Chapter XV: Book II: Into the West (6)

The Blackfeet fought the Shoshones, the Crows, by superior cunning, fought the Blackfeet, the Assiniboines fought the Crows, and the Sioux, the lordly Sioux, fought all.

It was time for the white man's hand to stay the diabolical dance of death.

XXV

_BEWARE THE BLACKFEET!_

On the third of July, at the mouth of Lolo creek, the expedition separated, Lewis to cross to the Falls of the Missouri and explore Marias River, Clark to come to the three forks and cross to the Yellowstone.

With nine men and five Indians Captain Lewis crossed the Missoula on a raft, and following the Nez Percé trail along the River-of-the-Road -to-Buffalo, the Big Blackfoot of to-day, came out July 7, the first of white men, on the opening through the main range of the Rockies now known as the Lewis and Clark Pass. A Blackfoot road led down to the churning waters of the Great Falls.

Pawing, fighting, ten thousand buffaloes were bellowing in one continuous roar that terrified the horses. The plain was black with a vast and angry army, bearing away to the southwest, flinging the dust like a simoom, through which deep-mouthed clangor rolled like thunder far away. And at their immediate feet, Drouillard noted fresh tracks of Indians dotting the soil; grizzly bears, grim guardians of the cataract, emitted hollow growls, and great gray wolves hung in packs and droves along the skirts of the buffalo herds, glancing now and then toward the little group of horsemen.

In very defiance of danger, again Lewis pitched his camp beside the Falls, green and foamy as Niagara. Again buffalo meat, marrow bones, ribs, steaks, juicy and rich, sizzled around the blaze, and the hungry men ate, ate, ate. They had found the two extremes--want on one side of the mountains and abundance on the other.

While Lewis tried to write in his journal, huge brown mosquitoes, savage as the bears, bit and buzzed. Lewis's dog howled with the torture, the same little Assiniboine dog that had followed all their footsteps, had guarded and hunted as well as the best, had slept by the fire at Clatsop and been stolen at the Dalles.

Hurrying to their _cache_ at the Bear Islands, it was discovered that high water had flooded their skins and the precious specimens of plants were soaked and ruined. A bottle of laudanum had spoiled a chestful of medicine. But the charts of the Missouri remained uninjured, and trunks, boxes, carriage wheels, and blunderbuss were all right.

"Transport the baggage around the Falls and wait for me at the mouth of Maria's River to the first of September," said Captain Lewis, setting out with Drouillard and the Fields boys. "If by that time I am not there, go on and join Captain Clark and return home. But if my life and health are spared, I shall meet you on the 5th of August."

It was not without misgivings that Sergeant Gass and his comrades saw the gallant Captain depart into the hostile Blackfoot country. With only three men at his back it was a daring venture. Already the five Nez Percés, fearful of their foes, had dropped off to seek their friends the Flatheads. In vain Lewis had promised to intercede and make peace between the tribes. Their terror of the Blackfeet surpassed their confidence in white men.

"Look!"

On the second day out Drouillard suddenly pointed, and leaning far over on his horse, examined a trail that would have escaped an eye less keen than his. "Blackfeet!" the vicious and profligate rovers that of all it was most desirable not to meet!

Hastily crossing the Teton into a thick wood, the party camped that night unmolested.

On the eighth day Captain Lewis suddenly spied several Indians on a hilltop intently watching Drouillard in the valley. Thirty horses, some led, some saddled, stood like silhouettes against the sky. Kneeling they scanned the movements of the unconscious hunter below.

"Escape is impossible. We must make the most of our situation. If they attempt to rob us, we will resist to the last extremity. I would rather die than lose my papers and instruments."

Boldly advancing with a flag in his hand, followed by the two Fields brothers, Lewis drew quite near before the Indians perceived these other white men. Terrified, they ran about in confusion. Evidently with them a stranger meant a foe.

Captain Lewis dismounted, and held out his hand.

Slowly the chief Blackfoot approached, then wheeled in flight. At last, with extreme caution, the two parties met and shook hands. Lewis gave to one a flag, to another a medal, to a third a handkerchief. The tumultuous beating of the Indians' hearts could almost be heard. There proved to be but eight of them, armed with two guns, bows, arrows, and eye-daggs, a sort of war-hatchet.

