Wild Instinct

We wrapped Magdalena in my sleeping blanket and took her to San Juan Creek and washed what was left of her. When she was clean we wrapped her in the blanket.

Bernardo wailed and I was not able to control my tears or the awful pounding of my heart that I thought might explode.

We carried Magdalena back home and there was a two-day fast and the dance of the dead, for which we paint our bodies in red and white pigments. Then the ceremony of fire.

When it was over, Father Serra allowed us to pour her ashes from a raft into the Pacific Ocean, five kilometers away. This is not how the Franciscans treat their dead.

I became sick for two days, with fever and pain and vomiting. I slept many hours and felt better.

Late one evening Father Serra brought me into his office at the mission and he prayed for me and for the eternal soul of my sister, whom, like me, Father Serra had baptized.

There was a wooden box on his desk. It was shaped as a coffin is shaped, but smaller. It was shiny in the candlelight.

He asked me to open it. Inside was a blunderbuss, which is a flintlock gun shorter than a musket. It has a flared muzzle for easier loading of balls or shot. Blunderbuss is taken from Dutch words meaning “thunder” and “container.”

Father Serra asked me to bring it to my shoulder.

“This is for El Diablo,” he said. “You need more than your bow and arrow against him.”

It was shorter than the soldiers’ muskets but very heavy. I raised it toward the office door and it was difficult to hold steady.

“Good, good,” said the father. “There is a fork rest in the box. It makes the gun accurate. This gun takes fifteen seconds to load, even if you are an expert. It is thunderously loud. It creates a white cloud with a strong smell. If you believe, God will help guide your ball.”

I set the gun back in the box, alongside the fork rest, which was polished oak and lustrous.

“You will only get one shot at El Diablo,” said Father Serra. “You must be close. Ten meters or less. You will kill him or he will kill you. He will only run at you, not away. The devil never runs away.”

In the candlelight Father Junípero Serra was small in his brown robe, and his tonsure shined and its frame of hair was soft, and his white face had the glow of an angel or a god.

“Thank you, Father.”

“The soldiers will give you instruction on loading and shooting tomorrow morning after Mass. I know you are considered a good warrior. And want to be a warrior-priest someday. God will be with you, Luis.”

Two days later, Bernardo and Water Dog and I were back in the mountains where we found Magdalena. We brought two more dogs, Brown Dog and Kajitca, which in Acjacheme means to attack or bite.

I felt no fear, only grief and a cold anger directed at El Diablo.

We lived in the mountains for six days, eating and thanking the deer that Bernardo killed with his silent arrows, and we left carcasses in a pile, to attract El Diablo. We hid in the bushes quietly, with sage rubbed on us to disguise our scent, Bernardo with his bow and arrows, I with the blunderbuss that I named Thunder Girl, and the fork rest erected for accurate shooting.

I imagined my one-shot kill. I prayed to God, Jesus, Mary, and to forbidden Chinigchinich.

I dreamed of the shot, and in the dream Magdalena, whole and living and beautiful again, steadied the fork rest.

Lions came on the first five evenings, but none carried away a deer. I believe one lion came twice, by the pattern of his coat. How many lions matters not, because none of them were as enormous as El Diablo had been described.

Looking down the barrel and using the sight, I aimed Thunder Girl at them, and she was steady on the rest.

Grizzlies watched us, following their powerful noses to the pile of deer but keeping their distance because of our dogs’ snarling attacks. Bears and dogs are mortal enemies. A large bear pursued Water Dog but Brown Dog and Kajitca pursued her, and she whirled upon them and chased them until she was tired and stood in the grass for a long while, then turned and crashed back into a stand of sycamores.

On the seventh morning El Diablo stood high on a ridge above us, approximately one-half kilometer away. Even at that distance his enormity was clear. And, just as the descriptions of him had claimed, he was lighter in color than other lions but his facial mask was very dark. When he yawned in the new sunlight, his fangs were white within the dark mask and very much bigger than I had foreseen.

The dogs were unaware.

He watched us with what appeared to be boredom and absolute calm. As if measuring us and our intents.

Then he vanished in the blink of an eye, only to reemerge a few minutes later, lower on the ridge, drawn by the odor of the deer, blending with the boulders, but closer to us by half.

And later again by half of that, as the sun continued to rise.

At noon he revealed himself again, closer, but still well above us, perhaps two hundred meters away. Much too far for Thunder Girl, even with the fork rest and Father Serra’s blessing.

The dogs caught El Diablo’s scent and scrambled up the steep hillside, frenzied but slowed by the boulders, only to return with dragging tongues and a visible sense of penance.

That evening we built another fire and lit candles in the darkness. El Diablo screamed down on us with the sound of a woman. I had heard this many times in my life but never this close. Our shamans and ritual specialists say this is the sound of tribesmen and women and children the lion has killed. This may be true but it sounded as if he was trying to say something to me. It was hard to identify what. Was he taunting me? Was he building his courage? Was he warning me? Or calling out to a mate? Or was this screeching, pitiful sound truly the voices of the dead? Magdalena?

The dogs curled near the fire and snarled at each other and looked ashamed of their fear.

Bernardo and I took turns sleeping but neither of us slept well. While one tried to sleep, the other sat on a big fallen oak branch that together we dragged near the fire, Thunder Girl primed and loaded and resting on the polished oak fork, pointed toward the ridge and the occasional hideous screams of El Diablo.

Things are often more true at first light.

I was on duty at sunrise, my body cold and buttocks numbly falling asleep on the log, Thunder Girl trained on the ridge.

The fire was almost gone and Bernardo and two of the dogs were snoring.

When I heard a sound in the dry leaves behind me, I realized I had made a foolish and terrible mistake.

I heard El Diablo snarl behind me and the dogs, too, and I sprung to the opposite side of the fork rest, lifted and reversed Thunder Girl, and got the flint ready to light the powder.

I saw El Diablo through the high tan grass that was his own color, well-hidden, his dark-tipped tail flipping left then right through the blades of grass. Then all three snarling dogs charged but stopped well short of the lion crouched in the brush, and Bernardo pulled up beside me with his bow drawn and his arms quivering and I waited for the lion to charge.

I did not wait long.

He launched high into the sky, front legs apart and out, his back legs trailing together, tail up, claws and teeth flashing, swiftly covering the distance.

Neither snarling nor roaring, he reached his greatest height, then dropped toward me with strange silence through the growling of the dogs, and I sparked the flint to the powder, hoisted Thunder Girl off the fork rest, and brought her to my shoulder.

It happened fast. His shadow fell upon me, and his great sprawled body descended, and I saw his face, past the muzzle of the blunderbuss, his eyes and the great open mouth framing his knives of teeth.

And with my front sight on that open mouth, I pulled the trigger.

The sound was truly thunderous.

Suddenly I was blinded by a thick white smoke from the burned gunpowder and its sulfurous smell.

El Diablo landed on me, but I broke his weight with my strong warrior legs, abandoned the gun, and with my hands hurled him off me to the ground.

I felt his claws slash my chest and arms.

He landed on his side but then righted himself and his legs shook and found no strength or coordination and his mouth was open still and with his tan eyes tearing into me I could see, from my now standing position, the great empty hole in the back of his head, a gaping, brainless cave.

He whirled in circles in the dirt like a drunken dancer, three circles one direction; three the other.

Then he stopped.

Bernardo jumped in and placed an arrow in the lion’s heart.

El Diablo’s tail tapped once and a spasm quaked his body and he went still.