Sign-Talker (40 page)

And Drouillard had told of a black-skinned man with hair like a buffalo’s poll. It was as if they had to stay, to see such a thing.

He had dismounted a few minutes ago and left the horse tied to a willow in order to stalk this close to the deer, which was not close enough to suit him, because if he missed, this gunshot would scare any game even farther down, and it was scarce enough already.

He squeezed the trigger; the rifle cracked and bucked, and the deer sprang forward three times, then fell. Up on the slope one of
the Shoshone horsemen whooped. Drouillard watched him lash his horse and ride full tilt back along the draw to tell his people of meat. Drouillard reloaded, ran back to get his horse, rode up and gutted the deer. He waved to Shields, whom he could see half a mile away on the other side of the valley, pointed down at the carcass, then mounted and headed on down the valley to hunt for more. He knew this one would not last long when the captain and the hungry Indians arrived, and also that one deer would scarcely begin to feed seventy starving people.

Within an hour he had killed a second deer, hung it by a stream and gone on down looking for another. Before mid-morning he had got a third, and he butchered it and slung it behind the saddle to take back to the Shoshones. Three deer would at least take the edge off their hunger, and he looked forward to cooking and eating a solid breakfast with these poor people.

He had taken a bite out of each deer’s heart—spiritual food, not enough to ease his own ravenous hunger. Remembering this country, he guessed it would take until late afternoon to get down to the creek fork where Lewis had left the note for Clark. No doubt the Shoshones were getting more and more nervous as they came down. He knew some of the women were certain they were being led into a trap. If Captain Clark wasn’t at the forks with the boats, the Shoshones’ suspicions would seem confirmed, and they probably would just turn and retreat back over the divide. Lewis had him explain, as well as he could, about the note he left on a stick for the other white chief. It had been very difficult to explain what a note was; Drouillard had to first explain such a mysterious thing as writing.

When he got back to Lewis and the Shoshones, he expected to see them cooking the other two deer, but there was nothing left of them but bones and hides. Lewis exclaimed with a grimace that when he gave them the major portions of the two animals, they had devoured them raw, down to the guts and even the soft parts of the hooves.

“You’re their savior, Drouillard. Now let’s cook this one proper for a good breakfast, all of us, if they can be patient
enough. I’ll be able to eat if I don’t let myself remember these wretches chewing raw guts. Eugh!”

Later Shields killed a pronghorn. The Shoshones rewarded Lewis and his hunters with fur capes. Lewis gave the chief his cocked hat. Now, to any lurking enemy, they all looked indistinguishable.

“Damn, look at ’em,” Lewis muttered. “Now they fully doubt us again! Where’s Clark?”

The Shoshones did look as if they were ready to turn and hightail back up the valley to their hideaway on the other side of the divide. Above the fork where Lewis had promised them the other whiteman chief with the boats would be waiting, there was not a sign of Clark’s party. Some of the most dubious warriors were crowding around Cameahwait and it was all too obvious they were telling him they were being tricked, that they should go no farther.

“I’ve got to restore their faith,” Lewis said, “or we’ll never see them again and we’re out of luck for horses ever. Listen … I’m going to give Never Walks my rifle … tell him that if I’ve tricked him and there’s any enemy in the brush down there, by God, he can shoot them or he can shoot me, that I’m not afraid to die. Got to challenge their courage again … We’ll all give ’em our rifles.”

The soldiers looked stunned. Shields protested: “S’pose there really
are
Blackfeets or somethin’ around? What if Cap’n Clark run into some? Maybe that’s why he ain’t here!”

“I think they’re just slow coming. Tell them, Drouillard.”

So Drouillard told them, and the men handed their weapons up to the horsemen. The Indians fondled and examined the fine weapons, and it was obvious that they would love to keep them forever—especially now that they knew from how far away they could kill deer. Drouillard had no illusions about men and weapons, and he knew that Lewis in his desperation had just enabled the Shoshones to kill the four members of the expedition, who had come in and troubled their lives and delayed their buffalo hunt, with their very own weapons.

