The Dakota Cipher

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

We paddled as far west as we could, passing from river to broad lake and back to river again, through a flat, forested landscape untouched by time. Mist hung on the reeds in early morning until the sun condensed it into evaporating diamonds, the warmth loosening our muscles as we stroked. The lakes were a perfect blue, clean enough to drink, with fish so plentiful they would boil in the shallows. We used the fat of our kills to grease ourselves against the insects, and their hides to patch our clothing. It was crowded in our single craft but sometimes Namida would lean against me and Little Frog would do the same with Pierre, resting as we glided. Instead of a pipe, we’d haul out on grassy islands to lie and look at lazy clouds. Only Magnus was impatient. The days were shortening.

When the river became no more than a stream and its channel turned south, Pierre guessed it was time to strike more directly west. We met another hunting party of Ojibway, these lithe and confident Indians as different from the wretches we’d seen in Ohio and Detroit as a duke from a debtor, and again as helpful as Red Jacket’s band had been hostile. Muscled, bronze, and at perfect ease in the wilderness, they had an easy, enviable manner that at first I couldn’t put my finger on. Why did they seem so different from the great mass of civilised men?

But then I recognised their quality: they were free. Oh, they were conscious of the cycling seasons and the daily arc of the sun, but they had no schedule and no destination, no ambition and no bosses, no dogma and no cause. They simply were alive. Their church was sky and forest, their loyalty was to family and clan, their destiny was as whimsical as the weather, and their science was magic. They were fierce about only one thing: their independence, their ability to roam where mood or need took them. True, they were hungry and cold and in pain at times, but how I now envied their presence in the present, in a world with no real history and no anxious future! Yet I could never capture that because I hadn’t been born to it; even out here I could never quite forget the tug of Washington and Paris, of distant armies and ambitious generals and a future with Zebulon Henry and compound interest. Why would I ever go back to such a world?

Because I was also frightened of this one: the endless space, the yawning silence, the reality of never making any material advance and of being suspended in a cottony now. I was, in the end, me. The Indians of Detroit and Grand Portage had been corrupted, but I understood their corruption. My kind had traded freedom for security, the simplicity of animals for the predictability of civilisation. I’d been cast out of Eden, but I had the promise of compound interest! I longed for this native freedom, but feared it, too. I was all for possession of Louisiana, but only if it could be tamed. There was no familiarity here. I sometimes heard spirits moving in the woods at night. I had little sense of direction away from the river by day. A wild thing could burst from the bushes at any moment.

I dared not confess this to Pierre.

At the advice of the Indians, we portaged our canoe a full day’s march to another stream, this one flowing west. The country was opening up into a savannah of wood and prairie, untrammelled and brimming with game. Our first bison came two days later. The animals drifted with insouciance, huge hump and shoulder tapering down to a sprinter’s hindquarters, as if two separate animals had been assembled to make one. Their brow was matted with dark, curly hair and wicked-looking horns, and their great dark eyes regarded us warily as we drifted past, the wind making the aspen shimmer.

‘Dakota territory,’ Pierre said.

Seeing the buffalo, I could almost imagine woolly elephants across the next ridge. Sometimes I stood on the bank’s high, sweet grass and pretended I was in Africa. The country and sky were opening, great white clouds sailing by like tall ships, the grass humming with locusts that skimmed ahead like flying fish when we stretched our legs.

The weather was like nothing I’d ever experienced. Many days we journeyed west under an endless bright sky, but occasionally black clouds like smoke would suddenly appear on the horizon and rise like a midnight curtain, blotting out the sun. The temperature would plunge as the wind rose, the prairie grass flailing frantically, and it would grow difficult to hear. Thunder would rumble, lightning flash, and Magnus and Pierre would look at me expectedly.

‘I have no equipment!’ I’d shout. ‘Science is about instruments and machines!’

They wanted sorcery.

Then rain or hail would lash as we crouched like humble animals, the storm boiling overhead in shades of grey, green, and purple. Once we watched a tendril of black reach down like an ominous finger and form a curious funnel, like a ram’s horn. Then the storm would pass as quickly as it had come, grumbling behind us. The sun would reappear, grass steaming, and soon we’d be hot again, insects rising in clouds.

So we were alternately soaked and sweaty, hungry and then gorging saltless meat before it could spoil, tired from trudging and restless from sleeping on hard ground. Namida would cup against me for warmth at night, and when we snuck away to make love, she’d buck and cling with fierce ecstasy, not wanting to let me go.

