Sign-Talker

by JAMES ALEXANDER Thom

  Capturing Reed was just a part of this mission. The captains had also told him to summon Big Horse and Little Thief, and other Oto and Missouria headmen, and bring them north to meet the expedition at the Omaha towns where the captains hoped to negotiate a peace between their tribes and the Omahas, as they had promised. They had also told him to find La Liberté, who had last been seen more than a week ago when he left with Hospitality to invite the Oto chiefs up for the first council.

  Drouillard had in his pouch a twist of tobacco and a string of wampum beads as token gifts for the chiefs.

  * * *

  He led his three men south over the familiar plains at a distance from the river, to avoid the many extra miles of looping riverbanks. He had hunted alongside Reubin Field often enough to know that the man would be dependable and calm in whatever situation this mission put him. Labiche was volatile, but that was outweighed by his realistic understanding of tribal life and his ability with languages, so Drouillard was pleased to have him along. Now and then it was pleasant to talk in French too.

  Private Bratton was a steady and rugged young fellow, pleasant, talkative. He was one of the few soldiers with real strength and confidence as a swimmer. One day Drouillard had seen him swim the whole width of the Missouri to get an article he had forgotten to put on the boat. Bratton seemed nervous about this present task, though, and asked Drouillard, “D’you, uh, d’you reckon we’ll have to shoot Reed?”

  “Maybe. He might choose that over being taken back and whipped.”

  “Whew! Yeh, for desertin’, it’d be way over a hundred lashes. They might shoot ’im, even if we don’t. After court-martial, an’ all.” After a while he went on, “D’you reckon La Liberté deserted too, or just got lost?”

  “He knows this country. I doubt he got lost. If a man gets lost beside a river half a mile wide, I’d guess he wanted to.”

  “Wonder if we’re s’posed to shoot him?”

  “He’s a hired civilian, like me. I think the army book’d say don’t shoot civilians ’less you need target practice.” Behind, Field and Labiche laughed.

  “Reckon they might shoot ’im for a horse thief, though,” Bratton chattered on. “That was a gov’ment horse he rode out on. Say! When’re they goin’ to send a boat home with all them written papers and whatnot, like they was sayin’?”

  “Haven’t heard anything about it for days.”

  “If I was Reed, I’d just’ve waited for that ride,” Reubin Field said. “Bet they would’ve put that dunghead on board home, just t’ get shed of ’im!”

  Drouillard had never heard either of the Field brothers talk bad about anyone but Collins. Since Reed’s disappearance, several soldiers had expressed their dislike and distrust of him.

  After a few breaths, Bratton started chatting again, this time about Captain Lewis, who was apparently an amazement to all his soldiers in one way or another. “Say, did you ever see a feller fuss over wee particklers like he does? Like that dang flathead snake we kilt t’other day? Why, he counted every black spot on its back and measured every line on its belly, and wrote all that down! Or them birds he’s always killin’ and measuring their wings and even each feather, and their toenails … Ever see anything like it, boys? Why, if they send home to Mr. President all that stuff they’ve written and drawed and trapped and stuffed and flattened out ’twixt blotters, lordy, it’d be easy then t’ haul that barge up this dang endless river—”

  “Bratton!”

  “’Ey, chief?”

  “Even Cap’n Lewis doesn’t write as much as you talk. Let’s save our breath and ride. We’ve got maybe seventy miles to go just to get down there and start looking.” Drouillard urged his horse into a trot and they moved south over the vast grassland, to seek two men who were trying to lose themselves in it. This was a time, he thought, to see like an eagle.

