Where the Lost Wander_ A Novel - Amy Harmon Page 0,59

think he only wants it because I so adamantly refuse. The bangled warrior grows impatient, gathering his ponies as if to leave, but Black Paint stalks back and forth, looking at the cattle and the mules of the cowering emigrants. I don’t think he really wants to trade. He is putting on a show of dominance.

Naomi touches her face and then points to his. “Ask him if he has more of his paint, John. Maybe I can give him something he will want more.”

I ask, telling him that she wants to honor him with a picture.

Black Paint is made curious by my request; I can see it in the lift of his chin and the dart of his eyes. He turns to his horse and pulls a small pot from his beaded saddlebag. He sets it on the ground and backs away, his arms folded.

“Ask him if I can use his shield.”

He hands it over with a deep frown, setting it down beside the paint. The pale skin is strung taut across the willow-branch hoop, and feathers and beads hang from the circlet, but the center is unadorned.

He hisses in protest, and I fear he is going to jerk it back when he sees Naomi’s intent; his eyes widen as she sinks down beside the shield, dipping her fingers into the little pot, but his curiosity wins out. Unlike with the pencil, she uses both hands, glancing up at him once or twice, her fingers shading and shaping. Within several seconds his likeness appears, and he grunts in amazement, watching her fingers fly until she straightens, finished. She scoots back from her handiwork and rubs her hands in the stubby buffalo grass to remove the excess paint from her fingers. I pick up the hoop and hand it to Black Paint. He stares at the drawing, flabbergasted, and I know exactly how he feels.

The bangled brave presents his shield next, pointing to the side covered completely in feathers. When Naomi shakes her head, I finger a feather, explaining she can’t paint on the feathers. Black Paint tells the bangled brave what I have said, and he turns it over to the other side, which is beaded with a simple X. He wants her to paint around it, and she obliges, but when she finishes and he brings her a stack of skins, wanting paintings on all of them, she refuses.

“I want a horse,” Naomi says to the bangled one. “I will paint on all these skins for a horse.”

“Naomi,” I say, shaking my head. I suddenly know what she is trying to do. She has seen the dun—though it is not among the ponies the bangled one has paraded in front of me—and, just like Webb, has noticed the similarities to Dame.

“Tell them,” she says.

“No.” I am adamant.

Naomi stands up and moves beside me. She points at the bangled brave’s horses and then points at herself.

“Naomi,” I warn. “You’re asking for trouble. Please go back to your wagon.”

Black Paint laughs and says something I can’t understand to the other Sioux warriors. The bangled brave points at his skins, insistent, but Naomi folds her arms and will not yield.

I tell them we are going to Fort Laramie in the morning, and the painted shields and the food are gifts. I hand him my best blade as well. Then I make the sign for good, signifying an end to negotiations, and tell them we don’t want to trade, and we do not want a horse. I ask them to take their shields and skins and ponies and leave us.

Amazingly enough, they talk among themselves, and without making any further demands, they mount their horses and withdraw, racing up the ridge and leaving the circle of wagons for their own encampment.

I don’t sleep at all, worried that Naomi has made herself a target. Stealing squaws is common among tribes. Recompense is easily made by offering a father something of equal value. Women and horses are the currency. William and Winifred obviously fear the same thing, because William and Warren sit with their backs to their wagon wheels all night, facing the ridge where the Dakotah disappeared.

They are back at dawn, their animals dragging poles bound at either end to support the skins they’ve piled upon them. But this time it is not a few warriors; it is the whole tribe—their old and their young, their dogs and their ponies, all prepared to follow us to Fort John. Abbott and I walk out to