Come back to me—ah, come back! I need you. I implore you to return!
There was no address, no date, no signature. There was no means of telling whence or how this letter had come to him, more than any of the others.
Go back to her—how could he, now? It was more than a year since these words had been written! What avail now, if he did return? No, he had delayed, he had gone on, and he had cost her—what? Perhaps her happiness as well as his own, perhaps the success of herself and of many others, perhaps his own success in life. Against that, what could he measure?
The white mountains on ahead made no reply to him. The stars glowed cold and white above him, but they seemed like a thousand facets of pitiless light turned upon his soul.
The quavering howl of a wolf on a near by eminence sounded like a voice to him, mocking, taunting, fiendish. Never, it seemed to him, had any man been thus unhappy. Even the wilderness had failed him! In a land of desolation he sat, a desolate soul.
When William Clark returned from his three days’ scouting trip, his forehead was furrowed with anxiety. His men were silent as they filed into camp and cast down their knapsacks.
“It’s no use, Merne,” said Clark, “we are in a pocket here. The other two forks, which we called the Madison and the Gallatin, both come from the southeast, entirely out of our course. The divide seems to face around south of us and bend up again on the west. Who knows the way across? Our river valley is gone. The only sure way seems back—downstream.”
“What do you mean?” demanded Meriwether Lewis quietly.
“I scarce know. I am worn out, Merne. My men have been driven hard.”
“And why not?”
His companion remained silent under the apparent rebuke.
“You don’t mean that we should return?” Lewis went on.
“Why not, Merne?” said William Clark, sighing.
“Our men are exhausted. There are other years than this.”
Meriwether Lewis turned upon his friend with the one flash of wrath which ever was known between them.
“Good Heavens, Captain Clark,” said he, “there is not any other year than this! There is not any other month, or week, or day but this! It is not for you or me to hesitate—within the hour I shall go on. We’ll cross over, or we’ll leave the bones of every man of the expedition here—this year—now!”
Clark’s florid face flushed under the sting of his comrade’s words; but his response was manful and just.
“You are right,” said he at length. “Forgive me if for a moment—just a moment—I seemed to question the possibility of going forward. Give me a night to sleep. As I said, I am worn out. If I ever see Mr. Jefferson again, I shall tell him that all the credit for this expedition rests with you. I shall say that once I wavered, and that I had no cause. You do not waver—yet I know what excuse you would have for it.”
“You are only weary, Will. It is my turn now,” said Meriwether Lewis; and he never told his friend of this last letter.
A moment later he had called one of his men.
“McNeal,” said he, “get Reuben Fields, Whitehouse, and Goodrich. Make light packs. We are going into the mountains!”
The four men shortly appeared, but they were silent, morose, moody. Those who were to remain in the camp shared their silence. Sacajawea alone smiled as they departed.
“That way!” said she, pointing; and she knew that her chief would find the path.
May we not wonder, in these later days, if any of us, who reap so carelessly and so selfishly where others have plowed and sown, reflect as we should upon the first cost of what we call our own? The fifteen million dollars paid for the vast empire which these men were exploring—that was little—that was naught. But ah, the cost in blood and toil and weariness, in love and loyalty and faith, in daring and suffering and heartbreak of those who went ahead! It was a few brave leaders who furnished the stark, unflinching courage for us all.
Sergeant Ordway, with Pryor and Gass, met in one of the many little ominous groups that now began to form among the men in camp. Captain Clark was sleeping, exhausted.
“It stands to reason,” said Ordway, usually so silent, “that the way across the range is up one valley to the divide and down the next creek on the opposite side. That is the way we crossed the Alleghanies.”
Pryor nodded his head.
“Sure,” said he, “and all the game-trails break off to the south and southwest. Follow the elk!”
“Is it so?” exclaimed Patrick Gass. “You think it aisy to find a way across yonder range? And how d’ye know jist how the Alleghanies was crossed first? Did they make it the first toime they thried? Things is aisy enough after they’ve been done wance—but it’s the first toime that counts!”
“There is no other way, Pat,” argued Ordway. “’Tis the rivers that make passes in any mountain range.”
“Which is the roight river, then?” rejoined Gass. “We’re lookin’ for wan that mebbe is nowhere near here. S’pose we go to the top yonder and take a creek down, and s’pose that creek don’t run the roight way at all, but comes out a thousand miles to the southwest—where are you then, I’d like to know? The throuble with us is we’re the first wans to cross here, and not comin’ along after some one else has done the thrick for us.”
Pryor was willing to argue further.
“All the Injuns have said the big river was over there somewhere.”
“‘Somewhere’!” exclaimed Patrick Gass. “‘Somewhere’ is a mighty long ways when we’re lost and hungry!”
“Which is just what we are now,” rejoined Pryor. “The sooner we start back the quicker we’ll be out of this.”
“Pryor!” The square face of the Irishman hardened at once. “Listen to me. Ye’re my bunkmate and friend, but I warn ye not to say that agin! If ye said it where he could hear ye—that man ahead—do you know what he would do to you?”
“I ain’t particular. ’Tis time we took this thing into our own hands.”
“It’s where we’re takin’ it now, Pryor!” said Gass ominously. “A coort martial has set for less than that ye’ve said!”
“Mebbe you couldn’t call one—I don’t know.”
