Where the Lost Wander

Chapter 21 begins in John’s point of view. The band leaves their hunting ground in mid-October and heads west to the valley where they will spend the winter. It features a hot spring that will make hunting in the cold easier, as animals gather around it for warmth. Washakie tells John that the days of living by hunting will soon be numbered for his people, and that they may need to learn how to farm.

John tames one of the horses stolen from the Crow, jumping on its back and letting it run for miles until it is spent. They are in the next valley, near an Indigenous village, and when John sees women carrying papooses he recognizes Wolfe.

The perspective shifts to Naomi, who is angry at John for risking a fall by breaking the horse. She goes outside to have an imaginary conversation with her mother, and Lost Woman finds her and says she will listen. Naomi says she feels trapped “where the lost wander” (315) because she can’t have Wolfe and she can’t leave him. She both loves and hates her life. Back in the wickiup, John tells her that he also misses his mother and feels close to her in the camp. Naomi asks her mother to help her find her way home, “wherever home is” (317).

Chapter 22 begins in Naomi’s point of view. Washakie and Hanabi make a goodwill visit to Pocatello’s village, and when they return they tell her that Wolfe is growing bigger. Biagwi and Weda call him Wolf Boy. She has begun to wonder if she and John should stay with Washakie’s band, although John says they must find her three brothers in the spring. They discuss the idea of taking Wolfe by force.

Naomi has begun painting again and paints a vision that Washakie had in a dream. Naomi recalls her mother’s dream about another woman feeding Wolfe. She tells Washakie her mother knew hard times were coming but she always found transcendence, rising above the things she couldn’t change. Washakie asks how one knows what can’t be changed, and John says people can only change “what could be” (321). Washakie’s vision was of the future: cars, airplanes, intermarriage between white settlers and Indigenous people. In the dream he was told not to fight, to choose peace with the white man.

The point of view shifts to John as he and Naomi go to bathe in the hot spring. On their way back they see Biagwi and Weda, who have brought Wolfe to Naomi because the baby is sick. They allow her to hold him, but he is flushed and still. Lost Woman tells Weda to let Naomi hold the child and say goodbye, and Wolfe dies in Naomi’s arms.

Naomi briefly narrates the scene of Weda snatching the dead child and howling, then putting him down and walking away.

John’s perspective returns as he thinks that Biagwi and Weda’s grief means Wolfe was cherished. Naomi washes the child’s body and wraps him in a blanket. Outside there are tracks in the snow, a woman and a wolf. Lost Woman says the spirit of Winifred came for her son and that now, Naomi can go home.

The Epilogue begins in Naomi’s perspective. In 1858, Naomi thinks of how Wolfe freed her, because she couldn’t either take him or leave him. She still thinks of her mother’s footprints in the snow and wonders if there is a “place called transcendence where all the blood runs together and we’re one people” (333).

She and John left Washakie’s band on horseback in early May with the three mules and two of the horses John won behind them. She thinks of how John will always be Two Feet, straddling two worlds, and all she can give him is something to hold on to.

After leaving the camp, they came to the spot where John buried their dead. They reached Coloma, California, a gold mining town, in July 1854 and found Naomi’s brothers there with Abbott. John started a mule business, and in 1856 they went to the Great Salt Lake Valley in the hope that Washakie would come to trade. He did, and he visited John and Naomi’s house and told John he was going to have a son and many descendants who would honor his name. Naomi concludes the memory by saying that the night she delivered her child, “there were tracks in the snow” (238).