Sign-Talker (8 page)

“I saw it start. I hope you don’t mean to ask me about it as a witness, because all I saw was the whiskey in a private fighting the rank in a corporal. To me, one’s about the same as the other.”

“What … what do you mean?”
“I mean both whiskey and rank make a man forget who he really is.” And, he thought, like a master over a slave too, but he didn’t say that because it might make trouble for York.

“Interesting,” Clark said. “Well, Frazier’s sober now and Whitehouse is a private again, so I guess I’ve cured ’em both, eh? Now here’s what I called you in for. I’d like you to do something for us while you make up your mind about joining us: Sergeant Floyd keeps so busy running courier between me here and Captain Lewis down in the towns, he’s no time left for useful duties here, like helping Ordway sit on these wild men. I’d like you to take over some of Floyd’s courier work, until our business in St. Louis and Cahokia is finished. You know your way around here, and we’ve seen you can be counted on.”

Drouillard nodded, and was ready to say something, but Clark went on: “Another thing you could do for us if you take that on. We need a body of good boatmen, who know these rivers. In particular, the Missouri. We’ve asked Manuel Lisa to help us recruit some. You know him, I believe? You could work with him to find some who know the waters, and maybe some of the languages too, up yonder. Osage, Kansa, Missouria, Omahas …”

Drouillard’s mind at once ranged over a number of just such men, most French-Canadian voyageurs, some métis like himself. The first one he thought of was his old friend Pierre Cruzarte, the old one-eyed fiddler, half Omaha and a veteran of upriver trade, lighthearted and honest. The thought of having along some French-speakers, someone besides pugnacious, surly soldiers, was a pleasant new notion. “I know some such as that. How many?”

“Maybe six to a dozen, depending on boats and loads. If a dozen apply, we’ve got time to shake out the chaff, as we’re doing here amongst the soldiers. And …” The captain looked over the rim of the cup from which he was sipping what looked like coffee but smelled like a toddy. “ … maybe that will be enough time for even you to make up your mind.”

Drouillard felt a lift inside his bosom, a sudden mirth, a sense of relief. “I’ll do those things. Carry messages. Find voyageurs. Sure …”

“And still hunt, when you can?”

“I will. But I won’t need all that time to decide myself. You can sign me on.”

“What? You
will
go? For the whole way? You’re certain?”

“Eh
bien
. If I didn’t go, I suppose I’d wonder from then on.”

Clark was beaming, nodding. So was York. Clark said, “Got an itch to see what’s out yonder? Like us, eh?”

Drouillard did want to see how it would look to the eagle in his spirit. That was true.

But his greater curiosity was about seeing these damned people try to do it. He had never seen a stranger mix of naive, single-minded, arrogant fools, extravagant spenders, hard-headed brawlers, all slaves to one thing or another—to army rules, to slave masters, to a faraway chief called President Jefferson—and all so ignorant of the minds and spirits of those wary peoples through whose lands they would be carrying their outrageous new notions. He had never seen a plan this big, this certain to fail. Everybody in the countryside was talking about this grandiose enterprise, either wanting to go or scheming for some way to profit by it. Half his heart wanted to see these strange young officers succeed in such a brave dream; half his heart believed it deserved to fail because of what land-hungry Virginia soldiers like them had done to his own people and their allies. Either way, he presumed that he was meant to go along and see it happen. His mother Asoondequis had always said that the Master of Life puts people where he has a purpose for them. He had counseled with her in her grave, with the spirits on the mound-hill, and with his uncle at the trading post. Their wisdom had not been clearly stated at those times, but they had come together now in that uplifted feeling inside him. This would require a sacrifice of all his own cherished day-by-day freedom, but he felt now that he had been put in its way, and as a talker of many languages, he might help it turn out as well as possible for the people out there who would be in its way. But all he said to Captain Clark now was:

“I would like to see that far.”

When Drouillard became the captains’ courier, he saw how they worked together even though twenty-five miles apart. Lewis bought supplies and merchandise in St. Louis and Cahokia, palavering with traders and officers here, and sent goods and messages up to Captain Clark at the soldier camp. Lewis was always shining in uniform, drinking, going partying. Clark stayed in the muddy camp, trained and disciplined the crude soldiers, sent them out to hunt, made them practice with their rifles, rewarded them with a little more whiskey, but punished them if they went to the bootleggers and got too much of it. He kept them busy whipsawing lumber to improve the camp and their big boat. He constantly measured the skies and the weather with his strange instruments, and wrote the measurements on paper along with lists and sketches and maps and numbers and words, words, words. All his life Drouillard had seen writing people, Lorimier’s clerks and scriveners, but he had never seen anyone write and figure on paper so diligently as that Captain Clark. His fingers were always black with ink.

It was their way of remembering. Clark told Drouillard they would write each day of what was happening, all the way to the western sea. This was all for the man Jefferson, to tell him all they did, all they saw. All the sergeants and soldiers who could write would keep journals too, so that if any records got
lost or damaged, there would still be accounts for the President. Clark asked Drouillard to keep a journal, but he said he could not write well enough. York made as much ink as coffee for Captain Clark. They looked alike, but the coffee was hot and the ink was not.

Drouillard, carrying letters to Captain Lewis from Captain Clark, disembarked from a rowboat near Manuel Lisa’s store. Lisa was a Spanish merchant who had made considerable wealth in New Orleans. Believing in the business tenet that the closer one is to the source, the more profit one can skim off, he had then moved up the Mississippi to try to break into the old Chouteau family’s fur trade monopoly in St. Louis. By virtue of being Spanish, Lisa had obtained a trading license from Spanish officials, and now had a thriving establishment on the riverfront. He had become one of the suppliers for the Americans’ planned journey to the West.

