Where the Lost Wander_ A Novel - Amy Harmon Page 0,82

Washakie.”

“I know he was not kind to you,” I say.

She looks surprised. “He was kind. Always. He helped me come home. He gave me a mule and found a wagon train for me to travel with.”

I am stunned by her revelation. He never let on that he had any part in her leaving.

“He did not tell you?” Hanabi asks.

I shake my head.

“I think he was afraid I would take you away.”

I frown, not understanding, and she laughs.

“We are not so different in age, John Lowry. But you were not ready for a woman. I was a sister to you.”

I introduce Hanabi to Naomi, telling her we will soon be married, and Hanabi insists on giving her a white buffalo robe and a deep-red blanket for our marriage bed. The Shoshoni women cook for us—a dinner of berries and trout and a handful of other things we don’t recognize or question. We simply eat our fill, the entire train, and I am tempted to marry Naomi today—right now—and make the feast a wedding celebration, but I hesitate to speak up and create new drama amid the peace. Then we are swept up in the attentions of Hanabi and her tribe, and I resist the impulse.

As we eat, Hanabi tells me of her journey home, about the wagon train and the family who let her travel with them. I translate her tale to the train, growing emotional throughout her account, stopping to search for English words and find my control as she recalls the moment she returned to her tribe. Her mother had died, but her father and her brother still lived. She had left them as a young bride to a fur trader who had befriended her father, who was then the chief of a small Shoshoni tribe. A year later, she was alone, far from home, with no husband, no family, and no people.

“For three years she lived with my white family,” I say. “Abbott brought her to us. We have missed her.”

“I was afraid to leave. But I was more afraid that I would never see my home or be among my people again.”

The emigrants stare at her in hushed awe, and before the night is over, Naomi is drawing again, painting on paper and skins, creating pictures for our new friends until the moon rises high over the camp, and wickiups and wagons alike descend into slumber.

Wolfe is the only one who cannot sleep. He fusses in Winifred’s arms as Naomi finishes her last picture by lantern light, a sketch of Hanabi holding her daughter, her loveliness and strength glowing from the page.

Hanabi accepts the gift, marveling at the lines and the likeness. She stands, bidding me good night, grasping my hand and then Naomi’s, but she hesitates, her sleeping infant in her arms. For a moment, Hanabi watches Winifred spoon milk into Wolfe’s anxious mouth.

Hanabi hands her sleeping daughter to Naomi, who takes her in surprise. Then Hanabi sinks down on the other side of the yoke Winifred is using for a seat and extends her arms toward Wolfe.

“Tell her I will feed him, John Lowry,” Hanabi says to me. “I have more milk than my daughter can drink.”

Winifred hands her son to Hanabi, her eyes gleaming in the tepid light, and Hanabi, without any self-consciousness, opens her robe and moves the child to her breast, guiding her nipple into his mouth. He latches on without difficulty, becoming almost limp in her arms, his cheeks working, his body still.

Winifred weeps openly, one hand pressed to her mouth and one to her heart, and Naomi cries with her, holding Hanabi’s daughter, her eyes on the little boy, who suckles like he’s starving, first one breast and then the other, until he falls into a milk-induced slumber, releasing the nipple in his mouth. Hanabi closes her robe and sets the babe against her shoulder, rubbing Wolfe’s small back. He burps with a satisfied rumble, and Winifred smiles through her tears as Hanabi lays him back in her arms.

I have completely forgotten myself, struck by the scene and caught up in an intimacy I should have turned away from. I am embarrassed by my own presence, but Hanabi looks up at me without censure or discomfort as she takes her child from Naomi’s arms.

“Tell the mother I will feed him again at dawn, before we part. She must eat and rest and let her body make milk for him.”

I repeat her words to Winifred, who nods, unable to stem the