THE
MAGNIFICENT
ADVENTURE

Being the Story of the World’s
Greatest Exploration and the
Romance of a Very Gallant
Gentleman.

A NOVEL

BY

EMERSON HOUGH

AUTHOR OF

THE COVERED WAGON,
NORTH OF 36, ETC.

ILLUSTRATED BY

ARTHUR I. KELLER

NEW YORK

GROSSET & DUNLAP

PUBLISHERS

Made in the United States of America

Copyright, 1916, by
EMERSON HOUGH

Copyright, 1916, by The Frank A. Munsey Company

Printed in the United States of America

“‘Him Ro’shones,’ replied the girl” PAGE [219]

]

TO

ROBERT H. DAVIS

GOOD FRIEND

INVALUABLE COLLABORATOR

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

THE
MAGNIFICENT ADVENTURE

CHAPTER I

MOTHER AND SON

A woman, tall, somewhat angular, dark of hair and eye, strong of features—a woman now approaching middle age—sat looking out over the long, tree-clad slopes that ran down from the gallery front of the mansion house to the gate at the distant roadway. She had sat thus for some moments, many moments, her gaze intently fixed, as though waiting for something—something or someone that she did not now see, but expected soon to see.

It was late afternoon of a day so beautiful that not even old Albemarle, beauty spot of Virginia, ever produced one more beautiful—not in the hundred years preceding that day, nor in the century since then. For this was more than a hundred years ago; and what is now an ancient land was then a half opened region, settled only here and there by the great plantations of the well-to-do. The house that lay at the summit of the long and gentle slope, flanked by its wide galleries—its flung doors opening it from front to rear to the gaze as one approached—had all the rude comfort and assuredness usual with the gentry of that time and place.

It was the privilege, and the habit, of the Widow Lewis to sit idly when she liked, but her attitude now was not that of idleness. Intentness, reposeful acceptance of life, rather, showed in her motionless, long-sustained position. She was patient, as women are; but her strong pose, its freedom from material support, her restrained power to do or to endure, gave her the look of owning something more than resignation, something more than patience. A strong figure of a woman, one would have said had one seen her, sitting on the gallery of her old home a hundred and twenty-four years ago.

The Widow Lewis stared straight down at the gate, a quarter of a mile away, with yearning in her gaze. But as so often happens, what she awaited did not appear at the time and place she herself had set. There fell at the western end of the gallery a shadow—a tall shadow, but she did not see it. She did not hear the footfall, not stealthy, but quite silent, with which the tall owner of the shadow came toward her from the gallery end.

It was a young man, or rather boy, no more than eighteen years of age, who stood now and gazed at her after his silent approach, so like that of an Indian savage. Half savage himself he seemed now, as he stood, clad in the buckskin garments of the chase, then not unusual in the Virginian borderlands among settlers and hunters, and not held outré among a people so often called to the chase or to war.

His tunic was of dressed deer hide, his well-fitting leggings also of that material. His feet were covered with moccasins, although his hat and the neat scarf at his neck were those of a gentleman. He was a practical youth, one would have said, for no ornament of any sort was to be seen upon his garb. In his hand he carried a long rifle of the sort then used thereabout. At his belt swung the hide of a raccoon, the bodies of a few squirrels.

Had you been a close observer, you would have found each squirrel shot fair through the head. Indeed, a look into the gray eye of the silent-paced youth would have assured you in advance of his skill with his weapons—you would have known that to be natural with him.

You would not soon have found his like, even in that land of tall hunting men. He was a grand young being as he stood there, straight and clean-limbed; hard-bitten of muscle, albeit so young; powerful and graceful in his stride. The beauty of youth was his, and of a strong heredity—that you might have seen.

The years of youth were his, yes; but the lightness of youth did not rest on his brow. While he was not yet eighteen, the gravity of manhood was his.

He did not smile now, as he saw his mother sitting there absorbed, gazing out for his return, and not seeing him now that he had returned. Instead, he stepped forward, and quietly laid a hand upon her shoulder, not with any attempt to surprise or startle her, but as if he knew that she would accept it as the announcement of his presence.

He was right. The strong figure in the chair did not start away. No exclamation came from the straight mouth of the face now turned toward him. Evidently the nerves of these two were not of the sort readily stampeded.

