Sign-Talker

by JAMES ALEXANDER Thom

  What stupidities! And Joe as sentry had laid down his rifle while all those young Indians were up milling about. He should have woken us all when they got up, Drouillard thought.

  But then he remembered waking up and seeing them around the fire and going back to sleep instead of getting up. Yes, he himself had been stupid. Everybody had been stupid. The only good thing about the day was that they were still alive.

  As he rode, softly rocking in the moonlight, midnight now, fatigued by the fight and the hundred miles of riding, he saw things strangely. He saw the gray-haired woman with bloodied arms, and she was walking beside Captain Lewis’s horse, leading it. Then he saw Captain Lewis walking with bloodied arms, leading the horse with the bloody woman riding it. He saw boats on a wide river, the captain lying bloody in a boat. He heard snorting and snuffling sounds, and opened his eyes to realize that he had been, possibly, asleep, dreaming, and that they were now riding softly past yet another enormous herd of buffalo, making them nervous, the bulls trotting out to investigate these horsemen coming by. He had to rein the horse; it wanted to go chasing them. Bright moonlight still, and distant lightning and thunder.

  Now and then he heard the captain say something, one or another of the brothers answering. They all rode at a distance behind him and to his left; he was always their scout, off at a distance, their Indian. He rode remembering all the explanations and apologies and decrees and requests he had shuttled back and forth between the captains and the Indians for more than two years now: Otoes, Sioux, Arikaras, Mandans, Hidatsas, Shoshones, Kootenai, Nez Perce, Chinooks, Clatsops.… It had taken every bit of intelligence he had, sometimes, to try to make the Indians understand and welcome and accommodate these strange whitemen, in particular the demanding and impatient Lewis, who saw everything through the eyes of his Great White Father, Jefferson. Again Drouillard thought: I would like to teach Jefferson about Indians.

  They were still riding at two in the morning, and Drouillard had begun seeing something over and over in his memory’s eye: before Captain Lewis threw the four Blackfeet shields on the fire, he cut off the little guardian totems that hung on them, those little bits of shaped horn and shell and braided hair, sacred to the carrier of a shield, and dropped them in his pouch as trophies of his victory.

  Drouillard carried his own totems in the medicine bag he wore under his shirt. He knew that if anyone took his totems, he would always be able to follow and find the thief, in This Side World or the Other Side World. That was the stupidest thing Lewis had done, even worse than leaving a peace medal on a corpse to taunt a people.

  But then he thought, No, stupid is doing something you know you shouldn’t, like stealing a canoe from a trusting friend, or mocking someone in his own country.

  This taking the totems was not so much stupid as it was ignorant. Lewis was ignorant of what was sacred to Indians; though he had had years to learn, he had chosen to stay ignorant, because he believed Indians were incapable of sacredness. To him, totems were just souvenirs. He had no idea what they could do.

  No point trying to tell him. What was to come of it would come.

  They stopped after two, unloaded and side-hobbled the horses, and slept till daybreak. They were all so sore they could hardly stand up or lift the saddles, but Lewis reminded them of the urgency of getting out of the Blackfeet country and warning the rest of the party on the Missouri. So within minutes they were mounted and on their way again, scanning the horizons for the Blackfeet. The captain was certain they must be near. He instructed the men that if the Blackfeet found and attacked them on this open plain, they should tie the horses’ bridles together and stand the Indians off with their best long shooting, and that if it became hopeless, they should sell their lives as dear as they could. Having no idea just how far along the rest of the party might be, he talked of various plans for finding them and warning them of the Blackfeet threat.

  About three hours of painful riding toward the blazing morning sun brought them to gullies and slopes that told them they were nearing the Missouri.

  “Hear that?” Drouillard said, reining in.

  “Sounded like a gunshot to me,” Joe Field said. “Way off.”

  They rode on for about an hour more. Some of the horses were beginning to limp and stumble with exhaustion, but the captain was afraid to stop and rest.

  “Guns,” Drouillard called. He had heard two shots, from the south. In the next few minutes they heard another, then two more. They were rifle shots. It meant the soldiers were already under attack by Blackfeet, or it meant they were hunting. To Drouillard it was the familiar sound of the expedition coming along, shooting at anything that walked or flew; he had heard that sound coming along behind him for thousands of miles and was sure it was no Indian attack.