But I knew, always in the back of my mind, that it couldn’t last.

Namida and Little Frog were becoming excited as the country opened to remind them of home, but Magnus was troubled.

‘There are no great trees here; this can’t be right.’

‘You must read the ancient words,’ Namida insisted. ‘What you call the cipher. Come, come, we must find my old village and the stone!’

The first realisation that we’d not left trouble behind came after we crossed the Red River of the North.

Pierre recognised the waterway because it flowed the direction of its name. Its cottonwood bottomlands had grass so high it reached above our heads.

‘So this is the one that runs to Hudson’s Bay?’ Magnus asked.

‘Yes, eventually. If your Norse came from there they could have paddled right by where we’re now standing, exploring to the south. The Red flows to Lake Winnipeg, and the lake empties farther north yet through the Nelson to Hudson’s Bay. From where we are now standing, in the middle of North America, you can boat to Europe.’

Magnus turned to face south. ‘So the hammer is upstream?’

‘Who knows? We need this stone cipher.’

‘How far?’ Magnus asked Namida.

She shrugged. ‘A week?’

‘Does a river lead there?’ asked Pierre.

‘My village is on one, but I don’t know which way it goes.’ She pointed southwest. ‘If we walk, we can find it.’

‘Walk again!’ cried Pierre. ‘I don’t like this idea of wandering in the grass, like a fly on paper!’

‘But that’s the way we have to go,’ Magnus said.

‘So let’s complete our rescue of these fair maidens,’ I added.

‘Maidens! Thank God they are not!’

We canoed across the Red, unloaded our meagre belongings, and abandoned our boat. ‘I feel like a shipwrecked sailor,’ Pierre mourned.

‘The prairie country should be like navigating the sea,’ I countered. I looked at Namida. ‘We’ll be safe with her people, I hope.’

There were trees in the valley but we climbed bare bluffs beyond. The Red was winding ochre, north and south. To the west we entered a rolling steppe that stretched to infinity, the grass dry, wildflowers mostly gone.

With no wood for fuel, Little Frog had to show us how to use dried buffalo dung for fires. It burnt surprisingly hot and smokeless.

And so we travelled, Pierre groaning at the indignity of walking, leaving no mark on the emptiness we traversed. My mind had settled into the monotony of marching, idly watching another storm build in the west from which we had no shelter, when Namida – who was bringing up the rear as we ascended the brow of a hill gentle as an ocean swell – suddenly pitched herself flat and cried warning. Little Frog and Pierre immediately followed, pulling Magnus and me down with them.

‘Dakota!’

I raised my head. In a little valley behind us, a party of a dozen Dakota warriors ambled on horseback. They were the first horsemen we’d seen among the Indians, and they sat their mounts like centaurs, torsos bare except for bone breastplates and paint. They had lances and bows, but only two guns that I could pick out. If it came to a fight, I could pick their gunmen off with my rifle before their trade muskets got within range. A couple of scalps fluttered from their lances. They hadn’t spied us.

‘Maybe they’ll just ride by,’ I said.

‘Then why are they coming in our direction?’ Magnus asked.

‘They’ve seen our sign and know we’re helpless,’ Pierre said. ‘We’re on foot.’

‘Should we shoot or parley?’

‘Too many to fight.’ He turned to Namida. ‘Can you deal with them?

She shook her head. ‘They are enemies of the Mandan.’

As if in reprieve the Dakota halted more than a mile away, one turning to call. More appeared, farther away, and for a moment I hoped this new group would draw the first band away. They rode towards each other. But then Pierre hissed and my heart sank. Even from a distance I could see the bright scarlet of Red Jacket’s coat. We were being hunted, not by canoeing Ojibway but mounted Dakota. He’d come west to recruit new followers!

‘They found our canoe and struck west to follow us,’ the Frenchman guessed.

I looked farther west. The sky was blackening again. But where was a hiding place on this endless, rolling prairie?

And why had Red Jacket followed us so far? The hammer. Were the Somersets still alive, and driving him? I didn’t see them.

‘What’s your plan, sorcerer?’

‘Maybe I can pick off Red Jacket and the others will go away.’

‘Dakota do not go away.’

Thunder rumbled across the prairie. I looked again at the approaching storm. ‘Then I’m going to enlist the lightning. Look!’ Vast purple thunderheads were sweeping our way like charging castles, their topmost towers a brilliant white and their undersides a forbidding black. A gauzy curtain showed where rain or hail was falling. In the opposite direction it was still blue and bright, as if the sky held night and day at once.

