Where the Lost Wander: A Novel(82)

Every day Washakie asks me if my woman is strong.

Every day I answer that she is.

I wish he wouldn’t ask. It makes me wonder exactly how strong she will have to be. He does not ask like he needs to know. He asks like he is trying to remind me, to make me say the words out loud. He asks me many things, and the conversations distract me from the snakes, hissing and writhing, so big and loud now that there is no room for anything else. I lie awake in my tent at night, among the tipis, convinced I will keep the families awake with the rattling. I rest because I must, but even in sleep my stomach is not free from the coils.

Washakie wants to know about my white father and my Pawnee mother. So I tell him. I talk and he listens, and then he presses for more. He is hungry to know, and I answer every question forthrightly, restricted only by my limited Shoshoni vocabulary.

“You were not raised by your people?” he asks, and I know he means the Pawnee.

“They did not like me. I was a two-feet. Pítku ásu’.”

He waits for more explanation.

“My mother brought me to my father. I never thought he liked me either, but maybe I was wrong. I don’t know anymore.”

“He was a good father?”

I am reminded of the time I asked Charlie if Dog Tooth was a good chief and his response: “What is a good chief?” What is a good father? I’m not sure I know.

“He never . . . shunned . . .” I’m not sure I am using the right word, but Washakie nods like he understands. “He never shunned me. He worked hard. Made sure I knew how to fight. And I am . . . loved.” It is an admission I have never made before, but I have come to believe it is true.

“My father was not one of the people,” Washakie says after a moment of silence. “I am a two-feet like you.”

“He was not Shoshoni?” I ask, surprised.

“He was Flathead. He died when I was a young boy. When he died, my mother returned to her people, the Lemhi Shoshoni, and I was raised Shoshoni.” He points to a woman riding an old horse. “That is my mother. Her name is Lost Woman. I am the only family she has left.”

I have noticed her before. She was with Hanabi by the Green River. But she keeps herself apart, and Washakie has made no move to introduce us. Hanabi rides beside her now, and the contrast between them is marked. Hanabi is young and straight, her hair heavy and dark. The woman beside her is bent, her hair is white, and she shares a weary long-suffering with the horse she rides.

“Why is she called Lost Woman?” I ask, my heart aching for her.

“It is what she has always been called.” He shrugs. “And that is what she is. A lost woman. She is lost in grief. A husband, a daughter, two sons. All gone. My brothers died not long ago. They were hunting in the snow along the hillside. The snow began to slide and fall, and they were buried in it. My mother went looking for them. She knew they had been buried. She dug all over the hill with her hands. She would not listen to reason when I begged her to stop. We found them when the snow melted.”



We move far more quickly than the wagons would have, but each day is torture. I am plagued with worry and strain, and the distance we must travel is not insignificant. We move steadily north, and though Washakie’s people seem eager for the Gathering, there is no sense of haste or hurry to arrive. We see some buffalo a ways off, but when the men yelp and want to hunt, Washakie shakes his head. It will take too much time to dry the meat and treat the hides, and we continue on. If there are a few resentful looks cast my way, I do not see them, and I am grateful. It is all I can do not to gallop ahead, to seek Naomi by myself, but I know how foolish that would be, how futile. And I endure the snakes.

“Someday we will all look like you,” Washakie says to me one day, almost a week since we left the Tobitapa. He has been morose and has not spoken to me all morning, though he insists I ride at his side. His sudden comment startles me.

“What do I look like?” I ask, not understanding his meaning.

“Like an Indian dressed as a white man.”

After a moment he continues. “The blood of the Indian and the blood of the white people will flow together. One people. I have seen it.” He does not sound happy about it. He sounds resigned, and I don’t know what to say.

I tell him about the turtle, about living on both the land and the water, like Naomi told me to do. He smiles, but he shakes his head.

“We will have to become entirely new creatures. Then we will all be lost people . . . like my mother.”





NAOMI


Beeya is excited. All the women are. We’ve quickened our step, and everyone is smiling and chattering. The men move ahead, scanning the wide valley and pointing as they argue. The chief—Beeya calls him Pocatello—has the final word, and the people spill down behind him as he chooses a spot where the ground is flat and the creek runs through it. This is not a temporary encampment; we have arrived.

The day is spent erecting wickiups and staking out territory. We are the first, but we are not the only. Another band comes in from the north midday. Another from the west not long after. Each stakes out a position in the valley, and by the end of the day there are easily a thousand lodges and twice that many horses and dogs. And they keep coming.

At nightfall, the celebrations begin. It is like the shrieking from the night I carried Wolfe into camp, but this is not mourning, and it goes on for hours. The leaders of each band make up the inner ring around their scalps, which are strung from small poles. The warriors dance around the leaders, and the women and children take the outside. Around and around, dancing and singing songs I have never heard and hope to never hear again. Beeya does not dance, but she enjoys herself, swaying and yelping softly, sitting at my side in the grass beyond the wide circle where all the activities take place.