Streams to the River, River to the Sea

by Scott O'Dell

  He decided to take some men and go up the south fork and look for the Great Falls. If he found them, it meant that the south fork was the river that led to the Shining Mountains.

  He was gone for two weeks nearly. The men's clothes were falling apart, so they spent the evenings while he was gone making jackets and trousers for themselves. I worked hard to help them—too hard, I guess, for I fell sick. I could not raise my head. I managed to nurse my son and that was all I could do. Poor baby with a sick mother. What a wonder that he ever lived!

  Captain Clark made a cut on my arm with the knife that he kept in his pocket and bled me three times and fed me some strong medicine. By the time Captain Lewis got back, I felt better, though I could do nothing but sit in the sun.

  Captain Clark saw that I had the best food, like marrow bones, boiled buffalo hump, and suet dumplings. When Captain Lewis came back and told him all that he saw when he reached the Great Falls, Captain Clark sat down by the fire and repeated the story to me.

  "Captain Lewis was going along on a level plain when suddenly he heard the sound of falling water. He moved farther toward the sound and saw spray rising from the plain like a pillar of smoke. At once he knew that he was approaching the Great Falls of the Missouri.

  "Then Captain Lewis climbed to a high rock near the center of the falls. Below him was a cliff and over it the water was falling in a great fury. The flowing water took on a thousand shapes. It flew up in streamers many times the height of his head. Beneath them the water rolled and swelled in huge billows that struck against the rocks and shook the earth."

  I went to sleep listening to his story about the Great Falls. In the morning I rose with the sun and felt strong enough to build a fire and cook breakfast for Charbonneau and myself.

  Charbonneau said, "Captain Clark, he worry. Afraid you die. Afraid he get no horses from Shoshone if you dead. So Charbonneau, he ask for money, I think?"

  He did ask Captain Clark for more money. He said that without me they would never find the horses they needed to get through the mountains before the snows came. Captain Clark refused him. For days while we were making ready to leave, Charbonneau went around in silence and would not lend a hand at anything.

  Captain Lewis had brought word that there were five big falls on the river he had traveled, so it was necessary now to travel with carts and on foot. Six men were chosen to make carts with wheels, bodies, and fastenings out of a cottonwood tree.

  Captain Lewis had a special canoe. The frame was made of iron covered with deerhide. It was twelve strides long. He said it would be easier to carry now that we had to leave the river and travel by land. He had saved it for just this time. But when he put it in the water the canoe sank, and he lost his best compass and other valuable things. Two new dugouts had to be made to take its place.

  Captain Clark went out to look at the way we had to travel to get around the falls. He came back with word that it was over level land but eighteen miles long and covered thickly with prickly pears. He marked the way we were to travel with stakes and little flags.

  The men hid the big pirogue on White Bear Island, which was near our camp. (They hid it there because the island was infested with bears. Thieving Blackfeet would be afraid to go to such a wild place.) The dugouts were carried up the bluff and put on the two carts, and we started off on the portage that was to last for more than eighteen very bad miles.

  Those miles were bad because of the many things that happened to us. On the first day it hailed. The next day it snowed. Then the sun came out, scorching hot. Overnight, a violent wind blew and black clouds rose in the west.

  Captain Clark, Charbonneau, Ben York, and I—with Meeko in my arms, not in his cradleboard, because something had frightened him and he was crying—were in a deep gully not far from the river.

  Charbonneau said, "The sky, she ugly up there. Better we get under trees."

  "Better yet," Captain Clark said, "we'll look for a cave."

  But there were no trees or caves. We were in a gully strewn with cactus.

  Captain Clark led us along the riverbank to the head of the ravine. Here he found a rocky shelf that would give us some shelter from the rain and from the wind that had blown violently on the first day of the portage. If the wind blew again, we were now so near the bank that without this shelter we might easily be swept into the river.

  Charbonneau and Captain Clark put down their guns. Captain Clark took off his jacket and laid it over his compass and a parcel of berries he had found on the way. Ben York climbed out of the ravine and went off to hunt buffalo.

