Part 8

There was a big dinner, of juicy meats, stewed corn, stewed dried pumpkin, with plum pudding at the close. The captains were present, in uniform. There was more dancing, and story-telling; not until late at night was the fort quiet. All the Indians had kept away.

Thus was passed Christmas Day, 1804, at this first United States fort west of St. Louis, 1600 miles up the River Missouri, in the centre of a North Dakota yet to be named.

“When do we have another Christmas, George?” asked Peter, eagerly.

“Not for a long time, Peter,” laughed George. “Christmas comes only once a year.”

For, you see, Peter had a great deal to learn.

Now Fort Mandan settled down to a winter routine. The United States flag floated. The swivel cannon from the barge had been planted in the street, its muzzle commanding the entrance. Just outside the gate a sentry constantly paced, by day; another sentry walked a beat on the top of a mound of earth that half circled the rear of the fort and banked the store-rooms against the cold. John Shields, the blacksmith, established his forge――and that, also, was great medicine. The Indians crowded about to watch the bellows fan the charcoal into ruddy heat. Even the interpreters were astonished, when John set to work.

“Ma foi!” exclaimed Toussaint Chaboneau. “I go get my squaw’s kettle. She haf one hole in him.”

Away he ran, and returned with Sa-ca-ja-we-a, bringing her kettle. A gentle little woman was the girlish Sa-ca-ja-we-a, or Bird-woman, of the far distant Snake nation; everybody was fond of her. John Shields willingly took the kettle, and patched the hole in it; and beaming with smiles the Bird-woman hastened to put it on her fire again.

But the wife of Jessaume had a kettle which could _not_ be mended; and very indignant and jealous she left the fort, with her kettle and her children, and went across the river to her own people.

“Huh!” said Jessaume, shrugging his shoulders. “She be so bad, guess I get ’nodder wife.”

John Shields not only mended kettles for the women, but he mended the battle-axes and tomahawks of the men. From scraps of sheet-iron and tin he manufactured a marvelous variety of articles――hide-scrapers, punches, arrow points, and occasionally a whole battle-ax. For these, the Indians from the villages traded corn and beans and dried pumpkins, so that John proved to be a valuable workman.

William Bratton and Alexander Willard sometimes helped him; and as they were gun-smiths too, they repaired the rifles of the expedition and the few fusils of the Indians.

The weather blew warm, and cold again. There were hunting excursions; and on January 1, 1805, which, Peter learned, was called New Year’s, there was another celebration, like that of Christmas.

“Ze Mandan, dey reques’ we pay visit to deir village an’ show ze squaw an’ boys how ze white mans dance,” informed Chaboneau, in the morning, after a call from Big White.

So the captains gave permission for Cruzatte and George Gibson to take their violins, and for York and Patrick Gass and a dozen others to go, and entertain the village of Big White.

They trapsed gaily across the river, and in the lodge of Chief Black Cat, who lived at this village, Francois Labiche, one of the boat-men from Cahokia, opposite St. Louis, danced on his head to the music of the two fiddles, and thereby greatly astonished the Indians.

The village rewarded the dancers with buffalo robes and corn; and that evening Head Chief Black Cat brought to the fort another quantity of meat packed on his wife’s back.

“Let the white medicine dancers visit my other villages, or there will be jealousy,” he urged.

“I will haf no more hair,” complained Francois Labiche.

Forty below zero sank the thermometer. John Newman froze his feet so badly that he was unable to walk in, and a rescue party with horses were sent to get him.

Captain Clark, with Chaboneau as guide, led a hunting party down-river, with the thermometer eighteen below. Chaboneau returned alone, to say that Captain Clark had obtained some meat, but that the horses could not carry it on the slippery ice.

“Your wife is ill, Chaboneau,” informed Captain Lewis. And Chaboneau rushed for his lodge.

Forth he darted again.

“My wife she ver’ seeck,” he cried, wringing his hands. “W’at s’all I do? I fear she die, ma pauvre Sa-ca-ja-we-a (my poor Sa-ca-ja-we-a).”

“I’ll try to tend to her, Toussaint,” said Captain Lewis; and got out the medicine chest.

But all that night, and part of the next day the groans of the little Bird-woman could be heard.

“Dere is one remedy I hear of,” spoke Jessaume. “I sorry my wife lef’. But sometime de Injun gif de rattle of de rattlesnake.”

“Let’s try that, then,” bade Captain Lewis.

