to find him missing, but it is not John who holds him; it is a stranger. It doesn’t last long, a few angry bellows, and he quiets. I lie back down, but I don’t stop listening. The sky is bigger here, and I am much, much smaller here, but this is where Wolfe is.
Magwich returns while I am still awake. I don’t expect him, and I jerk upright when he enters the wickiup, drawing his eye. He walks toward me, his hands on his hips, and stops beside the buffalo robes. I avert my eyes so he won’t get angry, but he stoops down and grips my chin so he can study my face. His breath is sharp with spirits, and I lean away. He puts his hand on my chest and pushes me back so I am lying down again. Then he bunches his hands in my dress and flips me over onto my stomach.
I cry out, but I don’t dare fight. If I fight him, I will lose. If I fight him, he will give me away. My heart has fled my chest, and it pounds in my head, pulsing against the backs of my eyes. I can’t breathe, but his breath rasps in my ears. He grips my hips and hikes me up to my knees, shoving my dress up around my waist. I have nothing underneath. I removed the leggings before I lay down to sleep. Beeya rolls over, muttering in her dreams, but if she were awake, she would not help me. She would be glad. Magwich has decided he wants me.
It hurts, but I do not fight.
I do not fight. I do not scream. I cry silently, and I endure.
I distract myself with what I want most.
He is not gentle, but he is quick, and he finishes with a grunt and a shiver and pushes himself away from me, staggering to his feet before falling onto his own pile of robes on the other side of the wickiup with a long, belching sigh. He is snoring almost immediately.
I walk out into the night and into the creek, lifting my skirt as I sink into the water to wash him away. I sit for a long time, waiting for the cold to make me numb. A dog barks, but there are so many dogs that no one listens. Distant singing. Distant fires. The sky is bigger here. I am much, much smaller here, but this is where Wolfe is.
“I gotta get my mind right,” I whisper. “Gotta find transcendence.” But I’ve already begun to float away.
JOHN
The valley is teeming with tapered tipis and domed wickiups on the morning we arrive. Camp after camp, thousands of people, thousands of horses, and a billion dogs. It is worse than the hills of St. Joe during the jump-off season. Washakie and his chiefs move up into the lead as we slowly proceed through the Gathering. A slice of the valley has been left open for him, one that extends up from the surrounding creek to an enormous circle in the center, where the people seem to congregate. I cannot help but scan the faces, searching desperately for sight of Naomi, but the numbers are too vast, and though we wind our way through the camps, Washakie and some of his men greeting other leaders of other bands, I do not see her. Washakie says that we are the last to arrive, but he does not prolong my agony.
“I will not go to Pocatello’s camp, but Hanabi and some of the other women will visit. There is good feeling among the Newe, even if their chiefs do not see eye to eye. They will look among the women for your wife and her brother. If they are here, I will call a council. We will not cause panic or raise an alarm. That would not be good for your woman or the tua.”
Washakie and some of the men go to watch the horses race and mingle among the warriors of other tribes. I see to my mules and help Lost Woman set up Washakie’s big wickiup and start a fire for cooking. The women seem to carry the brunt of the labor in the tribe. It is no different among the Pawnee. The men kill the meat, but the women skin it, quarter it, pack it, and drag it home. Then they cut it into strips, dry it, pound it, dry it some more, and pack it up again.