A feeling somewhat akin to awe fell upon Meriwether Lewis. He felt a cold prickling along his spine. It was for him, yes—but whence had it come? There had been no messenger from outside the camp. For one brief instant it seemed, indeed, as if this bit of paper—which of all possible gifts of the gods he would most have coveted—had dropped from the heavens themselves at his feet here in the savage wilderness. His heart had been on the point of breaking, it seemed to him—and it had come to comfort him! It was from her. It ran thus:

The letter was not signed, and needed not to be. Meriwether Lewis sat staring at the paper clutched in his hand.

Her face! Ah, did he not see it now? Was it not true what she had said? He saw her face now—but not smiling, happy, contented, as it once had been. No, he saw it pale and in distress. He saw tears in her eyes. And she had written him:

Was not he, who had forgotten honor, subject now to any command that she might give him?

“Will, Will!” exclaimed Meriwether Lewis, sharply, imperatively, to his friend, whom he could see dimly at a little distance as he lay.

The long figure in its robes straightened quickly, for by day or night William Clark was instantly ready for any sudden alarm. He started up on his robe, with his hand on his rifle.

“Who calls there? Who goes?” he cried, half awake.

“It is I, Will,” said Meriwether Lewis, advancing toward him. “Listen—tell me, Will, why did you do this?”

“Why did I do what? Merne, what is wrong?”

Clark was now on his feet, and Lewis held out the letter to him. He took it in his hand, looked at it wonderingly.

“This letter——” began Meriwether Lewis. “Certainly you carried it for me—why did you not bring it to me long ago?”

“What letter? Whose letter is it, Merne? I never saw it before. What is it you are saying? Are you mad?”

“I think so,” said Lewis, “I think I must be. Here is a letter—I found it but now in my bed. I thought perhaps you had had it for me a long time, and placed it there as a surprise.”

“Who sends it, Merne. What does it say?”

“It is from the woman whose face I have seen at night, Will. She asks me to come back!”

“Burn it—throw it in the fire!” said William Clark sharply. “Go back? What, forsake Mr. Jefferson—leave me?”

“God forgive me, Will, but you search my very heart! For one moment I was on the point of declaring myself too ill to finish this journey—on the point of letting you have all the honor of it. I was going to surrender my place to you.”

“You cannot desert us, Merne! You shall not! Go back to bed! Give me the letter! Bah! it is some counterfeit, some trick of one of the men!”

“It would be worth any man’s life to try a jest like that,” said Meriwether Lewis. “It is no counterfeit. I know it too well. This letter was written before we left St. Louis. How it came here I know not, but I know who wrote it.”

“She had no right——”

“Ah, but that is the cruelty of it—she did have the right!”

“There are some things which a man must work out for himself,” said William Clark slowly, after a time. “I don’t think I’ll ask any questions. If there is any place where I can take half your burden, you know what I will do. We’ve worked share and share alike, but perhaps some things cannot be shared, even by you and me. It is for you to tell me if I can help you now. If not, then you must decide.”

Even as he spoke, his beloved friend was turning away from him. Meriwether Lewis walked out alone into the night. Stumbling, he passed on out among the shadows, under the starlight. Without much plan, he found himself on a little eminence of the bluff near by.

He sat down, his blanket drawn over his head, like an Indian, motionless, thinking, fighting out his own fight, as sometimes a man must, alone. He did not know that William Clark, most faithful of friends, himself silent as a Sioux, had followed, and sat a little distance apart, his eyes fixed on the motionless figure outlined against the sky.

The dawn came at last and kindled a red band along the east. The gray light at length grew more clear. A coyote on the bluff raised a long and quavering cry, like some soul in torture. As if it were his own voice, Meriwether Lewis stirred, rose, drew back the blanket from his shoulders, and turned down the hill.

He saw his friend rising and advancing to him. Once more their hands gripped, as they had when the two first met on the Ohio, almost a year ago, at the beginning of their journey.

Lewis frowned heavily. He could not speak for a time.

“Give the orders to the men to roll out, Captain Clark,” said he at length.

“Which way, Captain Lewis—upstream or down?”

“The expedition will go forward, Captain Clark.”

“God bless you, Merne!” said the red-headed one.

CHAPTER III

“Yes, sir!”

“Has any boat passed up the river within the last day—for instance, while we were away at the hunt?”

“I think not, sir. Surely any one coming up the river would have turned in at our camp.”

Lewis turned to Gass, to Pryor; but both agreed that no boat could have gone by unnoticed.

“And no man has come into the camp from below—no horseman?”

They all shook their heads. Their leader looked from one to the other keenly, trying to see if anything was concealed from him; but the honest faces of his men showed no suspicion of his own doubts.

He dismissed them, feeling it beneath his dignity to make inquiry as to the bearer of the mysterious letter; nor did he mention it again to William Clark. He knew only that some one of his men had a secret from his commander.

“The men will find Shannon and bring him in ahead—we can’t afford to wait here for them. The water is falling now,” said Clark. “We are doing our twenty miles daily. The men laugh on the line, for the bars are exposed, and they can track along shore easily. Suppose Shannon were out three days—that would make it sixty miles upstream—or less, for him, for he could cut the bends. I make no doubt that when he found himself out for the night he started up the river; even before this time. En avant, Cruzatte!” he called. “You shall lead the line for the first draw. Make it lively for an hour! Sing some song, Cruzatte, if you can—some song of old Kaskaskia.”

