Where the Lost Wander_ A Novel - Amy Harmon Page 0,81

Good.

Seconds later, the mother arrives, panting and crying, her sodden, empty papoose still hanging from her back, and clasps her shrieking daughter.

She thanks me as she rocks back and forth, holding the child to her chest, comforting them both. And though she still cries, her words tripping and tumbling out of her weeping mouth, I realize that not only do I understand her, I know her.

“Ana?” I gasp, dumbfounded.

She peers up at me, suddenly seeing beyond her emotion, and freezes midsway, midthanks.

“John Lowry?” she asks, rubbing her eyes as though she cannot trust her vision. “John Lowry?” She says my name in exactly the same way Jennie has always said it, and I laugh as I pull her into my arms, planting a kiss on the top of her head.

The growing crowd around us exclaims at my affection, and the older man who was second to reach my side shoves at my arms. I find out soon enough that he is her father, and he doesn’t like the familiarity.

Then she is telling him and the people gathered around us who I am and how we know each other.

“John Lowry, all the way from Missouri,” she says. “John Lowry, my white Pawnee brother.”

She tells me they are Shoshoni, often called the Snake by trappers and fur traders because of the river that runs through their lands, and though I am out of practice and slow to remember the words to say, I have no trouble understanding her—or them—at all. They call her Hanabi—Ana is not so different—and she is the wife of the chief, a man named Washakie, who she says is good and strong and wise. The baby girl is their only child—the two children on the mule are her brother’s children—and she wants me to stay with them, an honored guest, so that I might meet him when he and many of the other men return from trading in the valley of the Great Salt Lake.

I tell her I have to go back to the wagon train, that people are waiting for me to help them cross the river, and she confers with her father for a moment before promising to wait for me to return.

“We have just broken camp and have a long journey ahead of us. We will await Washakie in the valley near the forks before we go to the Gathering of all the People of the Snake. But today we will stay here with you.”

I ride back to the place I left the train and lead them upstream to the point where the Shoshoni crossed, warning them not to be afraid of the Indians waiting for us on the opposite bank. Webb wants to know if they’re Comanche, and when I explain that they are Shoshoni and one is my friend from years ago, he—and everyone else—is intrigued. Abbott is overjoyed when I tell him who I’ve found, and he cries when he sees her, mopping at his wind- and sunburned cheeks and saying, “Ana, little Ana. God is good.”

True to her word, Ana and the Shoshoni are waiting, their packs already unloaded, their ponies grazing unhobbled in the grassy clearing just beyond the west bank. Before the wagons have even halted, the Shoshoni men and several women have crossed back over and begin the work of helping us cross, piling goods that will be ruined by water atop their rafts and ferrying them to the other side. We try to pay them, but they refuse. Ana says I have saved her daughter’s life, and for three years I was family when she had none.

“I will feed your people today,” she says.

My “people” are wary and watch with wide eyes and cautious smiles, but twenty wagon beds are unloaded, raised, and reloaded with nonperishables and possessions in less time than it would have taken us to cross two or three. Our passage is much less eventful than the Shoshoni’s was, and what would have been a strenuous afternoon crossing the swift-flowing river becomes a day of rest and rejoicing on the other side. We set up camp not too far from the crossing, agreeing to use the day to fortify ourselves and our teams against the next long stretch of dry, grassless trail.

Ana—Hanabi—stays close to my side all day, her daughter slumbering on her back in a new, dry papoose, seemingly unaffected by her near drowning. She asks about Jennie and my sisters and even asks after my father. “He was quiet. Strong. Like my