Where the Lost Wander

by Harmon, Amy

  “Ma says she’s painting for them. There’s a whole big line,” Will adds. He doesn’t sound the slightest bit concerned.

  I stow my packages, including the gifts for Naomi, in Abbott’s wagon and hurry up the hill, trying not to worry. It is not my business. I am not her keeper or her husband or her father. But I’m afraid for her and silently curse her mother for leaving her alone among strangers.

  But she is not alone. Wyatt sits beside her outside the biggest lodge, half-breed children skipping around them with dogs nipping at their heels. An Indian woman swats at the dogs and points for the children to go play somewhere else after one trips over the items Wyatt seems to be in charge of collecting. As I watch, a squaw wrapped in a brown blanket sits down in front of Naomi, her legs crossed, her face solemn. Naomi hands her a looking glass, the one I saw hanging from the willow frame inside Warren’s wagon when I was laid low. The woman studies her face and smiles, nodding. I wonder with a start if she’s ever seen her likeness before.

  Naomi sketches quickly—her audience is growing—and hands the piece of paper to the brown-cloaked squaw. The woman compares the picture to her face in the glass and nods and smiles once more. In exchange for the drawing—which Naomi has added a bit of paint to here and there—the woman gives Naomi a blanket, which Wyatt sets on the growing pile. Naomi bows her head slightly and makes the Indian sign for good, the way I did with the Dakotah braves, and the next person steps forward. The whole process repeats itself.

  Wyatt sees me and waves, like it’s all a grand adventure. I tell myself she is fine and I can go. I should go. But I don’t. I simply watch, tucked back from the crowd. Naomi draws on her own paper more often than not, though a few hand her pieces of leather or shields like the ones she decorated for the Dakotah warriors; I wonder if word has spread to their encampment. It has definitely spread to the fort. Some of the emigrant women from other trains have straggled in, watching curiously and talking among themselves. A French fur trader, who seems to reside in the lodge Naomi sits in front of, gets a turn as well. He stands, solemn, holding his rifle and wearing a coonskin hat with a fat ringed tail that hangs between his fringed shoulders.

  She doesn’t take much time with each person. Ten minutes at the most, but the people marvel and clap when she finishes each drawing, and her happy patrons walk away, carrying their prizes in careful hands. An Indian woman, her skirts wet like she’s crossed the Platte, brings Naomi a goat.

  Naomi blanches for a moment, and the woman rushes to demonstrate the goat’s worth, squeezing its teats and squirting a stream of milk into a tin cup. She offers it to Naomi, adamant. Naomi takes it and gives it to Wyatt. He gulps it down without hesitation.

  He smiles, wiping his mouth, and the goat’s owner claps. Naomi says something else to him, and they both begin to nod. Apparently, they have accepted the goat. The woman puts a picket pin in the goat’s lead rope and sinks down in front of Naomi to pose for her portrait.

  There is no way there is room in the wagons, packed tight as they are, for all of Naomi’s trades. Nor does she need most of what she is being given. But she keeps painting away. Her left cheek is smudged with blue paint, her right cheek with red, and the tip of her nose has a black dot right on the tip, like she leaned too close to her work. Her yellow dress, the dress she was wearing when I first saw her in St. Joe, is splattered; I doubt she will be able to get it clean, no matter how hard the rain falls. Her hair is hanging down her back in a fat braid, long wisps clinging to the paint on her cheeks, but the crowd is looking at her like she’s descended from the clouds to walk among them.

  Hours pass. I leave briefly to check on my animals and return to an even larger crowd. As far as I know, Naomi has not taken a break or tried to curtail the gathering, and her pile of trades is growing. The trapper’s squaw gathers her children and bundles them into the lodge only to come out a few minutes later with water and some kind of meat pie, which Wyatt and Naomi gobble up like they are starving. Naomi hands the woman a blanket from her stack, insisting she take it for the food, and the woman brings her another pie. Naomi points to me, and Wyatt stands, shaking out his cramped limbs, and brings me the pie.

  “Naomi says if you’re going to wait for us, you are going to eat.”

