On the fourth day out three Frenchmen were met approaching the Mandan nation with the message,—
"Seven hundert Sioux haf pass de Rickara to mak' war on de Mandan an' Minnetaree." Fortunately, Shahaka did not understand, and no one told him.
The Arikara village greeted the passing boats. Lewis, still lame, requested Clark to go up to the village. Like children confessing their misdeeds the Arikaras began:
"We cannot keep the peace! Our young men follow the Sioux!"
The wild Cheyennes, with their dogs and horses and handsome leathern lodges, were here on a trading visit, to exchange with the Arikaras meat and robes for corn and beans. They were a noble race, of straight limbs and Roman noses, unaccustomed to the whites, shy and cautious.
"We war against none but the Sioux, with whom we have battled for ever," they said.
Everywhere there was weeping and mourning. "My son, my son, he has been slain by the Sioux!"
Between the lands of the warring nations surged seas of buffalo, where to-day are the waving bonanza wheat fields of North Dakota.
From an eminence Clark looked over the prairies. "More buffalo than ever I have seen before at one time,"—and he had seen many. "If it be not impossible to calculate the moving multitude that darkens the plains, twenty thousand would be no exaggerated estimate."
They were now well into the country of the great Sioux Indian Confederacy. Arms and ammunition were inspected.
The sharp air thrilled and filled them with new vigour. No wonder the Sioux were never still. The ozone of the Arctic was in their veins, the sweeping winds drove them, the balsamic prairie was their bed, the sky their canopy. They never shut themselves up in stuffy mud huts, as did the Mandans; they lived in tents. Unrestrained, unregenerate, there was in them the fire of the Six Nations, of King Philip and of Pontiac. Tall, handsome, finely formed, agile, revengeful, intelligent, capable,—they loved their country and they hated strangers. So did the Greeks. An effeminate nation would have fallen before them as did the Roman before the Goth, but in the Anglo-Saxon they met their master.
"Whoop-ah-ho-o-oh!"
As anticipated, Black Buffalo and his pirate band were on the hills. Whether that fierce cry meant defiance or greeting no man could tell.
"Whoop-ah-ho-o-oh!"
The whole band rushed down to the shore, and even out into the water, shouting invitations to land, and waving from the sand-banks.
But too fresh in memory was the attempt to carry off Captain Clark. Jubilant, hopeful, and full of the fire of battle as the white men were, yet no one wished to test the prowess of the Sioux.
Unwilling to venture an interview, the boats continued on their way. Black Buffalo shook his war bonnet defiantly, and returning to the hill smote the earth three times with the butt of his rifle, the registration of a mighty oath against the whites.
Leaving behind them a wild brandishing of bows, arrows, and tomahawks, and an atmosphere filled with taunts, insults, and imprecations, the boats passed out of sight.
Wafted on the wind followed that direful "Whoop-ah-ho-o-oh!" ending with the piercing shrill Indian yell that for sixty years froze the earliest life blood of Minnesota and Dakota.
Here in the land of the Teton Sioux was to be planted the future Fort Rice, where exactly sixty years after Lewis and Clark, there crossed the Missouri one of the most powerful, costly, and best equipped expeditions ever sent out against hostile Indians,—four thousand cavalry, eight hundred mounted infantry, twelve pieces of artillery, three hundred government teams, three hundred beef steers, and fifteen steamboats to carry supplies,—to be joined here on the Fourth of July, 1864, by an emigrant train of one hundred and sixty teams and two hundred and fifty people,—the van guard of Montana settlement. The Sioux were defeated in the Bad Lands, and the emigrants were carried safely through to Helena, where they and their descendants live to-day.
Already sweeping up the Missouri, Lewis and Clark met advancing empire. Near Vermilion River, James Aird was camping with a license to trade among the Sioux.
"What is the news from St. Louis?"
There on the borders of a future great State, Lewis and Clark first heard that Burr and Hamilton had fought a duel and Hamilton was killed; that three hundred American troops were cantoned at Bellefontaine, a new log fort on the Missouri; that Spain had taken a United States frigate on the Mediterranean; that two British ships of war had fired on an American ship in the port of New York, killing the Captain's brother.
Great was the indignation in the United States against Jefferson and the impressment of American seamen.
"The money spent for Louisiana would have been much better used in building fighting ships."
"The President had much better be protecting our rights than cutting up animals and stuffing the skins of dead raccoons."
"Where is our national honour? Gone, abandoned on the Mississippi."
And these coureurs on the Mississippi heard that the conflict foreseen by Napoleon, when he gave us Louisiana, was raging now in all its fury, interdicting the commerce of the world.
To their excited ears the river rushed and rocked, the earth rumbled, with the roar of cannon. To themselves Lewis and Clark seemed a very small part of the forces that make and unmake nations,—and yet that expedition meant more to the world than the field of Waterloo!
The next noon, on ascending the hill of Floyd's Bluff they found the Indians had opened the grave of their comrade. Reverently it was filled again.
Home from the buffalo hunt in the plains of the Nebraska, the Omahas were firing guns to signal their return to gather in their harvest of corn, beans, and pumpkins. Keel boats, barges, and bateaux came glistening into view,—Auguste Chouteau with merchandise to trade with the Yanktons, another Chouteau to the Platte, a trader with two men to the Pawnee Loupes, and Joseph La Croix with seven men bound for the Omahas.
Through the lessening distance Clark recognised on one of the barges his old comrade, Robert McClellan, the wonderful scout of Wayne's army, who had ridden on many an errand of death. Since Wayne's victory McClellan had been a ranger still, but now the Indians were quieting down,—all except Tecumseh.
"The country has long since given you up," he told the Captain. "We have word from Jefferson to seek for news of Lewis and Clark. The general opinion in the United States is that you are lost in the unfathomable depths of the continent. But President Jefferson has hopes. The last heard of you was at the Mandan villages."
With a laugh they listened to their own obituaries. On the same barge with McClellan was Gravelines with orders from Jefferson to instruct the Arikaras in agriculture, and Dorion to help make way through the Sioux.
"Brave Raven, the Arikara chief, died in Washington," said Gravelines. "I am on my way to them with a speech from the President and the presents which have been made to the chief."
How home now tugged at their heart strings! Eager to be on the way, they bade farewell to McClellan.
Down, down they shot along, wind, current, and paddle in their favour, past shores where the freebooting Kansas Indians robbed the traders, past increasing forests of walnut, elm, oak, hickory.
The men were now reduced to a biscuit apiece. Wild turkeys gobbled on shore, but the party paused not a moment to hunt.