  August 8th 1804

  we had seen but a few aquatic fouls of any kind on the river since we commenced our journey up the Missouri … this day after we had passed the river Souix I saw a great number of feathers floating down the river those feathers had a very extraordinary appearance as they appeared in such quantities as to cover pretty generally sixty or seventy yards of the breadth of the river. for three miles after I saw those feathers continuing to run in that manner, at length we were surprised by the appearance of a flock of Pillican at rest on a large sand bar … the number of which would if estimated appear almost incredible: they appeared to cover several acres of ground … we now approached them within about three hundred yards before they flew; I then fired at random among the flock with my rifle and brought one down; the discription of this bird is as follows …

  Meriwether Lewis, Journals

  August 9, 1804

  In the twilight Drouillard paced all over the old camp and council site, stopping here and there and tilting his head or squatting to pinch up soil and rub it between his fingers, sniffing the air, picking up a wood chip. Field, Labiche, and Bratton had already built a cookfire, and Labiche was cooking a turkey while the other two halfheartedly strolled around trying to read something from the week-old tracks all over the beaten ground. Finally Drouillard told them to go and sit down because they were leaving new tracks all over. They shrugged and sat down in the campfire smoke, lit pipes, and commenced killing mosquitoes.

  Drouillard had found one set of soldier-shoe footprints fresher than the rest, and followed them from place to place until their story was plain to him. He went to the campfire and sat on the ground to eat with the others. The turkey was undercooked and tough but flavorful enough to merit the hard chewing. The last light faded behind the bluff and the pole shelter-frames of the old camp dimmed to invisibility in the deepening darkness. Wolves chorused on the distant plains. Mosquitoes whined incessantly, and the men had to blow mosquitoes away from their mouths before every bite of turkey.

  “Here it is about Reed,” Drouillard said when they had finished eating and sipped their whiskey ration. “He camped here at least two nights, maybe three. He dug up his stuff, over there by that leaning-over cottonwood. Could be he wanted to go to the Oto town but didn’t know which way to head off. He went up on the bluff once, maybe to look for their smoke. Confused man. Cooked a big catfish. Two days ago or maybe yesterday he set off the only way he knew to go: down the river. Now he may just try to walk all the way back to St. Louis, or he might turn up the Platte and try to find the Oto town, try to get a horse. If he knows that’s where they are. I doubt he knows. My guess is he’s afraid of Sioux Indians and that’s why he deserted. He probably thinks the Oto are friendly enough and hopes to trade something for a horse. Or maybe he’s pining for a woman.”

  “Poor bastard! Imagine that!” Field exclaimed.

  “Mon ami,” Drouillard said to Labiche, “come daylight I want you and Reubin to go overland to the Oto town, find Faufon, and La Liberté, if he’s with ’em. Get their chiefs ready to go up to meet the captains at the Omaha town. Their real chiefs, not those made-up Jefferson chiefs.”

  “How will we know ’em?” Fields asked.

  “Eh bien, why not ask the Indians? I’d reckon they know who their chiefs are!” This was getting to be a sore point with him.

  “Uh. Yeah.”

  “Bratton and I will track Reed down the river. When we get him, we’ll bring him back up here, and we’ll wait here for you and the chiefs. And bring Faufon. And La Liberté.”

  “Um, Drouillard,” Reubin Field said, “don’t y’ think we should all go after Reed? He’s got a good rifle, y’ know, and he’s a fair good shot.”

  “It won’t take four of us for him. I want you to get those chiefs ready to travel while we’re getting Reed. If we do one thing at a time, it’ll take us a month to catch up with the boats.”

  Labiche raised a finger. “Could be them chiefs already headed up? Wasn’t their trader s’posed to take ’em up?”

  “Supposed to, but I doubt he has yet,” Drouillard said. “Probably still be out after buffalo. B
ut if they have already left, come back and meet us here and we’ll all go up. Now, see, one reason I’m splitting us off is, I don’t think we’d make a real good impression on the Otoes by hauling a tied-up or a dead soldier into town with us. I mean, since the cap’ns are preaching ‘peaceful road’ and all that. I can explain a deserter to a few headmen. A town’s a different matter. Indian women don’t like to see a man tied up, and might want to turn him loose.”

  Field stretched, yawned, spat out mosquitoes. “I look forward to goin’ to a town where the women like the men runnin’ loose!”

  In the distance the evening songs of several wolves braided themselves through the darkness, a beautiful sound that filled Drouillard’s heart with longings for something he couldn’t have named. In the tones he detected the songs of the ancestors.

