Sign-Talker by JAMES ALEXANDER Thom Read Free Book Online

officers for their army. It would be amusing, would it not, for them to make officers of the sons of their old enemy Lorimier? Ha ha! And it will give the Lorimier name much prestige in this new part of their country.”
    Drouillard could see that Captain Lewis had caught his uncle like a fish on a hook baited with flattery and promises. Lorimier said now, “As for you,
neveu:
they want you to go with them. Will you?”
    “I am still studying on it. I would not even think of it but that I need money for Angelique and her family. But I do think of it.”
    “To be early in a place is a great advantage,” Lorimier said. “If you go and learn that country, we will all profit by it.”
    “I came for your counsel about it,
mon oncle
. Thank you.”
    “Then you will be going with them?”
    “I still need counsel from others,” he said.
    “Eh bien
. Will you stay for supper with our family?”
    “I have some soldiers to take care of. And before I go, I must counsel with
ni geah.”
    Lorimier raised his eyebrows and said,
“Ah. Mais oui.”
    He walked out of Lorimier’s compound and climbed the small hillock where the Indian graves were, enclosed by a fence of cedar slats. The graves were little mounds with wooden markers, some grayed by years of weathering. Under a huge, fan-shaped elm he stopped, and gazed down at a plain cedar slab. Into it was carved the name ASOONDEQUIS . He leaned his rifle against the elm and crossed himself as the Black Robes had taught him. Though he had come to hate them and all they had taught him and done to him, his mother had cautioned him that they might be right about their god, and it was good to honor all gods, so while he was here with her he would make the gesture.
    He stood with his eyes closed and remembered his mother’sface, the steady, bold eyes, the vermilion dot on each cheekbone. Then he opened his eyes, loosened the drawstring of his tobacco bag and picked out some flaked leaf. He walked around the grave, crumbling tobacco at the head, sides, and foot. Then he stood in the cold by the marker for a long while, remembering, sometimes looking east toward the Mississippi and into the sky beyond, back toward their Ohio homeland.
    Because she was an Indian, her marriage to his father had not meant anything in the eyes of the Christians, and after the drunkard abandoned her to go and marry a respectable Catholic Frenchwoman in Ontario, Asoondequis had stayed with her relatives in Kishkalwa’s band near Lorimier’s store. They had helped her raise her son, first in Ohio, then here in the West. Here she had lived out the rest of her life on the fringe of the Indian trade, and had let Lorimier send him to the mission where he was forbidden to speak Shawnee. Then something had happened at the school, something Drouillard remembered only in dark images, in a room like a box, the murmuring voice of the man in black cloth, some caresses that had seemed comforting at first. Then being held and struggling, and pain and shame. He ran away, and his mother hid him and refused to let Lorimier send him back to the school. From then on it had been all Shawnee teaching, the prayer smoke, the Spirit Helper quest, the eagle leading him even into the sky, the strawberries in spring, the Green Corn ceremony with a drum beating and a cedar wood fire in the center. Twice she had taken him on journeys back to the Ohio country to visit relatives who had not come with Kishkalwa and Lorimier to the Mississippi. On those journeys, she had taken him still farther, to Ontario, where he had been allowed to stay awhile with his father’s new French family. The children had doted on him, their Indian brother. His father as usual had smelled of liquor, but was respectable and made a good living, and was good to his Indian son. Then Asoondequis had brought him back here where Lorimier’s children were his family. His mother had not married again. She had not been dead long; her grave marker was hardly turning