The Dakota Cipher

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

We tramped into the worst country yet, thick woods and meandering swamp. The nights were growing crisper, but the days were still hot and buggy. There was no direct path, so we used the sun to strike west as close as we could.

‘The swamp will discourage pursuit,’ Magnus said.

‘That is good,’ Pierre said, ‘because we make one mile of progress for every three hours of circling, wading, and meandering.’

Indeed, it took us three days and forty miles of marching to make what I guessed was at best twenty miles in our desired direction, following hummocks across wetlands and moose trail through eerily quiet forest. Twice I saw water snakes undulate away and thought again of Apophis, the Egyptian serpent god. We shot and butchered a deer, but our hasty meals never caught up with our persistent hunger. I felt lean as rawhide.

Finally the still water seemed to show a slight current, waterweed bending, and we sensed we were nearing the path of another river. The marsh seemed to be tilting west. A final belt of woods and we reached broad water running south. This new river was too wide to easily swim, and the idea of struggling up its brushy banks was unappealing.

‘I hadn’t dreamt dry land could be so wet,’ I said.

‘A canoe remains the only way to travel in this country,’ said Pierre. ‘If we found a stand of birch and some spruce root we could build one, but even the least excuse for a canoe would take a week or more.’

‘Spring is the time to take the bark, not now,’ Namida said.

‘So we bushwhack? Swim?’

‘We build a fire, have a proper meal, and wait,’ she advised. ‘White men hurry too much. Start doing things the Indian way.’

I was hesitant to advertise our presence, but Namida reasoned that if Red Jacket was pursuing us across the swamps we’d have seen sign by now. So we roasted venison, boiled wild rice, and almost as if expected, an Ojibway hunting party drifted down on us after smelling our smoke and food.

‘See? Wait for help,’ said Namida.

By now I feared red strangers, but by extending the normal hospitality of Indians we got the same in return. These men were as different from Red Jacket’s band as a hotelier from a dungeon keeper: shy, curious visitors who accepted our food matter-of-factly because of the mutual aid expected in the wilderness. It is the poorest who are the most generous. There were four men hunting in two canoes, which left room for game and furs. The women interpreted and they informed us that upstream this new river turned west. So we purchased one of their boats with four of the last silver dollars I’d hidden in my moccasins. Pierre had a steel awl and we drilled holes in the metal so that they could be hung as medallions. The Ojibway were so pleased that they gave us extra food and explained how this river upstream led to a series of lakes, streams, and portages and finally yet another river, that one flowing west.

So we set off again, happy to be paddling now that we’d suffered the alternative. We’d been converted to voyageurs.

‘This may be the beginning of the Mississippi, but I’m not sure,’ Pierre said. ‘This country is a maze of rivers and lakes and I’ve not been here.’

‘Even the maps at Grand Portage were blank in these parts,’ I recalled.

The Frenchman pointed to the western bank. ‘If so, there’s your Louisiana, Ethan. We’re at the edge of Napoleon’s new empire.’ Our course along it led north and west.

Now there were no forts, no maps, no certainties. If a woolly elephant had poked its head from the trees along the riverbank, I wouldn’t have been the least surprised. We did see moose feeding in the shallows, great jaws dripping, and armadas of ducks on pewter-coloured lakes. In truth it did seem like an Eden, with the animals we saw not yet frightened by gunshots.

We passed villages of Indians as peaceful as Red Jacket was warlike, the children running along the bank to point at our white skin and Magnus’s red beard as we glided to a rest. The women streamed down to see us, curious, while the men hung slightly back with their bows, watchful but not unfriendly. Namida and Little Frog would ask, interpret, and then direct us on our way, always coming away with a gift of food. I left a coin at each one until I had no more.

When we camped, our Norwegian would sometimes climb a tree to survey the country in hopes of finding sign of Norse habitation. But all was simply an undulating expanse of forest and lake, endless and empty in all directions.

