The Dakota Cipher eg-3

by William Dietrich

  Good news, indeed.

  The little flotilla passed and the river was empty. I hurried back to the others, who were eating crabapple, whortleberry, and more of the beaver. ‘There was some kind of fight, I think. Red Jacket was retreating back downriver.’

  ‘Let’s hope they’ve given up,’ said Pierre. ‘Now we get ahead of them.’

  We carried the canoe to the sluggish pond, slowly rising, and paddled down to the beavers’ new engineering. With a loud tail slap the survivors disappeared, and we carefully carried our craft over the repaired structure. This time Magnus didn’t slip. Then down to the main river, a careful scouting for enemies, a wait until nightfall, and once more up against the current.

  I feared every bend would still bring an ambush, but Pierre said it was equally dangerous to linger, blind and helpless. ‘We need to learn what happened,’ he said. ‘If his band had a fight, they may not follow Red Jacket farther west. Maybe we’re done with him.’

  ‘But what if some of his men went still farther upriver?’

  ‘That’s the territory of other bands. Red Jacket is feared but not trusted. He has many, many enemies. His men can’t stay up here, and his enemies become our friends. So now we’ll follow this river northwest until it turns back east, and then decide what to do. That’s where the shooting came from, I guess.’

  In the Indian manner the stars were our clock.

  ‘At least we don’t have as many mosquitoes at this hour,’ I said as we paddled.

  ‘Indians often travel at night to avoid them,’ Namida agreed. ‘When you are not afraid of the night you can see like the wolf. Look.’ She lifted her paddle to point. ‘Giwe danang. The North Star. In a month it will bring the first frost, and the insects will disappear.’

  Her hair was like a satin curtain, her arms slim and strong. ‘So is this paradise to you, as Pierre said?’

  ‘Paradise is in the next world, not this one. There you don’t go hungry. Here we have winter, sickness, and bad Indians like Red Jacket.’

  ‘So have you ever heard of a special place to the west?’

  She took two strokes before replying. ‘There are stories of a great tree.’

  I could see Magnus stiffen ahead of her.

  ‘How great?’

  ‘So tall it touches the sky, or so it is said. Yet warriors who go to find it never return. And it is not easy to find. Sometimes it appears and sometimes it is lost.’

  ‘A tree marking Eden,’ Magnus said, ‘and Indians with blue eyes.’

  ‘My people live where the sun goes down,’ Namida said. ‘They have no interest in this tree.’

  ‘And what is this stone tablet of yours?’

  ‘It has markings like the traders’ magic books. It is very old, found long ago. Our tribe captured it from the Dakota, who may have captured it from someone else. A medicine man in my country keeps it until the men who carved it return. Legend says that red-haired men dug for metal in the earth and promised to come back.’

  The Norwegian beamed. ‘This is proof of what I’ve been telling you since Paris!’

  ‘Proof if we find it.’

  ‘Would Namida make up something like writing on stone?’ He grinned at the woman. ‘You are wiser than our sorcerer.’

  ‘And elephants – have you seen woolly elephants?’ I asked her.

  ‘What is an elephant?’

  ‘Bigger than a moose. Bigger than a buffalo.’

  She shook her head. ‘Nothing is bigger.’

  At dawn we saw smoke. ‘Too much of it,’ Pierre said.

  We hid the canoe, this time Magnus staying with the two women while the voyageur and I crept ahead to scout.

  It was a massacre. A camp of Ojibway had been attacked, their wigwams put to the torch and their canoes smashed. Earthen pots had been shattered into fragments, drying racks had been toppled, and toy dolls made of cattail husks had been trampled. A crippled dog limped among two dozen scalped and mutilated bodies, their remains pecked at by crows.

  Feathered shafts jutted from flesh and Pierre checked the markings.

  ‘Red Jacket’s work.’

  I felt sick. ‘The attackers were looking for us.’

  ‘They came upon this group without finding us and a fight broke out. Maybe they suspected these Indians of hiding us.’ The voyageur looked about, studying the tangle of footprints. ‘They retreated before other Ojibway can learn what happened and mount revenge. Red Jacket must be half-crazed to provoke such a powerful tribe this far north. You have truly stirred the hornet’s nest, Ethan Gage.’

