I had begun to adjust to the prospect of no food, but the little ones cried so quietly and fretted. I dreaded the look of despair in their mothers’ eyes as they had nothing to offer. Nursing mothers drying up gave their babies sticks to stuck on. I watched one toddler chewing on grass. The sight made me close my eyes and look away.

Still, I had to agree with Poker Joe. I know I owed some of my sense of urgency to those calendars that had ruled my life and still did. I could see days flipping by, as on that daily desk calendar in my father’s office, all heading to winter.

“You are right,” I told him. “As sad as it makes me to see grass-eating children, we cannot linger.”

“How can I convince them, Liz?” he asked me. “I cannot blame them for wanting to slow down, but they do not understand.”

“It’s because they don’t see calendars,” I said, knowing even as the words left my lips that they sounded monumentally stupid. “Oh, I mean…” I looked at him. “You know calendars, don’t you? You said you are part French.”

“I know calendars.” He chuckled. “My father kept a calendar, the same calendar, for years. Every month he turned a page. I had no idea why then. I understand now. Time is passing on white man’s paper in ways that The People do not understand.”

When he spoke again, I knew he was not talking to me, but thinking aloud. “When we fled, our leaders assured The People that there was room for us here in the buffalo country with our friends and brothers the Crow.”

I let that sink in, and felt a chill deeper than a breeze or frost on grass. “Poker Joe, when we took the train from Nebraska to Utah Territory, I saw piles of buffalo bones and mounds of buffalo skins at every depot. They’re going.”

“They’re gone,” he said.

I heard all the sadness. Cry cry, I thought, remembering Blue Mountain Woman’s quaint English. I felt like apologizing for the whole United States of America. It was plain to me that the Nez Perce (oh, why not call them by an erroneous name?), were being crushed, and there wasn’t a thing anyone could do. We – I had included myself because I was there – would have to play out this whole drama for formality’s sake. These people were doomed. I saw it. I knew it. Canada wasn’t close enough.

We rode through Judith Gap a few days later. It was a wide spot between two mountains. I wondered who Judith was. We continued in a northeasterly direction, heading for a crossing of the Missouri River. Chief Joseph made a point to have Poker Joe tell me that we would surely find some whites who would take me in.