From Sea to Shining Sea

by JAMES ALEXANDER Thom

  William was amused by the sight of his friend grinning over his notebook. Lewis, who oftimes had been uncomfortably intense or gloomy during the winter, was happier now than William had ever seen him.

  Lewis looked up from his notebook, his eyes twinkling in the firelight, to say:

  “We should send Charbonneau back to Washington, as chef for Mr. Jefferson’s kitchen, eh? Can’t you imagine him in the Executive household, this great rancid goat? Ha, ha!”

  Over by the big bonfire, the fiddle was squeaking happily and the men were cavorting and laughing over their evening dram. The wind boomed against the skin tent where Sacajawea sat tending to her son Pomp; the river hissed in the darkness beyond. William gazed in wonder at Lewis, at his dishevelled hair, his torn buckskins, his stained, dusty tricorn, his face tanned dark as oiled leather and glinting with chin-stubble.

  “My friend,” William said, “it’s all I can do to imagine you in the White House!” Yet, strange though it was, this gristly little frontiersman here beside him—this bodacious, dog-eating, cliff-hanging, grizzly-bear hunter, squatting here by a wind-whipped campfire twenty-three hundred miles from civilization digesting a meal of buffalo guts—actually had lived in the White House! Fate, William thought, plays curious games!

  May 14, 1805

  BOTH CAPTAINS WERE WALKING ON SHORE THIS EVENING. That was unusual. But the land was interesting, and they had things to discuss, so they walked along the shore together, now and then glancing out toward the white pirogue, which was coming along under sail in midstream. Charbonneau was visible at the helm, his red wool cap marking him. Sacajawea sat under the awning amidships with her baby in her arms. Three oarsmen, one of them Cruzatte, were working against the stiff current while another man held the brace of the squaresail, and the boat was making the pace of a walking man. Following were the red pirogue and the dugout canoes, in a ragged single file. The weather had been changeable all day; the riverbanks downriver were softly illuminated now by a setting sun, but across the river a drift of black clouds came flying low, its lower edge sweeping along like a tattered skirt. The waves on the river were building up and beginning to break into whitecaps.

  “Hey, now,” William said to Lewis, “I wish it wasn’t Charbonneau on that tiller.” He was remembering the last time.

  Lewis opened his mouth to reply, but paused at the sound of rifle fire far behind. Four shots, faint over the wind, in close sequence. They peered down along the river, counting sails. Five. One of the canoes was either still around the bend or had put ashore. “What d’you reckon?” said Lewis. “They gone ashore to hunt?”

  “A salvo like that, I’ll wager they’re makin’ war on a grizzly,” William said.

  They walked a bit farther, the wind from across the river whipping at their clothing, and Lewis looked worried, glancing first at the choppy waters and then back down the river.

  Two more rifle shots sounded. And after a while four more at close intervals. “Damnation,” William said, stopping and turning around, “s’pose they’ve got attacked by Indians?”

  “Oh, oh!” Lewis cried just then, staring out into the wind. William looked. The white pirogue was heeling and turning under a blast of wind from the squall line; William saw the wind come shivering across the water, blowing tops off the waves, and felt it beat cold around his face, and just then Lewis cried into the gale at the top of his lungs:

  “PUT HER BEFORE THE WIND! HEY! YOU FOOL! PUT HER BEFORE THE WIND!”

  But Charbonneau was responding dead wrong, just as he had the last time. He threw the tiller to the left and the pirogue luffed into the wind. The squaresail immediately began whipping and fluttering violently, so violently it tore the brace out of the soldier’s hand, and the vessel went onto her side as if shoved over by a giant unseen hand.

  “Godalmighty!” Lewis screamed into the wind, watching the vessel with all its valuable cargo—almost everything needed to complete the journey—laying over in the pounding waves, shipping water fast, only the resistance of the awning against the water so far keeping her from turning turtle. Lewis and William both were shouting now, but the wind across the water virtually blew their voices back into their mouths, and the tiny figures aboard the boat kept moving with an infinite slowness, doing nothing effectual. Lewis fired his rifle into the air to attract their attention; William fired his; but the little figures continued their slow, confused movements, unheeding. William, his heart sinking with a sense of tragic helplessness, watched Charbonneau drop the tiller and fall to his knees in the bilges, wringing his hands; he saw Scannon slide and fall overboard into the icy water; he saw Cruzatte hanging onto the bow for his life while the soldiers clawed the gunwale for a grip. They could hear Charbonneau’s screaming prayer come across the wind: “Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu, aidez-moi!” Cruzatte’s voice came, too; he was yelling in rage at Charbonneau. Sacajawea, now to her waist in water, seemed to be grabbing for items as they floated over the side. And far downstream, as if to add to the confusion, another rifle banged.

  “CUT THE HALYARDS! HAUL IN THE SAIL!” William roared through cupped hands. He heard something hit the ground beside him. It was Lewis’s rifle. Then his shot pouch and espontoon fell beside it, and William turned to see Lewis unbuttoning his coat and running toward the water’s edge.

  “No!” William yelled, and sprinted after him. He caught his wrist in an iron grip just as Lewis flung off his coat.

  “Let me go! I’m—”

  “You can’t swim in that! You’d perish in two minutes!” He hung onto Lewis’s straining arm and turned to shout again: “HAUL IN THE SAIL! Look,” he cried, “they’re doing it!” The men were gathering in the sail, desperately, with great difficulty. William prayed silently for them; he knew that two of them could not swim, and neither could Charbonneau. And this water was too cold for even a vigorous swimmer.

  Lewis was watching, no longer pulling toward the water, perhaps beginning to realize that the high waves and frigid water would be fatal. “God!” he groaned, “if that boat goes under, I’m as well off dead!”

  “Swallow such talk,” William snapped. “Look! She’s righting!” The mast was a little more vertical now, as the sail came in. But the hull was almost submerged, full to the gunwales with icy water, waves breaking over her windward side. The woman remained kneeling in water amidships, babe in one arm, snatching up floating objects with her free hand. Charbonneau was still bellowing supplications to his God, utterly ignoring the swinging tiller, and the boat was in danger of getting swamped by a wave broadside. But now Cruzatte was roaring at Charbonneau; he had drawn his pistol and was pointing it at Charbonneau in the far end of the pirogue. “Tirez! Tirez!” His voice came on the wind now: “Take the helm, or I shoot!”

  William stood, still holding Lewis’s wrist, and watched the desperate little crisis act itself out among the tiny figures, so remotely distant, but so detail-clear in the glorious cross-light of a prairie sunset. The red pirogue and the following canoes were having their own battle with the gusting winds, but were not in any trouble. “Never do I give that buffoon the tiller again,” Lewis hissed through clenched teeth. “He’s surely the most timid waterman in all the world!”

  “Aye! That woman of his, though. Look!” She was still working swiftly, holding her baby while capturing drifting articles in the sloshing water.

  “There! He’s come to. He’s got the helm now!” Cruzatte’s threat had at last moved Charbonneau out of his paralysis, and he was at the tiller. The sail was in now, and Cruzatte had organized the crew. Two men were bailing with kettles, while Cruzatte and another were on oars, pulling the pirogue and its great load of water toward the shore, slipping fast downstream on the current. The vessel was so low in the water, so fully swamped, that the high waves broke over her, refilling her as fast as the bailers could pour. But, little by little, she was coming across the distance. Scannon, his head a dark spot on the river, apparently tired of swimming around and just then decided to climb back aboard; one bi
g forepaw reached over the gunwale. Oh, no, William thought, that great beast’ll overset her again.

  Cruzatte was yelling at the dog, now threatening him with an oar.

  “SCANNON!” Lewis yelled. “SCANNON! COME!”

  The dog, fortunately, heard, and turned away from the boat to come swimming strongly toward his master.