But it seemed to be working. This gesture, and his hand-sign explanation of it, now had the chief and his warriors nodding and talking rapidly among themselves, and the looks in their faces were changing. Faith in Cameahwait’s integrity was well-placed.

Now the captain said, “Here’s something else we can do. You remember the note I left for Cap’n Clark to wait here for us? Drouillard, I want you to tell them again about that note and then take one of their scouts down there with you and get it. I want him to see you pick it up. Then bring it back to me.”

So he told them about the note. They nodded and waited, still fondling the rifles.

Then, with one of their scouts to keep an eye on him, Drouillard rode down to the point in the forks and took the paper off the stick, brought it back to Lewis and handed it to him. Lewis untied it and seemed to be reading it with growing delight.

What’s he doing? Drouillard thought. He already knows what it says—he wrote it himself!

Lewis waved the paper in front of Cameahwait, smiling broadly. “Now, George, tell them that this is a note from our other captain. That he comes so slow that he sent a messenger here today with this note, and took away my note. That this one asks us to wait here for him with the Indians. And that if the Indians don’t believe it, one of their braves should ride down with you to meet Clark and tell him we’re waiting. Got all that?”

Drouillard, incredulous, said, “But that’s the same note you left there. I recognize—”

“They don’t know that. Tell them what I said.”

“But that isn’t true, it’s lying.”

Lewis narrowed his eyes. “It isn’t really a lie. It’s a stratagem. You’ve got to tell them that or we lose them, and probably our guns and our lives too. This is no damned time for niceties, and I’m ordering you to tell them what I said!” He kept his voice low and pleasant but there was ice in his eyes.

Drouillard turned slowly to the Indians, cupped his hand behind his ear and pointed to them, meaning,
Listen
. And for a moment he wasn’t sure what he was going to tell them. He did not
ever want to lie to Indians for whitemen, especially friendly Indians who were sure they were risking their lives to help them. But to undermine the captain’s “stratagem” would destroy their trust, probably with fatal consequences for these soldiers and himself, and cause a failure of the whole mission. Would that be better than a small, inventive deceit?

He sighed. There was a way to say it. He began signing:

My chief wants me to tell you this story about the message on the white leaf. That it came from our other chief. He wants me to say it was put here just today …

This was going to be an uneasy night.

It was cold and Drouillard was glad when the sun rose over the eastern mountains, ever so slightly warming the right side of his face. The Shoshone warrior who had agreed to accompany him down was glancing about warily, but now and then he took out and examined the shiny steel knife Captain Lewis had given him for this service. Drouillard’s rifle had been returned to him for protection on the way down, and the young warrior was watching him as carefully as he watched the countryside for enemies. This was one who had seen Drouillard shoot the first deer at such great distance yesterday, and it must have required considerable courage for the warrior to come with him. But Captain Lewis, Shields, and McNeal in effect were hostages until this warrior returned safely, and perhaps he took some courage from that.

The sun was just starting to melt the frost when Drouillard saw cawing ravens fly up from the willows downstream, and at the same time he heard a man’s voice, faint and distant, but sounding like Charbonneau’s. The warrior had heard it too, and
reined back. Drouillard smiled, pointed down and signed,
Come. Friends
. He put his heels in the horse’s flanks and they trotted down, the unshod horses’ hooves thudding softly. He heard another voice now, and it was a woman’s. He felt laughter bubbling up in his bosom. Sacagawea. The ravens had said, Bird Woman comes.

They came walking up the shore, Charbonneau and his wife with their baby on her back, and they stopped suddenly, seeing him and the other rider. He raised a hand in greeting.

And then the Bird Woman gave a squealing whoop. She put two fingers in her mouth, her sign of kinship, meaning,
We eat together
, and began dancing in a small circle where she stood. At that moment a big man came running into view from behind them, carrying a rifle and clad in deerskin and a wolf-skin cap and virtually skidded to a stop beside them, his ruddy face open with astonishment. Drouillard leaned back in his saddle, laughed aloud and yelled:

“Cap’n Clark! It’s me, Drouillard! Come on up! We got Shoshones with four hundred fine horses!”

