‘What was that?’
‘A killer wind, as bad as the cannibal Wendigo! We must run from it!’
I looked at the Dakota. They’d spotted us but were pointing to the storm, too, horses milling. The wind was blowing hard now, grass thrashing, and the light was rapidly emptying from the day. In the wedge of blue sky still left to the east I saw the party of forty mounted warriors crest a rise and stop, silhouetted against the light and hesitating to close with us.
‘No! We must run towards it!’
‘Are you mad?’ asked Pierre.
‘I’m a sorcerer! Come on, Magnus! Let’s go meet Thor!’
We grasped the hands of the women to pull them and ran, linked, towards the wall of the storm. Yipping uncertainly, the Dakota saw our boldness and lashed their steeds in reluctant pursuit.
Now the wind was roaring in our faces, grit and fat globs of water spattering us. It was cold and deafening. Another black funnel touched down, and then another. Thunder boomed, and for an instant the prairie flashed silver. All the bad weather of the world had gathered for an instant! Ice pellets began to fall, big enough to sting, and the wind climbed to a howl. I looked back, barely able to see Red Jacket exhorting the others to charge through a silver curtain. Our pursuers were losing cohesiveness as some fell back.
Now a funnel formed directly in front of us. A more menacing phenomenon I’ve never seen. The wind was sucking upward in a whirling maelstrom of dirt and cloud, weaving towards us like a drunken thing. The sound rose to a shriek. Namida and Little Frog were crying.
‘It will kill us all!’
It was the only thing I could think of to frighten Red Jacket. ‘We need to get it between us and the Indians!’
‘Donkey, it will suck us off the earth!’
But we had no choice. I hauled our party into a dent in the prairie, a dry wash now filling with ice pellets and storm water, and splashed to a cleft in its dirt bank. ‘Hide here!’ I looked up. Now the funnel seemed to reach as high as the stars, a vast, bellowing, devouring monster of a cloud – a god’s power made manifest. We squeezed together into our clay crevice just as the funnel achieved a siren’s scream.
The black thing seemed to have scooped up the very air. I could barely breathe, and my ears ached and popped. The churning winds had a horrible grinding noise.
‘Crawl in! Hold on! Close your eyes! It’s Thor!’
And there, at the edge of this dark funnel, on the crest of horizon between earth and sky where the prairie thrashed like something electrocuted, did I see the elephant?
I have no proof. I don’t even have firm memory. But some huge animal seemed to flash for a moment on the horizon, trumpeting to the sky with long trunk and curved tusks, some great lumbering hairy tower of a beast, monarch of the plains, lord of creation, ancient memory of a greater age in the past. For one moment I saw the lightning flash on its ivory. Just for a moment! And then it was hidden by a curtain of rain and I had to cling against the ferocity I’d run towards.
We held each other, shaking, and the world dissolved into spinning dust oscillating faster than any machine on earth. I felt it tug at our legs and we clawed at dirt and grass roots to stay pinned. I risked the turn of my head for a momentary peek. There – at the top of the whirling black wall – was that a glimpse of blue far above, of heaven or Valhalla?
Then it was beyond us, lightning flashed, and rain fell in a deluge, hissing as it melted the ice. The little ravine was half flooded with water. We crawled higher, gasping, and at last dared lift our heads and look for the funnel.
It was gone. The day was shifting again from black to grey. To the east, where the Indians had been, was a line of forked flashes.
We were too drained to do anything but huddle. Slowly the day lightened back to something approaching normal, even as the sun in the west backlit the inky curtain that was now to our east.
And of Red Jacket and his Indians? There was no sign.
‘They bolted, Ethan,’ Pierre said with wonder. ‘They knew you were an electrician, and they ran for their lives.’
I stood, wishing Franklin had taught me some milder form of expertise.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
We now walked where no white men had ever gone, except perhaps grizzled Norsemen centuries ago. Ever since the Ohio country and its gargantuan trees, the west had been opening up, every vista broader, every sky bigger. Now the sensation of endless, empty, uncomplicated space was complete, the world reduced to its simplest elements of earth and sky. The horizon seemed to curve and distant clouds to dip. This was our planet
They hoped, and I doubted. America unrolled to complete nothingness, somewhere ahead.
Napoleon was to do something with this? I kicked at the soil, black and endlessly deep. Maybe Jefferson’s yeoman farmers could make something of it, but for French imperialists, this would be like the sands of Egypt. There was not even fur.
I saw no more elephants, no mountains of salt, no belching volcanoes, and no pursuing Dakota. The prairie had been swept clean. Each night our low coals were the only light on the empty plain. The true illumination was overhead, stars brilliantly silver and the air cold. Whereas before Namida and I, and Pierre and Little Frog, had lain as couples – Magnus once or twice looking at us with wistful envy – we now all lay huddled like sheep. I didn’t want to be out here when the first snow blew.
‘How long before winter?’ I asked Pierre.
‘We must hurry. The question will be if we have time to get back to wherever you wish to go. Where is that, sorcerer?’
‘Norway for Magnus. Washington and Paris for me.’
‘And poor Pierre? I am a thousand miles from my paddling companions, a marooned pilgrim with no winter post.’
‘You can come back with us.’
‘Can I? And Namida? And Little Frog? It’s not easy to go between two worlds.’
We’d been walking several days, deeper and deeper into the plains, me longing for a horse, when we woke one morning and found our voyageur had disappeared.
It took a moment in the predawn stillness to realise Pierre was gone. Little Frog said something in her native tongue to Namida, and the women began running up and down the swale of land where we’d camped, growing increasingly anxious.
Magnus and I stood, uneasy. Our companion could have crept off to relieve himself, or perhaps he saw some game. But the three guns were stacked as we’d left them and his water skin remained behind.
We could see no sign of him, and we could see a very long way.
‘Pierre!’ Our cries were feeble against the immensity of the prairie.
Silence.
The wind was our answer.
‘He went back to his canoe,’ Magnus said without conviction. ‘He hated walking.’
‘With no gun? And no word?’
The four of us fanned out at the points of the compass, going to the limit of where we could keep each other in sight.
‘Pierre!’ The shouts were swallowed.
We came back together to eat a cold breakfast. Little Frog looked miserable.
‘Perhaps he’s scouting,’ Magnus tried again.
No one replied.