The young man’s mother at first did not speak to him. She only reached up her own hand to take that which lay upon her shoulder. They remained thus for a moment, until at last the youth stepped back to lean his rifle against the wall.

“I am late, mother,” said he at length, as he turned and, seating himself at her feet, threw his arm across her lap—himself but boy again now, and not the hunter and the man.

She stroked his dark hair, not foolishly fond, but with a sort of stern maternal care, smoothing it back in place where it belonged, straightening out the riot it had assumed. It made a mane above his forehead and reached down his neck to his shoulders, so heavy that where its dark mass was lifted it showed the skin of his neck white beneath.

“You are late, yes.”

“And you waited—so long?”

“I am always waiting for you, Merne,” said she. She used the Elizabethan vowel, as one should pronounce “bird,” with no sound of “u”—“Mairne,” the name sounded as she spoke it. And her voice was full and rich and strong, as was her son’s; musically strong.

“I am always waiting for you, Merne,” said she. “But I long ago learned not to expect anything else of you.” She spoke with not the least reproach in her tone. “No, I only knew that you would come back in time, because you told me that you would.”

“And you did not fear for me, then—gone overnight in the woods?” He half smiled at that thought himself.

“You know I would not. I know you, what you are—born woodsman. No, I trust you to care for yourself in any wild country, my son, and to come back. And then—to go back again into the forest. When will it be, my son? Tomorrow? In two days, or four, or six? Sometime you will go to the wilderness again. It draws you, does it not?”

She turned her head slightly toward the west, where lay the forest from which the boy had but now emerged. He did not smile, did not deprecate. He was singularly mature in his actions, though but eighteen years of age.

“I did not desert my duty, mother,” said he at length.

“Oh, no, you would not do that, Merne!” returned the widow.

“Please, mother,” said he suddenly, “I want you to call me by my full name—that of your people. Am I not Meriwether, too?”

The hand on his forehead ceased its gentle movement, fell to its owner’s lap. A sigh passed his mother’s set lips.

“Yes, my son, Meriwether,” said she. “This is the last journey! I have lost you, then, it seems? You do not wish to be my boy any longer? You are a man altogether, then?”

“I am Meriwether Lewis, mother,” said he gravely, and no more.

“Yes!” She spoke absently, musingly. “Yes, you always were!”

“I went westward, clear across the Ragged Mountains,” said the youth. “These”—and he pointed with contempt to the small trophies at his belt—“will do for the darkies at the stables. I put yon old ringtail up a tree last night, on my way home, and thought it was as well to wait till dawn, till I could see the rifle-sights; and afterward—the woods were beautiful today. As to the trails, even if there is no trail, I know the way back home—you know that, mother.”

“I know that, my son, yes. You were born for the forest. I fear I shall not hold you long on this quiet farm.”

“All in time, mother! I am to stay here with you until I am fitted to go higher. You know what Mr. Jefferson has said to me. I am for Washington, mother, one of these days—for I hold it sure that Mr. Jefferson will go there in some still higher place. He was my father’s friend, and is ours still.”

“It may be that you will go to Washington, my son,” said his mother; “I do not know. But will you stay there? The forest will call to you all your life—all your life! Do I not know you, then? Can I not see your life—all your life—as plainly as if it were written? Do I not know—your mother? Why should not your mother know?”

He looked around at her rather gravely once again, unsmilingly, for he rarely smiled.

“How do you know, mother? What do you know? Tell me—about myself! Then I will tell you also. We shall see how we agree as to what I am and what I ought to do!”

“My son, it is no question of what you ought to do, for that blends too closely in fate with what you surely will do—must do—because it was written for you. Yonder forest will always call to you.” She turned now toward the sun, sinking across the red-leaved forest lands. “The wilderness is your home. You will go out into it and return—often; and then at last you will go and not come back again—not to me—not to anyone will you come back.”

The youth did not move as she sat, her hands on his head. Her voice went on, even and steady.

“You are old, Meriwether Lewis! It is time, now. You are a man. You always were a man! You were born old. You never have been a boy, and never can be one. You never were a child, but always a man. When you were a baby, you did not smile; when you were a boy, you always had your way. My boy, a long time ago I ceased to oppose that will of yours—I knew that it was useless. But, ah, how I have loved that will when I felt it was behind your promise! I knew you would do what you had set for yourself to do. I knew you would come back with deeds in your hand, my boy—gained through that will which never would bend for me or for anyone else in the world!”