  I take the pie, hungry but hesitant, and Wyatt trots back to Naomi’s side. I can’t guess at what she’s trying to accomplish, beyond the obvious: she is painting, people are happy, she’s collecting loot. The sun is setting, the train will pull out in the morning, and just as I begin to think I am going to have to interrupt and put an end to the madness, for Naomi’s sake, the crowd begins to part and point, and the emigrant onlookers scatter like scared rabbits. Black Paint and the bangled brave approach on horseback. Three Indian women lead a mule pulling an empty travois. Black Paint is leading the dun and a sorrel, his reddish-brown coat the same color as Naomi’s hair.

  Black Paint says something in Sioux—Go? Leave?—and the crowd obeys.

  As the people disperse, I make my way to Naomi, standing behind her and Wyatt, who doesn’t seem surprised at all by the entrance of the Dakotah war chief. Naomi adds a few strokes to the picture she’s drawing for a cavalryman, who’s come over from the fort just to have his likeness painted on a bit of burlap. He takes it and scatters like the rest, leaving a pound of bacon in trade.

  “Many Faces wants a horse,” Black Paint says, addressing me in Pawnee. “I will give her two.”

  I look at Naomi, attempting to control my expression. She is biting her lip and looking from me to the dun.

  “I told you I would get you a horse,” she says.

  “He wants to give you two.”

  Her eyebrows shoot up, but she stoops and, directing Wyatt to help her, begins to show the chief what she has collected for him in trade. He directs his squaws to gather it, inspecting every item and leaving what he does not want behind.

  “Tell him I’m keeping the goat,” Naomi says, looking up at me. “Ma wanted a goat. We haven’t been getting any milk from the cows, and Ma is worried Wolfe isn’t getting enough. He’s hungry all the time.”

  I do as I’m told, and Black Paint agrees to leave the goat. The women pack Naomi’s trades onto the travois, making quick work of the heap. When they are finished, Black Paint inclines his head toward the horses.

  “You, Pawnee white man, take. Red pony is calm. Old. She will be a good one for Many Faces to ride so she does not run away from you. You ride the young one, so you catch her.” Black Paint’s lips twist slightly in mockery, and Wyatt and Naomi look at me for translation. I say nothing. Black Paint tosses me the ropes of the two horses and, with a final look at Naomi, rides away with the bangled brave, the squaws, and the travois trailing behind him.

  The dun whinnies, stamps, and tosses his head, but the sorrel mare dips her head in search of something to eat, confirming Black Paint’s words.

  “How did this happen?” I ask Naomi, grunting at her below my breath.

  “She’s Black Paint’s sister.” Naomi points at the woman standing in the doorway of the lodge watching the drama unfold. The woman nods and smiles. “Ma wanted to do some of her own trading and thought maybe, with white husbands, these women would be able to communicate with us.”

  I stare at Naomi, waiting for the rest of the tale.

  “I think she sent word, because not long after we stopped to visit with her and the other women, the Dakotah chief and several others arrived with a stack of skins for me to paint. They left before you got here, but by then, there was a crowd. It was Wyatt’s idea to get the looking glass. Her husband, the man in the coonskin cap, told me Black Paint would come back with the horse. I made sure I had plenty to give him in exchange.”

  I can only shake my head in wonder. “What are you going to do with two horses?”

  “Give them to you.” She shrugs. “I don’t figure they’ll be much harder to look after than your mules. I wouldn’t mind riding one, now and again, if they’re gentle.”

  “How
did he know you wanted the dun?” I ask, stunned. The selection couldn’t have been an accident.

  “I drew him a picture.” She smiles, weary but triumphant, and Wyatt just laughs.

  10

  INDEPENDENCE ROCK

  NAOMI

  After Fort Laramie, we stay on the north bank road, though the guidebooks we bought for fifty cents in St. Joseph don’t follow that route. It’s a new road, Mr. Abbott says, and much better than the old. Mr. Abbott says the “old way” means crossing the Platte twice more—at Laramie and Deer Creek—and lining the pockets of the ferrymen who make money off travelers that don’t know any better. None of us want to ford the Platte again, especially not twice, so we let Mr. Abbott lead the way into uncharted territory.