So the captain broke open the specimen bales in the store-room and found a dried rattlesnake skin. With Chaboneau jumping about imploringly, he crumbled two of the rattles into water, and this the suffering Bird-woman drank. Everybody at the fort was interested.

Soon from the lodge of Chaboneau issued a new sound――a feeble, shrill, piping wail. But the groans of Sa-ca-ja-we-a had ceased. Out again darted Chaboneau, his leather face beaming.

“One fine boy,” he shouted, capering. “It is all right. One fine boy. I t’ink he look like me.”

The next day, which was February 12, the hunting party returned, having left their meat in a pen to protect it from the wolves.

“I have the honor to announce a new recruit, Captain,” reported Captain Lewis, saluting Captain Clark, a twinkle in his eyes.

“What’s his name, Merne? Chaboneau?” demanded Captain Clark, smiling broadly, with cold-reddened face.

“He is leetle Toussaint,” proclaimed Chaboneau. “One fine boy who look so han’some as me.”

“B’gorry,” uttered Sergeant Pat, “an addition to our number, is it? Faith, he has good lungs, but I thought it was a weasel chasin’ a rabbit.”

The next morning four men and three horses to haul sleds were sent down to get the meat; but at evening they came back empty-handed. A hundred Sioux had robbed them. Captain Lewis set out at sunrise, to punish the robbers. Only three or four Mandans went. Chief Black Cat said that his young men were out hunting, and the villages had few guns, so his people could not help the white soldiers.

Captain Lewis was gone six days. He did not overtake the Sioux, but he brought up the meat――part of it on a sled drawn by fifteen men.

Mr. Gravelines, the trader, arrived from the Arikara nation. The Sioux sent word by the Arikaras that they would hereafter kill the white soldiers whenever they caught them.

But nobody at the fort minded these threats. February slipped into March, and all thoughts were turned upon the onward journey as soon as the river opened.

The thermometer rose to forty above zero. A flock of ducks were seen, flying up stream.

“The first sign,” quoth Sergeant Gass.

The weather was “open an’ shet,” as said Pat, with wind, sunshine, and snow flurries. But the ice in the river began to move, a little; another sign of spring. The captains decided that the barge was to be sent back to St. Louis, with the specimens, and the Corporal Warfington squad and other extra men. Under the direction of Captain Clark and Patrick Gass, the carpenter, boat timber was cut, and small pirogues, or canoes, were built, to take the place of the barge. John Shields was busy all the days long, making battle-axes to trade for a fresh supply of corn.

The store-room was ransacked and the clothing and such damp stuff was hung out to dry. Great strings of geese and swans and ducks passed, northward bound. The rising river burst into a channel; down it floated ice cakes, carrying buffalo, elk and deer. The Indians, running out across the firmer ice, killed them with spears. The canoes were finished and brought out of the timber, and to the bank at the fort. All hands were put at work loading.

This was an anxious time for Peter. Was he to be sent down with the barge, or was he to be taken on, with the captains and Pat and all?

“I go,” announced Chaboneau. “I engage’ as one interpreter, for ze journey to ze Rock Mountains an’ ze salt ocean. I take my young wife, an’ my baby, but I leave my ol’ wife.”

“Do I go, Pat?” queried Peter.

“Well, now, I dunno,” drawled Pat, pausing to wink at Toussaint. “An’ what would we do with a boy, yonder up amongst the white bear an’ the two-headed Injuns? For I hear there be giants, wearin’ two heads on their shoulders. Sure, they’d ate a boy with only one o’ their mouths.”

“I hunt,” asserted Peter.

“Would ye kill bear an’ buff’lo with the bow an’ arrer?” teased Pat. “Ain’t we got Drouillard an’ Fields an’ the captains an’ meself, all handy with the gun?”

“I show you, Pat,” exclaimed Peter.

Two steps he made, and grabbed his bow and quiver, where they were lying on the gunwale of the barge. The quiver was full of iron-pointed arrows, which John Shields had equipped for him. Out he ran, upon the ice of the river. His quick eye had noted a black object floating down the channel aboard a floe. No Indian was after it, yet. He would show that he was as good a hunter as any Indian.

Buffalo? Elk? Deer? Wah! It was crouching, and he could not yet tell. But fast he ran, in the slush, dodging air-holes, and with the ice weaving and bending beneath him. Suddenly, as he approached, heading off the floe, the creature stood. It was no buffalo, or elk, or deer; it was a bear.

Wah, again! Also, hooray! Voices were shouting at him, to turn back; but, no, he would not turn back, even for a bear. He was a hunter. He ran faster, because he was afraid that some of the men would come with guns.

