The Big Sky (14 page)

The Missouri was a devil of a river; it was a rolling wall that reared against the
Mandan
and broke around her and reared against her again; it was no river at all but a great loose water that leaped from the mountains and tore through the plains, wild to get to the sea.

As far as a man could see, rain was falling -falling smalldropped and steady, so that the air itself was watery and came into the lungs wet and weak. Looking up river, feeling the breeze square on his face, Jourdonnais lost the river in the mist. The far shore was a shadow. He could see the towline, running from the mast through the bridle, bellying of its own weight, and going on to nothing, toward the crew that was a slow-moving blur upshore.

It was no time for boating, no time for sail or oars or poles or line. A man could lose his boat before he knew it. A shelving bank would wreck her, or a planter, or a sawyer. Most of all, Jourdonnais feared sawyers. A half a dozen times this day he had seen the moving water break and the great limbs spring out like thrashing legs, standing for a moment against the current, naked and huge, and then yielding again and sinking from sight. One leg under the
Mandan
would be enough. Jourdonnais watched the dark water as if he might see beneath it. Romaine stood ahead of him in the bow, a watchful giant of a man who handled his long pole as if it were no heavier than a cane.

It was no time to be moving, but the
Mandan
had to move -ten miles a day, five miles, one, whatever they could strain out. And so they had rowed and poled and towed and put up sail and had to haul it down and put it up again, hoping for long reaches and favorable winds. They had worked from dawn to dark, snatching breakfast and dinner aboard and making camp only when the light was done. Where the shore water was deep they had moved into the bank and the men had stood on the
passe avant
and on the decks, grasping for the brush, pulling the
Mandan
ahead hand over hand.

There was complaint among the crew. They looked at Jourdonnais -not directly, but out of the corners of their eyes- and he had heard them grumbling over their food at night and in their blankets of a morning, waking to the dawn sore and resentful. Every morning now and every night he passed the whisky jug. He led them in songs and made jokes and swore at them and praised them, as if they were children. He and Summers talked at night when they were camped, telling about the Pawnees, who were bad when they found a white man alone. It was just last year, Summers said, that two deserters had gone under on the Platte.

The rain fell in a tiny lisp against the cargo box and ran down the sides. The deck was filmed with water. Pretty soon they would have to bail. Jourdonnais felt uneasy about Teal Eye, though she had a robe to sit on and an extra blanket, and he himself had rearranged the buffalo hide that made her little lodge. It would not do for her to get sick. He must save her from sickness and the men. Mon Dieu, the men! He would tell them again and have Summers stare at each with that so-hard eye of his. The cats in the cage on the box looked small with their hair wet. They moved around, mewing, not liking the rain. There were only four of them left now. Two had been taken by Francis Chouteau, the trader on the Kansas, for the price of a good plew each, for the price of an Ashley beaver. Painter was in the stem with Teal Eye, protected by the robe.

Jourdonnais squeezed the water from his mustache with the knuckle of his forefinger. April nearly at the half, and the Platte still ahead! He shook his head, thinking about it. How far was it to the Blackfoot Nation, past the Roche Jaune, past the Milk and the Musselshell, maybe clear to the Great Fall? Twenty-three hundred miles? Twenty-five? It was a long summer's work, that was sure. The
Mandan
wouldn't make it unless they used every minute, or maybe would make it late, maybe in time to be frozen in, in country so cold the air cracked like ice and the sun froze and even the
Pieds Noirs
kept to their lodges, dreaming ahead to summer and war parties while they sharpened their scalping knives.

Les Pieds Noirs!
A little cold lump came into a man's bowels when he thought about them. Even Lisa had had to give up, and the bones of Immel and Jones and how many others rotted in the Trois Fourches or along the Roche Jaune? Jourdonnais shook himself, pushing uneasiness from his mind. It could all be accounted for. The Blackfeet knew Lisa as the friend of their enemies, the Crows. Immel and Jones had set their traps in country forbidden. And neither Lisa nor the others had had Teal Eye, the little squaw who was daughter of a chief. The white trader was bringing her home because the white trader was kind and wanted to be a brother to the Blackfeet. He had journeyed many sleeps and encountered many dangers just to get her back, and he brought with him a red uniform with gold facings and silver buttons that would mark the chief as the great man he was in the nation. Also, he had for his brothers beads and vermilion and guns and powder and some of the drink called firewater. He had brought them past the Sioux, past the Rees, past the Assiniboines, so that his friends, the Blackfeet, might have what other nations had.