On the twentieth a mighty shout went up. They heard the clank of cow bells, and saw tame cattle feeding on the hills of Charette, the home of Daniel Boone. With cheers and firing of guns they landed at the village.
"We are indeet astonished," exclaimed the joyful habitants, grasping their hands. "You haf been given up for det long tam since." The men were scattered among the families for the night, honoured guests of Charette.
"Plaintee tam we wish ourself back on ole San Loui'," said Cruzatte to his admiring countrymen.
To their surprise Lewis and Clark found new settlements all the way down from Charette. September 21, firing a tremendous salute from the old stone tower behind the huts, all St. Charles paid tribute to the Homeric heroes who had wandered farther than Ulysses and slain more monsters than Hercules.
Just above the junction of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers loomed the fresh mud chimneys of the new log Fort Bellefontaine, Colonel Thomas Hunt in command, and Dr. Saugrain, surgeon, appointed by Jefferson.
The Colonel's pretty little daughter, Abby Hunt, looked up in admiration at Lewis and Clark, and followed all day these "Indian white men" from the north. Forty years after she told the story of that arrival. "They wore dresses of deerskin, fringed and worked with porcupine quills, something between a military undress frock coat and an Indian shirt, with leggings and moccasins, three-cornered cocked hats and long beards."
Standing between the centuries in that log fort on the Missouri, pretty little Abby Hunt herself was destined to become historic, as the wife of Colonel Snelling and the mother of the first white child born in Minnesota.
After an early breakfast with Colonel Hunt, the expedition set out for the last stretch homeward. They rounded out of the Missouri into the Mississippi, and pulled up to St. Louis at noon, Tuesday, September 23, 1806, after an absence of nearly two years and a half.
It was noon when Lewis and Clark sighted the old stone forts of the Spanish time. Never had that frontier site appeared so noble, rising on a vast terrace from the rock-bound river.
As the white walls burst on their view, with simultaneous movement every man levelled his rifle. The Captains smiled and gave the signal,—the roar of thirty rifles awoke the echoes from the rocks.
Running down the stony path to the river came the whole of St. Louis,—eager, meagre, little Frenchmen, tanned and sallow and quick of gait, smaller than the Americans, but graceful and gay, with a heartfelt welcome; black-eyed French women in camasaks and kerchiefs, dropping their trowels in their neat little gardens where they had been delving among the hollyhocks; gay little French children in red petticoats; and here and there a Kentuckian, lank and lean, eager,—all tripping and skipping down to the water's edge.
Elbowing his way among them came Monsieur Auguste Chouteau, the most noted man in St. Louis. Pierre, his brother, courtly, well-dressed, eminently social, came also; and even Madame, their mother, did not disdain to come down to welcome her friends, Les Américains.
It was like the return of a fur brigade, with shouts of laughter and genuine rejoicing.
"Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu! eet ees Leewes an' Clark whom ve haf mournt as det in dose Rock Mountain. What good word mought dey bring from te fur countree."
With characteristic abandon the emotional little Frenchmen flung their arms around the stately forms of Lewis and Clark, and more than one pretty girl that day printed a kiss on their bearded lips.
"Major Christy,—well, I declare!" An old Wayne's army comrade grasped Captain Clark by the hand. What memories that grasp aroused! William Christy, one of his brother officers, ready not more than a dozen years ago to aid in capturing this same San Luis de Ilinoa!
"I have moved to this town. I have a tavern. Send your baggage right up!" And forthwith a creaking charette came lumbering down the rocky way.
"Take a room at my house." Pierre Chouteau grasped the hands of both Captains at once. And to Chouteau's they went.
"But first we must send word of our safe arrival to the President," said Lewis, feeling unconsciously for certain papers that had slept next his heart for many a day.
"Te post haf departed from San Loui'," remarked a bystander.
"Departed? It must be delayed. Here, Drouillard, hurry with this note to Mr. Hay at Cahokia and bid him hold the mail until to-morrow noon."
Drouillard, with his old friend Pascal Cerré, the son of Gabriel, set off at once across the Mississippi. The wharf was lined with flatboats loaded with salt for 'Kasky and furs for New Orleans.
Once a month a one-horse mail arrived at Cahokia. Formerly St. Louis went over there for mail,—St. Louis was only a village near Cahokia then; but already Les Américains were turning things upside down.
"We haf a post office now. San Loui' haf grown."
Every one said that. To eyes that had seen nothing more stately than Fort Mandan or Clatsop, St. Louis had taken on metropolitan airs. In the old fort where lately lounged the Spanish governor, peering anxiously across the dividing waters, and whence had lately marched the Spanish garrison, American courts of justice were in session. Out of the old Spanish martello tower on the hill, a few Indian prisoners looked down on the animated street below.
With the post office and the court house had come the American school, and already vivacious French children were claiming as their own, Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, and George Washington.
Just opposite the Chouteau mansion was the old Spanish Government House, the house where George Rogers Clark had met and loved the dazzling Donna.
Aaron Burr had lately been there, feted by the people, plotting treason with Wilkinson in the Government House itself; and now his disorganised followers, young men of birth and education from Atlantic cities, stranded in St. Louis, were to become the pioneer schoolmasters of Upper Louisiana.
New houses were rising on every hand. In the good old French days, goods at fabulous prices were kept in boxes. Did Madame or Mademoiselle wish anything, it must be unpacked as from a trunk. Once a year goods arrived. Sugar, gunpowder, blankets, spices, knives, hatchets, and kitchen-ware, pell-mell, all together, were coming out now onto shelves erected by the thrifty Americans. Already new stores stood side by side with the old French mansions.
"Alas! te good old quiet times are gone," sighed the French habitants, wiping a tear with the blue bandana.
And while they looked askance at the tall Americans, elephantine horses, and Conestoga waggons, that kept crossing the river, the prices of the little two-acre farms of the Frenchmen went up, until in a few years the old French settlers were the nabobs of the land.
Already two ferry lines were transporting a never-ending line through this new gateway to the wider West. Land-mad settlers were flocking into "Jefferson's Purchase," grubbing out hazel roots, splitting rails, making fences, building barns and bridges. Men whose sole wealth consisted in an auger, a handsaw, and a gun, were pushing into the prairies and the forests. Long-bearded, dressed in buckskin, with a knife at his belt and a rifle at his back, the forest-ranging backwoodsman was over-running Louisiana.
"Why do you live so isolated?" the stranger would ask.
"I never wish to hear the bark of a neighbour's dog. When you hear the sound of a neighbour's gun it is time to move away."
Thus, solitary and apart, the American frontiersman took up Missouri.