‘We can’t reach that in time!’ Namida said.

‘It’s going to reach us. Look how fast it is approaching.’ Indeed, the speed of the tempest was disquieting. This storm was different.

‘It’s Thor, come to save us,’ Magnus muttered.

‘No, it will kill! Look!’ She pointed.

Again, a curious funnel-shaped cloud had formed. It reached down like a probing finger, touched the ground, and a whirlwind of debris spun around its mesmerising tip like shavings from a bit. Then it seemed to fly apart and disappear.

‘What was that?’

‘A killer wind, as bad as the cannibal Wendigo! We must run from it!’

I looked at the Dakota. They’d spotted us but were pointing to the storm, too, horses milling. The wind was blowing hard now, grass thrashing, and the light was rapidly emptying from the day. In the wedge of blue sky still left to the east I saw the party of forty mounted warriors crest a rise and stop, silhouetted against the light and hesitating to close with us.

‘No! We must run towards it!’

‘Are you mad?’ asked Pierre.

‘I’m a sorcerer! Come on, Magnus! Let’s go meet Thor!’

We grasped the hands of the women to pull them and ran, linked, towards the wall of the storm. Yipping uncertainly, the Dakota saw our boldness and lashed their steeds in reluctant pursuit.

Now the wind was roaring in our faces, grit and fat globs of water spattering us. It was cold and deafening. Another black funnel touched down, and then another. Thunder boomed, and for an instant the prairie flashed silver. All the bad weather of the world had gathered for an instant! Ice pellets began to fall, big enough to sting, and the wind climbed to a howl. I looked back, barely able to see Red Jacket exhorting the others to charge through a silver curtain. Our pursuers were losing cohesiveness as some fell back.

Now a funnel formed directly in front of us. A more menacing phenomenon I’ve never seen. The wind was sucking upward in a whirling maelstrom of dirt and cloud, weaving towards us like a drunken thing. The sound rose to a shriek. Namida and Little Frog were crying.

‘It will kill us all!’

It was the only thing I could think of to frighten Red Jacket. ‘We need to get it between us and the Indians!’

‘Donkey, it will suck us off the earth!’

But we had no choice. I hauled our party into a dent in the prairie, a dry wash now filling with ice pellets and storm water, and splashed to a cleft in its dirt bank. ‘Hide here!’ I looked up. Now the funnel seemed to reach as high as the stars, a vast, bellowing, devouring monster of a cloud – a god’s power made manifest. We squeezed together into our clay crevice just as the funnel achieved a siren’s scream.

The black thing seemed to have scooped up the very air. I could barely breathe, and my ears ached and popped. The churning winds had a horrible grinding noise.

‘Crawl in! Hold on! Close your eyes! It’s Thor!’

And there, at the edge of this dark funnel, on the crest of horizon between earth and sky where the prairie thrashed like something electrocuted, did I see the elephant?

I have no proof. I don’t even have firm memory. But some huge animal seemed to flash for a moment on the horizon, trumpeting to the sky with long trunk and curved tusks, some great lumbering hairy tower of a beast, monarch of the plains, lord of creation, ancient memory of a greater age in the past. For one moment I saw the lightning flash on its ivory. Just for a moment! And then it was hidden by a curtain of rain and I had to cling against the ferocity I’d run towards.

We held each other, shaking, and the world dissolved into spinning dust oscillating faster than any machine on earth. I felt it tug at our legs and we clawed at dirt and grass roots to stay pinned. I risked the turn of my head for a momentary peek. There – at the top of the whirling black wall – was that a glimpse of blue far above, of heaven or Valhalla?

Then it was beyond us, lightning flashed, and rain fell in a deluge, hissing as it melted the ice. The little ravine was half flooded with water. We crawled higher, gasping, and at last dared lift our heads and look for the funnel.

It was gone. The day was shifting again from black to grey. To the east, where the Indians had been, was a line of forked flashes.

We were too drained to do anything but huddle. Slowly the day lightened back to something approaching normal, even as the sun in the west backlit the inky curtain that was now to our east.

And of Red Jacket and his Indians? There was no sign.

‘They bolted, Ethan,’ Pierre said with wonder. ‘They knew you were an electrician, and they ran for their lives.’

I stood, wishing Franklin had taught me some milder form of expertise.