Sign-Talker (16 page)

I guess I need to tell them some things they don’t understand, he thought.

And I’d better tell them before they get up among the Omaha and the Sioux, where a little stupidity will go a long way.

*     *     *

When Drouillard brought his horses down to the riverbank, the corral guard told him that the captains wanted to see him.

A voyageur of middle age, François Rivet, rowed him to the sandbar where the camp was being set up. Rivet was so powerful in the arms and shoulders that though it was a boat for seven rowers, he handled it easily by himself. An exuberant man, he sometimes entertained by dancing on his hands to Cruzatte’s fiddling, but now he looked at Drouillard in a sullen and suspicious way, and had not a word for him. It was ominous, and Drouillard wondered if it had something to do with his being summoned by the captains.

Cookfires of driftwood smoked up the campsite, the soldiers and voyageurs squinting against the smoke but standing in its most acrid clouds to avoid the swarming mosquitoes. Drouillard kept his hands, face, and neck anointed with bear oil and elderberry in such times, and was less bothered by them.

He saw Sergeant Floyd sitting on a crate by his squad’s campfire with his face drawn and white, arms crossed over his middle, so full of pain that he was ignoring mosquitoes. Drouillard sensed death near the man, and was sorry, for this was one of their best. York was coming, bringing a cup of something for the sergeant. It was said that York gave Floyd such care because he was some kind of a relative, a cousin, of Captain Clark. York gave Drouillard a strange look and said, “Cap’ns want t’ see you.”

“So I hear. Thanks.” He walked over to where they stood by their own fire in the blue dusk, waving away mosquitoes. They were still in their uniforms from the council, and they stiffened when they saw him coming. By now he was uneasy. Everyone seemed to know something he didn’t.

Captain Lewis glared at him. “George, we need to talk to you.”

“So I hear,” he said again.

“Let’s walk down. The troops don’t necessarily have to hear what we’ve got to say.”

“Good, sir. They might not want to hear what I have to say either.”

“Oh? You have something on your chest, do you?”

“With respect, sir. I’ll listen first.”

They walked away from the camp, down to a thicket of willow where the mosquitoes were even worse.

“Now, George,” Lewis began, “I hardly know how to speak of this. I never in my life expected to have to talk to any man of mine about … about such an
aberration.”
Drouillard didn’t know what an aberration was, but thought it must have something to do with the way everybody had looked at him this evening. Lewis went on, continually brushing mosquitoes away from his face. “George, you’ve been valuable to us. You’ve kept us in fresh meat, and never failed in a duty. But, damn it, now, it—this—” He took a deep breath, got mosquitoes in his mouth and began sputtering and spitting. Then he glared and said forcefully, “I’m talking about
pederasty!”

Drouillard squinted at him through the dancing mosquitoes for a moment. “Cap’n, I don’t know what that is, so I doubt I did it.”

“Damn it! Buggery!” Clark blurted. “Don’t play dumb!”

Drouillard stepped back. He had to control himself, to keep from going for his knife. He couldn’t speak, he was so full of sudden fire.

“Yes, buggery!” Lewis snarled. “The vice of English fops and … and papist
priests!”

Papist? Drouillard’s flaring mind tried to remember that word. Didn’t it mean Black Robe? This captain was accusing him of something like that thing he had wiped out of his old memory?

Before he could find words, Lewis went on, in a hissing, angry tone: “The men are talking about you, Drouillard! You and that pretty Indian boy you brought in all moon-eyed and snuggly! And about that simpleton of Dorion’s … By God, Drouillard, I won’t have—”

“Tscha!
Damn you, Cap’n, you better stop!”

“What? What did you say to me?” Clark swelled up and boomed: “You don’t talk to your commander that way! By God, I’ll have your guts for garters if—”

“I said you better stop.” He was cold enough inside to kill now
and didn’t care how he spoke. The officers stood as if stunned. “Listen,” he said, hissing like a snake. “I’m not one of your soldiers. I’m not your slave. And I’m not one of those Catholics you hate!”

He knew of the contempt these Virginians had for Catholics; he had heard them snipe and scoff behind the backs of the wealthy Spanish and French merchants and officials Lewis was always soliciting in St. Louis.

“Listen! You say those lies again and you will look around and wonder where Drouillard went!”

They stood, barely visible in the deepening dusk, and he could feel their indignation, could feel them preparing words.

“Listen!” he went on. “I’m an Indian and you’re in Indian country now. I am your eyes and your tongue. You’re stumbling into a country you don’t know. Without me, and Cruzatte and Dorion, you are blind and dumb. You say that buggery lie again and I am gone so quick you’ll think I was just a spirit!

“Listen! I told you I have words for you. Hear this: your Father Jefferson has filled your head with such goddamn smoke and foolishness you won’t get past the Omahas, and sure not the Sioux, if you try to do them as you did those few poor Otoes today!”

“Did what …” It was Lewis, in a low, furious, outraged tone. But they were listening, not pulling their pistols on him or calling for the sergeant of the guard to arrest him. They were not even bothering to brush at mosquitoes now. Maybe he had got away with talking back.

He said: “If I could have talked to your Jefferson before he sent you, I would have told him: Big Horse and Little Thief are as great in their nations as you are in yours. You are no one to name them to be chiefs or not, you are just a stranger going through. They choose their own leaders, by ways of knowing that you don’t understand. I would tell your Father Jefferson, Indians don’t go to Washington and tell a man they meet, ‘You will be President.’ Eh? So you can’t say that in their country!”

He was amazed that they were still standing quiet in front of him, listening. They could not like this. They were important
whitemen and he was just a half-blood Indian. They thought they were important even here in this country, because their President had given Napoleon some money. He hoped that now as they stood staring so hard at him, they might be considering their own ignorance, that they might know how much they needed his eyes and his language.

It would be up to them now. If he had told the truth too plainly for their comfort, or if they still couldn’t see it, then they would get rid of him.

One thing was certain in his heart: they were not going to lay whippings on him. He could outshoot, outswim, and outrun any of their soldiers. If he needed a horse, he could take one out from under the very nose of any of their sentries. If this was to be the end of his part in their journey, he would vanish so quickly they would wonder if he had been just a spirit. In truth he felt that, compared with these ponderous men and their great load of Jefferson duties, he was a spirit.

He waited. He thought he felt Lewis’s anger still expanding. But it was Clark who spoke. “I’m for getting back to camp. There’s too much to do, t’ be idling out here feeding m’skeeters.”

They stirred. “Mind you, Drouillard. No boys or you’re out,” Lewis said.

“Mind you, Cap’n, there never were boys. And Hospitality isn’t a bugger. That good young man is something among his people you don’t understand.”

“Well, whatever it is, it’s unnatural.”

Unnatural, Drouillard thought. If you want to see unnatural, see one of your white soldiers copulate with a dead doe because she’s still warm. Drouillard had seen one do that while out on the hunt. But he didn’t say it. He was not a bearer of tales.

“I wonder if Reed found his knife and got back,” Captain Clark said as they walked toward the camp. He seemed relieved it was over. But Drouillard was still mad.

For several days Clark acted as if there had never been strong words, but Lewis talked to Drouillard only when necessary and seemed to be studying him coldly. Everyone had too much to do to sit dwelling on things, as the convoy moved up the winding river fifteen to twenty miles a day and the officers measured and wrote, measured and wrote. Captain Clark had become very interested in the shifting and reshaping of the river course, caused by cave-ins, silting up, and flood-throughs. He noted bow-shaped ponds that had formerly been parts of the river channel and were now cut off. He found a stretch where the river made a twelve-mile loop and came back within a quarter mile of itself, and saw that in flood times the water had flowed over that narrow neck. He predicted that in a year or two the main current would wash through and isolate the long loop. In his shore hikes he tasted and studied the varieties of grapes and fruits that grew so profusely in the bottoms, while Lewis examined and described herons, snakes, and waterfowl killed along the way, and took his navigational sightings, so solemn and intent on his instruments that he appeared to be worshiping them. Drouillard ranged the plains hunting, staying away from the captains, the troops, and the voyageurs, except in camp. He watched the boatmen’s eyes and expressions for hints about which men, if any, had spread the rumors about him, perhaps to divert attention from their own use of Dorion’s boy. Drouillard in the beginning had tried to
reach through the lad’s veil and find a spark of his Sioux spirit inside, but now stayed far from him.

Reed had been gone four days, and as the expedition moved north, the officers’ anxiety about him had grown. Then Sergeant Ordway came up with evidence that he had deliberately deserted. Ordway had examined his knapsack, and it was empty. Reed apparently had left not only his knife back at the council camp, but all his clothes and ammunition. It was presumed that he would head for the Oto villages, perhaps to try to obtain a horse there for his escape back to civilization.

So now Drouillard was riding out with a written order to find Reed and bring him back, preferably alive, but dead if he resisted, riding south along the west bank of the river with Labiche, Reubin Field, and a private named William Bratton, a member of Reed’s squad. Bratton, a Kentuckian, was a fair hunter with some gunsmithy skills, which might be needed on this long trek.

Drouillard was glad to get away from the officers a while. He was pleased, on the other hand, that they still had enough trust to put him in charge of a mission having life-and-death importance. They had given him some of the best available men, and had entrusted him with most of the hunting horses. Drouillard was not happy that he might have to kill a man for quitting this party; he had been close himself, many times, to turning his back on it and walking away. Four nights ago he had been within an eyeblink of doing so.

Capturing Reed was just a part of this mission. The captains had also told him to summon Big Horse and Little Thief, and other Oto and Missouria headmen, and bring them north to meet the expedition at the Omaha towns where the captains hoped to negotiate a peace between their tribes and the Omahas, as they had promised. They had also told him to find La Liberté, who had last been seen more than a week ago when he left with Hospitality to invite the Oto chiefs up for the first council.

Drouillard had in his pouch a twist of tobacco and a string of wampum beads as token gifts for the chiefs.

*     *     *

He led his three men south over the familiar plains at a distance from the river, to avoid the many extra miles of looping riverbanks. He had hunted alongside Reubin Field often enough to know that the man would be dependable and calm in whatever situation this mission put him. Labiche was volatile, but that was outweighed by his realistic understanding of tribal life and his ability with languages, so Drouillard was pleased to have him along. Now and then it was pleasant to talk in French too.

Private Bratton was a steady and rugged young fellow, pleasant, talkative. He was one of the few soldiers with real strength and confidence as a swimmer. One day Drouillard had seen him swim the whole width of the Missouri to get an article he had forgotten to put on the boat. Bratton seemed nervous about this present task, though, and asked Drouillard, “D’you, uh, d’you reckon we’ll have to shoot Reed?”

“Maybe. He might choose that over being taken back and whipped.”

“Whew! Yeh, for desertin’, it’d be way over a hundred lashes. They might shoot ’im, even if we don’t. After court-martial, an’ all.” After a while he went on, “D’you reckon La Liberté deserted too, or just got lost?”

“He knows this country. I doubt he got lost. If a man gets lost beside a river half a mile wide, I’d guess he wanted to.”

“Wonder if we’re s’posed to shoot him?”

“He’s a hired civilian, like me. I think the army book’d say don’t shoot civilians ’less you need target practice.” Behind, Field and Labiche laughed.

“Reckon they might shoot ’im for a horse thief, though,” Bratton chattered on. “That was a gov’ment horse he rode out on. Say! When’re they goin’ to send a boat home with all them written papers and whatnot, like they was sayin’?”

“Haven’t heard anything about it for days.”

“If I was Reed, I’d just’ve waited for that ride,” Reubin Field said. “Bet they would’ve put that dunghead on board home, just t’ get shed of ’im!”

Drouillard had never heard either of the Field brothers talk
bad about anyone but Collins. Since Reed’s disappearance, several soldiers had expressed their dislike and distrust of him.