Across the Endless River
A
LSO BY
T
HAD
C
ARHART
The Piano Shop on the Left Bank
A
CROSS
THE
E
NDLESS
R
IVER
Â
a novel
 
Thad Carhart
First published in Canada in 2009 by
McArthur & Company
322 King Street West, Suite 402
Toronto, Ontario
M5V 1J2
www.mcarthur-co.com
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations,places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imaginationor are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2009 T.E. Carhart
All rights reserved.
The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or byany means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise storedin a retrieval system, without the expressed written consent of the publisher, isan infringement of the copyright law.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Carhart, Thaddeus
Across the endless river / Thad Carhart.
ISBN 978-1-55278-824-0 (bound).âISBN 978-1-55278-823-3 (pbk.)
1. Charbonneau, Jean-Baptiste, 1805-1866âFiction. I. Title.
PS3603.A7348A65 2009 813'.6 C2009-904211-8
eISBN 978-1-77087-114-4
Cover Illustration by Marc Yankus
Cover photograph © Roger-Viollet/The Image Works
Cover design by John Fontana
Map by Mapping Specialists
For my children, Sara and Nicolas
C
ONTENTS
P
ART
T
HREE
THE LIFE THAT LAY AHEAD
P
ART
F
OUR
WHAT HE HAD LEFT BEHIND
O
NE
F
EBRUARY
11, 1805
O
N THE BANKS OF THE
M
ISSOURI
, 1,200
MILES
UPRIVER FROM
S
T
. L
OUIS
A
ll afternoon her cries could be heard throughout the small wooden enclosure they called Fort Mandan, winter quarters for the expedition across the river from one of the tribe's villages. Two rows of huts faced each other at an oblique angle within the stockade, and from one of these the guttural shrieks emerged with a grim regularity. In and around the other huts the men kept to their businessâskinning game, cutting wood, cleaning gunsâbut each flinched inwardly when the next cry reached his ears.
“It's her first,” René Jesseaume said as he ground an ax blade on a whetstone inside his hut. “She can't be more than fifteen; it's no wonder she has been at it for so long.”
“All you can do is wait,” said the young soldier across from him, shaking his head. He continued to dress the elk meat they had hunted two days before.
“Maybe,” Jesseaume said. He put down the ax, oiled the stone, and let himself out into the biting cold.
He crossed the central space enclosed by the palisade. On the river side the American flag snapped fiercely on its pole above the roughhewn gatehouse, its edges already frayed. Hunched against the bitter cold wind, he approached the door to the captains' quarters opposite his hut. As he prepared to knock, the door opened and Charbonneau, the squaw's husband, emerged in a daze. His eyes were rheumy, his look distracted; he passed Jesseaume without appearing to see him. Jesseaume knocked lightly on the half-open door and let himself in to the close confines of the room.
Captain Lewis looked up from where he sat by a low pallet covered with a buffalo robe. His features were worn. The young woman lay beneath a woven blanket, her face turned away from the candle at Lewis's side. Lewis began to say something but the woman cried out suddenly, a long howl that paralyzed both men before it tapered off in a whimper. Jesseaume approached and knelt by Lewis's side.
“Captain, my wife's tribe has a potion in such cases where the labor is long and difficult.” Lewis nodded for him to continue. “They crush the tail of a rattler, mix it with water, and have the woman drink it. I have never seen it fail.”
At length Lewis said, “I have given her as much tincture of laudanum as I dare. I don't suppose the Mandan remedy you propose can keep nature from taking its course.”
He rose and walked to the other side of the hut, its interior dank with the smell of sweat, blood, and wood smoke. On one wall a profusion of pelts, tails, snakeskins, and bones hung on the rough timber. He produced a knife from his pocket and snipped the rattles from the tip of a snakeskin. Then, setting his cup on an adjacent plank, he ladled out a quarter measure of water and returned to where Jesseaume crouched beside the woman.
“Will this serve?”
“Very well, Captain. I thank you.”
Jesseaume neatly snapped two of the rattles from the tail, dropped them into the water, and broke them into tiny pieces, using his thumbnail as a mortar to the tin cup's pestle. Kneeling low to the pallet, he raised the young woman's sweat-drenched head in one hand and whispered in her ear in Mandan, “New Mother, the power of the snake will tell your body how to work. Drink this, and let the snake show your baby the way out.” He held the cup to her lips then, and she raised her head to drink it, her matted hair stretched across her mouth. Gently, he pulled the strands clear and she drank the cloudy liquid, slowly at first, then in one long swallow. She lay down as if the effort of drinking was a new source of exhaustion. A short while later her body contracted, her knees rose to her chest, and she let out a shriek.
Lewis said, “I am going out for a short while. I fear our vigil may yet be long.”
“It may, Captain,” Jesseaume whispered. “But in case it is not, could you ask my wife to attend? She is at the gatehouse with Black Moccasin and his squaws.”
A quarter of an hour later the girl they called the Bird Woman, Sacagawea, brought forth a fine and healthy boy. Charbonneau was found dozing in one of the soldiers' huts. He returned, tearful and smiling, and cradled the infant, wrapped in a blanket of fox fur, as he announced proudly to all, “We will name him Jean-Baptiste, like my grandfather.”