Where the Lost Wander

by Harmon, Amy

  “I hate them. I hate Indians,” Webb cries, his voice muffled by my shoulder.

  “Do you hate me?” I ask quietly. “I’m an Indian.”

  “No. I love you.”

  “And I love you too. There’s good and bad in all kinds of people. Indians and emigrants alike. Do you remember when Mr. Caldwell set my animals loose?”

  “Yeah. I hate Mr. Caldwell too,” Webb sobs.

  “Do you remember my friend Hanabi? And Charlie? They helped us. Without Charlie . . . Wyatt and I wouldn’t have made it back to you and the others,” I remind him. “So you be real careful about who you hate.”

  Webb is quiet, and I ease him back from my arms.

  “It’s time to go now,” I say.

  “I’m scared, John,” Will says.

  “I know. I’m scared too. But we all have jobs to do. And we’re going to do them.”

  I watch as my wagon pulls out, lurching from side to side, Wyatt prodding the oxen along with his father’s staff, Webb and Will staring back at me, framed by the oval opening in the wagon cover.

  16

  NOWHERE

  NAOMI

  Wolfe sleeps, and I stagger. For miles and miles, I stagger. I am accustomed to walking, but I am not accustomed to being dragged, and the pace we’ve kept is mild for the horses but bruising for a woman with a child in her arms. My skin is slick and my dress damp with sweat. The cut beneath my eye stings, and my head throbs in time with my steps, but like everything else, the sensation is distant; I recognize it, the way I recognize that the sun has moved in the sky and there is a pebble wedged into the hole in my shoe. I keep my eyes forward, on the trail of black feathers one Indian wears in his hair. They extend all the way down his back to the top of his leather leggings. I have not looked behind me. No one follows, and I am afraid that if I turn my head, I will fall and will not find my feet again, or worse, Wolfe will be taken from my arms.

  Ma says the things we fear most tend to find us. Just like Job from the Bible. People think the Lord was testing him—and Ma said He was—but she said that wasn’t the only thing to be learned from Job. For the thing which I greatly feared is come upon me, and that which I was afraid of is come unto me.

  “Some trouble can’t be avoided. Some you must face. Job was the best of men. Yet trouble still came.”

  We reach a river and cross it, and the men let the animals drink. They don’t remove the rope at my neck but drop it, shooing me toward the water. I shuffle down the banks and collapse beside Gert. I am trembling, and I pull too hard on her teat, making her bleat and spraying Wolfe in the face, but I manage to work a stream of milk into his mouth for several minutes before I am pulled up again, away from the river. I did not get a chance to drink. We veer northwest, away from the river. I am thirsty, and Wolfe has started to wail. I beg the men to stop, but they ride on unconcerned until Wolfe’s cries become ragged sighs, and he sleeps again.

  The sun is sinking, and we are nearing a camp. A cry goes up, and I know we’ve been seen. The fear that floated above me all day is perched on my shoulders now, and my back is fiery with the strain of staying upright. Dogs bark and rush my legs, and I trip over one. Wolfie’s bunting is soaked through, and the smell of urine is strong. The warriors celebrate with yipping and spears and shields lifted high. The scalps dance, and I sway. The man on the painted pony slides to the ground and with no warning yanks Wolfe from me. My arms are cramped and will not straighten, and I cannot even reach for him. The painted brave hands Wolfe to a woman, who stares at my brother with disdain. She sets him on the ground and turns away. The man calls after her, and he is angry. He picks Wolfe up again and follows her. I am encircled by women and children who tug at my clothes and pull at my hair. One woman slaps my face, and the cut beneath my eye begins to flow once more. I cover my head with my unbending arms, and I push through the crowd toward Wolfe. I hear him crying, but the sound recedes as he is carried away. I scream for him, and the Indian children throw back their little heads and howl too. I realize they are copying me, and his name is like the call of the wolves.

