The Dakota Cipher (22 page)

S
EEING NO SIGN OF THE ENEMY, WE SET OUT AGAIN, HOPING
we could follow without stumbling into an ambush. As the river narrowed and its banks grew rockier, we towed our canoe by foot through light rapids. Trees overhung each bank, almost meeting overhead, and side creeks were dammed by beaver. Half this wilderness, in fact, seemed water. I spied a yearling buck but I dared not risk a shot because of the noise. We went on hungry, warily watching.

It was drawing toward evening when Namida reached from behind and lightly touched me on the shoulder. “They’re nearby,” she whispered.

I looked around. “How do you know?”

“Birds flew up. Someone is on the river ahead.” The women, I had noticed, could see things we couldn’t, hear things we were deaf to.

I glanced nervously at the trees, worried that birds would announce us.

“We must get off the river,” Pierre said. “There—that tributary! We’ll hide and scout.” We turned into a creek, a green tunnel in the
trees. The woods seemed deathly silent and I tensed for an arrow, but none came. After a quarter mile we came to a beaver dam, its quiet pond beyond. The beaver lodge was a wattle mound of sticks and mud in the pond’s middle.

We got out to lift our canoe over. “Treat the dam like glass, or they’ll see our sign,” the voyageur instructed. “Do not bend a blade of grass or crack a twig! We must be silent as the wind and light as the butterfly!”

So of course the structure cracked under Magnus like a flute of champagne. He slipped, cursing, and fell into mud and water. Sticks gave way, water pouring out.

“Yes, just like that, giant,” the Frenchman said. “Let’s light a signal fire, too, just in case they can’t spot this sign.”

“Sorry,” the Norwegian mumbled.

“Should we go back downstream?” I asked.

Little Frog shook her head and spoke to Namida. The woman nodded and turned to us. “Go to the edge of the pond and hide, then break the dam and eat the beaver.”

Pierre brightened. “But of course! Out of clumsiness, grace! We’ll use the beaver pond to get farther upstream, then empty it to deter canoes from following. Gage, go with the women and camouflage the canoe. Giant and I will follow after we break the rest of this dam.”

“I thought we had to treat it like glass.”

“That was before I remembered I was hungry.”

The women and I paddled another mile to a grassy bank where we hoped no pursuit would find us and pulled our craft into a thicket. Then we hunkered down and waited.

“How will we know the Indians missed us?”

“If we are not dead,” Namida said logically.

The water began to recede, evidence the dam was being dismantled. Night fell, but we dared not light a fire. Nor did we hear anything but frogs. I slept restlessly, and then at dawn we heard men
coming on foot, slogging in the mud of what was now an emptied lake. I readied my rifle.

It was our companions. Each had a dead beaver in both their hands.

“We broke the dam, drained the swamp and clubbed these beaver as they came out of the lodge,” Pierre said. “It’s good the giant is so clumsy because I’m starving for beaver tail! If we find the driest, most smokeless wood, I think we’re far enough from the river to risk a fire.”

I escorted Namida and Little Frog into the forest and watched while they turned a wilderness into a green grocer. Where I would have starved, they found leaves for tea, roots for medicine, and cranberries and wild plum to dress our beaver. Little Frog briskly stitched a bark pot with birch and spruce root so we could boil a stew. The tail was a fatty godsend to our depleted bodies, and the beaver’s flesh dark red and fine-textured, tasting like corned beef. We satiated ourselves, Pierre lamenting that we had no easy way to carry and sell the skins.

“But then why do I need money?” he went on, arguing with himself. “The Indians have none and are happier for it. See, here we have all men need—a camp, food, women, the sky. But then treasure—well, that would be nice, too.”

I sympathized with his reasoning. No man is consistent.

If we were hidden, we were also blind, with little idea if Red Jacket still lay in wait. So it was almost reassuring that we heard, like a murmur in the wind, far-distant gunshots. We might not have noticed, but the noise persisted. Someone was fighting. Pierre, lithe as a monkey, shimmied up a tree to a branch from where he could see some of the sky. He stayed there for some minutes, then quickly came down.

“Smoke,” he reported.

“What does it mean?”

“I don’t know. We may be in luck—we need to watch the river. Let the American go—he’s done nothing useful for a while.”

