Sacajawea

  “You, big braves, sing loud on the other side of the post. It will make you feel good, and it will make me feel good not to know what the words are you sing,” scolded Sacajawea.

  “See, I said they are becoming like white women!” Charbonneau eyed her, but obeyed.

  The trapper pointed a long, bony finger, curved almost to a hook with rheumatism, at Charbonneau. “You remind me of a Canuck I once knowed. He wore a Nor’west capote, same as you, and a one-shot gun rifle. He made that shoot plumb center when he got buffler. He got his fixings from old Chouteau, but what he wanted out there in them mountains, I never just rightly knowed. He made some pictures of the Injuns and their horses. That were a hair of the black bear in him. Leclerc knowed him in the Blackfoot. The boys still tell how he took the bark off the Cheyennes when he cleared out of the village with old Elkhorn’s squaw. His gun was handsome—that’s a fact.”

  “Might be that he was me.” Charbonneau’s chest swelled. “I been those places and hightailed it out of

  Elkhorn’s village with his little femme one night,” he bragged.

  The old trapper looked through squinted eyes at Charbonneau and grinned. “Why, you couldn’t draw the hinder part of this chile’s foot. You ain’t got nothing to crow about here. You aiming to pick up supplies from Jake?”

  “Oui.”

  “Better git moving. Them there Omahas are coming in for tobaccy and firewater. Jake will close this here post if they git too pestering. Black Harris came through a week ago and couldn’t git nothing for two days. This chile’s not leaving until Ashley’s party come through. But you with women and chilluns, looks like you ought to move on.”

  “Obliged to you for the warning. I’ll stop back before the snow to press the plews,” said Charbonneau, tapping the spit from his French harp on the back of his left hand.

  “I could just go with you.”

  “Non, thanks, I’m pushing on in the morning.” Charbonneau wanted to go alone and work in secrecy—plews were too valuable to take on a doubtful partner.

  Charbonneau finished his purchases, and they pushed out the next morning. They passed circles of buffalo skulls that Indians had made to draw herds of buffalo to the area. They camped beside the Platte again, and Charbonneau set his traps in the small streams heading into the large river. The boys learned to build rafts that floated in the streams. They fished and waded in cold water, wearing only breechclouts. They learned to imitate the call of the wolf, coyote, whippoorwill, and mourning dove. Sacajawea told them meanings for each howl and bird call.

  They worked the meadow streams where the water ran slowly enough to be dammed by beaver. Charbonneau set his traps late in the afternoon, between sunset and dark. They worked upstream, because signs of other trappers or Indians might come downstream, and because Charbonneau believed the country grew safer as they moved higher. His was a trapper’s mind. Even though slow and bungling in many ways, when he hunted beaver he read the country, recorded his route, watched for hostiles, and planned for all eventualities. He was not always wise in his plans, but he was a mountain man, with ruggedness and a knowledge of living with the country.

  Little Tess and Pomp explored the beavers’ dams and tried to imitate them upstream, only to find that the dams they built were washed aside by the stream overnight. The beaver built his house of small branches, with a five-inch plastering of mud for roof and outer walls, on the edges of the pool his dam made. It was almost six feet high and twice as broad. In the middle of the earth floor was a pool, sometimes two or more. They were the exits of the tunnels that had been dug down through the earth to the stream bed above the dam. Weighted down with mud and water-logged snags was the winter hoard of saplings and branches whose bark was the beavers’ food.

  One day Sacajawea showed both boys how the Agaidükas hunted beaver by blocking tunnels. She chopped through the roof of the house and dug out three good beaver. The boys were delighted with her prowess.

  Otter Woman, not to be outdone, pulled out a two-arm span of heavy linen thread, a needle, and a snippet of yellow buckskin from a small bag hung on her belt. She knotted one end of the line, threaded the needle, then pierced the tiny piece of buckskin and drew it down against the knot. That was all she needed to catch trout, she explained, turning her head and trying to suppress a cough. “It might be better with a grasshopper added.” So, with the needle still threaded, she walked away from the creek, watching in the grass. It was late for grasshoppers, but she caught two. One went into the bag, while the other was threaded and drawn down against the buckskin.

