From Sea to Shining Sea (117 page)

Then he had a curious, chilling sensation that something or someone was behind him, likewise looking down at the oncoming
Corps—for an instant he remembered the image of Chief Logan the Mingo standing behind George in that old story—and he turned, his thumb on the hammer of his rifle.

No one was there. Just the thirsty, eroded, scrubby, yellow-green and gray, rock-studded hills rolling away treeless into a hazy blue infinity.

But no!

His mouth dropped open and he shaded his eyes with his hand and stared at something just above the shimmering horizon. It shone like the white crest of a wave.

His heart beat fast, as he turned, scanning the horizons up beyond the westering rivercourse. There were more of them, more of those shining crests.

William climbed for a while farther along the summits of the river hills, entranced, limping but hardly aware of the pains that made him limp, his gaze fastened on those distant masses of white, perhaps twenty, perhaps fifty, miles ahead. And at last he stopped and turned back to go down and tell friend Lewis what he had seen.

What he had been the first to see.

O
NE MOMENT THE DARKNESS WAS SILENT, ABSOLUTELY STILL
but for the liquid music of the Missouri nearby; the next it was full of uproar: splintering wood, thumpings, shouts, earth-shaking hoofbeats, a gunshot, the chesty breathing of some great creature, still more shouts, and then the explosive barking and snarling of Scannon.

Jerking upright with his hair on end and his heart in his mouth, William felt Scannon scramble out of the tent in a frenzy. The hoofbeats, the heavy panting, rushed toward the shelter, as if a mammoth were running into the camp. A great, heavy force shook the tent. Lewis’s voice, Charbonneau’s, Sacajawea’s, her baby’s, all erupted at once, adding to the chorus of confused shouts from the troops nearby, but above it all was Scannon’s mad outburst and then a desperate bellowing, mere inches away, and another gunshot.

When the hoofbeats and barking had receded away down the river and torches were lighted, the shaky captains and nervous sentries were able to study tracks and piece together the near-catastrophe.

A huge bull buffalo apparently had swum the river from the far side, and in landing had clambered over the white pirogue, upsetting it, stumbling in it, breaking York’s rifle and a blunderbuss that had been left in it. Then, thoroughly panicked, the bull had galloped headlong up the rows of sleeping men, its sharp hooves missing their heads by inches, straight toward the officers’ shelter, while sentries fired blindly into the air. Only Scannon, charging into the face of the onrushing buffalo, had caused it to veer past the shelter, sideswiping it as it thundered away with the Newfoundland at its heels.

Lewis kept fondling the dog, laughing weakly, shaking his
head, looking as if he wanted to kiss the shiny black nose. Scannon sat panting, favoring the foreleg that was still bandaged from its beaver wound, and soaked up the praise, tail beating happily. Sacajawea, who was just beginning to understand through her imperfect hearing of the white men’s language that her friend the black dog had probably saved several lives, was very happy, and she held her baby and leaned unthinking back against the good Red Hair Chief. And it was so natural, under these circumstances, that William was hardly aware of it until he saw Charbonneau glaring balefully at her. So William moved around to kneel close by the dog and run his hand over the silky black hair of its shapely head. Lewis was saying:

“I’d never have thought of bringing a dog on this journey, but that I read of Mackenzie’s dog, that crossed Canada with ’im. Somehow that just appealed to me, I guess, and that’s why I bought this beastie. Ha, ha! Well, that’s
one
good idea I’ll have to admit I got from an Englishman!” He shook his head, chuckling. “But I ask you, Clark, have y’ ever seen so sagacious an animal in all your days? Good dog! Goooood Scannon!”

L
ATER THAT DAY, THE MEN STILL WADING TO PULL AND PUSH
the canoes, the party came to the mouth of a crystalline river that poured into the muddy Missouri from the south. Because of the purity of its waters, William proposed to call it the Judith River, in honor of his Judy Hancock of Fincastle. He made a point of praising that fair golden maiden within the hearing of Charbonneau. William had always tried to treat Sacajawea with detachment, even though his affection and respect for her increased day by day. She, on the other hand, did not have enough guile to try to conceal her admiration of the Red Hair Chief, and so Charbonneau seethed and grew sulkier. Thus William wanted the Frenchman to know he already had a woman—a woman far away, certainly, but a woman of his own kind. And then William put the whole matter out of mind.

