Ever-hopeful, I walked back to Blue Mountain Woman, who sat her little mother on a folded buffalo robe and motioned me to join her. She handed me a sliver of camas root bread and I made myself eat it slowly this time. When I finished, she gave me a bit of boiled salmon from the brass pot. This time I knew better than to look inside and see if there was more; I knew there wasn’t.

Blue Mountain Woman ate her own tiny portion then popped another piece of the bread in her mouth. As I watched in amazement and then humility, she chewed, took the food from her mouth and put it in Catherine’s mouth, which was open wide like a bird’s. I know it was rude to stare, but I had never seen anything so kind and practical. With hardly any teeth, I suppose it was the only way Catherine could eat.

Blue Mountain Woman looked at me with a smile. She chewed more food for her mother, then touched my hand, always such a gentle touch and much like her son’s, I had discovered. What was I learning in so few days? I knew that once I was home safe in Omaha, it would take a winter to absorb it all.

“Would your mother not do this for her mother?” Blue Mountain Woman asked, moving me out of my odd reverie. I didn’t know what to say. She would never understand if I told her that my mother complained when she got a letter from Grandma Casey, saying she wanted to visit. That Casey side of the family owned a successful brewery, which fact Mother had never admitted to her Omaha friends. No. My mother would gamble at cards before she would feed her mother from her own mouth.

I had to ask myself – would I?

When I said nothing, Blue Mountain Woman gave me a charitable smile and went into the shelter to fold robes and blankets. All around me women were pulling down tipis and shelters and packing. The lodge poles formed the frames for their pony drags. I don’t know what had happened to Blue Mountain woman’s tipi, but she still had lodgepoles. While she expertly readied the horse and travois, I folded and packed. My efforts were decidedly puny, but I knew I would be better the next time, if there was a next time before the chiefs found a place to hand me off to others.

There was so much to see. I held onto the folded canvas as Blue Mountain Woman lashed it to the travois. Children ran and called to each other, mothers nursed babies, and old men rounded up horses. As they talked and laughed with each other, I could barely hide my growing unease. I had seen Howard’s troops yesterday. Didn’t The People understand the need to hurry?

When the travois was packed and met her specifications, Blue Mountain Woman picked up Catherine and set her on top of the bundle in a space she had hollowed out. She smoothed her mother’s skirt and spread a blanket over her lap, as Catherine sat there with her hands folded. Mother and daughter touched foreheads. With a pang, I wanted her to touch mine, too.