"I am glad to see you," said Lewis. "I have much to say. Let us camp together."

The Indians assented and set up their semi-circular tent by the willows of the river. Here Drouillard, the hunter, skilled in the sign language of redmen, drew out their story.

Yes, they knew white men. They traded on the Saskatchewan six days' march away.

Yes, there were more of them, two large bands, on the forks of this river, a day above.

What did they trade at the Saskatchewan? Skins, wolves, and beaver, for guns and ammunition.

Then Lewis talked. He came from the rising sun. He had been to the great lake at the west. He had seen many nations at war and had made peace. He had stopped to make peace between the Blackfeet and the Flatheads.

"We are anxious for peace with the Flatheads. But those people have lately killed a number of our relatives and we are in mourning."

Yes, they would come down and trade with Lewis if he built a fort at Maria's River.

Until a late hour they smoked, then slept. Lewis and Drouillard lay down and slept with the Indians, while the two Fields boys kept guard by the fire at the door of the tent.

"Let go my gun."

It was the voice of Drouillard in the half-light of the tent at sunrise struggling with a Blackfoot. With a start Lewis awoke and reached for his gun. It was gone. The deft thieves had all but disarmed the entire party.

Chase followed. In the scuffle for his gun, Reuben Fields stabbed a Blackfoot to the heart.

No sooner were the guns recovered than the horses were gone. "Leave the horses or I will shoot," shouted Lewis, chasing out of breath to a steep notch in the river bluffs. Madly the Indians were tearing away with the horses. Lewis fired and killed a Blackfoot. Bareheaded, the Captain felt a returning bullet whistle through his hair, but the Indians dropped the horses, and away went swimming across the Marias.

Delay meant death. Quickly saddling their horses, Lewis and his men made for the Missouri as fast as possible, hearing at every step in imagination the pursuing "hoo-oh! whoop-ah-hooh!" that was destined to make Marias River the scene of many a bloody massacre by the vengeful Blackfeet.

Expecting interception at the mouth of Marias River, the white men rode with desperation to form a junction with their friends. All day, all night they galloped, until, exhausted, they halted at two o'clock in the morning to rest their flagging horses.

That forenoon, having ridden one hundred and twenty miles since the skirmish, they reached the mouth of Marias River, just in time to see Sergeant Gass, the fleet of canoes, and all, descending from above. Leaping from their horses, they took to the boats, and soon left the spot, seventy, eighty, a hundred miles a day, down the swift Missouri.

XXVI

_DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE_

As Lewis turned north toward Marias River, Clark with the rest of the party and fifty horses set his face along the Bitter Root Valley toward the south. Every step he trod became historic ground in the romance of settlement, wars, and gold. Into this Bitter Root Valley were to come the first white settlers of Montana, and upon them, through the Hell Gate Pass of the Rockies, above the present Missoula, were to sweep again and again the bloodthirsty Blackfeet.

"It is as safe to enter the gates of hell as to enter that pass," said the old trappers and traders.

More and more beautiful became the valley, pink as a rose with the delicate bloom of the bitter-root, the Mayflower of Montana. Here for ages the patient Flatheads had dug and dried their favourite root until the whole valley was a garden.

As Clark's cavalcade wound through this vale, deer flitted before the riders, multitudinous mountain streams leaped across their way, herds of bighorns played around the snowbanks on the heights. Across an intervening ridge the train descended into Ross Hole, where first they met the Flatheads. There were signs of recent occupation; a fire was still burning; but the Flatheads were gone.

Out of Ross Hole Sacajawea pointed the way by Clark's Pass, over the Continental Divide, to the Big Hole River where the trail disappeared or scattered. But Sacajawea knew the spot. "Here my people gather the kouse and the camas; here we take the beaver; and yonder, see, a door in the mountains."

On her little pony, with her baby on her back, the placid Indian girl led the way into the labyrinthine Rockies.