“Sure, the Frenchmans, she’ll lead on the line this morning, Capitaine! I’ll put nine, seven Frenchmans on the line, and she’ll run on the bank on her bare feet two hour—one hour. This buffalo meat, she make Frenchmans strong like nothing!”

“Go on, Frenchy!” said Patrick Gass, Cruzatte’s sergeant, who stood near by. “Wait until time comes for my squad on the line—’tis thin we’ll make the elkhide hum! There’s a few of the Irish along.”

“Ho!” said Ordway, usually silent. “Wait rather for us Yankees—we’ll show you what old Vermont can do!”

“As to that,” said Pryor, “belike the Ohio and Kentucky men could serve a turn as well as the Irish or the French. Old Kaintuck has to help out the others, the way she did in the French and Indian War!”

“Well,” broke in Peter Weiser, joining them as they argued, “I am from Pennsylvania; but I am half Virginian, and there are some others from the Old Dominion. When you are all done, call on us—ole Virginny never tires!”

The contagion of their light-heartedness, their loyalty and devotion, came as solace to the heart of Meriwether Lewis. He smiled in spite of himself, his eye kindling with confidence and admiration as he looked over his men.

They were stripping for their day’s work, ready for mud or water or sun, as the case might be. Amidships, on the highest locker on the barge, one of the Kentuckians was flapping his arms lustily and giving the cockcrow, the river challenge of frontier days. Others seated themselves at the long sweeps of the barge, while yet others were manning the pirogues.

A few moments later, with joyous shouts, they were on their way once more—and not setting their faces toward home. In an hour they were above the first long bend. The wilderness had closed behind them. No trace of the Indian village was left, no sight of the lingering smoke of their last camp fires.

Faithfully, patiently, day by day, they held their way, sustained by the renewed fascination of adventure, hardened and inured to risk and toil alike. The distance behind them lengthened so enormously that they began to figure upon the unknown rather than the known.

“We surely must be almost across now!” said some of the men.

All of them were sore distressed over the loss of Shannon. Two weeks had passed since they left the Yankton Sioux, and four times the faithful trailers had come back to the boats with no trace of the missing one.

“It certainly is in the off chance now,” assented William Clark seriously, one day as they lay in the noon encampment. “But perhaps he may be among the natives somewhere, and we may hear of him when we come back—if ever we do.”

“If he got by the Teton Sioux, and kept on up the river, in time he would find us somewhere among the Mandans,” said Meriwether Lewis. “But we will try once more before we give him up. Send a man to the top of the bluff with my spyglass.”

Busy in their labors over their maps, and in the recording of their compass bearings, for half an hour they forgot their messenger, until a shout called their attention. He was waving his hands, wildly beckoning. Yonder, alone in the plains, bewildered, hopeless, wandering, was the lost man, who did not even know that the river was close at hand! Shannon’s escape from a miserable fate was but one more instance of the almost miraculous good fortune which seemed to attend the expedition.

“And she was lucky man, too!” said Drouillard, a half-hour later, nodding toward the opposite shore. “Suppose he is on that side, she’ll not go in today!”

“Two weeks on his foot!”

They looked where he pointed. Red men, mounted, were visible, a dozen of them, motionless, on the rim of the farther bank, watching the explorers as they began to make ready for their journey. Lewis turned his great field glass in that direction.

“Sioux!” said he. “They are painted, too. I fancy,” he added, as he turned toward his associates, “that this must be Black Buffalo’s band of Tetons you’ve told us about, Drouillard.”

“Oui, oui, the Teton!” exclaimed Drouillard. “I’ll not spoke his language, me; but she’ll be bad Sioux. Prenez garde, Capitaine, prenez garde pour ces sauvages, les Sioux!”

And indeed this warning proved well founded. More Indians gathered in toward the shore that afternoon, riding along, parallel with the course of the boats, whooping, shouting to the boatmen. At nightfall there were a hundred of them assembled—painted warriors, decked in all their savage finery, bold men, showing no fear of the newcomers.

The white men went about their camp duties in a mingling of figures, white and red. Lewis lined up his men, beat his drums, fired the great swivel piece to impress the savages.

“Bring out the flag, Will,” said he. “Put up our council awning. I’ll have a parley with their head man. Can you make him out, Drouillard?”

“He’ll said he was Black Buffalo,” replied the Frenchman. “I don’t understand him very good.”

“Take him these things, Drouillard,” said Lewis. “Give him a lace coat and hat, a red feather, some tobacco, and this medal. Tell him that when we get ready we’ll make a talk with him.”

But Black Buffalo and his men were not in the mood to wait for their parley. They crowded down to the bank angrily, excitedly, even after they had received the presents sent them. Lewis, busy about the barge, which had not yet found a good landing-place, turned at the sound of his friend’s voice, to see Clark struggling in the grasp of two or three of the Sioux, among them the Teton chief. A savage had his hand flung about the mast of the pirogue, others laid hold upon the painter. Clark, flushed and angry at the touch of another man’s hand, had whipped out his sword, and the Indians were drawing their bows from their cases.