  Then the women are moaning and crying too as the dead man is pulled from his horse, the grieving of the village rising like a sudden storm, the kind that sent the waters rushing down the Platte without warning. One of the men slides from his horse, then moves into the circle of women and children and buries his hand in my hair, yanking my head back. He turns my head this way and that, talking all the while. With the hand not gripping my hair, he parts my lips with a dirty finger, and I taste horse and blood. He cracks a knuckle against my teeth and snaps his own, as though my teeth please him. The finger that is in my mouth moves to my left eye, and he peels back my eyelid. I cry out, trying to twist away, but he seems entranced by the color of my eyes. He is showing everyone, wrenching my head, keeping my eye pinned open. A woman spits, and I am blinded by the glob of saliva. The man releases my face but not my hair, and I am dragged, stumbling, behind him, trying to keep my feet beneath me, my hands wrapped around his wrist to prevent my hair from being torn out by the roots. I can’t imagine being scalped would hurt much more.

  I don’t know if anyone will come looking for me or baby Wolfe. I don’t know. John. John will come looking. I shudder, and my stomach roils again. Pa and Warren are dead. Ma. Ma is dead too. My mind goes black. Blank. I can’t think of them. I hope John doesn’t come after me. They’ll kill him. They’ll kill me too. I just hope they do it quickly.

  JOHN

  Naomi is wearing her moccasins. I can tell by her print. Her foot is small, and her tread is short, like she’s stumbling along. There are no footprints besides hers. The rest are horses and two mules. Trick and Tumble. A set of smaller, cloven-hoofed prints makes me think they took Gert too. I’ve lost the trail a few times and have had to circle back. I’ve lost it again and am sure I’m going the wrong way.

  A flutter of white tumbles over the dry ground, and I race toward it, chasing it for half a mile before it finally presses up against the sagebrush, momentarily caught. I am screaming in frustration by the time I reach it, and my voice, raspy and raw, frightens my animals. They shimmy and sidestep, and I slide from Samson’s back, pulling the animals forward so I can snag the page I’ve chased for half an hour.

  It is a sketch I’ve seen, one I admired. Bones in Boxes is written across the bottom in Naomi’s curling scrawl. I have a vision of her blood-soaked body lying somewhere in the rocks, her book lying open beside her, her pictures scattered in the wind. Then I remember the way she left a trail of pictures for me and Wyatt when we’d gone after my mules, and calm quiets my anguish. Naomi is leaving pages for me again.

  NAOMI

  I do not open my eyes when I hear the camp stirring, and for a moment I am still with the train, wondering if I am the last to wake. Then I remember where I am. I remember why, and I am flooded with grief so heavy I cannot take a breath. I start to wheeze, gagging and gasping, and the dog I spent the night beside begins to nuzzle the juncture of my thighs, where the blood of my menses has seeped through my dress. I kick him away, giving up my pretense of sleep, and roll to my side, tucking my legs to my chest. Another nudge in my side. Thinking it is the dog, I swat at it and touch someone’s leg instead.

  She looms above me, the old woman, her face so worn and brown she looks like she is made of tree bark. She peers at me, deep-set eyes black and shining, and beckons me to follow. I duck out of the lodge and flinch against the rising sun. They are breaking camp. Children are running, the men are gathering the horses, and women are packing. The other shelters have all been brought down, and the fires have been doused. They are leaving in a rush, and many stare, but no one stops me. It was much the same the night before. The man who dragged me by the hair took me into his lodge. He shoved me in a corner with a mangy dog and growled something I couldn’t understand. The old woman brought me water and a blanket. I drank, and then I slept.

  Now she urges me down toward the stream. She is small, a full head shorter than I am
, but her grip on my arm is firm, and I don’t know what else to do but obey. And I am thirsty. I move downstream, the old woman watching me from the banks. I set my satchel with my book of pictures, still hanging around my neck, on a rock and remove my stockings and my moccasins and sit, fully clothed, in the creek. The water engulfs me to my chin. I scrub at the soiled fabric between my legs and pull the rags free from the pockets in my dress, rinsing them too. The water is cold and the morning young, and I shiver and quake as I try to wash as best I can. I consider escape, floating away with the current. I look at the old woman; she stares back at me. A wisp of her gray hair waves goodbye, and I wonder if she knows my thoughts. Then a child cries, and I am ashamed. I cannot leave without Wolfe. I rise, water sluicing from my dress, and hobble back to shore, my tender feet curling around the slick stones.

