Sign-Talker (60 page)

It was this: Creator gave this land to the Real People. The visitors are much trouble, but they are only passing through.

Drouillard remembered this place. He had hunted here in the rain, in 1804, on the way up. It was a high tongue of land between the Osage and the Missouri. In the point stood a high limestone bluff, with some of the old mounds on top. Manuel Lisa knew the place too. He had traded with the Osage tribe for a decade and had been here often.

“Shall we climb up and see the old mounds?” Lisa suggested. The Spaniard was more pleasant to Drouillard than to any of his other men—but still patronizing.

“I would like to see them again. Hey, Potts! Weiser!” he called down to the boats. “Remember this place? Let’s go up.” The two ex-soldiers trotted up from the riverbank, grinning. The trader looked annoyed that the two mere employees would join their climb, but he was aware that they were Drouillard’s old compatriots and said nothing. The two men always had wads of tobacco in their cheeks.

Drouillard was an investing partner in this voyage, as well as the one who had all the knowledge needed for its success. He had emerged from the Voyage of Discovery a rather well-to-do Indian. He had even bought a hat. It was black, and he wore it with the brim pinned up on the rifle-aiming side. Congress had voted to double his expedition pay. He had collected his bets from the soldiers. He had bought Collins’s and Whitehouse’s land grants, then soon sold them, with his own, for twice their
original value. Aside from his old three hundred dollar debt to Frederick Graeter, which he hadn’t got down to pay off, Drouillard was “worth,” as whitemen put it, more than four thousand dollars. By the end of this new venture, if all went well, he’d be worth twice that. He had never dreamed that twenty-five dollars a month interpreter pay would swell into such a fortune.

When they reached the summit, Lisa looked around, puzzled. All the trees lay dead and brown in the undergrowth, bark falling off, chopped stumps still standing. “What’s happened here?” he asked. “Who—”

“Me,” Weiser said. “Me and about six others. Cap’n Lewis had us clear it so he could use his sky insterments. They’d always get a fix on things whenever we come to a big river or somethin’, wouldn’t they, George?”

“You,” Lisa snapped at Weiser. “You will address him as ‘Mister Drouillard.’ He is a principal and an investor in this enterprise.”

Weiser raised his eyebrows and dropped his jaw, glancing at Drouillard, who said, “Ah, señor, I’ve always been just ‘George,’ or ‘Drouillard.’ Or just ‘our Indian.’ They don’t need to call me ‘Mister.’ I’d rather they didn’t.”

“I insist; they must show you the proper respect.”

“Well, sir,” Weiser said, eyes flashing, “whatever he’s called, I already got more respect for George than for anyone else in this shebang, incl—” He stopped himself from saying “including you,” but Lisa caught the intent and looked ready to hit Weiser or shoot him. Drouillard winked at Weiser and barely tilted his head, then put a hand under Lisa’s elbow and led him toward the mounds.

He could see that an enterprise with Manuel Lisa was not going to be easy or pleasant. He had been warned in that regard by many before leaving St. Louis. This man was as intense as Meriwether Lewis, but unlike him, had no military code governing his treatment of his men. Lisa cared little what anyone thought of him, except those—like Drouillard just now—whom he really needed. It appeared so far that discipline in his expedition would be based on fear of Lisa’s temper.

*     *     *

Just before Lisa’s fleet—two keelboats and several pirogues—was ready to depart from the Osage River landing, a big, shaggy mulatto man came down the Osage in a canoe and leaped out on shore. As he came up, Drouillard knew that he had seen him somewhere. Lisa nodded and grinned at him, and said, “You! Well, Rose, what do you want? Or need I ask?”

“I came t’ join ye,” the man said. His whiskers hid his expression, but from the display of teeth, which were big and brown-edged like those of a twenty-year-old horse, Drouillard guessed that the man was grinning. He shifted his gaze to Drouillard. “I’ve saw him,” he said. Now Drouillard remembered. He had seen Lisa eject this man from his store in St. Louis years ago, leading him with a knife up his nostril.

Lisa said, “This is George Drouillard. He’s second in charge. Represents Mr. Menard and Mr. Morrison. Lately he was scout for the Americans who crossed over the Western mountains. Mr. Drouillard, here is Ed Rose, who sometimes trades with the Osages for me, sometimes steals from me.”

