III
RECRUITING FOR OREGON
"Now that I have accepted President Jefferson's proposal to be associated with Captain Lewis in this expedition, it will oblige me to accept brother Jonathan's offer of ten thousand dollars cash for Mulberry Hill," William Clark was saying at Louisville. "That will help out brother George on his military debts, satisfy his claimants, and save him from ruin."
At the time of sale the old home was occupied by General Clark and William Clark, and their sister Fanny and her children. The departure of William for the Pacific broke up and dispersed the happy family.
The General went back to the Point of Rock, fifty feet above the dashing Ohio. That water was the lowest ever known now, men could walk across on the rocks. Three or four locust trees shaded the cabin, now painted white, and an orchard of peach and cherry blossomed below. Negro Ben and his wife Venus, and Carson and Cupid, lived back of the house and cultivated a few acres of grain and garden.
All of Clark's old soldiers remained loyal and visited the Point of Rock, and every year an encampment of braves, Indian chiefs whom he had subdued, came for advice and to partake of his hospitality.
Grand and lonely, prematurely aged at fifty-one when he should have been in his prime, General Clark sat overlooking the Falls when Captain Lewis pulled his bateaux into the Bear Grass.
Captain Clark and nine young men of Kentucky were waiting for the boat,—William Bratton, a blacksmith, formerly of Virginia, and John Shields, gunsmith, the Tubal Cain of the expedition, John Coalter, who had been a ranger with Kenton, the famous Shields brothers, Reuben and James, William Warner and Joseph Whitehouse, all experts with the rifle, Charles Floyd, son of that Charles Floyd that rode with his brother from the death-stroke of Big Foot, and Nathaniel Pryor, his cousin.
Twenty years had passed since that fatal April morning when John Floyd was laid a corpse at the feet of Jane Buchanan. That posthumous child, ushered so sadly into the world, John Floyd the younger, now a handsome youth, was eager to go with his cousins—but an unexpected illness held him back—to become a member of Congress and Governor of Virginia.
And York, of course York. Had he not from childhood obeyed John Clark's command, "Look after your young master"? With highest elation York assisted in the preparation, furbished up his gun, and prepared to "slay dem buffaloes."
"An interpreter is my problem now," said Captain Lewis, "a man familiar with Indians, trustworthy, and skilled in tongues."