  They veered off in that direction, urging the exhausted horses. There were more occasional rifle shots.

  Suddenly they were on the bluff with the wide Missouri flowing below. Drouillard knew this place exactly. He had hunted here.

  He pointed up the river, and couldn’t keep from laughing. “Here they come. There’s that old white pirogue, and canoes around her like ducklings!”

  Sometimes it seemed that Captain Lewis was doomed by bad spirits, but other times it seemed that all the powers were setting everything to his advantage. This arrival of the men with his canoes at the same place in the same moment was good fortune beyond belief. The captain fired his pistol in the air to get the boatmen’s attention, and was answered by rifles and swivel gun. Then they rode down the bluff and met the soldiers on the shore, in a wild outburst of whooping and hugging and backslapping and sheer, giddy laughter, with Seaman the black dog barking and bounding around his master. Then Captain Lewis sobered them all with the warning about the Blackfeet. Swiftly all the instruments and baggage were unloaded from the horses and into the pirogue and canoes.

  As they hurried downriver, watching the bluffs for Indians, Sergeant Ordway reported that everything had gone just as planned: finding and raising the old canoes, splitting off from Captain Clark at the three forks, paddling down to meet Sergeant Gass’s party at the White Bear Island camp. Gass had dug up the wooden wheels. With horses pulling, they had retraced the portage route back down past the Great Falls, uncovered the white pirogue, and dug up caches at the lower portage camp. Only yesterday they had loaded and embarked to come down to Maria’s River. They had thought they would have to wait days for Lewis. All in Sergeant Gass’s party were well: Goodrich, Frazier, McNeal, Thompson, and Werner. Sergeant Ordway’s men, Collins, Colter, Cruzatte, Howard, Lepage, Potts, Whitehouse, and Willard were all well; Private Weiser had cut his leg badly with a knife and couldn’t work. All Captain Clark’s party had been well when they split off at the three forks. Sergeant Gass and Willard were coming along the right bank bringing the horses. It was amazing and thrilling how well everything was working out; the men couldn’t stop chattering about it.

  Reaching the mouth of Maria’s River later in the morning, they dug up all their old caches. Water and cave-ins had ruined most of the skins and the men’s belongings, but things packed in kegs and canisters had survived, so now the men had corn flour, salt pork, salt, replenished gunpowder, and, most important to the troops, it seemed, tobacco. They puffed and chewed in bliss. Three of Drouillard’s good beaver traps could not be found in the cache where they had been left, but no time was squandered hunting further for them because a violent storm of lightning, thunder, rain, and hail rolled over the valley. In the afternoon, Sergeant Gass and Willard caught up, bringing the horses from the falls, alleviating a fear that Blackfeet might have found them.

  On the island in the mouth of the Maria they pulled away the brush covering the red pirogue. With disappointment they admitted that she was too decayed to use or repair. So they just salvaged her nails and ironwork and left her there. The fleet would be the white pirogue and five small dugout canoes. The river was running fast, deep and muddy. Now there was nothing to hinder their race homeward. Hun
ters would ride ahead and kill enough meat for the paddlers to eat, fight grizzly bears if they had to, and try to get enough elk hides to cover the cargoes, make clothes and shelters and moccasins. Everyone was so swollen in the face from mosquito bites that they looked like fat men with skinny bodies. But they were too happy to be bothered much by discomfort; they could hardly remember what comfort felt like after nearly three years on this mission. All they wanted now was to eat roasted meat three times a day, smoke and chew their tobacco, make speed down the river, meet Captain Clark at the mouth of the Yellow Stone, stop at the Mandan towns just long enough perhaps to copulate with their old sweethearts there, and then float on down to collect glory, whiskey, and pay at St. Louis, then disperse to the bosoms of their families in the United States. As far as they could foresee, there were no more obstacles except maybe having to fight their way past the Sioux.

  But that didn’t worry them much. They were all pretty convinced by now that they could get through anything unscathed. They sang as they paddled down between the beautiful white bluffs:

  “What shall we do with the drunken sailor?

  What shall we do with the drunken sailor?