He remained motionless, apparently unaffected, as his mother went on.

“You were always old, always grown up, always resolved, always your own master—always Meriwether Lewis. When you were born, you were not a child. When the old nurse brought you to me—I can see her black face grinning now—she carried you held by the feet instead of lying on her arm. You stood, you were so strong! Your hair was dark and full even then. You were old! In two weeks you turned where you heard a sound—you recognized sight and sound together, as no child usually does for months. You were beautiful, my boy, so strong, so straight—ah, yes!—but you never were a boy at all. When you should have been a baby, you did not weep and you did not smile. I never knew you to do so. From the first, you always were a man.”

She paused, but still he did not speak.

“That was well enough, for later we were left alone. But your father was in you. Do I not know well enough where you got that settled melancholy of yours, that despondency, that somber grief—call it what you like—that marked him all his life, and even in his death? That came from him, your father. I thank God I did not give you that, knowing what life must hold for you in suffering! He suffered, yes, but not as you will. And you must—you must, my son. Beyond all other men, you will suffer!”

“You were better named Cassandra, mother!” Yet the young man scarce smiled even now.

“Yes, I am a prophetess, all too sooth a prophetess, my son. I see ahead as only a mother can see—perhaps as only one of the old Highland blood can see. I am soothseer and soothsayer, because you are blood of my blood, bone of my bone, and I cannot help but know. I cannot help but know what that melancholy and that resolution, all these combined, must spell for you. You know how his heart was racked at times?”

The boy nodded now.

“Then know how your own must be racked in turn!” said she. “My son, it is no ordinary fate that will be yours. You will go forward at all costs; you will keep your word bright as the knife in your belt—you will drive yourself. What that means to you in agony—what that means when your will is set against the unalterable and the inevitable—I wish—oh, I wish I could not see it! But I do see it, now, all laid out before me—all, all! Oh, Merne—may I not call you Merne once more before I let you go?”

She let her hands fall from his head to his shoulders as she gazed steadily out beyond him, as if looking into his future; but she herself sat, her strong face composed. She might, indeed, have been a prophetess of old.

“Tragedy is yours, my son,” said she, slowly, “not happiness. No woman will ever come and lie in your arms happy and content.”

“Mother!”

He half flung off her hands, but she laid them again more firmly on his shoulders, and went on speaking, as if half in reverie, half in trance, looking down the long slope of green and gold as if it showed the vista of the years.

“You will love, my boy, but with your nature how could love mean happiness to you? Love? No man could love more terribly. You will be intent, resolved, but the firmness of your will means that much more suffering for you. You will suffer, my boy—I see that for you, my first-born boy! You will love—why should you not, a man fit to love and be loved by any woman? But that love, the stronger it grows, will but burn you the deeper. You will struggle through on your own path; but happiness does not lie at the end of that path for you. You will succeed, yes—you could not fail; but always the load on your shoulders will grow heavier and heavier. You will carry it alone, until at last it will be too much for you. Your strong heart will break. You will lie down and die. Such a fate for you, Merne, my boy—such a man as you will be!”

She sighed, shivered, and looked about her, startled, as if she had spoken aloud in some dream.

“Well, then, go on!” she said, and withdrew her hands from his shoulders. The faces of both were now gazing straight on over the gold-flecked slope before them. “Go on, you are a man. I know you will not turn back from what you undertake. You will not change, you will not turn—because you cannot. You were born to earn and not to own; to find, but not to possess. But as you have lived, so you will die.”

“You give me no long shrift, mother?” said the youth, with a twinkle in his eye.

“How can I? I can only tell you what is in the book of life. Do I not know? A mother always loves her son; so it takes all her courage to face what she knows will be his lot. Any mother can read her son’s future—if she dares to read it. She knows—she knows!”

There was a long silence; then the widow continued.

“Listen, Merne,” she said. “You call me a prophetess of evil. I am not that. Do you think I speak only in despair, my boy? No, there is something larger than mere happiness. Listen, and believe me, for now I could not fail to know. I tell you that your great desire, the great wish of your life, shall be yours! You never will relinquish it, you always will possess it, and at last it will be yours.”

Again silence fell between them before she went on, her hand again resting on her son’s dark hair.

