Centennial

by James A. Michener

  “He staked himself out. He wanted to die.”

  “Blue Leaf?”

  “Her time to die.”

  They asked where the Arapaho got their bullets, and the chief showed them a sheet of lead and his bullet mold. Pasquinel asked casually if he could see some of the bullets, and the chief summoned a squaw and commanded her to show the ones she had made that day. They were lead.

  As Pasquinel hefted them, McKeag saw Clay Basket coming down the valley. She was now sixteen, tall, shy, but deeply interested when children cried that the white men had come back. When she saw them she stopped, smoothed down her elk-skin dress and adjusted the quills about her neck. Her black hair fell in two braids, and she seemed somewhat pale from the effects of winter, but she was even more bright-eyed than she had been as a child. Walking gravely to McKeag, she placed her hand softly on his right shoulder and asked in English, “Good?”

  He thumped his shoulder and replied, “Good.” Pointing to Pasquinel, he said, “He fix.” He delighted the Indians by taking off his shirt and showing them the clever device that Pasquinel had fashioned from buffalo hide, a kind of armor which fitted over his damaged shoulder, enabling him to jam the rifle butt against the hardened hide and fire without fear of the kickback. Clay Basket touched the harness and approved.

  May and June of that year were the happiest months Pasquinel, McKeag and Clay Basket had shared. The valley was superb, but the weather had grown so warm that passing Indians no longer had pelts. There was no specific reason for the white men to linger, but Pasquinel still did not know where the gold was, and he did not propose leaving until he found out. He became so attentive to Clay Basket that the Arapaho women, shrewd detectives where sex was concerned, deduced that although it was Pasquinel who had fallen in love with her, it was McKeag she had chosen for her mate.

  They were confirmed in their judgment when a young brave who up to now had assumed that he would marry Clay Basket picked a fight with McKeag. It was settled when the Scotsman gave the young man a buffalo robe. Here was an opening for McKeag to pursue his suit, if he wished, but as the women had expected, he did nothing.

  In midsummer Pasquinel asked one of the women, “What will Clay Basket do?”

  “Difficult,” she replied. “Poor girl, she loves Red Beard.”

  “Will she ...”

  The woman laughed. “Red Beard will never take a wife. Everybody knows that.”

  “Then what?” Pasquinel asked.

  Again she laughed. “Clay Basket will marry you. Next moon.”

  And that’s how it happened. With the whole Arapaho nation—at least that part encamped at Blue Valley—knowing that Clay Basket preferred Red Beard, she married Pasquinel, who intended by this device to pry the secret of the gold from her. When McKeag realized the callous thing his partner was doing, he was appalled. But it was not the bigamy that distressed him, for many traders had an Indian wife on the prairies to complement the white one back in Saint Louis, but rather the harsh misuse of a young girl. He thought several times of protesting, but Pasquinel was in no mood for moral debate—he never referred to his bigamy; all he said was, “Now we’ll find the gold.”

  It wasn’t much of a ceremony. Pasquinel had to give her brother a gun and some beads and a pouch of tobacco while Clay Basket watched. She was most beautiful that day, decked in fresh porcupine quills and blue stones bought from Indians who traveled the plains to the south. She tried not to look at McKeag and he helped by staying at a distance. A medicine man pointed to the sky, then to the eastern horizon, and said something that McKeag couldn’t translate, and that night when Pasquinel was alone with his new wife he asked her, “Where is the gold your father found?”

  “Gold?” she asked.

  “Yes, the gold.”

  “What gold?”

  He was infuriated by her stupidity, or her deception, he wasn’t sure which. He repeated the question and got the same answer, and in frustration, asked, “Why did you marry me when it was Red Beard you wanted?”

  In English she offered an explanation which astonished him. “That first night, many years ago, when my father crept into your camp at Beaver Creek ... you could have killed him and he could have killed you. He watched you in those days and loved you—because you were brave. So before he staked himself out at the Pawnee camp he told me, ‘The dark man will come back. Marry him.’ In this way I knew it would happen.”