  I cannot ask her where Wolfe is. Instead, I mime a baby in my arms. The old woman doesn’t react, and I try harder, tapping my chest and cradling an invisible infant. She says something I don’t understand, says it again louder, then breaks the circle of my arms, forcing them to my sides, shaking her head. I fear she is trying to tell me what I already know. Wolfe is no longer mine.

  I try to tell her my name. “Nay-oh-mee,” I say slowly, patting my chest. “Naomi.”

  She grunts, and I say it again, desperate. “Naomi.”

  “Nayohmee,” she repeats, running all the sounds together.

  “Yes,” I say and nod. “Yes. Naomi Lowry.” Naomi May Lowry. I blink back sudden tears.

  She pats her own chest and says something I can’t even decipher enough to repeat. I shake my head, helpless. I can’t even make out the first sound. Softer than a p, harder than a b.

  She says her name again.

  “Beeya?” I attempt, but my voice trails off, unsure of the rest.

  “Beeya,” she repeats, satisfied. “Nayohmee,” she says and touches my chest. She bends and picks up my leather satchel and looks inside. She pulls the book out, and a few loose drawings tumble free. The leather string I keep wrapped around the pages is undone. I am lucky the book is even inside. I must have shoved it into my satchel without tying it when I stooped down next to Gert to feed Wyatt. Not at the river . . . but before. Before.

  Beeya wants to see what’s inside. Shivering and afraid she will take it, I open it. Wyatt grins up at me, fully fleshed in a thousand lines.

  I shut the book again. I am too wet to tuck it away, and Beeya reaches for it, not understanding my agony. I crouch and begin to put on my moccasins, my fingers stiff and uncooperative, my stockings so filthy I consider abandoning them. Beeya is sifting through my pages, hissing and moaning, and I pray she will not destroy my book.

  She hands it back abruptly, thumping it against my breasts. I try to take it, but she simply uses it to underscore her words.

  “Nay-oh-mee.”

  I nod.

  She points at the book, adamant. “Beeya.” Her desire is clear. She wants me to draw her face, to add it to my book.

  JOHN

  I find another picture caught in the grass about a mile from the river. It is Webb asleep on Eddie the ox, his arms and legs loose and dangling. I remember that day. Oddie gave out, and we had to leave him behind. I cannot follow Naomi’s trail in the darkness, and I hunker down to wait for daylight not far from the water. I have traveled north, moving from the flat, dry expanse of baked earth and burned rocks to long yellow grass that gives little clue—beyond bent stalks—if I am on the right track.

  I doubt Naomi is studying the pictures and sending a message with each one that falls, but the image is disturbing; the desperation and despair of that day echo in me now. For all I know, the wind picked up the page and sent it miles from her course, and I am wandering aimlessly. My mules are thirsty and tired and settle quickly. I sleep in fits and starts, dreaming of Naomi stretched over Oddie’s back, both of them dead and powdered in white. I awake, shaking and sick, and fall back to sleep sometime later only to dream of the white desert again, with a slight variation. It is not Oddie but Naomi who has given up, and I can’t make her move.

  I do not know the river’s name or where it will take me, but when the morning comes and I cross to the other side, I can find no sign of a continuing trail. I search the banks up and down, going upstream for half a mile before turning around and going the other direction, scanning the soft soil near the banks. I return to the other side, convinced that Naomi’s captors didn’t cross after all, and search some more, but I cannot find a single print of an obvious path in the grass leading away from the river. I know horses. I know mules. And I know Indians don’t shoe their horses, and mules don’t need to be shod, but I’m no tracker, and I don’t know where to go.

  I scan the distance for a flutter of white but see only empty swells and distant mountains and a river that winds away to my right and away to my left. There are no trees to speak of, and no wagon trains. No white men or brown men or horses or herds. No Naomi. I cross to the other side once more; it was where the trail led last night, but I continue to follow the river. The land is dry and the days are hot, and I can’t imagine such a small band would be too far from home. Villages, both permanent and temporary, are erected near the water. Within a few miles, my instinct is rewarded. The river bends, straightens, and turns back, creating a stretch of land with water on three sides.