At that moment Lewis gave a loud order, which arrested them all. The Sioux turned toward the barge, to see the black mouth of the great swivel gun pointing at them—the gun whose thunder voice they had heard.

“Big medicine!” called out Black Buffalo in terror, and ordered his men back.

Clark offered his hand to Black Buffalo, but it was refused. Angry, he sprang into the pirogue and pushed off for the barge. Three of the Indians stepped into the pirogue with him, jabbering excitedly, and, with Clark, went aboard the barge, where they made themselves very much at home.

“Croyez moi!” ejaculated Drouillard. “These Hinjun, she’ll think he own this country!”

Here, then, they were, in the Teton country. No sleep that night for either of the leaders, nor for any of the men. They pulled the pirogues alongside the barge and sat, barricaded behind their goods, rifle in hand.

They kept their visitors prisoners all that night, and whatever might have been the construction the Tetons placed on their act, they themselves by dawn were far more placable. Continually they motioned that the whites should come ashore, that they must stop, that they must not go on further up the river. But when all was prepared for the start on the following morning, Lewis ordered the great cable of the barge cast off.

Black Buffalo in turn ordered his men to lay hold upon it and retain the boat. Once more the Indians began to draw their bows. Once more Lewis turned upon them the muzzle of his cannon. His men shook the priming into their pieces, and made ready to fire. An instant, and much blood might have been shed.

“Black Buffalo,” said Lewis, as best he might through his interpreter, “I heard you were a chief. You are not Black Buffalo, but some squaw! We are going to see if we can find Black Buffalo, the real chief. If he were here, he would accept our tobacco. The geese are flying down the river. Soon the snow will come. We cannot wait. See, I give you this tobacco on the prairie. Go and see if you can find Black Buffalo, the real chief!”

“Ha!” exclaimed the Teton leader, his dignity outraged. “You say I am not Black Buffalo—that I am not a chief. I will show you!”

He caught the twists of good black Virginia tobacco tossed to him, and cast the rope far from him upon the tawny flood of the Missouri. An instant later the oars had caught the water and Cruzatte had spread the bowsail of the barge. So they won through one more of the most dangerous of the tribes against whom they had been warned.

“A near thing, Merne!” said Will Clark after a time. “There is some mighty Hand that seems to guide us—is it not the truth?”

CHAPTER IV

Hereabout the Sieur de la Verendrye had crossed on his own journey of exploration two generations earlier. More lately the emissaries of the great British companies, although privately warring with one another, had pushed west over the Assiniboine. Traders had been among the Mandans now for a decade. Thus far came the Western trail from Canada, and halted.

The path of the Missouri also led thus far, but here, at the intersection, ended all the trails of trading or traveling white men. Therefore, Lewis and Clark found white men located here before them—McCracken, an Irishman; Jussaume, a Frenchman; Henderson, an Englishman; La Roque, another Frenchman—all over from the Assiniboine country; and all, it hardly need be said, excited and anxious over this wholly unexpected arrival of white strangers in their own trading-limits.

Big White, chief of the Mandans, welcomed the new party as friends, for he was quick to grasp the advantage the white men’s goods gave his people over the neighboring tribes, and also quick to understand the virtue of competition.

“Brothers,” said he, “you have come for our beaver and our robes. As for us, we want powder and ball and more iron hatchets and knives. We have traded with the Assiniboines, who are foolish people, and have taken all their goods away from them. We have killed the Rees until we are tired of killing them. The Sioux will not trouble us if we have plenty of powder and ball. We know that you have come to trade with us. See, the snow is here. Light your lodge fires with the Mandans. Stay here until the grass comes once more!”

“We open our ears to what Big White has said,” replied Lewis—speaking through Jussaume, the Frenchman, who soon was added as interpreter to the party. “We are the children of a Great Father in the East, who gives you this medal with his picture on it. He sends you this coat, this hat of a chief. He gives you this hatchet, this case of tobacco. There are other hatchets and more tobacco for your people.”

“What Great Father is that?” demanded Big White. “It seems there are many Great Fathers in these days! Who are you strangers, who come from so far?”

“You yourself shall judge, Big White. When the geese fly up the river and the grass is green, our great boat here is going back down the river. The Great Father is curious to know his children, the Mandans. If you, Big White, wish to go to see him when the grass is green, you shall sit yonder in that boat and go all the way with some of my men. You shall shake his hand. When you come back, you can tell the story to your own people. Then all the tribes will cease to wage war. Your women once more may take off their moccasins at night when they sleep.”

“It is good,” said the Mandan. “Ahaie! Come and stay with us until the grass is green, and I will make medicine over what you say. We will open our lodges to you, and will not harm you. Our young women will carry you corn which they have saved for the winter. Our squaws will feed your horses. Go no farther, for the snow and ice are coming fast. Even the buffalo will be thin, and the elk will grow so lean that they will not be good to eat. This is as far as the white men ever come when the grass is green. Beyond this, no man knows the trails.”

“When the grass is green,” said Lewis, “I shall lead my young men toward the setting sun. We shall make new trails.”

Jussaume, McCracken, and all the others held their own council with the leaders of the expedition.

“What are you doing here?” they demanded. “The Missouri has always belonged to the British traders.”

The face of Meriwether Lewis flushed with anger.

