The True Account (10 page)

While I set up my easel, Boone began to crack facetious about Thomas Jefferson, whose Republican principles he detested. He maligned the President as a whoremaster and the father of whores and whoremasters. Boone called him a traitor to his country for forbidding settlement west of the Missouri, and a pretender who had stolen the last presidential election through bribes and chicanery. This my uncle could not bear to hear; seizing my pencil, on the pretext of adding a few finishing touches to the sketch, he placed Boone, bearskin and all, cowering high in a tree, and a bear with a top hat and a rifle underneath, drawing a bead on him. This caricature he signed, boldly, “To Daniel Boone, with the compliments of true
TEAGUE KINNESON.”
My uncle then affected great diffidence about showing Boone the results of his pencil, at last consenting to let him see it only if we were first allowed to ride our mounts to a low hillock overlooking the settlement, lest he be entirely overcome by embarrassment at nearer proximity. Most of the company thought this stipulation curious, but Boone said we could ride clear back to St. Louis for all he cared, only be quick about it, for he longed to see his likeness. My uncle thrust the drawing into the crotch of the tree to which we had tied our mounts, and off we galloped to the hilltop, arriving just as Boone unfolded the sketch. There was a stunned pause. Then the enraged bear-killer roared, “To horse. And a double eagle to the man who brings the villain to me alive.”

Up went a great bloodthirsty whoop. There was a wild, scattered flurry, and the chase was on. My uncle and I broke for the open grassland east of the settlement, then doubled back in the bed of a little stream that ran into the willow brakes along the river, counting on the whiskey that Boone and the others had drunk to assist us in this ruse. Our strategy seemed to work, as the cries of our pursuers faded off in the distance.

We had not proceeded far along the narrow trace through the willows, however, when a tanager-colored flash in the trees ahead caught my eye and I heard hoofbeats coming our way fast. And who should come galloping headlong out of the willows, straight at my uncle, but Flame Danielle herself, astride her big bay, with a pink cushion for a saddle and her long red locks flying. She leaped from her saddle and pulled him off Ethan Allen, quite knocking out his breath as he fell to the ground with her aboard him.

“Now, here are the rules, you absconding rounder,” she cried, laughing. “There ain't no rules!”

In a trice they were in each other's arms, and I do not know what might have happened next had we not suddenly heard horses crashing through the underbrush. “Hold the ravisher off a minute longer, little darling,” Boone roared out. “We be there instantly.”

“I must flee for my life, my dear Dulcinea,” cried my uncle.

“Then let us exchange tokens of our affection,” Flame cried, “and meet again as soon as ever we can.” She whipped off his codpiece, wrapped it around her head like a crimson turban, and threw him her little pink riding cushion to use in its stead. A moment later we were off toward the high ground to the north.

“He headed back toward the river slough, pappy,” I heard Flame shriek. “We've got him cut off. He's ourn.”

Leaving Flame to misdirect her relatives, we rode hard all the rest of that morning, pausing to breathe our animals just once. By noon we believed ourselves safe. Over cold venison from the night before, my uncle allowed that he owed his nearentrapment to the whiskey he had imbibed with his breakfast. Yet his smirking grin, along with a thoughtful gleam in his eyes whenever he spoke of Miss Flame afterward or hitched up his breeches and patted the pink cushion he now wore inside them in lieu of his codpiece, made me think that perhaps, if we survived our great odyssey, their little business in the willow brake might turn out not to be the end of their acquaintance.

 

 

 

 

N
OW THAT WE WERE
completely beyond the reach of civilization, all nature seemed larger than in Vermont, Virginia, or Tennessee. The expansive sky, the wide river, the huge red morning and evening suns and palatial late afternoon thunderheads—this Louisiana was an altogether grander country than any I had ever dreamed of. Not an hour passed during the next week when I did not long to stop and paint the newest vista over a knoll or round a bend in the river. But I also had a strong urge to push on ahead, for I was terribly eager to meet and sketch a Missouri River Indian in his own surroundings.

“‘Now mother, O mother, go dig my grave, go dig it deep and narrow,'” crooned my uncle. “‘Sweet William died for me today, I will die for him tomorrow.'”

“Uncle, will not your singing frighten away every Indian within ten miles?”

“Hardly, Ti. The native peoples of Louisiana will soon be singing ‘Barbrie Allen' with me. The dulcet strains of my ballads will call them nigh, as the Sirens did Greek sailors.”

Sometimes my uncle was joined in his singing by field larks with flashy yellow and black cravats, or the softly melodious bluebird, or the twittering black-capped bobolink. Every copse on the great grassy terrace above the river held feeding deer, flocking turkeys, or black bears that sallied forth to graze on the first ripe strawberries, lifting their heads to watch us pass, then resuming their feeding unconcerned. The backwaters of the river were loud with ducks and teeming with fish. Tight-sitting snipe went up from under my horse's feet, hooting wildly as they traced out their intricate high dance against the dawn and twilight skies. The meadows were ablaze with many-colored wildflowers unknown to us New Englanders.

But on windless days the mosquitoes rose out of the tall grass by the millions; and though we besmeared ourselves with mud and tallow and bear grease, they assailed us all day and all night as well, insinuating themselves, along with their yet more numerous cousins, the stinging midges, into every opening in our clothing and every crease of our exposed skin—between our fingers, in the lines at the corners of our eyes and mouths, where the hair left off on our necks. My uncle did valiant battle with them, swatting right and left and crying, “Now the Sioux and Blackfeet show their true colors, Ti. Down with them. Crush them. We'll plow salt into their fields as the Romans did those of old Carthage.” To no avail. All we could do was keep to the high ground, where the wind was most apt to blow. Evenings we built smudgy fires of sodden driftwood culled from the riverbank and crept as near to the smoke as we could get, coughing like a fine pair of consumptives. Soon our clothes and skin alike were aired like a Vermont ham.

Sometimes, when the endless rolling prairie grew tedious after we had been riding most of the day, we would pass the time by posing to each other the old riddles my uncle had taught me when I was small. “A stick in his hand, a stone in his throat, answer this riddle and I'll give you a groat,” I'd call out.

Then my uncle would frown and ponder and knit his white brows until, abruptly, he would smite his copper crown with his hand and cry, “A cherry! Ha ha, Ti. You must get up early in the morning to get one past me.”

After which he would think for a few moments, then smile slyly as though
this
time he would stump me once and for all, and say, “Little Nancy Ettycoat wears a white petticoat and has a red nose; the longer she stands, the shorter she grows.”

“I can't imagine,” I would say, after pretending to rack my brain. “You have me there, uncle. You have riddled me.”

“A candle,” he would cry, and then I would smite
my
head as though I should have known the answer all along—as indeed I had.

I was amazed by the flatness of the country. To a Vermont farm boy brought up in a land so tilted that it was said that the cows' legs were a foot shorter on one side from grazing steep hillsides all day, the endless prairie was dizzying; and sometimes we both felt lost under the ever-widening sky. “Here we are, Ti,” my uncle would suddenly cry out, two or three times a day, with a jingle of his bell. To which I would always reply, “Here we are, sir.”

When my head started to spin from the vastness of our surroundings, I found it best to fix my attention on some closer feature of the landscape or on my unchanging uncle, riding along with the sunshine flashing off his mail and trolling his old ballads. But exactly where we were, and exactly why, and exactly what sort of place this Louisiana might be, other than a very flat one, I could not say.

I missed my father and mother, especially at night. Then we would get out our spyglass and gaze upward into the heavens until we felt like the only human beings in the universe, and my uncle would jingle the bell on his cap all over again to convince himself of his own existence.

 

I don't know how a person knows when he's being watched. He does, though. Just as he knows when he comes to a bad place in the woods where a killing or some other terrible thing has taken place. About ten o'clock one morning, we both felt it and knew someone was watching us from nearby. “We're about to see your Indians, Ti,” my uncle told me. “Limber up your paintbrush.”

At the time we were riding through some tall cottonwoods close to the river. As we reemerged onto the open prairie, we sighted no one, and by noon we had decided that whoever it was had gone on about their business. But the next morning we spotted three young men on horses across the river on a bluff where no one at all had been a moment earlier. They were armed with bows and arrows, and their long hair was dyed bright carmine, with one side of their faces painted black, the other white.

Now, for reasons known only to himself, my uncle had long held the conviction that while our eastern Indians had probably originated from a band of nomadic hunters from the far north, western Indians might well have come from China. Therefore he called out loudly, in what he assured me was good Cantonese, “We greet your celestial personages with much respect and bring the felicitations of the Supreme Khan of America, Thomas Jefferson. We are travelers come to see your Great Wall from Vermont, where we have stone walls ourselves. And you must not think yours superior to ours, though I'm sure it's very sturdy.”

This salutation, uttered in a high, fast singsong, seemed to have no effect upon the Indians other than, after a minute, to cause them to laugh. Whereupon my vexed uncle said he was surprised that so polite a people as the Orientals had not taught their youth better manners, and for all he cared the three newcomers could “go straight back to China in a handbasket.”

As we rode on, my uncle muttered to himself about the sad state to which the young had sunk the world over, while the Indians kept pace with us along the opposite side of the river. From their gaudy appearance, I believed they were out looking for enemies or for horses to steal, but I was not greatly alarmed so long as the Missouri lay between us. After a while they went away. But the following morning the trio appeared again, this time on our side of the river.

My uncle was now determined to force an audience with our admirers and put an end to this puss-and-mouse game. Accordingly, we stopped on the edge of the ever-present cottonwoods along the river, where he instructed me to paint his face black and white, which I must say gave him a very fearsome aspect. But though we remained there for above two hours, the Indians never came forward and after that we saw them no more.

 

Two days later we nooned it at the mouth of the Kansas River. As we ate our meat, we noticed many large white feathers drifting down the current. At first my uncle was greatly alarmed, supposing that some young Icarus of Louisiana, attempting flight with wings fashioned from feathers and wax, had flown too near the sun, which had melted the wax and precipitated him to his death somewhere up the river. I assured him that this could not be the case, since the river was choked with feathers, far too many to have come from one flying boy. Instantly he got out his “Chart of the Interior of North America” and boldly crossed out the word “Kansas,” substituting
Fluvius Pennae,
or “River of Feathers.” But where was all this plumage coming from? Determined to solve the puzzle, my uncle said that we would adventure up along the tributary for a certain distance and see what we could discover.

We had not gone far before we came to a large island covered with what I first mistook for snow. How this could possibly be I had no idea—my uncle feared it was a mirage thrown up by some giant or wizard to confuse us. But as we came closer we saw that the island, about half a mile long and a third wide, was covered with pelicans. The birds—so numerous that many had been crowded off into the water—were molting, and the white feathers choking the river were theirs.

More interesting still, just off the lower tip of the island, in a very primitive-appearing dugout canoe on a sandbar buried deep in feathers, sat a tiny, angry-looking man wearing nothing but a nightshirt. “Heyday, what have we here, Ti?” cried my uncle. Then, to the stranger, “Private True Teague Kinneson, at your service, sir.”

“It's you, is it?” the nightshirted man called out in a querulous voice. “Throw me a rope and tow me off this accursed bar, and for God's sake be quick about it. I've been befeathered here for three days and two nights. The River Missouri, you said. Go west by the River Missouri, John Ledyard, if you wish to cross the continent. Well, gentlemen, thank you for the excellent advice. The River Missouri, I must inform you, is half a mile wide and an inch deep and too thick to drink and too thin to plow and I've gone so far wrong that I don't know if I'll ever go right again. What in the deuce held you up? Do you have any rum?”

“Jehovah forbid, no, John Ledyard,” my uncle replied. “Rum has gotten me into trouble enough before now. We have no strong spirits, but something else that's far better for you. I mean, of course, hemp. Here”—throwing him a rope, which the angry little voyageur affixed to a spike in the bow of the canoe—“we'll pull you ashore.”