Three days later the sun began to shine as clouds broke into fluffy white balls and drifted eastward. The huge flights of migratory birds kept winging north along the Mississippi flyway. Life in Saint Louis was good. People climbed the huge, ridge-shaped Indian mound on the north side of town to picnic and marvel at the view it provided of the wide Mississippi valley and the distant headlands on the far Illinois horizon.
Baptiste Latoulipe followed Lisa’s black houseboy, Charlo, into the cool recesses of the bourgeois’s opulent house. Baptiste looked about enviously, taking in the fine furnishings, the thick and soft carpets, and the porcelain statuettes. He couldn’t help but think of the money the bourgeois held for him in the confines of his safe.
One day, he, his Elizabeth, and his two children would live in a house like this. His sweat on the river would ensure that. For that he had dedicated himself. All it would take was one more trip. One more backbreaking summer of endless work, danger, and risk. Then, with what he would be paid, that dream house would be his.
Nor did he have any doubts about his patron, Manuel Lisa. Lisa took care of those who served him loyally. And if Baptiste Latoulipe had a single flawless character trait, it was loyalty.
Lisa’s office always looked the same to Baptiste. This was a working man’s office, with fine chairs, a remarkable oiled wooden desk with an oil lamp, a pane-glassed window, and shelved ledger books.
Charlo immediately poured a crystal half-full of brandy and handed it to Baptiste as Lisa looked up from his ledgers, waved to a seat, and bent over the figures again.
Baptiste sat easily, letting his eyes roam the room, cataloging the Indian artifacts, knickknacks, a leather-bound Bible in Spanish, and the curiosities that lined the packed shelves. He pulled his pipe from his pocket, filled the bowl, and leaned down for an ember from the fireplace.
Lisa was sharpening his quill as Baptiste pulled at his pipe and tried to order his thoughts, his eyes focused on some distant point beyond the lime-plastered walls.
“Yes, Baptiste?” Lisa’s precise voice brought the engage’s attention back. The bourgeois scribbled something at the bottom of the page and settled the pen in the inkwell. The keen black eyes were waiting.
“I followed this John Tylor,” Baptiste began. “You asked me to report anything unusual.” He hesitated, trying to think of how to say it well. Lisa’s gaze urged him along. “He goes to Reuben Lewis and gets his advance. Then he buys a Kentucky rifle which shoots a .54 caliber ball. After that, he does a strange thing. He has the barrel cut shorter and half the stock removed. Then he buys a sword and cuts it in half, taking the guard off and leaving the quillons.”
“That makes sense. He has a rifle which is easier to handle and a fighting knife which will not break. What else does he do?”
Baptiste looked into Lisa’s eyes. “He buys tobacco and a bottle of good whiskey which he does not drink. He buys new clothes of buckskin which he packs away. And he buys one other thing.”
Latoulipe hesitated, unsure.
“What?”
“Books!” Latoulipe gave Lisa a helpless look, his hands motioning a shrug.
“Books?” Lisa wondered. “What kind of books?”
Baptiste swallowed nervously and sighed his misery. “I do not know, Manuel. You know I do not read.”
Lisa toyed with an arrowhead on his desk. “Does he read these books?”
“Every night,” Baptiste assured him. “Each book he buys, he reads. Some he takes and trades back to the old French. Some he reads and keeps. He binds them in oil cloth and puts them in a pack he has bought. That is all. He sees no one. He does not drink or whore with the engages. He just . . . reads.” Baptiste looked his despair at Lisa.
“He trades books with the old French?”
“Oui, that, and with the American officers.” Baptiste puffed a cloud of blue smoke at the stained ceiling.
“Has he seen Charles Gratiot?”
“Non.” Latoulipe granted a thin smile of understanding. “If he is someone’s agent, he is not seeing any of the people I would suspect.”
“Has he traded books with William Clark?”
“Non. In fact, one day Clark comes down the Rue de la Tour and Tylor crosses. Out of the way. As if he avoids Clark. It is strange, non?”
The silence lasted for nearly a minute as Lisa’s stare fixed on some far distance in his mind. He tapped his long fingers, stained as they were by the ink from his quill.
Lisa came to some conclusion, stating, “Have him come here. I will assign him the job of running the expedition’s horses over to my brother, Joaquin, in Saint Charles. Tylor will leave his pack here under my protection. Then, my friend, I shall see what is in these books he reads.”
“You will read these books yourself?”
Lisa chuckled, arching a dark eyebrow. “There is more than one kind of intelligence passed within the pages of a book, my friend. They may contain ciphers, hidden pages, and many other aspects of the intelligencer’s art.”
“The what?”
“A way of passing messages.”
“And you think Tylor is doing that?”
“We shall see, Baptiste. And if he is not?” Lisa’s eyebrow arched even higher, “Then, our Mr. Tylor is even more of an enigma.”