  Back at the creek, she took a turn or two of the line around her index finger and let the bait drift down a sunny, shallow riffle. Within seconds, a nine-inch trout had fought his way up over the gravel, the water bulging and breaking from his glistening green back. When he’d had time to swallow the grasshopper, she swung him fast and low in a wide horizontal arc to the bank. The next one was caught as swiftly and as easily. She handed the line to Little Tess.

  Sacajawea moved with Pomp upstream to a pool behind several old logs and brush, and she lay on her belly in the grass within reach of the brush that grew from the water. A trout shot away as she dangled both hands, her fingertips moving gently, almost touching, deep in the shaded pool. Her hands grew numb, and she scrambled up, showing her son how to dangle his fingers in the water to attract trout. A good-sized one came up, and Pomp was so excited that his fingers scarcely moved as the fish rubbed his back against them. Pomp warmed his hands a little and tried again, but after a while had to warm them again. Otter Woman shouted that she and Little Tess had ten trout on the bank. That made all the Charbonneau family needed for the evening meal.

  The next day, Charbonneau took them to the spot where he had set a trap at the natural runway of the beaver, just inside the water where a path came down from the bank. The other traps he baited and set in places for attracting the beaver and for drowning him when he was caught. The bait was the musky secretion taken from the beaver’s prepuce. Charbonneau used it straight. “Some doctor this with bear’s grease or powdered stink bugs,” he explained. He called the bait “medicine” or “castoreum,” and carried it in a plugged horn bottle at his belt. Otter Woman did not seem to mind its perfume, but Sacajawea was not attracted to it and tried to stand upwind from Charbonneau whenever he baited the traps.

  Charbonneau selected the proper places for his traps meticulously, setting them in water of the proper depth and driving a stout, dry trap pole through the ring at the end of the five-foot steel chain into the bed of the stream. He patiently told the boys this latter was to keep the beaver from dragging the heavy five-pound trap out of the ground and into the air. For if he did that, he would escape by gnawing off the paw by which he was caught. When every other preparation had been made, Charbonneau smeared a little medicine on a twig or willow, which he arched just above the surface, directly over a trap’s trigger. The scent attracted the beaver—reminding Otter Woman of a pet dog’s behavior when there was a bitch in heat around the Minnetareevillage—and when he approached the bait stick, he was caught by the foot.

  Charbonneau had waded into the stream at a sufficient distance from his selected place, carrying his set trap, and he waded several yards downstream before getting out. He splashed water over his own trail and made sure the man-scent was eliminated.

  Next morning before sunrise, Charbonneau went out to raise the traps. One beaver had struggled and unmoored a trap, but it was too late. The float stick showed where the carcass was. Little Tess waded out to bring it in. Charbonneau’s line was four traps. The women skinned the beaver on the spot. He had been killed by drowning. A full-grown beaver weighed thirty to sixty pounds and the pelt a pound and a half or two pounds when finally prepared.

  The women packed the pelts and medicine glands back to camp. Camp was never located in the same place for two nights straight. The boys carried the tails, for they were a delicacy when charred in the fire to remove the horny skin, and then boile
d.

  The rest of the day was spent playing games with the boys, blowing on the French harp, or dozing. Sacajawea and Otter Woman were busy, with no time for dozing. They scraped the flesh side of the pelts free of tissue and sinew and stretched the hides on frames of willow, rather like large embroidery hoops, and then the pelts were given the cool fall sun for a day or two. When they were dry, they were folded with the fur inside and marked with Charbonneau’s symbol, C.

  Little Tess was as full of blunders as his father. Pomp accompanied him on his afternoon rambles and saved him from passing into the next world several times. Pomp would show him the lower ford, which he could never seem to find for himself, generally mistaking quicksand for it. He recommended that his brother not shoot his arrow at a deer in the moment when Charbonneau was passing behind the animal on the farther side of the brush. Pomp did not lose his patience, but seemed to take it as his lot to have an older brother who had to have his horse brought back to him, which ran away because Little Tess had forgotten to throw the reins over his head and let them trail.

  “He’ll always stand if you do that,” Pomp reminded him. “See how that horse stays quiet over there?”