  ‘All I wanted was to look for woolly elephants.’ The ruthlessness reinforced the peril we were in.

  ‘Well, here’s your companion’s Garden of Eden.’ The bodies had already bloated in the sun.

  We fired three shots in quick succession to bring the others up and then salvaged what we could. The camp had been looted, but we found pemmican, kettles, and even some cached horns of gunpowder that had been overlooked. We didn’t have time to bury anyone. Who knew if Red Jacket would suddenly return?

  ‘My friends, it is time to make a serious decision,’ Pierre said. ‘Your stories are entertaining, but here we’re presented with the reality of our situation. The longer we wander, the worse our peril. This river now turns back northeast if we continue to ascend it. That means back towards Grand Portage. We may have time to get back to the fort, ask for protection, and even return home with the fur brigades.’

  ‘But home is that way,’ Namida said, pointing west.

  ‘Your home. And that of the Dakota, who share Red Jacket’s blood.’

  ‘My people will protect us.’

  ‘Your people are far away, and we don’t know how to find them.’

  ‘That’s the way to the tree and the tablet!’ Magnus said.

  ‘And slow and merciless death, giant. Your stories are entrancing, but …’ He turned to me. ‘Ethan, what do you think?’

  ‘I don’t trust anyone.’ I looked east longingly.

  ‘No.’ Namida looked at me with annoyance and said something to Little Frog. Both women began shaking their head. ‘Cowards will make us slaves again.’

  ‘We’re not talking cowardice, we’re talking sense,’ I said.

  ‘We’ll buy you if we have to,’ Pierre offered, ‘and send you home in the spring. By that time the two donkeys will be gone and Red Jacket will have forgotten.’

  ‘He never forgets.’

  ‘But how will we get west from here, with no river!’ He seemed to fear dry land as much as Red Jacket.

  ‘Walk. We find other rivers.’ She pointed again. ‘Many rivers and lakes to the west, Frenchman.’

  The voyageur turned to me. ‘Make her understand we’re safer at Grand Portage.’

  But I wasn’t sure that was true, either. Meanwhile, the two Indian women had already picked up their things and were walking off in exactly the opposite direction Pierre wanted to go, Little Frog leading the way. ‘They don’t seem to be persuaded.’

  Magnus watched them disappear into the trees, turned to us and our canoe, and then turned back again.

  ‘Come,’ begged Pierre, ‘The Indians won’t bother two squaws, or merely re-enslave them if they do. But Red Jacket could return here at any moment. Let’s find friendly Indians, tell them what happened, and make them our protectors. They’ll escort us back to Grand Portage.’

  ‘And give up the hammer?’

  ‘The hammer is a story. Red Jacket is real.’

  ‘No,’ said Magnus, stubbornly shaking his head. ‘I don’t trust the British, and I didn’t come this far to stop now. The women are right. Our path is that way.’

  ‘But we can’t paddle!’

  ‘Then learn to walk, little man.’ And Magnus set off after the two Indians as well.

  ‘Stop calling me little man!’

  Well, tarnation. Here was a splendidly sensible idea – take our hair home while we still had it to take – and my Norwegian preferred suicide! Nothing I’d heard a
bout the Dakota made me want them as enemies, and Red Jacket and the Somersets had our map to guess where we’d be going. The forest seemed dank and endless, no doubt full of malevolent beasts and cannibal monsters. But the ladies wanted home, Magnus wanted his hammer, and I? It did seem a pity not to at least take a peek for treasure. I sighed.

  ‘I’m sorry, Pierre. It appears we’re outvoted, three to two. I think I’d better go on to keep watch on Magnus. We both know he’s a lunatic.’

  ‘So are you, if you keep marching towards the Dakota!’

  ‘I’m in your debt for saving us. Take the canoe, go back to Grand Portage, and if we find something worth keeping I’ll share it with you anyway. I promise. Go back to your friends.’

  ‘But you’re my friends, now!’

  ‘Well, your friends are going that way.’ I pointed after the others.

  ‘Mon dieu, you are not donkeys but jackasses! When the Dakota stake us all to the plains, do not blame me!’

  ‘It will be entirely the women’s fault, but every lady I meet seems to have a definite mind of her own.’ I shouldered my rifle. ‘You’ve done enough.’

