The Dakota Cipher

conquest of Canada, all the labourers were French Canadian, while four of the canoes each carried either a Scot, an Englishman, or a German Jew as bourgeois, or gentleman fur partner or clerk, who rode amidships like a little sultan. The other two would carry the Somersets, Magnus, and me. We could hear the paddlers’ song in French as the flotilla neared the island, the lilting melody floating over the blue water in time to the dip of the paddles:

C’est l’aviron qui nous mene

M’en revenant de la jolie Rochelle

J’ai rencontre trois jolies demoiselles.

C’est l’aviron qui nous mene, qui nous mene,

C’est l’aviron qui nous mene en haut.

It is the paddle that brings us

Riding along the road from Rochelle city

I met three girls and all of them were pretty.

It is the paddle that brings us, that brings us,

It is the paddle that brings us up there.

The verses set the time for the stroke. We would journey on a tide of French folk song.

Our course would first pass the new British post of Fort Saint Joseph being constructed at the north end of Lake Huron, and then through the thirty-mile-long Sault Ste Marie, or the ‘Saint Mary Jump’ of rapids that led to Lake Superior. Then we would hug the northern shore of that inland sea until we reached Grand Portage at its western end.

As promised, Aurora and her cousin took a canoe different from that of Magnus and me, the woman seating herself primly on one of her trunks and holding a parasol as shade. The year had warmed now and the forests had erupted in full leaf and flower, but no public warmth emanated from Aurora, who looked steadfastly away. I tolerated this coolness because the inevitable end would be so sweet, and because it saved me from having to pay court to her whims or explain our tryst to others. I could pretend nothing had happened! I knew she’d reheat quickly enough once she missed my prowess.

Like most men, I have an optimistic appraisal of my own charm.

Cecil, after greeting the other bourgeois, took up position in a second canoe, natty as ever in fawn-coloured coat, high marching boots, and beaver-skin top hat. He carried a fowling piece on his lap to plunk at birds, and a popular novel in his pocket to pass the time. He seemed so at home in this wild country that I suspected his fine manners coated a core of experienced steel.

The voyageurs wore buckskin leggings, loose white shirts, bright caps, and, if needed, blanket coats called capots. Physically they tended to be short-legged and broad-shouldered, almost like muscular dwarves bred to the canoe. Here was our transport west! The canoe we would ride glided in and the bowman who commanded – wiry, tanned, with impish dark eyes and a jaunty red cap – bounded onto the island’s dock to block us before we could board. While the Somersets had been catered to, this captain put hands to his hips and dubiously eyed us like specimens of flotsam.

‘Mon dieu, an ox and a donkey! And I am supposed to paddle your weight to Grand Portage, I suppose?’

Magnus squinted. ‘No little man needs to paddle me.’

‘Little man?’ He stood up on his toes, thrusting his nose in my companion’s face. ‘Little man? I am Pierre Radisson, a North Man with three winters at the posts and the guide of this master canoe! The Scots pay me a full nineteen English pounds a year! I can stroke twenty hours in a single day without complaining and travel a hundred miles before sleeping! Little man? None know the rapids like the great Pierre! None can portage faster than I, or drink more, or dance more splendidly, or jump higher, or run faster, or more quickly win an Indian bride! Little man?’ He crowded into Magnus, the crown of his head at the Norwegian’s collarbone. ‘I can swim, shoot, trap, chop, and fuck better than the likes of a clumsy oaf like you, eat my own weight, and find my way from Montreal to Athabasca with my eyes closed, cyclops giant!’

Bloodhammer was finally forced to take a step back. ‘I just meant a Norwegian pulls his own oar.’

‘Ha! Do you see any oars on my canoe? You think me master of a dinghy? I think perhaps that a Norwegian is an imbecile!’ He eyed Magnus up and down like a tree he was considering chopping. ‘But you are big, so perhaps I will let you try my paddle – if you promise not to break it or use it to pick your big horse teeth, or lose it in that thicket of moss that is your face. Do you know any songs?’

‘Not French ones.’

‘Yes, and it sounds from the gravel of your throat that you will sing like a grindstone. Mon dieu! It is hopeless.’ He turned to me. ‘And you, even skinnier and more useless than him! What do you have to say?’

‘That the girls of Rochelle are pretty,’ I replied in French.

He brightened. ‘Ah, you speak the civilised tongue? Are you French?’

‘American, but I lived in Paris. I worked as an aide to Bonaparte.’

‘Bonaparte! A brave one, eh? Maybe he will take back Canada. And what do you do now?’

‘I’m an electrician.’

‘A what?’

‘He’s a sorcerer,’ Magnus explained, using French as well.

Now Pierre looked intrigued. ‘Really? What kind of sorcerer?’

‘A scientist,’ I clarified.

‘A scientist? What is that?’

‘A savant. One who knows the secrets of nature, from study.’

‘Nature? Bah! All men know savants are as useless as priests. But sorcery – now that is a skill not altogether useless in the wilderness. The Indians have sorcerers, because the woods are filled with spirits. Oh yes, the Indians can see the world behind this one, and call the animals, and talk to the trees. Just you wait, sorcerer. You will see the cliffs wink and storm clouds form into a ram’s horn. Wind in the cottonwoods will whisper to you, and birds and squirrels will give you advice. And when night falls, perhaps you feel the cold breath of the Wendigo.’

‘The what?’

‘An Indian monster who lives in the forest and devours his victims more thoroughly than the werewolves the gypsies speak of in France.’ He nodded. ‘Every Ojibway will tell you they are real. A sorcerer – that is what we truly need.’ He looked at me with new respect, even though he clearly had never heard of electricity. ‘And can you paddle?’

‘I’m probably better at singing.’

‘I don’t doubt it. Though I bet you can’t sing very well, either.’

‘I’m good at cards.’

‘Then you’re both lucky you have the mighty Pierre Radisson to look after you! You won’t need cards where we are going. But what is that you are carrying?’ he asked Magnus, staring at what was strapped to his back.

‘My axe and my maps.’

‘Axe? It looks big enough to sled on. Axe? We could hold it up for a sail, or use it as a roof in camp, or lower it as an anchor. Axe? We could recast it as artillery or start a blacksmith shop. So you might be useful after all, if you don’t let it drop through the bottom of my canoe. And you with your longrifle … that’s a pretty gun. Can you hit anything with it?’

‘I have impressed the ladies of Mortefontaine.’

He blinked. ‘Well. Paddle hard enough and I, Pierre will baptize you voyageurs if you satisfy me. That is the greatest honour a man could have, yes? To win recognition from a North Man? This means, if you are so blessed, that you must buy the rest of us a round of shrub from the company kegs. Two full gallons from each of you.’

‘What’s shrub?’ Magnus asked.

‘You might as well ask what is bread! Rum, sugar, and lemon juice, my donkey friend. Are you ready for such honour?’

I bowed. ‘We seek only the chance to prove ourselves.’

‘You will have that. Now. You will sit carefully on the trade bundles and will enter and leave my canoe with