Sacajawea (160 page)

And then Shoogan appeared. He sat in front of the tepee with several women and children. He ate soundlessly, smiling once in a while toward his waiting children and women so that his white teeth showed. He lit his cherry-wood pipe and puffed blue-drifting clouds of smoke. The sun made yellow patterns around them, and a small breeze rustled in the cottonwood branches. Shoogan sat, soaking in the calmness of the late afternoon, and Sacajawea sat, squinting into the light and shadow of the trees.

“Tell us now,” prompted one of his small boys in Shoshoni. “I want to remember how you came upon that herd of deer.” The boy’s eyes sparkled as he stretched out on the brown grass. He wore a breechclout andmoccasins too small for him. He turned and grunted something else in Shoshoni to his small sister.

“Why, we got into some antelope,” said Shoogan, “before we ever found those mule deer all together.” His eyes kindled as he remembered. “I was in the lead, and we topped a rise and looked into a meadow when the morning mists were just rising out. They were just waiting for us to come. We took half a dozen bucks and a couple of doe and left the rest to breed next spring. We’ll have meat until fall.”

As he told it, Sacajawea imagined the place, the summer sun plumbing the water and sparkling in the spring. She pictured the ancient leaves in patches on the sand of the bottom, the dense woods rising still and sultry in the heat, and the jewellike coolness of the meadow in early morning. She remembered how she had lain in the cover of brush with her mother and sister while her father had hunted meadows for deer in the morning mist.

Then he said, “Nowroyawn and Washakie think we ought to move to a more sheltered spot in the valley before the fall rains come.”

“Where would we go?” asked a woman, her eyes crinkling. She picked a long piece of stringy meat from the cooking pot and held it above her mouth, then let it drop in.

“Could the People go over to the Beaver Head?” asked Sacajawea impulsively.

Shoogan nodded, sucking reflectively at the pipe-stem. Then he looked up and seemed to realize that the voice did not come from his women, but from the one sitting at the side of his tepee with two sleeping children on her lap.

“Old woman, do not interrupt,” he said, curling his smaller left foot under the right leg and shifting his weight backward so that he could see the intruder better. “I am talking with only my family.”

He was a dry, spare man, not tall, but clean and quick and furtive in movement. His wide shoulders were bent forward in that permanent hunch peculiar to those who have spent their lives perpetually half-crouched, ready to spring for cover and weapon at the first crack of a twig or hiss of a war arrow.

“And so—I am talking with my family,” said Sacajawea, closing her eyes in a long, reflective blink.

The coffee-skinned hunter looked at her a long three seconds before deliberately and slowly saying, “Old woman, I am warning you, do not bother us. Go away, now! Vamoose!” He was irritated, more because Sacajawea had interrupted his talk than because she had claimed to be some relative of his.

Sacajawea looked at him, unable to match his low, clear Shoshoni speech.

“Well, what do you want then?” asked Shoogan with no particular politeness.

“I imagine you are the son of Rain Woman, and then later Spotted Bear and his woman, Cries Alone, raised you.”

Shoogan was on his feet.

Sacajawea spoke fast. “One day many white men visited your camp in the mountains when you were a small boy and Black Gun was chief. Can you remember?”

“Old woman, you utter blasphemy when you speak of the dead!” But Shoogan saw it in his mind as Sacajawea told it: a younger, slimmer woman, with coal-black braids and large warm fawn eyes. She had lifted him into her arms and nuzzled his neck. He could smell the sage scent of her clothing and hear her low voice speaking with his father, Spotted Bear. Shoogan thought, This old woman could be that one. Her voice has the same quality. But that is foolish. It is impossible.

Sacajawea gave Shoogan a sidelong glance, as if she had forgotten those she spoke about were now dead. She smiled as if she had forgotten she had other listeners and was acknowledging the presence of strangers.

“And so—what happened then?” asked Shoogan.

Sacajawea did not answer immediately. It was as if, in telling, she had put her mind into another time and then found she could not live in both worlds at once. “I found my brother was chief of the Agaidükas, my sister, Rain Woman, dead, and I made a young girl’s promise to come back and raise you as my son. I never returned until now,” she said finally.

“Old woman, I have told you to go. You are a nuisance. I do not know who you are.” His answer was drawled, but it hit Sacajawea across the face like the haft of a war ax.

Sacajawea hitched her blanket closer about her yellow dress. “Where is Willow Bud?” she said. “She will remember the day the Minnetarees dragged us from our families and the chief was killed.”

