Another rat’s hole, thought Charbonneau, I got to tell the captain. He bent forward, dragging his flintlock; he had gone hardly ten feet when the wind changed and drove the full, suffocating force of the rain right into his face. A vivid flash of lightning showed a boulder half the size of a flour barrel set in the bank four or five feet above him. Slowly he climbed up to it, realizing that he was badly spent. He slid his body over onto the rock and found it was still warm from the blazing sun and he felt amazingly comfortable.
The beginning of terror came during a lull in the wind when Sacajawea heard the rumbling below them. She pulled away to look, and saw a wall of water come thundering down the hill, tearing away huge rocks and mud and sweeping everything before it. She pointed to the raging torrent coming straight toward them.
“Good God!” shouted Clark. “Let’s get out of here!” He grabbed for his gun and pouch and reached for Sacajawea. She was kneeling behind a large stone. Pomp began to cry. When the next roll of thunder died away, the captain heard Sacajawea singing, her words rising over the rush of wind and the wash of rain. She was singing about the First Times and the Big Flood. It was a death song. The tone and cadence carried her mood, a strange, discordant jumble of sound that beat against the roar of water and the wail of wind, pulsating as did the lightning with the crash and fall of the thunder. She was throwing away her dream because the trail had caved in above and below. Death was near, and there was no use fighting against it.
“Up this way—up the bluff!” yelled Clark. Sacajawea looked up and saw Charbonneau clinging like a bear to the rock; she felt Clark’s tug as he pulled her; she heard the baby crying as Clark hitched him up more tightly under his arm. She was dragged by her hand upward to the safety of that huge rock. She fought her fear and tried to force the Shoshoni fatalism into the back of her mind whence her terror came. The wind lashed her hair about her streaming face.
Charbonneau, thinking about the Minnetarees and his young Otter Woman, and the dry, warm Dakota plains where he had lived in ease and plenty, was jerked back to the present by Clark’s yelling. “Charbonneau, you fool, take the baby! Here! Help your squaw now! Pull her up! Come on, man!”
He knelt over the ledge and slowly put his trembling hand over the edge. He pulled the screaming, flailing baby up, hanging on to one arm.
Sacajawea waited for his hand. There was nothing more from above.
“Come on! Reach down again, you heathen!” Captain Clark called. Finally a weak, shaky hand extended over the rock. But Sacajawea found no more help from it than from a dead branch. She could not get to the top.
“Pull! Charbonneau, pull! Up, up!” yelled Clark. “Dammit, man, what’s the matter with you? I’ll wring your neck if you don’t extend a hand!” Then, pulling himself up with every inch of his six feet, Clark shoved Sacajawea until she was able to grasp a projecting root and climb over the rock.
For a moment she rested, trembling from exertion and fright. Then she looked over the edge to help Chief Red Hair. She put her hand down and gasped, horrified. He was scrambling for a foothold as the river of mud and stone surged down upon him. She shrieked a warning. “Quick!” Terror-stricken, she watched as he lost his foothold and missed her outstretched hand.
Unconsciously, Sacajawea keened the death cry; final and horrible, it was a natural thing. Hearing her, Charbonneau began to scream with the baby. Sacajawea stopped and stared at her man. Her fear was forced out and brushed aside by a torrent of words that came out and raced screaming toward her cowardly man. “You cry like a pregnant woman, while Chief Red Hair gives up his life for us!”
She leaned over again, expecting to see Chief Red Hair’s body being swirled away with the tremendous current. She gave a shriek. He had gained a foothold; he had a chance. The water was closing in; he must not slip. “Slow, come now,” she called softly, placing her body flat on the rock ledge, her words swept away by the gusts of wind. Carefully, step by step, Clark secured himself, the race with the torrent more and more difficult. He felt the water surge in around him, deeper and deeper. It came past his feet and legs. The water streamed down his face, blinding him. He pulled up one step and then another, feeling with his feet for a tiny foothold. He felt the water swirl about his waist, pulling at him. He looked up. It was only a few more feet to the small brown hand outstretched strong and firm toward him. Could he make it? Another step up. Still another. “Come, come to me,” she called.