“Mebbe we couldn’t, eh? I mind me of a little settlement I had with that man wance—no coort martial at all—me not enlisted at the toime, and not responsible under the arthicles of war. I said to his face I was of the belief I could lick him. I said it kindly, and meant no harm, because at the time it seemed to me I could, and ’twould be a pleasure to me. But boys, he hit me wan time, and when I came to I was careless whether it was the arthicles of war or not had hit me. Listen to me now, Pryor—and you, too, Ordway—a man like that is liable to have judgment in his head as well as a punch in his arm. We’re safer to folly him than to folly ourselves. Moreover, I want you to say to your men that we will not have thim foregatherin’ around and talkin’ any disrespect to their shuperiors. If we’re in a bad place, let us fight our ways out. Let’s not turn back until we are forced. I never did loike any rooster in the ring that would either squawk or run away. That man yonder, on ahead, naded mighty little persuadin’ to fight. I’m with him!”
“Well, maybe you are right, Pat,” said Ordway after a time. And so the mutiny once more halted.
The tide changed quickly when it began to set the other way. Lewis led an advance party across the range. One day, deep in the mountains, he was sweeping the country with his spyglass, as was his custom. He gave a sudden exclamation.
“What is it, Captain?” asked Hugh McNeal. “Some game?”
“No, a man—an Indian! Riding a good horse, too—that means he has more horses somewhere. Come, we will call to him!”
The wild rider, however, had nothing but suspicion for the newcomers. Staring at them, he wheeled at length and was away at top speed. Once more they were alone, and none the better off.
“His people are that way,” said Lewis. “Come!”
But all that day passed, and that night, and still they found none of the natives. But they began to see signs of Indians now, fresh tracks, hoofprints of many horses. And thus finally they came upon two Indian women and a child, whom the white men surprised before they were able to escape. Lewis took up the child, and showed the mother that he was a friend.
“These are Shoshones,” said he to his men. “I can speak with them—I have learned some of their tongue from Sacajawea. These are her people. We are safe!”
Sixty warriors met them, all mounted, all gorgeously clad. Again the great peace pipe, again the spread blanket inviting the council. The Shoshones showed no signs of hostility—the few words of their tongue which Lewis was able to speak gave them assurance.
“McNeal,” said Lewis, “go back now across the range, and tell Captain Clark to bring up the men.”
William Clark, given one night’s sleep, was his energetic self again, and not in mind to lie in camp. He had already ordered camp broken, more of the heavier articles cached, the canoes concealed here and there along the stream and had pushed on after Lewis. He met McNeal coming down, bearing the tidings. Sacajawea ran on ahead in glee.
“My people! My people!” she cried.
They were indeed safe now. Sacajawea found her brother, the chief of this band of Shoshones, and was made welcome. She found many friends of her girlhood, who had long mourned her as dead. The girls and younger women laughed and wept in turn as they welcomed her and her baby. She was a great person. Never had such news as this come among the Shoshones.[5]
All were now content to lie for a few days at the Shoshone village. A brisk trade in Indian horses now sprang up—they would be footmen no more.
“Which way, Sacajawea?” Meriwether Lewis once more asked the Indian girl.
But now she only shook her head.
“Not know,” said she. “These my people. They say big river that way. Not know which way.”
“Now, Merne,” said William Clark, “it’s my turn again. We have got to learn the best way out from these mountains. If there is a big river below, some of these valleys must run down to it. Their waters probably flow to the Columbia. The Indians talk of salmon and of white men—they have heard of goods which must have been made by white men. We are in touch with the Pacific here. I’ll get a guide and explore off to the southwest. It looks better there.”
“No good—no good!” insisted Sacajawea. “That way no good. My brother say go that way.”
She pointed to the north, and insisted that the party should go in that direction.
For a hundred miles Clark scouted down the headwaters of the Salmon River, and at last turned back, to report that neither horse nor boat ever could get through. At the Shoshone village, uneasy, the men were waiting for him.
“That way!” said Sacajawea, still pointing north.
The Indian guide, who had served Clark unwillingly, at length admitted that there was a trail leading across the mountains far up to the northward.
“We will go north,” said Lewis.
They cached under the ashes of their camp fire such remaining articles as they could leave behind them. They had now a band of fifty horses. Partly mounted, mostly on foot, their half wild horses burdened, they set out once more under the guidance of an old Shoshone, who said he knew the way.
Charbonneau wanted to remain with the Shoshones, and to keep with him Sacajawea, his wife, so recently reunited to her people.
“No!” said Sacajawea. “I no go back—I go with the white chief to the water that tastes salt!” And it was so ordered.
Their course lay along the eastern side of the lofty Bitter Root Mountains. The going was rude enough, since no trail had ever been here; but mile after mile, day after day, they stumbled through to some point on ahead which none knew except the guide. They came on a new tribe of Indians—Flatheads, who were as amazed and curious as the Shoshones had been at the coming of these white men. They received the explorers as friends—asked them to tarry, told them how dangerous it was to go into the mountains.
But haste was the order of the day, and they left the Flatheads, rejoicing that these also told of streams to the westward up which the salmon came. They had heard of white men, too, to the west, many years before.
Down the beautiful valley of the Bitter Root River, with splendid mountains on either side, they pressed on, and on the ninth of September, 1805, they stopped at the mouth of a stream coming down from the heights to the west. Their old guide pointed up this valley.
“There is a trail,” said he, “which comes across here. The Indians come to reach the buffalo. On the farther side the water runs toward the sunset.”
They were at the eastern extremity of that ancient trail, later called the Lolo Trail, known immemorially to the tribes on both sides of the mountains. Laboriously, always pressing forward, they ascended the eastern slopes of the great range, crossed the summit, found the clear waters on the west side, and so came to the Kooskooskie or Clearwater River, leading to the Snake. And always the natives marveled at these white men, the first they ever had seen.