  Lightning flashed. Thunder echoed. The ravine was filled with a yellow light and thunderous sounds.

  The rain fell gently at first, mixed with large hailstones. Suddenly it fell in a glittering mass that hid the sky.

  Through the rain and hail I saw a yellow wall gathering at the head of the ravine. It was moving toward us. Before I could find the cradleboard, before I could shout a warning, Captain Clark had me by the arm. He was pushing me and the baby up a steep cliff.

  Charbonneau had clambered ahead already. He reached down and caught the sleeve of my jacket, hut he was so terrified that he could not hold on.

  "Save yourself!" I shouted to him. "We are safe."

  But we were not safe. With one hand I desperately clung to the baby. With the other I grasped a bush that grew in a crack between two rocks.

  The rock I stood upon was slippery and narrow but it slanted away from the cliff. I could see nothing above me. When I looked up, hailstones stung my face.

  I glanced down at Captain Clark, who was clinging to a rock below me. His hat, which had a cord that came under his chin and held it on his head, was gone. His hair was in his eyes. He brushed it away and tried to smile.

  Below us the yellow flood roared through the gully. It pushed rocks and brush before it and surged over the precipice. It was deep, higher than my head. Meeko's cradle-board, Captain Clark's compass, Charbonneau's gun, all had disappeared.

  "Stay where you are," Captain Clark shouted. "We'll wait out the storm. We can't go back. We'd drown in the mud. We'll have to climb out. There's a level place above us. I saw it yesterday when I was scouting."

  The hail turned to snow. I crouched on the ledge, the baby in my lap. I closed my eyes and prayed to the Great Spirit. An eagle flew out of the sky, through the snow.

  It was an omen. The snow ceased and the sun came out.

  "Now we climb," Captain Clark said, "as fast as we can."

  I took off my mantle, made a sling from it for the baby, and put him on my back. We went slowly, one slippery rock, one crevice, at a time. The sun grew hot and Meeko began to cry. I gave his foot a pinch to make him quiet down.

  York was waiting for us. He had killed a prairie chicken with his tomahawk and put it to roast over a fire of buffalo chips, there being no wood in sight. Charbonneau dried off Meeko in front of the fire and gave him a chicken wing to suck on.

  The sun was hot again as we started forth to circle the Great Falls. Soon the ground was steaming. By noon gnats fell upon us in clouds, digging at our eyes. To breathe we had to wrap nets around our heads.

  The sun lured the rattlesnakes out of their winter lairs. They were squirming everywhere, as long as my arm. Scannon had been riding in a cart, but he was fascinated with Meeko. He jumped out and followed us until one of the rattlers struck him on the mouth.

  His face swelled up to twice its size. His eyes disappeared. I helped him as much as I could. I made soup for him when we camped that night, though he could not swallow it. And Captain Clark gave him some of the same medicine he had given me.

  In five days, Scannon was better. He began to eat. We had plenty of buffalo, so I fed him all he wanted, which was a lot. He could eat more than a hungry man. Captain Clark said that I had saved Scannon's life. This was not true, but afterward the dog did pay more attention to me than to anyone else, even his master.

  I was so busy with Scannon I had not seen the Great F
alls that Captain Clark had told me about. But I heard the sounds they made and felt the cold spray on my face. One dawn I stole away to the bluff and looked down.

  Mist hid the river and the roar was louder than mountain thunder. When the sun rose, sparkling waters blinded me. I turned around to show Meeko, but he was too scared to look. When I got back to camp, Charbonneau hit me with a stick for not having his breakfast ready.

  Yet I remembered the roar and the mist and the sparkling waters. I dreamed about them that night and thought about them the next day.

  Wheels on two of our carts collapsed, being made of soft cottonwood, and we had to stop while the men made new ones. Carrion birds circled high above us and we were followed by flocks of chattering magpies. The wind was strong and made whistling sounds, sounds like curlews make. We were all very tired.