Gratefully he took her hand, and with a final tug and gigantic effort he was up and safe. Over all the other noise he heard his own voice cry, “Oh, my God! Thanks! Janey, thanks! I’ll do something fine for you! I thought I was a goner!” And the wind died then, as though it had never been.
For a few moments all of them sat huddled together, dazed, trembling, soaked to the skin. Finally Clark stirred. Below, where he had stood only moments ago, there was nothing but water—almost fifteen feet of water. “Thanks, Janey!” he mumbled again.
“Let’s get out of here,” said Charbonneau. He needed no pushing—on he went, up to the top, leaving Sacajawea with the baby in her lap, and Captain Clark.
No one spoke for some time. Then Sacajawea said, “I’m hungry.” She patted her stomach and took off the pouch that hung around her waist. It contained her traveler’s rations. She counted each grain of corn and each pumpkin seed and gave exactly half of them to Chief Red Hair. They chewed excessively, as though those kernels were the last food in the world.
Sacajawea smiled at Captain Clark. “Once I hit my finger with a grinding stone. It hurt terrible. The storm was like that. Then, when my finger quit hurting, it felt awfully good and warm all at once. I feel all over like my finger felt then.”
Captain Clark smiled and tugged at her arm, at the same time boosting the baby up to his shoulder. “That was not the place to be during a thunderstorm—not down there!” He looked cautiously over the edge once more. “We have some traveling to do. Come.”
At the top of the bluff they walked through the new, clean, wonderful world, with all the dust washed away and each gravel pebble bright with its own true color—as bright as the vermilion paint, yellow clay, purple sandstone, and red-brown of the distant mountains—but Sacajawea saw none of it. Her mind was working on a puzzle.
Why had Chief Red Hair risked his life to save hers—the life of a squaw, another man’s woman? And the life of her child? The child had no usefulness yet. Her man would have let her and the child drown to save his own life. The life of a grown man was more important. A man is the hunter, the warrior, the protector; his life is valuable. Why was it that Chief Red Hair valued all life, even the lowliest—from that of the helpless papoose to the keening squaw?
Sacajawea looked up at Chief Red Hair, and his eyes met hers. For a brief moment their walking stopped. The baby gurgled and smiled. Slowly Clark put his free arm about her waist and drew her to him; and then, to Sacajawea’s amazement and delight, he kissed her lightly on the tip of her nose, letting her go quickly.
Never before had she experienced such a thing. Her heart patted against her tunic so that she was afraid he would hear it. She felt the glow of happiness. She remembered this moment a million times over in her long life.
After a while her voice came back and she was able to say with much shyness, “I have great feelings for you. You gave me back my life, my dream.”
“Oh, my dear Janey,” said Clark huskily, “you are so tiny, so young, and you’ve this boy to care for. I did what any self-respecting man would do.”
“Any man?” she asked. “Not my man.”
“Well, Charbonneau is not quite like any man,” said Captain Clark carefully. “You see, he has lived with the Minnetarees so long that he is not sure what he is. When we get to your people,” he went on, trying desperately to change the subject, “you’ll be the most valuable person in this whole outfit.”
The warm glow inside her grew in spite of her shivering and her feeling of being dog-tired. She stood by herself soaking up the sun
shine and watching Captain Clark trot with her son across the buffalo grass to meet York, who was grinning and swinging his arms in welcome.
“Lordy, what a soaking storm that there one was! Yes, sir, I’se fairly wet through. And you two look no better than a couple of drowned rats. You nursemaiding for now, Master Clark?” York grinned at the sleeping infant on his shoulder. “I sent Charbonneau high-tailing it back to camp to get a pot of tea boiling. And if he uses his head, he’ll start up a hot stew.”
They walked into camp shivering in their wet clothing. York took the baby, who was now whimpering from hunger and cold, and wrapped him in one of his old woolen shirts. Then he fed him some pot liquor from the buffalo stew simmerings.
