Tales from the Journey of the Dead: Ten Thousand Years on an American Desert

2. The Wild Man

8 2. The Wild Man He was a remnant of the Old West. Like cactus and coyote, like rattlesnake and mountain lion, he belonged to this harsh desert. A shadowy, elusive figure, the Wild Man wandered one of the most desolate wildernesses in the continental United States. For his entire adult life he lived outside in the open air of the Jornada del Muerto. Most who remember him say he was a skinny beanpole of a man who dressed in rags and buckskins, in wool and rubber. He wore a combination of hand-me-downs and natural objects. His denim trousers were always slashed to faded, blue shreds by thorns and rocks. At the bottom of his trousers he often lashed a hunk of old automobile tire. The rubber served to add an extra sole to his ancient boots and to protect his lower legs from the multitude of stings, stabs, and poisons that his unforgiving desert home provided. He always wore a hat. He carried all of his belongings in a hand-fashioned pack made from materials found easily enough in cattle and goat country: a burlap bag and some rope. In the burlap pack were all of his worldly possessions: a blanket, a few shreds of extra clothing, and – if he was lucky – a couple of cans of food. He always carried a jug of water, often tied to the end of a yuccastalk walking stick and slung over his shoulder. He was a tramp, a traveler. The Wild Man spent more than thirty years on the Jornada del Muerto and the rugged San Andres range of its eastern flank. He wandered from ranch to ranch, from cow camp to cow camp, from mountain to plains, from canyon to arroyo. Only one night in his three decades of life on the Jornada did he ever sleep under a roof. The Wild Man 9 Fugitive or broken hearted, outlaw or desert rat, what turmoil of youth could have thrown a man so far from his fellow beings? It doesn’t matter which old-timer you talk to – there are dozens of eyewitnesses – just about every ranch wife, cowboy, or schoolteacher who once lived on the great open land of the Jornada remembers the San Andres hermit. Here is what remains of his life story. The Wild Man was born around 1890 and was last seen alive a few days before the mushroom cloud from the world’s first atomic bomb sprang up from the dry desert plains he called home. The oldest account of him is from the early 1930s, but the woman who remembered him from those days said by then he’d already been roaming the area ‘‘for many, many years.’’ He never talked about himself much, and when he did, the stories never seemed to match up. He wandered into Roy and Dixie Tucker’s spread one day, asking for food. He had leaned against a corral and watched the rancher’s horses. Then he said, ‘‘My boss used to have mares like that in Canada when I worked on a farm up there.’’ He told them that he was from Canada, where he had worked before drifting south. Dixie was curious; she prodded the Wild Man for details. ‘‘My boss left on a two-week vacation and when he came back, I left,’’ was all he said. Once, when he wandered in for food at another rancher’s place, he said that he had been born in Kansas and had run away from home when he was very young. Others said he had worked ranches in Wyoming and Montana in his early years. One story has him in trouble with the law. In the 1910s a team of two bank robbers robbed several New Mexico banks. One of the bandits had been killed, but the other was never found. Some people believe the missing man was the Wild Man. Others speculate that he was involved in some illicit trade, smuggling something up from Mexico into the States. He traveled only north or south up the long spine of the Jornada and its mountains. He never moved east or west. When he was moving south, they say, he was 10 The Wild Man visible to the point of distraction, but when he was traveling north he was reclusive and secretive. Still others say that he fought in World War I, the bloody horror that...