  What shall we do with the drunken sailor

  Ear-lye in the morn-ing?

  Put ’im in the bilge and make ’im drink it!

  Put ’im in the bilge and make ’im drink it!

  Put ’im in the bilge and make ’im drink it,

  Ear-lye in the morn-ing!

  Hoo-ray and up she rises,

  Hoo-ray and up she rises,

  Hoo-ray and up she rises,

  Ear-lye in the morn-ing!”

  Chapter 24

  Below the Yellow Stone River

  August 11, 1806

  First he heard two rifle shots in quick succession from the willow thicket on the island, where Captain Lewis and Cruzatte had gone to follow the elks. Drouillard glanced that way, but they were out of sight among the willows. He heard Cruzatte shout something, but couldn’t make it out over the rush of the high, muddy Missouri. Drouillard and the others kept bailing dirty water out of the bilges of the pirogue and canoes at the shore. They all leaked after their year of disuse—the pirogue at the seams, the canoes through cracks caused by being submerged all winter and then dried—and a hasty repair job had not sealed them entirely, so they had to be bailed often. And the captain wouldn’t stop for thorough repairs because he was too intent upon catching up with Captain Clark.

  Four days ago they had reached the mouth of the Yellow Stone, only to find that Clark and his men had been there but had gone on. A tattered note said they had left because of a scarcity of game and too much abundance of mosquitoes, and would halt and wait a few miles farther down. Seven miles down they had found traces of a very recent camp, with part of a Chinook hat that had belonged to one of Clark’s men. But that place had been abandoned too. Since then there had been no sign of Clark’s party, and Lewis expressed a worry that they might have run into hostile Indians.

  Shortly after the first two shots, there followed a third, then a loud but unintelligible shout. It was Lewis. A moment later they heard his voice again, “Cruzatte!” and then several more times, but no reply.

  Weiser, still reclining in the pirogue with his thigh bandaged, said: “Hell, I knew the ol’ frog was half blind, didn’t know he was deef too!”

  “Hush a minute,” Drouillard said. He had never heard the captain’s voice sound quite like that, though he had often heard him yell.

  The voice cried again, this time clear on the wind: “Damn you, answer me! I’m shot! Shot! Cruzatte! Cruzatte!”

  Drouillard grabbed his rifle out of the pirogue, and several soldiers were starting up the bank toward the thicket.

  Then they heard the captain’s voice clearly, louder now: “Cruzatte! Get out of here! Indians! There’s Indians! They’ve shot me!” Lewis appeared, bursting out of the thicket in an awkward, lunging gait. He had his rifle in his left hand and waved with his right, summoning the soldiers. “To arms! To arms! Indians in there! I’m hit! I think they’ve got Cruzatte! Come on, damn it, come on!”

  Shouting and milling as they grabbed their rifles, they quickly sorted themselves out and ran toward him, Drouillard ahead of them all, heart racing, his eyes already penetrating the willows for a sight of Indians.

  Lewis turned and started to lead the charge back into the bush. The seat of his leather breeches was dark with blood. The men followed him into the thicket with guns at the ready, and then he began limping and staggering. He stopped and leaned on his rifle. “Sergeants,” he yelled, and gasped. “I … can’t go on.… Go help Cruzatte. If there’s too … many, retreat in order … keeping up a fire. I’ve got … get to the boat …” Seaman had appeared from somewhere and was whining and barking, smelling his master’s blood and sensing his pain. The sergeants, Gass and Ordway, called their men to follow, and they moved flinchingly into the thick willows. Drouillard went in with them, and it reminded him of something, something.… It felt like their war on the bears last summer at the end of the portage. They inched slowly forward, brows shining with sweat.

  The first thing he saw ahead in the thicket was a dead elk, its horns still covered with the season’s shaggy velvet, a bullet hole neatly placed just behind its left shoulder.

  Then he saw something else, and he called out, “Don’t shoot! Here’s Cruzatte!” He crept up to him, and asked, “Que va? Did you see Indians?”

  Cruzatte looked fearful, confused. He shook his head, looking down and around. “I … I wound an elk. Reload, try to shoot him again … What?”

  “No Indians?”

  “Non!”

