Lewis announced, “Now!” and squeezed the trigger. With no smoke and less noise than a light sneeze, the shot flipped the target out of the ground and dropped it into the grass.
The whole party of Indians blinked and looked at each other, looked at Captain Lewis, looked at Ordway, who had stepped over to replace the target, and started talking rapidly. Monsieur Faufon told Drouillard that some of the Indians believed the sergeant had done a trick out there, perhaps with a snare string. All the while, Captain Lewis was putting another ball down the barrel. He waved Ordway to the side, aimed, asked Faufon to quiet the Indians’ discussion and have them watch, and then squeezed the trigger again. Again the white kerchief flopped away.
If the Indians had not had their dram of whiskey, they might have realized by then that this was actually a special kind of a gun instead of some sort of a trick; as it was, it required four more successful shots to convince them that this white man was actually shooting the little target with something as quiet as bow and arrow but more accurate than a musket. By the time the demonstration was over, the soldiers had taken down the awning and struck camp. It was a good time to leave, while the Indians were still a little bedazzled and slightly tipsy. Hospitality, the new boy chief of the Missourias, caught Drouillard and pressed a cheek to his. Then he signed, Question: See you when?
Drouillard signed: Far, two winters. He held up the shivering fists that meant winter.
Hospitality nodded gravely, and gestured: I leave heart on the ground. Then he stood with his fellow chiefs and warriors and watched the corps in its boats and its hunters on their horses move away up the river. For a change there was a southwest wind, and the boats moved under sail, a pretty sight that these Indians might never have seen before.
Drouillard had ridden about a league when he saw the red pirogue row up close to the keelboat. A soldier climbed down into the pirogue and was rowed to shore. As the man came striding back down the west bank, Drouillard saw that it was Moses Reed, one of the shifty malcontents of the crew. Drouillard rode down the slope and met him. “Where you headed, Mr. Reed?”
Reed squinted up at him, the afternoon sky-glare in his eye. “I left my knife back there where we put up them shelters. Cap’n told me to go back an’ get it and then catch up.”
“Long walk. Three miles back, and then by the time you get back here they’ll likely be three more miles farther up. Kind of discourages a man from leavin’ things lying around, eh?” Reed apparently took it as a personal criticism, scowled, and started to move on. Drouillard thought of the distances and the descending sun. This fool probably wouldn’t come back till after dark and he’d get lost and then he or Colter or somebody’d have to waste a morning going back to hunt for him. So Drouillard said, “Why don’t you just get on my packhorse and we’ll trot back there real quick and find your knife? If the Indians didn’t carry it off, that is.” He knew the captains wouldn’t like that, as the long walk was part of the lesson about carelessness, but he was willing to risk a little censure for that if it could save trouble the next day.
Reed was thinking hard, then he said: “Well, you don’t need to go back with me. But I’d be obleeged for the loan o’ that spare horse, and I could go back quicker.”
Drouillard looked at him and saw some cunning in his face. “I said I’d ride back with you. But I can’t give you my packhorse.”
“Why not, man?”
“First place, it’s in my charge. Second, I usually get a deer or elk this time of evening, and that’s why I’ve got this horse, is to carry meat.”
“Aw, hell, Drouillard. Get a deer, you can load it up when I come back up with the horse. Be a good Injin an’ gimme the borry of that horse.”
“Guess you better get down there while there’s light to hunt for your knife, Reed. Have a nice walk.” And with a light shift of his weight in the saddle he rode away.
Reed called after him: “Goddamn difficult half-breed! Hell, it’s an army horse, an’ you ain’t even in the army!”
Drouillard suddenly felt a tingle of danger in his back. He turned quickly and saw that Reed had raised his rifle as high as his waist, one hand at the flintlock. Drouillard reined the horse left and halted so that his own rifle across the saddle just happened to be pointed at Reed, and said quietly, “Yeah, better hold that gun with both hands so y’ don’t lose it too.” He glanced upriver. The keelboat was far up but still in sight. He looked back and saw that Reed was considering the boat too. He sat there and waited until Reed turned and trotted on down the riverbank. Only then did Drouillard turn back north.
