Sign-Talker (22 page)

“Sir,” said Private Frazier, one of the pirogue’s crew, “want us to get this Indian off the mast?”

“Never mind him yet. Drouillard, Cruzatte, come here.” They stepped into the water. It was warm and the bottom was slick. “Tell this man that we are going on up the river. That we are warriors and he won’t stop us.”

Drouillard signed that quickly. Partisan responded by lunging close again, pointing at Clark’s face and erupting in fast, jabbering, insulting tones, with belligerent gestures. Not a word of it was understandable, but the message was all too plain, and the captain, standing with shin-deep river water licking at his shined boots, reached across his waist and drew his sword from the scabbard at his left hip. Its metallic slide and ring were frightfully loud. The cacophony of excited voices fell to a murmur as the captain leveled the long blade toward Partisan’s face. Partisan was looking at the blade and was for the moment speechless. Warriors were moving to vantage points with arrows ready, and Captain Lewis was shouting more orders on the distant keelboat. Drouillard reached into the boat for his rifle and Cruzatte’s
and brought them up. He and Cruzatte stood flanking Captain Clark.

Sometimes he had wondered how he would die; a hunter does often consider death. He had never dreamed of standing with whitemen against Indians. But this was no time to think of that. It was a time to decide where to aim. The air seemed compressed and the light was brilliant and he was cold inside. He was a Shawnee, and these Sioux were not enemies and the whitemen were not his allies, but this was how the Master of Life had put the moment together, and he could not shame his ancestors by being afraid or slow, even though there was no one anymore to give him an eagle feather.

A red figure was moving into the side of his vision. He glanced over. Black Buffalo, stately in his gift coat, lips drawn thin, strode down the riverbank to the prow of the pirogue. He grabbed the mooring rope from the three warriors who held it and shouldered them back. He shouted at the warrior who was hugging the mast, and the warrior let loose and jumped ashore. Black Buffalo threw the rope aboard. Then he stood staring at Partisan and Captain Clark, who were still poised as if to kill each other. Some warriors had waded in to the left, and Drouillard saw that he and Cruzatte and the captain were now cut off from the pirogue. Corporal Warfington, head of the pirogue’s crew, said, “Cap’n Clark, sir, what should I do? Want us to shoot?”

Clark barely glanced over his shoulder, and said, “Go to the ship and ask the captain for a full squad.”

“Don’t wish t’ leave ye here, sir.”

“Go on. I mean to face down this son of a bitch. Don’t act hurried, but don’t dawdle.”

“Yes sir. You Frenchies, row. Rest, stand to arms.” The pirogue moved off across the sun-glittering water. Captain Clark stood with sword drawn, Drouillard and Cruzatte with cocked rifles, in water to their shins, with maybe eighty warriors all around them with their weapons at ready, and a hundred or more other Sioux people crowding both riverbanks, and Captain Clark meaning
to stare down one proud son of a bitch. The keelboat seemed far off.

And just to make things even nicer, Drouillard thought, I need to piss.

Captain Clark kept his sword pointed at Chief Partisan but told Drouillard and Cruzatte to try to talk civil to Black Buffalo and Buffalo Medicine. “Tell them we are sorry we can’t stay, but we ’re going on. It’s not their say-so. We ’re warriors, not women.”

The interpreters said that with hands and words, and Black Buffalo answered with flitting hands and flashing eyes.

“He says they are warriors too. That if we go on, they will follow us and kill us bit by bit. That they have another town farther up with more warriors. That those could destroy us. He says if we leave the white boat here full of gifts, they’ll let us go on. Might just be tough talk for Partisan’s sake, or he might mean it.”

“Tell them we have enough medicine on our big boat to kill twenty towns. That if they misuse us, the Great Father in the East will send enough soldiers to destroy them in an instant.”

All this threatening talk was being done under metal arrows pointing, sword pointing, guns ready. But it was talk. It used time. It was a good thing now that the translation was so bad because while it went on, the white boat reached the keelboat and then came back with a full squad of resolute blue soldiers, all with shiny guns. The warriors and chiefs who had been pressing so close around waded out of the river and withdrew a distance up the bank, where they talked among themselves. The voices of the three chiefs, all too familiar by now, were scolding and arguing.