He reached the edge of the channel. The bear stiffened, lowered its head, and bristled, showing every fang. No “white bear” was it, evidently. It was a brown bear, but an old one, large and cross. Below, a few yards, the channel narrowed; the floe might lodge there, or the bear be enabled to spring from it to the other ice. Peter must act quick. He knelt and bent his bow――drew the arrow clear to the iron point, so that his arm holding the bow was straight and the hand of the other arm was against his shoulder. That was the way to shoot. The bear was right in front of him, balancing on the ice cake. Twang-thud! The arrow struck true――was buried to the feathers where the bear’s neck met shoulder.

Now another! Up reared the bear, roaring and clawing, and the floe swerved in toward the channel’s edge. Peter in his haste to pluck a second arrow, string it and launch it, slipped and fell sideways――and on the instant the floe had touched the channel edge, where the channel narrowed; roaring, the bear had sprung ashore, and roaring he was coming, the arrow feathers dripping red and his tongue dripping red, and crimsoned froth slathering his open jaws. The bristles on his back were full six inches high.

All this Peter saw in a twinkling. He had time only to launch his arrow. But he took good aim, there on his knees; whang-thud!――his second arrow landed near the first; and away he ran. From the bank at the fort men, both white and red, were running, too; running to help him. They waved their arms and weapons, shouted loudly.

Peter changed his course. They should _not_ help him. He would show Pat, and the captains, and everybody, what he could do. He glanced over his shoulder. The bear was close. A bear could easily outrun a boy, or a man, and for a short distance, a horse. Aside leaped Peter, digging in his moccasined heels, for foothold in the soft spots; another arrow was on the bowstring; with scratching of claws and furious growl the bear slid past. But Peter had turned in a flash, and while turning had drawn his bow. Whang-thud! The arrow sank almost out of sight in the bear’s ribs, forward where the heart should be.

“Hooray!” cheered the shouting men.

The blow had knocked the bear down. He went sliding, in a struggling heap. Now he roared indeed, and twisting his head bit at the arrow. Up he rose, sighted Peter, and on he came. Peter lost a moccasin, his foot slipped. He stood his ground, held his breath, and took very careful, cool aim――bending his bow till it quivered in his grasp. A moment more, and the bear would rear, to strike him――and he loosed the taut string. The arrow struck the bear right in the nape of the burly neck; his head was low, bear fashion, and Peter had taken the chance. Down sprawled the bear, as if smitten by lightning, for the arrow point had cut his spine. He shivered, and was still. The four feathered ends jutted from his hide. He was a dead bear.

“Glory be!” panted Sergeant Pat, arriving. “An’ ye did it all by yourself! But, sure, I thought I see ye ’aten up entoirely.”

“Huh!” grunted Little Raven, second Mandan chief, prodding the lax, furry carcass with his spear. “Heap boy. Make big hunter.”

All together they dragged the bear, at the end of Pat’s belt, to the barge. Peter, of course, said nothing. But when Captain Clark clapped him roundly on the shoulder, and Captain Lewis said, “Well done, Peter,” he knew that he stood a good chance of being taken up-river. The Long Knife was not much given to idle words; but he appreciated deeds. The bear proved to be very old, very thin, with tusks worn to stubs. Hunger had driven him out of his winter hole early. The hair of his hide was loose. Nevertheless he was a large specimen.

“We’ll send his head to the President,” remarked Captain Lewis to Captain Clark. “No such bear as this can be found in Virginia or Kentucky.”

X

THE KINGDOM OF THE “WHITE BEARS”

April was ushered in by a great thunder-storm of rain mingled with hail. That speedily cleared the river. The rotted ice went swirling down, and soon from bank to bank the Missouri was free.

“De trail is open,” said old Cruzatte.

“How far to the Rock Mountains, Pat?” asked Peter.

“Another thousand miles, I hear tell. An’ after that, another thousand miles to the big ocean.”

“How do we get over the mountains, Pat?”

Pat scratched his carroty thatch, and reflectively rubbed his stubbled chin.

“Faith, an’ I dunno. Trust to the commandin’ officers, I guiss. That’s the proper way for soldiers. We’ll find a gate some’ers. There be some tremenjous falls to get around, fust, say the Injuns.”

“Sa-ca-ja-we-a know,” proudly asserted Chaboneau. “Her peoples lif dere, in ze mountains, beyond dose falls. She speak ze Snake tongue.”

“I gwine to kill one ob dem white b’ars,” boasted York.