“Your great desire will cost me my son. Be it so! We breed men for the world, we women, and we give them up. Out of the agony of our hearts, we do and must always give them up. That is the price I must pay. But I give you up to the great hope, the great thing of your life. Should I complain? Am I not your mother, and therefore a woman? And should a woman complain? But, Oh, Merne, Merne, my son, my boy!”

She drew his head back, so that she could see deep into his eyes. Her dark brows half frowning, she gazed down upon him, not so much in tenderness as in intentness. For the first time in many months—for the last time in his life—she kissed him on the forehead; and then she let him go.

He rose now, and, silently as he had come, passed around the end of the wide gallery.

Her gaze did not follow him. She sat still looking down the golden-green slope where the leaves were dropping silently. She sat, her chin in her hand, her elbows upon her knees, facing that future, somber but splendid, to which she had devoted her son, and which in later years he so singularly fulfilled.

That was the time when the mother of Meriwether Lewis gave him to his fate—his fate, so closely linked with yours and mine.

CHAPTER II

MERIWETHER AND THEODOSIA

Soft is the sun in the summer season at Washington, softer at times than any old Dan Chaucer ever knew; but again so ardent that anyone who would ride abroad would best do so in the early morning. This is true today, and it was true when the capital city lay in the heart of a sweeping forest at the edge of a yet unconquered morass.

The young man who now rode into this forest, leaving behind him the open streets of the straggling city—then but beginning to lighten under the rays of the morning sun—was one who evidently knew his Washington. He knew his own mind as well, for he rode steadily, as if with some definite purpose, to some definite point, looking between his horse’s ears.

Sitting as erect and as easily as any cavalier of the world’s best, he was tall in his saddle seat, his legs were long and straight. His boots were neatly varnished, his coat well cut, his gloves of good pattern for that time. His hat swept over a mass of dark hair, which fell deep in its loose cue upon his neck. His cravat was immaculate and well tied. He was a good figure of a man, a fine example of the young manhood of America as he rode, his light, firm hand half unconsciously curbing the antics of the splendid animal beneath him—a horse deep bay in color, high-mettled, a mount fit for a monarch—or for a young gentleman of Virginia a little more than one hundred years ago.

If it was not the horse of a monarch the young man bestrode, none the less it was the horse of one who insisted that his stables should be as good as those of any king—none less, if you please, than Mr. Thomas Jefferson, then President of the United States of America.

This particular animal was none other than Arcturus, Mr. Jefferson’s favorite saddler. It was the duty as well as the delight of Mr. Jefferson’s private secretary to give Arcturus and his stable-mate, Wildair, their exercise on alternate days. On this summer morning Arcturus was enjoying his turn beneath his rider—who forsooth was more often in the saddle than Mr. Jefferson himself.

Horse and rider made a picture in perfect keeping as they fared on toward the little-used forest road which led out Rock Creek way. Yonder, a few miles distant, was a stone mill owned by an old German, who sometimes would offer a cup of coffee to an early horseman. Perhaps this rider knew the way from earlier wanderings thither on other summer mornings.

Arcturus curveted along and tossed his head, mincing daintily, and making all manner of pretense at being dangerous, with sudden gusts of speed and shakings of his head and blowing out of his nostrils—though all the time the noble bay was as gentle as a dog. Whether or not he really were dangerous would have made small difference to the young man who bestrode him, for his seat was that of the born horseman.

They advanced comfortably enough, the rider seemingly less alive to the joys of the morning than was the animal beneath him. The young man’s face was grave, his mouth unsmiling—a mouth of half Indian lines, broken in its down-sweeping curve merely by the point of a bow which spoke of gentleness as well as strength. His head was that of the new man, the American, the new man of a new world, young and strong, a continent that had lain fallow from the birth of time.

What burdened the mind of a man like this, of years which should have left him yet in full attunement with the morning of life and with the dawn of a country? Why should he pay so little heed to the playful advances of Arcturus, inviting him for a run along the shady road?

Arcturus could not tell. He could but prance insinuatingly, his ears forward, his head tossed, his eye now and again turned about, inquiring.

But though the young man, moody and abstracted, still looked on ahead, some of his senses seemed yet on guard. His head turned at the slightest sound of the forest life that came to him. If a twig cracked, he heard it. If a green nut cut by some early squirrel clattered softly on the leaves, that was not lost to him.