Captain Clark blew out a long breath between his lips and slipped his sword back into its scabbard, and Drouillard eased his flintlock from full cock. So did Cruzatte. After a time the chiefs stopped quarreling and stood looking at the boatful of soldiers as it nudged ashore beside Captain Clark. One voyageur hopped off the bow with the mooring rope in hand to hold the boat there.

But then Captain Clark waded out of the river, muddy water streaming off his boots, and walked toward the chiefs with his
right hand proffered. They looked at him expressionless, and no one reached out for his hand. So without a pause he turned his back on them and came back down to the shore. He looked at Drouillard with a half smile and a shake of the head and said, “Seems we’re done here. Get aboard.” He stepped into the stern with all the dignity that stretching, lurching maneuver allowed, and stood there, and Drouillard and Cruzatte boarded. The voyageur shoved the prow off shore and leaped aboard with the rope in his hand. The rowers dug in and the boat swung around to go out. Drouillard noticed that the captain’s hands were shaking. He himself was taking some deep breaths and watching the river water seep out of his moccasins and leggings and run into the bilge, when the captain said softly, “Hullo, what’s this now?”

Black Buffalo and Buffalo Medicine, each with a bodyguard, were wading hurriedly into the water after the pirogue, hands extended. Black Buffalo was calling out some words.

“These two ask to go to the big boat again, I think,” Cruzatte said.

“Well! Surprise, eh? Squeeze in, boys. Make room.”

The chiefs sat on bundles of the pirogue’s cargo. The vessel was near to swamping with twenty-two men and about six tons of cargo. Drouillard needed to urinate so badly that he considered not waiting. He was sitting in Captain Clark’s shadow.

If I moved to piss over the side, he thought, we’d turn over. If I pissed in the boat, it would sink.

“What are you laughing at?” the captain asked.

“Just things in general, sir. Wish you’d sit down.”

“Would, but I’m afraid to move.”

Drouillard smiled up at him. “Glad you’re afraid of
something.”

The music sounded like a heartbeat and a rattlesnake together. Warriors around the bonfire held flat drums, made of rawhide stretched over willow hoops, beating them at heartbeat pace with padded sticks. Each drum was decorated with clusters of deer and goat hooves that chattered like rattlesnakes with every beat. There was great power in the music. Drouillard could feel it all through him, passing from sky to ground.

Black Buffalo and Buffalo Medicine had invited the captains and some of their soldiers to come to the town for this feast and dance ceremony. Intimidation at the riverside had failed to cow these bold whitemen. Now, after a wakeful night on the big boat, drinking sugared coffee until their hands were trembling, these two chiefs had fallen back on the more customary way of impressing visitors, which was hospitality.

The captains had been wary of accepting the invitation to the Sioux town, fearing treachery, wanting to get past this difficult tribe and move on up the river. But President Jefferson wanted something worked out with the Sioux, and anything that might effect that had to be tried. And Cruzatte had advised the captains to accept, saying, “If you are their guest, you are safe. They honor guests.” The captains had turned to Drouillard for his opinion on that, and he had confirmed it. His people, the Shawnees, would feed even their enemies if they came as guests, he told them.

So they had come to this council lodge to be fed and entertained. They had smoked the pipes and had been served roasted dog. Dog, Cruzatte had explained, was a dish served only as a special honor. The dog, a useful animal and a friend, too beloved to be eaten as mere belly-filling food, was sacrificed only to feed honored guests. The captains had wondered how they had become honored guests after all the surliness and threats they had endured yesterday by the Bad River.

“Because they know you are important whether they like it or not,” Cruzatte had explained. “And also because they found you brave.”

Captain Lewis, at first reluctant to eat dog, called it perhaps
the best meat he had ever tasted. Clark, who had eaten his portion only for protocol, was disgusted with it. He had leaned over to Lewis and said, “Aren’t you ashamed! Wait till I tell Seaman what you had for supper!”