All would be well, Jourdonnais told himself again, if only the
Mandan
got there, and got there in time. He would manage. Starting from nothing, as a common voyageur, he had worked himself up, by labor, by saving, by being bolder than other men. And now, along with Summers, he was a bourgeois, for all that he served as his own patron, a trader with all his savings and borrowed money, too, invested in an old boat and in traders' goods. He had a chance, a gambler's chance, to make very many dollars, and he would manage.

He would push ahead as he had always pushed ahead, and by and by perhaps he and his Jeannette could build themselves a big house far away from Carondelet, and who could call him a
Vide Poche
then?

Out of the bushes along the shore the hunter appeared. He waded out and came aboard as Jourdonnais brought the boat in. His wet buckskins hugged his body. He said, "Jesus!"'

"Bad," Jourdonnais agreed.

Summers said "Jesus!" again. "This bank ain't made for the
cordelle
."

"Or the bed for poling, or the current for rowing, or the wind for the sail. We move, a little, anyway."

"The damn trees, right down to the water."

Jourdonnais looked at the sky. "The river she's straight

now, above the Nishnabotna, and the wind wrong, like always."

"
Embarras
ahead," Summers announced.

"Another?"

"Worst yet."

Jourdonnais swore. He looked toward the far shore, across the brown flood and its traffic of drift. "We waste the time going back and forth like a damn ferry. All the time, point to point, we cross and cross again."

Summers' eyes were inquiring. "Maybe we try, anyhow."

The hunter moved his head dubiously. "The mast might go, or the line, I'm thinking."

"It is not safe, even to cross," Jourdonnais answered, pointing across the water.

"Risky, all right."

"I look, anyhow."

For a hundred feet from shore the fallen tree dammed the current. Drift was piled deep against it, soggy cottonwoods and cedar and dwarf pine from far up river and willow still swollen with buds, making a litter that pulsed with the current and drove tight against the bar of the tree, so that a man might walk on it. Around the end the water swept, smooth-muscled at first and then broken, flying in foam and spray, filling the ears with a steady gushing. The air stank a little with decay, from the bloated bodies of buffaloes that had drowned up river and now were caught in the jam and made little hills of brown in the drift and sometimes pushed around it and ran bobbing in the waves.

Jourdonnais signaled for a halt below the embarras. He studied it, his lids half-drawn over his eyes. "We have to drop back, to cross," he said to Summers, and waited for the reply.

The hunter only nodded.

"Even so, we run the risk." He motioned again toward the channel. "We could be wreck' there, also."

Summers grinned, but his eyes were sober. "I'm thinking we would tie up if we had a fool hen's sense."

Jourdonnais said, "
Non
! Mother of God! Do we spend the summer on the bank?"

"Let's try 'er, then," the hunter said. "You need three men anyhow in the boat, but we need as many hands as we can git on the line."

"Go on. Romaine and I, we will handle her."

Romaine poled the boat toward the bank, and Summers splashed ashore. "We'll take a hitch around a tree and then r'ar at her," he called to Jourdonnais. Romaine was working the
Mandan
out again. Jourdonnais came down from the cargo box and gave him a hand, ignoring Romaine's heavy frown. He saw Summers stride along the bank, walking as a man of purpose walks, his figure blurring with rain as he drew away.

Summers waved his hat. "Ready," Jourdonnais said to Romaine, and climbed back to the helm.

The
Mandan
inched ahead while the water boiled against her nose. The
cordelle
straightened from its sag, running almost in a line. The rain was thinner now, and Jourdonnais could see the crew, bent and scrambling on the rough and cluttered shore. The boat came close to the dam, came even with it, out from it by a dozen feet but still in the tow of the current that raced around it. The
Mandan
began to swing like a kite, running out and suddenly turning back toward shore, getting her nose to one side as if to swing around and then overanswering to the towing line and the bridle and the steering oar in Jourdonnais' hand. Romaine jumped from side to side, swinging his pole around with him.