“Many of the People are dead, but the Minnetaree raid is tribal tradition,” said Shoogan, as if that made any other answer unnecessary.

The women were beginning to chatter among themselves, and the children had run to the back of the tepee to chase a brown dog. Sacajawea sat quietly, and the two girls slept on her lap.

“Where is the one called
Tooettecone,
Chief Black Gun?” she asked.

Now Shoogan’s eyes appeared to slit as they fastened on the vexatious woman. “That name cannot be spoken! That chief was much loved and is gone on the trail to the Land of Everfeasting. He was shot down on a raid by the Crows.” Shoogan slowly walked around Sacajawea, looking her over.

“That chief was my brother, and the one called Spotted Bear was my brother. My sister was Rain Woman, your first mother.” Now she waited while the birds sang and the locust chanted in the heat, like insane crones who talk to themselves all day and never weary.

The softness of her tone caused Shoogan to step closer. She held out the Jefferson medal for him to examine.

He turned it over and over, breathing hard. Finally he let it drop back to her breast. “The chief you call brother had a medicine piece such as that. It is still on his breast giving him courage for his last long journey to the Unknown. And it is true that many times he told of recognizing his sister who came with many whites and was a chief woman to them. He said she helped them understand what the white men had to say. She had a child. She also had a man that did much complaining and told foolish stories. For many years our women have had a saying if a child complains or twists his tongue, ‘Beware, you will grow face hair and be left to do the cooking.’” Shoogan’s black eyes sparkled like chipped obsidian. He was reed-thin, with grease-blackened

buckskins. The leggings were heavily fringed, and his moccasins quilled and beaded. His lank hair hung shoulder-long and straight against his broad, bare shoulders. His face was angular and flint-keen as a lance blade.

“The man’s name was Charbonneau,” said Sacajawea. “I was his woman.”

Shoogan knew now that the old woman could not be lying. He fingered the gold-rimmed medal again, sucking in his cheeks. Finally he called to his three women, who jumped, startled, “Fix a meal for this old woman and her children. She is one of my mothers.” He looked at Sacajawea and decided that her story was not thin as April grass. He liked her and wondered what other events flickered behind her shining black eyes.

In her turn, Sacajawea was sizing up the grown Shoogan. She could see that he had been well brought up to live on the land. He was decent and honest, slow, with caution in both manner and mind. She could see that he read the nature of man or animal quickly and unerringly. She dared ask the one question close to her heart. ‘Tell me of the man the people call Bap?”

“We have heard of him. We do not see him much. He is a white man and stays at the fort. I think he is mostly white, like Jake Connor in the post store. Once I heard this Bap yell at mules pulling a cart full of supplies. He is like the white men, having little patience. Why do you ask about him?”

Sacajawea was amused, but she did not show it. “First tell me about another, called Tess or Toussaint. About the same age as Bap. They could be brothers.”

A shadow passed over Shoogan’s face, and he did not smile, but he looked at the woman with curiosity. “He does not come this way. I do not know about this man.” His voice flashed with a thin stringer of iron. “Tell now why you want to know these things.”

“Porivo! Porivo!” It was the Spanish accent of Louis Vasquez calling. He had to shout to be heard above the din of Shoshoni voices, as each family was celebrating and catching the news of the hunt. “I’m looking for the woman called Porivo,” stated Vasquez.

“Who is this woman?” asked Shoogan.

“The woman who can speak many tongues.”

“You have need for a translator?” asked Shoogan with his hands.

“Goddammit, no!” stated Vasquez. “Never had need of a translator myself, unless you count that time those Cayuses wandered across the mountains and I had to listen to their palaverin’ most of the night.”

He took off his straw hat and scratched vigorously at his head, where the black hair lay dank with sweat. He stepped to the side of Shoogan and noticed Sacajawea sitting quietly with the sleeping children in her lap. He spoke to her. “I come on account of Bridger wants to meet the mother of Bap Charbonneau. Says he can hardly believe Bap ever had a mother at all.”

Sacajawea looked at Vasquez keenly; then she looked at Shoogan, whose mouth hung open. Her black eyes were guarded and half-shut with the pleasure of anticipation. “I’m coming,” she said, stretching herself, “if one of these women will look after my sleeping papooses.”

“Oh, I will,” said Shoogan’s first woman, Dancing Leaf. “I like girls. All I have is a boy.”