“We are about the business of our government,” he said. “It is our purpose to discover the West beyond here, all of it. It is our own country that we are discovering. We have bought it and paid for it, and will hold it. We carry the news of the great purchase to the natives.”

“Purchase? What purchase?” demanded McCracken.

And then the face of Lewis lightened, for he knew that they had outrun all the news of the world!

“The Louisiana Purchase—the purchase of all this Western country from the Mississippi to the Pacific, across the Stony Mountains. We bought it from Napoleon, who had it from Spain. We are the wedge to split the British from the South—the Missouri is our own pathway into our own country. That is our business here!”

“You must go back!” said the hot-headed Irishman. “I shall tell my factor, Chaboillez, at Fort Assiniboine. We want no more traders here. This is our country!”

“We do not come to trade,” said Meriwether Lewis. “We play a larger game. I know that the men of the Northwest Company have found the Arctic Ocean—you are welcome to it until we want it—we do not want it now. I know you have found the Pacific somewhere above the Columbia—we do not want what we have not bought or found for ourselves, and you are welcome to that. But when you ask us to turn back on our own trail, it is a different matter. We are on our own soil now, and we will not turn for any order in the world but that of the President of the United States!”

McCracken, irritated, turned away from the talk.

“It is a fine fairy tale they tell us!” said he to his fellows.

Drouillard came a moment later to his chief.

“Those men she’ll take her dog-team for Assiniboine now—maybe so one hundred and fifty miles that way. He’ll told his factor now, on the Assiniboine post.”

Lewis smiled.

“Tell him to take this letter to his factor, Drouillard,” said he. “It is a passport given me by Mr. Thompson, representing Mr. Merry, of the British Legation at Washington. I have fifty other passports, better ones, each good at a hundred yards. If Mr. Chaboillez wishes to find us, he can do so. If we have gone, let him come after us in the spring.”

“My faith,” said Jussaume, the Frenchman, “you come a long way! Why you want to go more farther West? But, listen, Monsieur Capitaine—the Englishman, he’ll go to make trouble for you. He is going for send word to Rocheblave, the most boss trader on Lake Superior, on Fort William. They are going for send a man to beat you over the mountain—I know!”

“’Tis a long road from here to the middle of Lake Superior’s north shore,” said Meriwether Lewis. “It will be a long way back from there in the spring. While they are planning to start, already we shall be on our way.”

“I know the man they’ll send,” went on Jussaume. “Simon Fraser—I know him. Long time he’ll want to go up the Saskatchewan and over the mountain on the ocean.”

“We’ll race Mr. Fraser to the ocean,” said Meriwether Lewis; “him or any other man. While he plans, we shall be on our way!”

Well enough the Northern traders knew the meaning of this American expedition into the West. If it went on, all the lower trade was lost to Great Britain forever. The British minister, Merry, had known it. Aaron Burr had known it. This expedition must be stopped! That was the word which must go back to Montreal, back to London, along the trail which ended here at the crossroads of the Missouri.

“The red-headed young man is not so bad,” said one of the white news-bearers at the Assiniboine post. “He is willing to parley, and he seems disposed to be amiable. But the other, the one named Lewis—I can do nothing with him. For some reason he seems to be hostile to the British interests. He speaks well, and is a man of presence and education, but he is bitter against us, and I cannot handle him. We must use force to stop that man!”

“Agreed, then!” said his master, laughing lustily, for, safe in his own sanctuary, he had not seen these men himself. “We shall use force, as we have before. We will excite the savages against them this winter. If they will listen to us, and turn back in the spring—all of them, not part of them—very well. If they will not listen to reason, then we shall use such means as we need to stop them.”

Of this conversation the two young American officers, one of Virginia, the other of Kentucky, knew nothing at all. But they held council of their own, as was their fashion—a council of two, sitting by their camp fire; and while others talked, they acted.

Before November was a week old, the axes were ringing among the cottonwoods. The men were carrying big logs toward the cleared space shown to them, and while Meriwether Lewis worked at his journal and his scientific records, William Clark, born soldier and born engineer, was going forward with his little fortress.

Trenches were cut, the logs were ended up—taller pickets than any one of that country ever had seen before. A double row of cabins was built inside the stockade. A great gate was furnished, proof against assault. A bastion was erected in one corner, mounting the swivel piece so that it might be fired above the top of the wall. A little more work of chinking the walls, of flooring the cabins, of making chimneys of wattle and clay—and presto, before the winter had well settled down, the white explorers were housed and fortified and ready for what might come.

The Mandans sat and watched them in wonder. Jussaume, the French trader, shook his head. In all his experience on the trail he had seen nothing savoring quite so much of preparedness and celerity.

Among all the posts to the northward and eastward the word went out, carried by dog runners.

“They have built a great house of tall logs,” said the Indians. “They have put the thing that thunders on top of the wall. They never sleep. Each day they exercise with their rifles under their arms. They have long knives on their belts. They carry hatchets that are sharp enough to shave bark. Their medicine is strong!