  The land is changing. Gone are the flats and sandstone castles. Instead we veer north, away from the river, to avoid canyons that can’t be crossed and make a slow ascent out of the river bottoms and up into hills thick with cedars and pine. It’s a sight looking back. It’s a wonder looking ahead. I’ve never seen mountains. Not like these. Mr. Abbott points out Laramie Peak, a huge dark pyramid with its head in the clouds, a trail of peaks behind it.

  “Those are the Black Hills,” Abbott says, but they’re bigger than any hill I’ve ever seen. He says we won’t cross them but will move along beside them, though when we descend into the valleys, we hardly notice them anymore. The grass is sparse here and abundant there, and John is kept busy herding Kettle and his mules from atop the dun, who hasn’t grown accustomed to Dame’s saddle. John rides him more each day; he grumbles that it’s like bumping down a rocky bluff on his backside after riding Samson, whose tread is as long and smooth as John himself. But the dun’s a beauty, and he likes to run. John says the Dakotah must have hunted buffalo with him because he thinks everything is a race. He bolts forward every now and then, taking John for a good ride. He talks to the dun in Pawnee, the hitches and coos no different to me than the speech of the squaws who liked my pictures, and I know he is pleased with the horse.

  The sorrel is sweet and doesn’t mind a rider, though John seems to have a chip on his shoulder where she’s concerned. I don’t think he likes that Black Paint gave her to me. I’ve started calling her Red Paint with great affection just to tease him. I’ve named our new goat Gert. She’s as mild mannered as the sorrel, and the horses and mules do well in her company, even allowing her to ride across the saddle when she can’t keep up. Her milk has been a godsend, and Wolfe begins to settle better at night, his belly fuller. I still use him as an excuse to visit John, though we do not stay as long, and I’ve managed not to fall asleep in the grass again with Wolfe in my arms.

  We pass great rounded columns and soaring sugar-covered mounds of gray rock, but instead of the expanse of the prairie, they are encircled by silver streams and pine and cedar green. The air is different. It’s thin, and some people get dizzy. Others go a little mad. Maybe it’s that gold fever people speak of. Whole wagon trains veer off the trail to start digging when they hear the rumors of rich gold mines at the mouth of a creek on the south side road. A few in our company want to take a day to check it out, maybe do some digging, but leveler heads prevail.

  We’ve passed a few go-backs and two men who are heading back to Fort Laramie with a third man who is trussed and tied on the back of his horse. They tell Abbott that the man went crazy and killed his brother-in-law and his sister, and they’re taking him to Fort Laramie to stand trial. Seems the man got tired of them telling him what to do and just shot them dead. Some in the company wanted to hang him and be done with it, but a few folks thought he was justified. The men say he’s lucky to get a trial. One man stabbed another in a train three days ahead of ours, leaving his wife a widow and his child fatherless. The company hanged the man from a tree. Most likely we’ll pass the site of the hanging in a day or two.

  We camp at some springs where the water shoots straight out from the rocks, so clear and cold and sweet we don’t want to leave. That is, until Homer Bingham finds a sheet of paper nailed to a tree describing the murder of a man, woman, and child whose bodies were found beneath some wild rosebushes nearby, their throats slit from ear to ear. We can see the fresh, rounded graves covered with rocks so the wolves can’t get at them. The burial is marked with a piece of driftwood that simply says, MAN, WOMAN, BOY.

  Beware of the Indians, the paper warns, and Mr. Caldwell and others demand to move out immediately, though we’ve no guidebook to refer to and no idea how far it is to the next good water or grass.

  Most nights we don’t gather and pray—folks are tired, and most do their own thing, having given up on any sort of schedule when the rigors of the journey set in—but Deacon Clarke gathers us together, and we pray for the dead and pray for protection, from whatever forces out there would harm us.

  John doesn’t think it was Indians. He says it was more likely an emigrant cutthroat who saw an opportunity to steal an outfit and a team and took it.

  “No Indian would try to hide what he’d done. And he wouldn’t have taken the wagon. If the bodies were dragged out of sight, you can bet it was someone trying to buy himself some time,” he tells the deacon.

  With the rumors of troubles and violence among the trains, John’s guess is as good as any. He says it’s easier to blame the Indians than it is to believe ill of your own, and I’d have to agree with him. Regardless, folks are afraid, the guard is doubled, and no one rests well. Months of little sleep and endless toil, not to mention the roadside graves and daily grief, have us all worn thin. It’s a wonder more of us haven’t lost our minds.