  He was startled by a sudden outburst of yipping and squealing, much nearer. It continued madly for half a minute, then quit as abruptly as it had begun.

  “What in tarnation!” Field exclaimed.

  “Sound like somebody flang a litter o’ pups in a fireplace!” Bratton said. “What was it, Drouillard?”

  “I never heard it before.”

  Labiche, who had lived here, knew. “It’s Little Wolf. Spaniards call him coyotl. That was a pack of ’em.”

  “Lordamercy, ’tween them and the skeeters, how we goin’ to sleep?” Bratton exclaimed.

  “They’re done,” said Labiche. “They just say good night once.”

  “I like the big wolves better,” Drouillard said, marveling at the creatures that Our Grandmother, the creator of lives, had put to live in different places of the world. “Now, they sing beautiful. Just be still and listen.”

  August 11th Satturday 1804

  about day this morning a hard wind from the N. W. followed by rain. we landed at the foot of the hill on which Black Bird The late King of the mahar who Died 4 years ago & 400 of his nation with the Small pox was buried and went up and fixed a white flag bound with Blue white & read on the Grave … from the top of this hill may be Seen the bends or meanderings of the river for 60 or 70 miles round …

  William Clark, Journals

  “There he is,” Drouillard said to Bratton. “Get down.” They dismounted in shoulder-high brush a hundred paces from the north bank of the Platte. Drouillard pointed to a wisp of smoke near the riverbank, half a mile downstream. Near the smoke, looking no bigger than a gnat against the broad expanse of the roiling river and its labyrinth of sandbars, was a man. Still farther down to the east was the even greater shimmer of the wide Missouri. Drouillard kept pointing until Bratton finally made out the figure. “Cooking breakfast, I guess, maybe trying to figure out how to cross.”

  “God be praised!” Bratton said softly. “Don’t a man look small in this country!”

  “Sure he feels small by now. Well, I better go down and get him.” He studied the bottomland, then turned to Bratton and said, “Tie the horses here. Then come with me, and don’t talk.”

  They slipped through the grass parallel to the Platte, staying screened by shrubs and berry bushes until they were about a hundred yards from Reed, who was sitting on a barkless drift log facing away toward his fire and the river. To his left grew a long stand of willow slips, lightly waving in the early morning breeze. His rifle leaned upright against the log.

  “Get a bead on him at full cock,” Drouillard whispered. “I’m going down to say hello. If he reaches for his gun, I’ll get him. If he gets me, you get him. Clear enough?”

  Bratton was shaking his head. “Isn’t there some better way?”

  “Don’t argue, eh?” he whispered. “The wind’s my way and I’ll go by way o’ the willows. He won’t know I’m there till I am. Check your primer.”

  They flicked up the frizzens of their flintlocks and recharged with new powder. Drouillard readied both his pistols, slipped them back into his sash, waited till Bratton had aim on Reed, then nodded, stooped, and ran down the slope toward the willows. The only thing he had to worry about between here and the willows was scaring up ground birds that Reed might hear. It didn’t happen. In a few seconds he was walking noiselessly along the screen of willows, approaching Reed by his left shoulder. The smell off the man was as bad as anything short of death, Drouillard thought.

  Reed looked scrawny and wretched. His jaws were dark stubble and his clothes were torn and filthy. Impaled on a greenwood spit leaning by the fire was a little bird. Some guts and wood duck feathers lay in the sand, alive with flies. Reed was gazing at the broiling bird in such a deep stupor that he might as well have been asleep, so Drouillard just walked up behind the log, snatched the muzzle of Reed’s rifle and lifted it away. Only then did Reed jerk his head up and look around into the muzzle of his own piece, which Drouillard cocked with a loud click.

  “’Morning, Reed. Lost?” he said into the haunted, stricken face.

  Reed rose slowly, lips trembling. Then suddenly he was sobbing. “Oh, hell,” he whimpered. “Man, am I glad to see somebody!”

  August 18, 1804

  It happened to be Captain Lewis’s thirtieth birthday when Drouillard caught up, more than a hundred miles up from the Platte, and he brought with him so much of what Lewis wanted that the captain seemed to forget all the hard words of their confrontation two weeks ago.