The old Indians still made maps on the sand for them, showing them how they would come to the great river where the salmon came. They were now among yet another people—the Nez Percés. With these also they smoked and counciled, and learned that it would be easy for boats to go all the way down to the great river which ran to the sea.
“We will leave our horses here,” said Lewis. “We will take to the boats once more.”
So Gass and Bratton and Shields and all the other artisans fell to fashioning dugouts from the tall pines and cedars, hewing and burning and shaping, until at length they had transports for their scanty store of goods. By the first week of October they were at the junction of their river with the Snake. An old medicine man of the Nez Percés, Twisted Hair, a man who also could make maps, had drawn them charts on a white skin with a bit of charcoal. And on ahead, mounted runners of the Indians rushed down to inform the tribes of the coming of these strange people.
It was no longer an exploration, but a reception for them now. Bands of red men, who welcomed them, had heard of white men coming up from the sea. White men had once lived by the Tim-Tim water, on the great river of the salmon—so they had been told; but never had any living Indian heard of white men coming across the great mountains from the sunrise.
“Will,” said Lewis, “it is done—we are safe now! We shall be first across to the Columbia. This—” he shook the Nez Percés’ scrawled hide—“is the map of a new world!”
Where lately had been gloom and despair there now reigned joy and confidence. With the great mountains behind them, and this new, pleasant and gentle land all around them, the spirits of the men rose buoyantly.
They could float easily down the strong current of the great Snake River, laboring but little, if at all. They made long hours every day, and by the middle of autumn they saw ahead of them a yet grander flood than that of the noble river which was bearing them.
At last they had found the Columbia! They had found what Mackenzie never found, what Fraser was not to find—that great river, now to be taken over with every right of double discovery by these messengers of the young republic. How swelled their hearts, when at last they knew this truth, unescapable, incontrovertible! It was theirs. They had won!
The men had grown reckless now. Cruzatte, Labiche, Drouillard—all the adventurers—sang as they traveled, gayer and more gay from day to day.
Always the landscape had fascinating interest for them in its repeated changes. They were in a different world. No one had seen the mountains which they saw. The Rockies, the Bitter Roots—these they had passed; and now they must yet pass through another range, this time not by the toilsome process of foot or horse travel, but on the strong flood of the river. The Columbia had made a trail for them through the Cascades.
Down the stormy rapids they plunged exulting. Mount Hood, St. Helen’s, Rainier, Adams—all the lofty peaks of the great Cascades, so named at a later date, appeared before them, around them, behind them, as they swung into the last lap of their wild journey and headed down toward the sea. Cruzatte, Labiche, Drouillard—all you others—time now, indeed, for you to raise the song of the old voyageurs! None have come so far as you—your paddles are wrinkling new waters. You are brave men, every one, and yours is the reward of the brave!
Soon, so said the Indians, they would come to ships—canoes with trees standing in them, on which teepees were hung.
“Me,” said Cruzatte, “I never in my whole life was seen a sheep! I will be glad for see wan now.”
But they found no ship anywhere in the lower Columbia. All the shores were silent, deserted; no vessel lay at anchor. Before them lay the empty river, wide as a sea, and told no tales of what had been. They were alone, in the third year out from home. Thousands of leagues they had traveled, and must travel back again.
Here they saw many gulls. As to Columbus these birds had meant land, to our discoverers they meant the sea. Forty miles below the last village they saw it—rolling in solemn, white-topped waves beyond the bar.
Every paddle ceased at its work, and the boats lay tossing on the incoming waves. There was the end of the great trail. Yonder lay the Pacific!
Meriwether Lewis turned and looked into the eyes of William Clark, who sat at the bow of the next canoe. Each friend nodded to the other. Neither spoke. The lips of both were tight.
“The big flag, Sergeant Gass!” said Lewis.
They turned ashore. There had been four mess fires at each encampment thus far—those of the three sergeants and that of the officers; but now, as they huddled on the wet beach on which they disembarked, the officers ordered the men to build but one fire, and that a large one. Grouped about this they all stood, ragged, soaked, gaunt, unkempt, yet the happiest company of adventurers that ever followed a long trail to its end.
“Men,” said Meriwether Lewis at length, “we have now arrived at the end of our journey. In my belief there has never been a party more loyal to the purpose on which it has been engaged. Without your strength and courage we could not have reached the sea. It is my wish to thank you for Mr. Jefferson, the President of the United States, who sent us here. If at any time one of you has been disposed to doubt, or to resent conditions which necessarily were imposed, let all that be forgotten. We have done our work. Here we must pass the winter. In the spring we will make quick time homeward.”
They gave him three cheers, and three for Captain Clark. York gave expression to his own emotions by walking about the beach on his hands.
“And the confounded ships are all gone back to sea!” grumbled Patrick Gass. “I’ve been achin’ for days to git here, in the hope of foindin’ some sailor man I’d loike to thrash—and here is no one at all, at all!”
“Will,” said Meriwether Lewis after a time, pulling out the inevitable map, “I wonder where it was that Alexander Mackenzie struck the Pacific twelve years ago! It must have been far north of here. We have come around forty-seven degrees of longitude west from Washington, and something like nine degrees north unite with France or Spain on the south to known exploration by land. We have driven the wedge home! Never again can Great Britain on the north unite with France or Spain on the south to threaten our western frontier. If they dispute the title we purchased from Napoleon, they can never deny our claim by right of discovery. This, I say, solidifies our republic! We have done the work given us to do.”