Rose extended a hand to Drouillard, saying, “Not stealing. We don’t always agree on the value of things, is all, and sometimes I must make adjustments. I am proud t’ know another good man who ain’t got all lily-white blood in ’is veins. What people, sir? Omaha? Missouria?”

“Shawnee.”

“Well now! Like Mr. Lorimier’s people, that would be! Would ye know that gentleman?”

“I would. He’s my uncle.” Drouillard had visited Lorimier awhile just before setting out on this voyage, finding him firmly ensconced in American causes. In fact, one of his sons had just been graduated from the military academy at West Point, a matter of great pride and some ironic joking for Lorimier.

Lisa agreed to take on Ed Rose for this trip to the mountains, subject to immediate dismissal if his honesty came into doubt again. This seemed to be a dispute of long standing.

Just as the keelboats were casting off from the Osage landing,
Benito Vasquez, Lisa’s chief factor, shouted from the bow of one of the boats. “Señor Lisa! Wait! Wait! A man missing!”

“Who’s missing?”

“Bissonnette! His gun and gear are gone, and some goods.”

“Damn him! Put in. Cast on. Mr. Drouillard, you and Benito find his track. If he won’t come peaceably, bring him dead. I’ll go up the Osage to see if he’s headed for the villages. Rose, we’ll take a rifleman and go up in your canoe. Mr. Drouillard, if I see him up there, I’ll shoot. Either a signal or to put him down. Let’s go. And anyone else leaves the boats gets shot too!”

Drouillard trotted to all the outer edges of the camp, remembering where people had been, looking for tracks that kept going or disappeared into deep cover. Most of those would lead to a turd in the bushes, which he smelled before he saw it, and then tracks returning. The ground was soft and tracks were deep, but forty men tracked up a place in a baffling way. Vasquez tried to follow Drouillard as he tacked to and fro like a hunting dog, but finally stopped, panting, and just waited. Drouillard kept hunting.

He thought about his quarry. Bissonnette, a voyageur, had been a boatman for Lisa’s Osage trade for just a couple of seasons. Maybe he had some trinkets to go court an Osage girl. But a day or two back, Lisa had harangued him for skulking, so it was likely that Bissonnette had just deserted in anger. There were settlements just two days back, and St. Louis itself was only 120 miles. Drouillard remembered being sent back three years ago to catch or shoot Private Reed. This could be harder, in deep woods instead of prairie. But Bissonnette didn’t have a day’s head start like Reed. He had been here just an hour ago.…

There. Following tracks on a less-trodden stretch of riverbank, he found a hollowed, trampled place where something had been hidden and then dug up. Then the tracks went on, deeper with the additional weight. They went up the Osage a quarter of a mile, to a shallows, then sliding prints went down the muddy bank. Here the man had crossed the Osage. Drouillard waded in, looking along the south bank for prints coming out.

He followed silently, alert for ambush, because Bissonnette
would expect to be followed. Bissonnette’s gun was just a smoothbore, he remembered, and he carried a pistol, too.

After following for half an hour, he heard twigs crackling and got a glimpse of red scarf through the brush.

He stooped and ran closer. Bissonnette was moving through an opening. He carried bedroll and pack, but hanging in his left hand, not on his back. His musket hung by its sling behind his left shoulder. He moved heavily, clumsy with his pack of swag, shirt sodden with sweat.

Drouillard cocked his rifle and called to him. Bissonnette spun and saw him with his rifle pointed at him.

“M’sieu Lisa said bring you back alive,” Drouillard said. “Or otherwise.
Allons, mon ami?
I would rather not shoot a man for so little reason.”

Bissonnette gave a shrug of surrender and a forlorn smile, then turned away as if to lay down his pack and gun, but he was pulling his pistol out of his sash. Drouillard squeezed the rifle trigger. The shot echoed along the valley.

Bissonnette was still turning as he fell. His pistol was in his hand, but when he hit the ground he dropped it. He writhed and gave out a raspy squeal. Drouillard reloaded and went to him. The man’s teeth were bared in a grimace. Drouillard picked up Bissonnette’s pistol and drew away his musket, and laid them on the pack. He had been lucky all his life and had never quite had to shoot a man. Now this fool had made him do this. He said, “Can you get up?”

