Streams to the River, River to the Sea

Tall Rock led the horse to the corral and came back to us with a long speech. Le Borgne paid no attention. His one eye passed over him and fixed itself on me.

  Chapter Six

  Le Borgne had food brought for us, and after I had eaten he called one of his wives, who showed me to a sleeping place. There was a bear rug to step on and a bed, not a pallet, raised off the floor as high as my knees.

  I was so tired I did not try to sleep. I lay quiet, staring at the fire shadows. There was nothing to decide for I had already decided.

  I waited until the two men went to bed and the fire died. I had taken off only my moccasins. I picked them up and made my way to the door.

  Outside, I sat down and put on the moccasins, which took some time because they were wet and had shrunk. A narrow path led through the village and all the lodges faced it. I wanted to circle around behind them, but it was too dark, though a thin moon shone in the west.

  Before I had gone far, dogs began to bark. Two of them followed me, growling at my heels. A short way beyond the village, I heard a shout and the sound of hoofs in the distance.

  The country on both sides of the trail was open. There was no place to hide. I ran for a moment or two, hopelessly, fearing that I would be overtaken, for Metaharta was miles away.

  The trail met the stream and followed along beside it. I thought of trying to hide in the water. Then I saw a row of bullboats pulled up on the shore. I chose the largest one, crawled inside, and sat down on the bottom.

  Three horsemen rode by at a gallop. One of the horses, the spotted one, belonged to Tall Rock. I waited for a while. Then I lifted the boat into the stream and steered it close to the bank. The current took me toward my new home.

  A short distance before it reaches the village, the river narrows and the current runs very fast. Minnetaree bullboats are very light, made of buffalo hide stretched on willow frames round as a ring. If you do not know how to handle them, they spin like feathers in the wind. I had seen them paddled but it was the first time I ever was in a Minnetaree bullboat.

  It began to go round and round. I clawed hard with my paddle, to one side and then to the other, in front of me and behind, but still I spun in the fast water.

  I passed my village, went on spinning for half a league, and at last spun into the broad Missouri. I was too happy to have escaped from Le Borgne and Tall Rock to be frightened.

  In the slower current of the river the boat stopped spinning. I steered toward the west and for a while I thought I would reach shore. The boat caught on a snag, then floated safely away, but in the next two breaths, with an awful grating sound, struck something hard.

  I found myself lying against a pile of driftwood, half in and half out of the river. My mouth was full of sand. The boat spun away in the night.

  I lay there too exhausted to move. At daylight I crawled out of the water. I was on a small island with a wide stretch of brown water on both sides. The village of Metaharta was out of sight somewhere behind me.

  The island was flat except for a large hillock in the center. I walked along the shore, which was littered with things washed down from above. It took me only a short time to circle the island, altogether about the same number of steps as if I made a circle of Black Moccasin's village.

  I climbed the hillock and found cottonwood trees, nine of them, at the top, willows, two plum trees, a chokecherry tree, and a thicket of cactus pears. The view from here was the same as from below—a vast expanse of water, flat shores on both sides of the river, but no sign of life anywhere.

  It was a good place to build a fire. I had to build one to keep warm. Also the rising smoke would let the people in Black Moccasin's village know that I was on the island. I wanted them to come and bring me back to the village.

  I had no fear that Le Borgne or Tall Rock would see my fire from the high bluff on the east side of the river because the bluff and the land around it belonged to Black Moccasin. Le Borgne and Tall Rock would not dare to come there.

  Two sandbars stretched out like arms at the head of the island. The river had run between them for a long time and left a great pile of driftwood on the shore. I gathered up an armful of dry branches, which I took to the hillock.

  I had made many fires in my life, but this one was the hardest of all. I needed a knife to scrape up a pinch of dust. I only had a deer's shinbone. Instead of a stick, which I could twirl between my hands, I had to use the shinbone.