A bevy of partridges, feeding at dawn along the edge of the forest path, whirled up in his horse’s face; and though he held the startled animal close, he followed the flight of the birds with the trained eye of the fowler, and marked well where they pitched again. He did these things unconsciously as one well used to the woods, even though his eye turned again straight down the road and the look of intentness, of sadness, almost of melancholy, once more settled upon his features.

He advanced into the wood until all sight of the city was quite cut off from him, until the light grew yet dimmer along the forest road, in places almost half covered with a leafy canopy, until at length he came to the valley of the little stream. He followed the trail as it rambled along the bank toward the mill, through scenes apparently familiar to him.

Abstracted as he was he must have been alert, alive, for now, suddenly, he broke his moody reverie at some sound which he heard on ahead. He reined in for just an instant, then loosed the bridle and leaned forward. The horse under him sprang forward in giant strides.

It was the sound of a voice that the young cavalier had heard—the voice of a woman—apparently a woman in some distress. What cavalier at any time of the world has not instinctively leaped forward at such sound? In less than half a moment the rider was around the turn of the leafy trail.

She was there, the woman who had cried out, herself mounted, and now upon the point of trying conclusions with her mount. Whether dissatisfaction with the latter or some fear of her own had caused her to cry out might have been less certain, had it not been sure that her eye was at the moment fastened, not upon the fractious steed, but upon the cause of his unwonted misbehavior.

The keen eye of the young man looked with hers, and found the reason for the sudden scene. A serpent, some feet in length—one of the mottled, harmless species sometimes locally called the blow-snake—obviously had come out into the morning sun to warm himself, and his yellow body, lying loose and uncoiled, had been invisible to horse and rider until they were almost upon it. Then, naturally, the serpent had moved his head, and both horse and rider had seen him, to the dismay of both.

This the young man saw and understood in a second, even as he spurred forward alongside the plunging animal. His firm hand on the bridle brought both horses back to their haunches. An instant later both had control of their mounts again, and had set them down to their paces in workmanlike fashion.

There was color in the young woman’s face, but it was the color of courage, of resolution. There was breeding in every line of her. Class and lineage marked her as she sat easily, her supple young body accommodating itself handsomely to the restrained restiveness of the steed beneath her. She rode with perfect confidence, as an experienced horsewoman, and was well turned out in a close habit, neither old nor new.

Her dark hair—cut rather squarely across her forehead after an individual fashion of her own—was surmounted by a slashed hat, decorated with a wide-flung plume of smoky color, caught with a jewel at the side. Both jewel and plume had come, no doubt, in some ship from across seas. Her hands were small, and gloved as well as might be at that day of the world. There was small ornament about her; nor did this young woman need ornament beyond the color of her cheek and hair and eye, and perhaps the touch of a bold ribbon at her throat, which held a white collar closer to a neck almost as white.

An aristocrat, you must have called her, had you seen her in any chance company. And had you been a young man such as this, and had you met her alone, in some sort of agitation, and had consent been given you—or had you taken consent—surely you would have been loath to part company with one so fair, and would have ridden on with her as he did now.

But at first they did not speak. A quick, startled look came into the face of the young woman. A deeper shade glowed upon the cheek of the cavalier, reddening under the skin—a flush which shamed him, but which he could not master. He only kept his eyes straight between his horse’s ears as he rode—after he had raised his hat and bowed at the close of the episode.

“I am to thank Captain Lewis once more,” began the young woman, in a voice vibrant and clear—the sweetest, kindest voice in the world. “It is good fortune that you rode abroad so early this morning. You always come at need!”

He turned upon her, mute for a time, yet looking full into her face. It was sadness, not boldness, not any gay challenge, that marked his own.

“Can you then call it good fortune?” His own voice was low, suppressed.

“Why not, then?”

“You did not need me. A moment, and you would have been in command again—there was no real need of me. Ah, you never need me!”

“Yet you come. You were here, had the need been worse. And, indeed, I was quite off my guard—I must have been thinking of something else.”

“And I also.”

“And there was the serpent.”

“Madam, there was the serpent! And why not? Is this not Eden? I swear it is paradise enough for me. Tell me, why is it that in the glimpses the sages give us of paradise they no more than lift the curtain—and let it fall again?”

“Captain Meriwether Lewis is singularly gloomy this morning!”

“Not more than I have been always. How brief was my little hour! Yet for that time I knew paradise—as I do now. We should part here, madam, now, forever. Yon serpent spelled danger for both of us.”

“For both of us?”