Bissonnette’s face was blanched with shock and his breath wheezed. He squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head. Drouillard grasped his shoulder and rolled him far enough to look at the wound. The ball appeared to have gone in under the shoulder blade. The back of the shirt was bloodsoaked, and dirt and chaff from the ground were mixed with gore. He would need men to carry him to the boats, so he shot the pistol in the air to summon help. “Damn you, you made me shoot you in the back. You better tell the truth about it, or I’ll kill you.”

The wounded man received no sympathy from Manuel Lisa.
The Spaniard tongue-lashed him all the time he remained conscious. The next day the groaning deserter was put in a canoe with a paddler from St. Charles and sent to St. Louis for medical care. The canoe disappeared down the broad Missouri, leaving Drouillard angry with both Lisa and Bissonnette, because the wounded man had not admitted that he provoked the shot in the back. Maybe he would have if Lisa had stopped scolding long enough to let him talk.

But the damage was done now. The voyageurs assumed a cold, distant manner with Drouillard. It was too familiar a feeling. It was like the beginning of the expedition with Lewis and Clark, when he had been regarded as the captains’ man by his fellow French-speakers, their talk falling low when he came near. Only Weiser and Potts seemed to remain comfortable in his presence.

One evening in camp a day or two below the mouth of the Platte River, sitting in as much smoke as possible to reduce the old torment of mosquitoes, listening to the voyageurs sing and jingle their tambourines, Pete Weiser said to him, “Ain’t seen no more thieves or deserters since, though, have we?”

Lisa and Vasquez came out of their tent into the fireglow and moonlight, both as usual in clean, loose-fitting white shirts and knee-high black boots, Lisa carrying his gentleman’s walking stick, which was also the scabbard for a straight, concealed sword. The two Spaniards kept a half-breed boy who served them and maintained their wardrobes, as York had served Clark. They knelt by the fire. Potts and Weiser, so recently soldiers, touched their hat brims as a salute. Lisa said, “We need to overhaul the keelboats very soon. Pay the seams, drain the bilges, dry some cargo. What do you think of the Platte as a place to do it, Señor Drouillard?”

He remembered the place in his mind’s eye. It was where he had walked up behind the wretched deserter Reed and lifted his rifle away from him. As he would have preferred to do in Bissonnette’s case. He remembered the great sandbars thrown out into the Missouri by the shallow Platte. “I can’t think of a better place,” he said.

“Me neither,” said Potts, who enjoyed giving Lisa his unsought
opinion, and knew he could get away with it when Drouillard was nearby. “The Platte. That’s where George here brought the cap’ns their first Indians, wasn’t it, George?” Lisa had given up trying to make these two call him Mr. Drouillard. “Hey,” Potts went on, “know who I’d like to see? That perty Indian ever’body thought was sweet on you. What’ll y’ bet he’s a chief by now?”

“Hospitality. No, not a chief. Wise man, maybe. If he’s alive.” Drouillard had thought of him, but doubted he would see him again.

The expedition returning last summer had sped toward St. Louis too fast to permit visiting. Now Lisa was hurrying toward the Upper Missouri, hoping to get beyond the Mandans before winter, so there was little dallying. Not much hunting. None of that exploring and note-writing or giving the Jefferson screed along the way. The voyageurs were on the oars as soon as there was light, made camp late, and ate mostly provisions that had been brought along. There were no horses, so Drouillard and Weiser and Potts hunted afoot, ranging ahead and killing game only if they found it by the river where the boats could retrieve it easily.

The old French merchant families in St. Louis for the most part were slow to evaluate an opportunity and reluctant to take risks. Manuel Lisa was different. His purpose was to get up into the best beaver country first, build a post, get traps out, and make trade contacts with the Indians up there. He and his backers in this venture had one motive: a head start on profit-making.

“I hope we’ll see Hospitality’s people near the Platte,” Drouillard said. “But I don’t count on it. They’ll likely be out on the buffalo hunt, like last time. Big country. Hard to find people.”

He stood on the familiar height north of the mouth of the Platte, looking far. No sign of Indians anywhere, not even distant smoke. From below on the sandbar came faintly the thump of caulking mallets and the voices of boatmen working. He saw something floating in the river bend about three miles up the Missouri. Not a drift tree. So he waited, standing in the clean
wind. Before long he could make out that it was a hollow-log canoe, not a big one. In it was one paddler, stroking steadily. It was staying along the near bank.