Sacajawea ambled after Vasquez toward the fort, feeling a mixture of timidity and victory. They reached the edge of the Shoshoni camp, where the leather tepees stopped and the trail wound into the cotton woods, where grasshoppers whirred in the tall grass.

“We sometimes call Bridger Old Gabe,” said Vasquez. “I suppose it is from the angel named likewise, but who knows. Anyway, he’ll likely have some stories to tell about your boy. He’s rested some and had some whiskey to make his insides alive. Now he wants to talk.”

Sacajawea understood half his Spanish words, and smiled—a long, slow smile that held the warmth of friendship.

“Hell, he’ll talk through the night,” Vasquez said.

It was near sundown when they went inside the fort. “This here is Old Gabe,” said Vasquez, facing the big mountain man. “He wants to shake your hand.”

She held her hand out. Bridger took it in his big callused one. “So—you are the mama of Bap?” He belched.

“Ai,” said Sacajawea emphatically, noticing that thewoman stood behind him, her eyes glinting black jealousy. She was even more heavyset than Sacajawea had noticed earlier in the afternoon.

“Oh, this is Emma,” said Bridger, nodding toward the big woman. “She is as good as any Christian wife. Reverend Sam Parker christened her Emma, and married us according to his Presbyterian service.”

Sacajawea looked at Vasquez to see if he were making hand signs so she could better understand the words of this Bridger. Vasquez was standing very still, watching to see how much Sacajawea understood. He made no motion to help her. So then she remained inside the privacy of her closed eyes as Bridger talked and she drifted mentally to the mountain meadow where her mother and father had camped. She made a comparison. At that time her people were laughing and joyful. Somber were the Agaidükas now. What had driven them from the mountains to live here beside this white man’s fort?

Sacajawea opened her eyes slowly and smiled toward Emma. Vasquez had left quietly. Bridger motioned her to sit on the split-log bench near the trading store. He sat beside her. She moved to the end of the log, so as not to sit too close to this handsome stranger. Emma nodded approval and blinked her eyes and sat herself at Bridger’s feet, glancing adoringly toward him every now and then. Bridger talked, scratching his bearded chin, telling stories about himself. He was muscular—without an ounce of superfluous flesh. His cheekbones were high, his nose hooked, the expression of his eyes mild and thoughtful, and his face grave, almost to solemnity. From an Indian viewpoint he was very handsome. Sacajawea found that his serious expression could be deceptive, for he was most expert in relating wildly fantastic stories without the slightest change of expression. Sacajawea liked him immediately.

“Injuns ain’t never so mean as when they’ve took a beatin’. They’re half-froze to make up for it, don’t matter on who,” Bridger continued. “And they put an arrow in my back. Buried it deep. Stayed there three years, that Blackfoot iron point. Doc Marcus Whitman came through and stayed to visit a couple days. Said he could take the goldarned arrow point out in a minute.” Bridgerwrenched himself around and pointed to a place below his right shoulder. “I’ve never laid on such a foofaraw bed in all my days. That Whitman concocted a bed under this same cottonwood here in the middle of my fort with liquor kegs and lodgepoles piled with beaver skins. Then he took the largest scalpel from a leather loop under the purple-velvet flaps of his instrument roll. That grapplin’ iron looked to be poor doin’s.” Bridger glanced at Sacajawea, as if waiting for her to speak.
²

She could not understand what he was talking so fast about, and she wanted desperately for him to tell about Bap. “Was Baptiste in this story?” she asked slowly.

“Darn tootin’! My good friend Baptiste come up from the crowd and gave me somethin’ from a jug for my dry, and he hunted in his possibles for a piece of rawhide for me to bite in. The Doc was pleased with his help. Then a Medicine Man came from nowhere and writhed and danced his way to the head of my bed, smeared with red vermilion on his bronze face. Then the Doc said, Outen my way, Medicine Man, it’s gettin’ dark.’ Then the Doc felt over my back explorin’ with his fingertips until he felt iron in that there flesh. Then he said, ‘Bite, man — here goes,’ and he cut deep and clean until he came to where the shaft had pulled off that iron arrow point. Blood—wagh—he mopped it out with a shirt-tail cut in strips. Things went black. Then I came back as the Doc sliced in deeper still and with his thumb and finger gave that arrow tip a turn. I could feel the muscles in my back cordin’. The Medicine Man leaped into the air with a shriek.