Where the Lost Wander(89)

“We buried your ma and your pa and Warren. We buried Homer and Elsie. And Will sang a song. We looked after them, the best we could.” He says nothing about Elsie’s baby, and I cannot ask. I cannot speak of the cries and the screams and the burning wagon. I cannot.

“I promised those boys I would bring you back. And I promised them I would find them again, no matter what. They need you, Naomi. I need you. But I will do whatever you want me to do. For as long as it takes. I will stay with you until you’re ready to go. Until we find a way to get Wolfe back.”





JOHN


I want to pack my mules and go. I want to put Naomi on Samson’s back and leave, to get as far away from Pocatello and his band as I can, but when the morning comes, the eastern sky changing from black to smudges of gray and gold, I gather the blankets, the waterskin, and the food that Naomi wouldn’t eat, and we walk back to the city of strangers, to the boy she won’t leave. I have no plan. No course of action. But we return.

She is so quiet. She walks by herself, her arms wrapped around her stomach, her eyes forward, but when we reach the creek, she scans the clustered camps until she finds what she is seeking. Her shoulders relax a little, like she feared Pocatello and his people had fled in the night. When we reach Washakie’s camp, the women are already stirring. Hanabi and Lost Woman sit in front of Washakie’s lodge. Hanabi is braiding her hair. Lost Woman is stoking the fire. They see us coming and do not pause, but their eyes search our faces. My tent still squats like a small white flag among the skin-covered wickiups. My mules—two, four, six of them—still mill close by, grazing among the sea of ponies.

“Brother, Naomi . . . come. Sit,” Hanabi urges, pushing her braid over her shoulder as she rises, hands beckoning. “We will cook for you.”

Lost Woman takes the blankets from my arms, and I reach for Naomi. She flinches when my hand circles her arm, and I release her immediately.

“They want us to sit with them,” I say.

“Not now,” Naomi whispers. “Is that yours?” She points toward my tent. When I nod, she hurries toward it and crawls inside.

“Come, brother,” Hanabi says softly, her hand light on my shoulder, and I comply, sinking down beside the fire. My limbs ache with fatigue. I did not sleep. I held Naomi all night, yet she flinches when I take her arm.

“I thought you would be gone before I woke,” Hanabi says. “I am glad you are not.”

“She can’t leave him,” I confess, hoarse. Raw. Hopeless. “And I can’t make her go. If I do . . .”

“She will be lost forever,” Lost Woman says.

“She will be lost forever,” I whisper.

“Then you will stay,” Hanabi says. “You will stay with us.”

“But . . . I have nothing,” I say. It is a million times more complex than that, but she has taken me by surprise.

Hanabi frowns. “What is nothing? You have mules. You have your woman. We will build a wickiup. You will hunt. You have all things.”

“You will stay,” Lost Woman agrees, nodding.





19





THE RACE


JOHN


I sleep beside Naomi for a few hours in my tent, but I am restless and troubled, and I rise without waking her. She is huddled on her side, her arms tucked and her head bowed like a bird in a storm. I wash myself in the creek and tend to my animals, who have little need of me now. They greet me and let me rub their necks and scratch their noses but resume their grazing as soon as I stop. I slide a rope over the dun’s neck, a pang in my chest, but he comes along without resistance, clopping along behind me. He thinks we are going to run. But I can’t run, not away, not now, and despite what Hanabi said, there are things we need.

Naomi has nothing but the garb she is dressed in. She doesn’t have her book or her satchel. When I asked her where it was, she said Magwich gave it away.

“The scarred warrior liked my pictures,” she said, as though every word took effort. When I pressed her, she just shook her head and whispered, “They’re gone, John.”

I don’t know how I will be received; I am a stranger, a Pani daipo, but when I enter the clearing, I am regarded with suspicion but no fear. I have the last of my tobacco, a bit of ribbon, and a pouch of beads and buttons I can trade. And I have three mules and the dun. The money in my bags won’t get me anywhere. Not here.

I search the men on horses and those making bets for the warrior with an obvious scar. It doesn’t take me long. The man is seasoned but not old, an obvious leader, but not a chief. A thick, ridged scar cuts across the left side of his forehead, over the bridge of his nose, and down his right cheek, ending just below his ear, dividing his face in two. He is a collection of hard lines—his hair, his limbs, his back, his scar—and he sits astride a gray roan who shimmies and dances, wanting to run. While I watch, the race begins, a gun blast that makes the ponies bolt, fifty riders running at full speed down the length of the clearing. A woman and her papoose narrowly miss getting trampled, and one pony bucks and writhes down the course, sending his rider soaring. When he slowly rises, his arm is bent the wrong way, but the race—and his horse—continues past a break in the encampments, over the creek, and back again. It ends in the clearing where it all began, the yipping and yelping like coyotes in a frenzy.