  Pasquinel sat silent for some time, then asked, “Before he died, he told you where the gold was?”

  “No,” she said.

  He knew she was lying and turned away from her. This distressed her and he could feel her shoulders tensing, as if she were sobbing. He left her alone and crossed the stream to wander amidst the aspen. How incredibly beautiful it was that night, with a summer moon and the sound of an owl in the distance, and after a while Clay Basket joined him, and she placed her hand in his and told him, “I am your woman. Always I will help.”

  “Where’s the gold?” he asked.

  “I do not know,” she said, but he believed that as she came to trust him more, she would confide her secret. In the meantime, she was a beautiful girl and there was no reason why he should not enjoy her whenever he returned to the prairie. With this idea in mind he led her back to the bridal tipi, and as they crossed the clear stream, they stepped on pebbles hiding the nuggets of gold he sought.

  He and Clay Basket would have three children: the famous Jacques Pasquinel, born in 1809; his brother Marcel, born in 1811; and a daughter Lucinda, who would be known by another name, born late in 1827. It was a union that lasted.

  But after three years of agonizing attempts to locate Lame Beaver’s gold, Pasquinel had to conclude that his wife did not know where it was, though he never ceased believing that somewhere in the hills frequented by the Arapaho there was much gold, and he purposed to find it. If his resolution failed, he had only to recall those two bullets he had held in his hand. They were real and they were gold.

  In 1807 when he and McKeag returned to Saint Louis they found many changes. For one thing the house on Rue des Granges was bigger. Since Lise enjoyed entertaining she felt the need of extra rooms, and whatever money Pasquinel had given her over the years she had spent on carpenters. Her father now had two apprentices in his flourishing jewelry business and was sending surplus pieces downriver to New Orleans, but his profits he invested in Saint Louis real estate.

  Now came a chain of years when Pasquinel kept increasingly to the prairies, sometimes not appearing in Saint Louis for three years at a stretch. When the partners did come back with their pelts, McKeag studied Lise to see how she was reacting to this strange behavior, but if she felt aggrieved she did not show it. And Pasquinel, when he was on hand, proved an exemplary husband and father, resuming his pattern of life as if he had been absent for only a few days. He loved his son Cyprian and delighted in telling him tales of the west. On Sundays he proudly held his wife’s arm as they attended the Catholic church, whose priest he helped with contributions.

  He found stubborn pleasure in arguing with those American officers he met at his wife’s entertainments, and warned them that if they wanted to hold the west, they ought to be sending out exploration parties to locate the mountain passes. He was amused at their presumptions of knowledge and told them: “Isn’t it strange that a handful of French coureurs who loved these western lands know more about them than your entire government?” One inflated colonel, guarded by six riflemen, took a boat trip of only one hundred and fifty miles up the Missouri, not even coming close to the mouth of the Platte, and when he returned to Saint Louis he was flushed with heroism and a great expert on Indian affairs. Pasquinel listened courteously as he expounded his theories on Indian control, but when the officer began speaking of his own courage in facing the savage, Pasquinel could not control himself. Laughing crudely, he said, “Colonel, on our trips home from real Indian country, when we get to where you were, we no longer keep lookouts. Because we know we’re in women-an
d-children country.” Lise, instead of being outraged at this rebuke to an exalted guest, winked at her husband, and soon thereafter the colonel left.

  As time went on, she viewed with growing dismay Pasquinel’s protracted absences. At first she suspected that she might be at fault, that she suffered some deficiency in ardor, and once when he was absent for three years she thought seriously of divorce. She was hurt personally by the gossip concerning her husband which circulated in the city, but kept her reactions to it secret. McKeag was never able to ascertain how much she knew, but it was apparent even to him that the marriage had deteriorated.

  It appeared that she had made a fundamental decision: with or without Pasquinel, she would live as good a life as possible and raise her son to be as happy and stable as she was. Pasquinel would always be welcomed, would always have an honored place in their home, but they would not allow themselves to be punished by his irresponsible behavior.

