venison down to the mining towns, where hungry miners would pay a handsome price for fresh meat. There were many ways to strike it rich in California, and Socks figured it was easier to take the gold from men who had dug it up than to go prospecting for gold himself. So he’d bought a pair of pack mules and he was hunting.
Socks was used to hunting alone. In 1835, when he was eighteen years of age, he had drifted westward to St. Louis. There he joined an expedition of trappers heading into the Rocky Mountains. For the next decade, he’d lived in the mountains, wearing buckskins, living with the Indians, and sporting the fur cap that was the mark of the mountain man. In 1845, when beaver was just about trapped out, Socks had headed west, going along on an exploratory expedition to California. Then in 1849 he’d guided a wagon train full of emigrants along the trail west. After that, having had his fill of nursemaiding greenhorns and city folks, he reckoned he’d just stay in California for a time.
That’s how he’d come to be camping high in the hills, beside a lake with water as clear as the air. Hunting had been good. With his Hawkens rifle, he’d brought down three deer. He’d butchered them and hung the carcasses to bleed. That evening, as he lay in his bedroll, he listened to wolves howling.
On the way across the plains, the fools who had hired him shivered like women when the wolves howled, terrified by the wailing voices that sang to the moon. Socks didn’t mind the wolves. He’d shoot ’em if they came prowling around his camp, but otherwise he didn’t pay them no mind. He pulled his fur cap low over his ears and fell asleep listening to their singing.
The wolves knew Socks was there, of course. They could smell the smoke of his fire, the biscuits that he had made for dinner, the reek of his tobacco, the dried blood of the deer he had killed. But the pack had brought down a young doe that evening, and they were well fed. They had no reason to nose around the mountain man’s camp.
But Sarah was intrigued. The smells of his camp awakened memories. The woodsmoke and aroma of baked biscuits lured her close. Those were smells that reminded her of her mother, of camping with her family on the trail west.
Before dawn, when the pack was stirring, while Socks still slept, Sarah crept to the edge of his camp, drawn by curiosity. She prowled through the camp, moving as silently as any wild creature frightened by the presence of man. She had been with the wolves for four months, and she had come to move as quietly as they did, her moccasined feet noiseless on the pine needles that covered the ground. Beside the mountain man’s fire pit, she found a tin where he had put two biscuits away for breakfast, sealing them in the tin so the varmints wouldn’t get them.
Sarah could smell the biscuits inside the tin, but she could not get to them. Still moving quietly, she carried the tin away from the camp to the shore of the lake. Among the wolves, she had learned that it was best to take your food to a secluded spot and eat alone. Beside the still water of the lake, she pried open the tin.
These were biscuits that her mother would have scorned. Rather than baking them properly in a cast-iron Dutch oven, the mountain man had toasted them on a stone by the fire. They were burned on the outside, half-raw on the inside, tasting of wood-smoke and ash. As the sun rose, Sarah crouched by the lake and devoured them with gusto, eating even the blackened bits.
Socks woke at dawn. A thin mist hung over the lake water. The air was cold; the first sunlight touched the water with a glimmer of silver. As he watched, a fish jumped, and Socks smiled without moving in his bedroll. He might catch a mess of fish for breakfast, before packing up and heading down to the mining camps.
A movement on the shore of the lake caught his eye. Something grayish white, moving along the shore, where the way was flat and easy. He squinted at the shape, not quite believing his eyes.
A little girl was making her way along the lakeshore. She wore only a pair of moccasins and a grimy petticoat that had once been white. Her hair was a tangle of coppery curls. By the color of her hair, he knew that she wasn’t an Indian child.
As he watched, she crouched by the lake and put her head down to drink. She lifted a dripping face and wiped the water away with a careless hand. Then she bent her head to the water again, her eyes fixed on something in the shallows.
Socks was not a man given to flights of the imagination. It made no sense to him that a little white girl would be wandering alone in the wilderness, but he accepted the evidence of his eyes.
As she sat up, Socks saw a movement in the brush behind her.
He kept his eyes focused on that spot, until he saw the movement again. What he saw made him reach for the rifle that he kept, always ready, alongside his bedroll.
A grizzled, old wolf was crouching in the alpine laurel beside the lake. Ears up, the animal watched the little girl splashing in the water. Not ready to pounce just yet, Socks thought. In no hurry for his breakfast. The old villain had no reason to rush. Breakfast was there whenever he wanted it. The child was unprotected—easy prey.
No, Socks thought. She was not unprotected. Sitting up in his mess of blankets, smelling of deer blood, tobacco, and sweat, his fur cap on his matted hair, Socks was an unlikely hero. But he saw himself as a hero, as the child’s savior, rescuing her from the perils of the wilderness. Moving slowly to avoid drawing the eye of the wolf, he carefully loaded his rifle. The wolf did not move as Socks sighted on its head—a clear shot, an easy shot.
Sarah knew Omuso was behind her: she heard the wolf moving through the bushes and smelled his scent on the breeze. The others were on higher ground, away from the man’s camp.
Sarah was happy. Her stomach was full and the first rays of the morning sun were warm on her head. On the lake bottom, she had found a pretty white-quartz stone. She was going to show it to Omuso just as she had shown pretty pebbles to her mama, so long ago.
She was turning from the water when she heard the crack of a rifle shot. She smelled gun smoke and saw Omuso fall, his right eye suddenly gone, replaced by a bloody hole. She looked in the direction of the sound and saw the man, his rifle at his shoulder.
A memory—sudden, sharp and clear. She was holding a white pebble out to her mother when she heard the crack of gunfire. She looked toward the sound and saw a man with a rifle. Her mother fell whispering to her: “Run. Run and hide.”
Sarah ran. Her heart pounding, her legs pumping, she fled without looking back, through the brush and up into the trees, running to Wauna, to the pack, to safety. She took with her a valuable lesson. Men were dangerous; men killed without warning; men killed at a distance. She had seen this happen twice. She understood it now.
She got away for one simple reason: Socks did not sleep with his boots on. He had learned, in his first year of trapping, that his feet stayed warmer at night if he took off his boots, took off the socks that he had worn all day, and put on a pair of wool socks. His mother had knit those socks for him before he had left for St. Louis, and he had promised to wear them to keep his feet warm at night.
He had kept his promise, and when the socks his mother had lovingly knit for him wore out, he purchased another pair and continued the same routine. This routine was, of course, the reason for his nickname. In the community of mountain men, where bathing more than twice a year could get you a reputation as a dandy, Michael Day’s nightly changing of socks seemed the ultimate in fastidiousness. Each night, he put on sleeping socks; each morning, he put on his ordinary socks, which he washed every few weeks.
When Socks crawled from his bedroll to go to the rescue (or so he thought) of the little girl he stopped to change his socks and pull his boots on, giving Sarah a significant head start. There wasn’t a terrible rush, he reckoned. The wolf was dead. The little girl would recognize him as her savior and come when he called. So he could take a moment to put on his boots.
But the little girl didn’t come when he called. The wolf was dead, sure enough. A clean shot through the eye; a damn fine shot, he thought. But the little girl was gone. Vanished, leaving behind the prints of her moccasined feet in the sand by the lake.
Socks followed the little girl’s trail up the slope for a bit. He found sign of other wolves: tracks, tufts of fur in the grass where wolves had been sleeping, the gnawed bones of a deer kill. It looked like the little girl had run right to where the wolves were sleeping, but there was no indication that the animals had attacked her.
He followed her trail a little farther, calling as he went. “Rallo! Rallo! Little girl! Come back!”
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.”