Where the Lost Wander_ A Novel - Amy Harmon Page 0,11

and minstrel girls and preacher’s wives, thumping their Bibles from wagon beds. Some folks are selling and some are buying, but they all seem to want the same thing. Money . . . or a way to make it. Yesterday, outside of Lowry’s Outfitters, a group of Indians—there had to be more than two hundred of them—walked right down the center of the street, their feathers and colors on full display, and the crowds parted for them like the waters of the Red Sea. They hurried down the banks to board the ferries, along with everyone else, but no one made them wait in line. I learned later they were Potawatomi, and I stared until Wyatt grabbed my arm and hurried me onward.

“You’re staring, Naomi. Maybe they don’t like that,” he warned.

“I’m not staring. I’m memorizing,” I said.

Memorizing. It is what I am doing now. Noting the details and committing them all to memory so I can recreate them later.

The line of clustered wagons waiting to cross the Missouri stretches from the landing docks to the bluffs that rim St. Joseph. There is a great fervor to be among the first to cross. Better grazing, less dust, better camping, less disease. We thought about crossing the river farther north, in Council Bluffs, and staying on the north-side route all the way to the Oregon Territory. But Council Bluffs is nothing more than a campground with everyone fighting to cross the river first and no safe way to do it. In Council Bluffs there are too many Mormons, and Mr. Caldwell doesn’t want to travel with them. Mr. Caldwell doesn’t like the Mormons, though I don’t think he’s ever met one and probably wouldn’t know if he had. Mr. Caldwell doesn’t like anyone he doesn’t understand, which to my way of thinking includes women, Indians, children, Mormons, Catholics, Irishmen, Mexicans, Scandinavians, and anyone who is different from him, which—again—includes most people.

The rumors of no steamboats in Council Bluffs and disastrous crossings on scows that could only hold two wagons convinced us that jumping off farther south would be safer, even if it extended our initial journey. Plus, we heard tell that St. Joseph was a real city with shops and streets. St. Joe had outfitters and steamboats and mules—good Missouri mules.

The younger John Lowry flits through my thoughts, and I push his image away. I’ve been pushing it away all day. The knowledge that he is traveling with us has filled me with a strange anticipation, and I haven’t yet sorted myself out. I plan to think about him before I sleep, when my brothers aren’t chatting in my ears and there isn’t so much to see.

We wanted to be in the first wagon train on the trail out of St. Joseph, but that was what everyone wanted, and everyone couldn’t be first. At this rate, we might be last. The moment the grass covered the prairie, the wagon trains began leaving the jumping-off points along the river, pushing westward. Pa has been saying for weeks, “Leave too early, and there’s no grass for the animals. Leave too late, and the grass will be gone, consumed by earlier trains.” He’s also said, more times than I can count, “Leave too early, and you’ll freeze and starve on the plains; leave too late, and you’ll freeze and starve in the mountains.”

Early or late, I’m just ready to go. I’m as hungry for this journey as I’ve been for anything in my life. I don’t know why, exactly. Going west was never my dream. It was Daniel who wanted to go west. It was Daniel who convinced our families to sell their farms in Illinois and strike out for California. It was Daniel who persuaded us all and Daniel who would never see it. Three months after we were married and a few days shy of my nineteenth birthday, he took sick and was gone in a week. When he died, I suspected I was pregnant, but heavy cramping and bleeding a few days after Daniel’s death removed that fear. I was heartbroken and . . . relieved. I didn’t want to be a widow and a mother. It was not an emotion I could easily explain without sounding vile, even to myself, so I didn’t try. I’m convinced everyone is a little vile, if they are honest about it. Vile and scared and human.

I missed him terribly in the weeks after. I tried not to. It didn’t do me any good. The