  At last I got the dust to smoke. At last I coaxed out a pale spark. Finally, I blew the spark into a fire. By nightfall I had a fire that could be seen from far away.

  I was not hungry and had no thought of eating, though there was some overripe fruit on the plum trees and green prickly pears in the thicket.

  Near the fire I hollowed out a place where I was sheltered by the cottonwoods, and I lay down and covered myself with leaves.

  I watched the stars move across the sky. I listened through the night for the sound of a boat on the river. From time to time I got up and put fresh branches on the fire. No one came. All I heard was the whimpering of nighthawks.

  I fed the fire throughout the day. While it burned and smoke trailed away on the cold wind, I went off looking for food that could be smoked over the fire.

  I circled the island and saw shoals of small silver fish and one big fish, half as big as I was, black on top and white underneath, with yellow eyes and long feelers on each side of its mouth. It was friendly, letting me get within arm's length. I had caught river fish often in Shoshone country, being very patient, putting out a hand slowly, then clamping down, but this one backed away and disappeared in the dark water.

  I thought there might be squirrels in the thicket, possibly rabbits. I found nothing except three prairie dog burrows. Each held a store of good roots, but since the roots were their food for a long winter I did not take them.

  I still believed that my fire would be seen at night, or the smoke in the daytime, by someone passing along the bluffs.

  After these two days when I had little to eat, I built a weir out of willow branches at the place where the river met the island. But the current was too strong and sent the weir floating away.

  It was at dusk when this happened. I felt like weeping, but as I watched the weir float down the river, I looked up and saw the Evening Star sparkling in the west. The star was my talisman. It was the sign the Great Spirit had given me when I was only a child to guide and protect me forever.

  The Spirit had given it to me in this way and for this reason. It was the summer of my sixth year and our tribe was camped where the three rivers meet. I was too young to know a friend from an enemy. To me, all people were alike. My family was sitting by the fire in our tipi talking. I was eating from a bowl of soup and had a spoonful to my mouth when I saw the shadow of someone standing near the doorway. I got up and went to the door and held out a spoonful of soup for the shadow to eat.

  The shadow belonged to an enemy, a Blackfoot chief. He drank the soup, then went back to his warriors, who had surrounded our camp, and told them he did not wish to attack us.

  The next morning I found a green stone shaped like the Evening Star lying in the grass where the chieftain had been. This stone I have worn ever since and have never taken it off.

  At dusk of my fourth day on the island, while I collected wood for the fire, I came upon the carcass of a deer deep in the driftwood. From the four arrows stuck in its back, I guessed that the wounded beast had fled into the river to escape the hunters, only to be swept to its death.

  The flesh was rank but when I smoked it the taste was good. I had no way of making a bow, which was disappointing, but the arrow tips were metal and the wrappings were well-cured leather.

  I made a short fishline from the wrappings and a hook from the metal, and I baited the hook with a piece of the deermeat. I caught a string, as long as my arm, of the silver fish. These I smoked over the fire and hung in the cotton-wood trees, with pieces of copper twirling in the wind to keep the ravens away. From t
he deer's hide, using an arrow tip to scrape it clean, I made a rough cape for myself.

  All of this good fortune was a gift from my talisman, the star that comes out at nightfall.

  Chapter Seven

  I kept my fire burning night and day. I saw figures moving along the high bluff but no one came.

  The nights grew colder. The wind shifted to the north and stayed there. Torrents of geese began to pour down from the north. A few stopped to rest on the island, but I had no way of catching them. I ate the last of the deermeat and half of my smoked fish. Still no one came to look for me.

  I thought of making a raft out of logs, lashing them together with strips taken from my deerskin cape. There was not enough leather to do this the right way, so I thought of getting a log and drifting downstream until I reached land on one side or the other. I gave this idea up because the current was strong, and if I drifted south for no longer than a day, I would be deep in the country of our enemies, the marauding Sioux.

  The nights grew bitter cold. Cakes of ice floated past and some piled up at the head of the island. A thin crust froze along the riverbank. It was possible that the whole river would freeze over. If it did, then I could cross over to the far shore.