Strolling along the Rue Royale, followed by admiring crowds, Lewis and Clark found themselves already at the Pierre Chouteau mansion, rising like an old-world chateau amid the lesser St. Louis. Up the stone steps, within the demi-fortress, there were glimpses of fur warehouses, stables, slaves' quarters, occupying a block,—practically a fort within the city.
Other guests were there before them,—Charles Gratiot, who had visited the Clarks in Virginia, and John P. Cabanné, who was to wed Gratiot's daughter, Julia. On one of those flatboats crowding the wharf that morning came happy Pierre Menard, the most illustrious citizen of Kaskaskia, with his bride of a day, Angelique Saucier. Pierre Menard's nephew, Michel Menard, was shortly to leave for Texas, to become an Indian trader and founder of the city of Galveston.
At the board, too, sat Pierre Chouteau, the younger, just returned from a trip up the Mississippi with Julien Dubuque, where he had helped to start Dubuque and open the lead mines.
Out of the wild summer grape the old inhabitants of St. Louis had long fabricated their choicest Burgundy. But of late the Chouteaus had begun to import their wine from France, along with ebony chairs, claw-footed tables, and other luxuries, the first in this Mississippi wild. For never had the fur-trade been so prosperous.
There was laughter and clinking of glasses, and questions of lands beyond the Yellowstone. Out of that hour arose schemes for a trapper's conquest along the trail on which ten future States were strung.
"The mouth of the Yellowstone commands the rich fur-trade of the Rocky mountains," said Captain Clark. Captain Lewis dwelt on the Three Forks as a strategic point for a fort. No one there listened with more breathless intent than the dark-haired boy, the young Chouteau, who was destined to become the greatest financier of the West, a king of the fur trade, first rival and then partner of John Jacob Astor.
No wonder the home-coming of Lewis and Clark was the signal for enterprises such as this country had never yet seen. They had penetrated a realm whose monarch was the grizzly bear, whose queen was the beaver, whose armies were Indian tribes and the buffalo.
Gallic love of gaiety and amusement found in this return ample opportunity for the indulgence of hospitable dancing and feasting. Every door was open. Every house, from Chouteau's down, had its guest out of the gallant thirty-one.
Hero-worship was at its height. Hero-worship is characteristic of youthful, progressive peoples. Whole nations strive to emulate ideals. The moment that ceases, ossification begins.
Here the ideals were Lewis and Clark. They had been west; their men had been west. They, who had traced the Missouri to its cradle in the mountains, who had smoked the calumet with remotest tribes, who had carried the flag to the distant Pacific, became the lions of St. Louis.
Such spontaneous welcome made a delightful impression upon the hearts of the young Captains, and they felt a strong inclination to make the city their permanent home.
The galleries of the little inns of St. Louis were filled with Frenchmen, smoking and telling stories all day long. Nothing hurried, nothing worried them; the rise of the river, the return of a brigade, alone broke the long summer day of content.
But here was something new.
Even York, addicted to romance, told Munchausen tales of thrilling incidents that never failed of an appreciative audience. Trappers, flat-boatmen, frontiersmen, and Frenchmen loved to spin long yarns at the Green Tree Inn, but York could outdo them all. He had been to the ocean, had seen the great whale and sturgeon that put all inland fish stories far into the shade.
Petrie, Auguste Chouteau's old negro, who came with him as a boy and grew old and thought he owned Auguste Chouteau,—Petrie, who always said, "Me and the Colonel," met in York for the first time one greater than himself.
Immediately upon their return Lewis and Clark had repaired to the barber and tailor, and soon bore little resemblance to the tawny frontiersmen in fringed hunting-shirts and beards that had so lately issued from the wilderness.
In the upper story of the Chouteau mansion, the Captains regarded with awe the high four-poster with its cushiony, billowy feather-bed.
"This is too luxurious! York, bring my robe and bear-skin."
Lewis and Clark could not sleep in beds that night. They heard the watch call and saw the glimmer of campfires in their dreams. The grandeur of the mountains was upon them, cold and white and crowned with stars, the vastness of the prairie and the dashing of ocean, the roar of waterfalls, the hum of insects, and the bellowing of buffalo.
They knew now the Missouri like the face of a friend; they had stemmed its muddy mouth, had evaded its shifting sandbanks, had watched its impetuous falls that should one day whirl a thousand wheels. Up windings green as paradise they had drunk of its crystal sources in the mountains.
They had seen it when the mountains cast their shadows around the campfires, and in the blaze of noon when the quick tempest beat it into ink. They had seen it white in Mandan winter, the icy trail of brave and buffalo; and they had seen it crimson, when far-off peaks were tipped with amethystine gold.
In the vast and populous solitude of nature they had followed the same Missouri spreading away into the beaver-meadows of the Madison, the Jefferson, and the Gallatin, and had written their journals on hillsides where the windflower and the larkspur grew wild on Montana hills.
An instinct, a relic, an inheritance of long ago was upon them, when their ancestors roved the earth untrammelled by cities and civilisation, when the rock was man's pillow and the cave his home, when the arrow in his strong hand brought the fruits of the chase, when garments of skin clad his limbs, and God spoke to the white savage under the old Phœnician stars.
In their dreams they felt the rain and wind beat on their leather tent. Sacajawea's baby cried, Spring nodded with the rosy clarkia, screamed with Clark's crow, and tapped with Lewis's woodpecker.
"Rat-tat-tat!" Was that the woodpecker? No, some one was knocking at the door of their bed chamber. And no one else than Pierre Chouteau himself.
"Drouillard is back from Cahokia ready to carry your post. The rider waits."
This was the world again. It was morning. Throwing off robes and bear-skins, and rising from the hardwood floor where they had voluntarily camped that night, both Captains looked at the tables strewn with letters, where until past midnight they had sat the night before.
There lay Clark's letter to his brother, George Rogers, and there, also, was the first rough draft of Lewis's letter to the President, in a hand as fine and even as copperplate, but interlined, and blotted with erasures.
In the soft, warm St. Louis morning, with Mississippi breezes rustling the curtain, after a hurried breakfast both set to work to complete the letters.
For a time nothing was heard but the scratching of quill pens, as each made clean copies of their letters for transmission to the far-off centuries. But no centuries troubled then; to-day,—to-day, was uppermost.
York stuck in his head, hat in hand. "Massah Clahk, Drewyer say he hab jus' time, sah."
"Well, sir, tell Drouillard the whole United States mail service can wait on us to-day. We are writing to the President."
