There is a grave commemorating the legendary dog, Gelert, in the village of Beddgelert, Wales. In 1794 David Prichard, the first landlord of the Royal Goat Hotel (which is still in use), and two friends placed the large stone that now marks this grave on the bank of the Glaslyn River. The marker tells the story:
Gelert’s Grave
In the 13 th century, Llewelyn, Prince of North Wales, had a palace at Beddgelert. One day he went hunting without Gelert, “the faithful hound,” who was unaccountably absent on Llewelyn’s return. The truant, stained and smeared with blood, joyfully sprang to meet his master. The prince, alarmed, hastened to find his son and saw the infant’s cot empty, the bedclothes and floor covered with blood. The frantic father plunged his sword into the hound’s side, thinking it had killed his heir. The dog’s dying yell was answered by a child’s cry. Llewelyn searched and discovered his boy unharmed, but nearby lay the body of a mighty wolf, which Gelert had slain. The prince, filled with remorse, is said never to have smiled again. He buried Gelert here. The spot is called Beddgelert.
This dog story, also told in Persian, Hebrew, Irish, Hindu, and Buddhist mythology, is a version of an ancient Indian folktale found in the Sanskrit Panchatan-tra, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica (Vol. 10, 1965, p. 55). It is one of those old legends that is moving enough to be told, retold, written and rewritten. At present, no one knows why the North American Mandan Indians had such a tale, which was closely related to the late Welsh version.
While living among the Mandans, Sacajawea no doubt heard the tale. Maybe she repeated it. The dog story in the following chapter makes use of this Welsh theme. It is an interesting tale to use in a historical novel as part of the legend of the unusual Mandans.
Most historians today do not believe the “Welsh Indian” myth—that the Mandans were descendants from the Welshman, Madoc, and his followers. They believe that the Mandans were descended from a branch of the early Sioux. Mandan prehistory is only dimly known and today there are no full-blood Mandans.
The anthropologist Dr. Edward M. Bruner writes that there were nine thousand Mandans in 1750, but after the small pox epidemic of 1837 there were only twenty-three male survivors. The descendants of these people are scattered in mixed Hidatsa and Arikara communities on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation.
SHOWELL STYLES, What to See in Beddgelert and How to See It. Caernarvonshire, Wales: William H. Eastwood, 1973, pp. 9-12, 19-22.
EDWARD HSPICER, ed., Perspectives in American Indian Culture Change, “Mandan,” by Edward M. Bruner. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969, pp. 187-277.
Winter was not far off. During the night, the marsh froze hard. For days the sun had fought against the ice. Sacajawea had kept the hope that the Agaidükas would come. Now she listened to the rattle of dry stalks, empty scabbards with summer drawn out of them. Chickadees slid down the stems, and her hope flowed away as the days grew shorter.
One morning she was aware that her lodge was preparing for some big event. Knives and hatchets were being honed on sandstone. Catches Two squatted over the fire, heating, bending, and straightening his arrows. Sacajawea wondered if he were preparing for battle and moved close to Talking Goose, who was nursing Little Rabbit.
“What is he doing?” She pointed to Catches Two, who was sighting along his arrows one by one.
“Going fishing,” said Talking Goose. “The bass are in groups now. We will smoke and dry them for trading with the Sioux in the Moon of Storing Squash.”
“Trading?” Sacajawea asked.
“Ai, you ask so many things. They come and trade buffalo robes, skins, and meat for our vegetables and the fish. It is a time of feasting and merriment. We will have some fun.”
That night there was a dance in the middle of the village, with drummers and singers. Sacajawea watched from behind the old people and children. The people were dressed in their regular clothes, and two men came out and danced like fish swimming upstream. A few children imitated them, and the old ones patted hands and nodded to the drums. Sacajawea noticed that not all the village came out to dance for the fish. Only ten or twelve families were going on this trip. She walked back to the lodge and did not see the dog, which followed at the edge of the village. She slept to the monotonous beat of the drums.
The next morning, Old Grandfather said she was to go with them. Only Old Mother was staying behind to care for Little Rabbit. Antelope carried willow nets,
Talking Goose carried spears, and Sacajawea carried the bows and arrows. At the river embankment they laid the gear near Catches Two’s bull boats. Old Grandfather sat in the sun to smoke his pipe. The other families had also risen before sunrise and trooped out of the village to the riverbank. Frost made the short grass slick where it melted in the first rays of the sun.
