Sign-Talker (14 page)

He heard Sergeant Floyd groan in the darkness a few feet away. That man, a very good man, had been very sick for several days. He was scarcely over twenty, but as wise, fair, and strong as any whiteman Drouillard had ever known. Maybe he should be sent back, where he could be doctored.

Drouillard’s mind turned back to his encounter today with the Indians. How good it had been to smoke and eat with just Indians, without a white soldier or officer anywhere around. He imagined himself turning his back on these busy, driven officers and their complicated mission, and just wandering away to some Indian town, to live the way an Indian was born to live. He had often thought of that. It had been so comfortable today, sitting by a fire eating elk with just the horizons all around, without time measured by watches, without a constantly pressing purpose cutting hard and straight across the roundness of the world. It was the way his days used to be when he was a hunter alone in the woods, before he got involved with these officers and this mission of theirs which let no one rest.

La Liberté and the young Indian were talking softly. That was one way spoken language was better than hand language: you could talk in the dark. But you had to understand words of the same language to do that.

The young man’s name was Wetheah. La Liberté had told Drouillard that it meant something like Good Welcome, or Hospitality. When he remembered how the young man had greeted him, it seemed appropriate. And it was more like a woman’s name than a warrior’s.

Drouillard smiled at the memory of something. When Wetheah had asked him what his name meant, he had replied, Followed by Buzzards.

John Colter grinned his thin-lipped mocking grin and said, “By God, George, for every damn mile this damn outfit goes for’ard, you and me go back twenty or thirty fetchin’ what-all they’ve lost!” They were riding along the east bank of the Missouri, leading two horses that the Field brothers had lost two days before while deer hunting on the rolling plains. Drouillard and Colter had backtracked a dozen miles or so to find the horses. In bringing them back up, they had shot a cow elk; its meat was now on the backs of the two led horses.

Drouillard snorted a laugh. “Palefaces never look back. Like poor old Willard. And now we’re picking up after Rube, who picked up after Willard.” They rode along laughing. It had been a comedy: The daydreamer Willard had left his tomahawk somewhere at a stopping place and was sent back afoot to fetch it. On his return, trying to cross a creek on a fallen log, he tottered and dropped his rifle in the creek. Willard was a poor swimmer, so a pirogue had been dispatched back to the creek, and from it Reubin Field had dived to retrieve the weapon. Now it was Reubin’s lost horse carrying the hind quarters of the elk.

Colter said, “Be better if we just left behind all the stuff that gets dropped, and maybe drop off some more stuff when the cap’ns ain’t lookin’. Like that damn stuffed beast o’ Lewis’s. Or your pet beaver. The more we’d drop off, the lighter that damn barge’d be. Wonder if Liberté and that pretty boy o’ yours has brought the Indians up yet? I hope so, so’s we can unload a few pounds o’ gifts onto ’em.”

Drouillard didn’t mind Colter’s gibes much. He had come to respect him and like him. The stuffed beast the man had spoken of was a fierce burrowing animal Joe Field had shot. Captain Lewis had skinned, stuffed, and mounted it, because he thought it was a kind of animal nobody had ever seen before, and that of course meant it had to be preserved for the Great Father Jefferson. It looked like a wide, low dog without ears and had a white stripe running back from its nose. Drouillard called it a
blaireau
. He had seen its skins in his uncle’s store but had not been able to remember the English name for it until last night:
badger
. It was a bulky thing, filling still more of the boat’s limited space. As for the pet beaver, it was a very young one Drouillard had caught alive in a creek one day. He released it before it suffered much, and it had become very tame for him; it acted as if it considered him its savior. When he left with Colter to find the horses, he asked some of the men to keep it supplied with green willow branches, and then it probably would stay around. He hoped it had; its coat was soft and delightful to stroke.

“I doubt the Oto are here yet,” Drouillard said. “They were out hunting buffalo on the prairie. It might take days to find them. They’re like another thing we have to go back and fetch, except worse because we don’t know where they are.”

