There was no certainty that all, or any, of these scattered groups of soldiers would succeed, or find each other again, or even stay alive. Drouillard in these three years had seen narrow survival of hazard after hazard; there was not a man who had not had at least one brush with death or crippling injury, and most had been grievously ill at least once. It was amazing how often the Master of Life had spared them, and Drouillard wondered why that was so, as Lewis apparently prayed to no God, unless Jefferson really was his God.
Suddenly, Drouillard felt a chill, that first warning instinct that he might be prey instead of predator.
He raised his rifle from across the pommel, looked all about, sniffed the air. He felt he was being watched, but saw nothing. High above the bluff on his right he detected in the edge of his vision a movement. Looking up, he saw an eagle soaring against gray clouds. Nothing else. An eagle looking down on him, on the valley. But why would an eagle have given him the warning sense?
After a while he urged the horse forward and rode into the open, then in among some more small cottonwoods, where he halted, waited, looked around, listened, smelled the breeze. Then he moved on, slowly, half hunting for prey, half for predator.
About five miles farther on he saw a doe step daintily to the river’s edge, look up and down, and lower her head to drink. He dismounted, tethered his horse, and slipped through the brush, stooping, to get within a hundred paces of the doe in silence. He was aiming his rifle at her when she raised her head, looked at a place up the river, and bounded away. Drouillard heard the grate of gravel on gravel in that direction, then his horse whinnied softly. He saw nothing, but heard hoofsteps, hooves in gravel, and in a stooping run returned to his horse, who was looking upstream. As he took the reins, he smelled smoky, sweaty clothing. It smelled like whiteman.
A pair of riders emerged from beyond a screen of foliage, and it was a sight he had not expected to see.
One of them was Reubin Field.
The other was a lean Indian warrior with a bony face and hair cut very short, a shield on his arm and a lance in his hand. They were riding together at a walk, as if they knew each other. Just then Reubin cupped his hand beside his mouth and yelled, “Heyyyy, Drouillard!”
He rode out from concealment so suddenly he startled them, and said, “Rube, if that’s your brother, he’s starting to look more civilized.”
The Indian was looking at Drouillard with keen interest, and the slightest nod and smile suggested that he was surprised and pleased to see a man of his own race. Drouillard signed to him: Great Spirit put us here to smoke together.
The Indian signed, My heart rises up.
Reubin began explaining quickly: “There’s eight of ’em. With about thirty horses. Lots o’ saddles, so there may be more close by. We found ’em on the bluff watchin’ you down here. One rode at us but backed off. Cap’n told ’em you’re our pipe man so we should fetch you to do a smoke. They thought that was a good idee so here we are. Let’s go join ’em. Joe and the Cap’n’s got ’emselves seven real dancy young bucks around ’em. Need you to talk. They’re comin’ down.”
“They have guns?”
“A couple.”
“From Canada, then. Blackfeet, probably.”
“Well, come on. Cap’n’s worried,” Reubin said.
They were Piegan Blackfeet, all very young, two just boys. It was obvious they would have liked to race off to their band and get older and more experienced reinforcements, but it was almost sundown, and their band was a day’s ride west, almost at the mountains. They said there was a white trader with their band. “I’d like to be rid of ’em and get out of here quick,” Captain Lewis told Drouillard. “But I don’t want them bringing a big band after us. I think we can handle this many if there’s any trouble. So let’s propose we all camp together tonight, and who knows but we might win them over a little. I don’t doubt they already trade with the British companies up north.”
The young men quickly and skillfully assembled a coneshaped frame of green limbs and covered it with hides, and the Field brothers built a fire out in front to smoke away mosquitoes and cook some venison they had left over from morning.
It was good that Drouillard carried his own supply of ceremonial tobacco because these young men seemingly couldn’t get enough, and Reubin and Joe had been out of tobacco since Fort Clatsop.
