At the advice of the Indians, we portaged our canoe a full day’s march to another stream, this one flowing west. The country was opening up into a savannah of wood and prairie, untrammelled and brimming with game. Our first bison came two days later. The animals drifted with insouciance, huge hump and shoulder tapering down to a sprinter’s hindquarters, as if two separate animals had been assembled to make one. Their brow was matted with dark, curly hair and wicked-looking horns, and their great dark eyes regarded us warily as we drifted past, the wind making the aspen shimmer.
‘Dakota territory,’ Pierre said.
Seeing the buffalo, I could almost imagine woolly elephants across the next ridge. Sometimes I stood on the bank’s high, sweet grass and pretended I was in Africa. The country and sky were opening, great white clouds sailing by like tall ships, the grass humming with locusts that skimmed ahead like flying fish when we stretched our legs.
The weather was like nothing I’d ever experienced. Many days we journeyed west under an endless bright sky, but occasionally black clouds like smoke would suddenly appear on the horizon and rise like a midnight curtain, blotting out the sun. The temperature would plunge as the wind rose, the prairie grass flailing frantically, and it would grow difficult to hear. Thunder would rumble, lightning flash, and Magnus and Pierre would look at me expectedly.
‘I have no equipment!’ I’d shout. ‘Science is about instruments and machines!’
They wanted sorcery.
Then rain or hail would lash as we crouched like humble animals, the storm boiling overhead in shades of grey, green, and purple. Once we watched a tendril of black reach down like an ominous finger and form a curious funnel, like a ram’s horn. Then the storm would pass as quickly as it had come, grumbling behind us. The sun would reappear, grass steaming, and soon we’d be hot again, insects rising in clouds.
So we were alternately soaked and sweaty, hungry and then gorging saltless meat before it could spoil, tired from trudging and restless from sleeping on hard ground. Namida would cup against me for warmth at night, and when we snuck away to make love, she’d buck and cling with fierce ecstasy, not wanting to let me go.
But I knew, always in the back of my mind, that it couldn’t last.
Namida and Little Frog were becoming excited as the country opened to remind them of home, but Magnus was troubled.
‘There are no great trees here; this can’t be right.’
‘You must read the ancient words,’ Namida insisted. ‘What you call the cipher. Come, come, we must find my old village and the stone!’
The first realisation that we’d not left trouble behind came after we crossed the Red River of the North.
Pierre recognised the waterway because it flowed the direction of its name. Its cottonwood bottomlands had grass so high it reached above our heads.
‘So this is the one that runs to Hudson’s Bay?’ Magnus asked.
‘Yes, eventually. If your Norse came from there they could have paddled right by where we’re now standing, exploring to the south. The Red flows to Lake Winnipeg, and the lake empties farther north yet through the Nelson to Hudson’s Bay. From where we are now standing, in the middle of North America, you can boat to Europe.’
Magnus turned to face south. ‘So the hammer is upstream?’
‘Who knows? We need this stone cipher.’
‘How far?’ Magnus asked Namida.
She shrugged. ‘A week?’
‘Does a river lead there?’ asked Pierre.
‘My village is on one, but I don’t know which way it goes.’ She pointed southwest. ‘If we walk, we can find it.’
‘Walk again!’ cried Pierre. ‘I don’t like this idea of wandering in the grass, like a fly on paper!’
‘But that’s the way we have to go,’ Magnus said.
‘So let’s complete our rescue of these fair maidens,’ I added.
‘Maidens! Thank God they are not!’
We canoed across the Red, unloaded our meagre belongings, and abandoned our boat. ‘I feel like a shipwrecked sailor,’ Pierre mourned.
‘The prairie country should be like navigating the sea,’ I countered. I looked at Namida. ‘We’ll be safe with her people, I hope.’
There were trees in the valley but we climbed bare bluffs beyond. The Red was winding ochre, north and south. To the west we entered a rolling steppe that stretched to infinity, the grass dry, wildflowers mostly gone.
With no wood for fuel, Little Frog had to show us how to use dried buffalo dung for fires. It burnt surprisingly hot and smokeless.
And so we travelled, Pierre groaning at the indignity of walking, leaving no mark on the emptiness we traversed. My mind had settled into the monotony of marching, idly watching another storm build in the west from which we had no shelter, when Namida – who was bringing up the rear as we ascended the brow of a hill gentle as an ocean swell – suddenly pitched herself flat and cried warning. Little Frog and Pierre immediately followed, pulling Magnus and me down with them.
‘Dakota!’
I raised my head. In a little valley behind us, a party of a dozen Dakota warriors ambled on horseback. They were the first horsemen we’d seen among the Indians, and they sat their mounts like centaurs, torsos bare except for bone breastplates and paint. They had lances and bows, but only two guns that I could pick out. If it came to a fight, I could pick their gunmen off with my rifle before their trade muskets got within range. A couple of scalps fluttered from their lances. They hadn’t spied us.
‘Maybe they’ll just ride by,’ I said.
‘Then why are they coming in our direction?’ Magnus asked.
‘They’ve seen our sign and know we’re helpless,’ Pierre said. ‘We’re on foot.’
‘Should we shoot or parley?’
‘Too many to fight.’ He turned to Namida. ‘Can you deal with them?
She shook her head. ‘They are enemies of the Mandan.’
As if in reprieve the Dakota halted more than a mile away, one turning to call. More appeared, farther away, and for a moment I hoped this new group would draw the first band away. They rode towards each other. But then Pierre hissed and my heart sank. Even from a distance I could see the bright scarlet of Red Jacket’s coat. We were being hunted, not by canoeing Ojibway but mounted Dakota. He’d come west to recruit new followers!
‘They found our canoe and struck west to follow us,’ the Frenchman guessed.
I looked farther west. The sky was blackening again. But where was a hiding place on this endless, rolling prairie?
And why had Red Jacket followed us so far? The hammer. Were the Somersets still alive, and driving him? I didn’t see them.
‘What’s your plan, sorcerer?’
‘Maybe I can pick off Red Jacket and the others will go away.’
‘Dakota do not go away.’
Thunder rumbled across the prairie. I looked again at the approaching storm. ‘Then I’m going to enlist the lightning. Look!’ Vast purple thunderheads were sweeping our way like charging castles, their topmost towers a brilliant white and their undersides a forbidding black. A gauzy curtain showed where rain or hail was falling. In the opposite direction it was still blue and bright, as if the sky held night and day at once.
‘We can’t reach that in time!’ Namida said.
‘It’s going to reach us. Look how fast it is approaching.’ Indeed, the speed of the tempest was disquieting. This storm was different.
‘It’s Thor, come to save us,’ Magnus muttered.
‘No, it will kill! Look!’ She pointed.
Again, a curious funnel-shaped cloud had formed. It reached down like a probing finger, touched the ground, and a whirlwind of debris spun around its mesmerising tip like shavings from a bit. Then it seemed to fly apart and disappear.