  They combed the willow island and found another elk, which had trailed blood a quarter mile and finally fallen. There was not a trace of Indians. He said to Cruzatte, “You didn’t know the captain was shot?”

  Cruzatte looked astonished, his one eye bulging. “Qu’est-ce que c’est? Le capitaine est mort?”

  “Non, non, non. Blessé.”

  They all went down to the boat. The captain was aboard, kneeling, unable to sit, his pistol, rifle, and air gun readied to fight against Indians. He looked wobbly and pale. He said to Cruzatte, through a grimace, “Didn’t you hear me yelling at you?”

  “No, my captain. No, no!”

  “You shot me. You must have. No one else was there. When you didn’t answer, I was sure Indians had shot me and got you. Why did you shoot at me, Cruzatte?”

  “Please, my captain! We went to follow my wounded elk, n’est ce pas? I think I see him, I shoot! If it was my bullet, please, I did not intend! I—I—” He pointed at his one nearsighted eye.

  The captain had found the rifle ball in his breeches. It had passed through the back of his left thigh at the buttock and out the right, missing bone or artery. It was the same size ball as that of the short rifle Cruzatte was using. Cruzatte left, shaking his head, almost weeping, while Sergeant Gass braced the captain and helped him undress. He had bled much but it was slowing. He told the men to go and butcher the two elk, and then he lay contorted in the sunlight, wincing, teeth chattering, tending his own wounds even where he could not see them, not trusting the sergeant to do it. He inserted a roll of lint gauze in each entrance and exit wound, which would allow the wounds to drain and could be slowly pulled out as the wounds healed from within. Then he bound his hips and loins with linen swaddling that was hardly whiter than his own skin. The blood was rinsed out of his clothes, and he reclined on his stomach atop a soft, smelly bundle of bighorn and bear hides, and was covered with a blanket. Then, Drouillard steering, a mortified Cruzatte with his gaff-pole in the bow, they set off accompanied by the canoes, everybody more anxious than ever to catch up with Captain Clark’s party. About an hour later they came to Clark’s campsite of the previous night; he was still dropping down the Missouri almost too fast to be overtaken.

  At the campsite, Clark had left a letter that contained mixed news. The horses being taken overland by Sergeant Pr
yor to be given to the Mandans had all been stolen, probably by Crow Indians along the Yellow Stone. Pryor’s men, robbed but not molested, had hastily built two hide-covered tub-boats like those of the Mandans and sped down the Yellow Stone, then the Missouri, and caught up with Captain Clark here.

  So everybody was safe and reunited, except Colter and Collins, who had fallen behind hunting several days before—and except for the difficulty of catching up with Clark.

  Drouillard steered and the oars rose and fell, and once in a while he would see one of the rowers biting his lips to suppress a smile, and he thought he knew why.

  Of course, they were worried about Lewis. Their lives had been in his hands for three years and he had shown them the world and shown them what men could do. He was a hard-driven man with a brain like a hurricane, stiff-necked and hot-tempered and carrying out a sacred mission, brave as a Caesar and tough as whipcord. All that was true, and he was as important to them as any man, probably even their fathers, had ever been.

  But he was lying up there hurting like blazes no doubt, and they didn’t want to smile over the fact that after all this, coasting home to glory, he had got shot in the arse by a half-blind Frenchman.

  Whitehouse would probably make up a ballad about this. But he wouldn’t dare sing it.

  Thursday August 12th 1806

  Being anxious to overtake Capt. Clark who could be at no great distance before me, we set out early and proceeded with all possible expedition at 8 A.M. the bowsman informed me that there was a canoe and a camp he beleived of whitemen on the N.E. shore. I directed the Perogue and canoes to come too and found it to be the camp of two hunters from the Illinois by name Joseph Dickson and Forest Hancock. these men informed me that Capt. C. had passed them about noon the day before … while I halted with these men Colter and Collins who seperated from us on the 3rd rejoined us. they had concluded that we were behind and had delayed several days in waiting for us. my wounds felt very stiff and soar. there was much less inflamation than I had reason to apprehend there would be. I had last evening applyed a Poltice of Peruvian barks. at 1 P.M. I overtook Capt Clark and Party and had the pleasure of finding them all well.