He rode onto the higher ground to get out of the clouds of mosquitoes, the late sun glaring from above the western horizon, grass rising and flattening like flowing currents of gold. A dark shape raced along above the northern horizon, then rose and swerved and changed shape: a great flock of tiny birds moving as if all one. He scanned the slopes and draws for game. He saw elk moving along a height, but they were on the other side of the river, so distant they looked like a line of ants on the smooth contours of the land. He tried to keep his mind clear in the hunting attitude, but he was not serene. The soldier Reed had annoyed him with his “half-breed” talk and his menace, but that was a small part of it. What was really bothering him, rising up like a bad digestion, was his part in that damned council. He remembered the eager, friendly faces of the Otoes and Missourias when the council started, and then the confusion and doubt that had begun to show as they listened to the vague promises and the veiled threats of Captain Lewis’s speech. He remembered their disappointment with the medals and pieces of paper, all of no apparent use, and the dearth of other gifts. They knew the big boat was full of useful and pretty things, and they knew it was going on upriver into the lands of their enemies, the Omaha and the Sioux, who would probably get much more.
But what gnawed sharpest in Drouillard was the memory of Captain Lewis telling those Indians who would be their chiefs.
In many ways, Drouillard had come to admire these captains—even Lewis, swollen as he was with his own importance.
But what Lewis did not know, or care, about Indian people and their tribal ways, was going to defeat his own cause. Worse, in Drouillard’s mind, was the trouble Lewis’s ignorance was likely to cause among the Indians themselves. He imagined Hospitality going back to his people and proclaiming that a passing whiteman had made him their chief. Maybe the youth wasn’t that foolish, but one never knew what would grow in a man’s head. The one called Jefferson had certainly planted such a seed in Lewis.
Drouillard remembered that one of his own justifications for coming with these captains had been that he might be able to help protect them from their own ignorance.
I guess I need to tell them some things they don’t understand, he thought.
And I’d better tell them before they get up among the Omaha and the Sioux, where a little stupidity will go a long way.
* * *
When Drouillard brought his horses down to the riverbank, the corral guard told him that the captains wanted to see him.
A voyageur of middle age, François Rivet, rowed him to the sandbar where the camp was being set up. Rivet was so powerful in the arms and shoulders that though it was a boat for seven rowers, he handled it easily by himself. An exuberant man, he sometimes entertained by dancing on his hands to Cruzatte’s fiddling, but now he looked at Drouillard in a sullen and suspicious way, and had not a word for him. It was ominous, and Drouillard wondered if it had something to do with his being summoned by the captains.
Cookfires of driftwood smoked up the campsite, the soldiers and voyageurs squinting against the smoke but standing in its most acrid clouds to avoid the swarming mosquitoes. Drouillard kept his hands, face, and neck anointed with bear oil and elderberry in such times, and was less bothered by them.
He saw Sergeant Floyd sitting on a crate by his squad’s campfire with his face drawn and white, arms crossed over his middle, so full of pain that he was ignoring mosquitoes. Droui
llard sensed death near the man, and was sorry, for this was one of their best. York was coming, bringing a cup of something for the sergeant. It was said that York gave Floyd such care because he was some kind of a relative, a cousin, of Captain Clark. York gave Drouillard a strange look and said, “Cap’ns want t’ see you.”
“So I hear. Thanks.” He walked over to where they stood by their own fire in the blue dusk, waving away mosquitoes. They were still in their uniforms from the council, and they stiffened when they saw him coming. By now he was uneasy. Everyone seemed to know something he didn’t.
Captain Lewis glared at him. “George, we need to talk to you.”
“So I hear,” he said again.
“Let’s walk down. The troops don’t necessarily have to hear what we’ve got to say.”
“Good, sir. They might not want to hear what I have to say either.”
“Oh? You have something on your chest, do you?”
“With respect, sir. I’ll listen first.”
