A bow and a quiver for Webb and Will, a cradleboard for Wolfe so Naomi and Winifred can keep their arms free, and a new felt hat for Wyatt. I don’t know what I can buy for Warren. There are no wives on the shelves of Fort Laramie, and Warren misses Abigail. I decide something sweet will do us all good; two pounds of candy wrapped in brown paper is my final purchase. It all costs me more than it should—the trading post is the only place to get goods until Fort Bridger, and they take advantage of the demand.
I return to the camp before most of the rest of the men and approach the May wagons with my packages, wanting to deliver my gifts without William May looking over my shoulder. I have already half convinced myself to just leave Naomi’s gifts in her wagon without a word. But Webb and Will see me coming and run toward me, accepting my present with joyful whoops. Each has a piece of candy stuffed in his cheek before I can ask the whereabouts of anyone else.
“Where is Naomi?” I ask Webb, who hops around me with the bow, his little bare feet doing a variation of a war dance while he pretends to shoot at the sun. Will is studying the arrows, his eyes narrowed on the sharp points and the feathered quills, pulling them out of the quiver one at a time like he is drawing a sword.
“She went to visit the Indian ladies. Ma too. But Ma came back ages ago. She’s in the wagon with baby Wolfe,” Will says. “Do you want me to bring her the papoose?”
I stare at him, stunned. “What Indian ladies?”
Will points to the lodges of the French trappers on the banks of the Platte. Even from a distance, I can see dogs and children and women milling about. The trappers all have Indian wives; at the fort I heard someone refer to the community as the French Indians, though I’m guessing the women don’t come from any one tribe.
“Ma says she’s painting for them. There’s a whole big line,” Will adds. He doesn’t sound the slightest bit concerned.
I stow my packages, including the gifts for Naomi, in Abbott’s wagon and hurry up the hill, trying not to worry. It is not my business. I am not her keeper or her husband or her father. But I’m afraid for her and silently curse her mother for leaving her alone among strangers.
But she is not alone. Wyatt sits beside her outside the biggest lodge, half-breed children skipping around them with dogs nipping at their heels. An Indian woman swats at the dogs and points for the children to go play somewhere else after one trips over the items Wyatt seems to be in charge of collecting. As I watch, a squaw wrapped in a brown blanket sits down in front of Naomi, her legs crossed, her face solemn. Naomi hands her a looking glass, the one I saw hanging from the willow frame inside Warren’s wagon when I was laid low. The woman studies her face and smiles, nodding. I wonder with a start if she’s ever seen her likeness before.
Naomi sketches quickly—her audience is growing—and hands the piece of paper to the brown-cloaked squaw. The woman compares the picture to her face in the glass and nods and smiles once more. In exchange for the drawing—which Naomi has added a bit of paint to here and there—the woman gives Naomi a blanket, which Wyatt sets on the growing pile. Naomi bows her head slightly and makes the Indian sign for good, the way I did with the Dakotah braves, and the next person steps forward. The whole process repeats itself.
Wyatt sees me and waves, like it’s all a grand adventure. I tell myself she is fine and I can go. I should go. But I don’t. I simply watch, tucked back from the crowd. Naomi draws on her own paper more often than not, though a few hand her pieces of leather or shields like the ones she decorated for the Dakotah warriors; I wonder if word has spread to their encampment. It has definitely spread to the fort. Some of the emigrant women from other trains have straggled in, watching curiously and talking among themselves. A French fur trader, who seems to reside in the lodge Naomi sits in front of, gets a turn as well. He stands, solemn, holding his rifle and wearing a coonskin hat with a fat ringed tail that hangs between his fringed shoulders.
She doesn’t take much time with each person. Ten minutes at the most, but the people marvel and clap when she finishes each drawing, and her happy patrons walk away, carrying their prizes in careful hands. An Indian woman, her skirts wet like she’s crossed the Platte, brings Naomi a goat.
Naomi blanches for a moment, and the woman rushes to demonstrate the goat’s worth, squeezing its teats and squirting a stream of milk into a tin cup. She offers it to Naomi, adamant. Naomi takes it and gives it to Wyatt. He gulps it down without hesitation.
He smiles, wiping his mouth, and the goat’s owner claps. Naomi says something else to him, and they both begin to nod. Apparently, they have accepted the goat. The woman puts a picket pin in the goat’s lead rope and sinks down in front of Naomi to pose for her portrait.
There is no way there is room in the wagons, packed tight as they are, for all of Naomi’s trades. Nor does she need most of what she is being given. But she keeps painting away. Her left cheek is smudged with blue paint, her right cheek with red, and the tip of her nose has a black dot right on the tip, like she leaned too close to her work. Her yellow dress, the dress she was wearing when I first saw her in St. Joe, is splattered; I doubt she will be able to get it clean, no matter how hard the rain falls. Her hair is hanging down her back in a fat braid, long wisps clinging to the paint on her cheeks, but the crowd is looking at her like she’s descended from the clouds to walk among them.
Hours pass. I leave briefly to check on my animals and return to an even larger crowd. As far as I know, Naomi has not taken a break or tried to curtail the gathering, and her pile of trades is growing. The trapper’s squaw gathers her children and bundles them into the lodge only to come out a few minutes later with water and some kind of meat pie, which Wyatt and Naomi gobble up like they are starving. Naomi hands the woman a blanket from her stack, insisting she take it for the food, and the woman brings her another pie. Naomi points to me, and Wyatt stands, shaking out his cramped limbs, and brings me the pie.
“Naomi says if you’re going to wait for us, you are going to eat.”
I take the pie, hungry but hesitant, and Wyatt trots back to Naomi’s side. I can’t guess at what she’s trying to accomplish, beyond the obvious: she is painting, people are happy, she’s collecting loot. The sun is setting, the train will pull out in the morning, and just as I begin to think I am going to have to interrupt and put an end to the madness, for Naomi’s sake, the crowd begins to part and point, and the emigrant onlookers scatter like scared rabbits. Black Paint and the bangled brave approach on horseback. Three Indian women lead a mule pulling an empty travois. Black Paint is leading the dun and a sorrel, his reddish-brown coat the same color as Naomi’s hair.
Black Paint says something in Sioux—Go? Leave?—and the crowd obeys.
As the people disperse, I make my way to Naomi, standing behind her and Wyatt, who doesn’t seem surprised at all by the entrance of the Dakotah war chief. Naomi adds a few strokes to the picture she’s drawing for a cavalryman, who’s come over from the fort just to have his likeness painted on a bit of burlap. He takes it and scatters like the rest, leaving a pound of bacon in trade.
“Many Faces wants a horse,” Black Paint says, addressing me in Pawnee. “I will give her two.”