“No, forgive me! None the less, I could not help my thoughts—cannot help them now. I ride here every morning. I saw your horse’s hoof-marks some two miles back. Do you suppose I did not know whose they were?”

“And you followed me? Ah!”

“I suppose I did, and yet I did not. If I did I knew I was riding to my fate.”

She would have spoken—her lips half parted—but what she might have said none heard.

He went on:

“I have ridden here since first I saw you turn this way one morning. I guessed this might be your haunt at dawn. I have ridden here often—and feared each time that I might meet you. Perhaps I came this morning in the same way, not knowing that you were near, but hoping that you might be. You see, madam, I speak the absolute truth with you.”

“You have never spoken aught else to any human soul. That I know.”

“And yet you try to evade the truth? Why deceive your heart about it, since I have not deceived my own? I have faced it out in my own heart, and I have, I trust, come off the victor. At some cost!”

Her face was troubled. She looked aside as she replied in a voice low, but firm:

“Any woman would be glad to hear such words from Captain Lewis, and I am glad. But—the honest wife never lived who could listen to them often.”

“I know that,” he said simply.

“No!” Her voice was very low now; her eyes soft and cast down as they fell upon a ring under her glove. “We must not meet, Captain Meriwether Lewis. At least, we must not meet thus alone in the woods. It might cause talk. The administration has enemies enough, as you know—and never was a woman who did not have enemies, no matter how clean her life has been.”

“Clean as the snow, yours! I have never asked you to be aught else, and never will. I sought you once, when I rode from Virginia to New York—when I first had my captain’s pay, before Mr. Jefferson asked me to join his family. Before that time I had too little to offer you; but then, with my hopes and my ambitions, I ventured. I made that journey to offer you my hand. I was two weeks late—you were already wedded to Mr. Alston. Then I learned that happiness never could be mine.... Yes, we must part! You are the only thing in life I fear. And I fear as well for you. One wagging tongue in this hotbed of gossip—and there is harm for you, whom all good men should wish to shield.”

As he rode, speaking thus, his were the features of a man of tremendous emotions, a resolute man, a man of strength, of passions not easily put down.

She turned aside her own face for an instant. At last her little hand went to him in a simple gesture of farewell. Meriwether Lewis leaned and kissed it reverently as he rode.

“Good-by!” said he. “Now we may go on for the brief space that remains for us,” he added a moment later. “No one is likely to ride this way this morning. Let us go on to the old mill. May I give you a cup of coffee there?”

“I trust Captain Meriwether Lewis,” she replied.

They advanced silently, and presently came in sight of a little cascade above a rocky shallowing of the stream. Below this, after they had splashed through the ford, they saw the gray stone walls of Rock Creek Mill.

The miller was a plain man, and silent. Other folk, younger or older, married or single, had come hither of a morning, and he spoke the name of none. He welcomed these two after his fashion. Under the shade of a great tree, which flung an arm out to the rivulet, he pulled out a little table spread in white and departed to tell his wife of the company. She, busy and smiling, came out presently with her best in old china and linen and wherewith to go with both.

They sat now, face to face across the little table, their horses cropping the dewy grass near by. Lewis’s riding crop and gloves lay on his knee. He cast his hat upon the grass. Little birds hopped about on the ground and flitted here and there in the trees, twittering. A mocker, trilling in sudden ecstacy of life, spread a larger melody through all the wood.

The sun drew gently up in the heavens, screened by the waving trees. The ripple of the stream was very sweet.

“Theodosia, look!” said the young man, suddenly swinging a gesture about him. “Did I not say right? It is Eden! Ah, what a pity it is that Eden must ever be the same—a serpent—repentance—and farewell! Yet it was so beautiful.”

“A sinless Eden, sir.”

“No! I will not lie—I will not say that I do not love you more than ever. That is my sin; so I must go away. This must be our last meeting—I am fortunate that it came by chance today.”

“Going away—where, then, my friend?”

“Into the West. It always has called me. Ah, if only I had remained in the Indian country yonder, where I belonged, and never made my ride to New York—to learn that I had come too late! But the West still is there—the wilderness still exists to welcome such as me!”

“But you will—you will come back again?”

“It is in the lap of the gods. I do not know or care. But my plans are all arranged. Mr. Jefferson and I have agreed that it is almost time to start. You see, Theodosia, I am now back from my schooling. You behold in me, madam, a scientist! At least I am competent to read by the sun and stars, can reckon longitude and latitude—as one must, to journey into the desert yonder. If only I dared orient my soul as well!”

“You would never doubt my faith in my husband.”

“No! Of course, you love your husband. I could not look at you a second time if you did not.”

“You are a good man, Meriwether Lewis!”

“Do not say it! I am a man accursed of evil passions—the most unhappy of all men. There is nothing else, I say, in all the world that I fear but my love for you. Tell me it will not last—tell me it will change—tell me that I shall forget! I should not believe you—but tell me that. Does a man never forget? Success—for others; happiness—for someone else. My mother said that was to be my fate. What did she mean?”

“She meant, Meriwether Lewis, that you were a great man, a great soul! Only a man of noble soul could speak as you have spoken to me. We women, in our souls, love something noble and good and strong. Then we imagine someone like that. We believe, or try to believe, or say that we believe; but always——”

“And a woman may divide not love, only love of love itself?”

“I shall love your future, and shall watch it always,” she replied, coloring. “You will be a great man, and there will be a great place for you.”

“And what then?”

“Do not ask what then. You ask if men never change. Alas, they do, all too frequently! Do not deny the imperious way of nature. Only—remember me as long as you can, Meriwether Lewis.”

She spoke softly, and the color of her cheek, still rising, told of her self-reproof.

He turned suddenly at this, a wonderfully sweet smile now upon his face.

“As long as I can?”

“Yes. Let your own mind run on the ambitions of a proud man, a strong man. Ambition—power—place—these things will all be yours in the coming years. They belong to any man of ability such as yours, and I covet them for you. I shall pray always for your success; but success makes men forget.”

He still sat looking at her unmoved, with thoughts in his heart that he would not have cared to let her know. She went on still, half tremblingly:

“I want to see you happy after a time—with some good woman at your side—your children by you—in your own home. I want everything for you which ought to come to any man. And yet I know how hard it is to alter your resolve, once formed. Captain Lewis, you are a stubborn man, a hard man!”

He shook his head.

“Yes, I do not seem to change,” said he simply. “I hope I shall be able to carry my burden and to hold my trail.”

“Fie! I will not have such talk on a morning like this.”

Fearlessly she reached out her hand to his, which lay upon the table. She smiled at him, but he looked down, the lean fingers of his own hand not trembling nor responding.

If she sensed the rigidity of the muscles which held his fingers outward, at least she feared it not. If she felt the repression which kept him silent, at least she feared it not. Her intuitions told her at last that the danger was gone. His hand did not close on hers.

She raised her cup and saluted laughingly.

“A good journey, Meriwether Lewis,” said she, “and a happy return from it! Cast away such melancholy—you will forget all this!”

“I ask you not to wound me more than need be. I am hard to die. I can carry many wounds, but they may pain me none the less.”

“Forgive me, then,” she said, and once more her small hand reached out toward him. “I would not wound you. I asked you only to remember me as——”

“As——”

“As I shall you, of course. And I remember that bright day when you came to me—yonder in New York. You offered me all that any man can ever offer any woman. I am proud of that! I told my husband, yes. He never mentions your name save in seriousness and respect. I am ambitious for you. All the Burrs are full of ambition, and I am a Burr, as you know. How long will it be before you come back to higher office and higher place? Will it be six months hence?”

“More likely six years. If there is healing for me, the wilderness alone must give it.”

“I shall be an old woman—old and sallow from the Carolina suns. You will have forgotten me then.”

“It is enough,” said he. “You have lightened my burden for me as much as may be—you have made the trial as easy as any can. The rest is for me. At least I can go feeling that I have not wronged you in any way.”

“Yes, Meriwether Lewis,” said she quietly, “there has not been one word or act of yours to cause you regret, or me. You have put no secret on me that I must keep. That was like a man! I trust you will find it easy to forget me.”

He raised a hand.

“I said, madam, that I am hard to die. I asked you not to wound me overmuch. Do not talk to me of hopes or sympathy. I do not ask—I will not have it! Only this remains to comfort me—if I had laid on my soul the memory of one secret that I had dared to place on yours, ah, then, how wretched would life be for me forever after! That thought, it seems to me, I could not endure.”

“Go, then, my savage gentleman, and let me——”

“And let you never see my face again?”

She rose and stood looking at him, her own eyes wet with a sudden moisture.