  At the conclusion of his visits, Pasquinel, broke as usual, would borrow money from his father-in-law, stock his canoe and head for the Platte where at some appointed place Clay Basket would be waiting with their two boys. These prairie reunions were tender and even passionate, and Clay Basket would have a tipi ready with the kind of furnishings she knew Pasquinel liked: a willow-reed bed with backrests, buffalo robes on the floor, a reliable flap for emitting smoke.

  He loved his Indian sons and spoiled them, bringing them gifts from New Orleans and small rifles for shooting birds. He was especially indulgent with Jacques, who at six could ride his pinto at a gallop. The boy was headstrong, and several times McKeag tried to discipline him, warning him not to speed his pony through places where Indian families were cooking meals, but Jacques rejected such advice, and any further interference by McKeag only served to irritate Pasquinel, who wanted his son to become a fine rider. Marcel was quite different, a chubby little fellow who liked people and was becoming a master in devising tricks to get from them what he wanted.

  It seemed to McKeag that the boys stood halfway between the two worlds of white men and Indian, uncertain as to which they would ultimately prefer. Pasquinel brought them white-man toys but steeped them in Indian tradition. They loved their father, but stayed mostly with their mother. They spoke Arapaho primarily, but were at ease in the mélange of French and English especially spoken when the two men were present.

  McKeag was especially disturbed over the fact that throughout the west, both in camps and in Saint Louis, such children were called breeds and were treated with contempt—half-breeds who had a rightful home in neither race. He suspected that the time must come when this pejorative term would be thrown at young Jacques. Then there would be trouble, for the boy gave promise of becoming almost the archetype of that word: a real two-breed individual.

  The first confrontation came during the postwar year of 1816. Pasquinel so enjoyed his Indian sons that he proposed taking them and their mother to Saint Louis with him that year, wanting the boys to see the city. He seemed to have no comprehension of the scandal that would ensue or of the hurt it would inflict on Bockweiss and Lise, and when McKeag pointed this out, Pasquinel’s reaction convinced McKeag that the coureur was not insensitive, he just didn’t give a damn.

  “Don’t worry,” Pasquinel said, but McKeag flatly forbade him to take his Indian family to Saint Louis, explaining that it would be especially difficult for Clay Basket.

  So Pasquinel compromised. He would take them down the Platte, past the Pawnee village and onto the Missouri. They would drift down that river as far as the westernmost American fort, recently reopened: Fort Osage it was called. There Clay Basket and the boys would be able to see what civilization was like, with the probability that their visit could be kept secret from Saint Louis.

  It started as a happy family vacation organized around the two canoes, and that was what caused the first discord. Since Pasquinel, with his powerful shoulders, could paddle with twice the power of McKeag, it was arranged for Pasquinel and Marcel to ride in the lead canoe with four bales, while McKeag, Clay Basket and Jacques rode in the following canoe with only one bale. Since Jacques, now seven, could handle a paddle, the propulsion of the two canoes would be equalized, but this didn’t work, because as a partner for McKeag, Jacques proved quite intractable. If the Scotsman said, “Shift sides,” Jacques refused to do so, and he did not try to mask his contempt. Before they passed the Pawnee village he began complaining of the fact that McKeag allowed Pasquinel’s canoe to get far ahead, and he continued this complaining until Clay Basket was forced to reprimand him, but Indian mothers had little authority where sons were concerned, and Jacques repeated his complaints. McKeag thought it ridiculous to allow a boy of seven to agitate him, but as they approached the Missouri he shouted ahead for Pasquinel to stop.

  “You take him,” he said brusquely.

  “What’s the matter? You can’t handle?”

  “I cannot,” McKeag said without apology, and the boys traded canoes.