They walked away from the camp, down to a thicket of willow where the mosquitoes were even worse.
“Now, George,” Lewis began, “I hardly know how to speak of this. I never in my life expected to have to talk to any man of mine about … about such an aberration.” Drouillard didn’t know what an aberration was, but thought it must have something to do with the way everybody had looked at him this evening. Lewis went on, continually brushing mosquitoes away from his face. “George, you’ve been valuable to us. You’ve kept us in fresh meat, and never failed in a duty. But, damn it, now, it—this—” He took a deep breath, got mosquitoes in his mouth and began sputtering and spitting. Then he glared and said forcefully, “I’m talking about pederasty!”
Drouillard squinted at him through the dancing mosquitoes for a moment. “Cap’n, I don’t know what that is, so I doubt I did it.”
“Damn it! Buggery!” Clark blurted. “Don’t play dumb!”
Drouillard stepped back. He had to control himself, to keep from going for his knife. He couldn’t speak, he was so full of sudden fire.
“Yes, buggery!” Lewis snarled. “The vice of English fops and … and papist priests!”
Papist? Drouillard’s flaring mind tried to remember that word. Didn’t it mean Black Robe? This captain was accusing him of something like that thing he had wiped out of his old memory?
Before he could find words, Lewis went on, in a hissing, angry tone: “The men are talking about you, Drouillard! You and that pretty Indian boy you brought in all moon-eyed and snuggly! And about that simpleton of Dorion’s … By God, Drouillard, I won’t have—”
“Tscha! Damn you, Cap’n, you better stop!”
“What? What did you say to me?” Clark swelled up and boomed: “You don’t talk to your commander that way! By God, I’ll have your guts for garters if—”
“I said you better stop.” He was cold enough inside to kill now and didn’t care how he spoke. The officers stood as if stunned. “Listen,” he said, hissing like a snake. “I’m not one of your soldiers. I’m not your slave. And I’m not one of those Catholics you hate!”
He knew of the contempt these Virginians had for Catholics; he had heard them snipe and scoff behind the backs of the wealthy Spanish and French merchants and officials Lewis was always soliciting in St. Louis.
“Listen! You say those lies again and you will look around and wonder where Drouillard went!”
They stood, barely visible in the deepening dusk, and he could feel their indignation, could feel them preparing words.
“Listen!” he went on. “I’m an Indian and you’re in Indian country now. I am your eyes and your tongue. You’re stumbling into a country you don’t know. Without me, and Cruzatte and Dorion, you are blind and dumb. You say that buggery lie again and I am gone so quick you’ll think I was just a spirit!
“Listen! I told you I have words for you. Hear this: your Father Jefferson has filled your head with such goddamn smoke and foolishness you won’t get past the Omahas, and sure not the Sioux, if you try to do them as you did those few poor Otoes today!”
“Did what …” It was Lewis, in a low, furious, outraged tone. But they were listening, not pulling their pistols on him or calling for the sergeant of the guard to arrest him. They were not even bothering to brush at mosquitoes now. Maybe he had got away with talking back.
He said: “If I could have talked to your Jefferson before he sent you, I would have told him: Big Horse and Little Thief are as great in their nations as you are in yours. You are no one to name them to be chiefs or not, you are just a stranger going through. They choose their own leaders, by ways of knowing that you don’t understand. I would tell your Father Jefferson, Indians don’t go to Washington and tell a man they meet, ‘You will be President.’ Eh? So you can’t say that in their country!”
He was amazed that they were still standing quiet in front of him, listening. They could not like this. They were important whitemen and he was just a half-blood Indian. They thought they were important even here in this country, because their President had given Napoleon some money. He hoped that now as they stood staring so hard at him, they might be considering their own ignorance, that they might know how much they needed his eyes and his language.
It would be up to them now. If he had told the truth too plainly for their comfort, or if they still couldn’t see it, then they would get rid of him.
