Where the Lost Wander(81)

Hanabi raises her worried eyes to mine, waiting for my response.

“You understand?” Washakie asks, and now his voice is almost gentle.

“It won’t be just Pocatello and his men who suffer,” I say, understanding more than I’m willing to admit.

He nods. “Newe.” The people. “They will all pay.”

I cover my eyes with my hands, the way Will did, trying to erase the horrors he’d seen.

“Is your woman strong?” Washakie asks, still gentle.

“Yes,” I whisper. “She is very strong.”

“Then we will go and get her.”





NAOMI


The man who took Wolfe from my arms and gave her to his wife is named Biagwi. He is the only one who did not kill, but I wish he had. I wish he had killed me. I think the one who dragged me into his lodge by my hair is Beeya’s son. His name is Magwich. And he killed Pa.

That’s how I identify them: the one who took me and Wolfe. The one who killed Pa. The one who killed Warren. The one who stabbed Homer Bingham, and the one who took his scalp. I didn’t see Ma die. I didn’t see Elsie die, but I know who carries their scalps too. I know who burned the wagons. One of the men is their chief, but I do not know his name.

We walk all day. We go where wagons would never go, moving north. The morning of the second day we walk within a mile of high white adobe walls surrounded by circled wagons and clustered lodges, and I realize with a start that it must be Fort Hall. I wonder what they would do if I started to run toward the wagons. Would Magwich chase me on his horse? Would their chief put an arrow in my back? That would not be so bad, and maybe I would get away. But I cannot leave Wolfe, and I keep walking. We are too far for anyone to notice a white woman in the tribe, and I am dressed like an Indian.

Beeya took my yellow dress and brushed my hair with a block of wood bristled like a pine cone before braiding it down my back. My dress was in filthy tatters, but I was very angry with her when I discovered it was gone. The pale doeskin dress and leggings she gave me to wear are too warm for August, and the sun beats down on my face.

We are moving toward something. We are going somewhere. We have not made a permanent camp for days, and we don’t seem to be following a herd. Beeya has loaded me down like a pack mule, and she is always at my side. Beeya isn’t her name. It is the word for mother. Pia? Beeya? I can’t hear the difference. She is mother to Magwich, and now she considers herself mother to me. I understand when she points to Biagwi’s wife, who carries Wolfe upon her back, his white face and pale hair in stark contrast to the dark papoose.

“Weda beeya,” Beeya says, pointing, insisting. “Beeya.” She is telling me the woman, whose name is Weda, is now Wolfe’s mother.

I think she is trying to reassure me, to tell me he is being taken care of, but I cannot be grateful. I shake my head. “No. No Beeya,” I say.

Beeya wants me to draw for her, and I do, but I feel no joy in it. I have pulled every one of my old drawings from my book, every beloved face, and put them in my satchel. I leave only the blank sheets behind. I’m afraid Beeya will take it to show the other women or her sons, and I can’t lose the pictures. I’m afraid Magwich will toss it in the fire when I displease him. He is afraid of the color of my eyes and slaps me when I watch him. So I don’t watch him. I track him from the corner of my eye. He does not have a woman. Maybe he did. I only know that Beeya lives in his wickiup and takes care of him, and as long as I don’t look at him, he leaves me alone.

One night, while the men sit in the chief’s lodge, Beeya sits me among the women with my book and my pencil. She is very proud. Very excited. I don’t understand anything that is said, and no one understands me. It’s been five days, and it feels like five minutes. It feels like five years. Like five hours, like five decades. A part of me is waiting, and a part of me is dead.

I embrace the lifeless girl, the one who does not yearn for John or talk to Ma, the one who does not worry about my brothers. The lifeless girl walks and works and draws faces that I do not remember moments after I finish. Lifeless girl watches Weda feed Wolfe from her breasts and doesn’t flinch; I only wonder where Weda’s real baby has gone. Maybe he is with Ma.





17





DEER LODGE VALLEY


JOHN


Washakie tells me the river is called the Tobitapa. We leave it in the morning. The Shoshoni travel with the skins and poles for tipis, but when they reach the Gathering Place, they will build their wickiups, the dome-shaped shelters covered in skins and sometimes brush for the longer stay. The Gathering lasts weeks at a time. When it is done, they will hunt buffalo one more time before they go to the winter range. It takes us days to reach the Snake River—the Shoshoni call it the Piupa—and I help the women make rafts from the bulrushes to get everything across. Some of the men ask if all Pawnee work like women.

“Only the good ones,” I say. Hanabi says I work as much as two squaws, which only makes them laugh harder.

Washakie sat in council with his war chiefs the night I arrived. I don’t know what was said when I left. I told my story sitting among them, and then they asked me to leave them alone to talk. I did not point fingers of blame or mention Pocatello, the Gathering, or the promise I made Chief Washakie and the promise he made me. I left that up to him. Hanabi tells me that even though the family group they travel with is small—250 people and seventy wickiups—Washakie is head chief over many bands of Shoshoni, and they will listen to him.