From Sea to Shining Sea

by JAMES ALEXANDER Thom

  Charbonneau in those moments would seem not to exist, and it was largely his own fault, because he preferred the company of his old compatriot Le Page, and would nearly every evening go to sit and talk French with him and Cruzatte, bragging about his reputation as a sharp trader and a drinker of taffia and a steely-nerved gambler and a famous paillard among Indian maidens from Canada to the Missouri. That was what he was doing at this moment, when across the camp came a clucking sound like that of a galloping horse: the sound of Le Capitaine Clark making tongue-noises to the baby on his knee, calling him Dancing Boy, and the little high hoot of glee the baby made in response, and a laughing syllable in Sacajawea’s voice. Le Page and Cruzatte smirked at each other, and Charbonneau saw them do it, and they might as well have made cuckold-horns at him, because he was quite aware of that domestic scene over by the captain’s fire; he had been watching it out of the back of his head all evening. His eyes went dark and murderous and he glared at his countrymen in a way that meant this is beyond joking, so they lowered their eyes to the willow-wood fire and began discussing the best recipes for beaver-trap bait.

  But Charbonneau had been stung to a rage by the sight of that knowing smirk and the cheerful sounds from his wife and baby. He stood up and wandered slowly among the campfires and the blanket-wrapped sleepers and the low-talkers still sitting up, and went down to the water’s edge, and stood there with his breeches open making his contribution to the source waters of the great Missouri. He mumbled to the sentry who stood, a dark shape, by the canoes, then went a little way up the shore until he was in the shadows near the captain’s fire. He had no real notion of what he might do, but he was full of a sense of outraged honor, and he squatted in the dark fingering his skinning-knife and having a fantasy in which Le Capitaine Clark would come down to the water’s edge to relieve his bladder and suddenly there would be a knife through it and a hand over his mouth and then he would be dead in the river and no one would ever know what had happened to him. Charbonneau had dispatched an Indian that way one night long ago after a rum-soaked dispute near a British trading post, and had never been found out.

  He squatted here by the liquid whisperings of the little river, where the captain most likely would come down at least once before bedding down; he was not really planning anything, but his hands and body and nerves were enacting and reenacting certain swift moves, each time giving him a kind of grim satisfaction, each time healing his wounded pride a little bit.

  And suddenly there were moccasins patting the earth close by him and a walking figure coming toward him in the darkness, silhouetted briefly against the glow of the captain’s campfire; it stopped three feet from him and there was a pause, then the sound of water being made on the ground, and the smell of urine in the cold air—and then a gasp: he had been seen. He stood up quickly, not sure what he was going to do, and then the figure before him said, “Who ess?” and it was Sacajawea’s voice. The sound of it at that moment made his seething rancor explode in him, and with a growling curse he rose to his feet and struck with his fist full of knife handle straight at the place from where her voice had come.

  The blow was loud and hard and wet-sounding and she cried out in pain and her body crashed in the brush as she staggered and fell backward.

  WILLIAM HEARD THE SOUND OF HER VOICE, AND THE BLOW, and her outcry and the rustie of brush, and leaped to his feet, crying, “Janey?” York was holding the baby now, his yellow eyes bulging toward the darkness. William snatched up the little alcohol writing lamp and ran into the brush. Other voices were making queries in the darkening camp.

  Five strides down the bank his lampglow picked out the scene: Charbonneau standing half-crouched, half-ready to flee, his bearded face surly as a devil’s; Sacajawea sprawled in the scrub, trying to rise, one hand over her mouth. The little lampglow did not reveal Charbonneau’s right hand behind him with the knife in it.

  William was furious. He glared at Charbonneau while reaching down to help the girl up. She rose, whimpering a little, and William pulled her hand down; there was a trickle of blood coming from the corner of her mouth.

