From Sea to Shining Sea

by JAMES ALEXANDER Thom

  William was going on ahead because he wanted to improve the trail if possible and also because he wanted to deposit this meat at the upriver campsite and then come back and be of a little more help with the wagons. Now that noon had come and gone and the earth was baking in the afternoon sun, the plain had become like an anvil, the sun like a hammer. After that first long hill, some of the men had fainted, and he knew that more would be fainting all afternoon. I might do the same right now if I didn’t have this bumbershoot over me, he thought. Wish there was some way to keep a canopy over the men who’s pullin’.

  But how could that be done? he thought.

  It couldn’t, he answered himself. They’ll just have to bear it.

  He slogged on, his tortured feet sending up sparks of pain with each step, his sweat-sodden elkskins rubbing him raw between the thighs, his neck and shoulders burning with the load of the pack. The plain crept under his feet; the far hills shimmered; the faraway Rockies trembled white with their snowcaps.

  How can there be snow in this hell of a world, he wondered. Ouch. God, I don’t know if I can take another step.

  But then he remembered what George had told him once about pain. You know what you can do, even if your body says quit. It’s only pain.

  It’s only pain, he thought, hearing George’s voice and seeing his eagle-face. If anyone would know, George would, he thought.

  And truly, he thought, it’s the most useful one thing a body can know.

  HE LEFT THE PACK OF MEAT AT A CAMPSITE HE HAD SElected near the head of the Falls. There were no trees to hang it in, so he piled rocks around it. Nothing should be able to get in there before we come back, he thought. He pulled off his moccasins and removed the spines from his feet. They were hard to see because of the sweat that ran stinging into his eyes and the gnats and flies that swarmed around his face, but soon he had extracted all he could find. The carbuncle on his ankle was the size and color of a half-ripe plum now. He got up, wincing, and went down the bank for a drink of cold water. He held it in his mouth to warm it so its coldness would not cramp his stomach in the overheated state he was in. Then he started back. Despite the pains in his feet, he felt as light as a gazelle now for a while, without the weight of the pack. He could have run.

  Here at the upper falls, the river was nearly on a level with the plain, and in places off to his left he could see the surface of the river, blue under reflected sky, white where rapids ran. A distance to the north and northeast of him, though the river descended out of sight into its deepening canyon, he could see plumes of mist marking two of the cascades, and he could hear the deep, steady thunder-roll of their fall. A shadow passed over the blazing yellow ground in front of him; he squinted up and saw an eagle coasting past the sun and down toward one of the columns of mist.

  The one that lives by the Falls, he thought. They had seen her nest the other day, high in a cottonwood tree on a tiny island amid the churning froth below one of the high cascades, a solitary and spectacular homesite, completely protected from any kind of predator that walks, and usually overarched by a misty rainbow. Safe, surely, William thought, but imagine being born and growing up in such a thundering eyrie, those eaglets. Like growing up next to a battlefield it must be.

  Maybe it’s that, growin’ up next door to space and tumult, he thought, that makes eagles what they be.

  He stopped there and paused to think of that, as the eagle glided down into the mist, and it seemed to be something he and George had talked about there on the porch of George’s cabin—nay, his eyrie—on Point of Rock above the Falls of the Ohio.

  And for a moment he was there again, his brother George there beside him.

  Then he shook his head and went on.

  WHEN HE GOT BACK TO THE WAGONS, IT WAS LATE AFTERnoon. They were still several miles from the upper camp, and were good and stalled by a broken tongue, which the carpenters were trying to mend with a soft, brittle, crooked piece of cottonwood—the only piece of lumber they still had. The men were in pitiful condition, now scarcely able to hobble. “Lots of ’em been a-faintin’ on me,” said Sergeant Pryor. “Thank God that sun’s goin’ down!”

  “All set t’ go, sir,” called Bratton.

  And so they labored and strained and stumbled and rumbled on for two more hours, the setting sun blazing straight into their eyes until it dropped below the peaks of the great range. In the twilight they heard the melodious trill of some sort of lark in the grass near the trail, heartrendingly sweet. They went on through the dusk, past great herds of buffalo, whose sentinel bulls trotted out toward the wagons, closer and closer until their caution overcame their curiosity and they retreated.

