Mountain men say that wolves howl like devils, like banshees, like the lost souls in hell. They say the sound is dreadful, terrifying, unimaginably frightening. They shiver when they hear the wailing of the wolves, touched by a chill of the spirit. These men huddle by their fires, fearing the darkness of the mountains that surround them, fearing the wilderness that they hope to tame.
Surrounded by howling wolves, Sarah stared up at the night sky, mesmerized by the flashing lightning. The song of the wolves filled her with a strange feeling, a sense of urgency that made her heart pound faster. This feeling did not come with words—she had few words. But she remembered the touch of a wet cloth on her face, her mother’s hand stroking her hair, her father’s low voice singing her a lullaby, wordless memories that filled her with sorrow and passion.
When Wauna lifted her head to howl again, Sarah turned her face skyward and joined in with a wild young cry, a high note that rose above the others. If any mountain men had been listening, they might have wondered what new terror had joined the pack, a frightening creature with the shrill voice of a child. But there were no men to hear. Sarah clutched the neck of her adopted mother and howled, her face wet with tears and rain.
3 A CLEVER VILLAIN
“The calamity that comes is never the one we had prepared ourselves for.”
—Mark Twain
THE MINERS FROM SELBY FLAT were delayed by the storm. By the time the pounding rain let up, night had fallen. They left town at first light, but it was a long and muddy trail from Selby Flat to the McKensie’s camp on Grizzly Hill. Beside the South Fork of the Yuba River, the rain had washed out the trail and the men had to climb high on the riverbank to make a new one.
Late in the afternoon, they reached the canvas tent where Rachel lay. Her body was still wrapped in the quilt, as Max had left her. The men stood beside the creek, surveying the wreckage that surrounded the tent. Now that they had reached their goal they were uncomfortable and uncertain of how to proceed.
“I came through here last Friday,” Jasper said. “I must have seen them just before the Injuns got them.” He frowned down at the quilt-wrapped body, his jaw set in a grim line. “I talked to her husband; I didn’t talk to her, didn’t see the girl. If I’d been a little later, maybe I could have helped.”
Henry Johnson, a beardless youngster of eighteen, awkwardly patted Jasper’s shoulder. “We’ll do what we can for them now.”
Jasper shook his head, as if shaking off his sorrowful thoughts, then glanced up at the hills, down at the valley. “We can divide into teams,” he suggested. “Each team can take an area and search for the girl.”
“Her body, more likely,” murmured Johnny Barker. “Or what’s left of it.” He’d been a trapper in the Rockies before corning to California, and he had no illusions about the child’s chances.
“If we find her body, we’ll give her a Christian burial, along with her mama and papa,” Jasper said solemnly.
“If it was Injuns, they might have taken her captive,” suggested Henry. “I’ve read about that.” Henry had arrived in Selby Flat just a month before, having come to California by ship from Boston. Before taking that voyage, he had bought every book about California and the West that he could find, compiling a library that included scholarly accounts of exploratory expeditions, practical advice for travelers, matter-of-fact descriptions of military campaigns, and lurid novels that abounded with Indian captives and beauteous Indian maidens. On the ship, he read them all, amassing a storehouse of information and misinformation. “Many Western tribes take captives and raise them as slaves.”
“Never heard of the Diggers doing that,” Barker observed. Like most of the miners, he held the tribes native to California in contempt, regarding them as dirty beggars and savages. “If they didn’t kill her, then the weather and the wolves did.”
“Enough jawing,” Jasper said. “I’ll search that way.” He waved a hand up the trail. “Max, why don’t you give me a hand? We can rendezvous back here.”
The men split up, each taking a different area to search. Max followed Jasper up Grizzly Hill, on the trail that led to the town of Humbug. Where the slope leveled off a bit, Jasper stopped and let Max catch up.
“I just couldn’t keep talking about the little girl like that,” Jasper said. He was looking out over the valley. “I keep thinking about her being lost out here, all by herself.” He shook his head. “By the sound of her mama’s letter, she’s too young to get far. Too young to talk, most likely.”
