Across the Endless River Read Online Free Page B

penmanship,” Reverend Welch called it—was something that came to him easily, its satisfactions inherent in the act itself.
    After they wrote out the alphabet many times, each boy was told to cover a sheet of paper with his own name. “Jean-Baptiste” appeared five times in his tenuous hand before Reverend Welch, walking among the benches, covered Baptiste’s hand with his own and stopped him. “You are named after John the Baptist,” he intoned, “a very great honor since he was so close to our Lord. In English we write only ‘John.’ ” But the name never stuck, and beyond that one exercise, he continued to be Baptiste to all in St. Louis.
    The domestic arrangements were simple, but there was always activity and companionship: daily chores and lessons, Sunday church, meals together at the big table of rough-hewn planks that took up half the kitchen. Boys came and went for extended periods when their parents reappeared, but there were usually six or eight at any one time. The only part of the routine that was disagreeable to Baptiste was the weekly bath. Every Saturday evening a long zinc tub of hot water stood in the wash house at the back of the main structure, and the boys took turns. As the youngest, Baptiste went last. The water was invariably tepid and dirty, a week’s worth of sweat and grime forming a thin gray scum that covered the surface. Mrs. Welch stood guard outside the door, and after they had put on their trousers, she made each barechested boy hold up his arm for her to sniff so she could be sure he had used the thick yellow block of soap. “I will not have you smelling like a herd of buffalo,” she announced with a shrewish look. “Not under this roof!” In later years, whenever Baptiste thought of Mrs. Welch, that was the image that came to mind: a bony-faced woman in a plain long-sleeved dress waiting expectantly to thrust her nose in the armpit of the next boy.
    Captain Clark’s household was different, and Baptiste was often invited for meals. “You are always welcome here,” Clark told him, and he understood that the captain’s special bond with his parents extended to him. But “No Indians in the house” was Mrs. Clark’s rule, as she did her best to make the family’s quarters as close an approximation of southern refinement as memories of her plantation girlhood in the Virginia Piedmont could conjure. Baptiste felt she admitted him there upon sufferance, but fortunately her domain, and the genteel rules that went with it, extended no farther than the main house.
    Captain Clark was the Superintendent of Indian Affairs for the entire territory, and anyone who had business up the river had first to secure his say-so. Indians from various tribes, government agents, slaves, French voyageurs, Negro freedmen, soldiers, adventurers—all could regularly be found around the large wing of Clark’s house that was his office. Its walls were covered with Indian objects from the many tribes along the upper river. Baptiste often sat against the wall in the big council room and watched them come and go as they consulted Clark for advice, examined his hand-drawn maps, petitioned for assistance, or argued among themselves. Unless a private meeting required Clark to close the door to his inner office, Baptiste was never excluded. The Superintendent often introduced him to his visitors, but Baptiste discovered that he most enjoyed watching and listening. When you weren’t noticed, he found, you could learn a lot.
    The sound of the different languages entranced him. He understood the chiefs who spoke Mandan and Hidatsa, and he understood some of the related tongues of the Omaha, the Osage, and the Dakota Sioux. The occasional groups of Pawnee or Arikara, however, spoke a different language, whose inflections were unknown to Baptiste. The same was true for the Arapaho and the Cree. All of the Indians were obliged to