Catches Two assigned his boats, and, like the other Hidatsas, they each clambered inside one and began twirling downriver. Sacajawea stayed close behind Antelope so that she could imitate her actions with the long pole. The first two craft to reach the bend in the river hesitated, and their occupants yelled back to the others to take care, there was white water. The others held back until the first two had gone down around the bend and out of sight; then they began fishing. Antelope instructed Sacajawea to stretch her net over between their boats, and they rode with it dragging in the water for some distance. Some of the Hidatsas had already caught fish in their nets. Talking Goose and Catches Two had more than a dozen. Old Grandfather had several bass flopping around his feet in the bottom of his boat.
Sacajawea tensed as her boat rounded the bend and began to bob down in a stretch of rapids. Some of the Hidatsa men and women had already leaped from their boats to swim to shore, dragging the bull boats behind.
Antelope waited until she was close beside Sacaja-wea’s fast-moving, twirling boat, then she flung a rawhide rope to Sacajawea and frantically poled toward shore. Antelope held tightly to one end of the rope, then her bull boat suddenly was pulled into a riffle. The little round boat lurched and overturned. Antelope was thrown into the water, which was waist-deep; she still held the rope. She looked around and saw her small craft right itself in the rapids and bob like a milkweed pod until it reached a deep, quiet pool and gently float to the riverbank. Antelope waded ashore against the pull of the swift water, the rawhide rope digging into her palm. She again looked back to the middle of the river where Sacajawea was trying to keep her eggshelllike craft upright as Antelope pulled it against the current.
At that moment, and without warning, Sacajawea’s boat smashed against a boulder that lay hidden just under the water’s surface and Sacajawea was thrown into the water. Fragments of the boat floated downriver. Sacajawea came up sputtering, gasping for air, fighting the rapids, trying to find something to wedge her body against, to put her feet against, or to put her hands around. She still had the rope in her hand and it cut into the flesh.
Antelope tried to maneuver Sacajawea out of the swift water, to get her closer to the riverside into a quiet pool she saw that was overhung with graceful willows. Antelope’s arms ached, her shoulders throbbed, and her hands hurt from the pull of the rope. Her eyes watered as she ran from rock to rock along the shore.
Catches Two yelled at Antelope to let go the rope. “She is lost!” he yelled. “Don’t fight the fast water.” Then he turned to Old Grandfather, who was white as bleached bone. “She is only a female, a Shoshoni at that, not worth much.”
“Oh,” cried Old Grandfather, “Great Spirit, stretch your hand to the child. Help her!”
“Are you dizzy-sick?” asked Catches Two, staring at Old Grandfather. “She is only a slave. Pagh, young females are nothing. Come, let us get this other net untangled and catch more fish.”
Old Grandfather grunted and turned the bull boat upright in the sunshine to dry. Catches Two twisted the rawhide from Antelope’s hand and flung it far out in the water. It floated momentarily, then disappeared. Old Grandfather sighed and seemed to shrink as his shoulders hunched downward.
Sacajawea felt the tension go out of the rope and she felt herself again being carried along by the strong current. To ease the pain in her hand, she tried to loosen the rope a bit, but her movements were clumsy and an unexpected eddy flushed the rope from her fingers. She grabbed. Too late, she saw the rope disappear.
Suddenly the mangy yellow dog, looking more than ever like a half-starved coyote, came from nowhere, jumped into the water, and began paddling. Its head ducked and came up with the rawhide in its mouth; its front paws moved frantically. It seemed to be trying to get to Sacajawea, but both girl and dog were being carried relentlessly downstream and were still far apart. Antelope ran along the gravelly bank shouting for Sacajawea to get to the dog—and the rope.
The shouting was fruitless. Sacajawea stretched her legs downward, trying to find a foothold—a rock, a log, anything. She bruised her knee on a slippery, algae-coated rock that was smooth from years of water charging against it, but she was chilled and the bruise did not hurt much.
The dog was closer now. Its head bobbed in time to the churning of its front paws. She saw the dark rawhide dangling from its mouth.
Antelope’s eyes followed the rope upstream and discovered the loose end floating near the willow overhang. She ran to the water’s edge, reached through the scratchy brush and branches, hung on to a thick limb, and grabbed for the line as it trailed through the water. All the time she yelled instructions to Sacajawea, but she couldn’t make herself heard above the churning of the fast water.
Sacajawea managed to propel herself closer to the dog. Finally she gave several extra-strong kicks, reached out, and with a cold, stiff hand grabbed the short wet fur and loose skin and hung on with white knuckles. The dog opened its mouth and the line slacked and fell out. Sacajawea caught it before it hit the water. The dog blinked. Its head bobbed as it turned and headed for shore. The current pulled faster than the dog could paddle and it rested, letting the current have its way.