“Probably knows a few words,” Max said. “She can walk, so it’s likely she can talk some.”
Jasper shot him a curious look. “You have children?” Max shook his head, denying the past.
Jasper shrugged. “She’ll know her name, then.”
Max nodded. “She’ll know her name.”
From some reason, Max did not like this man. It was nothing he could put his finger on; the man had done nothing wrong. In fact, he had done many admirable things—rallying the miners to form a search party, encouraging the men as they made their way on the muddy trail, insisting that they search the area carefully, though the odds that the child had survived were slim. But there was something shifty about Jasper—he stared into space rather than meeting Max’s eyes.
But perhaps it was nothing. Max was a short man, small-boned and wiry, and Jasper was tall and broad-shouldered. Max felt ill at ease in crowds and Jasper seemed to be a natural leader. He was younger and stronger than Max. Perhaps it was a touch of envy, Max thought, the simple jealousy that the weak feel for the strong, the timid feel for the confident.
“Let’s call her name as we look,” Jasper suggested, turning to continue up the trail. “Maybe she’ll hear us and come out.”
Max followed the big man up the mountain. “Sarah,” Jasper called as he walked. “Sarah, come out.”
After an hour of searching, they stopped to rest in a small clearing, where a lightning-struck pine raised its blasted branches to the sky. The sun was low in the west, and Max was weary. For two days, he had been traveling without much rest.
“She couldn’t have come this far,” Jasper said. “We’d best head back.”
From the clearing, the main trail continued to the northeast, but a small trail, worn by deer, most likely, branched off to the east. “We should check down there,” Max said.
“You’re tired. I’ll take a look, while you rest a spell,” Jasper suggested.
Max leaned back against the trunk of the pine, closing his eyes for a moment. He listened to Jasper’s footsteps as the man made his way down the trail. “Sarah,” Jasper called. “Sarah. Are you there?” Jasper’s voice faded in the distance.
Out of Max’s sight, Jasper Davis smiled, happy to leave the other man behind. “Sarah,” he called. “Come here, Sarah.”
He had been hard-hit when Max had read Rachel’s letter. What bad luck that he had missed the child.
He reached the wolf den where he had hidden the gold. “Sarah,” he called again, just in case Max could still hear him. “Where are you, Sarah?”
He glanced behind him to make sure that Max had not followed him, then lay on the rocky ledge in front of the den and reached inside to feel a corner of the strongbox. He stood and dusted himself off, glancing at the bushes where he had hidden Arno’s body. The bodies of the wolf pups and the wolf that had been guarding them still lay by the den. Everything was just as it should be.
Jasper smiled, thinking of how cleverly he had set up the stagecoach robbery. Over a bottle of whiskey, he had made a deal with the stagecoach guard, a man who was unhappy with his job and his salary. The bargain was simple: When Arno and Jasper appeared in the stage road, demanding the gold shipment, the guard would make sure that his shots went wild. In return, he’d get a fifth of the loot and Arno and Jasper would split the remainder.
The guard had kept his part of the bargain. Arno and Jasper appeared in the stagecoach road, blocking the way with their horses and demanding the gold shipme
nt. The guard’s shot missed the two of them—just as they had agreed. But Jasper’s aim was accurate: He hit the guard in the heart and killed him instantly. And he and Arno got away clean with fifty thousand dollars in gold.
Jasper smiled down at the bushes that hid Arno’s body. Not a very bright man, Arno.
“You nailed that guard good and proper,” Arno had said cheerfully as they rode away. “He sure looked surprised.” “He certainly did,” Jasper agreed. “That he did.”
Together, they rode into the mountains, to the wolf den that Jasper had located earlier. Jasper shot the wolf that guarded the den, pulled the squirming pups from the safety of the den and slit their throats. Arno helped Jasper lift the strongbox of gold from his horse.