The Blackfeet were paying keen attention to Drouillard’s hand signs as he relayed the usual Jefferson peace message. The captain told them he had a large body of soldiers coming down the Missouri, which was an exaggeration. Then he told them he had come all the way up this river to find the Blackfeet and speak council with them. In truth he had been hoping against hope to avoid them.
The captain suggested that some of these warriors might ride to their nation and summon leaders to a peace council at the mouth of this river, where they would receive gifts and honors. He invited the rest to come with him. Then he explained why his whitemen were coming through here: that they had been all the way to the western sea. The young Indians were duly impressed, which seemed to encourage Lewis to brag. For the first time, Drouillard heard him expressing his pride in the achievement. Lewis boasted of the bond of friendship he had forged among the Shoshones, the Kootenai Flatheads, and the Nez Perce, exaggerating as he went along. His eyes were shining. Drouillard had a chill. He saw the woman with bloodied arms. He remembered the captain climbing the Bad Spirit Hill. He recognized in Lewis again the dark demon, now wearing a bright mask. Lewis was acting too pleased with himself. He told of the greatness of the American goods and in particular the guns. He told of winning a shooting match in the Nez Perce mountain camp by hitting a mark twice at 220 paces.
Then Lewis bragged on his hunters, these three men with him, who often killed elk and antelope at twice that distance. The young Blackfeet were looking at the rifles with covert fascination, so he told them of his wonderful silent gun that would shoot again and again without reloading. “Damn, I wish we had it with us!” he exclaimed with a grin and a shake of the head.
“Tell them,” Lewis said then, “that they can get excellent guns too, if they will make peace with the tribes who are already our friends.”
Drouillard signed that statement, and the young braves stiffened and glanced at each other. Suddenly they were as cold and wary as before the eating and smoking began. He said, “Cap’n, with due respect, I don’t think you should have said that.”
“What?”
“You told them that you promised to sell great medicine guns to their enemies. Or that’s what they think you said.”
He saw the comprehension in Lewis’s eyes, and the captain said, “Well, quick then, tell ’em we haven’t actually done any such thing.”
“I’ll try, sir. But it’s hard to unsay something. Especially when you’re smoking a truth pipe.”
Drouillard’s watch passed, from about two to four in the morning: moonlight and firelight, a light breeze rustling the foliage in the tops of the three tall cottonwoods, while Lewis and the Field brothers breathed in deep sleep near the fire. All eight of the young Indians were in their hut asleep, or pretending to sleep, though he heard some of them now and then whispering and murmuring. Keeping a watch on the horses was easy, as the campground was a moonlit, bowl-shaped bottom between the river and the steep bluffs, the grass here in the bottom being so much better than anywhere else that the horses had no urge to stray. Captain Lewis had told each watchman to wake the others if any Indian left the camp, because he feared they might try to steal the horses. The captain kept the first watch, till almost midnight, then wakened Reubin to take the next two hours. Now Drouillard sat up. Occasionally he felt eyes watching him, so he knew that the young Blackfeet were too suspicious to go to sleep without sentries of their own. Thus the peace of the moonlit night was not as it seemed. With the warriors on edge, Drouillard was uneasy.
He was annoyed that Captain Lewis had overspoken. These were inexperienced and high-strung young men. They were
probably half afraid, but also half eager to have an exploit to make names for themselves. He imagined he could hear their minds changing in there, about whether to try something or not. One thing he was sure they were thinking of: that these whitemen intended to bring guns to the enemies of the Blackfeet. As long as only Blackfeet had guns in this part of the country, they were happy and secure. That was the way it was now, but these whitemen had brought troubling words. And they seemed to be liars.
This could have been a pleasant, if nervous, encampment. These were fine young men, bold and proud and untamed, obviously very tough. Young as they were, two of them had impressive scars: one from his forehead down across his nose to his upper lip, another missing half his hand. When the captain had invited them to ride down to the mouth of the river with him to meet his soldiers, they had been too wary to accept, even though he offered them horses and tobacco if they would go.