  Little Tess would not answer. He watched his small brother’s tiger-limberness, and his force that lurked beneath the surface, and his dislike for him grew. Little Tess found the company of his half brother more and more disagreeable.

  One afternoon, the boys went duck-hunting. They found several in a beaver dam, and Little Tess had sent his arrows through two as they sat close together, but they floated against the dam, out into the stream, some three and a half feet deep, where the current was about to carry them downstream.

  Little Tess’s anxiety over the ducks caused him to pitch into the water; he crawled out slippery but triumphant. Pomp’s serious eyes rested upon his brother, a spectacle of mud-caked leather shirt and leggings, and he said nothing, except “Won’t be hardly enough for this night’s meal.” Pomp tied the birds to the saddle.

  “I’ll get more,” said Little Tess, his face strangely pinched. His eyes were inky slits.

  “I reckon you won’t be so lucky and stay undrowned next time,” said Pomp, handing him his bow, which he was about to leave deserted on the ground behind him. They rode to camp together in their usual silence. The inky slits fastened on Pomp.

  Charbonneau looked at his mud-covered son. “Looks like the cap on your head was the one mark showed you were not a snapping-turtle.” Little Tess’s eyes, still narrow slashes, turned with his body, and he did not come into camp for supper.

  “It is not right to tease the boy so much,” said Otter Woman.

  “Anyone could fall into the creek. It is just good that Pomp was there to help him out,” said Sacajawea.

  Charbonneau was not exempt from the mountain man’s occupational disease, rheumatism. His joints creaked, and before dawn he was up limbering his legs and arms at the fire. Every year when winter was near, he believed the water got colder.

  The days shortened, and the blue of the canyon shadows deepened. They discovered a dust of snow in the meadow one morning. Another morning, ice had formedalong the edges of a stream when they checked the trap lines.

  “Time to think of wintering beside the roaring fire,” said Charbonneau, sending the women back to camp with the pelts and letting the boys stay to collect the traps in preparation for heading back to Saint Louis.

  Coming over a rise where the knoll was covered with fallen sycamore logs and low-bush sage, they saw a cow elk standing alongside a log with her back to them.

  “If we brought her into camp, our man would have no trouble finding something for supper,” said Otter Woman.

  The cow was as big as a young steer and quite awkward-looking. Her hams were patched with a thin yellow color. Sacajawea thought, if she runs, I will laugh because those patches will jerk back and forth so stiff and idiotic-looking. Maybe she was put here for some joke, because there is nothing so funny about an elk’s ability to cover ground. The cow took one squint over her shoulder at the two women and, without any backing for a start or other preparation of any kind, jumped over the log sideways, came down facing them, and hightailed it off into the brush with her hindquarters working like pale yellow streamers in a fast wind. Sacajawea and Otter Woman laughed until Otter Woman began coughing and had to sit down before she could stop.

  “A person has to be badly crippled to starve in this place,” said Sacajawea, still laughing.

  “Or own a couple of foolish women,” grumbled Charbonneau, who had come along beside them with his rifle loaded.

  The women packed the beaver skins and the tepee and strapped them on the back of the packhorse. It was their job to keep the pelts dry in case of rain, to dry them if they got wet, and to safeguard them on the trail. They would stop at the post again and press the packs into compact bales of about a hundred pounds apiece with a machine. Some small posts rigged up contraptions of logs and stones to compress the packs.

  While Charbonneau went back to help the boys find the traps, Sacajawea picked up the French harp andplayed; Otter Woman laughed and danced until again she began coughing.

  Sacajawea played and danced. Otter Woman doubled over, trying to catch her breath, not knowing whether to laugh or cough. Just at that moment Charbonneau came into camp, sooner than the women had expected him. He threw down the two clanking traps he carried.

  “Squaw, give me that!” He wiped the mouth organ off on his trousers and swung Sacajawea around by one of her braids. “No femme of mine is touching my harp. Stay out of my gear!” He pushed her against a tree and swung his big moccasined foot at her. He missed and swore in French.

  “But—I have done nothing, really. Nothing to hurt you.” Sacajawea could see that his blood was up.