  Scannon came floundering out of the river’s edge a few minutes later, shook himself mightily, and then ran up and down the bank, barking in his deep voice at the oncoming pirogue. The other vessels had turned toward the bank now. William and Lewis waded out into the numbing water to their waists to meet the vessel and help haul her in. The danger past, Cruzatte and Charbonneau were yelling at each other in French, Cruzatte damning, Charbonneau whining in his own defense. Despite their exertions, the people in the pirogue were shaking with cold. As they hopped out and pulled with their last energies to get the vessel onshore, William looked in dismay at the pathetic mess floating or sunk everywhere in the hull: notebooks, charts, lists, specimens, medicine boxes, navigational instruments, pans, parfleche bags, decanters, strips of jerky, flour kegs, powder horns and canisters, hats, moccasins, beads, medallions, and trinkets meant to be used as Indian gifts. God knows what’s lost in the river or spoiled, he thought.

  THEY MADE CAMP ON THE SPOT. A LARGE BONFIRE WAS built to warm and dry the occupants of the pirogue. The men stripped to the skin and rubbed the fire’s heat into their bodies, then hung their sodden buckskins on poles and bushes to steam in the fire’s heat. Sacajawea was trembling violently, but was tending first to her baby, kneeling near the fire, drying him. William got a dry blanket and draped it over her shoulders, and she looked up at him with eyes eloquent in gratitude. He made a hand sign which meant “good,” and then returned to the shore, where a desperate effort was being made to salvage the articles. William’s own wet leggings and breeches were chilling him through, making his old winter rheumatism ache, but there was much to do and little light left. The sky was blown nearly clean of clouds now; it seemed there would be no rain in the night. That was a boon. Everything from the canoe was lifted out, dribbling, and carried up and laid out on the bank to drain. Papers were spread on the ground and stones set on their corners to keep them from blowing away. As this process was continued in the twilight, it became apparent that although everything was soaked, hardly anything was missing except a few iron cooking utensils, which had sunk, and one notebook containing Captain Lewis’s journal for the first year of the voyage.

  “God bless that girl,” Lewis exclaimed. “She’s saved us, I’ll vow!”

  “Doesn’t it beat all!” William breathed. “I mean, most squaws wouldn’t ha’ conceived how this stuff was important. That one’s got a head on her shoulders, she has.”

  He went up by the fire to thank her for what she had done. Her baby was snug now in his cradleboard, packed in dry cottonwood down, and Sacajawea had stripped her own sodden tunic off and hung it on a pole close to the fire. For an instant her naked little figure glowed ruddy-gold in the firelight before she wrapped herself in the blanket.

  There were a few words of English the girl had learned. William knelt beside her and reached toward the fire. “Janey,” he said, “thank you.” It was the nickname York had given her. William made signs as he talked. “What you did was a great thing. Our hearts are yours.” She smiled, the biggest, fullest, white-toothed smile he had ever yet seen shine through her reserve. By God, he thought. We’ll give her some kind o’ reward. She deserves more than we heap on those chiefs everywhere we go.

  There were shouts down by the river. In the gathering darkness, the last canoe was coming ashore. The men were whooping and yelling something about a great bear.

  They emerged into the firelight. Two were soaking wet, and stripped to wrap themselves in blankets.

  “Lookee here!” someone yelled, and two men held up an enormous grizzly-bear hide, a thick, fine-haired yellow-brown. It was riddled with bloody bullet holes.

  “Sergeant!” Lewis called to Ordway. “A gill o’ spirits for every man, and let’s hear a tall tale!” He was relieved and happy; the losses from the boating accident likely were going to prove minimal after all.

  “A tall tale, aye, sir,” explained Collins, “tall but true! And here’s the monster’s coat to prove it!”

  “Hear, hear!”

  “Aye, Johnny, tell us how it happened!”

  “Well, boys, we seen ’im a-loafin’ on open ground about three hundred paces from the river, so we put ashore and all six of us creept up, and by stayin’ downwind and ahind of a little rise, we got within forty paces of ’im, an’ he had no idea, just layin’ there wallowing on th’ grass. Hugh and me, we held our fire, like ye’ve advised, Cap’n, and t’ other four all shot at once for his heart. Well, God damn me, not one of us missed, but that roarer just jumped onto his feet and came at us with ’is mouth open as big as a cave. Hugh and me, cool as y’ please, shot right at ’is face. He staggered, with a broke shoulder, I think, but he come on like he was a racehorse and we was the finish line.”