The Hidatsas, clearly enjoying this sport, shouted for the dog to resume swimming. Old Grandfather cupped his hands around his mouth and called for Sacajawea to pull herself up the line, to fasten it around a log or rock. The others watched the dog compete against the force of the rushing water, and they made bets about the exact place the animal would come ashore—if it made it to shore at all. The men believed the girl could not hold out, and they made bets about how long she could keep her head above the rapids. The women clicked their tongues, hid their eyes, not wishing to see the moment when the girl slipped under the froth, never to be seen again.
Old Grandfather took the rawhide line from Antelope’s right arm where she had wrapped it. He wound it four times around his hand and felt the strength of the pull. Antelope rubbed her arm, which was ringed with deep indentations, to bring the circulation and feeling back and to relieve the tingling. She heard a group of women call out encouragement to the dog, and she watched Sacajawea work painfully and slowly toward shore, moving hand over hand along the rawhide line.
Old Grandfather yelled for someone to help him, and a broad-faced brave with clamshell earrings ran over and also grabbed the rope. Both men now began pulling, and Sacajawea found herself moving so fast through the water that she could not keep her head in the air. She choked and gasped. A shin banged the sharp end of a submerged log, but she was barely aware of any pain. The men’s pulling made her feel as though her arms were being pulled from their sockets. She tried to signal them not to pull so fast, but she couldn’t raise an arm from the water. Her hands and arms were numb with cold. She tried rolling over on her back, but the water washed over her face; she could not breathe. I am going to drown, she thought. It can’t matter if I let go the line. Clumsily she worked to twist the rawhide from her wrist, and finally it slipped off her hand.
Her knees sank and she lowered her feet with no thought anymore of finding footing. It was her knees that touched the gravel bottom. Her head came up and she could breathe. The breaths were shallow, and her lungs felt scorched when she inhaled. Her throat felt raw and sore. It was the kiyi-ing barks of the dog that caused her eyes to seek the shore. The dog was standing alone on a sandbank.
A group of men, Catches Two in the center, were below the dog making good their bets. The dog had come ashore at the big red rock. Antelope ran back and forth along the shore motioning for Sacajawea to stand up and walk. Sacajawea raised her aching right arm in answer. She got to her feet, but she was dizzy and her legs were like wilted cornstalks. She put her hands down in the cold water and crawled. At the shore she lay on her back, staring at the clear sky, her chest heaving with hard breathing. Antelope sat down beside her.
“What can I do?” asked Antelope.
“Bring me two, three fish,” whispered Sacajawea.
“You want food?”
Sacajawea pointed toward the scrawny, silent dog.
Antelope hissed, “For that?”
“Ai,” Sacajawea said, closing her eyes.
Antelope came back with two good-sized fish from Old Grandfather.
Sacajawea pushed herself up stiffly and walked on aching legs to the sandbank. She tossed both fish to the dog. It began to tear and chew chunks of fish hungrily.
Some of the Hidatsa shook fingers at Sacajawea, showing disapproval for wasting good food on the mongrel.
Later, Old Grandfather carried Antelope’s bull boat over his head until they moved far enough upstream to be out of the white water. Then he put the boat in the water and let Sacajawea curl up in the bottom. He poled upstream along with the others, homeward to the big Hidatsa village. Not once did he complain about his aching arms. Nor did he scold because he could hardly move his feet in the little boat. When he saw that Sacajawea could not control her shivering, he told her to remove the wet tunic, and he took off his dry shirt and wrapped her snugly in it. He never once mentioned the bows and arrows she had lost in the water, nor the fish net, nor the boat she smashed to pieces.
Soon the weasels became whiter and a growth of frost flowers decorated the marsh edge. A small band of Sioux came to trade, their travois loaded with meat and hides. They stayed three days and promised to come back later during the time of the big spring trading fair. The women in Catches Two’s lodge worked as they saw fit, going often to visit and gossip with the women in the Sioux camp. Sacajawea went out with the women, but when the dog followed, she felt many eyes on her. When she was sent to return a horse to the herd or to catch another to keep hobbled near the lodge, the dog stayed close by her. From the field, as she harvested the ripening squash, Sacajawea watched the games and horse racing between the Hidatsa and Sioux boys. They rode their horses flattened out like lizards. The older Sioux boys could ride a horse and fire arrows at the “enemy” at breakneck speed, miraculously clearing a series of small rocky gullies without mishap.
The Hidatsas had traded with the Sioux for much meat. Trees, bushes, and meat racks were covered with flat strings of it, drying, turning dark. The lodge of Catches Two had four skins from the Sioux; the hair on them was long, dark brown, shiny. The wind whistled out of the north, and the Sioux left for their winter camp before the first snow fell.
