Where the Lost Wander_ A Novel - Amy Harmon Page 0,72
Winifred, and Adam gladly yokes his oxen to Warren’s wagon. My mules and I are freed from duty for the first time since the alkali flats, and I herd them ahead, stripped of an excuse to travel with the Mays, though I hardly needed one before. Samson and Delilah are almost giddy as we ford the river for the ninth and last time, leaving the Sweetwater and the longest week of my life behind.
South Pass is a wide, grassy saddle of land sitting between a range of mountains to the north and another to the south.
“They call this the Continental Divide. The Sweetwater River flows east, and everything to the west flows toward the Pacific,” Abbott hollers, pulling his wagon to a halt. “Everything thataway is the Oregon Territory.”
“Oregon? Already?” Webb yells, as if the journey has been a buggy ride in the countryside. “Ya hear that, Will? We’re almost there!”
Almost there, and still eight hundred miles to go. Webb is riding Trick alongside me, Will behind him. My mules and the horses have picked up the pace, sensing quitting time.
A few trees climb the low bluffs that rise up here and there, but from where I sit, there is nothing but vastness. Vast skies above, vast land below, and nothing to obscure the view in between.
I pitch my tent and see to my animals, keeping myself apart from the rest, still swinging between resolution and regret. I’m carrying buckets from the stream we’re camped beside, my hair still dripping from a good wash, when Winifred May finds me and asks for a moment of my time. Wolfe is in her arms, his little legs kicking wildly, freed from the papoose I bought him in Laramie.
“Naomi’s gone up the bluff on Red,” she says. “She wanted to see the view.” Winifred points to the bluff about a half mile off and the lone rider just cresting the rise.
“She shouldn’t have gone alone.” I sound as irritated as I feel.
“I told her to let Warren or Wyatt go with her, but she’s headstrong.” Winifred looks at me. “And she’s not a child anymore. So I don’t treat her like one.” Winifred’s voice is perfectly mild, her gaze steady, but I don’t miss her point. I don’t acknowledge it either. “I don’t think one needs to climb the bluff to appreciate the view. A body can see so clearly from here. It’s all so wide open. Yet it looks nothing like the prairie. We’ve seen some country, haven’t we, John?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Are you going to follow her?”
“Ma’am?”
“Naomi. Are you going to follow her? I think that’s what she wants.”
“I’m not sure Naomi knows what she wants, Mrs. May.”
Winifred’s eyebrows shoot up, but she lets my response drift away on the breeze. She raises her hand to shade her eyes, finding the lone rider ascending the bluff.
“In all her twenty years, I don’t think that’s ever been true, Mr. Lowry,” she says.
We are silent for a moment, standing side by side. Winifred sways back and forth to keep Wolfe content. I’ve noticed it’s something she always does, even when she’s not carrying him. It reminds me of the metronome Jennie kept on her piano, ticktock, ticktock, and I am suddenly engulfed in a longing for home. It stuns me. Maybe I’ve just never been away long enough to appreciate it. Maybe that’s the way it is with everything. Even Naomi. She withdraws, and I miss her so bad I can’t breathe.
“Do you love her, John?” Winifred asks softly, her hand still pressed to her brow.
I am taken aback, but Winifred doesn’t pause long enough for me to answer anyway.
“Because if you don’t, you have my respect. You’ve told her how it’s going to be, and you’ve stood your ground. But . . . if you do love her . . . the ground beneath you isn’t very firm.”
“She wants us to marry,” I blurt out. “Did she tell you?”
“And you don’t want that?”
“I want that.” It is a relief to say the words out loud and know them to be true. I want that.
“So what’s stopping you?”
My flood of reasons rises like a torrent, a million drops of water inseparable from each other, and I don’t know where to start.
“Is it because she’s not Pawnee?” Winifred asks.
I shake my head no, though I know that’s part of it. There is guilt in choosing one of my feet over the other.