Sacajawea (102 page)

“The largest post is to be at the Three Forks of the Missouri.”

Sacajawea drew in her breath.

Charbonneau scowled at her.

A soft, musical voice called from an inner doorway, “Will, may I come in?”

“Yes, do.”

Sacajawea looked up from her seat on the floor. Her eyes met the face of a smiling young woman with brown, curly hair framing her pink-and-white face. Her mouth was large, with thin lips over white even teeth, and her dark eyes were set wide apart. Sacajawea’s brown eyes bored deep into the white woman’s, which danced and fluttered at the Indian girl’s sudden, keen interest.

The young woman’s eyes rested on Sacajawea’s face, seeing her skin, ruddy from sun and wind, her straight nose with wide nostrils, her white, unbroken teeth showing but little when she smiled. Sacajawea’s face was a trifle gaunt, her cheekbones high, and there was a deep purplish hint to her raven black hair.

Clark stood with his arms outstretched to meet the young woman. “Please, come in, Judy. Janey is here, and her son, and Monsieur Toussaint Charbonneau. I want you to meet them, especially Janey. You’ve heard me say she was worth more to us on that trip than some of the men who were along.”

Pryor stood and bowed toward Judy Clark.

Charbonneau let out a burst of air.
“Nom du bon dieu!
My squaw already got the big head and thinks she was guide for all those men. Soon she will have nothing to do with us at all. She be too good. All the fat will be in her goddamn head.” Charbonneau’s face reddened as he looked at Clark’s wife. “Excuse.”

Judy Clark smiled and extended her hand to Charbonneau and then to Sacajawea. who had risen and still stared at the beautiful dress—light, fluffy, yellow, flowing to the floor.

“Janey, this is my wife, Miss Judy. She is my woman,” said Clark proudly.

Suddenly Sacajawea was making the past come alive again. She saw ropes and towlines and thongs of tough leather weave through swirling brown waters; then she felt the almost invisible shimmers of fine mist that joined her and Chief Red Hair and this young woman. Sacajawea extended her brown hand as Charbonneau had done. Hers was roughened by work, and she tried to smile, but civilization had not yet taught her to look pleased when in truth she was far from it.

And so—my belt of blue beads traded for an otter robe to give to this woman. And so—this is the squaw Chief Red Hair named the clear, sparkling river after. The honeysuckles smelled sweet, and violets nodded on its banks, she thought.

Again Clark read Sacajawea’s thoughts. “Remember the river I named Judith?”

“If that name stands, Will,” Miss Judy said with a teasing in her voice, “it will show you that you didn’t know me any too well.”

“So,” admitted Clark, taking her hand, “so I named it the Judith River, instead of Julia. It was your nickname, Judy, that confused me.”

“There’s no harm in it—you were thinking of me,” she said, laughing.

“We’ve got to find a lodge for Janey and her son and man.”

“Will, I know just the place,” Miss Judy said quickly. “The cabin you let traders and hunters use. It’s vacant. They’ll have a roof over their head—I can help Janey fix it up.”

“W-w-what!” stuttered Clark, unable to hide his surprise. “That is just the place. I wouldn’t have thought of it. And will you show Janey how to make curtains and things?”

“Yes, yes. I want to,” Miss Judy said, kissing Clark over his left ear, after pulling him down to her height.

“Diable!”
blurted Charbonneau.

“Then I’ll make arrangements for your boy to go to school, as soon—”

“But, Will,” interrupted Miss Judy, “this child is no more than three; four at the most. He’s just a baby.”

“Three and a half. But time takes care of everything. You know what I have told you. No matter what I did for Janey, I couldn’t do too much. I actually owe my position to Janey.”

Charbonneau squirmed. “No squaw’s worth that much,” he said more to himself or the floor.

Miss Judy said, “Of course, Will, you told me. I have not forgotten.”

Sacajawea felt a mixture of embarrassment, shame, and fear.

Miss Judy saw the uncertainty in Sacajawea’s face and said, “I offer my hand in friendship. I shall do all I can to make you acquainted with Saint Louis and get you settled in your cabin.” Then she did a quickstep and two swift turns, bowed low before each of the adults, and patted the top of Pomp’s head.

“You have gone daft,” said Clark, chuckling to himself. “There may be a spell on you.”

