Sacajawea (49 page)

It took thirteen days for the expedition to transport itself from the camp on Portage Creek. Each day meant hardship. Sacajawea spent time repairing moccasins, which were constantly torn by rocks and prickly pears, and wondering how other men, coming after these, could possibly find her people for trade. Three moons had already passed since they had left Fort Mandan, and still the expedition was not in the land of the Shoshonis. They had seen only deserted campfires and scattered, abandoned tepee frames, all belonging to the Blackfeet. Captain Clark had said there would be trading posts for her people. How?

And then came the day Sacajawea had waited for. With Captain Clark and the rest of the men who had manned the base camp, she paced off the final miles that would lead her to the boundary of the land of the Shoshonis.

The rush and roar of the falls became louder, the mist of the spray heavier, until at last they stood still, enchanted by the sight of the cascade eighty-seven feet high, fully two hundred feet across, forming a sheet of white beaten foam, hissing, flashing, sparkling. They watched, fascinated, as the water dashed against a huge abutment of rock, then rose again in great billows and vanished. The Great Falls of the Missouri was a gigantic wildlife rendezvous. Thousands of impatient buffaloes pushed each other along the steep, rocky paths to the water. Hundreds went over the cataract to feed the buzzards and wolves below.

Sacajawea raised her eyes in search of the eagle’s nest that her people spoke about, built high beyond reach of any man or beast. Then she noticed the ominous black sky. A storm from the west would soon be upon them. She touched Chief Red Hair’s hand and pointed. “When the rain comes, this will be a bad place.”

Surprised, he gave a quick start, then said reassuringly, “Well, we are prepared. I have brought along the tomahawk with the umbrella attached to the top, a present from my brother when I started on this trip. I thought it was funny, but it may well come in handy.”

He shifted the rest of his load so that he could put up the umbrella. Sacajawea laughed at such a funny contraption, like a huge leaf to keep the rain off one’s head.

“We’ve got to find shelter,” said Captain Clark. It was getting black-dark now, and the wind was gusting. He looked in both directions and then pointed. “The rocks in that deep ravine—they’ll give some protection. We’d better run for it.” A bunch of sagebrush ripped away from a dying clump and came sailing over their heads with a great
swoosh!

“My feet hurt,” complained Charbonneau.

A chain of lightning dissolved with a teeth-rattling, ear-splitting crash.

Captain Clark pulled Pomp’s cradleboard from Sacajawea and tucked the child and board under his arm. He gave Sacajawea the umbrella to carry. The other things he carried over his shoulder in a leather sack.

Charbonneau, carrying nothing but his gun, sprinted toward the ravine. Captain Clark and Sacajawea followed.

The wind became fierce; the lightning flashed; the rain was coming. The ravine would be a dangerous place to be in case of a flash flood, but there was no other shelter. Captain Clark jumped toward the shelving rocks just ahead and felt the first big drops of rain strike his face. Charbonneau clambered up the rocks. Sacajawea stumbled, almost fell. Captain Clark gave her the leather sack and pulled her along. They passed Charbonneau.

“If I’d my eyes on the outside of my head, I’d never have come down into this rat trap!” Charbonneau yelled through the wind. Then he called for them to wait so he could catch his damned breath. But they went on, stumbling and gasping, the wind rising and whipping away their breath.

They reached the projecting rocks and leaned, breathless, against the side walls. Sacajawea sniffed the air. It was still warm, but there was a new smell to it.
“Ai
—the rain will be hard.”

Her mind was easier standing on this safe ledge, but her body was tired.

“Blow like
le diable,”
said Charbonneau, climbing up to them, gasping. “I never like the plains now with no trees to hide under.”

“Right!” agreed Captain Clark, putting down the cradleboard and unlacing it enough to remove the baby. He sighed, “That cradleboard is heavy.”

“So—it is packed with Pomp’s clothes,” said Sacajawea, putting down the leather sack and umbrella.

“Caw! No wonder he has outgrown the board. There is no place to put his feet!” screamed Charbonneau.

Then nobody spoke, and the darkness crashed down with the thunder. The blackness covered them. During a flash of lightning Sacajawea saw Charbonneau’s eyes contract and a shadow of terror cross his face.