“Yeah,” Colter said. “If they’d of come up already, I guess we’d of heard a ten gun salute and bugles and drums by now. That Cap’n Lewis is so eager to show a shindig for some Indians, he’s like a man clenchin’ loose stools. And don’t we all know how
that
feels! Well, now! Look there!” he exclaimed as they rode over the brow of the bluff and looked down on the moored boats and the camp. “Flag up on the flagpole. Reckon they’re marking Cap’n Clark’s birthday?” The flag rippled in the upriver wind.

“That was yesterday. So we missed the feast because we were out gathering lost horses. No, white brother, I think the flag still flies in hopes that it will draw Indians. And I don’t see any down there yet.”

“Dagburn, that’s a pity! Reckon y’ll have to stroke your pet beaver, ’stead of your perty Indian boy!”

“Ah-huh! Maybe the hair I stroke will be the scalp of the next paleskin who makes that joke!”

“Whoops! Mercy, red brother! Put your blade away! I was just a-tellin’ m’self I’d surely never make that joke again! No, sir, why, it’s not funny at all, is it?”

They rode into camp calm and cheerful as the best of friends.

*     *     *

The Indians appeared on the river bluff at sunset, as if to light their arrival most dramatically. Several fired muskets in the air, and then they rode down in dust tinged by sunlight. The troops were ordered to be on guard, ready for anything.

Two shots were fired from the swivel cannon in the bow of the keelboat to salute the thirteen Indians. The shots made an ear-pounding noise, huge billows of smoke and flashes of burnt wadding, bright in the dusk. It seemed to awe the Indians, all Oto and Missouria men well mounted, most armed with lances and bows. Some had braided hair with erect eagle feathers attached to the back of their heads, but two wore broad-brim trading-store hats, and one a plumed, three-cornered black hat. A squat, dirty whiteman, apparently their resident trader, came forward to speak. Drouillard could not see much in the deepening dusk, but he noticed that the voyageur La Liberté and the horse issued to him were not with the Indians. After a brief exchange of words, handshakes, and food, the Indians went a little way off to a fire ring and a group of brush shelters the soldiers had built for their arrival.

The troops were glum. There was not one woman among the Indians.

That night Captain Lewis worked over the speech he would make in the ceremonies tomorrow morning. Drouillard sat cleaning his rifle in the candlelight, biting the inside of his lip and waving away the mosquitoes, which were so thick that many of them got in past the mosquito gauze and whined inside the tent. Clark and Lewis talked about the distribution of the gift bundles for the headmen of varying status. Eventually they got to wondering aloud about the absence of La Liberté. The trader had told them La Liberté had ridden out ahead a day earlier and the Indians had expected he would be here. The captains guessed he had perhaps overtired his horse, or temporarily gotten lost, but they hinted at the faintest suspicion that he might have defected, since he was now in the country of a people whose ways and language he knew. Maybe, not knowing which side of the river they would be encamped on, he tried to swim his horse across the river and it had died, as had the little horse Captain
Clark captured down by the Kanzas. To Drouillard, they seemed as concerned about losing the horse as the man.

“Or maybe,” Captain Clark said, “maybe La Liberté ran away to some Oto damsel he used to know. Or some new one he met.”

Drouillard’s guess was that he had just tired of rowing a boat all day every day for somebody else’s army.

The day dawned gray with fog so thick the high bluffs nearby were invisible. The keelboat’s sail had been rigged up as an awning under which the chiefs and officers would meet. In front of the awning was the flagpole with its flag of stripes and stars. The captains and soldiers were up early getting into their formal uniforms and tall hats, which had been stored in the boat lockers and not worn for many weeks. The captains opened a bale of goods already designated for the tribal leaders of this stretch of the river. Medals and flags, blankets, elegant dress coats, and bright red leggings were sorted and combined into individual bundles for the headmen. While the sergeants fussed at their squads to look their military best, Drouillard got his first look at the Peace and Friendship medals. These were stamped on one side with a picture of two hands clasped under a picture of a tomahawk and a long pipe crossed, and on the other side a profile picture of a strong-jawed man whose hair was tied in a queue behind his shoulders. “Who is the man, sir?” he asked, dangling the medal by its ribbon.

“The President,” Captain Clark said.

Drouillard peered hard at it, his scalp tingling. So this was the one called Jefferson whom Captain Lewis obeyed and almost worshiped! The one who had caused all this to happen! He turned the medal to and fro in the light, and said: “Is he an elder? Is his hair white?”