Sacajawea had been hard at work making double soles of raw buffalo hide for the men’s moccasins, to turn the prickly pear needles, but these helped only on overland walks, and the men still had to wince along barefoot when they were on the riverbank or in the water, which was most of the time. A pair of moccasins lasted about two days on this terrain. The Corps had gone through hundreds of pairs.

The men had every reason to trust that their leaders had worked out in advance every step of their way to the Pacific, and there were a hundred proofs already behind them that both captains
were possessed of an uncanny sense of direction and terrain. They had always arrived where and when they had said they would; they never got bewildered, even when hunting and exploring parties split off; even in the treeless, monotonous plains they had always come and gone, departed and rejoined, with an unerring certainty. Shannon and other hunters had got lost for days, but never the captains. All the evidence was that Captains Lewis and Clark were infallible guides, perfectly oriented; there simply was never a reason to doubt their direction. Until Sunday, June 2, when the Corps of Discovery came upon a fork in the river where none was supposed to be: two rivers of apparently equal size, either of whicn could be the Missouri. The party paused and made camp in a cottonwood grove while the captains consulted their projected maps and wondered aloud why the Minnetarees at Fort Mandan had never spoken of this fork.

It was June now, a week since they had first seen the distant Rocky Mountains, and to go up the wrong river and butt up against the mountains far from the headwaters of the western river would cost them the rest of their traveling season; then there would not be time to cross the Rocky Mountains before the snows made them impassable. The only way to know would be to learn which fork had the Great Falls, the high waterfalls the Minnetarees had described on the Missouri.

Evening fell, cool and damp.

The captains had no answer. The Indian girl could not remember tnis fork in the river. Sacajawea had caught a cold and looked weak and dishevelled and confused. Charbonneau seemed scornful, indignant that they would even consult her about such a question.

She stood and sniffed the air, turning slowly, like a doe, expressionless, and at last pointed up the river that came from the left, from the southwest. Some or the men snickered. This was nothing to go on, they were thinking. That river was clear. The one coming in from the north was muddy and gray-brown, just as the Missouri had been for twenty-five hundred miles. They all felt that it was the Missouri. They were surprised that their captains, who always knew the way, were even hesitating.

T
HEY MOVED THE CAMP NEXT MORNING ACROSS THE CLEAR-RUNNING
river and set up on the point made by the junction of the two rivers, and in this camp Captain Lewis set the men to work dressing elk skins, to make new double-sole moccasins and
clothing, and also for a hide covering for the collapsible iron-frame boat he had brought all the way from Harper’s Ferry. He looked lovingly at the bundle of iron tubes that, according to his plan, would be fitted together to its thirty-six-foot length and covered with elk hides, thus making a vessel much lighter than a pirogue but capable of carrying five tons of load. He was very fond of this invention of his, and had high expectations for it.

Now it was time to make the decision about which fork of the river to take. Though every man in the party believed that the muddy one coming in from the north was the true Missouri, the captains were inclined to believe it was the clear one coming up from the southwest. In order to make an informed choice rather than a merely intuitive one, they sent a canoe up each stream, with three good woodsmen in each canoe, to learn the widths, depths, currents, and waters of both streams, as far as they could push up the two streams and safely return by evening. Sergeant Gass took the party up the southerly fork; Sergeant Pryor took the one up the north. They also sent several small parties afoot with instructions to climb the heights along the way and see the distant bearings of the rivers.

“Now, friend Clark, let’s us climb the height up yonder ourselves and see what we can see,” Lewis said.

“I’m with you.”

The morning was pleasant and fair. They hiked up the greening slopes out of the valley, Lewis using his espontoon as a walking staff, William shading his eyes under the tomahawkumbrella George had given him. For a time as they went up they could see the scouting canoes crawling slowly up the divergent rivers; then those were lost to sight in the willows and below the brow of the bluff. They were limping soon; some of the prickly pear thorns pierced even the parfleche outersoles of their moccasins. But they were accustomed to that, and went on to the top.