Before ten o'clock Drouillard was off to Cahokia with messages that gave to the nation at large its first intimation that the Pacific expedition was a consummated fact.
There were hurried days at St. Louis, a village that knew not haste before. The skins were sunned and stored in the rooms of Cadet Chouteau. Boxes of specimens were packed for the Government. Captain Lewis opened his trunk and found his papers all wet. The hermetically sealed tin cases that held the precious journals alone had saved these from destruction.
The Captains had their hands full. The restless men must be paid and discharged. Nine of the adventurers within a week after the return to St. Louis sold their prospective land claims for a pittance. Seven of these claims were bought by their fellow soldiers; Sergeant John Ordway took several of the men and settled on the site of the present city of New Madrid.
Robert Frazer received two hundred and fifty dollars for his claim, and prepared to publish his travels,—a volume that never saw the light. In addition to land grants, the men received double pay amounting altogether to eleven thousand dollars.
A grand dinner, given by St. Louis, a ball and farewell, and the Captains were on the way with their Mandan chief, Big White, and his Indians, and Gass, Shannon, Ordway, Pryor, and Bratton.
"The route by which I propose travelling to Washington is by way of Cahokia, Vincennes, Louisville, the Crab Orchard, Fincastle, Staunton, and Charlottesville," Captain Lewis had written in that letter to Jefferson. "Any letters directed to me at Louisville will most probably meet me at that place."
With well-filled saddle-bags, the returning heroes crossed to Cahokia and set out across Illinois in the Indian summer of 1806.
Governor Harrison was at Vincennes, and Vigo, and a hundred others to welcome.
"Hurrah for old Kentucky!" cried Clark, as he caught sight of its limestone shores. On many a smiling hilltop, the log cabin had expanded into a baronial country seat, with waxed floors and pianos. Already the stables were full of horses, the halls were full of music.
Clark, Lewis, and Big White climbed the cliff to the Point of Rock. Who but chiefs should visit there?
With newspapers around him, sat George Rogers Clark, following the career of Napoleon. That calm and splendid eye kindled at sight of his brother. His locks had grown longer, his eye a deeper black under the shaggy brows, but the Revolutionary hero shone in every lineament as he took the hands of the two explorers.
With the dashing waters at their feet, upon the lonely Point of Rock, above the Falls of the Ohio, William Clark stopped first to greet his brother from the great expedition. Painters may find a theme here, and future romancers a page in drama.
Without delay, taking his rusty three-cornered chapeau from its peg, and donning his faded uniform, the conqueror of Illinois accompanied the explorers to Locust Grove, ablaze that night with welcome.
Lucy, Fanny, Edmund were there; and Jonathan from Mulberry Hill; Major Croghan, the courtly host of old; and the lad, George Croghan, now in his fifteenth year. All too quickly fled the hours; the hickory flamed and the brass andirons shone not brighter than the happy faces.
Spread around for exhibition were Mandan robes, fleeces of the mountain goat, Clatsop hats, buffalo horns, and Indian baskets, Captain Clark's "tiger-cat coat," Indian curios, and skins of grizzly bears,—each article suggestive of adventure surpassing Marco Polo or the Arabian nights. Another huge box, filled with bones for the President, had been left with George Rogers Clark at the Point of Rock.
Louisville received the explorers with bonfires and cannonry. A grand ball was given in their honour, in which the Indians, especially, shone in medals and plumage.
The next day there was a sad visit to Mill Creek, where lamenting parents received the last token and listened to the final word concerning their beloved son, Sergeant Charles Floyd.
A cold wind and a light fall of snow warned them no time must be lost in crossing the Kentucky mountains; but encumbered with the Indian retinue they made slow progress along that atrocious road, on which the followers of Boone had "sometimes paused to pray and sometimes stopped to swear."
A few days beyond Cumberland Gap, Clark's heart beat a tattoo; they had come to Fincastle! Among its overhanging vines and trees, the Hancock mansion was in holiday attire,—Harriet Kennerly had just been married to Dr. Radford of Fincastle.
Colonel Hancock had been proud to entertain George Rogers Clark, still more was he now delighted with the visit of the famous explorers.
"La!" exclaimed Black Granny at the announcement of Captain Clark. "Miss Judy?" Black Granny had nursed Miss Judy from the cradle.
Sedately Miss Judy came down the long staircase,—not the child that Clark remembered, but a woman, petite, serious. The chestnut brown curls with a glint of gold were caught with a high back comb, and a sweeping gown had replaced the short petticoats that lately tripped over the foothills of the Blue Ridge.
"My pretty cousin going to marry that ugly man?" exclaimed Harriet, when she heard of the early engagement.
There was nothing effeminate about Clark, nor artificial. His features were rugged almost to plainness; his head was high from the ear to the top, a large brain chamber.
"Absolutely beautiful," said Judy to herself, associating those bronzed features with endless winds that blew on far-off mountains.
Behind the respectable old Hancock silver, Judy's mother turned the tea and talked. Turning up his laced sleeves to carve the mutton, Colonel Hancock asked a thousand questions regarding that wonderful journey.
"We passed the winter on the Pacific, then crossed the mountains, and my division came down the Yellowstone," Clark was saying. "By the way, Judy, I have named a river for you,—the Judith."
A peal of laughter rang through the dining-room.
"Judith! Judith, did you say? Why, Captain Clark, my name is Julia."
Clark was confounded. He almost feared Judy was making fun of him.
"Is it, really, now? I always supposed Judy stood for Judith."
Again rang out the infectious peal, in which Clark himself joined; but to this day rolls the river Judith in Montana, named for Clark's mountain maid of Fincastle.
"That I should live to see you back from the Pacific!" was Aunt Molly's greeting at "The Farm," at Charlottesville. "I reckoned the cannibal savages would eat you. We looked for nothing less than the fate of Captain Cook."
But Maria, whose eyes had haunted Lewis in many a long Montana day, seemed strangely shy and silent. In fact, she had another lover, perhaps a dearer one.
Uncle Nicholas was sick. He was growing old, but still directed the negroes of a plantation that extended from Charlottesville to the Fluvanna.
It was sunset when Captain Lewis reached the home at Locust Hill, and was folded to his mother's bosom. With daily prayer had Lucy Meriwether followed her boy across the Rocky Mountains.
Meriwether's little pet sister, Mary Marks, had blossomed into a bewitching rose.
"Here is a letter from the President."
Captain Lewis read his first message from Jefferson in more than two years and a half.
Turning to Big White, the chief, who at every step had gazed with amazement at the white man's country,—
"The President says 'Tell my friend of Mandan that I have already opened my arms to receive him."
