Sign-Talker (59 page)

The town of St. Louis was swirling with excitement and celebration. Young officers long since given up for dead had appeared alive and well; though they looked more like savage barbarians than civilized men, they were indeed the officers, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, who had been here three years before, provisioning themselves for a trip across the continent. At once
the Chouteau family of town founders and fur traders invited the captains to be guests in their home. They did not, of course, invite George Drouillard or the enlisted men, but many other residents of the town did so. And an old boyhood neighbor and fellow soldier of Captain Clark’s, a Major Christy, had settled in St. Louis as a tavern keeper; he provided storerooms for their tons of moldy, smelly cargoes, and lodging for Drouillard.

Captain Lewis was eager to dispatch a letter to the President, but as the post had already left St. Louis, he sent a note across the Mississippi to the postmaster at Cahokia to hold the mail until noon the next day. He told Drouillard to come to Chouteau’s house after breakfast next day to take letters across to Cahokia before noon.

The innkeeper gave Drouillard a small jug of brandy on credit, and he carried it to his room, which was the size of a closet, containing a cot and a washbasin. He was determined to get clean, but not drunk. He took a dram, sipped it, undressed and bathed with a rag and soap, stretched out on the cot with a sheet over him and listened to the noises of the town outside the window. St. Louis looked as if it had doubled in size and population in the three years of his absence, mostly Americans and due probably to the purchase of Louisiana from France. The sounds had changed. There was wagon traffic, wheels rumbling and grinding. Less singing, more shouting. He had noticed remarkable numbers of trading boats at the riverside.

Coming down from the Mandan country, a fast journey of less than forty days, the expedition had met many trading boats going up, two of them Chouteau company parties, two of them old army friends of both captains, one carrying old Pierre Dorion and the trader and interpreter Gravelines, another carrying the voyageur François Rivet, their old
confrère
who danced on his hands. They had picked up much news in those encounters: that Jefferson was still President, having been reelected; that James Wilkinson, who had served with Clark in Anthony Wayne’s army, was now the governor of the Louisiana Territory; that Aaron Burr, the former Vice President, had killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel; that William Henry Harrison, another old
army comrade of Clark’s and now governor of the Indiana Territory, had taken most of the lands east of the Mississippi away from their Indian inhabitants by treaties, while the expedition was away.

But there was some news that gripped Drouillard: a prophet had risen among the Shawnee people, back in Ohio, and Governor Harrison was alarmed because Indians of all nations were flocking to hear the Prophet’s words. It was rumored that the Shawnee Prophet had made the sun go dark at noon last spring, to prove his medicine powers. What troubled Governor Harrison was that the Prophet had built a pilgrim town in Ohio, land the whites said they owned by treaty.

Drouillard lay on the cot in the hot St. Louis night, sipping brandy, oppressed by the square confines of the room, but his spirit was stirred by that rumor. Were the Shawnees in Ohio not quite defeated after all? He wondered what his uncle knew of that, what he thought of it. What would the Shawnee Prophet be saying? Should I go there? he wondered.

Through a window came the street sounds of the American whitemen’s town: Jew’s harps, angry taunts, loud oaths, breaking bottles, screams, iron-shod hooves, whores’ laughter, drunks caterwauling bad songs.

Yes, there was even a voice he recognized: Private Whitehouse singing drunkenly:

When Drouillard went to Pierre Chouteau’s grand house the next morning, he found Big White filling a whole wide bench, bewildered but gracious, receiving the homage of a crowd of curious St. Louis townspeople, their false flatteries being translated by a puffed-up and proprietary Jessaume. The captains were transformed: clean-shaven, red hair washed and gleaming, neatly queued. They were in clean lace shirts, white breeches and boots, but their eyes were puffy with fatigue. Lewis no
longer limped from his wounds, but this morning he was walking with a pained hobble.

“Strangest damn thing,” Clark said to Drouillard, shaking his head. “Could
not
sleep on a feather bed! All those years on the ground, I guess.” He laughed. “We finally got down on the floor and dozed a little. But we had to get letters written, so we were up early. Take these to Mr. Hay. He’s the postmaster at Cahokia, and he’s expecting them before noon. This is Captain Lewis’s letter to the President, this one’s mine to Governor Harrison, and these are to my friends and family in Kentucky. These are the first accounts of our return, so do impress upon Mr. Hay that they are extremely important. All right, then? And you, Drouillard. Did you celebrate with the boys last night? Y’ look pretty chipper.”