They stood now, the wind fresh on their sweaty faces, and looked over a vast plain, evenly covered with pale new grasses and wildflowers, blackened here and there by distant herds of buffalo, thousands of them, attended by tiny wolves like shepherds. There were smaller herds of elk, and scattered antelope grazing with their young beside them. To the south lay a range of high mountains, partially covered with snow, and at a great distance beyond them lay a loftier range, entirely white with snow. It was not possible to discern the directions of the rivers very far, as their channels soon simply blended into the surface of the immense plain.

“Now we’ve seen it, let’s sit and smoke on it,” Lewis said.

“Let’s find a bench, though. Prickly pears’re bad enough in the
feet.
”

They sat on a flat rock and lit a bowlful of tobacco in William’s versatile umbrella. Finally Lewis asked:

“What d’ you say, Clark?”

William blew smoke and, squinting across the plain, through the heat waves that made the distant animals and mountains tremble, replied:

“I think Janey’s right. This river”—he nodded toward the southerly branch—“looks like a mountain river to me. Clear, a stony bottom. I feel it’s come to us from those mountains.”

“Go on.”

“T’ other fork boils and rolls all muddy like the Missouri we know. So I don’t think it comes through mountains, lest it be away, way north.”

“Like from Saskashawan.”

“Aye. From there, or from thereabouts. But I think it rises this side o’ th’ mountains, not in ’em.”

“Thus it’s turbid here, eh?”

“Aye. And ye recall, the Minnetarees said the Missouri veers southwest before the mountains, and that you have to go that way to reach the falls.”

Lewis puffed and nodded. “Let me play Devil’s advocate, though,” he said. “Suppose we’re putting too much faith in what the Minnetarees told us. Didn’t you ever feel they were sometimes makin’ things up when they weren’t sure?”

William thought on this unsettling question. He had had that notion sometimes himself. But now he said: “I think their facts petered out
beyond
the Snake tribe country, true, and after that they just cheerful-like obliged us with whatever they thought we’d want to hear. But everything they told us up to this place proved out well-nigh exact, didn’t it?”

“Everything
seems
to, let’s say. But this big river from the north, that they never mentioned, that does give me pause as to their veracity. Say what?”

“Not me, Lewis. Maybe we miscomprehended something they meant, but I think I can judge when an Indian’s at least a-
tryin’
to tell the truth. Now, I would take that south river without a pause, if it was just me. But this is a bigger consequence and we have to be sure. So let’s study on what our boys find out.”

“I think like you,” Lewis said. “The south fork is our river. But we have to be dead sure. Now let’s go down and look to our footsore boys.”

*     *     *

T
HE MEN IN CAMP WERE WORKING HARD, BUT THEY WERE
doing as much as they could sitting down, trying to keep their weight off their feet. York was doing most of the standing work, hauling in firewood, cutting boughs for beds, cooking, making tea, and delivering it around the camp in steaming kettles. He limped and grimaced, but kept up such cheerful talk that his grimace could have been mistaken for a grin. He also hovered around Sacajawea a great deal; she was listless and dull-eyed, hardly even caring for her baby. Since almost everyone in the camp was suffering and had fallen off in vigor and appetite, the Indian girl’s condition caught no one’s attention particularly. But York was ever solicitous of her well-being. There was a special bond between these two; even though they knew scarcely twoscore words in common, they seemed to understand each other fully. York was teaching her some English and she was teaching him some hand signs. They were sensitive to each other and, with her baby and the invalid Scannon, they seemed to have formed a little society unto themselves. In camp, the four of them were almost always near each other. York coddled and tended the baby in much of his spare time, and could make it laugh with such frantic glee that its piping voice would carry throughout the camp. York, Sacajawea, Scannon, and little Pompey: they were the only members of the expedition who in one way or another were not white, male, adult humans. And, though each had his or her attachments to the military party itself, they were as well their own community, a community of slaves, mascots, and tagalongs, most unlikely in a military expedition—though they were so familiar to it by now that no one thought them odd anymore.