Charbonneau had lost his flintlock. The baby had lost his cradleboard and the clothing in the bottom. Captain Clark had lost his compass, the only large one the expedition had, his umbrella, his rifle, shot pouch, powder horn, and extra moccasins, but he was alive, and he knew what was needed to restore their spirits and give them warmth. He gave each of the men a dram of rum, then passed the tin cup to Sacajawea. She gulped her portion of rum and felt the warmth spread through her body.
A bobwhite called until another answered, then through the breeze came the sound of Cruzatte’s violin, and suddenly everyone had tales to tell of the hail and rain they had experienced during the sudden storm. Many were battered and bruised from the large hailstones, but none had found themselves in such a bad spot as the ravine Captain Clark and his party had climbed out of.1
Next day, a search party found the all-important compass and fished it out of thick red mud. None of the other lost items was ever found. The ravine was filled with rocks, washed down by the flood of water, each one large enough to have crushed Clark’s whole party to death.
CHAPTER
18
Tab-ba-bone
Drouillard came to a stop. So did the Indian. In fact, the Indian turned his horse as if to wait for them, casting his eyes from Drouillard to the captain and then to Shields, who, however, on his part, was continuing to advance as before.
The captain, too, kept striding forward. He held high the trinkets for the Indian to see. He stripped his shirt sleeve to show the color of his skin. He called, at the top of his lungs the ringing words, “Tab-ba-bone! Tab-ba-bone! White man! White man!” Proceeding in this manner he was able to get, finally, to within one hundred paces of the Indian, when the latter gave whip to his horse, and disappeared behind some willows on the other side of the creek.
Reprinted by permission of the publishers. The Arthur H. Clark Company, from George Drouillard by M. O. Skarsten, 1964, p. 101.
On Monday, July 15, 1805, the canoes were launched above the Great Falls. Captain Clark followed by land along an old native trail. The contour of the country changed from level plains to hills and hummocks, and great rocks jutted from the earth. In some places cliffs rose from the water’s edge to over twelve hundred feet.
Captain Lewis was enthusiastic about the sights. “Never have I seen such a magnificent masterpiece of nature!” he exclaimed. He looked up at the canyon walls—vast columns of rock, beautiful overlapping precipices, clear gushing springs. He took a deep breath of the clear fresh air. “This will be called ‘the Gates of the Mountains.’ The entrance to the Rocky Mountains. I can almost see the sun glitter on the snow way up yonder.”
Sacajawea could not take her eyes off the mountains that lay ahead with their tops covered white as though clouds rested there during all the seasons. Unexpectedly she pointed to the southwest and cried, “My people! My people! Smoke in the hills!”
Captain Clark saw the smoke signals, clear evidence that natives had detected their approach and were spreading the news. Suspecting that they might get behind him and follow on his trail, Clark left bits of clothing, strips of paper and trinkets at intervals, with signs indicating that his party were white men and friends. York helped Clark make a lop stick, a common trail sign. A tall tree was found and its branches lopped off so it created an unusual mark in the landscape. This was used as a portage sign or sign that the main trail was here. Sacajawea showed York how to make designs in the earth with a sharp stick to indicate that they were friendly. They tied the grass in three bunches to indicate that their trail went “this way.”
The party traveling overland found the going so rough that they decided to stop by the shoreline until Captain Lewis and the canoes appeared, and for the next few days they proceeded by water, watching for signs of the Shoshonis, killing game for food, and tending to blistered feet. But none of the men had eyes as sharp as Sacajawea’s.
Coming upstream in Captain Lewis’s canoe, with Pomp sitting in her lap and waving his chubby arms, Sacajawea suddenly pulled at York’s shirt. “Look!” she said. Long before he spotted them, she had pointed to several deserted brush wickiups and traces of old fires. She read him their story. “They were hungry and moved to find more game. They followed deer.” She pointed to the small cloven hoof tracks and told him a deer could easily be followed in the tall grass because it has a scent gland between its hooves and a larger gland on each hind leg that exudes a strong odor as the animal wanders through the brush.
