The Girl from Stinkingwater Mountain

“What did he mean by that, Honey? You won’t marry me?” “Tommy, I can’t. It would not be fair. I don’t know who or what I am. There’s something back there that haunts me. Sometimes I wake up screaming. Sometimes I tear off my clothes, as if they are burning. Ask Daddy. Tell him I want him to tell you everything. I want you to know.” An hour later, Brand and Tommy sat under an oak tree. Brand paused after the account of the voices he heard at the site of the burned cabin. “It was as if she was reliving that scene when she was put out the cabin window. Her mother told her to run, and said she could not get out. "Another time, she told me that she had to know if her parents knew Jesus. She said she couldn’t escape until she knew. That they were trapped, somewhere. They would be trapped until she found out. Tommy, I’ve searched. I can’t find anything that will help her. We know that she came from that burned cabin. Our Paiute friend, Hawk, tracked her from there to where I found her. Her burned night dress was in a puddle near where the cabin window would have been. I’ve been to Juntura, and the storekeeper remembered her parents with a little girl. He did not recall any details, except they had been robbed, and traded a couple of things they still had for food. I went to Drewsey, and nobody there remembered anything about them. The cabin was between those two settlements. “Tommy, I’ve tried to convince her that she is who she is, even without knowing her past. But she is stuck on that point. She knows things, sometimes, but not for herself. It’s always for others. I was there when she told Hawk that Jesus is the Gate of Peace. She told him in his tribe’s language, even though she does not speak any words of it. As a child, she saved the apple crop. We had come here to the farm, and the apples were rejected, because they were wormy. She got that look you have seen, and said the little birdies needed homes. She did not know anybody here in the valley, but she said we should ask Muttering Mark. He made birdhouses. She danced around the trees with him and said they talked to each other with their minds. “That gives you a little insight into the girl you want to marry, Tommy. She’s tormented by a past she does not know. Her knowing looks at what is, and sometimes what is to come. It tells her nothing of what was, except as she relives that traumatic scene. She’s afraid to take you there.”