  It was too cold to sleep on the ground in a hollow covered only by a blanket of leaves. I put up a lean-to of driftwood against the trunk of the largest of the cottonwoods, covered it with willow branches, and dug a deep pit for the fire close to the doorway.

  I caught another small string of fish and smoked them. But whatever I was doing I stopped to scan the shores to the east and the west. At nightfall I watched the Evening Star and spoke to her.

  Ice was growing thick along the banks. Cakes of ice floated past now in a steady stream. Some of them were half the size of my island. On one of the cakes were two deer. I watched them go past without feeling sad, for if they had piled up onshore, I had no way of killing them.

  It rained and the rain turned to sleet. The sleet turned to snow. The sun came out in a stormy sky. Through the pale light I saw on a cake of ice what I thought was a brown bear sitting on its haunches. As the ice floated closer, dipping from one side to the other under the beast's weight, I saw that it was not a bear but a buffalo cow.

  The ice cake brushed the shore. It was dipping away, back into the current, when the beast plunged into the water, climbed the bank, and stood staring at me. Buffalo are gentle beasts if not wounded. I stared back at her and she moved away toward the far end of the island.

  It snowed in the night. When I got up to put wood on the fire and cook a fish for breakfast, I saw hoofmarks in the snow. They made circles, many of them, around the hillock. The cow had seen the cottonwoods and wanted to eat their bark but was afraid to come closer.

  I broke off some of the cottonwood branches and went to find her. She stood by the pile of driftwood, trying to find bark she could eat among the barkless logs. I came close to her and held out the cottonwood branches. She moved away from me, so I left the food and went back to finish my breakfast.

  She was at the same place the next morning. I left food for her again, but after that, since it was a long walk in the icy air, each day I left food for her closer and closer to the hillock.

  Each day I tried to get her to eat from my hand. And always she backed away, though not as quickly, her head lowered and her yellow eyes fixed upon me without so much as a single blink.

  I got tired of her ways. I thought, what a fine warm robe you would make, and that big long tongue of yours, which you slurp up food with, would be very good roasted on the fire.

  Soon she began taking food from my hand and each morning I found her at the door of my lean-to. The cottonwoods, the big grove of willows, and the thicket of prickly pears were nearby, but she much preferred that I feed her. I liked this. She was good company. She kept me from thinking about myself.

  The river was frozen over now on both sides of the island except for channels down the center. The channels were too wide to swim across.

  My food ran low. Thinking about it, I remembered the winter when food ran out and all the Shoshones had to eat bark from the trees. Some ate their moccasins, though I never did. Now from time to time I feared that I might have to.

  One morning, after it had snowed all night, I went out to the west bank of the island. There was a white glare on the ice and the river that blinded me, but I was sure I saw a canoe coming toward me from the south, against the current.

  There were two people in the canoe, both of them paddling. I took off my cape and waved it, fearing that in the icy glare they would miss me.

  The one in the back of the canoe raised his hand to let me know that he saw me. Then he turned toward the bank where I stood. A girl in the front of the canoe held out her paddle and I grasped the end of it and pulled them in.

  The man got up, stretched himself, and stepped onshore. Huge, bigger than Le Borgne but not tall, he was wrapped in a bearskin cape and wore a red fox cap with the fluffy tail dangling behind. I could see only his eyes, which were set close to his nose and looked like small, dark pebbles.

  He made signs with his mittened hands. He asked me what tribe I belonged to. When I pointed toward the village, he smiled.

  "Metaharta?"

  I nodded.

  He did not ask me why I was on an island in the middle of the river in the wintertime.

  "I go there," he said in Minnetaree. "You want to come?"

  "Yes."

  "Now?"

  "Now."

  "Get in," he said, holding the canoe for me.

  The buffalo cow stood a short distance away, looking at us. The man asked the girl to hand him his firestick. He put it to his shoulder. Fire came out the end, then a lot of smoke.

