Where the Lost Wander: A Novel(94)

We don’t talk about what comes next. She holds my hand when we sleep, and we’ve started to talk about small things—Shoshoni words and Shoshoni ways and how Hanabi and Lost Woman are teaching her how to prepare skins and dry meat and sew beads onto our clothes. She doesn’t talk about her family, and she doesn’t kiss me. I don’t press on either count. Her fire isn’t gone, and neither is her love. I can still feel it when I’m near her, the same heat that had her asking me to marry her because she needed to lie with me. But the fire is banked, and I don’t try to stoke it.

We travel east out of the valley instead of retracing our steps south. Washakie wants to hunt the buffalo before the herds move south and the cold sets in. We are moving into Crow territory, and Washakie sends out scouts as we hug the mountains and wind down between thick forests to the west and a wide plain to the east. A party of Washakie’s men scouts a Crow village several miles away, and when we’ve broken camp and headed out, they go back to the village to steal horses under the cover of darkness. Washakie says the same band stole fifty head from his people the winter before, and they’ve been waiting for an opportunity to recoup their losses. He says the men will not return with the stolen horses if they are successful but make a wide arc around us to keep the Crow from our trail. Then they will drive the horses to the Shoshoni lands and wait for us there.

The men who do not go on the raid are wistful and spend the next few days wondering aloud how many horses their brothers will steal and if the Crow will give chase. It inspires stories from past raids, to and from the Crow, and I am convinced the tribes steal from each other mostly for sport, though someone always seems to get wounded or killed in the process.

We come across a huge herd of antelope, and spirits are enlivened, including those of my horse. Dakotah gets to run again, and like in the race at the Gathering, he knows exactly what to do. We cut off a section of the herd and take turns running the poor beasts in circles until they are so spent they lie down in the grass and wait to be slain. There is no gluttony in the kill, and nothing is wasted. We take only what we can eat or pack and move on.

Three weeks after we leave the valley of the Great Gathering, we make camp at the edge of the Wind River Valley, the wide expanse of low plateaus, rolling grass, and blue sky before us, the peaks of the Wind River Range at our backs, looming but distant, unconcerned with the lives beneath their shadow. I know where we are. South Pass, the wide saddle of land that divides the continent, lies at the bottom of the range. We’ve come back to the Parting of the Ways. Little did we know where the path we took would lead.

Washakie says this is the place he loves most, the place where he spent most of his boyhood days. “My father is buried here. I will be buried here. It is my home,” he says simply. “We will stay here until the leaves are in full color. Then we will go east. We will winter where the springs run hot, even when the snow falls. Pocatello will not be far.”

The raiding party is already there, flush with victory and thirty of the Crow’s best horses. We tuck ourselves back against the spruce and fir, where the water winds through the valley and cuts away again, and the camp is protected from the open range. I spend one morning with Washakie and a handful of braves, scouting the herds and planning the hunts, and return at midday to find the women circled together, plucking pine nuts from their cones, their fingers fast but their conversation easy. Hanabi knows a few English words from her years with my family. She is rusty, and Naomi must speak slowly, but Hanabi tries.

“I was once Naomi, brother,” she says. “I understand her.”

She seems to, and I am grateful. Lost Woman is infinitely patient with her and doesn’t even try to speak. She just demonstrates, loves, and looks after. There is a stillness about them both, an unspoken communion, and Naomi is drawn to her. But Naomi is not among the women seeding pine cones, and she is not in the wickiup or among the horses. Lost Woman points to the stream, where it disappears into the forest, and tells me Naomi wanted to be alone.

“She is alone long enough. You should go,” Lost Woman says, shooing me toward the trees. I find Naomi in a dense copse of trees near the creek. She has removed her leggings, and her doeskin dress is hiked up around her thighs. She is washing blood from her pale legs.

“Naomi?” I’ve startled her, and she jerks upright, slipping on the rocks and landing on her bottom in the creek. She stays down, her dress bunched around her, her hands in her lap and her legs splayed.

“Naomi?” I don’t want to laugh, and I’m not sure she’s okay.

She looks up at me and tries to smile. A smile, eye contact. We’ve come that far at least. “I didn’t hear you. I tried to go a ways from camp so . . . so I could wash.”

I walk toward her, halting at the water’s edge.

“You’re bleeding.”

“Yes.” She nods. Her eyes are bright, but she’s not crying. “I’m bleeding. Finally. I was afraid.”

I don’t understand.

And then . . . I do. The realization weakens my legs and steals my breath.

“I was bleeding when we reached Sheep Rock. I haven’t bled since.”

“And we haven’t been together since.” My voice is as hollow as I feel.

“No. We haven’t,” she whispers. “I’ve been . . . waiting. I needed to know. To be sure.”

“ka’a,” I whisper, sickened. Angry. I sit down beside her in the water, not caring that it is cold or wet or that I am fully clothed.