"Ugh! Ugh!" commented Big White, with visions of barbaric splendour in his untutored brain.
That afternoon the entire party rode over to Monticello to show the chief the President's Indian hall, where all their gifts and tokens had been arranged for display. The next day, by Richmond, Fredericksburg, and Alexandria, the party set out for the national capital. Every step of the way was a triumphal progress.
It was well into January before both Captains reached Washington. Workmen were still building at the Capitol, rearing a home for Congress. Tools of carpentry and masonry covered the windy lawn where Jefferson rode daily, superintending as on his own Virginia plantation.
Never had Captain Lewis seen his old friend, the President, so moved as when black Ben, the valet, with stentorian call announced, "Captains Mehwether Lewis and William Clahk!"
In silk stockings and pumps they stood in the Blue Room. At sight of that well-known figure in blue coat faced with yellow, red plush waistcoat, and green velveteen breeches, Meriwether Lewis bounded as a boy toward his old friend.
The gray-haired president visibly trembled as he strained the two sons of his country to his heart. Tears gushed from his eyes, "The suspense has been awful." Then pausing, with difficulty he controlled his emotion. "But the hopes, the dreams, the ambitions of twenty years are now vindicated, and you are safe, boys, you are safe. I felt that if you were lost the country would hold me responsible."
If others had asked questions about the route, Jefferson now overwhelmed them with an avalanche, put with the keenness of a scholar and the penetration of a scientist. For with the possible exception of Franklin, Thomas Jefferson was the most learned man of his time.
Into the President's hands Lewis placed the precious journals, obtained at such a cost in toil and travel. Each pocket volume, morocco-bound, had as soon as filled been cemented in a separate tin case to prevent injury by wetting. But now Lewis had slipped the cases off and displayed them neat and fresh as on the day of writing.
On rocking boats, on saddle pommels, and after dark by the flickering campfire, had the writing been done. T's were not always crossed, nor i's dotted, as hurriedly each event was jotted down to be read and criticised after a hundred years. Written under such circumstances, and in such haste, it is not remarkable that words are misspelled and some omitted. A considerable collection of later letters gives ample evidence that both the Captains were graceful correspondents.
And the vocabularies, the precious vocabularies gathered from Council Bluffs to Clatsop, were taken by Jefferson and carefully laid away for future study.
Big White and his Indians were entertained by Jefferson and the cabinet. Dolly Madison, Mrs. Gallatin, and other ladies of the White House, manifested the liveliest interest as the tall Shahaka, six feet and ten inches, stood up before them in his best necklace of bear's claws, admiring the pretty squaws that talked to them.
"And was your father a chief, and your father's father?" Mrs. Madison inquired of Shahaka. She was always interested in families and lineage. "And what makes your hair so white?" But Shahaka had never heard of Prince Madoc.
Never had the village-capital been so gay. Dinners and balls followed in rapid succession, eulogies and poems were recited in honour of the explorers. There was even talk of changing the name of the Columbia to Lewis River.
In those days everybody went to the Capitol to hear the debates. The report of Lewis and Clark created a lively sensation. Complaints of the Louisiana Purchase ceased. From the Mississippi to the sea, the United States had virtually taken possession of the continent. Members of Congress looked at one another with dilated eyes. With lifted brow and prophetic vision the young republic pierced the future. The Mississippi, once her utmost border, was now but an inland river. Beyond it, the Great West hove in sight, with peaks of snow and the blue South Sea. The problem of the ages had been solved; Lewis and Clark had found the road to Asia.
The news fell upon Europe and America as not less than a revelation.
Congress immediately gave sixteen hundred acres of land each to the Captains, and double pay in gold and three hundred and twenty acres to each of their men, to be laid out on the west side of the Mississippi. On the third day of March, 1807, Captain Lewis was appointed Governor of Louisiana; and on March 12, Captain Clark was made Brigadier General, and Indian Agent for Louisiana.
Tall, slender, but twenty-nine, Henry Clay was in the Senate, advocating roads,—roads and canals to the West. He was planning, pleading, persuading for a canal around the Falls of the Ohio, he was appealing for the improvement of the Wilderness Road through which Boone had broken a bridle trace. His prolific imagination grasped the Chesapeake and Ohio canal and an interior connection with the Lakes.
Henry Clay—"Harry Clay" as Kentucky fondly called him—had a faculty for remembering names, faces, places. As yesterday, he recalled William Clark at Lexington.
And Clark remembered Clay, standing in an ox-waggon, with flashing eyes, hair wildly waving, and features aglow, addressing an entranced throng. The same look flashed over him now as he stepped toward the heroes of the Pacific.
"Congratulations, Governor."
"Congratulations, General."
The young men smiled at their new titles.
Another was there, not to be forgotten, strong featured, cordial, cheerful, of manly beauty and large dark eyes, endeavouring to interest Congress in his inventions,—Robert Fulton of the steamboat.
Wherever they went, a certain halo seemed to hang around these men of adventure. They were soldiers and hunters, and more. Through heat and cold, and mount and plain, four thousand miles by canoe, on foot and horseback, through forests of gigantic pines and along the banks of unknown rivers, among unheard-of tribes who had never seen a white man, they had carried the message of the President and brought back a report on the new land that is authority to this day.
"What did you find?" Eager inquirers crowded on every side to hear the traveller's tale. At Louisville, men drove in from distant plantations; at Fincastle their steps were thronged along the village walks; in Washington they were never alone.
"What did we find? Gigantic sycamores for canoes, the maple for sugar, the wild cherry and walnut for joiner's work, red and white elm for cartwrights, the osage orange for hedges impenetrable, white and black oak for ship and carpenter work, pine for countless uses, and durable cedar.
"What did we find? All sorts of plants and herbs for foods, dyes, and medicines, and pasturage unending. Boone's settlers on the Missouri frontier have farms of wheat, maize, potatoes, and little cotton fields, two acres sufficient for a family. Hemp is indigenous to the soil. Even in the Mandan land, the Indians, with implements that barely scratch the earth, have immense gardens of corn, beans, pumpkins, and squashes.
"What did we find? Oceans of beaver and seas of buffalo, clay fit for bricks and white clay for pottery, salt springs, saltpetre, and plaster, pipestone, and quarries of marble red and white, mines of iron, lead and coal, horses to be bought for a song, cedar, and fir trees six and eight feet in diameter, enormous salmon that block the streams."
No wonder the land was excited at the report of Lewis and Clark. All at once the unknown mysterious West stood revealed as the home of natural resources. Their travels became the Robinson Crusoe of many a boy who lived to see for himself the marvels of that trans-Mississippi.
