She had said it—had said that last fated word. Now indeed he knew what voice had called to him across the deeps!
He reflected now that all these messages had been written to him before he left her; and that when he saw her last she was standing, tears in her eyes, outraged by the act of the man whom she had trusted—nay, whom she had loved!
CHAPTER XIII
THE NEWS
A horseman rode furiously over the new road from Fort Bellefontaine to St. Louis village. He carried news. The expedition of Lewis and Clark had returned!
Yes, these men so long thought lost, dead, were coming even now with their own story, with their proofs. The boats had passed Charette, had passed Bellefontaine, and presently would be pulling up the river to the water front of St. Louis itself.
“Run, boys!” cried Pierre Chouteau to his servants. “Call out the people! Tell them to ring the bells—tell them to fire the guns at the fort yonder. Captains Lewis and Clark have come back again—those who were dead!”
The little settlement was afire upon the instant. Laughing, talking, ejaculating, weeping in their joy, the people of St. Louis hurried out to meet the men whose voyage meant so much.