Lisa’s establishment fronted on a cobbled riverfront quay that ran with sewage from upslope streets; just as the great rivers of the land converged in the Mississippi Valley, the streets of St. Louis trickled mud, washwater, and chamber-pot waste down onto this broad quay, where it stewed until a rainstorm flushed everything into the river. Drouillard stepped from plank to cobblestone, stone to curb, to keep his soft-soled, delicately quilled moccasins out of the sludge as he approached the door of Lisa’s store and warehouse. He breathed through his mouth to keep from smelling the stench of whitemen’s civilization. A few flatboats, pirogues, and dugouts were moored at quayside, silhouetted against the vast, yellow-gray surface of the Mississippi.

The interior of Lisa’s establishment was dense with the musky, rotten-flesh smell of ill-prepared hides and pelts and loud with the arguments of buyers, sellers, and clerks. As Drouillard made his way through the gloom among kegs, coils of rope, bolts of calico, hempen sacks, and shelved boxes, he heard Manuel Lisa’s voice squawking rapidly in Spanish and then a deep bellow of a man in pain. From the dim depths at the
back of the store two figures came hurrying up the aisle. Drouillard darted out of their way among a stack of piggin buckets.

Manuel Lisa in a black frock was in front, leading a huge, reddish-haired mulatto man in filthy deerskins toward the front exit. The giant was running on tiptoe, because Señor Lisa had a dagger point up his nostril, and by this bloody point of contact pulled him along to the front door, where he released the man, pivoted around him and with a kick sent him sprawling in the foul puddles of the quay. When the little Spaniard returned, he seemed hardly agitated. He beckoned Drouillard into his office in the rear, where they sat to face each other.

“I am surprised to see
you
here, Señor Drouillard.”

“Why surprised? I come to talk further about the voyageurs.”

Lisa made a sharp cutting motion with one hand. “Your haughty captain has terminated us. He will get the boatmen through Chouteau. Has he not even told you?”

“In fact, no.”

“Perhaps then he was just venting his temper with me, or bluffing to make me meet his stingy terms.”

“Temper perhaps. Cap’n Lewis bluffing, permit me to doubt.”

“Verdad
. And I regret he is so stingy. I would have liked to continue commerce with you.”

Drouillard had watched Captain Lewis squander the government’s money here in St. Louis, and thought “stingy” anything but an apt term. He had heard Lewis rant about bad faith and overcharging by several of the suppliers, including Señor Lisa. “I too regret, señor,” he said, and started to rise, but Lisa shrugged, then stayed him with a hand on his wrist.

“Perhaps you could sweeten his attitude and bring him back to our establishment? I know the captain esteems you most highly.” Lisa was more anxious than he pretended; all the commerce yet to come would be under the American regime.

“Señor Lisa, I do not interfere. The best I can do for you is to say nothing against you.”

“Thank you for that, then.” Lisa was looking at him with calculation in his glittering black eyes, which reminded Drouillard
of a serpent’s: large, round, and scarcely ever blinking. “Will you stay and accept a drink with me, Señor Drouillard? Don’t worry, I won’t tell your captain if you do.”

“I will accept one, and will tell him myself.”

Lisa smiled at that, and decanted rum into a fancy glass, saying, as he gave it to him, “If I can be of any service to you, or to Captain Clark …”

Drouillard sipped and thought. He still needed to borrow money to send to his stepmother’s family, and wondered if Lisa cared enough about getting back in the Americans’ good graces to lend him a few hundred dollars. But he remembered something that his uncle Lorimier once had said about Manuel Lisa: that he would never be such a fool as to get into his debt.

So he replied, “The captains are of one mind on everything. I wouldn’t recommend going around one to the other.”

“Of course not. I wouldn’t try. As for you, Señor Drouillard, I presume you will go the whole way with them?”

“I’ve told them I will.” He sipped the
tafia
, which was smoother and more refined than anything he had ever tasted, and set the glass down.

“You will see such sights! I envy you. I would love to be the first to see what doubtless will be wonders!”

Drouillard said, “There are Indians out there already, señor; we won’t be the first to see it.”

“Mhmm, yes. So. After the journey, what are your plans?”

Drouillard shrugged. He had long been a plain hunter, not used to looking far ahead, and had hardly yet got used to thinking even of the duration of the voyage.
“If
we get back, I might know what I want by then. Maybe I will have enough pay and land to start a family. Maybe I will want that by then. Who knows what one will want two or three years away?”

Manuel Lisa leaned forward, eyes intense. “It is said that far up there, the number of beaver and other fur-bearers is beyond belief. You will see if that’s so. I would like you to come and see me as soon as you return. This is not an idle invitation, Señor Drouillard.”

Of course it’s not, Drouillard realized. For the first time he
foresaw the peculiar worth he would have after this voyage. He would have a connection with the United States government, and several hundred dollars in pay, and a piece of land, but more important to a man like Lisa, he would have first knowledge of a coveted new fur country. He would be very valuable. He had often heard his uncle speak of the great advantage of arriving early in a place. That was exactly what Lisa was hinting at. Drouillard appreciated this Spaniard for making that clear. Even though Lisa was trying to catch him for his own reasons, the trader had helped his Indian mind understand what a whiteman sees when he aims forward along a straight line. Drouillard had always looked at the world and its tomorrows as an eagle looks around the horizons. But a whiteman, he thought, looks ahead just as I aim along the sights of my rifle.

“Thank you, Señor Lisa. I’ll keep that in mind. Perhaps when I come back we can do business in some way. I regret your present disappointment with the American captains.”

“Buena suerte,”
Lisa said. His hand was firm but cold. “Come. I’ll escort you out.”

“No, please. I saw how you escorted out the man before.”

For the first time ever, he saw Manuel Lisa laugh.