Sergeant Gass received his pay in gold and went home to Wellsburg, West Virginia, to find his old father smoking still beside the fire. With the help of a Scotch schoolmaster Patrick published his book the next year, immortalising the name of the gallant Irish Sergeant. Then he "inlisted" again, and fought the Creeks, and in 1812 lost an eye at Lundy's Lane. Presently he married the daughter of a Judge, and lived to become a great student in his old age, and an authority on Indians and early times.
John Ordway went home to New Hampshire and married, and returned to live on his farm near New Madrid.
William Bratton tarried for a time in Kentucky, served in the War of 1812 under Harrison, and was at Tippecanoe and the Thames. He married and lived at Terre Haute, Indiana, and is buried at Waynetown.
George Gibson settled at St. Louis, and lived and died there. Nathaniel Pryor and William Werner became Indian agents under William Clark; Pryor died in 1831 among the Osages. George Drouillard went into the fur trade and was killed by the Blackfeet at the Three Forks of the Missouri. John Coalter, after adventures that will be related, settled at the town of Daniel Boone, married a squaw and died there. John Potts was killed by the Blackfeet on the river Jefferson. Sacajawea and Charboneau lived for many years among the Mandans, and their descendants are found in Dakota to this day.
Of the voyageurs who went as far as the Mandan town, Lajaunnesse accompanied Fremont across the mountains; and two others, Francis Rivet and Philip Degie, were the earliest settlers of Oregon, where they lived to a great old age, proud of the fact that they had "belonged to Lewis and Clark."
"Thank God for the safety of our country!" ejaculated Jefferson, in one of his long talks with Lewis regarding the upheaval across the sea.
In 1802 Napoleon had been declared Consul for life; May 18, 1804, four days after Lewis and Clark started, he had been saluted Emperor of France. Then came Jena. When Lewis and Clark reached the Mandan towns, Napoleon was entering Berlin with the Prussian monarchy at his feet.
While they camped at Clatsop in those December days of 1805, and while Baranof prayed for ships in his lonely Sitkan outpost, across seas "the sun of Austerlitz" had risen. Against Russian and Austrian, Napoleon had closed a war with a clap of thunder.
Every breeze bore news that overawed the world.
"Napoleon has taken Italy."
"Napoleon has conquered Austria."
"Napoleon has defeated Russia."
"Napoleon has ruined Prussia."
"Napoleon has taken Spain."
While Lewis and Clark were at Washington came the battles of Eylau and Dantzic. In December Napoleon annexed Portugal, and the Court of Lisbon fled to Brazil, to escape his arms and to rear anew the House of Braganza.
How much more remained to conquer? How soon might the theatre of action come over the sea? Still there was England.
For a time the Napoleonic wars had thrown the carrying trade of the ocean into American hands. American farmers could not reach the coast fast enough with their fleets of grain, the food for armies. Cotton went up to a fabulous price. Enterprise fired the young republic. Ships were building two thousand miles inland to carry her products to the ocean. She grew, she throve, and an ever-increasing inland fleet carried to and fro the red life of a growing nation.
On the other hand, the torch of liberty, lit in America and burning there still with calm and splendid lustre, carried by French soldiers to France had kindled a continent, sweeping like a firebrand through a conflagration of abuses. All tradition was overturning. America alone was quiet, the refuge of the world. Every ship that touched our shores brought fugitives fleeing from battle-scarred fields where Europe groaned in sobs and blood.
Napoleon was now master of almost the entire coast of Europe. Did he cast regretful eyes this way? America feared it. Nothing but fear of England ever made Napoleon give us Louisiana.
In May, 1806, England blockaded the French coast. Napoleon retaliated by the Berlin Decrees, shutting up all England, interdicting the commerce of the world.
And so, when Lewis and Clark returned, the giants were locked in struggle, like Titans of old, tearing up kingdoms, palatinates, and whole empires to hurl at each other.
And we had Louisiana.
When Captain Lewis went to Washington he was the bearer of a mass of papers on land claims sent by Auguste Chouteau.
"I have had some disturbing news from Louisiana," said Jefferson. "In the first place, Monsieur Auguste Chouteau writes requesting self-government, and that Louisiana remain for ever undivided. Now the day may come when we shall desire to cut Louisiana up into sovereign states,—not now, I grant, but in time, in time.
"Then the French people of New Orleans protest against American rule. Such is the dissatisfaction, it is said, that the people of Louisiana are only waiting for Bonaparte's victory in his war with the allies to return to their allegiance with France.
"St. Louis asks for a Governor 'who must reside in the territory,' hence I propose to put you there."
So it came about that Meriwether Lewis wrote back in February, "I shall probably come on to St. Louis for the purpose of residing among you."
There was trouble with Spain. In July, 1806, everybody thought there would be a war with her. But Napoleon was Spain's protector. It would never do to declare war against Napoleon. Napoleon!—the very word meant subjugation.
"Why are we safe from Bonaparte?" exclaimed Jefferson. "Only because he has not the British fleet at his command."
Even while Congress was at its busiest, devising a government for New Orleans, not at all was Jefferson sure of the loyalty of the French of Louisiana.
"If they are not making overtures to Napoleon, they are implicated in the treason of Aaron Burr."
All Washington was aflame over Aaron Burr. Only two years before Captain Lewis had left him in the seat of honour at Washington. The greatest lawyers in the country now were prosecuting his trial at Richmond, Randolph of Roanoke foreman of the jury and John Marshall presiding.
Borne with the throng, Lewis went over to Richmond. Washington Irving was there, Winfield Scott, and Andrew Jackson, "stamping up and down, damning Jefferson and extolling Burr."
Burr's friends, outcrying against Jefferson, caught sight of Meriwether Lewis; his popularity in a degree counteracted their vituperation. William Wirt of Maryland came down after making his great speech, to present a gold watch to his friend Meriwether Lewis.
With saddened heart Captain Lewis left Richmond. The beautiful Theodosia had come to stay with her father at the penitentiary. Lewis always liked Aaron Burr. What was he trying to do? The Mississippi was ours and Louisiana. But even the Ursuline nuns welcomed Burr to New Orleans, and the Creoles quite lost their heads over his winning address. All seemed to confirm the suspicions of Jefferson, who nightly tossed on his couch of worry.
It was necessary for Captain, now Governor, Lewis, to go to Philadelphia, to place his zoölogical and botanical collections in the hands of Dr. Barton. Scarce had the now famous explorer reached the city before he was beset by artists. Charles Willson Peale, who had painted the portraits of the most prominent officers of the Revolution, who had followed Washington and painted him as a Virginia colonel, as commander-in-chief, and as president, who had sat with him at Valley Forge and limned his features, cocked hat and all, on a piece of bed-ticking,—Peale now wanted to paint Lewis and Clark.