The dog often moved closer beside Sacajawea now. Although he was not allowed in the lodge, he seemed to live most of the time right outside the door, waiting for Sacajawea to come out. She continued to feed him, without Talking Goose’s discovering. She had learned to take the food she wanted without asking.
At night when Catches Two came to her sleeping couch, she feigned sleep, and often he moved away to the bed of Talking Goose or Antelope. But one night when he came to her he said that she created a flame in his belly that burned like a prairie fire. His hands ran slowly over her thighs as he said, “I may catch you by the river or the water hole, and you will lay for me each time I ask. You will think about it and feel the same fire.”
Sacajawea felt a sickening at the pit of her stomach.
“You are not fat like Talking Goose, or growing with child like Antelope, or old like Old Mother. You should look into the clear water. There you would see what I like—a young girl, barely a woman.”
Sacajawea lay very still, afraid to push and kick him, for he would beat her until she lay limp.
“You have an obligation to me, for I captured you and saved you from the white water in the river,” he breathed in her ear.
She shrugged and turned away so that he could not see her face in the firelight.
“It was the dog,” she whispered.
She felt his hard-surfaced flesh. Every movement he made had the easy gracefulness of an animal, seemingly unhurried, yet lithe and quick. But she could think only of the dirt-clogged pores covering his nose, and the rank odor about him. His hands moved over her body— her shoulders, her back, her hips, her breasts. It was difficult for her to breathe as he lost himself in her; then nothing remained but the blaze and flash of sensation, and a thousand images, half-formed and swift, confused and fantastic, thronging like scurrying clouds heavy-laden with rain.
Then he slid from her bed and stood with his arms hanging at his sides. In the pale light from the lodge fire she could see his brown-yellow eyes, hard and uncompromising, watching her steadily. There was no doubt he meant every word he said.
“You will always be my slave.”
She was careful not to go down to the river alone, or to the woods by herself. At night she would relax her tired body, then stiffen at the thought that Catches Two might come again. She felt uncomfortable when he was in the lodge. His eyes were like burning coals. She did not want her friend Antelope to know of his desire. Soon Antelope was going to have her first papoose.
Sacajawea began letting the dog in the lodge at night. She kept him in the entrance, and early in the morning she would let him out before the others awoke.
Ice thickened in the upland streams. In a brief thaw a trickle of water slid into the marsh. It resealed caverns; desperate fish gulped and choked and suffocated; and wise crows waited for the bodies to emerge through the ice.
There was much food in the storage cellars, and at no time did anyone know true hunger cramps in their belly. But about midwinter there was a great hunger in the soul for the green shoots of grass and the warmth of a spring sun. Snow smothered the grasses, and the horses were fed corn by the Hidatsa women. Sacajawea learned the merit in crop planting and storing for the long winter. Dimly she recalled the wild grass seeds her mother had wanted to store for the winter. That would have been good for trading with a friendly tribe for their oversupply of meat and warm hides.
In the warmth of the lodge, Catches Two made a new war shield and several long spears to be used for elkhunting. Old Grandfather left for several days at a time and returned with field mice and thin squirrels to add to the vegetable soup. The women made clothing and mended moccasins.
Almost daily, Sacajawea made a trip to the cache of vegetables in the field. She learned that she must keep busy to avoid the eyes of Catches Two. Sometimes she not only filled the leather pouch from the lodge with corn or hard, dry beans, but she stuffed some of the beans inside her tunic and shared jerky she found, hanging on bundles along the cellar walls, with the dog. She chewed the filched beans as she sewed and cooked.
That spring the Chinook struck the western country, and water flowed down the Big Muddy and Knife rivers in submarine arteries, then across the top of the rotting ice. Water streamed from shrinking snow and roared down gullies from the drifted prairie. The river ice cracked with reports sharper than an Indian trade flintlock, and broke into vast white blocks that began to move, crushing, grinding, piling up, and pushing in dirty banks and windows out over the flooded bottoms. Suddenly entire families, tired of the dank, smoke-filled lodges, went hunting. The Hidatsas often hunted with the other Minnetaree village, Metaharta, or their cousins, the Wetersoon, at the mouth of the Knife River.
