I rouse Naomi, who sits up with bleary eyes and stumbles to the wickiup in search of water and a softer place to lay her rumpled head. Washakie calls out to me, his voice low and warm.
“You are a buffalo hunter now, brother. You will see them in your sleep. Don’t shoot.”
His men laugh and Washakie smiles, and I bid them all good night.
I don’t dream of buffalo. I dream of oxen pulling wagons. I dream of Oddie the ox being left behind and Naomi sitting beside him, drawing pictures of people we’ll never see again. I come awake with a start, breathing hard, not certain where I am. Then Naomi reaches for my hand, reminding me.
“You had a bad dream,” she whispers.
“Not bad,” I whisper back. “Just strange and . . . lonely.”
She sits up, crawls to the canteen, and brings it back to me, as if water cures loneliness. I drink even though I’m not thirsty, and she does too.
She lies back down, but we are both wide awake, and she whispers after a long silence, “Do you want to tell me about the dream?”
“Sometimes I dream about Oddie.” I don’t tell her the rest, and she doesn’t ask me to, but after a moment, she shoves the buffalo robes aside and crawls up on my chest, spreading herself over me, her cheek against my heart. I shed my shirt before I slept, and her breath is warm on my skin.
“Poor Oddie. He was tired of carrying all of us,” she says softly. I close my eyes, savoring the feel of her against me, solid and close. I reach up to stroke her hair, following its length to the base of her spine.
“I worry sometimes that you will get tired of carrying all of us, John.”
“I would carry you to the ends of the earth.”
She raises her head and looks down at me; her walls are down, and her gaze is tender. She braces her hands on either side of my head and kisses me—lips, chin, cheeks, brow—softly, sweetly, and then does it all over again. When she returns to my mouth for the third time, her breath is shallow, her heart thrumming, and the kiss is not nearly so soft or sweet. Her lips cling to mine, hungry and hopeful, and I respond in kind, my hands still but my mouth eager, molding her lips and chasing her tongue.
She wears a ragged homespun shift when she sleeps, something Hanabi gave her. It’s thin beneath my hands as I draw it up over her hips and pull it over her head. Her eyes don’t leave mine, and her mouth returns, wet and welcoming, and I can’t be still any longer. Her arms curl around me, and her legs twine with mine when I roll, changing our positions. When she stiffens, I immediately stop, lifting myself up onto my arms and taking my weight from her body. But she grips my hips and guides me home, insistent. We moan as one and move together, slow, slow, slow. Our eyes are locked and our bodies are joined, but tears begin to seep from the corners of her eyes and trickle into the pool of her hair.
“Naomi?” I whisper, kissing them away. I hesitate, but she tightens her arms and legs around me, holding me close.
“No, don’t stop. Don’t go. It’s not . . . I’m just . . . happy. And it hurts to feel good.”
“Why?” I whisper. Naomi let me know, right from the beginning, that she wanted me, and I never doubted her. I doubted fate and my good fortune, I feared and fled her advances, but Naomi never played games, and she isn’t playing now. My own pleasure is the swollen Platte, surging from a far-off place, but I hold it back, waiting for her, feeling the answering quake in her limbs. She is on the brink, but her heart is breaking.
“It hurts to be happy,” she says.
“Why?” I ask, gentle. Careful.
“Because they can’t feel anything.”
“Who, Naomi?” I know the answer, but it doesn’t matter. She needs to tell me.
“Ma and Pa and Warren. Elsie Bingham and her baby. Her husband. They’re dead. And I’m not, and it doesn’t feel right.”
Everything about us feels right. The cradle of her hips, the silk of her skin, her breasts against my chest, her lips against my face. I don’t move, though my body screams to do just that, but I don’t pull away either.
“I am here, with you, loving you and being loved, and they are in the ground,” she says, almost pleading for me to understand.
“I know.”
“So it hurts . . . to feel good.”
“Yeah. It does.” There is no denying it, and admitting it eases the ache in my chest and the strain in her face.
She wipes her tears, and I kiss her forehead, resting my lips there. We breathe together, feeling the pain and holding each other close.
Then we begin to move again.
21
FALL
JOHN
The nights are colder, and the light has changed. It doesn’t beat down from overhead but slants across the land and curls around the peaks, leaving the shadows alone. It’s more golden and faded, and soon it will be gone. We leave the Wind River Valley in mid-October—I’m not sure of the exact date anymore. I lost track after Fort Bridger. I think it’s the tenth, but I could be wrong. The boys should have crossed the mountains by now. The trail was going to end at Sutter’s Mill, and I pray that Abbott will find them shelter somewhere to wait out the winter ahead. I trust the Caldwells and the Clarkes will look out for them too; Elmeda loved Winifred, and I think she loves Naomi. I hope she’ll love the boys until we find our way to them.
Naomi’s cheeks have some color beneath her freckles, and her face is not as thin. She rides on Samson’s back, her hair braided to keep it from whipping in the wind. She is eating serviceberries from a small sack, and her lips are stained red from their juice. We found the bushes where we camped last night. The season is late, and many had ripened and fallen to the ground, but we filled our bellies and saved what was left. Naomi said she’s never tasted anything better. We’ve lived on meat and the occasional roots and seeds, so the fruit is a treat, but there’s something to the Shoshoni diet. The people age slowly, and everyone has their teeth.
Naomi catches me looking at her and smiles a little, sending a bolt of heat from my chest to my toes. The space between us is gone, the tentative touches, the careful words. We’ve built a raft in my wickiup, an ark like Noah’s, where only the two of us live. And when it’s dark, we float together, shutting out the flood, the fear, and the uncertainty of a world that won’t be the same when the waters recede. Some nights Naomi is fierce, all speed and heat and frantic coupling, like she’s afraid the storm’s about to sink us. Other times she lies in my arms for hours, loving me slowly, like I am dry land.
We round the north end of the Wind River Range and go west toward the peaks Washakie calls Teewinot, which loom like a row of pendulous teats jutting out from Mother Earth. We cut through ridges and valleys heavy with trees for almost a week until we drop down into a bowl between the mountains, where the grass is long and green and the animals gorge while we rest for a day. Washakie doesn’t let us tarry longer, and we exit the valley at its south end, following the Piupa through a chasm where rivers converge and warm springs bubble in pale-blue pools, attracting the children and Naomi, who begs for a bath. Washakie promises there will be more in the valley on the other side of the mountain.
When we come out of the canyon two days later, the valley stretches in front of us, green and flat, with mountains behind us and rivers beside us, one running west, another south. As promised, a hot spring bubbles up among the rocks near the base of the hills, and Washakie says the animals will gather around it in the cold, making hunting and trapping easy when the cold makes it difficult. We make camp just below the tree line, east of the junction where the two rivers meet. Timber will be plentiful for fires, and the animals can forage beneath the trees when the snow covers the grass. Wild chickens and grouse abound, and the rivers are filled with fish. A huge elk herd is sighted just to the north, and a prettier spot I’ve never seen. The soil is rich with the minerals that bubble in the hot springs, the water plentiful, and I can’t imagine the farmland isn’t prime.