“They write down the words of the Mandans and the Minnetarees in their books. They are taking skins of the antelope and the bighorn and the deer, even skins of the prairie-grouse and the badger and the prairie-dog—everything they can get. They dry these, to make some sort of medicine of them. They cut off pieces of wood and bark. They put the dirt which burns in little sacks. They make pictures and make the talking papers—all the time they work at something, the two chiefs. They have a black man with them who cannot be washed white—they have stained him with some medicine of their own. He makes sounds like a buffalo, and he says that the white man made him as he is and will do us that way. We would like to kill them, but they have made their house too strong!

“They never sleep. In the daytime and in the nighttime, no matter how cold it is, one man, two men, walk up and down inside the wall. They have carried their boats up out of the water—two boats, a great one and two small. All through the woods they are cutting down the largest trees, and out of the straight logs they are making more boats, more boats, as many as there are fingers on one hand. They have axes that cast much larger chips than any we ever saw. We fear these men, because they do not fear us. We do not know what to think. They are men who never sleep. Before the sun is up we find them writing or making large chips with their axes, or hunting in the woods—not a day goes by that their hunters do not bring in elk and deer and buffalo. They do not fear us.

“We have seen no men like these. They are chiefs, and their medicine is strong!”

CHAPTER V

“Well, it seems that last summer Charbonneau married still another wife, a girl not over sixteen years of age, I should judge. He bought her—she was a slave, a captive brought down from somewhere up the river by a war-party. She is a pleasant girl, and always smiles. She seems friendly to us—see the moccasins she made for me but now. And I only had to knock her husband down once for beating her!”

“Lucky man!” grinned William Clark. “I have knocked him down half a dozen times, and she has made me no moccasins at all. But what then?”

“So far as I can learn, that Indian girl is the only human being here who has ever seen the Stony Mountains. The girl says that she was taken captive years ago somewhere near the summit of the Stony Mountains. Above here a great river comes in, which they call the Yellow Rock River—the ‘Ro’jaune,’ Jussaume calls it. Very well. Many days’or weeks’ journey toward the west, this river comes again within a half-day’s march of the Missouri. That is near the summit of the mountains; and this girl’s people live there.”

“By the Lord, Merne, you’re a genius for getting over new country!”

“Wait. I find the child very bright—very clear of mind. And listen, Will—the mind of a woman is better for small things than that of a man. They pick up trifles and hang on to them. I’d as soon trust that girl for a guide out yonder as any horse-stealing warrior in a hurry to get into a country and in a hurry to get out of it again. Raiding parties cling to the river-courses, which they know; but she and her people must have been far to the west of any place these adventurers of the Minnetarees ever saw. Sacajawea she calls herself—the ‘Bird Woman.’ I swear I look upon that name itself as a good omen! She has come back like a dove to the ark, this Bird Woman. William Clark, we shall reach the sea—or, at least, you will do so, Will,” he concluded.

“What do you mean, Merne? Surely, if I do, you will also!”

“I cannot be sure.”

The florid face of William Clark showed a frown of displeasure.

“You are not as well as you should be—you work too much. That is not just to Mr. Jefferson, Merne, nor to our men, nor to me.”

“It was for that reason I took you on. Doesn’t a man have two lungs, two arms, two limbs, two eyes? We are those for Mr. Jefferson—even crippled, the expedition will live. You are as my own other hand. I exult to see you every morning smiling out of your blankets, hopeful and hungry!”

Meriwether Lewis turned to his colleague with the sweet smile which sometimes his friends saw.

“You see, I am a fatalist,” he went on. “Ah, you laugh at me! My people must have been owners of the second sight, I have often told you. Humor me, Will, bear with me. Don’t question me too deep. Your flag, Will, I know will be planted on the last parapet of life—you were born to succeed. For myself, I still must remember what my mother told me—something about the burden which would be too heavy, the trail which would be long. At times I doubt.”

“Confound it, Merne, you have not been yourself since you got that accursed letter in the night last summer!”

“It was unsettling, I don’t deny.”

“I pray Heaven you’ll never get another!” said William Clark. “From a married woman, too! Thank God I’ve no such affair on my mind!”

“It is taboo, Will—that one thing!”

And Clark, growling anathemas on all women, stalked away to find his axmen.

The snows had come soft and deep, blown on the icy winds. The horses of the Mandans were housed in the lodges, and lived on cottonwood instead of grass. When the vast herds of buffalo came down from the broken hills into the shelter of the flats, the men returned frostbitten with their loads of meat. The sky was dark. The days were short.

To improve the morale of their men, the leaders now planned certain festivities for them. On Christmas Eve each man had his stocking well stuffed with such delicacies as the company stores afforded—pepper, salt, dried fruits long cherished in the commissary, such other knickknacks as might be spared.

On Christmas Day Drouillard brought out a fiddle. A dance was ordered, and went on all day long on the puncheon floor of the main cabin. In moccasins and leggings, with hair long and tunics belted close to their lean waists, the white men danced to the tunes of their own land—the reels and hoedowns of old Virginia and Kentucky.

The sounds of revelry were heard by the Mandans who came up to the gate.

“White men make a medicine dance,” they said, and knocked for entrance.

Two women only were present—the wife of Jussaume, the squaw man, and Sacajawea, the girl wife of Charbonneau, the interpreter of the Mandans. These two had many presents.

The face of Sacajawea was wreathed in smiles. Always her eyes followed the tall form of Meriwether Lewis wherever he went. Her own husband was but her husband, and already she had elected Meriwether Lewis as her deity. When her husband thrashed her, always he thrashed her husband.

