It was October 11, 1823. For more than a month he had moved away from his quarry. A strategic retreat—but retreat none the less. Beginning today, Glass resolved to retreat no more.
PART TWO
SIXTEEN
NOVEMBER 29, 1823
FOUR PADDLES HIT THE WATER in perfect unison. The slender blades cut the surface, pushed to a depth of eighteen inches, then dug hard. The bâtard slogged forward with the stroke, bucking against the heavy flow of the current. When the stroke ended, the paddles lifted from the water. For an instant it appeared that the river would steal back their progress, but before it could rob them completely, the paddles hit the water again.
A paper-thin layer of ice had covered the still water when they embarked at dawn. Now, a few hours later, Glass leaned back against a thwart, basking appreciatively in the midmorning sun and enjoying the nostalgic, buoyant sensation of floating on water.
On their first day out of Fort Brazeau, Glass actually tried to handle a paddle. After all, he reasoned, he was a sailor by training. The voyageurs laughed when he picked up the oar, strengthening his determination. His folly became obvious immediately. The voyageurs paddled at the remarkable rate of sixty strokes a minute, regular as a fine Swiss watch. Glass could not have kept pace even if his shoulder had been fully healed. He flailed at the water for several minutes before something soft and wet hit him in the back of the head. He turned to see Dominique, a mocking grin filling his face. “For you, Mr. Pork Eater!” For yew, meeSTER pork eeTAIR! For the rest of their voyage, Glass manned not a paddle but an enormous sponge, constantly bailing water as it pooled on the bottom of the canoe.
It was a full-time job, since the bâtard leaked steadily. The canoe reminded Glass of a floating quilt. Its patchwork skin of birch bark was sewn together with wattope, the fine root of a pine tree. The seams were sealed with pine tar, reapplied constantly as leaks appeared. As birch had become more difficult to find, the voyageurs were forced to use other materials in their patching and plugging. Rawhide had been employed in several spots, stitched on and then slathered in gum. Glass was amazed at the fragility of the craft. A stiff kick would easily puncture the skin, and one of La Vierge’s main tasks as steersman was the avoidance of lethal, floating debris. At least they benefited from the relatively docile flow of the fall season. The spring floods could send entire trees crashing downstream.
There was an upside to the bâtard’s shortcomings. If the vessel was frail, it was also light, an important consideration as they labored against the current. Glass came quickly to understand the odd affection of voyageurs for their craft. It was a marriage of sorts, a partnership between the men who propelled the boat and the boat that propelled the men. Each relied upon the other. The voyageurs spent half their time complaining bitterly about the manifold ails of the craft, and half their time nursing them tenderly.
They took great pride in the appearance of the bâtard, dressing it in jaunty plumes and bright paint. On the high prow they had painted a stag’s head, its antlers tilted challengingly toward the flowing water. (On the stern, La Vierge had painted the animal’s ass.)
“Good landing up ahead,” said La Vierge from his vantage point on the prow.
Langevin peered upriver, where a gentle current brushed lightly against a sandy bank; then he glanced up to judge the position of the sun. “Okay, I’d say that’s a pipe. Allumez.”
So vaunted was the pipe in voyageur culture that they used it to measure distance. A “pipe” stood for the typical interval between their short breaks for smoking. On a downstream run, a pipe might represent ten miles; on flat water, five; but on the tough pull up the Missouri, they felt lucky to make two.
Their days fell quickly into a pattern. They ate breakfast in the purple-blue glow before dawn, fueling their bodies with leftover game and fried dough, chasing away the morning chill with tin cups of scalding hot tea. They were on the water as soon as the light allowed them to see, eager to squeeze motion from every hour of the day. They made five or six pipes a day. Around noon they stopped long enough to eat jerky and a handful of dried apples, but they didn’t cook again until supper. They put ashore with the setting sun after a dozen hours on the water. Glass usually had an hour or so of dimming light to find game. The men waited with anticipation for the single shot that signaled his success. Rarely did he return to camp without meat.
La Vierge jumped into the knee-deep water near the bank, careful to keep the bâtard’s fragile bottom from scraping against the sand. He waded ashore, securing the cordelle to a large piece of driftwood. Langevin, Professeur, and Dominique jumped out next, rifles in hand, scanning the tree line. Glass and Professeur covered the others from the canoe as they waded ashore, then followed. The day before, Glass found an abandoned campsite, including the stone rings of ten teepees. They had no way of knowing if it was Elk Tongue’s band, but the discovery put them on edge.
The men pulled pipes and tobacco from the sacs au feu at their waists, passing a flame from a tiny fire set by Dominique. The two brothers sat on their butts in the sand. In their positions as bowsman and steersman, Dominique and La Vierge stood to paddle. As a consequence, they sat to smoke. The others stood, happy for the opportunity to stretch the kinks from their legs.
The colder weather settled into Glass’s wounds the way a storm creeps its way up a mountain valley. He awoke each morning stiff and sore, his condition made worse by the long hours at his cramped perch in the bâtard. Glass took full advantage of the break, pacing up and down the sandbar to coax circulation through his aching limbs.
He regarded his travel companions as he walked back toward them. The voyageurs were remarkably similar in dress, almost, thought Glass, as if they all had been issued a formal uniform. They wore red woolen caps with sides that could be turned down to cover their ears and a tassel trailing off the top. (La Vierge dressed his cap with a jaunty ostrich feather.) For shirts they wore long cotton blouses in white, red, or navy, tucked in at the waist. Each voyageur tied a parti-colored sash around his waist, its ends left to dangle down one leg or the other. Over the sash hung the sac au feu, keeping their pipes and a few other essentials close at hand. They wore doeskin breeches, supple enough to allow the comfortable folding of legs in a canoe. Below each knee they tied a bandanna, adding more dandy dash to their attire. On their feet they wore moccasins with no socks.
With the exception of Charbonneau, who was gloomy as January rain, the voyageurs approached each waking moment with an infallibly cloudless optimism. They laughed at the slimmest opportunity. They showed little tolerance for silence, filling the day with unceasing and passionate discussion of women, water, and wild Indians. They fired constant insults back and forth. Indeed, to pass up an opportunity for a good joke was viewed as a character flaw, a sign of weakness. Glass wished he understood more French, if only for the entertainment value of following the banter that kept them all so jolly.