She laughed like a carefree child, pointing to the bank where the rock was red, a source of vermilion for the People. Suddenly she was aware that she must not make a spectacle of herself before these men, especially Captain Lewis, who remained dignified and aloof much of the time. She did not want him to see her letting go and acting like a small child. Surely he would frown; after all, she was grown and had a child of her own. And so, she thought, what will the People say about this beautiful fat baby? Will they nod their approval? Will the old women click their teeth and smile, stretching out their arms to hold him?
Lewis put his hand on his mouth, indicating no more talk for a time. The canoes were facing a rapid current and everyone had to be at full attention. The oars were useless. The men poled and the poles would not grip the smooth, flat stones of the river bottom. Captain Lewis, however, rose to the situation and put fishing gigs on the ends of the poles. The gigs gripped the bottom or wedged between rocks much better.
“Hey, hey! Capitaine, sir, you push a tolerable good pole there!” called LePage to Captain Lewis, who was poling his canoe himself. Captain Lewis nodded, knowing that if he let go even with one hand to wave at the canoe opposite him, his pole might slip.
During the long afternoon Sacajawea watched the overhanging, gray granite walls pass by the canoes. She nursed her baby and hummed softly, but her eyes were on the passing shoreline. The walls she remembered as if it were yesterday when she was captured by the Minnetarees. She could almost feel the terror she had felt then; her hands tightened on her child. A constriction in her chest made it hard to breathe. She looked at the tops of the hills, anticipating an enemy riding there bedecked in hunting paints and feathers. Her outer countenance showed nothing. She hated this spot. Right here it was that she and Willow Bud had been tied to the horses.
Toward sundown her tension eased, and she told the men the story of her capture. “Tell that again,” urged Captain Lewis. “I’d like to keep that spot in our permanent records. I’ll write your story in my journal when we are in tonight’s camp.”
“My story? In your marking-book?” she asked, unbelieving. “A woman cannot be important enough to go down in those tiny markings. In that book the men mark about trees, flowers, birds, rocks, wind, and rain, but no marks about the babblings of a woman.”
“Yes, of course,” said Captain Lewis, “everyone on this trail is important.”
This was nearly incomprehensible to her, but she shrugged and told her story again.
Watching her, Captain Lewis thought she showed absolutely no emotion or sorrow in recollecting the event of her capture. He also thought she showed no joy in being restored to her native country. But Lewis had not listened closely to her words, nor had he watched her hands. Lewis, philosophic, introspective, and moody, did not share the fondness and in
terest in Sacajawea and her baby that Clark showed. Yet he was disturbed by this girl. Once when Clark had remarked, “She’s a good soldier,” Lewis had said, “Yes, a pity she’s red-skinned.”
The men camped at the Three Forks of the Missouri to refresh themselves for a few days. The men who had gone overland were suffering from badly cut feet, the result of the yellow prickly pear, which was beautiful and in full bloom, but a great annoyance, and the men who had poled the canoes were exhausted from the strenuous work. Lewis and Clark were excited by the prospects of a trading post at the spot.
“See,” said Lewis, “the rushes in the bottom, high as a man’s chest and thick as wheat. This would be a perfect winter pasture for cows and horses. And we could have the post built of stone or brick, much cheaper than wood, and all the materials are right here on the spot. The sandbars are near with pure white sand, and the earth on that bank—over there—looks as if it would make good bricks.”
Clark bent to pull a blade of grass to pick at his teeth and chew on. When he stretched, the heel of his hand struck the ground. It sank deep into the soil. He stood up to look out at the valleys of perennial green. He looked back at the print his hand had made. It was filling with water.
“This loam’s sponge,” he said. He felt excited. He felt good this morning. He looked at the blue jays, cedar waxwings, and meadowlarks. He thought of the beaver, otter, and muskrat cavorting in the river—this was a trapper’s paradise. There were sunflowers, wild rye, purple clover, sweet clover, buffalo peas, and Indian paintbrush. He looked about. All the trails seemed to converge at this point.
“This is it,” said Lewis. “This is where the squaw said the Blackfeet come on raids against the Shoshonis.”
“I’ll go find her,” Clark said.
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