In her simple child’s soul she consecrated herself to the task which he had assigned her. Yes, when the grass came she would take these white men to her own people. If they wanted to see the salt waters far to the west—her people had heard of that—then they should go there also. The Bird Woman was very happy that Christmas Day. The chief had thrashed Charbonneau and had given her wonderful presents!

All the men danced but one—the youth Shannon, who once more had met misfortune. While hewing with the broadax at one of the canoes, he had had the misfortune to slash his foot, so must lie in his bunk and watch the others.

“Keep the men going, Will,” said Meriwether Lewis. “I’ll go to my room and get forward some letters which I want to write—to my mother and to Mr. Jefferson. At least I can date them Christmas Day, although Providence alone knows when they may be despatched or received!”

He returned to his own quarters, where he had erected a little desk at which he sometimes worked, and sat down. For a moment he remained in thought, as the sound of the dancing still came to him, glad to find his men so happy. At length he spread open the back of his little leather writing-case, unscrewed his ink-horn and set it safe, drew his keen hunting-knife, and put a point upon a goose-quill pen. Then he put away the many written pages which still lay in the portfolio, the product of his daily labors.

Searching for fair white paper, his eye caught sight of a sealed and folded letter, apparently long unnoticed here among the written and unwritten sheets. In a flash he knew what it was! Once more the blood in his veins seemed to stop short.

He knew what hand had written the words. For one short instant he had a mad impulse to cast the letter into the fire. Then there came over him once more the feeling which oppressed him all his life—that he was a helpless instrument in the hands of fate. He broke the seal—not noticing as he did so that it had a number scratched into the wax—and read the letter, which ran thus:

Meriwether Lewis sat, his face between his hands, staring down at what he saw. Should he go on, or should he hand over all to William Clark and return—return to keep his promise—return to comfort, as best he might, with the gift of all his life, that face which indeed he had left in tears by an unpardonable act of his own?

He owed her everything she could ask of him. What must she think of him now—that he was not only a dishonorable man, but also a coward running away from the responsibility of what he had done? No blow from the hands of fate could have given him more exquisite agony than this.

For a long time—he never knew how long—he sat thus, staring, pondering, but at length with sudden energy he rose and flung open the door of the dancing-room.

“Will!” he called to his companion.

When William Clark joined his friend in the outer air, he saw the open letter in Lewis’s hand—saw also the distress upon his countenance.

“Merne, it’s another letter from that woman! I wish I had her here, that I might wring her neck!” said William Clark viciously. “Who brought it?”

“I don’t know.”

Meriwether Lewis was folding up the letter. He placed it in the pocket of his coat with its fellow, received months ago.

“Will,” said he at length, “don’t you recall what I was telling you this very morning? I felt something coming—I felt that fate had something more for me. You know I spoke in doubt.”

“Listen, Merne!” replied William Clark. “There is no woman in the world worth the misery this one has put on you. It is a thing execrable, unspeakable!”

His friend looked him steadily in the eyes.

“Rebuke not her, but me!” he said. “This letter asks me to come back to kiss away a woman’s tears. Will, I was the cause of those tears. I can tell you no more. What I did was a thing execrable, unspeakable—I, your friend, did that!”

William Clark, more genuinely troubled than ever in his life before, was dumb.

“My future is forfeited, Will,” went on the same even, dull voice, which Clark could scarcely recognize; “but I have decided to go on through with you.”

CHAPTER VI

Early in April the great barge, manned by ten men, had set out down stream, carrying with it the proof of the success of the expedition. It bore many new things, precious things, things unknown to civilization. Among these were sixty specimens of plants, as many of minerals and earth, weapons of the Indians, examples of their clothing, specimens of the corn and other vegetables which they raised, horns of the bighorn and the antelope—both animals then new to science—antlers of the deer and elk, stuffed specimens, dried skins, herbs, fruits, flowers; and with all these the broken story of a new geography—the greatest story ever sent out for publication by any man or men; and all done in Homeric simplicity.

As the great barge had started down the river, the two pirogues which had come so far, joined by the cottonwood dugouts laboriously fabricated during the winter months, had started up the river, manned by thirty-one men.

With the pick of the original party, there had come but one woman, the girl Sacajawea, with her little baby, born that winter at the Mandan fortress. Sacajawea now had her place in the camp; she and her infant were the pets of all. She sat in the sunlight, her baby in her lap, by her side an Indian dog, a waif which Lewis had found abandoned in an Indian encampment, and which had attached itself to him.

Sacajawea smiled as the tall form of the captain came toward her. She had already learned some of the words of his tongue, he some of hers.

“Which way, Sacajawea?” asked Meriwether Lewis. “What river is this which goes on to the left?”

“Him Ro’shone,” replied the girl. “My man call him that. No good! Him—big river”; and she pointed toward the right-hand stream.

“As I thought, Will,” said Lewis, nodding; and again, to the Indian girl: “Do you remember this place?”

She nodded her head vigorously and smiled.

“See!”

With a pointed stick she began to sketch a map on the sand of the river bar, showing how the Yellowstone flowed from the south—how, far on ahead, its upper course bent toward the Missouri, with a march of not more than a day between the two. The maps of this new world that first came back to civilization were copies of Indians’ drawings made with a pointed stick upon the earth, or with a coal on a whitened hide.