The gusts of wind came in increasing frequency and from every direction. Some passed overhead with a whooping rush and scattered gravel. Some pelted their backs with the gravel and tore the sand from under their feet and threw it into their faces.

“If the wind does not come out of the west, we are safe,” said Sacajawea.

“What was that?” asked Charbonneau. And as the message was passed on, some of the words were high and clear in a moment of silence, some were strained and distorted through a rush of wind, and the final words were blanked out entirely by thunder and the rolling echoes that came after.

Captain Clark had opened up the umbrella to keep the rain off the baby. “The men on the plains will get soaked along with the equipment. No help for that, though.”

Charbonneau complained that the blinding flashes and sudden blackouts hurt his eyes.

The color of the clouds had changed from ashen to a sickly yellow, full of wind and hail. The lightning flashed blue, and then the wind came out of the west, very suddenly and with devastating force, bringing rain mixed with sand and snatching the umbrella from Captain Clark’s hand, sending it sailing around like a bull boat floating in the muddy Missouri.

Then a fine mist, sucked into a partial vacuum under a curtain of wind-driven rain, felt like an early-morning mountain fog on Sacajawea’s face. It was cold. She thought, this should feel good after such a hot morning, but it is too cold.

Captain Clark screamed with the wind, “It’s a cloudburst for sure!” The rain shot directly off the top of the rocks in a hissing sheet, carrying loose gravel whistling over their heads to strike the opposite side of the ravine with such force as to dump a flood of mud and rock into the churning water that was already filling the wash below.

“Lie down so we won’t get blown off when the wind changes!” shouted Charbonneau. He lay down. He had a gnawing, sickening, uneasy feeling. At the next bright flash he looked over into the wash where they had stood only minutes before. The stream, boiling along twenty feet below, was undercutting the bank.

Sacajawea moved closer to Captain Clark, and his arm tightened on Pomp, who kicked his bare feet. Clark put his free arm protectively around her waist and drew her closer, unaware of the danger they were in.

Another rat’s hole, thought Charbonneau, I got to tell the captain. He bent forward, dragging his flintlock; he had gone hardly ten feet when the wind changed and drove the full, suffocating force of the rain right into his face. A vivid flash of lightning showed a boulder half the size of a flour barrel set in the bank four or five feet above him. Slowly he climbed up to it, realizing that he was badly spent. He slid his body over onto the rock and found it was still warm from the blazing sun and he felt amazingly comfortable.

The beginning of terror came during a lull in the wind when Sacajawea heard the rumbling below them. She pulled away to look, and saw a wall of water come thundering down the hill, tearing away huge rocks and mud and sweeping everything before it. She pointed to the raging torrent coming straight toward them.

“Good God!” shouted Clark. “Let’s get out of here!” He grabbed for his gun and pouch and reached for Sacajawea. She was kneeling behind a large stone. Pomp began to cry. When the next roll of thunder died away, the captain heard Sacajawea singing, her words rising over the rush of wind and the wash of rain. She was singing about the First Times and the Big Flood. It was a death song. The tone and cadence carried her mood, a strange, discordant jumble of sound that beat against the roar of water and the wail of wind, pulsating as did the lightning with the crash and fall of the thunder. She was throwing away her dream because the trail had caved in above and below. Death was near, and there was no use fighting against it.

“Up this way—up the bluff!” yelled Clark. Sacajawea looked up and saw Charbonneau clinging like a bear to the rock; she felt Clark’s tug as he pulled her; she heard the baby crying as Clark hitched him up more tightly under his arm. She was dragged by her hand upward to the safety of that huge rock. She fought her fear and tried to force the Shoshoni fatalism into the back of her mind whence her terror came. The wind lashed her hair about her streaming face.

Charbonneau, thinking about the Minnetarees and his young Otter Woman, and the dry, warm Dakota plains where he had lived in ease and plenty, was jerked back to the present by Clark’s yelling. “Charbonneau, you fool, take the baby! Here! Help your squaw now! Pull her up! Come on, man!”

He knelt over the ledge and slowly put his trembling hand over the edge. He pulled the screaming, flailing baby up, hanging on to one arm.

Sacajawea waited for his hand. There was nothing more from above.

“Come on! Reach down again, you heathen!” Captain Clark called. Finally a weak, shaky hand extended over the rock. But Sacajawea found no more help from it than from a dead branch. She could not get to the top.