  When night fell the wagons were among the dry rills that ran down into the second great ravine, and these were too tricky to negotiate in darkness.

  “Nothing for it then but t’ leave ’em here till morning,” William said. “We’ll back-tote all th’ precious goods we can carry up, have a nice dinner and a deep sleep. Come morning we’ll haul up the rest o’ the baggage and then trundle the empty wagons back to lower camp for another load, eh?”

  The hike was agony. They could not see the prickly pears in the dark.

  They dragged themselves into the upper campsite before midnight. A scurrying and growling in the darkness warned William that something was trying to get into the meat he had cached. It did not sound like bears, but he cocked his rifle and yelled. Now he could see them scrambling, some staying, some running, and their low shapes under the starlight revealed them to be wolves.

  He fired a shot into their midst, the powder flashing yellow-orange; one yelped and they all fled.

  “Sorry, boys, little fresh meat tonight,” he said. The wolves had managed to tear down the rocks and had shredded the pack and eaten most of the meat.

  He wrote briefly in his journal that night, hardly able to keep his eyes open. Never had he hurt so badly as he did now everywhere below his knees. Most of the men were already deep in slumber. The pages swam in the firelight as he wrote.

  … the men has to haul with all their strength wate & art maney limping from the soreness of their feet some become faint for a fiew moments, but no man complains all go chearfully on to state the fatigues of this party would take up more of the journal than other notes which I find scarcely time to set down.

  “NOW, CAP’N, SIR.” IT WAS SERGEANT PRYOR’S VOICE COMing in through the red blaze of pain. “They’s no reason for you to cripple yourself permanent, is there?”

  William turned, gasping, and looked at him. Pryor had come forward from the wagons. “Y’ve walked five times what we’ve done,” Pryor went on. “Nobody’d take it ill if you was to go back to camp and doctor them trail-beaters o’ your’n. Fact, it’s makin’ us all hurt to see you a-hobblin’ so. With respect, sir, if you fall down, my boys got enough to carry without you added on the load.”

  “I’ll grant y’ that,” William said. “All right, Sergeant. I think I will go back.” It was true. He had traversed this portage route at least a dozen times in the last six days. By replacing stakes he had managed to shorten the road nearly a mile for the wagon-haulers, but he had limped countless miles over prickly pears and jagged hard ground to do it, and he knew his feet were nearly ruined. He stood with his pack on his back and watched the wagons creep along. He waited for them to go out of sight because he didn’t want them to see him turning back, even though they knew he was. He leaned on his gun, and nodded and waved at them as they went on. A strong breeze was rising out of the southeast, and it cooled his face.

  It was four miles back to the lower camp. I can make that, I reckon, he thought. Don’t know as I could’ve made it fourteen miles to the upper camp, though.

  Up to a point it had been as George had said—only pain. But it was beyond that now. From here on he would be damaging himself. And that, he thought, is a fool’s business.

  But even knowing that, it was almost as hard to turn back as to go on. And he couldn’t bear to have them see h
im do it. So he stood and watched and waited. The wagons grew smaller and smaller. At last he turned and started back, the breeze in his face, limping and stumbling. Soon he turned for a last look after the distant vehicles.

  They were stopped. Something had stopped them there on the level ground. The men were moving around them, doing something. William turned to follow them and see what was the matter.

  He saw something white on one of the canoes, then on the other. What the devil? he thought.

  And then he understood; he saw what they had done: Someone had thought to raise the sails on the canoes. The white rectangles filled; the men in harness pulled; the canoe-wagons were now moving at a brisker pace.

  “Well, I’ll be damned!” he exclaimed. “Sailboats on dry land, as I live and breathe!” For a long time he watched them creep away over the prairie, then turned and went happily limping toward the lower camp. During his walk back he stopped to make some corrections on his sketch-maps of the river. The same wind that had propelled the sailing wagons whipped several of the sketches out over the prairie. Damn, he thought. Have to do those over another trip. He was too lame to chase them across the prairie.

  SERGEANT PRYOR WAS BEAMING WHEN THE MEN CAME trundling the empty wagons into the lower camp.

  “Pretty smart, those sails,” William said. William had been sick all day, his bowels loose, and had pampered himself by drinking some of their precious coffee, the first he had had since winter.

  “My own idea,” Pryor said. “Gave us as much go as four more men in harness, those sails did.”

  “Might be you do better without a captain along.”

  “Wal, I wouldn’t say that, sir,” Pryor replied. “Seein’ as how we’d be a-goin’ up the wrong river!”

  THERE WAS STILL A LITTLE DAYLIGHT, AND PRYOR’S MEN used it to carry two more canoes up the bluff from the lower camp to the prairie above, so they would be ready for an early departure next morning. While they did this, William wrote in his journal, looking up now and then in admiration at the men toiling up the steep path with the canoes. York was helping them now, and this was much to their advantage. Sacajawea sat bare-chested, nursing Pompey near the fire, busy as usual sorting and packing what York called her “mouse foods”—the various roots and bulbs and seeds she was always gathering—and now and then looking across the flames at William’s face, looking at him with such open warmth and affection in her eyes that it made him squirm sometimes. It was disturbing to be in such fond, wordless communication with a young woman who was by any standard desirable and was growing even more so in this womanless place.

  “Janey, I will write that you are all well now. Is it true?”

  “Yes. Have not hurt in any part now, thank you so.”

  He remembered how she had looked only two weeks ago, how near death she had been.

  “Your good health makes me happy,” he said. The sentiment in the words made his voice thick and tremulous, and she heard the tone; he could see in her eyes that she heard it, and for a moment then there glowed in her face such naked, unguarded adoration that he wanted to step around the campfire and kneel by her and put his head against her bosom. He wanted to hear her heartbeat now; he could feel his own and he wanted to hear that hers was racing too.

  They sat like this for an indeterminate time, their eyes on each other’s mouths and eyes, until gradually the sounds of the camp came back into William’s consciousness and he glanced about to see if anybody was watching. Cruzatte arrived just then, asking what should go in the new cache he had been assigned to build here, and the strange enchantment of the moment was broken. William was both annoyed and relieved.

  A moment later he felt something give way in the dense pain under the hot poultice on his ankle, and when he lifted away the steaming linen he saw that at last the accursed carbuncle had headed up and opened, and the pus was welling out, thick and yellow and blood-streaked; it looked as if a cupful were discharging from the center, while the swollen red flesh around it itched and tingled and softened. He watched it with grim fascination as it seeped into the linen.

  There, he thought, there’s that bedamned thorn! “Janey,” he said, “fetch me that rag from the kettle, and wring this’n out, if ye please.”

  She did, and then watched as he blotted more and more of the corruption out with the steaming compress. “You be well also,” she said, putting a brown hand on his blond-haired wrist and smiling at him, her face but a few inches from his. He could smell the clean musk of her breath, the milk at the baby’s mouth.

  “Aye! I’ll be a-walkin’ again t’morrow, I will!”

  “Good,” she murmured. “Good. I am joy.” And she stroked the hair on the back of his hand.

  “Might be we’ll walk together up on the prairie one day soon, eh?” he said. “And see all the fallin’ water? And the eagle in the treetop?” It would be a chance to redraw the map sketches that had blown away. Then he added quickly: “And old Charbonneau, too. I bet he’s tired o’ bein’ camp cook all day long.” I’m glad she has a husband, he thought. It was a strange thought, and he did not want to examine it.

  “York too!” she cried. She was suddenly almost as if dancing, even while kneeling still before him. “York come with!” She was like Judy Hancock, getting all wound up with enthusiasm for an outing, her eagerness just like a white girl’s.

  William laughed. “Say, we’ll have a proper picnic, like!” And then he had to explain to her what a picnic was, and as he talked about it—about packing a lunch and eating it out of doors, close to nature—the puzzlement on her face stopped him, and he laughed and said: “Lordy, by this definition, every meal we’ve eaten in five months been a picnic!”

  IT WAS DARK WHEN THE CANOE CARRIERS CAME BACK DOWN. Sergeant Pryor led them back into camp and then collapsed by William’s campfire as they went for the fragrant meal Charbonneau had cooked. His face was gray. “Feared I’ve took sick, Cap’n. Sorry.” William dispensed some salts for him and then kept him long enough to get the news from the upper camp. Shields had Captain Lewis’s iron boat frame assembled, and the hunters were out getting more elk hides to cover it. Young George Shannon had got lost again, but had turned up after being gone two days.

  William shook his head. “One of these days,” he said, “that boy’s going to get lost for good. Let’s hope it isn’t till we get back to St. Louis.”

  “St. Louis!” exclaimed Pryor. “Lord-a-God, I’d almost forgot there be such a place!”

  A little later, the sounds of Cruzatte’s fiddle started up, and dancers cavorted in silhouette against the big bonfire. York came to the table, chuckling and wagging his head. “Them white boys, Mast’ Billy! They haul wagons thutty-five mile all day, ‘n’ ’en carry canoes up to th’ prairie. ‘N’ ’en a fiddle play, an’ they all git up an’ shake a leg!” He kept wagging his head. “Just don’t know when to lay down an’ die!”

  But ten minutes later York himself was in their midst, dancing with the energy of several demons.

  * * *

  WILLIAM STOOD WITH CRUZATTE BY THE CACHE NEXT morning and made notes on its exact location.

  Cruzatte closed the cache, and William watched as he erased all traces of it from the ground. In it were some of Lewis’s books, more of his plant specimens collected since Fort Mandan, some of the men’s personal articles they had finally tired of carrying upstream, two blunderbusses, and a few kegs containing extra food and ammunition for the return trip.

  Well, he thought. There’s the stuff would have gone back to civilization this fall, could we have spared the men. There’s the stuff would have told our families and government that we’re still alive so far. When that doesn’t show up as promised, they’re going to think us dead, sure.

  NOW THEY HAD CARRIED THE LAST CANOE AND THE REST OF the baggage up to the prairie, and were rolling the wagons along, in high spirits because this would be the last of these torturous trips around the Great Falls. At the upper camp, they knew, was an enormous supply of good meat that C
aptain Lewis’s hunters had been killing and putting by for days. Soon they would be back in the Missouri, headed those last few miles into the great mountains that had been looming on their horizon for a month. The miseries of traveling the riverbed had not been forgotten, but they seemed minor in comparison with the agonies of this overland toil. And it would be light going, too, they reckoned, because that accursed big white pirogue, which in their memories weighed heavy as lead, would have been replaced by Captain Lewis’s collapsible boat—a mere ninety pounds of iron covered by a passel of elk hides. In their imaginations it floated light as cattail fluff.

  WILLIAM’S ANKLE WAS STILL SORE WITH A SHARP, WET, stinging pain, but having drained that carbuncle at last, with its huge throbbing pain, he hardly minded it. The sting of it almost felt good because it said the thing was healing.

  He felt a rising of wind, but it came out of the southwest and would not work for using the canoe’s sail. The wind had a rain-smell to it, and a chilly edge, and it came from a mountain of dense purple-black clouds mounting on the western horizon, flickering with lightning and grumbling with thunder. It was astonishing to see how rapidly it grew. God, I hope this one bypasses us, William thought. It’s going to be a hard blow, up here with no shelter.

  There was a chance that it might go by. Out here on the high prairies, William had noticed often, the sky was so immense that a storm might be filling a quadrant of it with thunder and violence while in another a serene sunset was on display.

  Another blast of icy wind now rocked the canoe on its truck; hats went flying, and whirlwinds of dust and sand, debris and prickly pear blossoms spun through the air. William ducked his head and squinted as driven particles began stinging his face like bee stings. He had to brace himself, leaning into the wind, to keep from being blown over backward. A blaze of lightning blanked out all shadows; a crack of thunder nearly deafened him, then the wind rose in a catamount’s wail.