“She knows, Will!” said Lewis. “See, this place she marks near the mountain summit, where the two streams are close—some time we must explore that crossing!”

“I’m sure I’d rather trust her map than this one, here, of old Jonathan Carver,” answered Clark, the map-maker. “His idea of this country is that four great rivers head about where we are now. He marks the river Bourbon—which I never heard of—as running north to Hudson Bay, but he has the St. Lawrence rising near here, too—and it must be fifteen hundred or two thousand miles off to the east! The Mississippi, too, he thinks heads about here, at the mouth of the Yellowstone, and yonder runs the Oregon River, which I presume is the Columbia. ’Tis all very simple, on Carver’s maps, but perhaps not quite so easy, if we follow that of Sacajawea. This country is wider than any of us ever dreamed.”

“And greater, and more beautiful in every way,” assented his companion.

They stood and gazed about them at the scene of wild beauty. The river ran in long curves between bold and sculptured bluffs, among groves of native trees, now softly green. Above, on the prairies, lay a carpet of the shy wild rose, most beautiful of the prairie blossoms. All about were shrubs and flowers, now putting forth their claims in the renewed life of spring.

On the plains fed the buffalo, far as the eye could reach. Antelope, deer, the shy bighorn, all these might be seen, and the footprints of the giant bears along the beaches. It was the wilderness, and it was theirs—they owned it all!

Thus far they had seen no sign of any human occupancy. They did not meet a single human being, red or white, all that summer. A vast, silent, unclaimed land, beautiful and abounding, lay waiting for occupancy. There was no map of it—none save that written on the soil now and then by an Indian girl sixteen years of age.

They plodded on now, taking the right-hand stream, with full confidence in their guidance, forging onward a little every day, between the high banks of the swift river that came down from the great mountains. April passed, and May.

“Soon we see the mountains!” insisted Sacajawea.

And at last, two months out from the Mandans, Lewis looked westward from a little eminence and saw a low, broken line, white in spots, not to be confused with the lesser eminences of the near by landscape.

“It is the mountains!” he exclaimed. “There lie the Stonies. They do exist! We shall surely reach them! We have won!”

Not yet had they won. These shining mountains lay a long distance to the westward; and yet other questions were to be settled ere they might be reached.

Within a week they came to yet another forking of the stream. A strong river came boiling down from the north, of color and depth much similar to that of the Missouri they had known. On the left ran a less turbulent and clearer stream. Which was the way?

“The north wan, she’ll be the right wan, Capitaine,” said Cruzatte, himself a good voyageur.

Most of the men agreed with him. The leaders recalled that the Mandans had said that the Missouri after a time grew clear in color, and that it would lead to the mountains. Which, now, was the Missouri?

They found the moccasin of an Indian not far from here.

“Blackfoot!” said Sacajawea, and pointed to the north, shaking her head.

She insisted that the left-hand river was the right one; but, unwilling as yet to rely on her fully, the leaders called a council of the men, and listened to their arguments.

They knew well enough that a wrong choice here might mean the failure of their expedition. Cruzatte had many adherents. The men began to mutter.

“If we go up that left-hand stream we shall be lost among the mountains,” one said. “We shall perish when the winter comes!”

“We will go both ways,” said Meriwether Lewis at length. “Captain Clark will explore the lower fork, while I go up the right-hand stream. We will meet here when we know the truth.”

So Lewis traveled two days’ journey up the right-hand fork before he turned back, thoughtful.

“I have decided,” said he to the men who accompanied him. “This stream will lead us far to the north, into the British country. It cannot be the true Missouri. I shall call this Maria’s River, after my cousin in Virginia, Maria Woods. I shall not call it the Missouri.”

He met Clark at the fork of the river, and again they held a council. The men were still dissatisfied. Clark had advanced some distance up the left-hand stream.

“We must prove it yet further,” said Meriwether Lewis. “Captain Clark, do you remain here, while I go on ahead far enough to know absolutely whether we are right or wrong. If we are not right in our choice, it is as the men say—we shall fail! But where is Sacajawea?” he added. “I will ask her once more.”

Sacajawea was ill; she was in a fever. She could not talk to her husband; but to Lewis she talked, and always she said, “That way! By and by, big falls—um-m-m, um-m-m!”

“Guard her well,” said Lewis anxiously. “Much depends on her. I must go on ahead.”

He took the French interpreter, Drouillard, and three of the Kentuckians, and started on up the left-hand stream with one boat. The current of the river seemed to stiffen. It cost continually increasing toil to get the boat upstream. They were gone for several days, and no word came back from them.

Meantime, at the river forks, William Clark was busy. It was obvious that the explorers must lighten the loads of their boats. They began to cache all the heavy goods with which they could dispense—their tools, the extra lead and powder-tins, some of the flour, all the heavy stuff which would encumber them most seriously. Here, too, was the end of the journey of the red pirogue from St. Louis—they hid it in the willows of an island near the mouth of Maria’s River.

Lewis himself, weak from toil, fell ill on the way, but still he would not stop. He came to a point from which he could see the mountains plainly on ahead. The river was narrow, flowing through a cañon.