“I slept deep, Cap’n. No writing in my head.”

Clark chuckled. “From what I hear, our boys behaved fairly well last night, no mayhem to speak of.”

“Well, sir. See how they do when they’ve been paid out.”

They laughed. York, toting a tray, nodded sadly at him. Lewis said, “In regards to pay, George, keep this to yourself, and don’t count on it till you see it. But we’ve discussed your performance of duties and we intend to petition the States for extra pay for you, five dollars a month over what we agreed. You were our civilian, but you were an example of duty and discipline to every soldier we had. Now, better hurry. Mr. Chouteau’s got a boat and oarsmen waiting for you at his establishment at the quay.”

“Cap’n Clark, Cap’n Lewis, I … I do thankee.” He was moved.

“We’re not through with you, George Drouillard. Before you make other plans, talk to us,” Lewis said.

And Clark said, “We’ll have better lodgings for you when you come back from Cahokia. Pascal Cerré and his family told me they would be honored to have you as guest.”

Drouillard strode down the street, stepping carefully to avoid the outflung night waste from St. Louis’s finest imported French porcelain chamber pots. He knew who the Cerrés were. Merchants and lenders. They had been helpful to Captain Clark’s
brother during the Revolution. It was remarkable how rich men gathered around an opportunity to become richer. Like buzzards over a kill.

He turned onto the riverfront, which was crowded with merchants and boatmen, voyageurs, soldiers, town Indians and other beggars, black laborers, fishermen, ladies, and tarts and bawds with their graduated shades of respectability. He passed, hearing talk of prices and politics, but the talk was mostly about the expedition just returned from the far places. Many an eye glanced at him, at his handmade leather clothes, breechclout, weapons. Some probably recognized him as one of those travelers. Then they would look at his face and see that he was an Indian, and look past him.

“Bonjour
, M’sieu Drouillard,” said a familiar voice. There in the door of a storefront, hands on the lapels of his waistcoat, stood Manuel Lisa, short, dark and handsome, nodding and smiling that smile with one corner of his mouth turned down. He stopped out and offered his hand.
“Bienvenue, et félicitations.”

“Merci
, M’sieu Lisa.”

“I hear marvelous things.”

“Eh. So.”

“I do hope you remember, though it was long ago that I had the pleasure of your company, that I invited you to visit me upon your return? That invitation remains fresh and sincere. At your convenience, of course. I should enjoy to hear about the mountains, and the tribes there. And your achievements.” He watched Drouillard with dark, keen eyes, and glanced at the letter pouch, as if he had already guessed everything about it. Then he raised a finger. “Ah,
ami
, I nearly forgot; I have word for you from your uncle, Lorimier.…” That was a surprise; the two scarcely tolerated each other. But of course three years had passed, and things must have changed since this place had become America. “He presumed that I might see you on your return before he would,” Lisa said. “This message was months ago, let me remember … ah, yes. That your father’s widow, ah …”

“Angelique? What?” He was afraid of the news; it would
mean that all his half brothers and sisters were orphans and would be even more needful.

“That she remarried. Actually, it was before you left, but of course the letter didn’t come until you were gone. He said to tell you the new husband is substantial; they want for nothing. Your uncle holds the letter for you, but he wanted me to tell you if I saw you first.”

Of course, he thought. So that I wouldn’t send off more of my pay, since they don’t need it now. In fact, didn’t need it when I sent it.

“Thank you, m’sieu, for remembering so well, with all you have on your mind.”

“I have much on my mind,
mon ami
. Especially now that you and your American captains are safely returned. I am very eager to talk with you.”

“I am on an errand just now, but, soon.”

“Until then.”

“Until then.”

He sprang ashore from Chouteau’s boat on the Cahokia side of the river and dismissed the rower. He delivered the letters, and the admonition about their importance and urgency, to the postmaster, who had detained a boat for them. Obtaining a receipt for the letters, Drouillard walked out of town on the river road. He remembered coming along this road in a sleet storm, bringing up the soldiers from Tennessee, nearly three years before. Not a day like this. It was hot and steamy in the Mississippi Valley today, and the giant oaks and elms and sycamores, the profusion of greenery and shade, wavered in the moist haze, nearly overpowering after all the emptiness of the Great Plains.