“Yes,” grinned William Clark, standing on one leg and warming his wet moccasin sole at the fire; “and I wonder where that other gentleman, Mr. Simon Fraser, is just now!”
They could not know that Fraser, the trader who was their rival in the great race to the Pacific, was at that time snow-bound in the Rockies more than one thousand miles north of them.
Three years after the time when this little band of adventurers stood in the rain at the mouth of the Columbia, Fraser, at the mouth of the river named after him, heard of white men who had come to the ocean somewhere far to the south. Word had passed up the coast, among the native tribes, of men who had white skins, and who had with them a black man with curly hair.
“That’s Lewis and Clark!” said Simon Fraser. “They were at the Mandan villages. We are beaten!”
So now the largest flag left to Lewis and Clark floated by the side of a single fire on the wet beach on the north shore of the Columbia. Here a rude bivouac was pitched, while the leaders finished their first hasty investigation along the beach.
“There is little to attract us here,” said William Clark. “On the south shore there is better shelter for our winter camp.” So they headed their little boats across the wide flood of the Columbia.
It was now December of the year 1805. Fort Clatsop, as they called their new stockade, was soon in process of erection—seven splendid cabins, built of the best-working wood these men ever had seen; a tall stockade with a gate, such as their forefathers had always built in any hostile country.
While some worked, others hunted, finding the elk abundant. More than one hundred elk and many deer were killed. And having nothing better, they now set to work to tan the hides of elk and deer, and to make new clothing. As to civilized equipment they had little left. About four hundred pairs of moccasins they made that winter, Sacajawea presiding over the moccasin-boards, and teaching the men to sew.
Clark, the indefatigable, a natural geographer, completed the remarkable series of maps which so fully established the accuracy of their observations and the usefulness of the voyage across the continent. Lewis kept up his records and extended his journals. All were busy, all happier than they had been since their departure from the East.
Christmas was once more celebrated to the tune of the Frenchman’s fiddle. Came New Year’s Day also; and by that time the stockade was finished, the gate was up, the men were ready for any fortune which might occur.
“Pretty soon, by and by,” said the voyageurs, “we will run on the river for home once more!”
Even Sacajawea, having fulfilled her great ambition of looking out over the sea which tasted of salt, said that she, too, would be content to go back to her people.
“We must leave a record, Will,” said Lewis one day, looking up from his papers. “We must take no chances of the results of our exploration not reaching Washington. Should we be lost among the tribes east of here, perhaps some ship may take that word to Mr. Jefferson.”
So now, between them, they formulated that famous announcement to the world, which, one year after their safe arrival home overland, the ships brought around by Cape Horn, to advise the world that a transcontinental path had been blazed:
The object of this list is that through the medium of some civilized person who may see the same, it may be made known to the world that the party consisting of the persons whose names are hereunto annexed, and who were sent out by the government of the United States to explore the interior of the continent of North America, did penetrate the same by the way of the Missouri and Columbia Rivers, to the discharge of the latter into the Pacific Ocean, where they arrived on the 14th day of November, 1805, and departed the 23rd day of March, 1806, on their return trip to the United States by the same route by which they had come out.
This, so soon as they knew their starting date, they signed, each of them, and copies were made for posting here and there in such places as naturally would be discovered by any mariners coming in. And today we—who can glibly list the names of the multimillionaires of America—cannot tell the names of more than two of those thirty-one men, each of whom should be an immortal.
“Boats now, Will!” said Meriwether Lewis. “We must have boats against our start in the spring. These canoes which brought us down from the Kooskooskie were well enough in their way, but will not serve for the upstream journey. Again we must lift up the entire party against the current of a great river. Get some of the Indians’ seagoing canoes, Will—their lines are easier than those of our dugouts.”
Need was for skilful trading now on the part of William Clark, for, eager as the natives were for the white men’s goods, scant store of them remained. All the fishhooks were gone, most of the beads, practically all the hats and coats which once had served so well. When at length Clark announced that he had secured a fine Chinook canoe, there remained for all the return voyage, thousands of miles among the Indians, only a half-dozen blankets, a few little trinkets, a hat, and a uniform coat.
“You could tie up all the rest in a couple of handkerchiefs,” said William Clark, laughing. “But such as it is, it must last us back to St. Louis—or at least to our caches on the Missouri.”
“How is your salt, Will?” asked Lewis. “And your powder?”
“In fine shape,” was the reply. “We have put the new-made salt in some of the empty canisters. There is plenty of powder and lead left, and we can pick up more as we reach our caches going eastward. With what dried meat we can lay up from the elk here, we ought to make a good start.”
Thus they planned, these two extraordinary young men, facing a transcontinental journey of four thousand miles, with no better equipment than the rifles which had served them on their way out. As for their followers, all the discontent and doubt had given way to an implicit faith. All seemed well fed and content, save one—the man on whose shoulders had rested the gravest responsibility, the man in whose soul had been born the vision of this very scene.
“What is the matter with you, Merne?” grumbled his more buoyant companion. “Are you still carrying all the weight of the entire world?”
Lewis turned upon his friend with the same patient smile. Both were conscious that between them there was growing a thin, impermeable veil—something mysterious, the only barrier which ever had separated these two loyal souls.
Sacajawea, the Indian girl, was as keen-eyed as the red-headed chief. In the new boldness that she had learned in her position as general pet of the expedition, she would sometimes talk to the chief reproachfully.