  He groaned. ‘Merde, you will starve without me. Or drown. Or be drained by mosquitoes. Or trampled by a moose. No, Pierre must look after his donkeys. Very well. Help me sink our canoe to hide it, because the markings make clear it is Red Jacket’s. We’ll pray he doesn’t discover we went this way. And hope we can find another river, and another canoe, and the women’s village, and this stone tablet, and paradise. Somewhere off the edge of the earth!’

  By hurrying, we caught the others in a few miles. ‘How far to your medicine man and his stone tablet?’ Pierre asked Namida, who accepted matter-of-factly that we’d followed her.

  ‘Many days. We have to go to where the trees end.’

  ‘Well, my friends, there it is.’ Pierre looked gloomy. ‘We’re at the edge of the blank spot on your old map. So I will go on your goose chase and watch you search the prairie for hammers. If you find nothing, it will make a good joke for my voyageur friends, and if you do find something, then you will share with your great friend Pierre. I will be rich and unhappy, like the bourgeois.’

  ‘Oh, we’ll find it,’ Magnus said.

  ‘And why do you still carry your map case, when we no longer have a map?’

  ‘Because it carries more than a map.’

  ‘But what, my friend? What is so precious?’

  He looked at the four of us for a long time. I was curious too, of course. There was something more to his quest he hadn’t shared with me. ‘I’m taking something to Yggdrasil, not just taking something away,’ he said. ‘You might think me crazy.’

  ‘We already think you crazy!’

  ‘I prefer not to share it yet, because my hope may be futile. All I can tell you is that if we can find Thor’s hammer, I may find peace – and if not peace, then at least acceptance. I carry the blood of kings, and also their old stories of that time before time, when miracles could still happen.’

  ‘Miracles now?’ Pierre cried in exasperation.

  ‘Have faith, Frenchman.’

  ‘I’d rather have a canoe.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  We tramped into the worst country yet, thick woods and meandering swamp. The nights were growing crisper, but the days were still hot and buggy. There was no direct path, so we used the sun to strike west as close as we could.

  ‘The swamp will discourage pursuit,’ Magnus said.

  ‘That is good,’ Pierre said, ‘because we make one mile of progress for every three hours of circling, wading, and meandering.’

  Indeed, it took us three days and forty miles of marching to make what I guessed was at best twenty miles in our desired direction, following hummocks across wetlands and moose trail through eerily quiet forest. Twice I saw water snakes undulate away and thought again of Apophis, the Egyptian serpent god. We shot and butchered a deer, but our hasty meals never caught up with our persistent hunger. I felt lean as rawhide.

  Finally the still water seemed to show a slight current, waterweed bending, and we sensed we were nearing the path of another river. The marsh seemed to be tilting west. A final belt of woods and we reached broad water running south. This new river was too wide to easily swim, and the idea of struggling up its brushy banks was unappealing.

  ‘I hadn’t dreamt dry land could be so wet,’ I said.

  ‘A canoe remains the only way to travel in this country,’ said Pierre. ‘If we found a stand of birch and some spruce root we could build one, but even the least excuse for a canoe would take a week or more.’

  ‘Spring is the time to take the bark, not now,’ Namida said.

  ‘So we bushwhack? Swim?’

  ‘We build a fire, have a proper meal, and wait,’ she advised. ‘White men hurry too much. Start doing things the Indian way.’

  I was hesitant to advertise our presence, but Namida reasoned that if Red Jacket was pursuing us across the swamps we’d have seen sign by now. So we roasted venison, boiled wild rice, and almost as if expected, an Ojibway hunting party drifted down on us after smelling our smoke and food.

  ‘See? Wait for help,’ said Namida.

  By now I feared red strangers, but by extending the normal hospitality of Indians we got the same in return. These men were as different from Red Jacket’s band as a hotelier from a dungeon keeper: shy, curious visitors who accepted our food matter-of-factly because of the mutual aid expected in the wilderness. It is the poorest who are the most generous. There were four men hunting in two canoes, which left room for game and furs. The women interpreted and they informed us that upstream this new river turned west. So we purchased one of their boats with four of the last silver dollars I’d hidden in my moccasins. Pierre had a steel awl and we drilled holes in the metal so that they could be hung as medallions. The Ojibway were so pleased that they gave us extra food and explained how this river upstream led to a series of lakes, streams, and portages and finally yet another river, that one flowing west.