All the fort was in a fever of impatience――the down-river men to be on their way “back to the United States,” as they expressed it; the up-river men to be on their way into a new country never explored by white foot. Long letters were being scrawled, for the “folks at home,” telling them of the past year’s adventures; Captain Lewis was busy preparing his report to the President; Captain Clark was laboring nights, by fire-light, putting final touches on a map of the Missouri, based upon a ruder map sketched by Little Raven, the Mandan, with charcoal on a buffalo hide. Baptiste Lepage and Chaboneau helped, for they, also, had been many days’ travel westward, trading with the Cheyennes and the Minnetarees.

Only John Newman was sad at heart. Captain Lewis had decreed that he be returned to St. Louis at the first opportunity. The opportunity was near. John pleaded to be permitted to go on with his comrades. He wanted to make good. Already he had showed that he was repentant of his brief bad conduct. Had he not worked faithfully, and even frozen his feet?

Captain Clark might have yielded to him, but Captain Lewis was sterner.

“No, John,” he said, again. “I must make an example of you. I cannot run the risk of any more mutinous talk. We have two thousand miles before us, and the party must all work together. You will return to St. Louis on the barge. Later, if your good conduct continues, I will request the President to overlook your offense and you will be granted an honorable discharge.”

“Yes, sir,” replied John Newman, saluting. “But it’s pretty tough, sir. I’d rather take another lickin’, sir.”

However, in time, John did receive honorable discharge, and was granted the 320 acres of land and the extra pay allowed to the other men.

April 7 was the day for breaking camp. By five o’clock in the afternoon the boats, loaded and manned――the barge for down-river, the six canoes and the two pirogues for up-river――were being held at the bank, waiting only for the captains’ orders.

“Ready, barge?” called Captain Lewis.

John Newman gripped the last of the hands extended to him by his former comrades, and clambered aboard. He and five of the Corporal Warfington privates from St. Louis were the guard. The sixth private, Moses B. Reed, was being returned as a prisoner, for he had attempted to desert, with his musket and other government equipment. Corporal Warfington was in command. Trader Gravelines was the pilot. Two French boatmen were the crew. Chief Brave Raven, and two other Arikaras who had accompanied Mr. Gravelines up from the Arikara village, also were aboard. They were going on to Washington to see their great white father.

For President Jefferson were being sent Captain Clark’s journal and map, and Captain Lewis’s report to this very date. And many hide and wooden boxes of specimens and trophies: two stuffed antelope, a white weasel pelt entire, squirrels that had been brought by the Minnetarees clear from the Rocky Mountains, dried prairie dogs, mountain sheep and elk and deer horns, a painted buffalo robe picturing a battle of Mandans and Minnetarees against Sioux and Arikaras, a beautiful shield made and decorated by Chief Black Cat especially for the great white father, Peter’s bear head, a yellow bear hide and other furs, Indian shirts and leggins and moccasins, a Mandan bow and battle-ax, and even an ear of the red Mandan corn. And three cages containing a live ground squirrel, a prairie hen, and four magpies.

Not until ten months later did these wonders arrive at Washington.

“All ready, sir,” responded Corporal Warfington, to the captain.

“Give way.”

Out pushed the barge. Captain Lewis drew his sword.

“Present! Ready! Fire!” he shouted. And every rifle, of canoes and pirogues, cracked in a volley.

“For the United States,” murmured Patrick Gass. “Arrah――but good luck to ’em.”

Then into the white pirogue sprang Captain Lewis.

“Give way,” he cried, standing beside Captain Clark; and out were shoved the eight boats together. Captain Lewis nodded at Gunner Willard.

“Boom!” spoke the swivel cannon, in farewell to the shore.

Sha-ha-ka and other Indians had come over in skin canoes to bid the Long Knife and the Red Head goodby. They stood, and gazed, and made no sign. They would wait, and take care of the white fathers’ fort.

“We’ll be back,” declared the buoyant George Shannon, as he bent to an oar. “Stay where you are, old fort. We’ll be back in the fall and light your winter fires again.” For the captains thus had figured.

“We locked the gates, but sure the Injuns’ll be climbin’ over the fince before we’re out o’ sight,” grunted Sergeant Pat.

The wind was almost dead ahead. With oars and paddles the men settled to their work. Now the party numbered thirty-three, and Peter.

