Sign-Talker (37 page)

“My people don’t fear storms,” he said. “We know they won’t ever hurt us. Because of a promise from Wind Spirit.” They looked at him strangely; it wasn’t like him to just start telling about something without being asked a question. And they had never heard him discuss anything about spirits.

“Long time ago this was. Wind Spirit likes to blow things down, throw sand in your eyes, you know. Long time ago when he was young, he was even worse about that, like a bad boy. Blew people down and laughed about it. He blew houses down and laughed. So all the old Shawnee women held a council, said it was time Wind Spirit grew up. They would teach him manners. So here’s what they did:

“Next time they saw Wind Spirit coming with a storm, they all lined up, all those old women, facing him. He came on, laughing. So they all grabbed the fronts of their dresses and pulled them up. When he saw that sight, all those old women fronts, he begged for mercy. They threatened him that if he ever bothered Shawnee people, they’d show him that again. So he promised he never would. And he never has again. That’s why my people aren’t afraid of storms.”

The soldiers sat looking at him. It wasn’t till they saw him slyly smiling that they all burst out laughing.

Two days later another violent hailstorm shrieked and pounded over the prairie. It was bad at the White Bear Camp, where it seemed every tree would come crashing down. That night the canoe wagons didn’t come up from the lower camp, and Lewis grew tense with anxiety. By midnight not even a messenger had come up, and worry kept everyone from sleeping well.

The next day they learned that the hailstorm had punished the wagon-haulers brutally, and had come within a hair’s breadth of wiping out the lives of Captain Clark, Charbonneau, Bird Woman and her baby, and York.

Caught in the open on the portage trail without even hats or shirts, the men had been beaten to the ground by a deluge of hailstones the size of apples. Many were bloodied, some knocked unconscious, others so badly bruised they could hardly walk or use their arms. After the storm they had left the wagons on the trail and staggered back to the lower camp.

At that same time, Captain Clark, York, and Charbonneau’s family were hiking up by way of the riverbank. Clark had needed to rewrite some earlier waterfall measurements that were blown away in the wind. He’d taken Charbonneau’s family with him because they had not been out of the lower camp yet to see the spectacle of the waterfalls. York veered off toward a small buffalo herd in hopes of shooting a calf for a meal along the trek. They viewed the grand waterfall and then proceeded a quarter of a mile above it when the black storm cloud suddenly mounted the sky, the wind howling up with such force that it threatened to blow them all off the cliff into the river. They had taken shelter under overhanging rocks in a dry ravine just ahead of a deluge of rain and hail that looked and sounded as powerful as the grand waterfall itself.

In moments a flash flood of muddy water came roaring down the ravine, and would have swept them into the river above the grand waterfall had the captain not seen it coming; by the time he had pushed Charbonneau and Sacagawea, with her baby in her arms, up the muddy bank and out of the ravine, the torrent was fifteen feet deep and he was half submerged, pulling himself up to the lip of the ravine by his fingertips. He saved his rifle but lost his compass. Charbonneau lost his gun, shot pouch, and tomahawk. Sacagawea saved her baby, but for the second time the child’s cradleboard had been swept away by water, and his clothes went with it.

When everybody was finally reunited at the upper camp, Drouillard had the strange, sweet feeling in his breast that he was in a family household again. Here were the brown faces of the quiet and self-contained Bird Woman and her cheerful baby Jean Baptiste, whose eyes were both coal-black and star-bright. And here too was the only other one who was not a whiteman, the
brawny slave, York, in whose black face a hundred unspoken emotions were always passing in succession. Now York sat with his arms embracing his knees, telling his own view of the hailstorm on the plain:

“Broth’ Droor, I thought I losted ev’body! They was on ’at clift ’bove them horrenjus waterfall one minute. Then come a wind ’at blown me down, and when I got up and look for ’em, they was gone! When I see ’em come up out o’ that ravine, I got on my knees an’ pray thanks to the Lord! Yeah, got prickly pear in my knees, but I di’n mind. Heh heh!” He was chuckling now, looking at his master and the Charbonneau family, but tears ran down his cheeks.

The whole island was a thicket of willow, a vertical maze so dense a man could hardly see thirty feet ahead, the worst kind of place to hunt bears. But both captains believed that this island was where all the bears came from to bother their camp, and so here they were with half their soldiery thrashing through the thickets to kill or drive them out for good. Every man was at great risk, not just from bears that might charge through the bush at short range, but from the other soldiers’ bullets, which would be flying in every direction the moment anyone saw or thought he saw a bear. Captain Lewis was seething with frustration over the details that delayed the completion of his dream boat, and was taking it out on the only other annoyance he couldn’t control: the bears. York and Captain Clark were somewhere on Drouillard’s right, and Captain Lewis far off to his left, but he got only glimpses of them now and then: York’s sun-faded red headkerchief, sun-glint on a gun lock beyond twigs and green leaves. He could hear them breathing and their feet crackling in old twigs on the ground. He could smell the men—indeed could recognize almost everyone by odor—and there was some faint bear scent on the island. He saw strands of their fur on twigs here and there, and footprints from before the rain. But Lewis’s hope of finding an army of bears here to engage in battle seemed in vain.

They had pushed through almost all the way across the island
when Drouillard heard a grunt and a rumbling growl just ahead, saw willow slips shaking and swishing, then saw the broad brown snarling face crashing toward him. Straight for him, not for anyone to his left or right. He heard warnings and questions shouted nearby as he cocked the flintlock and aimed just below the chin. The grizzly was two loping strides from him when his ball hit it in the heart.

