Free Sign-Talker by JAMES ALEXANDER Thom Page A

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 Drouillardof 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 heforesaw 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