“Capt’in,” she said one day, “what for you no laff? What for you no eat? What for you all time think, think, think? See,” she extended a hand—“I make you some more moccasin. I got picture your foot—these fit plenty good.”
“Thank you, Bird Woman,” said Lewis, rousing himself. “Without you we would not be here today. What can I give you in return for all that—in return for these?”
He took the pair of handsomely stitched moccasins, dangling them by the strings over one finger; but even as he did so, the old brooding melancholy fell upon him once more. He sat, forgetful of the girl’s presence, staring moodily at the fire. Sacajawea, grieving like a little child, stole silently away.
Why did Meriwether Lewis never laugh? Why did he always think, think, think? Why had there grown between him and his friend that thin, indefinable reserve?
He was hungry—hungry for another message out of the sky—another gift of manna in the wilderness. Who had brought those mysterious letters? Whoever he was, why did he not bring another? Were they all done—should he never hear from her again?
The winter was wearing away. The wild fowl were passing northward, landward. The game had changed its haunts. March was coming, the month between the seasons for the tribes, the time of want, the leanest period of the year.
Meriwether Lewis, alone one morning in the comfortable cabin which served as a house for himself and his friend, sat pondering on these things, as was his wont. His little Indian dog, always his steady companion, had taken its place on the top of the flatted stump which served as a desk, near the maps and papers which Lewis had pushed away. Here the small creature sat, motionless, mute, its eyes fixed adoringly upon its master.
The captain did not notice it. He did not at first hear the rap on the door, nor the footfall of the man who entered inquiringly.
“Yes, Sergeant Ordway?” said he presently, looking up.
Ordway saluted.
“Something for you, sir. It seems to be a letter.”
“A letter! How could that be?”
“That is the puzzle, sir,” said Ordway, extending a folded and sealed bit of paper. “We do not know how it came. Charbonneau’s wife, the Indian woman, found it in the baby’s hammock just now. She brought it to me, and I saw it was addressed to you. It must have been overlooked by you some time.”
“Possibly—possibly,” said Lewis. His face was growing pale. “That is all, I think, Sergeant,” he added.
Now alone, he turned toward the letter, which lay upon the table. His face lighted with a wondrous smile, though none might see it save the little dog which watched his every movement. For Meriwether Lewis had received once more the thing for which every fiber of his being clamored!
He knew, without one look, that the number scratched in the wax of the seal would be the figure “4.” He opened the letter slowly. There fell from it a square of stiff, white paper—all white, he thought, until he turned it over. Then he saw it looking up at him—her face indeed!
It was a little silhouette in black, done in that day before the camera, when small portraits were otherwise well-nigh impossible. The artist, skilled as were many in this curious form of portraiture, had done his work well. Lewis gazed with a sudden leap of his pulses upon the features outlined before him—the profile so cleanly cut and lofty—the hair low over the forehead, the chin round and firm, yet delicate and womanly withal. Here even the long lashes of her eyes were visible, just as in life. Yes, it was her face!
And now he read the letter, which covered many closely written sheets:
Meriwether Lewis, I said to you that my face should come to you, wherever you might be. This time it has been long—I cannot tell how long. That is for my messenger to determine, not for you or me. But that it has been long I shall know, else long since there would have been no need of my adding this letter to the others.
Not one of them has served to bring you back! Since you now have this one, let it advise you that she who wrote it is grieved that you gaze upon this little portrait, and not upon the face of her whom it represents. ’Tis a monstrous good likeness, they tell me; but would you not rather it were myself?
Where are you? I cannot tell. What adversities have been yours? I cannot tell that. You cannot know what grief you have caused by your long absence. You cannot know how many hearts you have made sad. You cannot know how you have delayed—destroyed—plans made for you. We are in ignorance, each of the other, now. I do not know where you are—you do not know where I may be. A great wall arises between us. A great gulf is fixed. We cannot touch hands across it.
As I know, this will not move you; but I cannot restrain this reproach. I cannot help telling you that you have made me suffer by your silence, by your absence. Do I make you suffer by looking at you with reproach in my eyes—as I do now?
You have forgotten your childhood friend! I may be dead as you read—would you care? I have been in need—yet you have not come to comfort me and to dry my tears.
Figure to yourself what has happened to all my plans and dreams for you. Even I cannot tell of that, because, as I write, it all lies in the future—that future which is the present for you as you sit reading this. All I know is that as you read it my appeal has failed.
I can but guess how or where these presents may find you; for how shall I know how wise or how faithful my messenger has been? Are you on the prairie still, Meriwether Lewis? Is it winter? Does the snow lie deep? Are the winds keen and biting? Are you well fed? Are you warm? Have you bodily comforts? Have you physical well-being?
How can I answer all these questions? Yet they come to my mind as I write.
Are you in the mountains? Were there, after all, those great Stony Mountains of which men told fables? Have you found the great unicorn or the mammoth or the mastadon which Mr. Jefferson said you were likely to meet? Have you found the dinosaur or the dragon or the great serpents of a foregone day? Suppose you have. What do they weigh with me—with you? Are they so much to you as you thought they would be? Is the taste of all your triumphs so sweet as you have dreamed, Meriwether Lewis?
Have you grown savage, my friend—have you come to be just a man like the others? Tell me—no, I will not ask you! If I thought you could descend to the lawless standard of the wilderness—but no, I cannot think of that! In any case, ’tis too late now. You have not come back to me.