  William’s hand lashed out and snatched the front of Charbonneau’s blouse. And the half-dressed soldiers who had come running to investigate the commotion found them there, a strange little tableau in the light of the lamp: the little squaw-girl working her tongue in her bloody mouth; Captain Clark holding Charbonneau’s bulk practically off the ground, with the lamp right under his nose, telling him in the most steely voice they had ever heard their affable captain use:

  “By the blood of Jesus, Charbonneau, I swear I won’t stand a man beating his woman! I’ve a mind to bat you around just as you’ve done her!” He shook him back and forth till his head bobbled. “By God, you greasy craven, d’ you hear me? Once more you put a hard hand on that girl and I’ll have you makin’ a sausage of your own guts!”

  “She ees my squaw, Capitaine,” Charbonneau wheezed. “We have dispute.”

  “Your squaw, aye, but she’s worth five o’ you! Now you may give me your word, man, or I’ll throw you in that river and hold you under, instead o’ fishin’ you out: you don’t ever put a hard hand on her again!”

  There were so many people standing around now, Charbonneau moved his hand in the darkness behind him and slipped his knife back into its sheath.

  “Eh bien” he breathed. “On my word, alors.”

  “I wonder me,” Sergeant Pryor muttered, just loudly enough for anyone to hear, “how much that’s worth.”

  “KILL SOME MEAT, FOR GOD’S SAKE,” LEWIS HISSED. “IF WE and all these Shoshonis starve to death, we’ll never live it down.” When he realized what he had said, a rueful grin broke through his dark intensity. Aside from a small wad of watered flour the four white men and Ca-me-ah-wait had shared at the end of yesterday’s march, no one had eaten since the previous morning, and everyone looked gaunt and lethargic.

  Lewis asked Ca-me-ah-wait to keep his young men close by, lest they frighten off any game before Drouillard and Shields could shoot it. But the request seemed to unsettle the Shoshoni chief. He and his principal men had a frantic, buzzing, private huddle. And when the two hunters rode out up the valley, two small bands of mounted Indians set out, one on each side of the valley, to follow and watch them. Lewis put his fists on his hips and scowled at the chief, who looked back at him blank.

  Eh, well, Lewis thought. They’re still suspicious we might be a decoy for their enemies. If I protest, they’ll only get more dubious.

  Much of the tribe was faltering anyway. Despite a harangue by the chief, most of the villagers turned to go back to their town. Now only twenty-eight men and three women elected to continue with their chief on this fearful mission with the white men. Ca-me-ah-wait himself looked as if he would like to go back with them, but he had given his word. And so now the brave ones set out, following the hunters up the valley, with the laments of the others droning after them.

  Because Drouillard and Shields each had borrowed a horse, the owners of those horses had to double up; one rode behind Lewis on his tired horse and the other behind McNeal. It made for a hot, uncomfortable, jostling ride.

  Now riding up the narrowest part of the valley, with Ca-me-ah-wait beside him, Lewis saw an Indian racing back down the valley toward them, whipping his horse furiously. Lewis saw a look of alarm on Ca-me-ah-wait’s profile, and his own heartbeat raced. What if by some awful chance some of their Blackfeet or Pahkee enemies actually had shown up just now?

  The messenger, one of those sent to spy on the white hunters, now wheeled across in front of his chief, shouting and making signs, then raced away in the direction from which he had come. A cry burst from the Indians’ throats and they lashed their horses into a headlong gallop. The Indian riding behind Lewis was whipping the horse unmercifully, but with its two riders it was being left behind; the Indian only lashed it harder.

  Being without stirrups, Lewis was jouncing painfully on the horse’s back; he felt as if his molars were
crashing together with each step. “Stop it, damn your eyes!” he yelled back over his shoulder after about a mile of this, but the Indian did not understand and only whipped the beast harder. All right, then, Lewis thought, clenching his teeth, and he suddenly reined in the horse, which stopped abrupdy despite the whip. The other horses were a good three hundred yards ahead, a cloud of dust going up the rolling valley. Now Lewis turned to try to forbid the Indian from using the whip, but the Indian was no longer on the horse. Lewis saw him hit the ground on the balls of his feet and sprint ahead like a jackrabbit. McNeal’s horse was far ahead now, too, with McNeal and his Indian pounding ahead lickety-cut, the Indian howling in McNeal’s ear. Lewis had no idea what the riders were in such frantic pursuit of, but knew he had better be there for whatever it was. He dug in his heels and soon was thundering after the dust cloud. He overtook the running Indian who had been sharing his horse with him, rode alongside him briefly, giving him a bemused look. But the Indian was pelting along at the pace of a good track horse and seemed to be getting where he wanted to go, so Lewis urged the horse onward and left him in the dust.

  And then, soaring over a rise and down into a defilade, he saw in the low ground a few hundred yards ahead what the pell-mell rush was about.

  Drouillard was there, dismounted, kneeling, butchering a deer. He had thrown the guts out, and half a dozen Indians were off their horses scrambling for them. The rest of the party was just now converging on the scene. Lewis saw them dismount even before their horses had quite stopped, and run tumbling in over each other like a pack of starved wolves for the offal. An Indian would snatch up a piece of liver, a kidney or spleen, and tear at it with his teeth, blood running from the corners of his mouth. Those who had got pieces of the paunch or lengths of intestine gnawed with equal frenzy at their slimy yields, but what exuded from their lips was of a different color and consistency. Lewis had to tighten his throat against a rush of nausea. Though his Corps of Discovery had been like a moving abbatoir and the sight of animal guts was as ordinary as the sight of leaves on trees, and though he himself had watched intestines being cooked into table delicacies for his own pleasure, he had never seen human beings brought down so close to the nature of wolves. He watched Ca-me-ah-wait then; the chief was trembling with hunger and salivating, but he stood back and let his people feed, took nothing himself, and forbade them to throw themselves on the carcass of the deer, which McNeal was now skinning and butchering, as that was the white men’s meat, which they had killed. And in that sight of Ca-me-ah-wait, Lewis found something so admirable that his nausea turned to pity for a people whose life could be so hard. So he told Drouillard to save but a quarter of the deer, and gave the rest to Ca-me-ah-wait to divide among his people. They fell on it with knives and devoured the whole of it raw. And while they were thus polishing the bones, Drouillard and Shields mounted their horses and rode off to continue their hunt. Again Ca-me-ah-wait sent a party of watchers out after them. Soon thereafter, as the whole party was moving down toward the stream, a rifle shot echoed down the valley. Drouillard had killed another deer.

  Virtually the same scene was reenacted, but Lewis here found brush for a fire to cook his men’s share of the venison. Some of the Indians now were patient enough at least to scorch their venison over the fire. And while the Shoshonis were devouring every shred of flesh on this deer, even the soft parts of the hooves, Drouillard’s rifle cracked again in the distance, and in a few minutes he came trotting down to the fireside with another small deer strapped over his horse’s rump. Lewis kept a quarter of this one and gave the rest of it to the Indians. When this one had been devoured, and the Indians seemed at last to have compensated for their long hunger for meat and were in a good humor, and the horses had been permitted to graze, Lewis encouraged Ca-me-ah-wait to continue on with him.

  Now Ca-me-ah-wait insisted on a little ceremony. He put over Lewis’s shoulders a beautiful mantle made of ermine skins—it appeared to be fifty skins or more—similar to those some of the leading men wore, and gave similar garments to Drouillard and Shields and McNeal. Now, sunburned as they were, the white men looked like Indians themselves. Lewis responded by putting his hat on Ca-me-ah-wait’s head, and urged him to bring his people along to the forks where he expected to meet the Red-Hair Chief. He gave the American flag to an Indian to carry, so that they might be more readily recognized by the other white men. And at last, toward evening, they all descended to a place from which they could see the creek forks two miles below. Lewis’s heart sank.

  The place was as vacant as when he had first seen it. There was not a sign of Captain Clark’s party. There were the small streams joining; there were the clumps of brush. But there was no one in sight.