  Chapter Nineteen

  We reached the place above the falls that Captain Clark had marked with stakes and little flags. Here the canoes were put in the water, much to our delight, for the portage had been hard on everyone.

  Clothes and food and all the provisions were loaded into the canoes. The men got out their ropes and poles and we went on toward the Shining Mountains.

  The country had changed. The plains lay behind us. Great glittering rocks jutted out of the water. Dark cliffs towered above us, straight up from the riverbanks. The sky was a deep blue and far away.

  On the second morning before we left camp, Captain Clark wrote down in his book and read to me what he had written.

  "'The fifteenth day of July, eighteen hundred and five,'" he said. "'I have a strong feeling that on this day we will be in or near the land of the Shoshone. Captain Lewis has made sightings for the past week and he agrees.'"

  He closed his book. "Do you see anything around you that looks at all familiar?" he asked me.

  "Only the mountains with snow on them," I said. "Our tribe moved around from place to place, but always near these snowy mountains."

  "This is a good day for you to look for signs. It makes a big difference in what we do and which way we go. Do you want one of the men to take care of the baby?"

  "He is no trouble. I will take him. We will watch for signs, both of us."

  I saw nothing that day. But toward nightfall the next day, we came out of the deep canyon we had been struggling through, the men wading to their hips in the fast water, pulling the canoes. And I saw bits of thin smoke drift up from a grove of pine trees.

  Captain Clark, Ben York, and I were walking on the shore, following the canoes. I told Captain Clark about the smoke.

  "The fire was lit this morning. It is nearly out," I said. "If the tribe was still there the fire would not be dying. It is suppertime and they would have a big fire to cook by. They have seen us and think that we are enemies. The smoke may be a signal to warn their friends."

  "Likely," Captain Clark said.

  He was so sure they were somewhere near us that he left trinkets and pieces of clothing along the trail. I drew figures on the ground to show that we were friendly and tied bunches of grass to the trees to mark our direction.

  For days the trail was the roughest we had ever traveled.

  My feet got blistered and my eyes were nearly blinded from the gnats, but I was too excited to notice these things. At last I was in the land of the Shoshone, the beautiful land! My mother was dead, many of my friends were dead, all might be dead, even my father and brother Cameahwait. Yet I was happy, thinking of the long-ago times when we were all together.

  I walked onshore with Captain Clark and Ben York, watching for signs of my people. I saw the print of a man's moccasin, a ring of cold ashes, wisps of smoke, a pointed quill that someone had lost. I walked so fast that York said I was killing him and begged me to walk slower. I was too excited to heed him.

  We came to a deep ravine and had to leave the shore and travel on the river with the rest of the party. Here I saw no signs of my people.

  Captain Clark gazed up at the dark yellow walls that rose on both sides of the river, at the blue sky high above us, where hawks and eagles soared.

  "The Shoshone chose wild country to live in," he said. "The wildest and most beautiful I have ever seen."

  "We did not choose the country," I said. "It was chosen for us. We were driven here by the Flatheads, by the Nez Percé and by the Gros Ventres and by others. We took shelter here from our enemies."

  "Your enemies made you a fine gift," Captain Clark said. "It's a wondrous land."

  The dark walls fell behind. We came out into country where the river ran shallow. Beaver dams were everywhere. In places they had to be cut away.

  The round, blue stones that covered the river bottom tortured the men who towed the boats. Those who poled had to fasten hooks at the ends of their poles to keep them from slipping. It was a mighty task for the men to move the heavy canoes at all. To save weight, Captain Clark, Ben York, and I went ashore again and walked.

  We circled green hills and a yellow bluff. We cams out suddenly upon the river at a place where it divided and flowed left and right around a wooded island. It was the place where our tribe had camped, where I had picked berries on a sunny day, where the raiders had captured Running Deer and me, where my mother died.

  I held the baby tight in my arms. I walked fast and did not stop until the island lay far behind.

  I found Captain Clark and Captain Lewis with the csnoes at a narrow bend in the river, held there by a beaver dam. I told them that I had just passed the island where I was stolen by the Minnetarees.