Of course such a flattering invitation was not to be resisted, and so, while Peale's assistants were mounting Lewis's antelopes, the first known to naturalists, and preparing for Jefferson the head and horns of a Rocky Mountain ram, Governor Lewis was sitting daily for his portrait.
This detained him in Philadelphia, when suddenly, on the 27th of June, the great upheaval of Europe cast breakers on our shores that made the country rock.
It seemed as if in spite of herself the United States would be drawn into the Napoleonic wars. England needed sailors, she must have sailors, she claimed and demanded them from American ships on the high seas.
"You shall not search my ship," said the Captain of the American frigate Chesapeake off the Virginian capes. Instantly and unexpectedly, the British frigate Leopard rounded to and poured broadsides into the unprepared Chesapeake.
"Never," said Jefferson, "has this country been in such a state of excitement since Lexington."
"Fired on our ship!" The land was aflame. By such white heat are nations welded.
It was a bold thing for England to disavow. But no apologies could now conceal the fact, that not Napoleon, but England, was destined to be our foe, England, who claimed the commerce of the world.
Meriwether Lewis came home to hear Virginia ringing for war; not yet had she forgotten Yorktown.
The mountains of Albemarle were clothed in all the brilliancy of summer beauty when Lewis kissed his mother good-bye, and set out to assume the governorship of Louisiana.
Immediately after his appointment in charge of Indian affairs, Clark left Washington, with Pryor and Shannon, Big White and Jussaume and their Indian families. The Ohio, swollen to the highest notch, bore them racing into the Mississippi.
"Manuel Lisa haf gone up de Meessouri," was the news at St. Louis. All winter Manuel Lisa had been flying around St. Louis with Pierre Menard and George Drouillard, preparing for an early ascent into the fur country. So also had been the Chouteaus, intending to escort Big White back to the Mandans.
At any time an Indian trader was a great man in St. Louis. He could command fabulous prices for his skill, and still more now could Drouillard, fresh from the unexploited land beyond the Mandans. All his money Drouillard put into the business, and with the earliest opening of 1807, Lisa, Menard and Drouillard set out for the upper Missouri with an outfit of sixteen thousand dollars.
"Wait for the Mandan chief," said Frederick Bates, the new Territorial Secretary.
Manuel Lisa was not a man to wait. "While others consider whether they will start, I am on my way," he answered.
Dark, secret, unfathomable, restless, enterprising, a very Spaniard for pride, distrusted and trusted, a judge of men, Manuel Lisa had in him the spirit of De Soto and Coronado.
For twenty years Lisa had traded with Indians. Of late the Spanish government had given him exclusive rights on the Osage, a privilege once held by the Chouteaus, but alas for Lisa! a right now tumbled by the cession. For the United States gave no exclusive privileges.
He reached the ear of Drouillard; they went away together. No one better than Lisa saw the meaning of that great exploration.
Coincidently with the arrival of Clark and Big White out of the Ohio, came down a deputation of Yankton Sioux with old Dorion from the Missouri. With that encampment of Indians, around, behind, before the Government House, began the reign of the Red Head chief over the nations of the West that was to last for thirty years. St. Louis became the Red Head's town, and the Red Head's signature came to be known to the utmost border of Louisiana.
"We want arms and traders," said the Yankton Sioux.
Both were granted, and laden with presents, before the close of May they were dispatched again to their own country. And with them went Big White in charge of Ensign Pryor, Sergeant George Shannon, and Pierre Chouteau, with thirty-two men for the Mandan trade.
Even the Kansas knew that Big White had gone down the river, and were waiting to see him go by.
"The whites are as the grasses of the prairie," said Big White.
In July the new Governor, Meriwether Lewis, arrived and assumed the Government. With difficulty the officers had endeavoured to harmonise the old and the new. All was in feud, faction, disorder.
St. Louis was a foreign village before the cession. Nor was this changed in a day.
"Deed not de great Napoleon guarantee our leebertee?" said the French. "We want self-government."
But Lewis and Clark, these two had met the French ideal of chivalry in facing the Shining Mountains and the Ocean. Pretty girls sat in the verandas to see them pass. Fur magnates set out their choicest viands. The conquest of St. Louis was largely social. With less tact and less winning personalities we might have had discord.
Whatever Lewis wanted, Clark seconded as a sort of Lieutenant Governor. It seemed as if the two might go on forever as they had done in the great expedition. Ever busy, carving districts that became future States, laying out roads, dispensing justice and treating with Indians, all went well until the 16th of October, when a wave of sensation swept over St. Louis.
"Big White, the Mandan chief, is back. The American flag at the bow of his boat has been fired on and he is compelled to fall back on St. Louis."
All summer the vengeful Arikaras had been watching.
"They killed our chief, the Brave Raven."
The Teton Sioux plotted. "They will give the Mandans arms and make our enemies stronger than we are." So in great bands, Sioux and Arikaras had camped along the river to intercept the returning brave.
"These are the machinations of the British," said Americans in St. Louis.
"This is a trick of Manuel Lisa," said the fur traders. "His boats passed in safety, why not ours?"
In fact, there had been a battle. Not with impunity should trade be carried into the land of anarchy. Three men were killed and several wounded, including Shannon and René Jussaume. And they in turn had killed Black Buffalo, the Teton chief that led the onslaught.
All the way down the Missouri George Shannon had writhed with his wounded knee. Blood poisoning set in. They left him at Bellefontaine.
"Dees leg must come off," said Dr. Saugrain, the army surgeon.
He sent for Dr. Farrar, a young American physician who had lately located in St. Louis. Together, without anesthetics, they performed the first operation in thigh amputation ever known in that region.
"Woonderful! woonderful!" exclaimed the Creoles. "Dees Dogtors can cut une man all up." Great already was the reputation of Dr. Saugrain; to young Farrar it gave a prestige that made him the Father of St. Louis surgery.
Shannon lay at the point of death for eighteen months, but youth rallied, and he regained sufficient strength to journey to Lexington, where he took up the study of law. He lived to become an eminent jurist and judge, and the honoured progenitor of many distinguished bearers of his name.
General Clark had had a busy summer, travelling up and down the river, assisting the Governor at St. Louis in reducing his tumultuous domain to order, treating with Indians, conferring with Governor Harrison in his brick palace at Old Vincennes, consulting with his brothers, General Jonathan and General George Rogers Clark at the Point of Rock. Now, in mid-autumn, he was again on his way to Fincastle.