He went along past cabins and farms and fields of stumps, then turned off eastward along an ancient path worn into the ground long ago but unused now, and passed along through woods and fields, watching the birds and small game fly and skitter out of his way. For a while he thought of the matter of that money he had sent where it wasn’t needed, thought of his half siblings with their new stepfather, thought of Lorimier being in touch with Manuel Lisa. He thought of the letters he had just
sent off, of the great stir they would cause across the whole country when they were published in the newspapers. The captains expected to be the most famous men in the United States. He knew they were expecting glorious rewards. He had heard them talking and planning all the way down the Missouri in the white pirogue, while Lewis’s wounds healed, hurrying so that they seldom let anyone ashore to hunt, some days eating nothing but sweet pawpaws.

The captains had their foothold in the West, and intended to profit by it. Already coalescing around them in St. Louis were the principals of a fur trading company that would replace the British on the Upper Missouri, now American country. They would cut the Sioux out of the commerce entirely until they learned to cooperate. The captains spoke of bringing their own families into the company. Lewis had a younger brother named Reuben who could use an opportunity like this to help build the family fortunes. Clark had older brothers who were already successful businessmen in Louisville, not as famous as the Town Burner brother, but more wealthy. Lewis intended to publish an account of the great journey and make a fortune from that. They were full of grand ideas, confident that their achievements would bring them the approval and gratitude of the nation, and the President himself was their greatest champion. They had suffered to open the West, and hoped for just rewards.

And in their minds, it seemed, Drouillard himself fit in somehow.

The old path led him through a glade of perfectly level ground. He stopped in the middle, aware of an utter silence: no birdsong, no rustling of creatures, not even the hush of a breeze in the surrounding treetops. He felt through his moccasin soles a vibration in the ground. It felt something like the drumming of the great waterfalls of the Missouri, but there was nothing to hear.

There has been something sacred here, he thought, in the time of the ancient ones. He rubbed tobacco and sprinkled it on the ground.

Then he went on, toward the sacred place he already knew. Its
slope rose in front of him, and he started up, climbing the mound among the trunks of the old trees. Very little sunlight penetrated the canopy of leaves, but beams here and there dappled the ferns and the little leaves of the crow’s-feet, the trout lily, that grew among and around the tree roots.

He reached the level summit of the mound and went to the place where he had built a fire and stayed on a drizzly night almost three years before. And where, as a boy long ago, he had come to find his Spirit Helper.

He found the fallen tree against which he had sat all that rainy night. It was more mossy now, and had decayed a little farther into the ground. Much of it had been clawed to punky shreds by a bear seeking grubs. Black bear. Man’s brother. He thought of the grizzly bears on the plains who had fought back when the soldiers made war on them. It was good to be back with black bears. He wondered how much a bear knew of the ancient spirits here, whether the spirits sang to them too. He thought they probably did.

When he had come onto this mound that rainy night three years ago to see what the old spirits would tell him, he had not known what their answer was, only that they had told him something. Then he had made his own free choice to go across the land. And when he was out there he saw the people living as the old ones had lived, going where they pleased because there were no whiteman lines they couldn’t cross.

He stood here on top of the mound and thought of the Shawnee Prophet he had heard of, he who ignored the whitemen’s lines and called the Indians back to the Shawnee homelands.

He stood on the top of the mound and filled his pipe, then rubbed some of the punk wood of the old tree between his fingers until it was powder and sprinkled that on top of the tobacco in the pipe, so it would catch fire quicker when he focused his burning glass in it. When the smoke started, he turned to all the directions, and smoked in the silent sunbeams, with the smoke curling up in shapes in the beams, and in the smoke he saw again the shape of the old one with something hanging in the center of his forehead. The breeze moved the leaves in the treetops, and he
heard the faint songs. And it was as he had remembered: these were the same songs he had heard the gray-haired Nez Perce woman sing, the woman who had cut her arms and bled. The songs said one thing to an Indian of any time.