“Let’s all go and look at the cabin,” said Miss Judy, twirling once and standing at her husband’s left shoulder.

“Eh, bien!”
Charbonneau stood up, charmed by the antics of Clark’s beautiful wife.
“Magnifique!”
He made a round circle with thumb and forefinger and blew threw it. “My Otter Woman and Tess, my other son, they are here also.”

“Where are they?” asked Clark. “You didn’t leave them outside?”

“Non,
they are with Sheheke, where our baggage is.”

“You old rogue,” said Clark, not at all fooled, but much amused by the trick the métis had played on him. “We’ll get them and put them up in the cabin, too. You fox, I will educate your boy Tess. Now what do you think of that?”

“Merci, mais oui.
That is nice,” said Charbonneau, feeling very cagey.

Miss Judy led the way, skipping, her body drawn fully erect and her lips parted.

The log cabin had two new windows, and the thick waxed tarp that had covered them still lay at the side. The windows were the six-pane kind, with the unpainted wood still bright against the weathered gray of adjacent split logs. Inside the door the whole place looked neat. Shelves of new wood on the wall near the stone fireplace held dishes, and on a wider, low shelf stood buckets for water. There was a battered kitchen table and a single straight-backed chair made of birch. There was nothing else to sit on except boxes, or the hand-hewn bed, which was fastened head and side to the walls, the only post standing at the outer corner. A curtain of thin old blankets strung on wire partitioned the cabin and left about eighty percent of the space for the kitchen-living room. A wooden crate had been nailed to the wall over the table, and it contained grayish white flannel sheets and a heavy, folded fourpoint Hudson’s Bay blanket, dark blue with a black stripe at either end. Beside this box hung a huge calendar, in both French and English, showing the Saint Lawrence Valley divided into two provinces, Lower Canada (Quebec) and Upper Canada (Ontario). Over the head of the bed hung a watercolor sketch of the bleeding heart of Jesus. This lodge will take some getting use to, thought Sacajawea.

“There is plenty of wood out back,” said Clark.

Charbonneau touched the glass in a window and then went out to examine the wood ricks. “I’ll send over some buffalo meat. Be a good idea to have your women dry some so they’ll have supplies when you go trapping,” Clark said to Charbonneau. “I’d like to see you settle down and get a little patch of land. You could raisemost of your own food and maybe some sheep or cows. Be good for you. You’re not getting younger, you know.”

“I first would like to be an interpreter for some trader around here. I need to get used to this country.” Charbonneau had his head down as though he were thinking. “This is much farther south than I’m used to. I might take some land, but I don’t think I’d like raising potatoes, string beans, or
les oignons.”

“Then you could try cotton,” suggested Clark, “or tobacco.”

Inside, the women were chattering about where to make sleeping pallets for the children. “The bed is fine for a man, but I would fall to the floor and so would Otter Woman,” giggled Sacajawea, who had never seen a sleeping couch so high off the floor before.

“The boys should sleep there,” suggested Miss Judy. “They ought to learn to sleep in a bed if they are going to school.”

“Ahh-i.”
Sacajawea pulled up a big sigh from way down inside herself. “Who will catch them when they fall in the middle of the night?”

“They’ll have to learn to stay under a blanket. There are other things they will need to know, and you have to help,” said Miss Judy, her eyes challenging Sacajawea.

“That’s right,” said Clark, moseying back inside. “The boys are here for an education. You don’t want them to be as ignorant as old Jussome, who needs someone to sign his own name, do you?”

“Mais non, merci.”
Charbonneau, who could neither read nor write, shook his head. “Never will they be like that old weasel.”

Miss Judy plumped a battered coffeepot on the table. “I can boil some coffee. See, there is a box of sugar and a can of coffee on the shelf. Let’s hope it’s not stale and rancid.”

Even though she was tired from the trip and the excitement of meeting old friends, Sacajawea began laying a fire, using a substantial cone of sticks, the larger ones on the outside. Clark bent to light the fire with a phosphorus match. The small sticks blazed, burning quickly. Sacajawea pushed on larger sticks. Miss Judy set the big pot of water on the iron arm abovethe fire, then threw in coffee and sugar and let them boil.

