take. There is sympathy in the audience. I can feel it, and I feel the moment it slips again.
“Who killed first?” the old chief asks Naomi, and she hesitates, her chest rising and falling in distress.
“We didn’t see them. We didn’t know they were there. It was an accident,” Naomi pleads, and when I translate, Pocatello begins to yell.
“They attacked us! They chose to fight.”
The old chief raises his hands again, pleading for order.
“Let him take his woman. That is just. But the child stays,” Biagwi cries out, his voice ringing above the din, the firelight dancing on his skin. Magwich spits, but everyone else falls silent.
Naomi is frantic, her eyes shifting wildly from one face to the next, trying to understand what has happened.
“Release them both. Biagwi’s brother was avenged,” Washakie says, his voice booming, but the leaders around the fire shake their heads.
“We will vote,” the old chief says. And the pipe is passed once more. One by one, the leaders state their opinions. Washakie says release them both. Pocatello says keep them both. The rest agree with Biagwi. A brother for a brother. The woman holding Wolfe is weeping, and Biagwi shakes his spear at the sky. Naomi stands amid the crush, her face bright with terrible hope, Magwich beside her, the old woman wailing and holding on to her arm. The old chief stands and points from Naomi to me.
“Go,” he says to her in English and again in Shoshoni. The old woman releases Naomi like she’s taken an arrow in the chest, screaming and falling to the ground, and Magwich turns away, giving his back to the council. Naomi runs toward me, her mouth trembling and tears streaming, her stained hands fisted in her skirts. And then she is in my arms, her face buried in my chest.
“Take the woman and go in peace,” the old chief says to me.
“What about the boy?” I shout, desperate, my arms braced around Naomi. But the leaders are standing; the council is finished. The decision is made.
“He will be raised as a son, like you were. A two-feet,” Washakie says. “Biagwi is a man of honor. The boy will not be harmed.” He has not moved from my side, but his eyes are on the woman in my arms, who does not yet understand.
“John . . . what about Wolfe?” Naomi starts to pull back, searching my face, searching for Wolfe. And Washakie turns away.
I can’t tell her. I can’t say the words. And she sees the terrible truth. She begins to fight against me, thrashing and crying, but I do not let her go.
“I can’t leave him, John. I can’t leave him!” she begs, crazed.
“And I cannot leave you,” I shout into her hair, shaking her, the weight of the last two weeks crashing down on me. “I will not leave you!” I pull back enough for her to see my face, my own wild desperation, and something dawns in her eyes, like she is coming awake. I see my own horror and fear and suffering mirrored back at me, and she folds into herself, her sobs raw and heartrending. I swing her up in my arms and carry her into the darkness, leaving the clearing as the scalp dance begins.
NAOMI
He walks and walks, his arms tight around me, his tears dripping down his chin and onto my cheeks. Or maybe they are my tears. I don’t know anymore. When he finally stops, there are no fires and no camps. No voices raised in strange celebration. There is only the sky riddled with stars above us and the grass beneath us. He is panting. He has carried me a long way, but he doesn’t put me down. He just sits, folding his legs beneath us, keeping me in his lap with his arms wrapped around me. His tears come harder, streaming silently down his face. He cries like it’s the first time he’s ever cried, like all the pain of all his twenty-odd years is rising up at once, and I can only lie in his arms, spent and useless, unable to comfort him.
I have nothing to give him. Nothing left. I try to quiet my own sobs to ease his pain, but the thing that was loose inside my chest is now broken completely, and the pain is like nothing I’ve ever felt before.
“Âka’a, Naomi. Âka’a,” he whispers again and again, stroking my hair, and after a while my sobs slowly abate, leaving a gaping hole