by Harmon, Amy
“You have the Face Woman,” the scarred warrior says. “You do not need her drawings.”
“They are the faces of her people. Her people are gone.”
He is silent, considering. He turns away, holding up his hand for me to wait, and returns seconds later with Naomi’s satchel. He opens the latch and pulls out a stack of loose pages. Winifred May looks up at me, and I am flooded with sudden grief.
“I do not want to give them to you,” he says. His tone is not belligerent, and no one laughs; he simply speaks the truth: he does not want to part with them.
“There are many,” I rasp, trying to speak around my emotion. “I do not need them all.”
He nods, acknowledging this. I pull a pouch of tobacco from my saddlebag and point at the picture of Winifred. “I need that one.”
He frowns, considering this for a second. Then he nods, and I hand him the tobacco. He gives me the picture on top, revealing a drawing of Warren, his face pensive and tired, his hair sticking up from his brow, staring off into a distance he’ll never reach.
“I need that one too,” I say, digging for my beads. The scarred warrior purses his lips, studying the picture, but then hands it over too, taking my trade. I exchange the ribbon for a sketch of William, the kerchief for a picture of a laughing Webb, and then I have nothing more to trade. A stack of precious images remains in the warrior’s hands. He puts them back in the satchel and closes the top.
“I will give you the dun for all of them,” I say. I’m no good at this. I want them too much, and he knows it. He looks at the dun, appreciative, but he shakes his head.
“It is a good horse, but I don’t need another horse. I have won many horses. Fifty horses. Wahatehwe always wins!” He yells these last words, goading the men around him, and some whoop and some hiss.
“I will beat you, Wahatehwe!” someone yells back. It is Magwich, and he is astride another horse.
“I have beat you ten times, Magwich. You will have no horses left. Who else will race me?”
He waits, his arms extended in challenge, but no one answers. He laughs, shrugging it off. “No one wants to race me now. Wahatehwe always wins.”
“I will race you,” I say. The men around us crow in excitement. “And if I win, I get Face Woman’s pictures.”
“I will race you both!” Magwich yells. “And if I win, I will take the woman and my horses.”
“I will not race for the woman, and I will not race Magwich,” I say, my eyes on Wahatehwe. “Only you. For the pictures.” I do not yell or even raise my voice, but the men around us spread the word.
“If I win? What do I get?” Wahatehwe says, but I can tell he wants to accept, regardless.
“You do not need another horse,” I remind him. He laughs, teeth flashing. His big scar makes his smile droop on one side, and I like him more for it.
“If I win, Face Woman will paint another skin for me,” he says, but I hesitate again.
“Face Woman is not well,” I say. Naomi is not well, and I need her pictures. Wahatehwe frowns and looks at Magwich. He grunts and looks back at me, his gaze hard. I don’t think he likes Magwich, and my esteem for him rises again.
“We will race. If you win, I will give you the pictures. If I win . . . I will keep them. That is all,” he says.
“Let’s race!” Magwich shouts.
Wahatehwe looks at me, his eyes speculative. “Magwich is angry. I said I would give him all the horses he lost in exchange for the Face Woman. Five horses. He decided the woman was more valuable. Now he has no horses and no woman. And he continues to lose.”
Magwich is going to lose his life if I remain in his presence, but I say nothing.
Wahatehwe looks away and raises his voice, addressing the gamblers.
“Wahatehwe and the Pani daipo will race. Not Magwich.”
“You are afraid of Magwich!” Magwich yells from atop his horse. Wahatehwe ignores him. I ignore him. A cry goes up, and bets are placed, and I send a boy from Washakie’s band back for my saddle. It’s outside my tent, the only tent in a valley of wickiups and tipis; he won’t have any trouble finding it. Washakie has arrived. He sits at the edge of the clearing astride his dark horse with the white star and stays clear of the gambling. If he has raced at all, I don’t know, but I doubt he would risk that horse. Pocatello and his men are at the starting line, placing their bets; Magwich is complaining to whomever will listen.
The boy returns with my saddle, his face alight with anticipation, and I hand him a coin from my bags. He flips it, smiles, and scampers away. I saddle the dun and swing up onto his back. He dances and tosses his head, eager to go, and I hear a few of the bets change. I don’t know how their system works and have no wish to find out. If I win, I get the pictures, and that’s all I care about.
