After harvesting roots and bark, we returned to camp. Niabi offered me a supper of fry bread, dried mulberries, and beans; wrapped a woven blanket round my shoulders; and settled me fireside beside the Lawman. Apparently he hadn’t been jailed. I itched to have overheard that conversation—listened to the Lawman’s tale, glimpsed why Wa-ah-zho chose to trust him. On a stump round the blaze, Wa-ah-zho’s demeanor relaxed, but the Lawman remained tense and brooding.
“Wa-ah-zho,” I said, tucking the striped wool up under my chin, “I do apologize, for hunting on your land.”
“Let’s speak of the matter no more,” Wa-ah-zho said. “I see boldness in you. I reckon trespassing isn’t your first misadventure.”
“Well—” I rubbed the chapped edges of my hands. “I may have some stories.”
The Lawman caught my eye, deliberately raised an eyebrow—and then Niabi challenged us to share of our most outrageous disasters. And so we spent the quiet hours sharing fragments of our pasts. Niabi snuggled beside her husband on a log, her tales of mishaps and debacles mimicking mine, her palm occasionally running across the hound curled at her feet. Wa-ah-zho refuted my anecdotes as hogwash, the Lawman tracked my every move below his Stetson, and we kept on telling stories until night was gossiping of morning.
Chapter Thirteen
The night passed full of color and sound. The Osage moved between bonfires, their clothes catching the flame’s light. Several children chased each other silently, slinking in and out of shadow, sneaking round their white lodges, the domes a’glow in the dark. After hours fireside, Wa-ah-zho joined a game beside us, bone dice clattering as they slammed the wooden bowl onto blankets. Niabi roved the celebration with her hound, leaning forward as she chatted with a friend, squeezing another woman’s arm, laughing without restraint. I was softly drunk on corn whiskey and relishing the weight of night’s shadows.
Beside me, the Lawman leaned back into darkness, One Eye asleep at his boots. After the Osage had welcomed us, they’d sent someone to gather Cricket and Shark. The Lawman had clucked his tongue—and One Eye had bolted from the thicket, apparently shadowing us all night.
The Lawman stretched out his legs, heels sunk in the dirt, hat tipped over his face, body lengthened into something like a slouch, an impersonation of a carefree cowboy. Below the front dip of his broadbrim hat, his gaze darted around the crowd, sharp and analytical. He didn’t entirely trust them. Well, a renegade probably trusted no one.
I sipped the whiskey, liquid burning the back of my throat. The Lawman leaned his shoulder close to mine. “You’re naive.”
I straightened the scratchy cuffs of my wincey blouse. “What are you scared of, Lawman?”
“Containment.”
I snapped my gaze to his, my fingers moving to the buttons at my neck. “Just ride on home, if you’re all affright.”
His gaze roamed to my palm, the butter-yellow linen crusted brown with blood. “I won’t leave you.”
“I’m hardly dying here.”
“I’ll stay.”
He leaned back again, his posture deliberate. Peeking from the woolen blanket over his body, a line of metal glinted, bullets organized down his bandolier. It was peculiar that he wouldn’t leave me. If he didn’t trust anyone, why would he form an alliance with me, a woman he knew had committed double murder?
Niabi bustled back, her arms full of bundles and pots, her shaggy hound trailing. “Let’s mix a salve for your hand.”
I joined her fireside.
The Lawman lifted his copper cup and sipped whiskey, watchful. Niabi poured something the shade of bruised rain clouds from a woven bag into a shallow bowl.
“Lavender?” I asked, the bonfire warm along the bridge of my nose.
Niabi nodded and held some grains out to me. They smelt like renewal. Niabi shared she was a healer, taught the ancient ways by her mother and grandmother. She did not hold her own memories of her ancestral land but had grown up among these hills, learning the remedies and gifts the earth offered here. She handed me the bowl and pestle, motioning for me to grind the lavender. I rotated the pestle across the grains, and Niabi laid her palm atop mine, a black spider tattooed on the back of her hand. She adjusted the angle of the pestle and modeled the right amount of pressure. My skin was dry, and I felt the texture of her palm across my knuckles. She showed me how to mix the ground lavender with some grease.
“You’ve all those books in your shack. Are skilled with horses and weapons.” She stirred the salve with her forefinger. “What else can you do?”
No one had ever asked about my skills. She knew my strengths of bravery and boldness. That I could hunt, build, survive. And horses, I’d always understood horses. When I thought back, horses saturated my earliest memories, the moments blurry and imprecise: a coppery claybank flank; lifting a carrot toward an Appaloosa; Pa guiding my bootheel into a stirrup; hair snapping behind me as I rounded wayward cattle on my pony. After I’d heard the legend of Willie Matthews—a woman from nearby in Kansas who’d dressed as a man and drove longhorns up Old Chisholm Trail to Dodge City—I’d yearned to shuck my skirts, chop off my hair, and throw trouser legs over a mustang. But Niabi would expect a pioneer to establish a farmstead, train horses, withstand a harsh life. What other abilities of mine might be uncommon on the frontier? I tapped the pestle on the wooden bowl. “I can paint.”
“Paint?” She tucked a slick strand of hair behind her ear, firelight striking on her sunset-hued beaded earrings. “Similar to how we make art with hand weaving—you paint?”
I scratched my ankle above my boot. “I could, once.”
“You don’t walk backward.” She flicked her hand, swiping away my ambivalence.
Niabi bustled away, returning with charcoal paint and an earthenware pot. She explained the spider shape on her hand. LikeHo e ka, a name for Earth, the spider represented a snare that trapped all life. Niabi asked me to draw the patterns round the pot, and I explained some of my painting techniques. Later, she joined her husband on a stump, leaning her head against his shoulder. His energy was staid, while hers vibrated. She was vivacious in a way I’d once been, before these seasons of regret. I lost hold of those pieces of myself somewhere along the way. I painted for a time, the celebration muted beyond me, the Lawman ever present in the shadows, and then the night sky began to loosen, as it did close tosunrise, letting in the softer undertones of dawn. Wa-ah-zho spoke something to Niabi and tucked her blanket cloak across her lap, the navy ink of his tattoos climbing from his collar. He leaned across our circle toward me. “Will you come back? We’ll share more stories.”
“You can paint. Show me how to train my horse.” Niabi held out her hand to me, her stack of bracelets jangling. “And I’ll show you where to find herbs in the hills.”
I clasped her hand between mine. “I’d be honored.”