  We leave the Platte for good today, and we all wave good riddance, celebrating the end of our acquaintance with the flat, muddy river that has been an almost constant companion since we reached Fort Kearny. Although we laugh and pretend to be jolly, we suspect the journey ahead will be harder than the one we left behind.

  It gets harder real quick.

  We travel through a valley thick with mire one day and then push up Prospect Hill, which has no prospects at all that I can see, the next. It’s steep and rocky and dry, and we come down the other side only to plod through ten miles of white desert, an alkali plain that coats our feet and clothes in white. No grass, no water, no timber. Just powder, and we spend all day traveling with our eyes to the ground, looking for buffalo chips to burn when we finally camp. It doesn’t take us long to realize that even the buffalo don’t wander here. Folks ahead of us have discarded a whole new round of possessions in an effort to ease the burden on their lagging teams. Anvils and plows, buckets and barrels, cook stoves and wagon chains lie abandoned wherever we look, even worse than when the journey began. It is a graveyard of oxen, iron, and steel. Amid the strewed belongings are the dead animals that couldn’t be coaxed a step farther, no matter how much their loads were lightened.

  One of the oxen on Pa’s wagon, an ox Webb has named Oddie, collapses midday, and we cannot get him up again. We unyoke him from the team and try to rouse him, sloshing precious water from our barrels onto his black tongue, but he’s been listing for days, and the poor thing is done for.

  “He’s got alkali poisoning,” Abbott says, and though he claims there’s a remedy, we haven’t the supplies to make the brew to revive him. John says he’s too far gone anyway. We fear Pa’s other ox, Eddie, will give out on us too, and we unyoke him so he can plod along, burden-free, until we reach water. We yoke in two of John’s mules to take the place of Eddie and Oddie on the team. We have to leave poor Oddie where he lies. Warren hangs back to put him out of his misery, and when the shot rings out behind us, Webb begins to sob.

  “Don’t cry, Webb,” Will says. “It won’t help Oddie, and it won’t help you. He’s happy now. He’s free of the wagon. That’s all he wanted.”

  “Do you think this is what it’s like to walk on the moon?” I ask, trying to distract him.

  “The moon is cool and dark, I imagine.” Webb sniffs. “Nothing like a desert.”

  “It looks like as
h, like we’ve been through a fire,” Will says.

  “Well . . . in a way, I suppose we have,” Ma says. She collects a bit of the white dust, convinced it will work to leaven our bread.

  We don’t speak after that. Our tongues are too dry to make words, and opening our mouths to converse just lets the dust in. Eddie allows Webb to ride on his back, and he falls asleep draped over him, his feet and hands flopping with every dusty step.

  We stop for dinner, and Will skewers a sage hen with his bow. He is delighted, but I can’t cook it because we don’t have enough kindling to start a fire. Elsie Bingham offers a few chips she’s gathered, Elmeda too, and I manage to boil the little bird until I can pull the meat off the bone. Elsie’s belly is beginning to look like Ma’s did when we started out, and she, more than anyone else, needs the strength. She eats a few bites and bursts into tears, and her husband looks on helplessly.

  We don’t camp for the night; we’re afraid to stop, and when we finally reach Greasewood Creek, where our animals can drink and rest, Elsie is not the only one who cries in exhaustion and relief.

  “They call it Independence Rock,” I tell my brothers, imagining all the ways I will sketch the sprawling, creviced monolith in the distance.

  “It looks like a whale. See its rounded head and tail?” Will says, and Webb immediately jumps in to disagree.

  “It looks like a big gray buffalo chip,” he snickers.

  “It looks like a turtle,” I say. “A giant stone turtle.”

  “Ícas,” John says, and his eyes meet mine.

  Halfway.

  It is the tenth of July, and we are halfway. Maybe it was the bad, stinking water of the Platte River Valley, or the lack of timber or fuel or rest. Maybe it was the loss of poor Oddie the ox. But it is the sight of the Sweetwater River, not the stone turtle it coils around, that has Ma and Elmeda singing praises.