  “Lie down,” he ordered. “Or I will shoot you.” He pulled his rifle from where it stood against the tree and drew it to his shoulder. Sacajawea obeyed and crawled to the ground. Charbonneau dropped the rifle and grabbed some rawhide thongs used for tying the packs. He tied her hands. He then tied a long thong to the saddle on his horse. He pulled up the reins so that the horse might walk or run, whichever he fancied. All the while, Otter Woman stared as Charbonneau swore he would shoot if Sacajawea moved. He groped for his rifle, shouldered it, and watched the horse begin to graze. Sacajawea was dragged behind in the fashion of a travois. Charbonneau seemed to enjoy that as fun. Sacajawea stood it as long as she could; but soon it became unbearable, and she screamed for Otter Woman to untie her. Otter Woman stood as if frozen, looking from Sacajawea to Charbonneau, unable to say anything.

  Sacajawea was immediately ashamed of her cry. She knew that it would only goad her man to leave her tied longer behind the horse.

  Otter Woman was stiff with fright. If she helped Sacajawea, Charbonneau might make her lie down and be tied to the horse, too, or he might whip her with leather thongs for interfering. He was the master. He did what he wanted, and the women obeyed. She had learned to submit, to be a slave. It was better to watch in fear and horror than to be tortured. It was better tomuffle a cry, than to be beaten by the hands of this man.

  Ancient memories seeped into Sacajawea’s brain and shielded her flesh from pain. In her mind she saw a young brave with a quiet face. His hands were tied to a high stake where he was swung around and around, his feet not able to touch the ground. He spoke of good hunting while heavy weights were tied to his feet, his face always calm.

  Sacajawea did not permit herself to ask when her man would free her. No tears came to her eyes, no other sound from her lips. Then she heard another command.

  “Umbea, Mother, get up.”

  She pulled up her hands slowly and felt they were free. She pulled herself up; she did not cry or limp as she walked. Needles were in her flesh, which screamed to her silently. Her brain was numbed, but it woke and she could hear the words of Chief Red Hair speaking to Charbonneau, “If you mistreat Janey, I’ll see she leaves you.” She smiled inside herself; she ha
d a friend.

  “Come here, Mother.” Pomp and Otter Woman rubbed her with bear’s oil. Her raw flesh burned. She tasted blood in her mouth, where she had bitten the tongue that made an outcry—a hateful tongue that would try to dishonor her.

  “Mother, it is good Little Tess and I came into camp right away.”

  Now she stood still, savoring a feeling of bravery, feeling the pain absorbed into a deep, dark sense of well-being. The small boys had not seen her flinch nor heard her cry out. Pomp had cut her hand bonds. Little Tess shrugged and sauntered off.

  Pomp’s short legs leaped after him in one noiseless bound, like a mountain cat’s. He spoke quickly in Shoshoni. His hard k sounds drummed like hail on a tin roof. “I say my mother must never be treated like that again. You are a coward if you walk away from her.”

  “Ai” replied Little Tess thoughtfully, speaking in English now. Then with one strong brown hand he reached out swiftly and gave Pomp’s yellow shell necklace a fast, strong jerk and a twist. The gesture was at once an insult and a threat. “I say—” Suddenly Little

  Tess stopped. He opened his mouth, and there issued from it a sound so unearthly as to freeze the blood of anyone within hearing. It was a sound between the crazy laugh of a loon and the howl of a wolf. It was the death howl of the Shoshonis, taught him by Sacajawea, who had said that when a brave howled in that manner it meant destruction to anyone in his path.

  Pomp’s face turned a dough gray, and he stepped away from his brother, who ran like a streak of brown buckskin behind the nearest clump of trees and vanished.

  “Parbleu! That’ll learn you not to be blowing in my harp when I’m not around.” Charbonneau spat at the ground, his face dark.

  They had an evening meal of boiled beaver tail and tea. Darkness circled the trees and grew up over them. The distant hills slipped away. The fire of green Cottonwood burned slow. Charbonneau tossed under his blanket. Little Tess reappeared with light steps and lay at the edge of the campfire, his eyes dull, dead black. Soon he was sleeping.