The pond was rising again—the surviving beaver must be rebuilding—and I cautiously moved on the periphery of its mud along drowned trees, and then down the tributary below to the main river, anxiously pausing at every sigh of wind and tremor of leaf. Nothing attacked me but biting insects.

Finally I came to the stronger light that marked the bigger river and wriggled to where I could see its current without being seen. Nothing. A few gunshots sounded upriver, but the shooting was sporadic now.

An hour passed, then two. Finally I saw canoes and tried to sink into the very earth, my rifle ready for one last shot if I was discovered. It was Red Jacket’s braves, but the canoes seemed more lightly manned. Some warriors were slumped as if wounded, not paddling. Others bore bloody scalps and kept looking over their shoulder as if fearing pursuit. The hunters had become the hunted.

Good news, indeed.

The little flotilla passed and the river was empty. I hurried back to the others, who were eating crabapple, whortleberry, and more of the beaver. “There was some kind of fight, I think. Red Jacket was retreating back downriver.”

“Let’s hope they’ve given up,” said Pierre. “Now we get ahead of them.”

We carried the canoe to the sluggish pond, slowly rising, and paddled down to the beavers’ new engineering. With a loud tail slap the survivors disappeared, and we carefully carried our craft over the repaired structure. This time Magnus didn’t slip. Then down to the main river, a careful scouting for enemies, a wait until nightfall, and once more up against the current.

I feared every bend would still bring an ambush, but Pierre said it was equally dangerous to linger, blind and helpless. “We need to learn what happened,” he said. “If his band had a fight, they may not follow Red Jacket farther west. Maybe we’re done with him.”

“But what if some of his men went still farther upriver?”

“That’s the territory of other bands. Red Jacket is feared but not trusted. He has many, many enemies. His men can’t stay up here, and his enemies become our friends. So now we’ll follow this river northwest until it turns back east, and then decide what to do. That’s where the shooting came from, I guess.”

In the Indian manner the stars were our clock.

“At least we don’t have as many mosquitoes at this hour,” I said as we paddled.

“Indians often travel at night to avoid them,” Namida agreed. “When you are not afraid of the night you can see like the wolf. Look.” She lifted her paddle to point. “Giwe danang. The North Star. In a month it will bring the first frost, and the insects will disappear.”

Her hair was like a satin curtain, her arms slim and strong. “So is this paradise to you, as Pierre said?”

“Paradise is in the next world, not this one. There you don’t go hungry. Here we have winter, sickness, and bad Indians like Red Jacket.”

“So have you ever heard of a special place to the west?”

She took two strokes before replying. “There are stories of a great tree.”

I could see Magnus stiffen ahead of her.

“How great?”

“So tall it touches the sky, or so it is said. Yet warriors who go to find it never return. And it is not easy to find. Sometimes it appears and sometimes it is lost.”

“A tree marking Eden,” Magnus said, “and Indians with blue eyes.”

“My people live where the sun goes down,” Namida said. “They have no interest in this tree.”

“And what is this stone tablet of yours?”

“It has markings like the traders’ magic books. It is very old, found long ago. Our tribe captured it from the Dakota, who may have cap
tured it from someone else. A medicine man in my country keeps it until the men who carved it return. Legend says that red-haired men dug for metal in the earth and promised to come back.”

The Norwegian beamed. “This is proof of what I’ve been telling you since Paris!”

“Proof if we find it.”

“Would Namida make up something like writing on stone?” He grinned at the woman. “You are wiser than our sorcerer.”

“And elephants—have you seen woolly elephants?” I asked her.

“What is an elephant?”

“Bigger than a moose. Bigger than a buffalo.”

She shook her head. “Nothing is bigger.”

A
T DAWN WE SAW SMOKE.
“T
OO MUCH OF IT
,” P
IERRE SAID.

We hid the canoe, this time Magnus staying with the two women while the voyageur and I crept ahead to scout.

It was a massacre. A camp of Ojibway had been attacked, their wigwams put to the torch and their canoes smashed. Earthen pots had been shattered into fragments, drying racks had been toppled, and toy dolls made of cattail husks had been trampled. A crippled dog limped among two dozen scalped and mutilated bodies, their remains pecked at by crows.

Feathered shafts jutted from flesh and Pierre checked the markings.