  When the smoke drifted away, the cow was lying on her side. With a sharp knife he butchered the carcass and he gave the pieces to the girl, who put them in a neat pile.

  Sweating in the bitter cold, he pulled the robe away from his face. It was covered with hair, right up to his eyes. Never had I seen a man with a hairy face before. He did not belong to our people. Our people were without hair. If the smallest hair did appear, our men plucked it out with deerbone tweezers.

  The man wiped his face on his arm and, with the firestick between his knees, took up his paddle and started across the river.

  The girl was very young. She paddled with the same stroke he used, as though they had traveled much together. Once she paused and turned to look at me. I smiled and she smiled back. It was not a friendly smile. Her name was Otter Woman.

  Chapter Eight

  The Minnetarees ran to the shore when news spread that a white trader had come. They swarmed around our big canoe. They pointed to the trader's piles of meat and his trading goods. Musicians with drums and rattles and turkeybone whistles marched the trader to the council ground. Otter Woman and I trailed along behind.

  They built a great fire in front of the long house and danced. Black Moccasin spoke a welcome. He said many good things about the man who had brought me home to the village. His name was Toussaint Charbonneau. Black Moccasin called him "the Frenchman."

  All during the talk Charbonneau clung to my arm as though he was afraid I might run away. Red Hawk stood beside his father and did not listen to the talk. His eyes were fixed on Charbonneau.

  Red Hawk left and went into the lodge. As the talk ended, he swaggered out and stood beside his father. He had changed his clothes. Before, he had worn a breechcloth and a coyote skin thrown over his shoulders. Now he was dressed in a beaded robe, a necklace of bear claws, and leggings decorated with porcupine quills.

  The moment his father's talk came to an end, Red Hawk pushed himself between Charbonneau and me. It was a hostile act. The Frenchman backed away. He stood facing Red Hawk, his shaggy head lowered, his huge shoulders bent forward. The firelight shone in his eyes. He looked like a wounded bear.

  Black Moccasin silenced both of the men with a sharp command. He grasped my arm, led me through the crowd
into the lodge, sat me down by the fire, and threw a buffalo robe over my shoulders. He asked what had happened to me during the long time I had been gone. And when I told him, he was not troubled about either Tall Rock or Le Borgne, only about Toussaint Charbonneau.

  "You saw him on the river," he said. "Did you call to him?"

  "I waved my cape."

  "But you did not cry out or act as though you were in danger."

  "No."

  "Did you ask him to bring you here?"

  "No, he asked me if I wanted to go to the village and I said yes."

  I knew what Black Moccasin was thinking. If the Frenchman had saved me from danger or captured me from an enemy, then, by the law of all the tribes, I belonged to Toussaint Charbonneau. To do with as he pleased.

  "You are to marry my son Red Hawk," Black Moccasin said. "That is settled. That is decreed. It does not matter what the Frenchman thinks or wishes. He will not harm you. He thinks too much of the trades he makes with us. Nor will he run off with you as Tall Rock did."

  Black Moccasin poked the fire with his walking stick and waited for me to say something.

  I was too confused to say a word. I should have said, "I do not like Red Hawk and I do not think I will be happy with him. And if I am unhappy, then he will be unhappy too." But these words from a slave girl, not yet fourteen, to the chieftain of the Minnetarees, would have a foolish sound. In truth, I should have jumped up and run in rings. A Shoshone, a slave, a captive, to marry the son of the great chieftain. How fortunate I was!

  "I see you are troubled," he said. "Even my old ears can hear your heart beat. Calm yourself. Stay in the lodge. Do not go out for any reason, not until the Frenchman leaves."

  "Why?"

  "He says one thing and means another."

  "You do not trust him?"

  "No, he is half white and half Sioux."

  "When will he go?"

  "Before the next moon. Then he goes to trade with One Eye. One Eye does not like to have us pick things over too much.