When the first winter storms had come sweeping over the plains, buffalos and other large animals had begun their great migration toward the Yellowstone and Missouri rivers, seeking protection in the bluffs, the brush, and the timber. Often buffalo were drawn out upon weak ice, pushed on by the moving mass behind. Thousands might break through and be swept away, drowned, and then frozen. In the spring, the huge bodies were washed out and scattered along the riverbanks for hundreds of miles, the flesh greenish under the hide and ready to come alive on the first day of warm sun with fiies and a horrible stench that only the buzzards, the Minnetarees, and their friends, the Mandans, could endure. When the sun woke the flies from their winter’s nap, the meat was so tender it almost fell apart. It was ripe for those with a taste for that sort of thing, as the Minnetarees had. Perhaps that taste had been cultivated in the days before the horse, when large supplies of meat were welcomed under almost any circumstance.1
The Minnetarees took to the river, the young men leaping from one ice cake to the next, falling between, to bob up elsewhere, towing buffalo carcasses to the bank. The women slipped out of their doeskin dresses and plunged naked into the icy water, too, collecting driftwood for fuel, which was always scarce on the prairie. There was no shyness about the naked body among the two Minnetaree tribes. The floating wood was important, and the ripened meat, like the hung game of the British, the hung beef of some Americans, was a great delicacy.
Everyone, except the very old and very young, was armed with a horn spoon and butcher knife. Some carried leather bags to bring meat home; some carried huge hunks of bark to use as sleds across the soft snow. Overnight the hills began weeping freshets, and there was the soft sucking chug of collapsing snowbanks. The children laughed and the women sang. The air felt good in the sunlight, where the eyes did not have to shut against the sting of the warm smoke of the lodge.
Sacajawea threw a handful of soft snow at Antelope and ran, laughing. Antelope ran to catch her. “Do not make me run. This papoose inside is heavy as a large stone.”
“Does your stone have jumping-frog legs?” asked Sacajawea, squinting through the sunlight.
“Ai—he will be the fastest runner in the village.”
“Pagh,” laughed Sacajawea. “He will be the fastest dressmaker.”
“When will you take a man?” asked Antelope suddenly.
Sacajawea’s heart sank to the snow beneath her feet. “I do not wish to become anyone’s woman,” she said, her head bowed.
“You will be a woman soon, anyway, and then maybe Catches Two will make you his woman,” Antelope said, teasing the young girl. “It is not all bad. Catches Two is a good man. Good compared to Kakoakis, the chief of the Metaharta. There’s a man who is a beast. If you talked back to him or refused his commands, he would beat you with water-soaked thongs and make you submit to all his subchiefs. He would tame you.”
Sacajawea said, “I have been promised to the younger son of Red Buck.”
“I suppose he lives in the Shoshoni camp, and I think he now has some woman who waddles more than she walks and he cannot remember whom he had promised to him.”
“I don’t want a man.” Sacajawea coldly blanked all feeling out of her eyes and kept it off her face.
“I want you to be the woman of Catches Two,” said Antelope, her eyes searching Sacajawea’s face. “I want you to stay in our lodge. Old Mother says you are the best worker in the village and fast to catch on. You make our work light and bring happiness to Old Grandfather. He still tells the story of the dog and you in the river. He talks more now than he has in years and takes an interest in things outside the lodge, like the hunting and fishing and beadmaking.”
“I do not want to be a slave squaw forever.”
“But squaws do not ask for more. They are happy to serve their man and have his children.”
Sacajawea raised her eyes. “I cannot live like a caged bird always.”
“Your ideas are strange. Catches Two could beat you for them.”
Sacajawea shuddered more from the air impregnated with the odor of putrefied flesh than from fear. She held her nose and moved in to watch the Minnetarees devour the soft meat greedily, thrusting their spoons into the meat that would scarcely stick together. Even the children crammed it down and seemed to suffer no inconvenience.
Suddenly she felt sickened by this sight and the stench of rotting animals. She moved away from Antelope and edged her way toward the women collecting driftwood. Slipping out of her dress, she plunged into the icy water to wash away the odor in her nostrils and to help Talking Goose attach a buckskin thong to a floating tree and haul it in. When they had collected a great deal of wood, Sacajawea slipped her dress on and headed back to the warmth of the smoky lodge.
She felt someone near, then an arm around her waist. Beside her was Bull Face. His leg was badly scarred where the dog had sunk its teeth. The skin was shiny pink, almost transparent along the long red scar.
“Come. We will find warmth together in my lodge.” Bull Face laughed deeply, meaningfully into her ear. Then he put his hands around her back and moved them down to her buttocks, pulling her close.
She pulled away, sickened. His stench was that of the rotting carcasses. It was on his breath and in his hair—nauseating. She felt as though she were breathing underwater in a rotting swamp.
From somewhere nearby came a throaty growl. It was the dog.
“You skunk! You little yellow-livered skunk!” His whole style had changed. He spat the words out. “That beast hangs like a burr in my hair!” He cuffed Sacajawea and sent her sprawling. She rolled over and sat up, scuttling crabwise out of his reach and letting out a loud yowl.
“The dog is a friend,” she said, reaching out toward the animal.
Bull Face caught her and clapped a hand over her mouth; the other he used to pinch her nostrils shut. She clawed and fought, but as her breath ebbed, she had to stop.
“Come with me,” he ordered Sacajawea, “and I’ll give you something to howl about.”
The dog growled again, closer now. Bull Face turned and saw him coming with his white teeth bared, amber eyes never wavering in their intense regard, his whole body taut with concentration; and like an arrow Bull Face hightailed it in the direction of the stinking, rotting, dead buffalo, running, running as fast as his moccasins could go over the soft snow.
The dog stayed with Sacajawea.
From then on, the dog followed at her heels each time she left the lodge until she entered it again. Sometimes she spoke to him when no one was around. The village whispered behind their hands about the dog and the slave girl.
Even though the dog was near, Sacajawea found herself constantly on the alert, watching for Bull Face—who had now been shamed twice by the dog—or her master, Catches Two. She knew that if Catches Two found her with Bull Face she’d be whipped; on the other end of the stick, if she refused Catches Two’s desires, she’d also be whipped. This punishment was common practice among the Minnetarees, but for a Shoshoni, beating or whipping was the most degrading thing that could happen, even to a slave girl.
She kept to herself, sewing moccasins and leggings for the people of the lodge. She washed their garments in the cold river, cut the dried squash, and dropped the hard strips of jerky into the stew. In her heart was a tocsin of fierce unrest. She had learned long ago to keep her face impassive, no matter what she felt. She could keep her tears bottled up inside so they would not slide down her nose. She managed to live above the fear she felt when Catches Two came inside the lodge. The dog was her only solace, a thing of faithfulness and devotion, yet he was completely wild.
The dog trotted behind Sacajawea as she went to the water hole, but behind it were the spirits of coyotes. These ancestral ghosts dictated the dog’s moods, so that often it turned away from Sacajawea, grabbing the meat she brought and darting into the brush to devour it alone, unseen. But it would return.
One morning Sacajawea carried Antelope’s newborn boy to the bathing place. The dog, whose bare patches of pink skin were almost invisible now, hidden with new brownish yellow fur, followed behind them. When Sacajawea turned to look, it ran with its bushy tail pointing to the ground and hid behind the sagebrush. Then it trotted alongside, seemingly to have a look at the Hidatsa papoose. Sacajawea took the baby from the cradleboard and unwrapped the soft doeskin. The baby made soft whimpering noises. The dog stood off, watching, its yellow eyes glinting in the early morning sunlight. The dog growled deep from within its chest. Sacajawea turned her back on him and bathed the baby gently in some shallow water. The baby thrashed his legs about and waved his arms, howling about the cold water that was poured on him. She laid the baby on the doeskin and wrapped it tightly so that his arms and legs could not move. Certain that he could not roll downthe embankment, Sacajawea set about cleaning the soiled cattail-down from the cradleboard. Then she pushed fresh down against the back and sides of the cradle. She adjusted the wrapping of the doeskin on the baby and placed him in the cradleboard. It was now arranged so that he could water without being taken out each time.
Sacajawea carried the baby, who had eyes like a bird, on her back up the trail, where she met Catches Two at the edge of the village. “I will have payment on the debt you owe me.” His ruttish eyes leered, and he reached his hand toward the fork between her bare legs; swiftly he pulled the cradleboard from her shoulders and hung it over a dead limb protruding low from a single cot-tonwood that grew near the trail. The baby was asleep. Catches Two held Sacajawea by the arm and pulled her off the trail, down a sharp gully, away from the watchful eyes of any guards at the women’s bathing place or anyone coming along the trail to or from the village. His breechclout was down, but in the next instant the dog stood between Catches Two and Sacajawea. The dog’s growl was still deep within its throat, but much louder than it had been before. Its mouth, half-open, was dripping saliva. Ina split second, Catches Two spun on his heels and disappeared. He did not return to the lodge until sundown. He was sullen and would not eat.
Another time Sacajawea took the papoose to a small mound of hard-packed earth outside the lodge so that Antelope might rest. Sacajawea hummed and rocked the papoose and half dozed herself. It was several moments before she saw the dog, its belly fur gleaming white in the sun. It carried a small deer mouse in its mouth. The dog walked up close, dropped the mouse in Sacajawea’s lap close to the baby’s face, and then trotted off. In a few minutes it was back with another dead mouse. The dead mice themselves did not bother Sacajawea—she knew they were a delicacy for the dog— but the lice-laden, furry body next to the baby’s face was too much. Sacajawea said angrily, “Scram, Dog! Go!”
She brushed her skirt furiously, tossing the dead mice to one side and causing the baby to awaken and cry.
The dog turned, walked a short distance, then reared up on its hind legs and pounced, pinning its prey to the ground. The dog crushed the tiny mouse’s head, then trotted back to place this new prize in Sacajawea’s lap. She stood, brushing unseen lice from the frightened baby’s face. She placed the baby on the ground, and kicked the mouse toward the dog. She found a piece of dead wood and threw it at the dog.
“Go away!” she yelled. “Or next time I’ll beat your head in!”
The dog hunched himself and slunk down the trail and off into the woods without turning back to look at Sacajawea. She was panting with anger when she scooped up the screaming papoose, stepped over the dead mice and went back to sit against the outside wall of the lodge.
For several weeks the dog did not return. Sacajawea felt glad, yet sad at the same time. Old Grandfather reported that the dog was living in the willow brake and that it had mated. “The female and five pups live in an abandoned rabbit burrow, which the dog enlarged.”
Catches Two smirked and brought out his dark thoughts on how to get rid of the wild dog.
Sacajawea said, “Good riddance.” But in her heart she wanted to see it again. Antelope said she hoped it was gone for good. She didn’t feel her babies were safe around it.
“That dog would not hurt anyone,” defended Sacajawea. “It only looks for friendship. It brought dead mice to me as a gift, and I did not like my gifts crawling with lice. That does not mean the dog is a monster. The dog never touched the papoose. Forget it. It is gone and I do not care if it ever returns.”
“It had better never touch my papoose! That coyote!” Antelope shut her eyes and shuddered.
Finally the dog did come back. It came to the edge of the bathing place one morning. Sacajawea saw it, and it seemed sullen, its brilliant, amber eyes seeming to question whether it would be welcomed. Sacajawea dumped a full buffalo paunch of water over its head. When it did not move, only shook violently until its fur was dry, she laid her hand on its head, then rubbedbehind each ear. It licked her arm, then began to lick her bare feet, enjoying the salty taste. Sacajawea laughed at the feel of the rough tongue.
The spring air was warm, and the women sat outside and sewed. Antelope had hung the cradleboard from a low branch of a nearby tree. The dog stood some distance away, watching. Then, slowly and silently, it approached and sniffed the cradleboard. The women watched it and it ran, with its black-tipped tail almost touching the ground, into the trash heap behind the lodge, there it sniffed around and found an old elk bone. With the bone clenched in its teeth it trotted off toward the willow brake.
Antelope announced that it was probably taking the bone to its family. Sacajawea said it was going to charm its wife into having more pups.
So Antelope’s distrust faded, and she let the papoose hang from a tree in his cradleboard when the dog lay lazily stretched on the ground—if someone were working nearby.
Then came the fateful day Talking Goose and Little Rabbit were planting corn and beans; Old Mother was sunning herself, half-asleep, near Sacajawea; the dog lay in the shade of the cottonwood. Antelope had set the baby in its cradleboard against the tree, intending to hang it up when she came back from the lodge with her sewing. That reminded Sacajawea of the elk skins she was tanning on the far side of the lodge, so she went to see if they needed more soaking, or to be turned over in the sunshine.
Sacajawea heard the scream and came running. Her throat tightened, and Antelope’s keening sounded louder.
Catches Two came running from the lodge with a handful of feathers that he had been putting in the butt end of some fresh arrows. Antelope, her face the color of pale squash, ran sobbing to him, wild with hysterical fear, her arms flogging at his chest. Between sobs and crying she made it clear that a coyote or wolf had snatched her baby out of his cradleboard and eaten him alive.
“That’s nonsense!” said Sacajawea. “No coyote or prairie wolf could have come near with the dog on guard.
But Antelope was staring hard at the dog, and when Sacajawea turned and looked, she saw that its muzzle, chest, and right shoulder were plastered with blood. The left shoulder was once again bare of fur and showed pink skin. The dog gave a low whine and pawed the ground, just as Antelope kicked at it. It growled deep down in its chest as if it had been wakened from sleep.
“I’ll kill you!” Catches Two yelled at the dog, who was now standing and looking around from one face to the other with yellow, luminous eyes. Then it turned and started to slink slowly away.
Sacajawea looked incredulously from Antelope to Catches Two. She called out a warning and moved toward the dog. But Catches Two was quicker and reached the animal first, plunging his steel knife into the already bloody chest. With a grunt, he twisted the knife as he dragged it down toward the white belly fur.
The dog lay where Catches Two had knocked it down. The lustrous amber eyes blinked, then remained open. The head fell back and the mouth was filled with frothing blood. Its dark yellow legs twitched and the air was saturated with a vile smell released from the dark scent gland at the base of its tail.