So now no one could trust anyone, and the warriors would carry their dubious impressions back to their people, and President Jefferson’s imaginary smooth road would be even more rough, because this captain always had to be a little overbearing with Indians. He really believed he was their better, Drouillard thought.
He reached out and squeezed Joe Field’s foot until he opened his eyes. “Your turn,” he said. He put two more sticks on the fire. When Joe was sitting up, yawning and blinking, Drouillard stretched out on the ground, his head on his crooked arm and one hand on his rifle, and went to sleep.
He half woke in the gray light before sunup, noting that the Indians were crowding around the fire. He saw Joe Field still sitting up with his gun on his lap by the firewood pile, and Reubin and the captain still asleep in their blankets. It had grown cold enough that there were no mosquitoes, and so the sleeping was good. He closed his eyes to doze a little more, the warm weariness humming in his limbs.
“Hey-hey! They got our guns! Git up! Git up!” At Joe’s angry shouts and sounds of scuffling and footsteps, Drouillard bolted awake to the sight of moccasins and leggings stepping and dancing around his head. He saw Reubin surge up out of his bedding like a panther. Drouillard flung back his blanket and was gathering himself to spring up when he felt a touch and a tug and saw the scar-faced youth crouched and reaching over him, lifting his rifle and shot pouch.
Every fiber of him was in motion at once. He leaped to his feet so fast that the Indian almost fell backward in the fire. “Damn you, let go my gun!” he bellowed, and snatched it out of the boy’s grasp with such quick force that the gun rattled and the Indian cried out in astonishment, or pain. But the youth still had hold of the shot pouch and tried to run with it.
“What? What’s the matter?” the captain’s voice cried out. Drouillard sprinted three steps and grabbed the strap of his shot pouch, spinning the Indian around in his tracks, and with the same movement kicking his legs out from under him. When the thief fell to the ground, Drouillard stomped on his shoulder and jerked the pouch out of his hand. Then he took a moment’s look at everything going on around him.
The morning sunlight was on the bluffs above, but this valley camp was still in blue shadow with a veil of smoke hanging above the campfire. The Field brothers were running back toward camp from a little way upslope, and they both had their rifles. The half-handed youth was running past the big cottonwood trees with a rifle in his hand and Captain Lewis sprinting after him with drawn pistol, yelling at him. When that Indian saw the brothers coming, pointing their guns at him, he just dropped the captain’s rifle on the ground and walked slowly away.
The cut-faced brave was rising gingerly from the ground with his eyes on the muzzle of Drouillard’s rifle, which was cocked and aimed at his face.
Drouillard was panting between clenched teeth, and in his head the blood was rushing hot. He said, “We kill these thieves, Cap’n?”
Lewis, who had picked up his rifle and holstered his pistol, looked around and answered, “No … let him go. We all got our guns back, right?”
Seven young Indians were sidling away, most of them unarmed; one had his musket, but was not threatening with it; two had their bows and arrows. Most of their weapons, robes, and pouches lay about the camp, including several bows and quivers and one musket.
“Where’s the other one?” Drouillard asked, counting.
“Kilt,” replied Reubin, holding up his bloody sheath knife.
Suddenly the Indians were in two groups, running. “They’re going for the horses!” Drouillard yelled.
“Shoot them if they try to take ours!” Lewis yelled.
Drouillard and the Fields sprinted after five warriors who were hooting and hazing the large part of the herd upstream. Drouillard was overtaking them, the brothers close behind him, eager to thrash a few young Blackfeet fools, when he heard Lewis yelling ferociously back beyond the camp, then heard a rifle shot and, moments later, the dull boom of a smoothbore. Drouillard stopped and looked back. “Go on and get those horses back!” he yelled as the brothers ran up. “I’m goin’ to the cap’n!” He raced back down through the grass and brush, looking for Lewis. The only Indian with a gun was down there somewhere. Several horses, theirs and the Indians’ intermixed, were milling and trotting near the foot of the bluff beyond the camp. Then Drouillard saw the captain coming down at a tired trot, breathing through his mouth, rifle at his side, face alarmingly pale. “You all right, sir?”
“Yah,” Lewis panted. He pointed back at a brushy niche in the bluff. “I shot one in there. Think I killed him. Near got me back too. I felt the wind of his ball go by my head! God, I’m so winded! Come on. I’ve got to get my pouch and reload. Round up some of these horses and get out of here. Try to call the Field boys back. We’ve got enough horses here.”
“Better than ours too,” Drouillard said, setting off at a lope to drive some back to the camp.
Captain Lewis ordered the men to throw on the campfire most of the Blackfeet belongings, including bows and quivers and shields. He left a peace medal hung on the neck of the warrior Reubin had stabbed to death. “That will let them know who we are,” he said with apparent satisfaction. The brothers had retrieved four of their own horses, but the gray given Drouillard by Cutnose was gone—a sad loss. They tied the Indian’s musket on a packhorse with some buffalo meat the Blackfeet had been carrying.
Lewis led up out of the valley and headed southeast at the hardest pace the horses could sustain; the captain believed the mouth of the Maria to be still more than a hundred miles away. Within hours the fleeing Blackfeet youths could reach one of their bands, and surely a war party would be coming for revenge. Or, knowing that these whitemen were going to the mouth of the Maria to meet others, a large war party might speed straight down there and attack the unsuspecting troops coming down from the falls. There was no time to waste. Fortunately, the plains were level and grassy, there were no major streams thwarting their route, and recent rains had left watering holes. Large and small herds of buffalo were grazing everywhere, shepherded by wolves. Constantly scanning the horizons, Drouillard saw no sign of Indians. By mid-afternoon they reached a stream they recognized, which told them they had made more than sixty miles. Here they stopped to eat and let the horses graze and drink, and then rode on.
At dusk Drouillard rode out toward a small buffalo herd to shoot a tender young cow for supper. As he approached, the Indian horse he was riding got excited and wanted to run at the herd. He realized that this was a buffalo-hunting horse, trained to race up and flank the herd and chase it. This was no time or place to start a stampede, so Drouillard reined in hard, walked the horse near the herd in defilade until he could pick his cow, and felled her with a long shot. He chewed a bite of her heart raw as he butchered her out, taking hump and tongue to cook now and some tender muscle for the trail. They cooked the delicacies over a smokeless fire of buffalo chips, and after a two-hour rest set out again by bright moonlight.
The spirits were powerful on the moonlit plain this night, playing with Drouillard, troubling him. The plains s
eemed as vast and empty as that ocean he had seen a few months ago. And where the surf had boomed and pounded incessantly on the rocky coast, there now was the distant booming and muttering of thunderstorms, in every distant part of the sky, lightning flickering low and high, thunderclouds everywhere except above, where the sky stayed clear to let the moon light the way for him and these three whitemen.
Something terrible throbbed deep in his soul like a drum as he rode with these men tonight. Two of them, Reubin and Lewis, had killed Blackfeet boys in their own country. Worse, he himself had been so much in the whitemen’s interest that he had been eager to kill an Indian. He had been that stirred. Now he was glad that he hadn’t, but for a moment he had almost been a warrior: after he disarmed the scar-face and threw him down and stood ready to kill him, for a moment he had the notion of taking a scalp. He had never taken a scalp; he had never been a warrior. Take a scalp, earn an eagle feather. He had not run looking for exploits in youth, as these boys had. They were still living in their old way. His name was Without Eagle Feathers.
He knew that if the Blackfeet youths had been a little luckier and gotten the good rifles, they might have used them to capture or kill these whitemen, for scalps, or to earn feathers to wear on their heads. Or they might have just fled away, whooping, with those wonderful rifles, becoming the best-armed Indians anywhere in the plains. That was why they had taken such a risk to steal the rifles: because Lewis had bragged on them so extravagantly.
Or because he had made them think that their enemies would have rifles like these.
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