Jourdonnais heard himself saying "
Fort! Fort!
" His body strained to urge her ahead, but she lay at the crest of the sweep, running before it but not pushing into it, like a scared horse before a fence. "
Fort! Fort!
" The men could pull her well enough but for the lack of footing. He saw water squeezing out from the cordelle and standing in beads like sweat. The mast arched with the strain on it. The rain was thick again, making a blur of the crew. He should have told them to take a shorter hold on the line, for the power it would give them.

"
Fort!
" he grunted again, between his teeth, and fell ahead, seeing the brown current streaking under him while his hands clawed for a lashing. Romaine made a splash in the water, and came up and began pawing for shore, bending his streaming face around to see the
Mandan
.

She had reared and spun around as the bridle broke and now she lay tilted while the water beat against her side, held by the line and the mast bending to it. Sprawled on the cargo box, clutching a rope, Jourdonnais said, "
0 man Dieu! Man Dieu!
" The boat ran in and out, like the weight at the end of a pendulum. He saw the mast arching over him, the mast that he had insisted be made of hickory, and felt the slant of the cargo box under his belly. "Line! Give linel Easy!" he shouted, knowing he couldn't be heard above the water. He saw Romaine pull himself from the river and stand dripping for a minute, staring at the
Mandan
, and then begin lunging up shore through the mud.

He worked himself off the cargo box and crawled to the spare pole and got it over the side while he braced himself on the slope by one foot and a knee. He forced the pole through the water and felt for the bottom, hoping to bring the
Mandan
part way round. The
Mandan
and all that he might be and all his years of work and purpose tilted on the brink of nothing, held by a hickory stick and a string, tilted for a minute, for an hour, for a lifetime that seemed as long as forever and no longer than yesterday. He heard himself shouting, crying for the crew to ease up.

His voice seemed prisoned, kept within the
Mandan
herself by the rush of water on her side, or lost beyond her in the little, busy rain, but at last he felt the line give, felt the boat rock and come to balance against the cordelle again, and saw the embarras easing upstream.

He poled her in after a while, and Romaine came up, puffing, and made her fast to a tree. After him came Summers and the crew. Jourdonnais turned and looked the boat over. "The cats," he said, "I did not see them go." And suddenly he thought, "Teal Eye!" and jumped to the
passe avant
and ran along it to the stern. He saw Painter, standing stiff-legged on a blanket. He yelled, "Gone! Look, everybody! Along the bank. She is gone. Teal Eye!"

He jumped from the boat and plunged ashore, motioning. "All! All! Look!" He started running. "You, Summers, you have eyes like the Indian."

They scattered into the brush and came out of it farther down and looked out at the water and along the banks. "Go on! Go on! Farther down! She could be farther."

It was the young Kentuckian, Caudill, who found her. They heard him shout and ran to meet him and found him carrying her through the brush. "She was holdin' to a loose log," he said. "Near done in, too. I had to swim for her." He looked down at his dripping jeans.

Jourdonnais took charge of her. "We get some dry clothes, little one," he said, "and then the fire and food." She looked at him, saying nothing, her eyes melting in the thin face that seemed all the thinner now. Her clothes hung to her small limbs. "She look like the wet cat but chic, still," Jourdonnais thought. Aloud he said, "Tell her to get dry and change clothes, Summers. She understand you better. She get the fever, maybe."

The girl seemed to understand. She barely nodded. Jourdonnais lifted her into the stern.

He walked away then and stopped when he came even with the nose of the
Mandan
and looked across the rolling water and up it, feeling tired but glad with a fierce gladness. "Four cats," he said. "You great big damn tough river, you only get four cats." He turned back. "Come on. We all have a drink."
 
 

"My old man allus said, if trouble's sartain, try and enjoy it."

Jim Deakins sat on a slope of grass, slapping now and then at a mosquito. The
Mandan
was tied up again, on the southwest shore, behind the protection of a tree that slanted into the water. Boone was lying on his back, only half listening, looking at the sky across which the low sun sent a streamer. Summers had said they would go out, looking for buffalo, pretty near any day now. Boone rubbed his cheek. "Don't reckon your old man could enjoy these gnats." He was wondering whether he and Summers would get any buffalo their first try.