There were the two captains――Captain Meriwether Lewis and Captain William Clark (to each other “Merne” and “Will”), from Virginia and Kentucky; and Sergeants John Ordway, of New Hampshire, Nathaniel Pryor and Patrick Gass; and Privates William Bratton of Captain Lewis’s state (Virginia); Alexander Willard from John Ordway’s state, and John Shields, of Kentucky, the three smiths; Reuben Fields and Joseph Fields, brothers, John Colter, Joseph Whitehouse, William Werner, who like Pryor and Shields, were from Captain Clark’s state, Kentucky; John Collins, of Maryland; John Thompson, the surveyor, from Indiana; Robert Frazier, of Vermont; the handsome, merry George Shannon from Ohio and Pennsylvania both; George Gibson, the fiddler, Hugh McNeal, John Potts, Peter Wiser, all from the same place as Pat and George――Pennsylvania; Silas Goodrich and Thomas Howard and Hugh Hall, of Massachusetts; Dick Windsor, said to hail also from Massachusetts.

Peter knew them all; fine men; but he liked Pat and George Shannon the best.

Then, there were the Frenchmen: gay old Cruzatte, with his one eye and his lively fiddle; Francois Labiche, the boatman who danced on his head; Baptiste Lepage, who joined at the Mandan villages to take the place of one Liberté who had run away; George Drouillard, the hunter; Chaboneau and Sa-ca-ja-we-a, the Bird-woman, who was to help the party into the mountains and make friends of the Snakes. And little Toussaint, the beady-eyed baby――a great pet.

And York, black, enormous York, the great medicine, whom all the Indians so highly respected.

Yes, this was a glorious company, from which a boy might learn much.

So, in a line, the eight boats proceeded up the Missouri, through present North Dakota. The wind blew sometimes fair, sometimes adverse; sometimes so strong that it lifted the fine sand in dense clouds above the river and the men’s eyes were made sore. Captain Lewis’s tightly-cased watch stopped and would not run.

At the end of the first week, when the night’s camp was breaking up, for the day’s journey, George Shannon espied a black animal slinking through the grass.

“Wolf!” uttered Pat. “An’ a black wan, for the captains’ collection. Wait till I draw a bead on him.”

“No! That’s a dog, Pat!” And George whistled. “Don’t shoot.”

The black animal crept toward George, stomach to earth, tail wagging.

“Assiniboine dog,” pronounced Chaboneau. “He sled dog. Draw ze sled in winter, an’ ze travois――ze lodge pole, in summer. He from dat ol’ camp we see yesterday. Mus’ be los’, poor leetle dog.”

“He’s only a puppy, and nigh starved,” said George, patting him.

So the black shaggy little dog was taken along.

That night at camp Lepage and Chaboneau consulted together.

“I never been up-river furder dan dees,” announced Baptiste. “I t’ink once I stop right at dees spot, an’ turn back. Chaboneau, he stop once ’bout t’ree mile below.”

“Then it’s our own trail from here on,” spoke John Shields.

Where North Dakota and Montana meet, George Drouillard was sent out to explore south up the Yellowstone River. He returned with report of many sand-bars and much coal.

Beyond the mouth of the Yellowstone, in the morning of October 26, while the boats were slowly sailing on up the Missouri, Captain Lewis suddenly appeared, at a clear spot on the bank, and signaled with a rifle-shot.

“Faith, the cap’n’s been in a hurry,” observed Patrick Gass, as the boats turned in.

And so he evidently had. He was still out of breath.

“We’ve killed a large white bear,” he panted. “Some of you men come and help Drouillard bring him down.”

“Good work, Merne,” called Captain Clark. And enough men tumbled ashore to carry half a dozen bears.

Cruzatte ran, Peter ran, the Fields brothers ran; all ran. Back a few hundred yards they found Drouillard working with his knife on the carcass of a bear.

“No! Let’s fetch him down entire, for the whole crowd to see,” cried Reuben Fields. “He’s a sockdologer. Look at him, Joe!”

“He not so ver’ beeg――but he beeg plenty,” averred Cruzatte.

“Who shot him, Drouillard?”

“De cap’n an’ me, both,” answered Drouillard. “Dere was two. De one we woun’, he get away. Dis odder we woun’, an’ my gracious, he chase de cap’n. He chase him seventy, eighty yard, but he bad hurt, could no run quite so fas’ as de cap’n. De cap’n load hees gun while he run, an’ shoot again――bang! Bear no fall. I come, aim queeck――bang! Dis time bear fall. But my gracious, he ver’ tough to keel.”

They dragged the huge carcass to the shore. It weighed 300 pounds. “Young bear,” declared Drouillard. Everybody crowded about, to examine its fur (which was not white at all, but was yellowish), its long claws and tusks, its little, deep-set black eyes.