One thing was certain in his heart: they were not going to lay whippings on him. He could outshoot, outswim, and outrun any of their soldiers. If he needed a horse, he could take one out from under the very nose of any of their sentries. If this was to be the end of his part in their journey, he would vanish so quickly they would wonder if he had been just a spirit. In truth he felt that, compared with these ponderous men and their great load of Jefferson duties, he was a spirit.
He waited. He thought he felt Lewis’s anger still expanding. But it was Clark who spoke. “I’m for getting back to camp. There’s too much to do, t’ be idling out here feeding m’skeeters.”
They stirred. “Mind you, Drouillard. No boys or you’re out,” Lewis said.
“Mind you, Cap’n, there never were boys. And Hospitality isn’t a bugger. That good young man is something among his people you don’t understand.”
“Well, whatever it is, it’s unnatural.”
Unnatural, Drouillard thought. If you want to see unnatural, see one of your white soldiers copulate with a dead doe because she’s still warm. Drouillard had seen one do that while out on the hunt. But he didn’t say it. He was not a bearer of tales.
“I wonder if Reed found his knife and got back,” Captain Clark said as they walked toward the camp. He seemed relieved it was over. But Drouillard was still mad.
August 3rd Friday
prepare a Small preasent for those Indians and hold a Concul Delivered a Speech & made 6 chiefs at 4 oClock Set out under a gentle Breeze from the S.E. Camped below a great number of Snags quite across the river, The Musquitors more numerous than I ever Saw them, all in Spirrits-, we had Some rough Convasation G. Dr.—about boys.
William Clark, Journals
Chapter 7
Toward Sioux Country
August 7, 1804
For several days Clark acted as if there had never been strong words, but Lewis talked to Drouillard only when necessary and seemed to be studying him coldly. Everyone had too much to do to sit dwelling on things, as the convoy moved up the winding river fifteen to twenty miles a day and the officers measured and wrote, measured and wrote. Captain Clark had become very interested in the shifting and reshaping of the river course, caused by cave-ins, silting up, and flood-throughs. He noted bow-shaped ponds that had formerly been parts of the river channel and were now cut off. He found a stretch where the river made a twelve-mile loop and came back within a quarter mile of itself, and saw that in flood times the water had flowed over that narrow neck. He predicted that in a year or two the main current would wash through and isolate the long
loop. In his shore hikes he tasted and studied the varieties of grapes and fruits that grew so profusely in the bottoms, while Lewis examined and described herons, snakes, and waterfowl killed along the way, and took his navigational sightings, so solemn and intent on his instruments that he appeared to be worshiping them. Drouillard ranged the plains hunting, staying away from the captains, the troops, and the voyageurs, except in camp. He watched the boatmen’s eyes and expressions for hints about which men, if any, had spread the rumors about him, perhaps to divert attention from their own use of Dorion’s boy. Drouillard in the beginning had tried to reach through the lad’s veil and find a spark of his Sioux spirit inside, but now stayed far from him.
Reed had been gone four days, and as the expedition moved north, the officers’ anxiety about him had grown. Then Sergeant Ordway came up with evidence that he had deliberately deserted. Ordway had examined his knapsack, and it was empty. Reed apparently had left not only his knife back at the council camp, but all his clothes and ammunition. It was presumed that he would head for the Oto villages, perhaps to try to obtain a horse there for his escape back to civilization.
So now Drouillard was riding out with a written order to find Reed and bring him back, preferably alive, but dead if he resisted, riding south along the west bank of the river with Labiche, Reubin Field, and a private named William Bratton, a member of Reed’s squad. Bratton, a Kentuckian, was a fair hunter with some gunsmithy skills, which might be needed on this long trek.
Drouillard was glad to get away from the officers a while. He was pleased, on the other hand, that they still had enough trust to put him in charge of a mission having life-and-death importance. They had given him some of the best available men, and had entrusted him with most of the hunting horses. Drouillard was not happy that he might have to kill a man for quitting this party; he had been close himself, many times, to turning his back on it and walking away. Four nights ago he had been within an eyeblink of doing so.
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