  'You're certain?" Captain Clark said.

  "Yes."

  Later that day I heard the two men talking. Captain Lewis said, "Our Indian girl is certain she's in Shoshone country and has seen the place where she was captured. Yet she shows no emotion either of sorrow or of joy about it. If she has enough to eat and a few trinkets to wear she would be perfectly content anywhere, I do believe."

  Little, oh so little, did he know about how I felt.

  A week passed and we were in a wide meadow among rolling hills where the river had many loops and turns. I was in the canoe with Captain Clark and Ben York. The baby was in my lap. I had nursed him to sleep and was half asleep myself when a voice spoke to me.

  The voice did not belong to the men. It might have been the wind speaking. Or the river speaking. Or my grandfather speaking. Whoever it was, I opened my eyes wide.

  We were traveling through a heavy mist, against a fast current. There were white beaches along the shore and some green places where elk were grazing.

  The sun rose and burned off the mist. I saw a broad valley where hills tumbled away to the mountain peaks covered with snow.

  I wanted to stand up to see better, but I had learned that you do not stand up in a canoe when it is moving in deep water or any kind of water. Instead, I got down on my knees.

  We came to a bend. For a while the sun was in my eyes. Then the river straightened out, and not far away a great yellow bluff reared up in front of us. It was shaped like the head of a beaver. Jaws, nose, everything looked like a beaver.

  "There," I said and pointed. "Look!"

  Captain Clark was behind me in the canoe. "What?"

  "Beaverhead."

  "Beaverhead. What about it?"

  "It is near the place where the Shoshone cross the mountains."

  "To where the rivers flow the other way?"

  "Yes. We came here to hunt buffalo in the summer."

  "You're certain?" Captain Clark asked me.

  "Yes."

  Beaverhead was good news. The men with the poles and those with the long ropes broke into a song. Sergeant Ordway played his fiddle. It was the first song in many days.

  "We'll take our time," Captain Clark said. "The Shoshone are out there all right, but they're scared. We'll give them a chance to see that we're friends."

  He got out a red and blue and white flag and carried it. I painted my cheeks and the part in my hair with vermilion, the sign of peace. I even pai
nted the baby's cheeks.

  We saw a Shoshone signal fire beyond us on a peak and thought we saw a man on horseback moving through the trees. Captain Lewis decided to take George Drewyer and three hunters and go out to look for them.

  I asked him if I could go along.

  "It's dangerous," the captain said. "And you have a baby in your arms that needs nursing all the time."

  "I have been through dangers before. Many times on this journey, Captain Lewis."

  "This journey is far too dangerous."

  "But the people you are going out to find are my people. They know me. They will welcome me. I can talk to them."

  Captain Lewis fell silent. He had made up his mind that I would only be a nuisance. I said no more except to tell him how my people would be dressed and other things about them. I gave him one of my Shoshone charms, not the green stone, to show them. I said that if they thought he was a friend they would throw a blanket over his shoulders. They would rub their faces against his face. He would not like this because they would be covered with elk grease. But he must act happy and pleased.

  He left us and rode up the river. We watched for him every day. We built big fires at night so he would know where we were if he came back. Many of our men doubted that he ever would. As for me, I was certain that he would find my people and they would all come back and meet us before we had gone far.

  In the morning, two days later, when the currents ran slow and shallow, before any of the men were awake, I got out of my blankets and went down to the river and bathed Meeko. The water was cold. He puckered his face but did not cry, because he had learned not to.

  I laid him on his blanket—I had not found time to make another cradleboard—and gave him a hawk's feather to play with. With my feet deep in the sandy bottom, bracing against the swift current, breathless at the shock of icy water, I bathed myself and wrung out my hair. My tunic and moccasins were worn but clean.

  The sun rose above the mountain, the Shoshone sun. As I had often before, long before the Minnetarees came, I knelt in the sand and prayed to the Great Spirit. I asked that my people, whoever was left, would be glad to see me after all these lost days. I was beside myself with joy.