In the sudden silence, a low whimpering sound drew everyone’s attention from the dead dog. Their eyes caught something unfamiliar. Antelope began to sob loudly once again and point with her finger. A dead female coyote lay in a puddle of blood just beyond the place where the cradleboard had stood against the Cottonwood. Near the tree lay a bull boat, bottom up. The whimpering came from under the old, discarded boat.
Still sniffling, Antelope ran to investigate. The papoose was out of the cradleboard, on his hands and knees under the lightweight boat. He was dirty and bedraggled and crying now because he was hungry— but he was unharmed.
“The dog saved him,” breathed Sacajawea, pointing to the broken straps on the cradleboard. The straps and lacing looked like something had chewed on them.
Antelope picked up her papoose, cooing and soothing and cuddling him; but this sweet moment of relief was short. Without warning, Sacajawea leaped at Catches Two and began beating him about the face and chest.
Old Mother felt a slow fear dawn in her heart, and her eyes became dark and glassy. Her lips were stiff as she took a deep breath. “What will happen?” she asked Antelope.
“It is up to Catches Two,” said Antelope, looking at Sacajawea, who had stopped hitting Catches Two, although her fists were still balled in rage. She could say no more, but gave a sickish laugh when Sacajawea rushed to the dog and threw herself on its back, embracing its scrawny head with the lifeless, amber eyes. Something great was gone.
Catches Two was bewildered by Sacajawea’s behavior. “It is unforgivable,” he said to Old Mother, “for a slave to beat her master and defile his lodge with a wild dog.” And then Sacajawea pulled her good sleeping robe out of the lodge and pushed the hulk of the dog onto it. Catches Two sat on the earth and began to laugh softly, unregenerate laughter. He was unstrung after his encounter with the dog and the pounding he had taken from Sacajawea.
Sacajawea promptly restrung him with a sharp, dark look. “I’ll lodgepole you,” she warned, “if you or anyone makes another sound.”
His laughter broke off and he glared at her. “No woman talks to a Hidatsa brave that way,” he said, but then fell silent.
Carefully she tied the robe together with thongs found in the lodge. Then she dragged the huge parcel across the cultivated field, toward the willow brake. She tugged and heaved until it was firmly caught in the lower branches of an old sycamore. She tore at her hair until it fell loose. She tore her face with her fingernails until it streamed blood. She tore her tunic. She scooped up dirt and spread it on her head and face. The riverbank was filled with her high animal howl.
“We must get rid of her,” said Catches Two. “She cannot stay here.”
“Where can she go?” asked Antelope.
“I think the old chief Black Moccasin would take her,” said Old Grandfather, pointing his pipe to the four corners of the earth and offering a prayer in behalf of the spirit of the dead dog.
“He has many slaves,” said Old Mother.
“Give her to Bull Face. He is shriveling up for want of a slave girl,” snickered Talking Goose.
“It is the Moon of the Trading Fair,” Catches Two said. He sounded worried. “There is much to do, and it will not be good if the girl continues to mourn. It will not look good to the village. If she does not come to her senses, we must end her comings and goings.”
“It is up to you,” said Old Mother, looking closely at Catches Two. “You are the one who brought her to us.” Her mouth bunched up and she scratched in the earth with the heel of her moccasin. Sacajawea’s howls were still to be heard as Old Mother began pushing dust over the pools of dried blood left by the dog.
Antelope clutched her baby son. “Will the wild beast’s spirit kill us because we did not believe in him?” she said.
It was a new thought. “Ai,” said Talking Goose. “What do you think about that, Old Mother?”
“I do not know,” she answered. “But perhaps the forces that made the dog react the way he did will be angry because the dog has been killed. We will offer an especially rich gift to the dog’s spirit to show that the members of our lodge feel some remorse and will never again harm a wild dog.”
Everyone supported her except Old Grandfather. He said, “I am not so sure this is necessary.”
Old Mother ignored him. She said, “If we place many animal bones together under the tree in the willow brake where the girl took the body of the dog, the sun and the moon, and the trees and living animals, will see, and they will know that we wish the spirit of the dog well.”
“Just how will they know this?” asked Old Grandfather.
“They will know,” said Old Mother.
And so the women of Catches Two’s lodge built a pile of bones as high as the branches that held the last earthly remains of the dog, and left a fresh hunk of bear meat on the top of the bone monument so that the spirit of the dog would not go hungry.
In the morning, Sacajawea was found sitting between the rows of new-planted corn, making believe the dog sat watching on his side of the brake. The meatthat Antelope had left was gone, and there were wild dog or wolf tracks around the huge stack of bones.
“Those are the tracks of the dog’s spirit,” said Old Mother positively.
The story of the bone monument was long recounted in the big Hidatsa village, and each spring new bones were added to the heap by the descendants of Catches Two.