I let the dun scamper a bit, warming up his limbs, but no one is patient enough for me to test the course. I move toward the line, but Wahatehwe is not the only one waiting there. Magwich insists on racing, and no one dares deny him.
“If I win, I get the woman,” Magwich insists.
“No. If you win, you win. You get nothing from me,” I say. I don’t even look at him. Wahatehwe is between us at the line, and I move the dun beside his paint, refusing to be goaded by the loathsome Magwich.
“If I win, I will take my horses,” Magwich warns Wahatehwe. The crowd goes silent, awaiting Wahatehwe’s response.
“If you win, I will give you the five horses I won from you,” Wahatehwe relents, letting his voice carry.
Magwich bellows, raising his hands like he’s already won, and the bets are cast yet again.
“But if the Pani wins,” Wahatehwe shouts, his eyes gleaming with mischief, “I will give the five horses to him.”
Magwich is stunned into silence, and the men around us whoop, but there is no time for argument.
“We race!” Wahatehwe yells. “Cross the creek and come back, Pani.”
Then the gun fires, making the dun jump, and Magwich and Wahatehwe are off, kicking their horses’ flanks, their hair flying out behind them, the dust billowing. I don’t even have to spur the dun. He sees the others leaving him behind and gives chase, almost unseating me. I mold myself to his back and bury my hands in his black mane, letting him go. He pounds down the clearing and past the camps, in pursuit all the way. Wahatehwe leads Magwich, and neither is paying any attention to the dun closing in. I cross the creek as they are turning around, and the dun hits the far bank and is back in the water without me taking the reins at all. It’s a race, and he is losing, and the dun doesn’t like to lose.
By the time we reach the edge of the clearing, the dun is stride for stride with Wahatehwe’s paint. Magwich is behind us, and I don’t look back to see how far. The dun flies, running with all the joy he’s been denied since leaving the Dakotah at Fort Laramie, and when we reach the finish, we are a full length ahead. The dun doesn’t want to stop, and I draw hard on his mane and bear down in the stirrups to bring him around.
Wahatehwe is laughing, his head and his arms thrown back, and those who shifted their bets at the end, gambling on the long shot, are yipping and dancing with the same zeal. For a brief, sweet moment, my heart is light and the snakes are quiet. I trot my horse back toward the finish, shaking my head in disbelief.
“Didn’t know you had that in ya, Dakotah,” I say to the dun, laughing. It’s about time I gave him a name. He’s earned it.
“I want that horse, John,” Wahatehwe yells, his teeth still flashing behind his lopsided lips. It seems I’ve earned a name as well. Washakie is approaching on his horse, his war chiefs beside him, and all are grinning. It was a good race.
I slide from the dun, reaching up to take the satchel from Wahatehwe’s outstretched hand. He is still astride the paint, incredulous and laughing, and then he isn’t. His eyes flare, and Washakie shouts out in warning. “Brother!”
I whirl, stepping to the side, and a knife sinks to the hilt in the dun’s right flank. The horse shrieks and bolts,
and Shoshoni scatter like a drop of oil in a too-hot skillet, spitting in every direction.
Magwich runs at me, another blade flashing, his teeth bared, and I spin, narrowly avoid being split from my navel to my neck. He slashes again as I feint left, but he nicks my face and takes off a piece of my hair. I stagger back, reaching for the blade in my boot, and he dives again as I scramble and spin. His blade catches my shirt, and the tip of his knife scores my stomach in a long, shallow slice. The welling blood behind the gaping cloth makes him smile. The area around us is wide and empty. No one interferes. No one calls out. They watch.
“I will take your scalp and take your woman . . . again,” Magwich spits out. “I will put the Newe in her belly. Again.” Magwich is panting with his confidence, his knife wet with my blood, but Otaktay, the half-breed Sioux, taught me how to kick and bite and gut a man a dozen ugly ways before I was thirteen years old, when my rage had nowhere to go. My rage is bigger now.