“Pull! Charbonneau, pull! Up, up!” yelled Clark. “Dammit, man, what’s the matter with you? I’ll wring your neck if you don’t extend a hand!” Then, pulling himself up with every inch of his six feet, Clark shoved Sacajawea until she was able to grasp a projecting root and climb over the rock.

For a moment she rested, trembling from exertion and fright. Then she looked over the edge to help Chief Red Hair. She put her hand down and gasped, horrified. He was scrambling for a foothold as the river of mud and stone surged down upon him. She shrieked a warning. “Quick!” Terror-stricken, she watched as he lost his foothold and missed her outstretched hand.

Unconsciously, Sacajawea keened the death cry; final and horrible, it was a natural thing. Hearing her, Charbonneau began to scream with the baby. Sacajawea stopped and stared at her man. Her fear was forced out and brushed aside by a torrent of words that came out and raced screaming toward her cowardly man. “You cry like a pregnant woman, while Chief Red Hair gives up his life for us!”

She leaned over again, expecting to see Chief Red Hair’s body being swirled away with the tremendous current. She gave a shriek. He had gained a foothold; he had a chance. The water was closing in; he must not slip. “Slow, come now,” she called softly, placing her body flat on the rock ledge, her words swept away by the gusts of wind. Carefully, step by step, Clark secured himself, the race with the torrent more and more difficult. He felt the water surge in around him, deeper and deeper. It came past his feet and legs. The water streamed down his face, blinding him. He pulled up one step and then another, feeling with his feet for a tiny foothold. He felt the water swirl about his waist, pulling at him. He looked up. It was only a few more feet to the small brown hand outstretched strong and firm toward him. Could he make it? Another step up. Still another. “Come, come to me,” she called.

Gratefully he took her hand, and with a final tug and gigantic effort he was up and safe. Over all the other noise he heard his own voice cry, “Oh, my God! Thanks! Janey, thanks! I’ll do something fine for you! I thought I was a goner!” And the wind died then, as though it had never been.

For a few moments all of them sat huddled together, dazed, trembling, soaked to the skin. Finally Clark stirred. Below, where he had stood only moments ago, there was nothing but water—almost fifteen feet of water. “Thanks, Janey!” he mumbled again.

“Let’s get out of here,” said Charbonneau. He needed no pushing—on he went, up to the top, leaving Sacajawea with the baby in her lap, and Captain Clark.

No one spoke for some time. Then Sacajawea said, “I’m hungry.” She patted her stomach and took off the pouch that hung around her waist. It contained her traveler’s rations. She counted each grain of corn and each pumpkin seed and gave exactly half of them to Chief Red Hair. They chewed excessively, as though those kernels were the last food in the world.

Sacajawea smiled at Captain Clark. “Once I hit my finger with a grinding stone. It hurt terrible. The storm was like that. Then, when my finger quit hurting, it felt awfully good and warm all at once. I feel all over like my finger felt then.”

Captain Clark smiled and tugged at her arm, at the same time boosting the baby up to his shoulder. “That was not the place to be during a thunderstorm—not down there!” He looked cautiously over the edge once more. “We have some traveling to do. Come.”

At the top of the bluff they walked through the new, clean, wonderful world, with all the dust washed away and each gravel pebble bright with its own true color—as bright as the vermilion paint, yellow clay, purple sandstone, and red-brown of the distant mountains—but Sacajawea saw none of it. Her mind was working on a puzzle.

Why had Chief Red Hair risked his life to save hers—the life of a squaw, another man’s woman? And the life of her child? The child had no usefulness yet. Her man would have let her and the child drown to save his own life. The life of a grown man was more important. A man is the hunter, the warrior, the protector; his life is valuable. Why was it that Chief Red Hair valued all life, even the lowliest—from that of the helpless papoose to the keening squaw?

Sacajawea looked up at Chief Red Hair, and his eyes met hers. For a brief moment their walking stopped. The baby gurgled and smiled. Slowly Clark put his free arm about her waist and drew her to him; and then, to Sacajawea’s amazement and delight, he kissed her lightly on the tip of her nose, letting her go quickly.

Never before had she experienced such a thing. Her heart patted against her tunic so that she was afraid he would hear it. She felt the glow of happiness. She remembered this moment a million times over in her long life.