Clark followed, descending into the beautiful Big Hole prairie, where in 1877 a great battle was to be fought with Chief Joseph, exactly one hundred years after the 1777 troubles, when George Rogers Clark laid before Patrick Henry his plan for the capture of Illinois. Out of the Big Hole, Chief Joseph was to escape with his women, his children, and his dead, to be chased a thousand miles over the very summit of the Rockies!

Standing there on the field of future battle, "Onward!" still urged Sacajawea, "the gap there leads to your canoes!" The Bird Woman knew these highlands,--they were her native hills. As Sacajawea fell back, the men turned their horses at a gallop.

Almost could they count the milestones now, down Willard creek, where first paying gold was discovered in Montana, past Shoshone cove, over the future site of Bannock to the Jefferson.

Scarcely taking the saddles from their steeds, the eager men ran to open the _cache_ hid from the Shoshones. To those who so long had practised self-denial it meant food, clothing, merchandise--an Indian ship in the wild. Everything was safe, goods, canoes, tobacco. In a trice the long-unused pipes were smoking with the weed of old Virginia.

"Better than any Injun red-willer k'nick-er-k'nick!" said Coalter, the hunter.

Leaving Sergeant Pryor with six men to bring on the horses, Captain Clark and the rest embarked in the canoes, and were soon gliding down the emerald Jefferson, along whose banks for sixty years no change should come.

Impetuous mountain streams, calmed to the placid pool of the beaver dam, widened into lakes and marshes. Beaver, otter, musk-rats innumerable basked along the shore. Around the boats all night the disturbed denizens flapped the water with their tails,--angry at the invasion of their solitude.

At the Three Forks, Clark's pony train remounted for the Yellowstone, prancing and curveting along the beaver-populated dells of the Gallatin.

Before them arose, bewildering, peak on peak, but again the Bird Woman, Sacajawea, pointed out the Yellowstone Gap, the Bozeman Pass of to-day, on the great Shoshone highway. Many a summer had Sacajawea, child of elfin locks, ridden on the trailing travoises through this familiar gateway into the buffalo haunts of Yellowstone Park.

Slowly Clark and his expectant cavalcade mounted the Pass, where for ages the buffalo and the Indian alone had trod. As they reached the summit, the glorious Yellowstone Alps burst on their view. At their feet a rivulet, born on the mountain top, leaped away, bright and clear, over its gravelly bed to the Yellowstone in the plains below.

It was the brother of George Rogers Clark that stood there, one to the manner born of riding great rivers or breaking through mountain chains. But thirty years had elapsed since that elder brother and Daniel Boone had threaded the Cumberland Gap of the Alleghanies. The highways of the buffalo became the highways of the nation.

"It is no more than eighteen miles," said Clark, glancing back from the high snowy gap, half piercing, half surmounting the dividing ridge between the Missouri and the Yellowstone, so nearly do their headwaters interlock. In coming up this pass, Clark's party went through the present city limits of Bozeman, the county seat of Gallatin, and over the route of future Indians, trappers, miners, road builders, and last and greatest of all, armies of permanent occupation that are marching still to the valleys of fertile Montana. Up the shining Yellowstone, over the Belt range, through the tunnel to Bozeman, the iron horse flits to-day, on, westerly one hundred miles to Helena, almost in the exact footsteps trodden by the heroic youth of one hundred years ago.

Among the cottonwood groves of the Yellowstone, Clark's men quickly fashioned a pair of dugouts, lashed together with rawhide; and in these frail barks, twenty-eight feet long, the Captain and party embarked, leaving Sergeant Pryor, Shannon, Windsor, and Hall to bring on the horses. All manner of trouble Pryor had with those horses. Lame from continual travel, he made moccasins for their feet. They were buffalo runners, trained for the hunt. At sight of the Yellowstone herds away they flew, to chase in the old wild Indian fashion of their red masters. No sooner had Pryor rounded them up and brought them back than they disappeared utterly,--stolen by the Crows. Not one of the entire fifty horses was ever recovered.

Here was a serious predicament. Down the impetuous Yellowstone Clark's boats had already gone. Alone in the heart of the buffalo country these four men were left, thousands of miles from the haunts of civilised man.