The drummers now began to sing. Their voices started high and nasal and descended to moans and growls, the drums would be struck doubly hard, and the voices would start shrill again and go sadly wailing down, like wolf spirits. And they sang to the open sky, as wolves do. This grand council lodge was circular, about thirty feet across, made of long, straight poles leaning inward to an apex, with a ceremonial firepit in the center, and this evening its covering was only shoulder-high, leaving the sky and stars open to view while protecting the occupants from the wind. Old Dorion had called these lodges tepees. The base was the Sacred Circle; the poles pointed toward the sky where Wakan Tanka, the Creator, dwelled. “Their home is also a prayer,” Dorion had explained.

About fifty chiefs, warriors, and soldiers were sitting in this lodge by firelight, all smoking tobacco and kinnikinnick mixed in their pipes, facing the fire in the center, and it did not feel crowded, because of the open sky. Out beyond the music Drouillard could hear the murmur of the town people, about eight hundred living in seventy or eighty of the tepee lodges. Tonight this whiteman visit was the center of all attention. All the way up from the river, curious people had been staring at the boats and hurrying along the path, watching the soldiers come up to the town. The captains had been conveyed to town sitting on elegant buffalo robes carried by several warriors so their feet did not have to touch the ground.

In their parade into town they had seen the beauty of the lodges, the orderly and cheerful demeanor of the people, their wealth of proud men and good horses. A particular order of Sioux men was always on duty as policemen and town criers. Drouillard had seen one such gendarme grab two squabbling women and propel them out of sight. He had also seen a picketed area where the forty or fifty Omaha prisoners from the recent
raid were being kept: women, children, and elders, scruffy and fearful, and they were guarded by the tribal police.

He could feel the presence of many people outside the lodge. Often a lower edge of the cover would be raised and eyes would peer in. Now and then a child’s face would appear at the top edge of the cover, where some little one had crawled up a pole to look in.

Now into the firelit circle erupted a throbbing, trilling sound, and the tempo of the drums changed, faster. In through the lodge door came a procession of richly dressed women of all ages, taking delicate half steps in time with the drums, some shaking rattles, all carrying long sticks decorated with feathers and ribbons, and each stick topped with one or more human scalps. The scalps were the war trophies of their fathers and husbands, sons and nephews, and there were many fresh ones. In a battle less than two weeks ago the Sioux from these towns had killed seventy-five Omaha men and boys, and had captured the women and children penned outside. The women began singing and filed off into two lines, one on either side of the fire, and there they kept up the same bobbing, rhythmic step, standing in place. The older women danced with a stolid dignity, only their feet moving, singing with their eyes half closed as if remembering the stories they were singing. Younger women tossed their heads from side to side in a great intensity of emotion, their long hair whipping left and right, their white teeth bared in grimaces, and they thumped the ground with their heels so that the fringes and bangles on their dresses flounced and shivered and their breasts and buttocks trembled. This dance was a celebration of their men’s bravery, a serious dance of life and death and triumph, not a trivial or suggestive dance. But the soldiers in the lodge were being affected. They were young and fit and were starved for contact with women. Through a space between the dancers Drouillard watched Sergeant Ordway. He could see that the sergeant was not admiring scalps; his eyes were trying to penetrate clothing. Collins watched from nearby, mouth hanging open.

The dancing and singing lasted until midnight, when the captains announced that they must get back to their boats. The
chiefs expressed disappointment. They had thought the officers and soldiers would spend the night in the town.

Certain women
, Black Buffalo told them in hand language,
say they would like to have the company of you and your soldiers. They say you have strong medicine, and they like you. We have many women and few men here. Some women are lonely. You do not have to go back to your boat
.

Drouillard translated that in a low voice; the soldiers were excited enough without hearing it. He saw the longing in the captains’ eyes and knew they were struggling with their own desires. Drouillard was himself full of yearning. But he felt that he had a duty to add: “Traders have been here for many years coming and going. The French pox is to be considered.”