Where the Lost Wander_ A Novel - Amy Harmon Page 0,106
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?”
I describe why they were there and why they were alone and how far they’d traveled from the Bear River and Sheep Rock. He knows the places by different names but nods as I explain, describing the spring and the jutting black rocks and the distance to the river where we now sit.
When I have finished, he sits still, his hands on his thighs, his back straight. He doesn’t speak for several minutes, and I don’t press him. I sit in numb exhaustion. Hanabi’s daughter is awake, and Hanabi rises from the robes to go retrieve her and returns with the baby in her arms.
“Pocatello,” Hanabi says, looking at her husband, and her mouth is flat and hard. Pocatello. The chief of the