The bear was knocked down by the shock, crashing to the ground almost at his feet, but it was up instantly with a roar. Without an instant to reload, Drouillard sprinted away to the left, crashing through the willows as fast as he could flee, with the roaring, gurgling animal at his heels and men’s alarmed voices shouting from every direction. In a few seconds the pursuit was over. He heard the animal fall silent behind him. He was reloading his rifle when the captains, following the trail of noise and blood, emerged through the willows and looked down on its carcass.

It was a young male of about four hundred pounds, and after another hour of beating the bush it was evident that this had been the only bear on the island.

Bird Woman and her little son were nearby that evening as Drouillard flensed the bear hide. She looked as if she wanted to say something about it—perhaps to offer to help with a task that was considered woman’s work. He kept working. He was thinking some curious thoughts about this bear, or rather, feeling something. Finally he leaned back and, with greasy hands, signed to her:
You question?

She nodded and with a sweeping hand indicated everything outside the camp. Then she signed:
Question all bears war against men who wear hats?
That meant whitemen. She had noticed, then, that it had been this way since the first conflicts near the Yellow Stone. She had noticed the many bears around this camp last night.

He signed:
War yes
. Then he signed:
I killed chief bear five days before. This bear come to kill me back
.

She nodded. She had no difficulty believing it. Probably she was the only person in all this party who would believe such a
revenge story. But with all the soldiers hunting bears on that island, the one bear on the island had sought him out and tried to kill him.

And yesterday while out hunting, Joe Field had another of his narrow escapes, chased into the river by a bear that went straight for him. It was Joe who had been in the tree with Drouillard when he killed the chief bear. Joe had been lamenting that he was having more than his share of bear troubles; maybe he would come to understand why.

It was getting too personal, this bear war, and Drouillard wasn’t sure he was on the right side.

The day dawned fair. Then a dark cloud settled over the island, but it was not a storm cloud. Drouillard felt a chill, hearing a strange fluttering and squawking din. Glancing up, he saw the sky over the camp full of wheeling blackbirds, some landing in brush and trees, some staying aloft. This seemed a bad sign. He glanced at Sacagawea, herself called the Bird Woman, to see her reaction, and he could see in her face too that this was bad. Whatever it meant, he would have to pray and be watchful.

Captain Lewis had finally finished assembly of his hide-covered iron boat, with a coating of charcoal, tallow, and beeswax over the entire hull to seal and waterproof it. It had been a maddening and anxious time, and the task had kept them here a week since the completion of the portage. Now the boat had
been launched, and it floated like a swan, waiting to be loaded. Captain Lewis kept pacing on the shore, slapping the back of one hand into the palm of the other, looking at his creation from every angle, grinning and chuckling with his bottom lip between his teeth. The six dugout canoes had already been caulked and loaded, ready to proceed at last on up the Missouri to the snow-topped mountains. The load for the iron boat sat on shore.

Just then the blackbirds all flew away to the east, and a violent windstorm swept in after them. The Missouri was whipped up into high, whitecapped waves which sprayed over the canoes, wetting their baggage before it could all be unloaded. Another delay.

The wind continued until evening. Captain Lewis had stayed hunkered down in the spray-drenched camp, keeping an eye on his precious boat, and by the time the wind slacked, he was slumping, grim-faced.

The hull of his iron boat was delaminating. The caulking compound was slipping off the elk skin, leaving the seams exposed, and through each one of the thousands of needle holes where the skins had been sewn together, river water was leaking. Even without any load in, she was sinking. Captain Lewis looked so gray and defeated, no one knew what to say to him.

Maybe this was what the blackbirds had foretold.

Eventually Captain Clark said, “I’ve had the hunters looking out for timber good enough for making dugout canoes. There’s some really big cottonwoods a few miles upriver. I’ll take a crew of our best axmen up in the morning, and a hunter, and we’ll have two or three dugouts made by the time you get up there. Two should carry what that basket-boat o’ yours was supposed to.”

It was plain that Clark had not had much faith in the iron boat. Captain Lewis glared into the fire, cracking the knuckles of one small, thick hand and then the other. Finally he muttered, “If I’d only
singed
the elk hair instead of shaving it, the composition might have stuck on. At least till we got to some pitch pine country. But there’s no time to experiment anymore. I’ve piddled away a week, on top of what that portage cost us.” He shook his
head slowly. “I don’t know whether this place is enchanted, or cursed, or both. Seems like we’ve been here for years, not weeks.”

He sighed mightily, then went on: “Well, my friend, all right. I’ll take apart this favorite boat o’mine and bury her tomorrow, and say adieu. We’ve got to get up to the end of this damned Missouri River and find Shoshone horses if we’re to cross the mountains before winter. God knows, our biggest portage is still probably ahead of us!” They all sat looking at him, thinking about what he had just said. They had barely survived this one. After a while he said, “Notice how quiet the bears are? Lord, I hope I never have to meet another one!

“But, my God!” Lewis looked as if he would cry. “Hasn’t it been worth it all, just to see these waterfalls?” There was a desperation in his eyes that Drouillard could hardly bear to see. Then he saw something gather and straighten up inside Lewis, who laughed and exclaimed, “Damn, what a time to run out of whiskey!”

Drouillard raised his head to sniff and listen, because there was something important about this place that he felt he was supposed to know.

He thought that it was one of the most beautiful places he had ever seen, a long, wide, fertile basin with snow-topped mountains on every horizon, berries and currants growing thick, extensive stands of timber, and considerable game. It appeared to be the best beaver country he had seen yet.

It was a coming-together place of rivers; here, within a short walk, three rivers came together, cold, clear waters, to become the Missouri. The captains had seen a high, level limestone plateau which they with their military eyes thought of as a naturally fortified place for a fort and trading post. So it was in many ways one of those proper places where his uncle had said a man should establish himself early. Drouillard could see that.