  Drouillard had the deserter, and he also had the Oto chiefs Big Horse and Little Thief, along with half a dozen of their chieftains and some of their most esteemed warriors. The trader Faufon was with them to help interpret again. Labiche and Field had found La Liberté at the Oto town too, and he had promised to return to the expedition with them, but then had slipped away the night before they started up. They did bring up the horse he had taken. Both captains were lavish with their praise and gratitude for Drouillard.

  The chiefs were greeted with a blast of the swivel gun, a display of the fluttering flag and squads in full uniform, and were offered food and a chance to rest from the hard ride. But then the captains explained that a council would have to wait until they tried and punished their warrior who had done bad.

  Little Thief, the Otoes’ true chief, was not little. He was burly, with long, sinewy legs and short arms, and a square, sun-fried countenance whose deep creases suggested a lifetime of smiling. His headpiece appeared to be the cylindrical crown of a Spanish army shako with the bill removed and a fan of grouse tailfeathers fixed on top like a crest, and over his shoulders he wore a yoke made of the whole skin of a coyote, head and forepaws hanging down in front, tail and hind feet down his back.

  The next chief was Big Horse, who was small, lean, middle-aged. Drouillard suspected this diminutive man was called Big Horse because any horse he sat on would have looked big. He had a face that looked as if it could split firewood, divided by a line of red paint from nose bridge to chin, and a bonnet of eagle feathers so big that when the wind blew at his back it looked as if it would fill and sail the slight fellow out of his saddle. But while amused by the sight of him, Drouillard kept in mind that eagle feathers are earned by bravery.

  The rest of the Oto and Missouria warriors were splendid and impressive in bearclaw necklaces, quilled tunics, shell gorgets, painted shields, feathers and hairlocks, carrying feathered coup sticks and lances. In the long ride up from the council bluff with them, Drouillard had imagined what a glorious horde they must have been before the smallpox had reduced them. He had felt drab himself, and saddened that his own people had been defeated and driven from their homelands before he was old enough to be a Shawnee warrior. All he had to decorate himself in was his demeanor and abilities. There was no one to award him eagle feathers, no wars for which to paint his face as his mother’s ancestors had done. These warriors’ wildness stirred but saddened him.

  The soldiers likewise were being shown at their most impressive in long-tailed blue coats with red lapels, cuffs and standing collars, white waistcoats and tight-legged coveralls, the wide straps of their shot pouches and bayonet scabbards crossed over their chests, every m
an made to look a foot taller than he was by his cockaded top hat. Most of the uniforms were patched and dingy by now, but at a distance the squads looked trim and grand, not to be outshone by the colorful warriors. Being all young men, those on both sides eyed each other both audaciously and with admiration.

  Private Reed was immediately whisked out of sight to be shaved and put in uniform for his trial, and Drouillard went straight to the boat, stripped out of his dirty trail clothes, bathed in the river with soap, even his hair, rubbed face and limbs with elderberry bear oil, and braided a neat queue down the back. By the time the troops were convened for the court-martial, he was in a clean linen hunting shirt with necklaces and ear bobs, a bright silk turban on his head, quilled knife-sheath hanging on his chest, and two pistols in the sash at his waist. The chiefs appraised him and nodded as he returned. They already knew him by reputation as a hunter; in fact, Hospitality had told them he was the chief hunter of the whole whiteman army. At least now they could see that he was no mere scruffy army scout.

  Private Moses Reed too was transformed, and looked like a soldier, not a scared fugitive. He stood straight and ready to face his judgment. It was hard to believe this was the man who had broken down crying when he was caught. Reed had tried to bribe Drouillard and Bratton to lie and say they had found him lost.

  Reed stood erect and pleaded guilty to deserting with a public rifle and ammunition, which meant, to Drouillard’s relief, that he would not have to testify against him. Reed looked directly at the captains and said, “Please, sirs, I own up to what I did and I am sorry. I ask the captains to be as merciful to me as your oaths and reg’lations allow.”