“Red Jacket’s work.”

I felt sick. “The attackers were looking for us.”

“They came upon this group without finding us and a fight broke out. Maybe they suspected these Indians of hiding us.” The voyageur looked about, studying the tangle of footprints. “They retreated before other Ojibway can learn what happened and mount revenge. Red Jacket must be half-crazed to provoke such a powerful tribe this far north. You have truly stirred the hornet’s nest, Ethan Gage.”

“All I wanted was to look for woolly elephants.” The ruthlessness reinforced the peril we were in.

“Well, here’s your companion’s Garden of Eden.” The bodies had already bloated in the sun.

We fired three shots in quick succession to bring the others up and then salvaged what we could. The camp had been looted, but we found pemmican, kettles, and even some cached horns of gunpowder that had been overlooked. We didn’t have time to bury anyone. Who knew if Red Jacket would suddenly return?

“My friends, it is time to make a serious decision,” Pierre said. “Your stories are entertaining, but here we’re presented with the reality of our situation. The longer we wander, the worse our peril. This river now turns back northeast if we continue to ascend it. That means back toward Grand Portage. We may have time to get back to the fort, ask for protection, and even return home with the fur brigades.”

“But home is that way,” Namida said, pointing west.

“Your home. And that of the Dakota, who share Red Jacket’s blood.”

“My people will protect us.”

“Your people are far away, and we don’t know how to find them.”

“That’s the way to the tree and the tablet!” Magnus said.

“And slow and merciless death, giant. Your stories are entrancing, but…” He turned to me. “Ethan, what do you think?”

“I don’t trust anyone.” I looked east longingly.

“No.” Namida looked at me with annoyance and said something to Little Frog. Both women began shaking their head. “Cowards will make us slaves again.”

“We’re not talking cowardice, we’re talking sense,” I said.

“We’ll buy you if we have to,” Pierre offered, “and send you home in the spring. By that time the two donkeys will be gone and Red Jacket will have forgotten.”

“He never forgets.”

“But how will we get west from here, with no river!” He seemed to fear dry land as much as Red Jacket.

“Walk. We find other rivers.” She pointed again. “Many rivers and lakes to the west, Frenchman.”

The voyageur turned to me. “Make her understand we’re safer at Grand Portage.”

But I wasn’t sure that was true, either. Meanwhile, the two Indian women had already picked up their things and were walking off in exactly the opposite direction Pierre wanted to go, Little Frog leading the way. “They don’t seem to be persuaded.”

Magnus watched them disappear into the trees, turned to us and our canoe, and then turned back again.

“Come,” begged Pierre, “The Indians won’t bother two squaws, or merely re-enslave them if they do. But Red Jacket could return here at any moment. Let’s find friendly Indians, tell them what happened, and make them our protectors. They’ll escort us back to Grand Portage.”

“And give up the hammer?”

“The hammer is a story. Red Jacket is real.”

“No,” said Magnus, stubbornly shaking his head. “I don’t trust the British, and I didn’t come this far to stop now. The women are right. Our path is that way.”

“But we can’t paddle!”

“Then learn to walk, little man.” And Magnus set off after the two Indians as well.

“Stop calling me little man!”

Well, tarnation. Here was a splendidly sensible idea—take our hair home while we still had it to take—and my Norwegian preferred suicide! Nothing I’d heard about the Dakota made me want them as enemies, and Red Jacket and the Somersets had our map to guess where we’d be going. The forest seemed dank and endless, no doubt full
of malevolent beasts and cannibal monsters. But the ladies wanted home, Magnus wanted his hammer, and I? It did seem a pity not to at least take a peek for treasure. I sighed.

“I’m sorry, Pierre. It appears we’re outvoted, three to two. I think I’d better go on to keep watch on Magnus. We both know he’s a lunatic.”

“So are you, if you keep marching toward the Dakota!”

“I’m in your debt for saving us. Take the canoe, go back to Grand Portage, and if we find something worth keeping I’ll share it with you anyway. I promise. Go back to your friends.”

“But you’re my friends, now!”

“Well, your friends are going that way.” I pointed after the others.

“
Mon dieu
, you are not donkeys but jackasses! When the Dakota stake us all to the plains, do not blame me!”