  An Indian village is tucked into the shallow peninsula.

  I dismount and lead my mules to the water, keeping my distance. The wickiups look Shoshoni, and I experience a flash of relief followed by a stab of dread. Washakie said Pocatello is Shoshoni. I’m not familiar with the land or the local tribes. Webb and Will could not describe an identifiable trait on the Indians who attacked the train; when I pressed them for details they blanched and cried, and I left it alone.

  I have a spyglass in my pack, and I hobble my mules near the water’s edge and find a high spot where I can study the camp without getting too close. From a distance the village is quiet, almost sleepy, as though the whole camp is resting. Horses mill about, and people move in and out of the wickiups, but there is no industry or urgency in the camp, and I am convinced it is a temporary rest stop, a day or two spent beside the river before moving on to somewhere new.

  I watch the wickiups for more than an hour, keeping an eye on my mules while I scan every animal in and around the camp, looking for Trick and Tumble, the red horse, or Homer Bingham’s mare. There is no sign of any of them or the goat. I see nothing at all to make me think Naomi and Wolfe are here, but I see another horse that is familiar. He is a deep brown with white forelegs and a dark mane, the white triangle on his forehead pointing down to his nose. Washakie rode a similar horse at Fort Bridger.

  Then a woman steps from the doorway of a large wickiup covered in elk skin and heads toward the river. She has a baby in her arms, and her hair is in a long single braid down her back. It is Hanabi. I am sure of it. Children play at the river’s edge, and through the spyglass I can make out the children of Hanabi’s brother. Hanabi appears to be scolding them as a dog bounds up from the banks and races to greet her. He gives a violent shake, and she scurries back toward the wickiup to escape his wet affection.

  The children see me coming and run, pointing and yelling. People begin to stream out of the lodges. Some look frightened, and a few men shout, running toward their horses, but I keep my hands raised and ride slowly, greeting them in their own tongue. Most of the men were absent when we camped with the tribe on the Green, and I expected this response. Moments later, Hanabi and Washakie rush from their wickiup. Hanabi is no longer holding her daughter, and she throws her arms wide in excitement like she is welcoming me home.

  “You are here, John Lowry!”

  Her joy in my presence is both a balm and a blade to my heart, and I slide from my saddle and grasp her hand, my eyes on Washakie, who stands at her side. He is not so joyous or welcoming, but he greets me softly.

  “John Lowry.”

  “Chief Washakie.”

/>   “Where did you come from?” he asks, his eyes raised to the distance behind me.

  “Yes! Where did you come from? And where is your woman?” Hanabi asks, looking beyond me. “Your family? Have you come alone?”

  For a moment I can’t speak. My words are stuck in my tangled thoughts, and I lack the emotional endurance to unravel them. I have not grieved or broken down. I have not let myself feel much at all. Telling the story, saying the words out loud, might break my control.

  “John Lowry?” Hanabi asks, her brow creasing in concern. Washakie shares the same expression.

  “My wife . . . is . . .” I don’t remember the Shoshoni word for taken. I try again. “Naomi is . . . lost.”

  I tell Hanabi and Washakie all that I know, from the moment Wyatt saw the smoke to the moment I set off in pursuit of the men who took Naomi. I have to stop many times. Hanabi brings me food. Water. Washakie hands me a bottle of whiskey. I don’t care for it. Never have, but I slosh a little into my cup and drink it down.

  It doesn’t steady me or ease the vise in my chest, but the burning distracts me, and I am able to choke out what Webb and Will told me about the Indian with Will’s arrow in his belly. Washakie asks me how many there were and what they looked like, and I cannot tell him. Only that there were enough to make quick work of three men and two women. From the number of hoofprints, difficult though they were for me to distinguish, I would guess nine or ten.

  “Why didn’t they kill your woman too?” Washakie asks.

  I have asked myself that question, and I don’t know.

  Hanabi has grown still, but there is grief in her eyes and the turn of her mouth.

  “I am sorry, John Lowry,” she whispers. “This is a great sadness.”

  “There were no others in the train?” Washakie asks. “They were alone?”