Meriwether looked at Clark, and he could see that they both agreed. Still, he remained troubled. With magical forces like that, what could their little party do against such a great enemy? How could they storm its lair?
“So far, I judge that our enemy has sent less than its full force against us. If such is the case, we might survive, as we did before. But if we try to beard the thing in its lair, we will surely never finish our expedition.”
Clark added, “If we tried to fight all these creatures at once, we will be quite undone, and dead. And then we might be added to its army of revenants.”
Meriwether expected that Sacagawea would look impatient or angry at their reluctance. Instead, she inclined her head. “Then we will part ways here at Fort Mandan. You go to the far ocean, while Pompy and I try to rescue his father.”
Stark and clear in his mind, Meriwether knew they couldn’t let her do that. He had saved this woman and her child at birth, and he could not let her take such a risk without protection.
Sacagawea was competent and accustomed to the arcane territories, but even in good times, without the shadow of evil magic, the land was full of perils. A lone woman with a child couldn’t see every danger. That was why tribes formed, and why families traveled together.
He said, gravely, “I understand and honor your wish to rescue your husband, but the truth is, Sacagawea, that we likely cannot do it as we are now. But if you come with us, instead of sacrificing yourself in a fruitless attempt, perhaps we can find some power or discover something—” He took hope from the secret they both shared, from the dream in which he’d defeated the dragon. “Maybe then the dragon will be easier to defeat.”
She stood there in the small room, the baby sleeping on her back. She looked from one captain to the other, studying their worthiness and how much they could be trusted. Finally she gave a curt nod. “I shall try. Unless we find a way to strike at the dragon first.”
She ducked through the curtain out of the room, and shortly afterward they heard her scolding the wives of the interpreters, directing them to some task.
“I hope I talked her into the right decision,” Meriwether said.
“Surely you did,” Clark said. “We could not leave her here determined to fight that creature, alone with the babe.”
“But what if we can’t fight the evil force? What if we get to the coast and find passage? Are we going to leave her alone with this danger?”
Clark looked perturbed. “No. Once we’ve proved it can be done, we’ll come back and save her husband for her. I wonder what manner of man he must be, and what he did to win such an exceptional woman.”
Meriwether agreed, but he had no answer.
My Dearest Julia,
The packing is nearly complete. We are sending our keelboat back downriver to St. Louis loaded with our discoveries, journals, charts, specimens, and these letters. Some of our men will pilot the boat back and send a detailed report to wizard Franklin.
The rest of us, though, will venture forth into a land that no European, or at least none that maintained contact with civilization, has ever seen. We passed a remarkably quiet, though cold, winter at Fort Mandan, and now that the river ice has thinned enough to crack, we shall follow the waters again, in hopes of finding the far side of the world. It will be a grand adventure, but perhaps not too terrible, since the local natives assure us we can cross the continental divide in no more than half a day, and then we should have an easy passage to the Pacific—if such exists.
We are all in good spirits. We’ve convinced our intrepid native woman, Sacagawea Charbonneau, to join our party. She has proved herself quite adept at finding roots and berries to supplement our diet, especially on lean evenings when our hunters brought back no meat. She keeps a strong hand on the few women that straggle along with our party. In exchange, we keep her safe, along with her little boy Pomp. Working together, maybe we all can reach the Pacific.
After a month of frantic planning and arrangements, we have supplies, dry clothes, and even buffalo robes, traded from the nearby tribes. We are now ready to go on.
The locals and even Sacagawea have misgivings about us continuing our journey, but Lewis and I have seen nothing to indicate that the strange magical attacks against us are about to resume, now that Spring has awakened. Perhaps the evil force—Sacagawea tells us it originated from a trapper captured by a local spirit—sleeps still.
We have seen only one recent sign of any supernatural occurrence, when we once again encountered the hideous damned revenants of Willard, Collins, and Hall. We repelled them as they attempted to steal a barrel of whiskey we intended to pack into the boat. We drove off the undead forms of our former comrades, and they vanished into the forest. We do not know what animates them, nor why they still have such a thirst for the liquor that had gotten them killed.
Unlike the other undead, our Whiskey Revenants have not decayed visibly. They remain recognizable to us, and Captain Lewis suspects they’d drunk so much of the whiskey that they are now permanently preserved. They keep singing the same drinking song, which is how we were able to detect them and repel their assault on our supplies.
We carry with us a tent built in the Indian manner, with tall poles, covered in tanned buffalo hides sewn together with sinew. As we travel, we have determined that this portable structure will protect Lewis, Sacagawea, little Pompy and myself from the still-brisk air.
We have two large canoes, and five small pirogues. Not quite the grand fleet with which we departed from St. Louis, but we shall be more agile, more mobile, in case we should face something terrible.
Not that anything will happen to us, of course.
I hope to complete this expedition soon and be back home to you without delay.
Yours, faithfully,
William Clark
—Letter from William Clark to Julia Hancock,
April 7, 1805
Dragons and Serpents
Many more miles, and another camp. Captain Clark had gone out hunting with a party of men, while other members of the expedition erected the tent and built a large fire. Meriwether elected to stay behind, ostensibly to guard their base camp against possible magical assaults, but he hoped to have a private moment with Sacagawea so he could discuss the matter of dragons.
Such a secret conversation had been near impossible in the crowded confines of Fort Mandan, where they would surely have been overheard. Now he hoped to have time alone with her. He knew she had information that he required.
In the midafternoon, Sacagawea went off in search of wild artichokes, and now she stood on the riverbank, running a thin reed into the muddy sand, near scattered driftwood. From the camp, he watched the native woman poke the sharpened stick into the river sand, pull it back, and poke it in again. She withdrew a spiny green ball, made a sound of triumph, and knelt to dig at the hole with both hands, collecting several of the green, spiny balls. The baby asleep on her back bounced without waking.
Meriwether approached her with an innocent question. “Wild artichokes grow like that? Without external foliage?” He was genuinely curious, with his background in various native plants, and he spoke loudly enough that the men starting the fire behind them would hear him and think nothing of it.
Sacagawea looked at him, with the half smile that came to her lips more often, especially when he showed ignorance in what she considered to be everyday knowledge. On anyone else, the smile might have seemed condescending or infuriating, but on her it seemed more amusing, showing neither fear nor undue respect.
“No, they are large thistles and they grow tall,” she said. “But the water rats collect them in a hole so they can eat them when food runs low. See, it’s a rat’s larder.”
“Oh,” he said, interested. He picked up one of the spiny balls to examine it. “I’ll make a note of it in my journals.” Now that he had established that their talk was of wild artichokes, he lowered his voice. “You saw the dream dragon. My battle in the sky, on the night you came to the fort.”