Magwich thrusts again, his stance wide, his powerful thighs braced to run me through, and I drop, kicking out like a mule and connecting with his knee. When he falls forward, I drive my elbow into the side of his head as hard as I can, making him stumble and reach for the ground to catch himself. He drops his knife, and I step back, letting him pick it up again, waiting to see if he wants to die. I want to kill him, but I don’t want to die. I made a promise to three boys and a dead man that I would take care of Naomi. I can’t do that if I kill this man and have to face two thousand more. I am not one of them. He is.
“I don’t want to kill you,” I lie. “Take your knife and Wahatehwe’s horses and go. I don’t want them.”
He laughs. I am bleeding, and he is not. Some in the circle around us jeer, and others jostle to see. Magwich picks up his knife and begins to circle, his stance low and his feathers dancing. He is favoring his knee. He lunges, and I kick out again, connecting with his injured leg, but the dirt is thick and loose from the pounding of hooves and the near-constant racing. I slip, and he pounces, bringing his knife down in a wide arc. It glances off the ground above my head, but my knife is already in his belly. He stiffens, his big body flexing in surprise. He tries to roll away, to escape the blade that is already embedded, but I wrap both hands around the hilt and yank upward, splitting him open before shrugging him off.
He gasps and grabs at his belly, but he is dead before I jerk my knife free. Then I rise to my feet, bloodied and tattered, my blade up and ready for whatever is next.
I expect a rush of knife-wielding Shoshoni, but I am greeted by a brief silence followed by whoops and wails and nothing more. Wahatehwe raises his arms and howls, and Washakie does the same. Some of Pocatello’s men come forward out of the circle, their eyes cautious. One asks if I will take the scalp. My stomach rebels, and I shake my head, refusing the rite. They lift Magwich onto their shoulders, his blood spilling down their backs and onto the ground, but no one rushes me with a spear or a blade. No one confronts me at all. Someone shrieks in mourning, and many voices join in as the body leaves the clearing, but like the final decision at the council, the matter is decided. It is done. Magwich challenged, and Magwich lost. I pick up the satchel, covered with dust and splattered with blood, and go in search of my horse.
NAOMI
I awake to distant wolves wailing, and I am alone in John’s tent. It is midafternoon, and I have slept for hours; I could sleep for hours more, but the sound rising up beyond the encampment has me crawling out of the tent to see what new hell has arrived. No one in the camp seems especially concerned by the noise, though many are gathered near Hanabi’s wickiup. The chief, Washakie, is speaking, and both men and women are listening intently, their eyes wide, mouths agape, like he is relaying a tale. Occasionally another brave cuts in, providing added emphasis or explanation—I can’t tell which—and then Washakie continues. But I hear John’s name.
Then I see John.
He is leading the dun toward the camp, and both he and the horse are caked in dust and blood. Everyone in Washakie’s camp exclaims, and a few run toward him, but he lifts his hand the way he does with his animals, reassuring them, quieting them. I want to run to him too, but I stay rooted to the spot. There is too much blood—his clothes are soaked in it—and my legs have gone numb. John scans beyond the heads of those huddled around him and sees me. He moves through the people, and they part for him. I think one asks to take the horse, but he shakes his head and leads the dun toward me. Hanabi claps her hands, snapping something, and the people disperse, leaving us in relative solitude.
“Are you hurt?” I choke, trying not to look at him, willing the bile in my belly to settle. I pin my eyes to the western sky beyond his shoulder. For months I’ve been looking at the western sky, walking toward it, but now I’m standing still.
“No. The blood isn’t mine,” he says, calm. Quiet.
“Okay,” I say. Nodding.
“You need to sit,” he says. “You’re white as a ghost.”
“I’m fine.” He reaches out a hand to steady me, and I step back. I don’t mean to. I just do, and he drops his hand.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I’ll go to the creek to wash.”
“I’ll get you a fresh shirt,” I whisper. “And your soap and towel.” He protests, but I turn away—I run away—and he lets me go. I search his packs just inside the tent with shaking hands and sip some water from the canteen John left beside me while I was sleeping.