“Say, speaking of writing, Charb, did you know that Pat Gass’s journal of the expedition was published early last year? An Irish schoolmaster, David McKeehan, corrected Pat’s spelling and grammar. I talked with him, and to hear him tell it, Pat needs schooling himself. His spelling must have been dreadful. Now Lewis and I have to get ours in shape. Jefferson asked about the journals last year.”

“Why don’t you send York after the other lady and her little boy and the Charbonneaus’ baggage?” asked Miss Judy.

“You have a fine
femme,”
said Charbonneau, who felt himself an expert in those things. He poured a third cup of coffee. It was strong and sweet.

“Yes,” agreed Clark. “That is a fine suggestion, Judy. And Charb, you still have a good eye, eh? Judy is an angel, she dances and talks too much, but she has not one mean, spiteful hair on her head.” Clark planted a soft kiss on his wife’s hair. Then he took her hand and led her out the door saying they would be back soon.

The two squaws worked for days drying the meat that was sent to them. They cut it in thin strips and hung it in the sun on a scaffolding made of cottonwood saplings. Miss Judy marveled at the stamina Sacajawea showed when she began a task. Otter Woman soon grew tired of drying meat and sat on the door stoop.

Often Miss Judy sat in the shade, telling nursery tales to the boys. Soon they were all singing together:

“What’s a teapot lid?” asked Little Tess.

“The top of a teapot, silly,” answered Miss Judy.

“Do we have one?”

“I don’t know. Do you like tea?”

“I like mine with sugar, same as Papa. We don’t have any now.”

“Next time I’ll bring some and we’ll have a tea party,” said Miss Judy, swinging each boy around once or twice, then sitting down again, laughing.

Otter Woman stretched herself and moseyed over to sit beside the children and Miss Judy. She had on a gingham dress she’d made from some red-and-blue cloth Miss Judy had brought for window curtains.

“Why work so hard on that meat?” said Otter Woman, pointing a ragged fingernail toward Sacajawea. “There will only be more. Chief Red Hair will take care of us. We do not have to work our fingers to the bone. We don’t even have to gather the wood. We don’t have to work anymore. We can play with the papooses, like you do. We can wear our new blankets and walk along the river to see the boats and the pale-eyed ladies.”

Miss Judy laughed at Otter Woman; then, her eyes still twinkling, she said emphatically, “You’ll never appreciate anything if you do not work for it.” She moved her hands so that Otter Woman could understand, but she was slow with hand signs. “I will teach you how to sew if you promise to make curtains with the next gingham, and no more dresses stitched up the sides with leather string.”

“Ai”
—Otter Woman kept her voice low and flat—“after window dresses, I make dress like white squaws. And so our man thinks he has a white woman, tee-hee-hee.”

Sacajawea’s head went from side to side, and her voice had a dry harshness. “Otter Woman, you could help finish cutting this meat today. Do you want our man to throw firewood at us because there is no jerky?” Sacajawea’s hands were blistered from the cutting knife, but finally she had all the meat cut and hung in the sun to dry.

Otter Woman’s shoulders hunched together, and she coughed. “Much smoke in the air. I hope it rains.”

“Oh, me, too,” said Miss Judy. “Something has to put out these brushfires. I don’t want them moving close to town. This smoke is bad enough.”

“When the wind is right, my eyes sting and I can’t stop the coughing,” said Otter Woman.

The next morning, Sacajawea surprised Otter Woman by saying, “Let’s take the boys walking along the riverbank.” Despite the heat, Sacajawea took her blanket so that she could carry Pomp on her back easily if he became tired.

Otter Woman talked a stream of inane chatter because she was so excited about going out to look at the new sights. She coughed as she combed her hair until it shone; then she put on her red-and-blue gingham. Little Tess skipped from the cabin and threw sticks down the trail.

Saint Louis was about fifty years old. It had begun as a French trading post, and only in the last four years, since the United States had acquired it from France with the Louisiana Purchase, had it really grown. At one time it had been a Spanish possession, and so now people from both Spain and France lived on the banks of the Mississippi River. There were also a few people from England, some Canadians, Indians from many tribes, métis, halfbreeds, Creoles, Americans, and blacks living in or near the village.
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The two squaws watched, and as they learned about these people, their wonderment grew. “It is like a Mandan summer fair,” said Otter Woman. “So many people in this village.”