You see, I am writing not so much to implore you to return as to reproach you for not returning. By the time this reaches you, it will be too late in our plans. We could not afford to wait months—three months, four, six—has it been so long as that since you left us? If so, it is too late now. If we have failed, why did we fail?
They told me—my father and his friends—and I told you plainly, that if your expedition went on, then our plan must fail. But now I must presume that you have succeeded, or by this time are beyond the feeling of either success or failure. If you have failed, it is too late for us to succeed. If you have succeeded, then certainly we have failed. As you read this, you may be doing so with hope. I, who wrote it, will be sitting in despair.
Meriwether Lewis, come back to me, even so! It will be too late for you to aid me. You will have ruined all our hopes. But yours still will be the task—the duty—to look me in the face and say whether you owe aught to me. Can I forgive you? Why, yes, I could never do aught else than forgive. No matter what you did, I fear I should forgive you. Because, after all, my own wish in all this——
Ah! let me write slowly here, and think very carefully!
My greatest wish in this, greater than any ambition I had for myself or my family—has been for you! See, I am writing those words—would I dare tell them to any other man in all the world? Nay, surely not. But that I trust you, the very writing itself is proof. And I write this to you, who never can be to me what man must be to woman if either is to be happy—the man to whom I can never be what woman must be if she is to mean all to any man. Apart forever! We are estranged by circumstance, sundered by that, if you please, weak as those words seem. And yet something takes your soul to mine. Does something take mine to you, across all the wilderness, across all the miles, across all the long and bitter months?
I say to you once more that in all this my demand upon you has not been for myself, nor wholly for my father. Let me be careful here.
This impassable gulf is fixed between us for all our lives. Neither of us may cross it. But I have been desirous to see you stand among men, where you belong. Do not ask me why I wished that—you must never ask me. I am Mrs. Alston, even as I write.
And as for you? Are you in rags as you read this? Are you cold and hungry? Are you alone, aloof, deserted, perhaps suffering, with none to comfort you? I cannot aid you. Nay, I shall punish you once more, and say that it was your desire—that you brought this on yourself—that you would have it thus, in spite of all my intervention for you.
Moreover, you shall say to yourself always:
“She asked and I refused her!”
Nay, nay! I shall not be so cruel. I shall not say that at all. Let me mark that out! Because, if I write that, you will think I wish to hurt you. And, my friend, let me admit the truth—the truth I ought not to lay upon you as any secret—I could never wish to hurt you.
They say that men far away in the wilderness sometimes long for the sight of the face of a woman. See, now you have that! I look up at you! What is your impulse? I am alone with you—I am in your hands—treat me, therefore, with honor, I pray you!
You must not raise my face to yours, must not bend yours to mine. See now, measure my trust in you, Meriwether Lewis! Estimate the great confidence I hold in you as a gentleman because—do you not see?—a gentleman does not kiss the woman whom he has at a disadvantage—the woman who can never be his, who is another’s. Is it not true?
Happiness is not for us. We are so far apart. I am sad. Good night, Meriwether Lewis! I, too, have your picture by me—the one you gave me years ago when I was in Virginia. And it—good night, Mr. Meriwether Lewis!
Place me apart—far from you in the room. Let my face not look at you direct. But in your heart—your hard heart of a man, intent on dreams, forgetful of all else—please, please let there linger some small memory of her who dares to write these lines—and who hopes that you never may see them!
The little Indian dog sat on the table, silent, motionless, looking at its master, whose head was bowed upon his arms. Now and then it had stooped as if it would have looked in his face, but dared not, if for very excess of love. It turned an inquiring eye to the door, which, after a time, opened.
William Clark, silent, stood once more at the side of his friend. He looked on the sad and haggard face which was turned toward him, and fell back. His eye caught sight of the folded paper crushed between Lewis’s fingers. He asked no questions, but he knew.
“Enough!” broke out Meriwether Lewis hoarsely. “No more of this—we must be gone! Are the men ready? Why do we delay? Why are we not away for the journey home?”
So impatient, so incoherent, did his speech seem that for a time Clark almost feared lest his friend’s reason might have been affected. But he only stood looking at Lewis, ready to be of such aid as might be.
“In two hours, Merne,” said he, “we will be on our way.”
It was now near the end of March. They dated and posted up their bulletins. They had done their task. They had found the great river, they had found the sea, they had mapped the way across the new continent. Their glorious work had gloriously been done.
Such was their joy at starting home again, the boatmen disregarded the down-coming current of the great waters—they sang at the paddles, jested. Only their leader was silent and unsmiling, and he drove them hard. Short commons they knew often enough before they reached the mouth of the Walla Walla, where they found friendly Indians who gave them horse meat—which seemed exceedingly good food.
The Nez Percés, whose country was reached next beyond the Walla Wallas, offered guides across the Bitter Roots, but now the snow lay deep, the horses could not travel. For weeks they lay in camp on the Kooskooskie, eating horse meat as the Indians then were doing, waiting, fretting.
It was the middle of June before they made the effort to pass the Bitter Roots. Sixty horses they had now, with abundance of jerked horse meat, and a half-dozen Nez Percés guides. By the third of July—just three years from the date of the Louisiana Purchase as it was made known at Mr. Jefferson’s simplicity dinner—they were across the Bitter Roots once more, in the pleasant valleys of the eastern slope.
“That way,” said Sacajawea, pointing, “big falls!”
She meant the short cut across the string of the bow, which would lead over the Continental Divide direct to the Great Falls of the Missouri. Both the leaders had pondered over this short cut, which the Nez Percés knew well.