Never through the tropic summer had Julia been absent from his thoughts. A little house in St. Louis had been selected that should shelter his bride; and now, as fast as hoof and horse could speed him, he was hastening back to fix the day for his wedding.
October shed glory on the burnished forests. Here and there along the way shone primitive farmhouses, the homes of people. The explorer's heart beat high. He had come to that time in his life when he, too, should have a home. Those old Virginia farmhouses, steep of roof and sloping at the eaves, four rooms below and two in the attic, with great chimneys smoking at either end, seemed to speak of other fond and happy hearts.
The valley of Virginia extends from the Potomac to the Carolina line. The Blue Ridge bounds it on one side, the Kittatinnys on the other, and in the trough-like valley between flows the historic Shenandoah.
From the north, by Winchester, scene of many a border fray and destined for action more heroic yet, Clark sped on his way to Fincastle. Some changes had taken place since that eventful morning when Governor Spotswood looked over the Blue Ridge. A dozen miles from Winchester stood Lord Fairfax's Greenway Court, overshadowed by ancient locusts, slowly mouldering to its fall. Here George Washington came in his boyhood, surveying for the gaunt, raw-boned, near-sighted old nobleman who led him hard chases at the fox hunt.
From the head spring of the Rappahannock to the head spring of the Potomac, twenty-one counties of old Virginia once belonged to the Fairfax manor, now broken and subdivided into a thousand homes. Hither had come tides of Quakers, and Scotch-Presbyterians, penetrating farther and farther its green recesses, cutting up the fruitful acres into colonial plantations.
"The Shenandoah, it is the very centre of the United States," said the emigrants.
The valley was said to be greener than any other, its waters were more transparent, its soil more fruitful. At any rate German-Pennsylvanians pushed up here, rearing barns as big as fortresses, flanked round with haystacks and granaries. Now and then Clark met them, in loose leather galligaskins and pointed hats, sunning in wide porches, smoking pipes three feet long, while their stout little children tumbled among the white clover.
Here and there negroes were whistling with notes as clear as a fife, and huge Conestoga waggons loaded with produce rumbled along to Philadelphia, Baltimore, Richmond. Every year thousands of waggons went to market, camping at night and making the morning ring with Robin Hood songs and jingling bells.
Yonder lived Patrick Henry in his last years, at picturesque Red Hill on the Staunton. Here in his old age he might have been seen under the trees in his lawn, buried in revery, or on the floor, with grandchildren clambering over him or dancing to his violin.
But Clark was not thinking of Patrick Henry, or Fairfax,—in fact he scarcely remembered their existence, so intent was his thought on his maid of the mountains, Julia Hancock.
The leaves were falling from elm and maple, strewing the path with gold and crimson. The pines grew taller in the twilight, until he could scarcely see the bypaths chipped and blazed by settlers' tomahawks.
Sunset was gilding the Peaks of Otter as Clark drew rein at the little tavern near Fincastle.
"I was rented to the King of England by my Prince of Hesse Cassel," the Hessian proprietor was saying. "I was rented out to cut the throats of people who had never done me any harm. Four pence three farthings a day I got, and one penny farthing went to His Royal Highness, the Prince. I fought you, then I fell in love with you, and when the war was over I stayed in America."
Clark listened. It was a voice out of the Revolution.
After a hurried luncheon the tireless traveller was again in his saddle; and late that night in the moonlight he opened the gate at Colonel Hancock's.
York had followed silently through all the journey,—York, no longer a slave, for in consideration of his services on the expedition the General had given him his freedom. But as a voluntary body-guard he would not be parted from his master.
"For sho'! who cud tek cah o' Mars Clahk so well as old Yawk?"
"What if love-lorn swains from a dozen plantations have tried to woo and win my pretty cousin! The bronzed face of Lochinvar is bleaching," said the teasing Harriet when she heard that the wedding date was really set. "One day, who knows, his skin may be white as yours."
Sudden as a flood in the Roanoke came Julia's tears. Relenting, the lively, light-hearted Harriet covered her cousin's curls with kisses.
"The carriage and horses are at your service. Hunt, fish, lounge as you please," said Colonel Hancock, "for I must be at the courthouse to try an important case."
With thousands of acres and hundreds of negroes, it was the dream of Colonel Hancock to one day drop these official cares and retire altogether into the privacy of his plantation. Already, forty miles away, at the very head spring of the Roanoke river, he was building a country seat to be called "Fotheringay," after Fotheringay Castle.
Back and forth in the gorgeous October weather rode Clark and Julia, watching the workmen at Fotheringay.
Now and then the carriage stopped at an orchard. Passers were always at liberty to help themselves to the fruit. Peaches so abundant that they fed the hogs with them, apples rosy and mellow, grapes for the vintage, were in the first flush of abundance. What a contrast to that autumn in the Bitter Root Mountains!
Then late in November to Fincastle came Governor Lewis and his brother Reuben, on their way to the west. He, too, had been to Washington on business concerning St. Louis.
"The great success of York among the Mandans has decided Reuben to take Tom along," laughed Lewis, as Reuben's black driver dismounted from the carriage—the same family chariot in which Meriwether had brought his mother from Georgia, now on the way to become the state coach of Louisiana.
Black Tom beamed, expansively happy, on York who had been "tuh th' Injun country" where black men were "Great Medicine."
"Ha, Your Excellency," laughed the teasing Harriet, "the beauty of Fincastle dines with us to-night,—Miss Letitia Breckenridge."
"Wait and the Governor will court you," some one whispered to the charming Letitia.
"I have contemplated accompanying my father to Richmond for some time," replied Letitia. "If I stay now it will look like a challenge, therefore I determine to go."
Governor Lewis underwent not a little chafing when two days after his arrival the lovely Letitia was gone,—to become the wife of the Secretary of War in John Quincy Adams's cabinet.
"Miss Breckenridge is a very sweet-looking girl," wrote Reuben to his sister, "and I should like to have her for a sister. General Clark's intended is a charming woman. When I tell you that she is much like my sweetheart you will believe I think so."
"What are you doing?" Clark asked of Julia, as she sat industriously stitching beside the hickory fire in the great parlour at Fincastle.
"Working a little screen to keep the fire from burning my face," answered the maiden, rosy as the glow itself. Much more beautiful than the little Sacajawea, stitching moccasins beside the fire at Clatsop, she seemed to Clark; and yet the feminine intuition was the same, to sew, to stitch, to be an artist with the needle.