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 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 flow of her tears. She tries to speak, but for a moment she can only cry. Hanabi seems to understand, though she looks to me for reassurance that all is well.
“She is grateful, Hanabi. She has suffered greatly and never complains,” I say, battling back my own emotion.
“I saw this . . . in my dreams,” Winifred stutters between sobs. “I saw another woman . . . an Indian woman . . . feeding him, and I . . . was afraid. But I am not afraid anymore.”
13
FORT BRIDGER
JOHN
We part with Hanabi and the Shoshoni early the next day, restored both in strength and in spirit. We travel a barren fifteen miles and close out the day by crossing the waters of Blacks Fork, which Abbott and the emigrant guide claim we will cross three more times before reaching Fort Bridger.
“It’s nothing like the Green. Not at any point. Just a little wadin’ is all. Shouldn’t need to unload the wagons or worry about being swept away,” Abbott reassures us as we make camp on the other side, but I have begun to fret about other things. I am weighed down by the unknown and by my inability to prepare for it. I want to go on ahead. The entire train can’t sit at Fort Bridger while I pull together an outfit—wagon, riggings, ropes and chains, spare parts, and two months’ worth of supplies—and pause to marry Naomi. I need time, and if I travel the final thirty miles with the train, I won’t get it. I talk to Abbott, who is agreeable to the idea, if not optimistic.