"We must join Captain Clark at all hazards. We must improvise boats," said Shannon.

Sergeant Pryor recalled the Welsh coracles of the Mandans. "Can we make one?"

Long slim saplings were bent to form a hoop for the rim, another hoop held by cross-sticks served for the bottom. Over this rude basket green buffalo hides were tightly drawn, and in these frail craft they took to the water, close in the wake of their unconscious Captain.

And meanwhile Clark was gliding down the Yellowstone. On either bank buffaloes dotted the landscape, under the shade of trees and standing in the water like cattle, or browsing on a thousand hills. Gangs of stately elk, light troops of sprightly antelopes, fleet and graceful as the gazelle of Oriental song, deer of slim elastic beauty, and even bighorns that could be shot from the boat. Sometimes were heard the booming subterranean geysers hidden in the hollows of the mountains, but none in the party yet conceived of the wonders of Yellowstone Park that Coalter came back to discover that same Autumn.

One day Clark landed to examine a remarkable rock. Its sides were carved with Indian figures, and a cairn was heaped upon the summit. Stirred by he knew not what impulse, Clark named it Pompey's Pillar, and carved his name upon the yielding sandstone, where his bold lettering is visible yet to-day.

More and more distant each day grew the Rockies, etched fainter each night on the dim horizon of the west. More and more numerous grew the buffaloes, delaying the boats with their countless herds stampeding across the Yellowstone. For an hour one day the boats waited, the wide river blackened by their backs, and before night two other herds, as numerous as the first, came beating across the yellow-brown tide.

But more than buffaloes held sway on the magic Yellowstone. Wrapped in their worn-out blankets the men could not sleep for the scourge of mosquitoes; they could not sight their rifles for the clouds of moving, whizzing, buzzing, biting insects. Even the buffalo were stifled by them in their nostrils.

Nine hundred miles now had they come down the Yellowstone, to its junction with the Missouri half a mile east of the Montana border, but no sign yet had they found of Lewis. Clark wrote on the sand, "W. C. A few miles further down on the right hand side."

August 8, Sergeant Pryor and his companions appeared in their little skin tubs. Four days later, there was a shout and waving of caps,--the boats of Captain Lewis came in sight at noon. But a moment later every cheek blanched with alarm.

"Where is Captain Lewis?" demanded Clark, running forward.

There in the bottom of a canoe, Lewis lay as one dead, pale but smiling. He had been shot. With the gentleness of a brother Clark lifted him up, and they carried him to camp.

"A mistake,--an accident,--'tis nothing," he whispered.

And then the story leaked out. Cruzatte, one-eyed, near-sighted, mistaking Lewis in his dress of brown leather for an elk, had shot him through the thigh. With the assistance of Patrick Gass, Lewis had dressed the wound himself. On account of great pain and high fever he slept that night in the boat. And now the party were happily reunited.

XXVII

_THE HOME STRETCH_

In the distance there was a gleam of coloured blankets where the beehive huts of the Mandan village lay. A firing of guns and the blunderbuss brought Black Cat to the boats.

"Come and eat." And with the dignity of an old Roman, the chief extended his hand.

"Come and eat," was the watchword of every chieftain on the Missouri. Even the Sioux said, "Come and eat!"

Hospitable as Arabs, they spread the buffalo robe and brought the pipe. While the officers talked with the master of the lodge, the silent painstaking squaws put the kettles on the fire, and slaughtered the fatted dog for the honoured guests.

"How many chiefs will accompany us to Washington?" That was the first inquiry of the business-pushing white men. Through Jussaume the Indians answered.

"I would go," said the Black Cat, "but de Sioux--"

"De Sioux will certainly kill us," said Le Borgne of the Minnetarees. "Dey are waiting now to intercept you on de river. Dey will cut you off."

"We stay at home. We listen to your counsel," piped up Little Cherry. "But dey haf stolen our horses. Dey haf scalp our people."

"We must fight to protect ourselves," added the Black Cat. "We live in peace wit' all nation--'cept de Sioux!"