  The men around the fire were spellbound. Some of them had been thus engaged with grizzly bears already and the others had spent a lot of time imagining it and expecting it. Collins continued:

  “There was just six of us, but we hied off in a hundred directions. I personally all by myself went ten directions at once, all of em toward the river.” The soldiers laughed. “No time to reload, just run,” Collins went on. “He was closin’ on us. I could feel his feet shakin’ the ground, and I bet I got blisters on my butt from them flames he was blowin’.

  “Well, John and Dick, bein’ the two scaredest, they dove in the canoe. Rest of us, we scattered inter th’ willer brush and reloaded, while ol’ monster-bear crushed around roarin’ and lookin’ us up. We all took another shot at ’im, damn nigh point blank, an’ every time a ball hit him he turned and come for the man who’d shot it. Lordy, if I’d a had five loaded guns, I could a kilt him five times!

  “Well, he flushed Hugh and George out an’ chased ’em, and—he, he!—they flang away their guns and run right off a cliff, till about ten paces over the river in midair, they saw they wasn’t no ground under ’em, and then they dropped twenty feet straight into the river—that’s how they got all wet, y’ see.”

  The two nodded in their blankets; Collins wasn’t lying.

  “Wal, then,” Collins went on, eyes ablaze, “ol’ bear he jumped in the river right after ’em, an’ made a splash high as th’ treetops, an’ almost sunk George, he was that close. Dick an’ I run out atop that cliff then, a-loadin’ our pieces, and we saw Hugh an’ George swimmin’ so fast upriver they was leavin’ a backwarsh, an’ ol’ bear swimmin’ after ’em, makin’ the river red from all them bullet holes he was a-leakin’ out of. So anyways I got down on a knee an’ got a good steady bead on that bear’s head down there, and by God, with that one I kilt ’im, the last time, didn’t I, boys?”

  They nodded and grinned at him admiringly. It was he who had stopped the bear, and so he could tell it just as he liked.

  “Wal, that’s th’ story,” Collins concluded. “Drug him ashore and butchered ’im, and found eight balls’d gone through ’im in different directions. One as I say’d broke ’is shoulder, and th’ rest gone through parts such as would ha’ stopped a bull! Now I say this:”—his eyes fell on York, who was just now breaking cottonwood limbs over his knee for the bonfire—“next time I go hunt a yaller bear, I’m a-gonna do it th’ easy way, an’ take my nigger friend here t’ rassle ’im to death! Eh, York?”

  York understood this was a compliment, and broke into a big smile. “Shoo will, Mist’ Collins. I mean, lest I be too busy otherways!”

  So the rest of the evening was taken up with eating, and with tales and retellings, and warming by the big fire, and the cleaning of weapons and repair of moccasins, some of the men lying back holding steaming poultice-rags on their boils. The regular ration of whiskey seemed to affect most of the
men twice as much as usual, perhaps because of the altitude, or because of the infrequency of its use recently, and everyone was having a hilarious time, except Charbonneau, whose poor seamanship and frantic Catholic prayers were the butt of some pretty severe joshing. He glowered and hung back out of the firelight as much as he could, and made a few feeble excuses. He had enough sense not to get angry, because the good humor of the men was only thinly masking their contempt, and there were several—little Cruzatte foremost among them—who would have enjoyed thrashing him. “Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu! Aidey-moi, Jesu L’Enfant!” Cruzatte mimicked him in a whining voice, then added: “God hears you not, eh, Big Tess? Maybe is because he don’ recognize your voice in a prayer, eh, sauvage? Oh, but God tells me: ‘Pierre Cruzatte, put thy gun on that maniac’s head and give him some wisdom!’”

  The troops roared.

  “Merde!” growled Charbonneau. “I think you are so brave for you think you could walk across the river, eh?”

  “Caution,” Cruzatte said softly. “I could shoot you yet.”