We healed and began to relax as each day passed with no sign of pursuit. Red Jacket’s band seemed increasingly remote. I’d almost certainly wounded or killed Cecil Somerset and perhaps dissuaded Aurora with my hard blow, and Pierre had winged the Indian chief. Maybe they’d been stung enough. Meanwhile, thanks to the women, the wilderness became a cornucopia, my rifle barking and the ladies gathering fruits. Magnus used his axe to whittle cooking spits, canoe braces and a dozen other useful tools as we travelled. Twigs yielded a crude tea. The inner bark of the basswood tree made strips to stitch birch into useful containers. Spruce gum was boiled to caulk leaks. The women taught us how camping near clay banks with swallows’ nests would provide us a zone almost free of mosquitoes, so voraciously did the little birds dine on them.

Little Frog had given up trying to attach herself to Magnus, who remained resolute against female attention. She instead made partners with Pierre, who took her attention as nothing more than his due for rescuing and accompanying us. He made no pretense of love, but instead initiated that cheerful sexual companionship that was the free and easy manner of the fur trade.

Namida, without request or negotiation, made herself a partner to me and, in the simple manner of that country, a potential wilderness bride as well. I knew there was a gulf of centuries between us, but could it be bridged? There was a limit to what we could talk about – she had no concept of cities or kings – but she began to educate me about survival in her world, showing how to find a simple root or make a simple shelter.

As for romance, for days she treated me with affectionate reserve, but finally she came to some decision, and one evening, as the sky where we were going went aflame from the sunset, she abruptly stood before the log where I was sitting, cleaning my rifle. ‘Come with me to gather wood,’ she suggested.

Pierre’s eyebrows rose. He’d told me once that wood-gathering time was the favourite period for the young to sneak off and make love in the forest, away from the disapproval of their elders. ‘Yes, go find some fuel, Ethan.’

‘Capital idea. Don’t want to get too chilly!’

She led me rapidly through the trees, light as an antelope. Namida was slightly pigeon-toed, in the Indian manner – their habit of walking with their feet straight or slightly turned in seemed to help their stealth and speed – and as confident in this green forest as a Philadelphia matron in a market. I followed in anticipation, neither of us picking up so much as a twig for a fire.

In a mossy glen she turned suddenly, smiled, and encircled my neck. I pulled her against me, marveling at the smoothness of her cheeks, the startling blue eyes, the copper of her hair. She was an alloy mix, as alien as a goddess. Finally we kissed, lightly at first, her nose and face rubbing against mine, and then more urgently.

‘You rescued me,’ I murmured when we broke. ‘That was brave, to demand us for husbands. It gave Pierre time and space to open fire.’

‘You came to save me,’ she said, ‘and now you’re taking me home.’

‘Some women I know believe in fate, Namida. Do Indians believe in that?’

‘I do not know that word.’

‘That the Manitou or destiny wanted us to meet so we could help each other. That our partnership was supposed to happen.’

She shook her head. ‘What good is that? Then our choices mean nothing. No, I chose you. I decided you were a good man.’

‘And why is that?’ It’s true, I think, but I always like to hear the reasoning of others.

‘No one obeys you. No one fears you.’

That’s not quite the impression one wants to leave with a woman, but it seemed to work with Namida. ‘Well, I am affable.’ And I kissed her again.

Her lips responded, sweetly and then passionately. She pressed herself against me, coiling with arm and leg, and we sank into a bed of sweet moss, warm and earth-smelling after the day’s sun. I lifted her tunic off her head and she tucked the doeskin under herself, raising her hips slightly, her colouring like honey. If we were headed to Eden, surely this was Eve. She reached up to loosen the laces of my shirt and trousers. I was more than ready.

‘Pierre said you enchanted me,’ I told her. ‘That you fed me seeds to attract me.’

She lifted her knees. ‘Do you think I need charms?’

‘It appears not.’

‘But it’s true, I did cast a spell. Women must do so to make a man sensible. Now we will give each other power.’ She smiled, her blue eyes startling, and I was so struck by her sweetness that I literally lost breath.

To give! So different than the greedy grasping of a Pauline or an Aurora. Despite my own poor judgment, I’d found a woman who saw me as a partner. I was falling in love.

And so we entwined while the others waited, in vain, for firewood.

By the time we got back they’d fetched their own.