“We must part, Will,” said Meriwether Lewis. “It is our duty to learn all we can of this wonderful country. I will take the Indian trail straight across. Do you go on down the way we came. Pick up our caches above the three forks of the Missouri, and then cross over the mountains to the Yellowstone. Make boats there, and come on down to the mouth of that river. You should precede me there, perhaps, by some days. Wait then until I come.”
With little more ado these self-reliant men parted in the middle of the vast mountain wilderness. They planned a later junction of their two parties at the mouth of a river which then was less known than the Columbia had been, through a pass which none of them had ever seen.
Lewis had with him nine men, among them Sergeant Gass, the two Fields boys, Drouillard and Cruzatte, the voyageurs. Sacajawea, in spite of her protest, remained with the Clark party, where her wonderful knowledge of the country again proved invaluable. This band advanced directly to the southward by easy and pleasant daily stages.
“That way short path over mountains,” said Sacajawea at length, at one point of their journey.
She pointed out the Big Hole Trail and what was later known as Clark’s Pass over the Continental Divide. They came to a new country, a beautiful valley where the grass was good; but Sacajawea still pointed onward.
“That way,” said she, “find boat, find cache!”
She showed them another gap in the hills, as yet unknown; and so led them out by a short cut directly to the caches on the Jefferson!
But they could not tarry long. Boots and saddles again, pole and paddle also, for now some of the men must take to the boats while others brought on the horses. At the Three Forks rendezvous they made yet other changes, for here the boats must be left. Captain Clark must cross the mountain range to the eastward to find the Yellowstone, of which the Indian girl had told him. Yonder, she said, not quite a full day’s march through a notch in the lofty mountains, they would come to the river, which ran off to the east.
Not one of them had ever heard of that gap in the hills; there was no one to guide them through it except the Indian girl, whose memory had hitherto been so positive and so trustworthy. They trusted her implicitly.
“That way!” she said.
Always she pointed on ahead confidently; and always she was right. She was laying out the course of a railroad which one day should come up the Yellowstone and cross here to the Missouri.
They found it to be no more than eighteen or twenty miles, Sacajawea’s extraordinary short cut between the Missouri and the Yellowstone. They struck the latter river below the mouth of its great cañon, found good timber, and soon were busy felling great cottonwoods to make dugout canoes. Two of these, some thirty feet in length, when lashed side by side, served to carry all their goods and some of their party. The rest—Pryor, Shannon, Hall and one or two others—were to come on down with the horses.
The mounted men did well enough until one night the Crows stole all their horses, and left them on foot in the middle of the wilderness. Not daunted, they built themselves boats of bull hide, as they had seen Indians do, and soon they followed on down the river, they could not tell how far, to the rear of the main boat party. With the marvelous good fortune which attended the entire expedition, they had no accident; and in time they met the other explorers at the mouth of the Yellowstone, after traveling nine hundred miles on a separate voyage of original discovery!
It was on the eighth of August that the last of Clark’s boats arrived at the Yellowstone rendezvous. His men felt now as if they were almost at home. The Mandan villages were not far below. As soon as Captain Lewis should come, they would be on their way, rejoicing. Patient, hardy, uncomplaining, they did not know that they were heroes.
What of Lewis, then gone so long? He and his men were engaged in the yet more dangerous undertaking of exploring the country of the dreaded Blackfeet, known to bear arms obtained from the northern traders. They reached the portage of the Great Falls without difficulty, and eagerly examined the caches which they had left there. Now they were to divide their party.
“Sergeant Gass,” said Captain Lewis, “I am going to leave you here. You will get the baggage and the boats below the falls, and take passage on down the river. Six of you can attend to that. I shall take Drouillard and the Fields boys with me, and strike off toward the north and east, where I fancy I shall find the upper portion of Maria’s River. When you come to the mouth of that river—which you will remember some of you held to be the real Missouri—you will go into camp and wait for us. You will remain there until the first day of September. If by that time we have not returned, you will pass on down the Missouri to Captain Clark’s camp, at the mouth of the Yellowstone, and go home with him. By that time it will have become evident that we shall not return. I plan to meet you at the mouth of Maria’s River somewhere about the beginning of August.”
They parted, and it was almost by a miracle that they ever met again; for now the perils of the wilderness asserted themselves even against the marvelous good fortune which had thus far attended them.
Hitherto, practically all the tribes met had been friendly, but now they were in the country of the dreaded Blackfeet, who by instinct and training were hostile to all whites coming in from the south and east. A party of these warriors was met on the second day of their northbound journey from the Missouri River. Lewis gave the Indians such presents as he could, and, as was his custom, told them of his purpose in traveling through the country. He showed no fear of them, although he saw his own men outnumbered ten to one. The two parties, the little band of white men and the far more numerous band of Blackfeet, lay down to sleep that night in company.
But the Blackfeet were unable to resist the temptation to attain sudden wealth by seizing the horses and guns of these strangers. Toward dawn Lewis himself, confident in the integrity of his guests, and dozing for a time, felt the corner of his robe pulled, felt something spring on his face, heard a noise. His little dog was barking loudly, excitedly.
He was more fully awakened by the sound of a shout, and then by a shot. Springing from his robes, he saw Drouillard and both of the Fields boys on their feet, struggling with the savages, who were trying to wrench their rifles from them.
“Curse you, turn loose of me!” cried Reuben Fields.