It was like a fair, a festival, here at the fork of the narrow stream: people milling and staring, Indian men and women, whitemen in ragged and fringed deer hide, wet to the waist from pulling the canoes up the shallows and over riffles; saddled horses being led about; groups of Indians gawking at a huge black man and a huge black dog and at countless bundles of material riches being unloaded from the beached canoes and opened and spread on the grass to dry in the sunlight; women gasping and prattling about beads and colorful cloth garments with gold ribbons and buttons; Indian men hugging brawny, rawboned whitemen with face hair that hung to their collarbones. Cameahwait was tying pearly shells into locks of Captain Clark’s coppery red hair, which was in itself an object of the crowd’s fascinated attention, and Lewis was demonstrating his dog’s obedience.

John Colter grinned at Drouillard’s Shoshone trappings and exclaimed, “Hey, old friend! Y’look like a real Indian now!”

“Haha! That’s the thing, eh, to look like one?”

Women gathered around Bird Woman to eye her Hidatsa dress and ornaments and to make a fuss over her baby. Drouillard wandered here and there, greeting soldiers, his heart feeling big as the world, stopping occasionally to do hand-signing for soldiers and Shoshones who had statements or questions for each other. He was hearing all the happy babble in his ears, but in his spirit he was hearing a song, a song that some of the Shoshones had sung as they came along the riverbank watching the boats come up, a happy but bittersweet greeting song with throat trills that made him long for his boyhood days in the Shawnee town at Lorimier’s.

He was looking at Bird Woman, who was speaking in her own tongue with the curious women, when she abruptly went speechless. Her eyes grew big and she clapped her hand over her mouth. He heard a girl’s voice exclaiming behind him and turned to see a pretty Shoshone approaching Bird Woman with her hands reaching. They embraced, almost collapsing on each other with laughter and tears. Drouillard grabbed Charbonneau by the sleeve and asked him what this was about. The Frenchman queried his sobbing wife in the Hidatsa tongue, then raised his eyebrows, nodding.

“This two were caught together by t’Hidatsa, same day, but t’at one got away and run back to her people! They see each other now! Five years! Ha haaa!” Charbonneau clapped his big, dirty hands together and shook his head sharply from side to side, yellow teeth grinning through his black beard, tears in his eyes. Drouillard had learned just today that Captain Clark reprimanded Charbonneau severely just days ago for striking his wife, yet the man seemed genuinely joyous over her reunion.

The Shoshones had erected a circular arbor of tall young willows, and the soldiers had put up a sail as a shade awning. Captain Clark called for Drouillard and Labiche and the Charbonneaus, waving them toward the awning. The captains and Cameahwait and some subchiefs were gathering there. Apparently they were getting ready to parley a little and wanted the interpreters. When Drouillard slipped into the shade, stopping to shake hands with Labiche, the captains had already seated
themselves and the Shoshone headmen on the deerskins he had so recently obtained. A pipe lighting ember was being made up by Sergeant Ordway, using his burning glass just outside the bower with a tin pan to hold the tinder. The Charbonneaus came in out of the sunlight and were directed to seat themselves near the center, where they could translate, and the young woman glanced at Cameahwait. She gasped, and again made that motion of clapping her hand over her mouth. She stepped in front of the chief and dropped to her knees, face crumpling with either anguish or joy, eyes gleaming with tears. The chief’s bony face at first showed just surprise. Then recognition. They uttered soft cries to each other and she embraced him, wrapping the edge of her blanket around him, now in full, unrestrained sobbing while he held her shoulder in a tight grip and tried in vain to keep a chiefly composure, his own face streaming with tears. Shoshones nearby were murmuring to each other in wonder.
“Qu’est-ce qui passe?”
Drouillard asked Charbonneau, who was watching with mouth ajar.

“Il me semble qu’il est son frère, croyé mort!”

The captains too were looking around for an explanation, and when Clark’s eyes met his, Drouillard said, “Never Walks is her brother! She thought he was dead!”

“Good God almighty! Lewis, did you hear that? Good God almighty!”