In vain Captain Clark endeavoured to quiet their apprehensions. "We shall not suffer the Sioux to injure one of our red children."

"I pledge my government that a company of armed men shall guard you on your return," added Lewis.

At this point Jussaume reported that Shahaka, or Big White, in his wish to see the President, had overcome his fears. He would go to Washington.

Six feet tall, of magnificent presence, with hair white and coarse as a horse's mane, Shahaka, of all the chiefs, was the one to carry to the States the tradition of a white admixture in the Mandan blood. "The handsomest Injun I iver saw," said Patrick Gass.

Arrangements for departure were now made as rapidly as possible. Presents of corn, beans, and squashes, more than all the boats could carry, were piled around the white men's camp.

The blacksmith's tools were intrusted to Charboneau for the use of the Mandans. The blunderbuss, given to the Minnetarees, was rolled away to their village with great exultation.

"Now let the Sioux come!" It was a challenge and a refuge.

The iron corn mill was nowhere to be seen. For scarcely had Lewis and Clark turned their backs for the upper Missouri before it had been broken into bits to barb the Indian arrows.

Sacajawea looked wistfully. She, too, would like to visit the white man's country.

"We will take you and your wife down if you choose to go," said Captain Clark to Charboneau.

"I haf no acquaintance, no prospect to mak' a leeving dere," answered the interpreter. "I mus' leeve as I haf done."

"I will take your son and have him educated as a white child should be," continued the Captain.

Charboneau and Sacajawea looked at one another and at their beautiful boy now nineteen months old, prattling in their midst.

"We would be weeling eef de child were weaned," slowly spake Charboneau. "Een wan year, he be ole enough to leaf he moder. I den tak' eem to you eef you be so friendly to raise eem as you t'ink proper."

"Bring him to me in one year. I will take the child," said Captain Clark.

Captain Lewis paid Charboneau five hundred dollars, loaded Sacajawea with what gifts he could, and left them in the Mandan country.

All was now ready for the descent to St. Louis. The boats, lashed together in pairs, were at the shore. Big White was surrounded by his friends, seated in a circle, solemnly smoking. The women wept aloud; the little children trembled and hid behind their mothers.

More courageous than any, Shahaka immediately sent his wife and son with their baggage on board. The interpreter, Jussaume, with his wife and two children, accompanied them. Yes, Madame Jussaume was going to Washington!

Sacajawea, modest princess of the Shoshones, heroine of the great expedition, stood with her babe in arms and smiled upon them from the shore. So had she stood in the Rocky Mountains pointing out the gates. So had she followed the great rivers, navigating the continent.

Sacajawea's hair was neatly braided, her nose was fine and straight, and her skin pure copper like the statue in some old Florentine gallery. Madonna of her race, she had led the way to a new time. To the hands of this girl, not yet eighteen, had been intrusted the key that unlocked the road to Asia.

Some day upon the Bozeman Pass, Sacajawea's statue will stand beside that of Clark. Some day, where the rivers part, her laurels will vie with those of Lewis. Across North America a Shoshone Indian Princess touched hands with Jefferson, opening her country.

All the chiefs had gathered to see the boats start. "Stay but one moment," they said.

Clark stepped back. Black Cat handed him a pipe, as if for benediction. The solemn smoke-wreaths soon rolled upward.

"Tell our Great Fader de young men will remain at home and not mak' war on any people, except in self-defence."

"Tell de Rickara to come and visit. We mean no harm."

"Tak' good care dis chief. He will bring word from de Great Fader."

It was a promise and a prayer. Strong chiefs turned away with misgiving and trepidation as they saw Shahaka depart with the white men.

Dropping below their old winter quarters at Fort Mandan, Lewis and Clark saw but a row of pickets left. The houses lay in ashes, destroyed by an accidental fire. All were there for the homeward pull but Coalter. He had gone back with Hancock and Dickson, two adventurers from Boone's settlement, to discover the Yellowstone Park.

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.

XXVIII

_THE OLD STONE FORTS OF ST. LOUIS_

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 Phoenician 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.

XXIX

_TO WASHINGTON_

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.

XXX