They did not see Charbonneau all day. He had gone to the camp of Duke Paul with Baptiste. When he did come into camp, he looked triumphant.
“That duke fellow, he hired me; Baptiste, he stay here,” he announced. “He agreed to wait one more day before pulling out. He was impressed with my knowledge of the Big Muddy. Maybe we go up as far as the Mandans.”
“You have a job as trader for Woods,” Tess reminded him. “I thought you’d talk him into taking me. I’m older than Baptiste.”
“You keep your mouth shut or I give you the whip. I am the man. I do as I please. I am boss.”
Tess backed away, and Charbonneau spoke more briskly. “Do this, do that! Get the job for me! Zut! You get your own work. You go to hell! I decide what I do!”
Sacajawea felt heartsick. She had hoped that Baptiste would have a chance to be on his own for a few weeks—maybe learn how to do interpreting well so that he could get away from Charbonneau. Yet, there was something else. She could not look at Charbonneau without pulling her blanket up over her mouth to hide her laughter. His face looked as if it had been put together from two faces that did not match. The upper half was deeply tanned and weathered. But his cheeks and chin were as white as those of Chief Red Hair’s new woman, Miss Harriet, who never went outdoors without a veil to shield her complexion. She tried not to stare, but she could not help giving a quizzical glance now and then at Charbonneau’s face where he had shaved off his whiskers so that he would make an impression on the strangers. His dark eyes bored into hers.
“You want more of that whip, Little Bird?” he asked.
“If you do it again, I will leave and you will not see me again,” she said, her eyes hard and black.
By the next morning, Duke Paul was anxious to move up the Missouri, and he came to help Charbonneau carry his gear out. He watched Baptiste brush the horses to get the mud out of their hair. The boy smiled. The duke began to talk with Sacajawea and motioned for Baptiste to help translate for them. Again he remarked on Baptiste’s likable personality and responsiveness. Sacajawea felt pleased and puffed up a little. She made him a cup of tea with extra sugar.
Charbonneau cupped his hands and shouted to the other three waiting men.
“Patience,” said Duke Paul. “I want to ask your good woman’s permission to take that young boy, Baptiste, to my homeland. I will stop in Saint Louis for him in the fall.”
Baptiste looked at his mother. “He said he would be in Saint Louis when the aspen grow orange and theoaks are fire against the sky. He will take me to his home across the waters.”
Sacajawea was dumbfounded. This man from the faraway land wished to take her son with him. When would he let him come back?
“He says I should stay a year, maybe two, maybe three.” Baptiste held up his fingers. “I am to learn his tongue even better than now, and speak to his people about the land here.” His heart was pounding.
“Ai,” answered Sacajawea quietly. “Now ask your father.”
“Oh, all right, if you want to go for a while,” said Charbonneau with no thought, eager only to get on with this trip.
“It is then a promise,” said Sacajawea, smiling. “He will go with you. You will take care of him, then return him to me.”
“You can be sure of that,” said the duke, his face reflecting his astonishment that the Indian mother would be so willing to have her son travel to a land she’d never heard spoken about before.
He did not know her thoughts. She was thinking about all the things her son would have in his head when he came back. Maybe as much as Chief Red Hair. This was the thing to do. Let him go. Her love for her firstborn shone from her eyes. Could she be without him? Not know what he was doing? She looked at the duke and saw his brown eyes soften and felt his great strength, and she knew he was the one to finish making a man out of her son. He would not break the gentleness in the boy as Charbonneau would. Her heart would drop without him, but it would break if Charbonneau took over the training of him.
For a long time there was silence. No one noticed Tess edge up until he spoke. “He gets pay for traveling to your homeland?” he asked laconically.
Duke Paul whirled around. “I never cheated anyone.”
Baptiste reached out to shake the duke’s hand on their agreement. “When the aspen change, we will leave.”
“I will be at Chouteau’s store inquiring about you, you can bet on it.”
The sun rose high and warm. The men walked on the high spots, trying to avoid the mud holes.
“We cast off now!” shouted Charbonneau.
“Fine,” said the duke, bowing low toward Sacajawea and Eagle, who had followed the men for a last farewell.
“I know this river well,” said Charbonneau, nodding his head up and down. “We’ll use the poles as long as we’re in the overflow here. When we get farther upstream, there is a point that rises high and pushes out into the river. The river has not overflowed there because the banks are high. We’ll tack across to the other side.”
Roudeau nodded, understanding. “We’ll take the ropes, then.”
“I’ll handle this,” Charbonneau continued. “We’ll take to the bushes.”
“Bushwhack?” Roudeau said slowly.
“Certainly—grab the bushes, hang on, and pull the pirogue along by hand. This is the best way.”
“Won’t that be slow?” asked the duke.
“Nothing’s slower. Maybe when we get to the bluff we can use the sail. You have one?”
Roudeau nodded. Then the men took up their poles and at the duke’s signal felt the bottom and pushed away from the shore. Slowly the pirogue moved forward as the men fell into a sort of rhythm of walking and hauling. When they had made a hundred yards of progress, Eagle waved and turned to return to the tepee. Sacajawea waved and shook her head wondering how long it would take Duke Paul to discover that her man did not know how to counsel others, especially about river travel. Charbonneau was a hog. She thought, Perhaps he will speak to the duke about going across the water to his homeland in place of his son, taking this other thing away from Baptiste also. She felt certain that after the river trip the duke would come to Saint Louis and ask only for Baptiste. He would be glad enough to let Charbonneau stay behind.5
CHAPTER
43
Kitten
Somewhere in what is now western Oklahoma and Kansas, the polygamous old interpreter took to himself another wife. This was a Ute woman, beautiful and youthful enough to become a discordant element in the household, and before long she and Sacajawea were engaged in a bitter domestic feud.
Reprinted by permission of the publishers, The Arthur H. Clark Company, from Sacajawea, Guide and Interpreter of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, by Grace Raymond Hebard, 1957, p. 153.
“Tess, you continue on the job as trader for Woods,” suggested Sacajawea. “Baptiste will help run the trap line.”
But Sacajawea’s thoughts were heavy when she looked at the boys—the one becoming the exact shadow of his father; the other, her own son, more like someone remembered in the past, more like her own father. I saw this boy’s eyes open, his small limbs harden to play. He has been mine all these years. He is still mine! He is going away, but he will return. He will no longer be a boy. He will not see me, perhaps. I am a mother. What mother can understand why her son should be taken? I said ai, he could be taken. I understand. Oh, Pompy, my loved one, come to Umbea, before you leave her; come before you lose her.
But Sacajawea, looking at her son and the son’s half brother, feeling her heart cry out with anguish, said, “It is going to blow.”
Already the sun was hazed over and a dark gray cloud was forming in the west. She watched the dark cloud, weighing the speed of its wind against the chances of getting the pirogue across the river before the squall hit. They could make it, she decided, and began to pack a parfleche with jerky for the boys.
The boys knew what was expected of them. They cleaned the traps and loaded their horses, ready to pull out
before that stiff breeze could blow up any more rain clouds.
For the remainder of the sultry, oppressive summer, Sacajawea and Eagle dug roots for eating, tanned deer hides, and dried sour purple grapes. The grapes would be used later in pemmican, despite their seedy quality.
Sacajawea and Eagle watched trappers and buffalo hunters come and go. The weather alternated between bad spells of heat and severe thunderstorms, which were a relief from the hot days and the scourge of stinging insects.
Tess, who looked like his father, with his mouth drawn down at the sides, his brown eyes squinting, shoulders rounded and somewhat humped, gave an impression of not fully understanding what was taking place around him. He continued to trap for Woods, but did not care for the mosquitoes and blue-green blowflies. Just before it was time to return to Saint Louis, he hired out as an interpreter at the Washita post, saying he’d be back in the cabin before Charbonneau.
Baptiste hung around the settlement, working with Woods and Curtis, trading with the Kansas Indians. On one occasion he went as far as the villages of the Iowas, Otoes, and Osages to trade for their fox pelts and tanned buffalo hides.
One evening Eagle sat at the fire long after the sun had set in a brilliance of red and gold. She called to Sacajawea, who had gone to sleep inside the tepee, “Come see, the moonlight is going out! It is finished! I see no clouds! What can this mean? Eeeiii!”
Sacajawea stood by her side and watched an eclipse of the moon. Then a small cloud sailed past the moon, and it seemed to be hanging close to the earth, a dark red. The left surface seemed lighter than the right, and a deep cleft or valley seemed to be visible on the moon’s surface.
“I believe the time for snow and ice is coming,” said Sacajawea. “This unusual sight is an omen.”
Eagle pulled her blanket closer. “I was afraid of that. What can it mean?”
“We must go back to our cabin.”
“We must go as soon as Baptiste arrives from his trap line?”
“Ai,” sighed Sacajawea. “Tess will find us already back in the warm cabin when he returns. We will keep it warm for our man.”
The fire burned out. Eagle and Sacajawea watched the moon return to normal, and they went to their sleeping robes.
On the day the first snowflakes fell, Charbonneau came galloping into the yard. Baptiste came from behind the horse shed where he had been cutting wood. He had heard Charbonneau coming, singing one of his favorite French songs about a lover and his young bride. Charbonneau was drunk. “Hey!” he called, not seeing
Baptiste standing against the side of the cabin, barging through the door and throwing his pack down. “You two squaws come on out and see what your man has bought with the pay Monsieur Herr Duke Paul Wilhelm of Württemberg, nephew of the King of England, cousin of King Friedrich I of Württemberg, gave to me.” Charbonneau pointed proudly toward a black stallion pawing the earth impatiently and then to the young, shy girl standing beside the horse. She was emblazoned with all the trappings and painting of her Ute tribe. Her ears were pierced four times on the rim, and several long blue-and-white glass beads were pushed into the holes. She wore a string of these glass sticks around her neck; otherwise she was naked.
“She is my new bride,” announced Charbonneau, leering in her direction. “And that is not all.” He swaggered around outside the front of the cabin. “I found a barrel of brandy in the sunken wreckage of an old double pirogue two days from here. Wahoo! What drinks have come from that barrel!” Unsteady, Charbonneau untied the straps holding the barrel to the stallion. “Chief Wakanzere and his Kansas band traded her to me for about half of this fine brandy. She was taken in a raid not over three weeks ago. He said she was too young to be his woman and too old to stay with his children. Some brave, whose face was painted with red stripes and whose head was shaved as smooth as my nose, said the chief was pleased that I’d take her off his hands. He really wanted rifles for his braves, better than those the British make. So—I promised him I’d bring in a load of good American rifles soon as I got back to Saint Louis. He’s still waiting there for me, by gar!”
Eagle gave the Ute girl, who now did not look too shy, a wicked glance.
A covey of partridge, alarmed by the stamping of the stallion’s feet, took to the air, and as they passed over a prairie-dog village, there was a shrill, quarreling bark among the creatures, angry over the disturbance, defensive at once. Sacajawea thought, Brave, empty sounds they made, retreating instantly when real danger threatened. Some people, she thought, were like that. All talking and no doing.
The newcomer stared at Sacajawea and Eagle. Her face was daubed with vermilion.
“She is younger than your youngest son. She is a papoose who does not yet wear clothes!” shouted Eagle, her hand over her mouth the instant the words were out.
Charbonneau stumbled inside and hunkered over the front of the fireplace, steaming.
Sacajawea looked at him. He had seen more than sixty winters; his hair was long and salted with white among the dark, mangy curls. She waited for him to tell what he would about the trip up the Missouri.
“Remember Charlie McKenzie? They call him King Charlie now. He’s with the Arikaras for trading.”
Baptiste came into the cabin and squatted on his haunches near the fire, watching his father, then the newcomer, the Ute girl.
“One whole day, canoes of Ashley’s men came downstream.” Charbonneau looked into the fire. “Most of the men were wounded. They had a fight with the Arikaras after they’d fished up a brandy keg and were for the most part drunk as hoot owls.”
He would not tell much about his trip. He had left the duke at the Grand Detour post, where he was visiting with the agent. Charbonneau had come to Council Bluffs in a dugout he’d found among some cattails. He was certain that the duke was on his way down the Missouri by now.
Baptiste nodded. “The aspen are orange and the oaks red and yellow against the sky. He will be here soon.”
“The duke lost two of his hunters from overexertion and heat. Sacre, it was hot.” Charbonneau rolled his eyes remembering how the two men showed symptoms of a nervous and gastric fever. Then the duke had asked him to act as hunter in their place. He had refused, reminding Duke Paul he had been hired as interpreter. The duke had insisted Charbonneau use his rifle and hunt game. He had given Charbonneau his interpreter’s pay and said from that day on he was engaged as a hunter. Charbonneau explained how he had been able to leave at night and get out of the camp. It wasn’t defeat; Charbonneau saw it as keeping his pride andprotecting his feet from the prickly pear, rocks, and mud they would have trod upon if he’d become a hunter.
In two days Tess rode in from the Washita post, tired but glad to see that his father was there.
“Even less room now for that painted papoose,” grumbled Eagle.
“She is a little thing—you will make room,” said Charbonneau.
Eagle looked at him. “With two grown boys, this is no place for her unless you wish to raise her as a daughter.”
“She is right,” said Sacajawea. “Your sons learn the white man’s way. One woman. How can they learn from a father who has two women and brings home another?”
“Sons no trouble,” said the Ute girl coquettishly. Men and boys were her stock in trade. Her father had often gambled off a night or two of her alluring company to traders. Now she felt her luck changing. She would not have to serve this old, wrinkled mountain man, but she could use her charms on the sons. She looked at the stocky Tess, who saw her from his squinted eyes as though seeing her through bright sunlight.
“My old man knows good merchandise!” exploded Tess. “Just look at those straight, strong legs.”
Baptiste stood with his mouth wide open, staring at the Ute girl. “Doesn’t she have a name?” he asked finally. “For a couple of days we just stare not knowing what to call her.”
“We could call her Kitten, huh?” said Tess. “I bet she is playful.”
Sacajawea seemed resigned to the
whole affair, feeling that the girl was actually too young to influence the boys. She looked at Kitten as if she were an errant child. In fact she treated her as a child. She combed her hair in the mornings and scrubbed her face in the evenings. She sent her on errands and showed her how to mend moccasins.
Charbonneau, strangely, was not jealous of Kitten’s flirting with his sons. He seemed quite amused by the entire situation. Perhaps it was amusing to him because he knew very well that Eagle, now about eighteen summers, previously the youngest of his women, wasnow seething inside. She was jealous of this adolescent child.
The snow lasted a week; then the weather warmed, and one day it was sunny. “Duke Paul will be here any day to get supplies before he goes south to New Orleans,” said Charbonneau. “I would rather be on a trading trip with the Sioux than meet him right away.”
“You are leaving?” asked Sacajawea.
“Oui, by tomorrow night. I will take my son on a short hunting trip.”
“You will not take Baptiste. You have given a promise that he will wait here for Duke Paul. The leaves are turning red. He will be here soon now.”
“Femme, how could I forget that?” sighed Charbonneau. “Each evening that duke reminded me of it and what he could do for my son. He said the same words Générale Clark uses. ‘Your son is one smart fellow, but you, his father—no brains that show.’”
Sacajawea put her hand over her mouth and smiled. She thought how peaceful it would be while Charbonneau and Tess were on the hunting trip. She hoped maybe she and Baptiste could visit Chief Red Hair once while he was gone. Then she remembered that Baptiste, too, would be leaving before the next snow. She was ready for Baptiste to go, but the thought of the day of his return made her want to sing. That would be the time she would set her face toward the sun.
The wind blew cold that evening, and Charbonneau sat on the floor with his sons playing the game of plum pits. Sacajawea sat sewing. Eagle was looking through her belongings for a missing necklace and beaded belt. Kitten sat close beside Tess. She was covered by a loose gingham Mother Hubbard that Eagle had given her. Kitten had left one shoulder free and had belted the dress around the middle with a blue-and-scarlet sash. Her waist-long hair rippled free over the glass sticks in her ears. She wore a silver squash-blossom necklace and a string of dark brown seeds.
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