  Ca-me-ah-wait halted his horse, studying the distant place with a face full of distrust, and all the other Indians began a sinister murmuring. This was the place where the white man had said his people would be waiting with a Shoshoni woman and boats full of good things to trade for horses. But if there were people down there, they must be hidden—in that ambush of which the old women had warned. Lewis was sure Ca-me-ah-wait was thinking this; somehow he had to restore the chief’s tenuous confidence and detain him or lure him on until William arrived. From the looks of Ca-me-ah-wait and his people, they were ready to gallop back into the mountains, where surely they would vanish for good. “Drouillard, come here,” Lewis said. “Tell the chief this and make it clear to him: To prove we’re not tricking him, I’m going to give him our guns. Tell him—”

  Drouillard gave him an oblique glance. “My gun too?”

  “Aye, yours too. Tell him that if he believes his enemies are in those thickets down there, he can defend himself with our guns, and he’s welcome to shoot me as a liar as well.”

  This gesture seemed to inspire a little confidence, and the party now moved warily down toward the forks. Lewis now was as nervous as the Indians, but for his own reasons, and all sorts of awful possibilities passed through his head. What if the river had proved so impassable that William had halted to wait somewhere far down? What if these nervous Indians persuaded themselves that they were indeed being tricked, and decided to kill him and his three unarmed men with their own weapons? If they didn’t come upon the main party soon, that might well happen.

  Now they were within a mile of the forks, the scouts moving ahead, looking as taut as their own bowstrings, ready to fight or flee. Other warriors were riding near Ca-me-ah-wait, mumbling into his ear words that Lewis was sure would further undermine his trust in the white men.

  I’ve got to do something else to assure him, he thought, but what? I’ve done about all I can. Now it’s all up to Ca-me-ah-wait and his courage and his concept of honor.

  Then he remembered something, something that might stretch this filament of trust out a little further, and it was, ironically, a deception: he remembered the notes he had left on a willow stick at the forks. “Drouillard,” he said, “come do some more talking for me.” They halted. “Tell him we have a way of speaking on white leaves. Explain as well as you can what a note is, understand? Then tell him I left such a message—tell him just one—down there on a stick for our friends. Then I’m going to send you down there, with a scout as witness, to get that note.”

  “There are two notes there, Capitaine,” Drouillard reminded him.

  “Exactly. And I want you to act surprised when you pick up the second note. Then you’ll bring ’em back to me and I’ll play it from there.”

  Ca-me-ah-wait seemed dubious as Drouillard tried to explain what writing was. But he was patient. He seemed to welcome any excuse to delay going down that last ominous mile.

  Drouillard then galloped down to the forks in the twilight with one brave alongside, and he returned with paper in his hand. Lewis took the notes, looked at one, then with greater interest at the other, and then showed them to Ca-me-ah-wait, who looked at the markings with keen curiosity; then Lewis had Drouillard translate to the chief in hand language:

 
“This white leaf is a message I left six days ago for my brother chief, the Red Hair. This other leaf is a message Red Hair put here today for me. It says the canoes are heavy and the water is shallow and it is harder to bring them up than we expected, but they are just below the mountains and are coming up slowly. It says I should wait until they bring the canoes to this place.” Lewis smiled. “This is good, eh? They are so close, and we will probably meet them tomorrow if you stay here with me.”

  Drouillard, even while translating, looked at Lewis with admiration for this piece of lying. Ca-me-ah-wait seemed about half-willing to believe all this, but his advisers seemed to be trying to talk him out of it. So Lewis continued:

  “If you do not believe me, I have a way of proving my word. It is almost night now, and this is a good place for us to make a camp. Before the sun tomorrow I will send my hunter here down to meet the Red Hair Chief and tell him we are here waiting. One of your men may go with him; in fact I will pay him gifts to do this. I and my other two men will stay here with you, and you have our guns. If you will not desert me now or tomorrow, your brave will come back and tell you that he has seen my people and that they are as I have told you. You will meet them soon, and they will have many beautiful things to trade you for horses. But if you leave me and do not meet my brother chief, and go to hide in the mountains instead of helping us, then our great father in the east will forget you when we come back in later seasons with guns and provisions, and you will remain poor and hungry as I have seen you to be.”