The next day they came to the foot of the Great Falls of the Missouri, alone, majestic here in the wilderness, soundless save for their own dashing—those wonderful cascades, now so well known in industry, so nearly forgotten in history.

“The girl was right—this is the river!” said Lewis to his men. “It comes from the mountains. We are right!”

Cascade after cascade, rapid after rapid, he pushed on to the head of the great drop of the Missouri, where it plunges down from its upper valley for its long journey through the vast plains.

Now word went down to the mouth of Maria’s River; but the messenger met Clark already toiling upward with his boats, for he had guessed the cause of delay, and at last believed Sacajawea.

“Make some boat-trucks, Will,” said Lewis, when at last they were all encamped at the foot of the falls. “We shall have to portage twenty miles of falls and rapids.”

And William Clark, the ever-ready engineer, who always had a solution for any problem in mechanics or in geography, went to work upon the hardest task in transportation they yet had had.

“We must leave more plunder here, Merne,” said he. “We can’t get into the mountains with all this.”

So again they cached some of their stores. They buried here the great swivel piece which had “made the thunder” among so many savage tribes. Also there were stored here the spring’s collection of animals and minerals, certain books and maps not needed, and the great grindstone which had come all the way from Harper’s Ferry. They were stripping for their race.

It took the party a full month to make the portage. They were worn to the bone by the hard labor, scorched by the sun, and frozen by the night winds.

“We must go on!” was always the cry.

All felt that the summer was going; none knew what might be on ahead.

At the cost of greater and greater toil they pushed on up their river above the falls, until presently its course bent off to the south again. They passed through a country of such wealth as none of them had ever dreamed of, but they did not suspect the hidden treasures of gold and silver which lay so close to them on the floor of the mountain valleys. What interested them more was the excitement of Sacajawea, who from time to time pointed out traces of human occupancy.

“My people here!” said she, and pointed to camp-fires. “Plenty people come here. Heap hunt buffalo!” She pointed out the trails made by the lodge-poles.

“She knows, Will!” said Lewis, once more. “We have a guide even here. We are the luckiest of men!”

“Soon we come where three rivers,” said Sacajawea one day. They had passed to the south and west through the first range of mountains—through that Gate of the Mountains near to the rich gold fields of the future State of Montana. “By and by, three rivers—I know!”

And it was as she had said. The men, wearied to the limit by the toil of getting the boats upstream by line and setting pole, at last found their mountain river broken into three separate streams.

“We will camp here,” said the leader. “We are tired, we have worked long and hard!”

“My people come here,” said Sacajawea, “plenty time. Here the Minnetarees struck my people—five snows ago that was. They caught me and took me with them, so I find Charbonneau among the Mandans. Here my people live!”

Without hesitation she pointed out that one of the three forks of the Missouri which led off to the westward—the one that Meriwether Lewis called the Jefferson.

And now every man in the party felt that they were on the right path as they turned into that stream; but at the Beaver Head Rock—well known to all the Indians—they went into camp once more.

“Captains make medicine now,” said Sacajawea to Charbonneau, her husband.

For once more the captains hesitated. There were many passes, many valleys, many trails. Which was the way? The men grew sullen again.

They lay in camp for days, sending out parties, feeling out the way; but the explorers always came back uncertain. It was Clark who led these scouting parties now, for Lewis was well-nigh broken down in health.

One night, alone, the leader sat by his little fire, thinking, thinking, as so often he did now. The stars, unspeakably brilliant, lit up the wild scene about him. This was the wilderness! He had sought it all his life. All his life it had called to him aloud. What had it done for him, after all? Had it taught him to forget?

Two years now had passed, and still he saw a face which would not go away. Still there arose before him the same questions whose debate had torn his soul, worn out his body, through these weary months.

“You will be cold, sir,” said one of the men solicitously, as he passed on his way to guard mount. “Shall I fetch your coat?”

Lewis thanked him, and the man brought from his tent the captain’s uniform coat, which he had forgotten. Absently he sought to put it on, and felt something crinkling in the sleeve. It was a bit of paper.

He halted, the old presentiment coming to his mind.

“Is Shannon here?” he asked of the man who had handed him the coat. “He was to get my moccasins mended for me.”

“No, captain, he is out with Captain Clark,” replied Fields, the Kentuckian.

“Very well—that will do, Fields.”

Meriwether Lewis sat down again by his little fire, his last letter in his hand. Gently he ran a finger along the seal—stooped over, kicked together the embers of the fire, and saw scratched in the wax a number. This was Number Three!

He did not open it for a time. He looked at it—no longer in dread, but in eagerness. It seemed to him, indeed, as if the letter had come in response to the outcry of his soul—that it really had dropped from the sky, manna for a hungry heart. It was the absence of this which had worn him thin, left him the shadow of the man he should have been.

Here, as he knew well, was one more summons to what seemed to him to be a duty. And off to the west, shining cold in the night under the stars, stood the mountains, beckoning. Which was the way?

He broke the seal slowly, with no haste, knowing that whatever the letter said it could mean only more unhappiness to him. Yet he was hungry for it as one who longs for a soothing drug.

He pushed together yet more closely the burning sticks of his little fire and bent over to read. It was very little that he saw written, but it spoke to him like a voice in the night: