Streams to the River, River to the Sea by Scott O'Dell

Author:Scott O'Dell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Chapter Seventeen

Before we started the next morning, Captain Clark came to the tent where Charbonneau was stretched out in front of the fire, eating his breakfast.

Captain Clark was wrapped in a buffalo robe against the cold. His eyes looked angry. "What happened last night?" he asked. "Sergeant Ordway tells me that he found you in one of the canoes, about to bid us farewell. Is that true?"

Charbonneau had a quick answer. "Shoshone here, she wake Charbonneau. She cry many tears. She beg take her back to Minnetaree. She fraid of Blackfeet. Fraid for baby, Jean Baptiste Charbonneau."

Captain Clark waited for me to say something. I put Meeko in his cradleboard and said nothing. I had learned, I had been warned to hold my tongue.

"My wife, she Shoshone. Afraid everything," Charbonneau said. "We leave now. Sorry, too bad."

"You can leave if you want to. I'll pay you the money we owe," Captain Clark said. "But you can't take a canoe. We need every one we have."

Charbonneau grumbled. "Me walk, huh?"

"You walk," Captain Clark said.

"Long way.

"Yes, a very long way."

Captain Clark turned his back on us and went down to the river.

Charbonneau ate the last piece of his boiled buffalo. He picked it up, held it in his jaws, and cut it in two with his knife. Then he wiped his mouth on his beard and went to fold our tent. As soon as he was gone I followed Captain Clark. He was putting the things he had gathered the day before in his canoe.

"I don't want to see you go," he said. "The men will miss you. You've kept up their spirits. They tell themselves, 'If a girl with a baby on her back can do this day after day, then we can too.' They keep going when they would like to quit."

"Charbonneau did not speak for me," I said. "He lied when he told you that I woke him in the night and wept and begged him to take me back to Fort Mandan. It was a lie, Captain Clark. I did not weep and I did not beg."

"Do you want to go with us?" he said.

"Yes."

"But you're afraid of what Charbonneau will say?"

"No, of what he will do. He has a bad temper."

"We need you," he said. "The journey has been hard so far, but from here on into the high mountains it will be worse. Dangerous. Do you understand what I am telling you?

"I understand."

"Still you want to go?"

"I do."

"I'll not hold it against you if you turn back. You'll be safe. The baby will be safe. You're sure you want to go?"

There was nothing, nothing that would make me turn back. Wherever he led, I would go.

"Yes," I said. "I am sure."

Dawn was breaking. The sun shone through the trees. It turned his hair to bright copper. He looked like the God of the Gods Above.

Charbonneau sidled up to the pirogue and tossed his blankets over the rail. He got into a canoe and took up a paddle.

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