|
|
The
Wolf Girl of Devil's Riverby
Gary Humphreys |
The
story begins on the Chickamauga River in Georgia. John Dent was a trapper working
with his partner, Will Marlo. Marlo and Dent traded together for several seasons,
each year selling their hides jointly and splitting the profits. However, in 1833,
Dent met Mollie Pertul, a daughter from one of the neighboring farms, and fell
in love. Dent told Marlo he would not divide the profits according to their usual
arrangement but would sell his hides himself. Marlo was unhappy. Days later, they
engaged in a public argument, ending when Dent fatally stabbed Marlo.
Now
a fugitive, John fled west with Mollie, stealing off in secret and leaving her
parents to wonder. Months passed before Mollie penned a note to her parents, postmarked
from Galveston
during the autumn of 1834. |
'Dear Mother,
The
Devil has a river in Texas that is all his own
and it is made only for those
who are grown.
Yours with love
Mollie |
In 1835,
a group of American colonists, led by Dr. Charles Beale, were camped at Lake Espontosa,
near what is now Carrizo
Springs in southwest Texas. Half a mile away from the Beale group, John Dent
and his pregnant wife Mollie Pertul Dent, both from Georgia, had built a brush
cabin. Dent had come to trap beaver in the Devil's River area, north of the present
day Del Rio. The Dents were
to prove fortunate in their choice of a site distant from the lake. A band of
Comanche’s raided the main Beale camp and massacred most of the inhabitants, afterwards
throwing the bodies of the victims and their carts into the lake.
As Mollie
was approaching the end of her pregnancy, the couple was reluctant to travel despite
the danger of hostile Indians. But moved on to the beaver lake area on the Devil's
River. One night in May 1835, there was a severe thunderstorm and Mollie went
into labor. She appeared to be having problems with the birth so Dent decided
to ride westwards for help. He arrived at a Mexican goat ranch on the Pecos Canyon,
and told them desperately about his wife's condition, begging for someone to ride
back with him.
But as the Mexicans prepared their horses to leave there
was a furious crash of thunder and a bolt of lightning struck Dent from his horse
killing him instantly. After a considerable delay the goat herders mounted up
and followed Dent's directions. However, darkness fell before they had got over
the divide to Devil's River, thus delaying the search. Finally, at sunrise the
next morning they located the Dent's isolated cabin.
But what they found
outside the cabin, in an open brush arbor, was Mollie Dent lying dead, alone.
She had apparently died in childbirth, but there was no trace of the baby anywhere.
The child was never found, but fang marks on the woman's body and numerous wolf
tracks over the area made the goat herders naturally assume that the infant had
either been devoured or carried off by lobo wolves.
First
Sighting of the Wolf GirlBut this was just the beginning of the story.
Ten years later, In 1845, a boy living at San Felipe Springs (Del
Rio) reportedly saw 'a creature, with long hair covering its features, that
looked like a naked girl' attacking a herd of goats in the company of a pack of
lobo wolves. The story was ridiculed by many, but still managed to spread back
among the settlements. Around a year after this incident, a Mexican woman at San
Felipe claimed she had seen two large wolves and an unclothed young girl devouring
a freshly killed goat. She approached close to the group, she said, before they
saw her and ran off.
The woman noticed that the girl ran initially on
all-fours, but then rose up and ran on two feet, keeping close to the wolves.
The woman was in no doubt about what she had seen, and the scattering of people
in the Devil's River country began to keep a sharp watch for the girl. There were
similar reports by others in the region during the following year and Apache stories
told of a child's footprints, sometimes accompanied by hand prints, having been
found among wolf tracks in sandy places along the river. A hunt was organized
to capture the 'Lobo (or Wolf) Girl of Devil's River' as she had now become known,
comprising mainly Mexican vaqueros. On the third day of the hunt the naked girl
was sighted near Espontosa Lake running with a pack of wolves.
The cowboys
managed to separate the girl from her wolf companions and cornered her in a canyon,
where she fought like a wildcat clawing and biting frantically to keep her freedom.
They finally managed to lasso her to keep her still, but while they were tying
her up she began to make frightening, unearthly sounds somewhere between the scream
of a woman and the howl of a wolf. As she howled, the monster he-wolf from whom
she'd become separated appeared and rushed at her captors. One of the cowboys
reacted quickly and shot it dead with a pistol, at which the wolf girl fell into
a faint. Securely bound, the men were now able to examine the girl and noted that
despite a body covered in hair and her wild mannerisms, her appearance was human.
Her hands and arms were well muscled but not out of proportion, and she lacked
the ability to speak, only making deep growling noises. She moved smoothly on
all fours, but was rather awkward when made to stand up straight.
The girl
was put on a horse and taken to the nearest ranch, an isolated two-roomed shack
amid the desert wilderness. She was put in one of the rooms and unbound, the cowboys
offering her a covering for her body and food and water, but she refused, cowering
in the darkest corner. They then left her alone for the night, locking the door
and posting a guard outside. The only other opening in the room was a small boarded
up window.
Howling CriesBut as night fell the cowboys heard terrifying
howls coming from the wolf girl's room. The strange cries carried through the
still night air, unsettling her captors and soon finding answers from among the
wolf pack in the wilderness beyond the shack. Soon there were long deep howls
coming from all sides as the pack drew closer to the house, and occasionally strange
howling screams from the girl answering them from inside her dark room. Suddenly
the large pack of wolves charged into the corrals, attacking the goats, cows and
horses and bringing the cowboys outside shooting and yelling to drive them away.
In all the confusion the wolf girl managed to tear the planks from the window
and escape into the night. The howls soon abated and the wolves crept back into
the wilderness. The next day not a trace of the girl could be found.
Though
there were a few unverified reports in the following years of a young hair-covered
girl being seen with a wolf pack in the area, no one ever came in close contact
with her. Meanwhile gold had been discovered in California and westward travel
had increased significantly. In 1852 a surveying party of frontiersmen searching
for a new route to El Paso
were riding down to the Rio Grande at a bend far above the mouth of Devil's
River. They were almost at the water's edge when they saw at close range,
sitting on a sand bar, a young woman suckling two wolf cubs. Suddenly she saw
them, quickly grabbed the pups and dashed into the breaks at such a rate that
it was impossible for the horsemen to follow.
The girl would have been
seventeen years-old that year. After that she disappeared into the country side
forever. During the 1850’s and 60”s reports from soldiers at Camp Hudson, Texas
that they would hear howling and cries at night. It is impossible now to know
what became of Mollie Dent's daughter.
© Gary Humphreys - April
4, 2011 Guest Column
Related
Topics:
Texas Ghosts, Haunted Places
& Texas Folklore | | |