“I’ll be hiding my share of the gold here,” Jasper had said. Arno had laughed at that. All the way up the trail he’d been talking about how he would spend his share of the money, about the fine whiskey he would drink and the fancy women he would buy.
Jasper had known all along that he couldn’t let Arno have any of the money. Arno was a fool at the best of times, and a drunken fool more often than not. Arno would lead the law back to Jasper, just as surely as he’d squander his share of the gold. He would start bragging to the first bartender who poured him a drink, to the first dance-hall girl he slept with.
Jasper was squatting beside the strongbox when Arno said, “I reckon I’ll take my share now.” Without a word of warning, Jasper had lifted his pistol and shot Arno through the heart. Arno barely had time to look surprised before he tumbled over dead.
Then Jasper had opened the box and transferred a few handfuls of gold dust from one of the big bags into his own pouch. It would be unsafe to take more—any man who suddenly started spending freely would be suspected of the robbery. He closed the strongbox and shoved it into the den, where it would be safely hidden. He tumbled Arno’s body into the bushes.
Now, standing on the rocky ledge in front of the wolf den, Jasper felt happy and secure. No one had disturbed his gold, and no one would. Sarah McKensie was surely dead. The odds of a child surviving one night in the wilderness were slim—and it had been four days since he did her parents in. That child would be no trouble to him. She couldn’t tell the miners that Jasper Davis had gone up the mountain with Arno and a box of gold—and he had come back alone. She could not tell them that he had murdered her parents so that they could not betray his secret.
He was smiling when he turned his back on the wolf den, heading back up the trail to where he had left Max. “Sarah,” he called as he walked. “Come out, little Sarah.” By the time he reached the clearing where Max waited, his face was set in a grim expression.
Max opened his eyes and saw Jasper coming up the trail. “You found nothing?” Max asked.
“Nothing. Let’s go back to camp. Maybe someone else has found her.”
The other men had been equally unlucky. No sign of the child or her body. By the light of the setting sun, the miners used William’s shovel to dig a grave. They buried Rachel and her husband together in the valley and marked the spot with a cross constructed of two oak branches lashed together with rope. Over the grave, Henry murmured a few words from the Bible.
They had done what they could, Max thought. The child was gone. Johnny Barker thought she had been devoured by wolves; Henry held to his theory of Indian capture. One way or the other, she had vanished.
As the sun set, Max sat beside a boulder—the very same boulder that Rachel had used as a writing desk—and sketched the valley, the creek running through the meadow, the oak trees and grasses. Henry Johnson had gathered a bouquet of poppies and placed it by the cross. The orange flowers caught the golden light of the setting sun and seemed to glow, as if illuminated from within. The cross at the head of the grave cast a long shadow in the grass. An acorn woodpecker flitted from an oak tree to the upright of the cross, paused for a moment, then flew away in a flash of black-and-white wings.
Max penned the sketch in careful detail. He would send a letter to Audrey North, the woman to whom Rachel McKensie had been writing. From Audrey North’s letters to Rachel, he had gathered that the women had been sisters. Perhaps, he thought, Rachel McKensie’s sister would take some comfort in knowing that Rachel had been buried in a beautiful place.
The others made camp on the far side of the valley at a goodly distance from the grave and the McKensies’ camp. When the sun set, Max joined the others by the campfire.
It was late the next day when they reached Selby Flat.
Rain had begun falling in the morning, a persistent drizzle that soaked through Max’s wool felt hat in the first hour and his coat in the second. The trails were slick with mud and treacherous, and it was a long, slow journey back to town.
Mrs. Selby met them at the entrance to the hotel. Drenched from the rain and chilled to the bone, the men trooped into the bar, long-faced and weary. Max was among the first to enter.
“No sign of the little girl,” Max told Mrs. Selby. He described their search, then shook his head despondently. “All we could do was to give her mother and father a decent burial, then come on back.”