He fought for a time longer with his brawny antagonist, till he saw others coming. Then his hand went to the long knife at his belt, and the next instant the Blackfoot lay dead at his feet.
Drouillard wrenched his rifle free and stood off his man for a moment, shouting all the time to his leader that the Indians were trying to get the horses. Lewis saw the thieves tugging at the picket-ropes, and hastened into the fray, cursing himself for his own credulity. A giant Blackfoot engaged him, bull-hide shield advanced, battle-ax whirling; but wresting himself free, Lewis fired point-blank into his body, and another Indian fell dead.
The Blackfeet found they had met their match. They dropped the picket-ropes and ran as fast as they could, jumped into the river, swam across, and so escaped, leaving the little party of whites unhurt, but much disturbed.
“Mount, men! Hurry!” Lewis ordered.
As quickly as they could master the frightened horses, his men obeyed. With all thought of further exploration ended, they set out at top speed, and rode all that day and night as fast as the horses could travel. They had made probably one hundred and twenty miles when at length they came to the mouth of the Maria’s River, escaped from the most perilous adventure any of them had had.
Here again, by that strange good fortune which seemed to guide them, they arrived just in time to see the canoes of Gass and his men coming down the Missouri. These latter had made the grand portage at the falls, had taken up all the caches, and had brought the contents with them. The stars still fought for the Volunteers for the Discovery of the West.
There was no time to wait. The Blackfeet would be coming soon. Lewis abandoned his horses here. The entire party took to the boats, and hurried down the river as fast as they could, paddling in relays, day and night. Gaunt, eager, restless, moody, silent, their leader neither urged his men nor chided them, nor did he refer to the encounter with the Blackfeet. He did not need to, with Drouillard to describe it to them all a dozen times.
At times it was necessary for the boats to stop for meat, usually a short errand in a country alive with game; and, as was his custom, Lewis stepped ashore one evening to try for a shot at some near by game—elk, buffalo, antelope, whatever offered. He had with him Cruzatte, the one-eyed Frenchman. It was now that fortune frowned ominously almost for the first time.
The two had not been gone more than a few minutes when the men remaining at the boat heard a shot—then a cry, and more shouting. Cruzatte came running back to them through the bushes, calling out at the top of his voice:
“The captain! I’ve keeled him—I’ve keeled the captain—I’ve shot him!”
“What is that you’re saying?” demanded Patrick Gass. “If you’ve done that, you would be better dead yourself!”
He reached out, caught Cruzatte’s rifle, and flung it away from him.
“Where is he?” he demanded.
Cruzatte led the way back.
“I see something move on the bushes,” said he, “and I shoot. It was not elk—it was the captain. Mon Dieu, what shall we do?”
They found Captain Lewis sitting up, propped against a clump of willows, his legging stripped to the thigh. He was critically examining the path of the bullet, which had passed through the limb. At seeing him still alive, his men gave a shout of joy, and Cruzatte received a parting kick from his sergeant.
There were actual tears in the eyes of some of the men as they gathered around their commander—tears which touched Meriwether Lewis deeply.
“It is all right, men!” said he. “Do not be alarmed. Do not reprove the man too much. The sight of a little blood should not trouble you. We are all soldiers. This is only an accident of the trail, and in a short time it will be mended. See, the bone is not broken!”
They aided him back to the boats and made a bed upon which he might lie, his head propped up so that he could see what lay ahead. Other men completed the evening hunt, and the boats hurried on down the river. The next day found them fifty miles below the scene of the accident.
“Sergeant,” said Meriwether Lewis, “the natural fever of my wound is coming on. Give me my little war-sack yonder—I must see if I can find some medicine.”
Gass handed him his bag of leather, and Lewis sought in it for a moment. His hand encountered something that crinkled in the touch—crinkled familiarly! For one instant he stopped, his lips compressed as if in bodily pain.
It was another of the mysterious letters!
Before he opened it, he looked at it, frowning, wondering. Whence came these messages, and how, by whose hand? All of them must have been written before he left St. Louis in May of 1804. Now it was August of 1806. There was no human agency outside his own party that could have carried them. How had they reached him? What messenger had brought them? He forgot the fever of his wound in another and greater fever which arose in his blood.
He was with his men now, their eyes were on him all the time. What should he do—cast this letter from him into the river? If he did so, he felt that it would follow him mysteriously, pointing to the corpus delicti of his crime, still insistent on coming to the eye!
His men, therefore, saw their leader casually open a bit of paper. They had seen him do such things a thousand times, since journals and maps were a part of the daily business of so many of them. What he did attracted no attention.
Captain Lewis would have felt relieved had it attracted more. Before he read any of the words that lay before him, in this same delicate handwriting that he knew so well, he cast a slow and searching gaze upon the face of every man that was turned toward him. In fact, he held the letter up to view rather ostentatiously, hoping that it would evoke some sign; but he saw none.
He had not been in touch with the main party for more than a month. He had with him nine men. Which of these had secretly carried the letter? Was it Gass, Cruzatte, Drouillard, Reuben Fields, or McNeal?
He studied their faces alternately. Not an eyelash flickered. The men who looked at him were anxious only for his comfort. There was no trace of guilty knowledge on any of these honest countenances before him, and he who sought such admitted his own failure. Meriwether Lewis lay back on his couch in the boat, as far as ever from his solution of the mystery.
After all, mere curiosity as to the nature of that mystery was a small matter. It seemed of more worth to feel, as he did, that the woman who had planned this system of surprises for him was one of no ordinary mind. And it was no ordinary woman who had written the words that he now read: