The corpse was no bronze-skinned native, but a middle-aged white man, with thinning hair. His death had frozen an expression of the utmost surprise on an unprepossessing face.
LaBiche yelped in dismay. “It’s Barefoot Johnny!” He shook his head. “I know he’s not barefoot now, but that’s his nickname. He was a trapper, but not a very good one. One winter, Johnny was so unsuccessful that he boiled and ate his boots to survive.” He blinked at Meriwether, then turned back to the corpse. “What is Barefoot Johnny doing in this place? He’s not the sort to come here looking for magic…or anything else, really.”
Meriwether bent down and quickly spotted three small darts lodged in Johnny’s right leg and a singed spot on his left arm. The darts looked too small, barely piercing the skin, to have caused a mortal wound—unless the tips were poisoned, or otherwise impregnated with dark magic. As Clark and LaBiche watched him, he cut away the buckskin breeches with his knife to inspect the man’s thigh. But other than the discolored flesh from the onset of putrefaction, he saw no sign of inflamed tissue or bruising by the wound. Instead, there was nothing, not even much blood.
Carefully, Meriwether extracted one of the darts, looked at the leaf-shaped stone blade, and wrapped it carefully in a rag from his pocket to make sure he did not accidentally prick himself. He saved the dart in a pouch at his waist, since their charge on the expedition had been to collect specimens and curiosities for Franklin. Once back in camp, he could test parts of the stone with such reagents as would indicate the presence of poison.
Leaving Barefoot Johnny in the grass, they moved toward the conical mound again, exhibiting even more caution. The air was utterly silent, now without even the presence of chittering birds. As they came closer to the unnatural hill, they saw no movement of inhabitants, heard no shouted alarms, nor did they see any welcoming crew or threatening defenders.
A stray wind whipped against the mound here, stirring showers of dirt and pebbles. They walked to the base of the mound, and Meriwether indicated holes burrowed into the hill, like rabbit warrens. Curious, Clark put the tip of his boot into one, evoking no response. Meriwether did the same, and again felt the curious tension of breaking spiderwebs. “It seems abandoned.”
Clark put his hands on his hips and looked up. “You and I should climb the hill, Lewis, and see what’s beyond. That would prevent us from being ambushed by whatever killed that poor fellow down there.” He glanced at the others. “The men can stay here and give Barefoot Johnny a decent burial, cover him with rocks to keep the scavengers away.”
Though Meriwether felt strangely reluctant to touch and ascend the steep mound, he knew the conical top would command a good view of the countryside, maybe even reveal the extent of magical attack the land was suffering. If the great mound was high enough, he mused, maybe they could even see the land clear to the Pacific.
The two men climbed the steep hill, which proved much more difficult than it appeared. The surface was loose with crumbly dirt and pebbles, as if it had been piled up only the day before and had not settled or compacted firmly in place. The bare dirt surface held no plants, no grasses or ground cover, not even any weeds. They had to clamber up by boot-tip and fingernail, and he and Clark were panting and covered in dirt by the time they reached the mound’s summit.
Clark stood, drawing a deep breath and letting out an exclamation as he surveyed the view. Meriwether followed him, standing beside his partner. He blinked in surprise, as though by blinking he could force his eyes to see something different.
The panorama was magnificent. Vast plains so flat they seemed to extend forever, as though the hand of God had flattened the terrain all the way to the horizon. From the summit, he felt he could see tomorrow’s weather. Under the heat of August, the waist-high grass rippled like a dry sea in the breeze.
The prairie was more than just grass, though—it was an ocean of buffalo, large dark forms that moved through the grassland. Meriwether had seen the big beasts before, but not like this. He saw herd after herd, countless thousands of the animals that covered the land all the way to the horizon. These animals provided the native tribes with everything they needed, meat to eat, hides for clothing and shelter, sinew, gut, bone for other uses.
“I never conceived there could be so many in all the world,” Meriwether gasped. How could the Sioux claim to be starving?
Clark narrowed his eyes and extended his arm to point. Meriwether saw swift, predatory movement among the massed animals, driving the beasts into a panic. At first he thought it must be native hunters running or riding horseback, because a cloud of dust rose up from the pursuers.
Even from their distance, Meriwether could hear the thunder of hooves, and then another chilling sound, a loud inhuman roar. He had heard that reptilian bellow before—and now the pounding of feet, driven by massively muscled and scaled legs. More roars, and then the bleating of terrified buffalo.
Large ferocious lizard things, silhouettes in the distance, charged into the herd, thrashing their tails, biting and snapping with great jaws to break the buffalo spines directly beneath the large hump. The buffalo males charged, ramming with their sharp black horns, but the reptiles continued to attack.
“They look smaller than the giant that attacked the Sioux village,” Clark said.
“But still deadly,” Meriwether said. “And hungry.”
The great lizards massacred the buffalo, clawing their sides and ripping out entrails, biting their thick necks, running them down and trampling them. The buffalo began to stampede, churning, racing en masse in one direction and then another. The lizards were mottled gray, and they hunted in packs.
“They are coming this way,” he said, glancing down the slope of the mound to see their companions finishing the burial of Barefoot Johnny. “And they’re running as fast as good carriage horses. It won’t be long until they’re upon us.”
Clark was already moving. “Let’s rejoin our party and retreat. We can head back the way we came, retrieve your dog, and find the keelboat. Let’s be free of the lizards.”
Feeling the urgency, he and Clark half-slid, half climbed down the hill again. He worried about Seaman, though others would surely criticize him for experiencing greater concern over a dog than the men.
After they reached the bottom of the hill and rejoined the rest of the party, they quickly related what they had seen. In the sky, they could see smears of dust from the oncoming stampede, could hear a distant rumbling. “Maybe we better run,” LaBiche said, and the men sprinted back the way they had come, though the day’s heat was still oppressive and their canteens quite empty.
Not allowing themselves to rest, they finally stumbled to the narrow creek where they had left the dog and the one man to guard him. They could still hear the far-off rumble of the huge buffalo herd, but Meriwether hoped the terrified animals had charged off in a different direction.
Then a crackling fear made his skin crawl. He heard the sound of giant footfalls, thundering steps that only a creature awakened from millennia in the dust could make.
Hearing Seaman bark, Meriwether started running before he had fully realized he was moving, without even paying heed to whether his fellows were following him.
He was already unslinging his air rifle, which had fortunately already been pumped into readiness. He prayed that the oncoming reptile was one of the smaller sort, not the gigantic monster that had attacked the painted warriors. Against such a huge beast, his rifle would be like a feather.
The man left with the dog held out his rifle, too, his face pale and drawn. “Captain Lewis?”