  They now entered the swift-flowing Missouri and would have covered the distance to Fort Osage quickly had they not been stopped en route by a guide who pushed his canoe out from the left bank of the river. “I need help!” he called, and when he drew alongside Pasquinel’s canoe, the Frenchman saw that it was Indian Phillips, a lanky, dour-faced half-breed who prowled the backwoods as hunting companion to a unique American.

  “He’s sick,” Phillips said.

  “Where?”

  “Morteau’s shack.” They followed him along a path leading up from the river, and after a ten-minute walk beneath dense foliage, came to a palisaded hut occupied by a mournful French hunter, Pierre Morteau, who greeted them at the door.

  “He’s awful sick,” Morteau said, leading the group inside.

  In a chair, refusing to lie down although it seemed he must be close to death, sat a gaunt, bearded man in his eighties. He seemed delighted to see Pasquinel and the boys. His breath came unevenly, and his large, frail hands trembled but when he spoke his voice was crisp, as it had been throughout his life.

  He was Daniel Boone, recluse on the lower reaches of the Missouri, who had sworn that each year, as long as the Lord allowed him to live, he would take hunting trips, spring and fall, into the wilderness. This one had gone badly, and it seemed impossible that the gaunt old man could make it back through the woods to his headquarters.

  “You want me to take him to Fort Osage?” Pasquinel asked Morteau quietly.

  “Not a bit of it!” Boone yelled. “I walked here. I’ll walk out.”

  “He looks very weak,” McKeag said. He had no idea who Boone was and asked Pasquinel in a whisper.

  “Famous Indian fighter,” Pasquinel said. “Saint Louis ... too many people for him.”

  “Too goddamned many!” Boone shouted. “You leave me here. Phillips, damn him, he got me here and he’ll get me back.”

  The half-breed grinned ruinously, gaping holes showing where teeth used to be. It was his job to accompany Boone on his yearly forays and to bury him if he died. “I don’t want no funeral in Saint Louis,” Boone growled. “Too damned many people there, a man can’t hardly breathe.”

  “What can we do?” Pasquinel asked.

  “You can tell those dudes at the fort I’m still huntin’ ba’ar and I’ll be walkin’ home soon.” He noticed Clay Basket and said, “Never cottoned much to Injuns but she looks a good ’un.” Of the boys he asked, “Breeds?” and Pasquinel nodded.

  Boone took Jacques by the hand and drew him to his side. “Stay on the prairies, lad. Don’t let ’em talk you into livin’ in no town.” He started coughing and Clay Basket pulled her family away.

  “He knows when it’s time to die,” she said in Arapaho, and they resumed their trip down the Missouri.

  For Clay Basket and her sons, Fort Osage was a marvel, their first acquaintance with the power of the white man. The fort had been built in 1808 on a cliff seventy feet above the Missouri, and from each of its five towers it commanded a vast sweep of the r
iver. Batteries of cannon were trained downward upon the waterway, interdicting any enemy boats that might attempt to force a passage, and from the river, as Pasquinel and his troupe approached, it looked as if each cannon were waiting to blow them out of the water.

  “Look at them!” Pasquinel told his sons, and when they had made their canoes fast and had climbed the steep cliff, he asked the guard, “When do the guns go off?” and the guard said, “Have your boys here at sunset.”

  So as the sun went down, Pasquinel took his wife and sons to the master battery overlooking the western approaches, and they all stood at attention as a sergeant gave orders. The boys gasped as the battery fired and a mighty reverberation echoed down the caverns of the river. “American guns,” Pasquinel said. He was not much impressed with Americans in general, but he did respect their cannon.

  The Indian agent at the fort was Major George Champlin Sibley. His rank was honorary, and he acted principally as the man in charge of the commissary, where rifles and powder could be bought for beaver pelts. An acidulous, correct gentleman who dressed in western Missouri as he might have done in Washington, he had been respected when he served at the fort in the period from 1808 through 1813, and the Indians in the area had been disconsolate when he had to close it down during the War of 1814. But now that he was back, with the fort flourishing once more, he was actually loved.