When I reach the creek, he’s already stripped off everything but his pants and submerged himself in the water, washing most of the blood from his skin and hair. He seems more concerned with the dun and is using a tin cup to pour water over his back and his legs, cleaning away the gore and the grime. The horse has a cut on his flank about an inch wide, but it oozes like it’s deep. I hand John the soap and then sink down into the grass with his shirt and towel, not trusting myself to stand.
Some of the blood is John’s. He wasn’t completely honest about that. A long, shallow slice crisscrosses his stomach, and there’s a small gash on his cheekbone.
“Your satchel is there.” He points with his chin, indicating the grass beside me. “I think if I wipe it with a cloth and oil it up some, it’ll be as good as new. You might want to check the pictures inside. There are a few more in that saddlebag.” Another lift of his chin. “I had to roll them to make them fit, but they’re there.”
I stare at the battered satchel and touch the clasp, stunned. It’s dusty and spattered, but it’s here. I open the cover and check the contents, the thick white pages filled with the faces I can’t look at right now. I close it again, overwhelmed with dumbfounded gratitude.
“How?” I whisper. “How did you find them?”
“The scarred warrior—Wahatehwe—gave them back.”
“He gave them back?” I gasp, but John isn’t listening anymore. He’s dunked himself in the creek again and is scrubbing his hair and skin with the soap like he can’t bear to look at me either.
Someone calls out behind me in Shoshoni, and I turn to see the same scarred warrior walking toward the creek, leading five horses. The same five horses he offered Magwich in trade for me. My chest grows tight, and my stomach twists, but John stands, the water sluicing off his hair and his body, and greets the man. John introduces him—his name, Wahatehwe, is beautiful on John’s tongue—but I don’t look up. I ignore them both. The scarred warrior and I have already met, and I would rather forget him.
They converse for a moment, and I feel Wahatehwe’s eyes touching on me before he turns away, but he leaves the horses behind. They bow their heads beside the creek and drink, unconcerned with his departure.
“They are ours now,” John says quietly. “We’ll need some skins for a wickiup and some buffalo robes to sleep on if we’re going to winter here. We can trade the horses for whatever we need.”
My head is spinning. Winter here? A wickiup? And why are the horses ours? “I don’t want anything that belonged to Magwich,” I stammer.
“T
hat’s what I told Wahatehwe, but he said it’s not a horse’s fault who his master is. Who his master . . . was.”
“Who his master was?” I ask, still reeling.
John doesn’t answer. He busies himself with Magwich’s horses, pretending not to hear. But I know him too well. “Why did . . . Wahatehwe . . . give you the horses, John?”
“I won them . . . in a race. Dakotah won them.”
“Dakotah?”
“The dun. That’s his name.”
“Since when?”
“Since he won your satchel and five horses from Wahatehwe,” John says quietly.
“And who put a slash across your belly and a gash on your cheek and a knife in . . . Dakotah?”
“Magwich.” John says the name like it tastes bad.
“And what did you do to Magwich?” I whisper. The hole in my chest fills with something black.
He is silent for a heartbeat, and then he raises his eyes to mine, solemn and dark. “I killed him, Naomi.”
I am caught in a deluge of relief and loathing, and I grit my teeth, close my eyes, and sink my hands into the grass so I’m not washed away.
“Naomi?” John murmurs.
“Yes?”
“I need you to look at me.”
“I will. I will, John. I just can’t . . . quite yet,” I say, keeping my eyes shut tight. I hear him walk toward me and crouch down beside me, but he doesn’t touch me. I can feel the cold coming off his skin and the warmth of his familiar breath.
“I need you to look at me now,” he says gently. “Please.”
I open my eyes and lift my head. And I steel myself to hold his gaze. So many words. So many. And I feel like a liar when I look at him.
“I promised Washakie I wouldn’t seek revenge if he helped me find you. And I kept that promise. But Magwich thought he could kill me, and today he tried. I killed him instead.”
My words are rising and spilling from my eyes, and I want to look away.
“He deserved to die, and I’m not sorry. I’m not ashamed to admit it. I got nothing to be ashamed of. And neither do you. Nothing. You hear me?” John’s voice is fierce, but his lips are trembling, and I reach up and touch his mouth, comforting him even as I break down. He grips my wrist and kisses my palm, and for a moment we struggle together, fighting the grief and the guilt and the words that we don’t say.