“An elder? About sixty, I guess. Lewis says his hair’s still red mostly. I haven’t seen him for a long time. Now, George, I’ve a lot to do here yet. I’d like you to be with us when we talk to these
people. Their trader seems to talk their tongue good enough, but I can scarcely follow his English. It’s about as bad as my French, and you know how bad that is. Get Labiche there too. With English, French, Oto speakers, and your hand signs, we should be able to talk just fine.”

When the Indians came in under the awning at mid-morning, they looked dignified and colorful, but a little meek. The sun had burned off the fog and shone bright on the sailcloth, making everything under it glow with intense color. An upriver breeze made the awning rustle and billow, and the Indians’ feathers and fringes shivered and flounced. The interpreter, whose name was Faufon, was in moccasins, leggings, and breechcloth like the Indians, but he wore a frilled white long shirt with a sash around the waist, and a three-cornered hat. He was stocky, fat-cheeked, and cheerful. As Drouillard watched him, he felt an arm slide across his shoulders and heard a familiar voice at his ear. He turned to face an elegantly dressed young Indian wearing a deer-hair crested headdress and fur hair-ties in his tight braids, and it was a moment before he recognized him as Wetheah, the young hunter he had brought in a week ago. The Woman Dreamer. He was so transformed by his finery, Drouillard could hardly believe it was he. When he smiled in recognition, the young man laughed and embraced him like a long-lost brother, patting his back and pressing his cheek against his. Drouillard saw that Captain Lewis, now stiff and trim in blue dress coat with gold braid frogging and epaulets, was glowering at him, so he patted the youth on the back and drew away, nodding, and indicated that he should go and rejoin the other warriors. Drouillard took up a stance near the gift bundles, not meeting Lewis’s eyes.

The thirteen Indians were seated in a semicircle facing out on the meadow where the flag fluttered. This was the time when a pipe should have been passed, but Drouillard saw it was not to be done. Instead, Captain Lewis shouted for the troops to pass in review. The sergeants shouted at their squads to shoulder arms and march, a drum rattled, and the straight lines of soldiers, all in red-trimmed blues with their tall hats adding a foot to their
height, tramped by in perfect step, as if they were two dozen bodies with one mind. The Indians leaned to each other and murmured in amazement at the sight. Drouillard, who thought drill the most unnatural thing he had ever seen human beings do, doubted that it was putting the Indians in a receptive mood. The young Missouria turned to look at him with his eyes wide, eyebrows up, and mouth down and open in a comic expression, and Drouillard could only shake his head and shrug. Then he raised his fist to make circles before his forehead, which meant “crazy.” Oh damn, he thought, I shouldn’t have done that. He was relieved to see that neither captain had seen him.

After the parade there was still no pipe. Captain Lewis at once stepped before the Indians and started his speech about the new White Father, the Road of Peace, and the Red Children, pausing to let the Frenchman translate into Oto. Drouillard was impressed by the patience and politeness of the listeners. Even when the captain made his veiled threat that red children who listened to bad birds would be denied trade for the wonderful American goods, the Indians stayed calm and nodded as if in full accord. It was obvious that the captain was pleased with their reception of his glowing plan.

The speech went on for a long time, and eventually Captain Lewis challenged all the Oto and Missouria to gather up a group of their principal leaders to travel to the Great Council Fire in the East and see their new White Father and the powerful nation he governed. If they went there and promised to submit to him, they would be honored with ceremonies and loaded down with such beautiful and valuable gifts as they had never imagined before now, and when they returned their people would prosper.

The unreliable traders from other countries will be no more, he told them, and the only Father to whom they could turn for protection was their new American Father, Jefferson. Drouillard translated that into French, and the trader then into Oto. Drouillard wondered if he was saying to them what had been said by Captain Lewis.
Eh bien
, he thought. They would probably make Faufon an agent of the American trade, just as they had done Lorimier. At any rate, when the speech was done, the Indians
seemed to have been sufficiently impressed, and they murmured and nodded. By then it was time to take the midday meal, with the expectation that the Indians would get to make their replies afterward.