“You did your best,” Mrs. Selby said. “No one can ask for more than that.” She patted Max’s shoulder.
“I thought I’d write a letter,” he said. “To her sister back home. Let her know what happened.”
Max hung his hat and coat by the fire that burned at one end of the hall. The space in front of the fire was crowded with boots, and the room stank of steam and sweat and drying socks.
He found a table at the back of the room near one of the gaps in the walls that served as windows. The dreary late-afternoon light that shone through the calico curtain gave that table the best lighting of any table in the house. Turning his collar up against the cold draft that blew through the opening, he settled down with his notepad and pencil to compose a letter to Mrs. Audrey North of New Bedford, Massachusetts. He had the address from letters he had found by the tent. It was difficult, but he knew that it had to be done. Since he had discovered the bodies, he felt that it was his place to do it.
Dear Mrs. North,
It is with a sorrowful heart that I must write to tell you that a tragedy has befallen your sister and her family. There is no way to soften this news, and so I will state the facts directly. Your sister and her husband have been murdered by unknown assailants and their daughter Sarah is missing and most likely dead in the mountains.
I was returning from prospecting on Grizzly Hill when I passed the place where your sister’s family had camped. There I found a terrible scene of destruction. Unknown persons had shot your sister and her husband and had wantonly destroyed much of their property. There was no sign of the child, Sarah, that your sister mentions in her letter.
A group of miners from the nearby encampment of Selby Flat have thoroughly searched the area, hoping that divine providence had somehow protected the innocent child from harm. Alas, we have found nothing. Some have suggested that Indians might have carried the child away, but that seems unlikely. I believe that the child is dead and that her body has been carried off by wolves.
I can give you no information about who perpetrated this terrible crime. Some suspect Indians, but there is no proof that the savages were involved. We have done our best to give your sister and her husband a Christian burial and we have said a prayer for Sarah, that she, too, may rest in peace.
It might comfort you to know that your sister’s last thoughts were of you. I enclose a letter that I found beside her tent. I also enclose a sketch that I made of the valley where your sister died.
He was finishing this line when Mrs. Selby returned to the table, having bustled about and made sure that all the miners were cared for. While she read the letter, Max took out his sketch of the gravesite.
Mrs. Selby wiped away a tear with a corner of her apron. She returned the letter to him and peered over his shoulder at the sketch. “That’s lovely,” she said.
Accepting th
e letter from Mrs. Selby, he wrote a final line. “You have all my sympathy at this time of sorrow.” He could think of nothing more to say, no words that could make this tragedy any less painful to Rachel’s sister. He signed his name and folded the note and his sketch of the valley around Rachel’s half-written letter.
“I’ll send it with the next stage,” Mrs. Selby said. “Such sad news for a sister to hear. But I’m sure your sketch will be a comfort to her.”
4 WANTED
“A man should not be without morals;
it is better to have bad morals than none at all.”
—Mark Twain’s Notebook; Mark Twain
FOR THE NEXT FEW WEEKS, the miners of Selby Flat continued speculating about the robbers who had held up the stage and about the villains who had killed Rachel McKensie and her family. The murders were generally blamed on Indians or Mexicans. Arno’s continued absence made him a favorite for the robbery. The stage company offered a reward for the recovery of the gold, but no one came forward to claim it.
Without a hint of shame, Jasper Davis speculated and discussed the murders with the others. He felt no guilt, no remorse.
Jasper Davis was an extremely intelligent man with no conscience. The youngest of six boys, he had been born on a hard-scrabble dirt farm in the hills of Tennessee. His mother, exhausted by the needs of the farm and the demands of her boys, had died two years after his birth, leaving the toddler to the indifferent care of his older brothers and drunken father.
Jasper had grown up hungry. His father was an indifferent farmer; his brothers were wild boys who helped on the farm only when threatened with beating. There was never enough food for everyone. At mealtime, he got what was left when his brothers were done—never enough to satisfy his growling stomach.