  So we set off again, happy to be paddling now that we’d suffered the alternative. We’d been converted to voyageurs.

  ‘This may be the beginning of the Mississippi, but I’m not sure,’ Pierre said. ‘This country is a maze of rivers and lakes and I’ve not been here.’

  ‘Even the maps at Grand Portage were blank in these parts,’ I recalled.

  The Frenchman pointed to the western bank. ‘If so, there’s your Louisiana, Ethan. We’re at the edge of Napoleon’s new empire.’ Our course along it led north and west.

  Now there were no forts, no maps, no certainties. If a woolly elephant had poked its head from the trees along the riverbank, I wouldn’t have been the least surprised. We did see moose feeding in the shallows, great jaws dripping, and armadas of ducks on pewter-coloured lakes. In truth it did seem like an Eden, with the animals we saw not yet frightened by gunshots.

  We passed villages of Indians as peaceful as Red Jacket was warlike, the children running along the bank to point at our white skin and Magnus’s red beard as we glided to a rest. The women streamed down to see us, curious, while the men hung slightly back with their bows, watchful but not unfriendly. Namida and Little Frog would ask, interpret, and then direct us on our way, always coming away with a gift of food. I left a coin at each one until I had no more.

  When we camped, our Norwegian would sometimes climb a tree to survey the country in hopes of finding sign of Norse habitation. But all was simply an undulating expanse of forest and lake, endless and empty in all directions.

  We healed and began to relax as each day passed with no sign of pursuit. Red Jacket’s band seemed increasingly remote. I’d almost certainly wounded or killed Cecil Somerset and perhaps dissuaded Aurora with my hard blow, and Pierre had winged the Indian chief. Maybe they’d been stung enough. Meanwhile, thanks to the women, the wilderness became a cornucopia, my rifle barking and the ladies gathering fruits. Magnus used his axe to whittle cooking spits, canoe braces an
d a dozen other useful tools as we travelled. Twigs yielded a crude tea. The inner bark of the basswood tree made strips to stitch birch into useful containers. Spruce gum was boiled to caulk leaks. The women taught us how camping near clay banks with swallows’ nests would provide us a zone almost free of mosquitoes, so voraciously did the little birds dine on them.

  Little Frog had given up trying to attach herself to Magnus, who remained resolute against female attention. She instead made partners with Pierre, who took her attention as nothing more than his due for rescuing and accompanying us. He made no pretense of love, but instead initiated that cheerful sexual companionship that was the free and easy manner of the fur trade.

  Namida, without request or negotiation, made herself a partner to me and, in the simple manner of that country, a potential wilderness bride as well. I knew there was a gulf of centuries between us, but could it be bridged? There was a limit to what we could talk about – she had no concept of cities or kings – but she began to educate me about survival in her world, showing how to find a simple root or make a simple shelter.

  As for romance, for days she treated me with affectionate reserve, but finally she came to some decision, and one evening, as the sky where we were going went aflame from the sunset, she abruptly stood before the log where I was sitting, cleaning my rifle. ‘Come with me to gather wood,’ she suggested.

  Pierre’s eyebrows rose. He’d told me once that wood-gathering time was the favourite period for the young to sneak off and make love in the forest, away from the disapproval of their elders. ‘Yes, go find some fuel, Ethan.’

  ‘Capital idea. Don’t want to get too chilly!’

  She led me rapidly through the trees, light as an antelope. Namida was slightly pigeon-toed, in the Indian manner – their habit of walking with their feet straight or slightly turned in seemed to help their stealth and speed – and as confident in this green forest as a Philadelphia matron in a market. I followed in anticipation, neither of us picking up so much as a twig for a fire.

  In a mossy glen she turned suddenly, smiled, and encircled my neck. I pulled her against me, marveling at the smoothness of her cheeks, the startling blue eyes, the copper of her hair. She was an alloy mix, as alien as a goddess. Finally we kissed, lightly at first, her nose and face rubbing against mine, and then more urgently.