“Women worth loving are so few!” she said slowly. “Clean men are so few! How a woman could have loved you, Meriwether Lewis! How some woman ought to love you! Yes, go now,” she concluded. “Yes, go!”

“Mrs. Alston will wait with you here for a few moments,” said Meriwether Lewis to the miller’s wife quietly. He stood with his bridle rein across his arm. “See that she is very comfortable. She might have a second cup of your good coffee?”

He swung into his saddle, reined his horse about, turned and bowed formally to his late vis-à-vis, who still remained seated at the table. Then he was off at such speed as left Arcturus no more cause to fret at his bridle rein.

CHAPTER III

MR. BURR AND MR. MERRY

The young Virginian had well-nigh made his way out over the two miles or so of sheltered roadway, when he heard hoof beats on ahead, and slackened his own speed. He saw two horsemen approaching, both well mounted, coming on at a handsome gait.

Of these, one was a stout and elderly man of no special shape at all, who sat his horse with small grace, his florid face redder for his exercise, his cheeks mottled with good living and hard riding. He was clad in scrupulous riding costume, and seemed, indeed, a person of some importance. The badge of some order or society showed on his breast, and his entire air—intent as he was upon his present business of keeping company with a skilled horseman—marked him as one accustomed to attention from others. A servant in the costume of an English groom rode at a short distance behind him.

The second man was lighter, straight and trim of figure, with an erectness and exactness of carriage which marked him as a soldier at some part of his life. He was clad with extreme neatness, well booted also, and sat his mount with the nonchalance of the trained horseman. His own garb and face showed not the slightest proof that he had been riding hard.

Indeed, he seemed one whom no condition or circumstance could deprive of a cool immaculateness. He was a man to be marked in any company—especially so by the peculiar brilliance of his full, dark eye, which had a piercing, searching glint of its own; an eye such as few men have owned, and under whose spell man or woman might easily melt to acquiescence with the owner’s mind.

He sat his horse with a certain haughtiness as well as carelessness. His chin seemed long and firm, and his lofty forehead—indeed, his whole air and carriage—discovered him the man of ambition that he really was. For this was no other than Aaron Burr, Vice-President of the United States, whose name was soon to be on the lips of all. He had lately come to Washington with the Jefferson administration.

This gentleman now reined up his horse as he caught sight of the young man approaching. His older companion also halted. Burr raised his hat.

“Ah, Captain Lewis!” he said in a voice of extraordinary sweetness, yet of power. “You also have caught the secret of this climate, eh? You ride in the early morning—I do not wonder. You are Virginian, and so know the heats of Washington. I fancy you recognize Mr. Merry,” he added, his glance turning from one to the other.

The young Virginian bowed to both gentlemen.

“I have persuaded his excellency the minister from Great Britain to ride with us on one of our Washington mornings. He has been good enough to say—to say—that he enjoys it!”

Burr turned a quick glance upon the heavier figure at his side, with a half smile of badinage on his own face. Lewis bowed again, formally, and Anthony Merry answered with equal politeness and ceremony.

“Yes,” said the envoy, “to be sure I recall the young man. I met him in the anteroom at the President’s house.”

Meriwether Lewis cast him a quick glance, but made no answer. He knew well enough the slighting estimate in which everything at Washington was held by this minister accredited to our government. Also he knew, as he might have said, something about the diplomat’s visit at the Executive Mansion. For thus far the minister from Great Britain to Washington had not been able to see the President of the United States.

“And you are done your ride?” said Burr quickly, for his was a keen nose to scent any complication. “Tell me”—he lifted his own reins now to proceed—“you saw nothing of my daughter, Mrs. Alston? We missed her at the house, and have feared her abduction by some bold young Virginian, eh?”

His keen eye rested fairly on the face of the younger man as he spoke. The latter felt the challenge under the half mocking words.

“Yes,” he replied calmly, “I have seen Mrs. Alston. I left her but now at the old mill, having a cup of coffee with the miller’s wife. I had not time myself for a second, although Mrs. Alston honored me by allowing me to sit at her table for a moment. We met by accident, you see, as we both rode, a short time ago. I overtook her when it was not yet sunrise, or scarcely more.”

“You see!” laughed Burr, as he turned to Merry. “Our young men are early risers when it comes to pursuit of the fair. I must ride at once and see to the welfare of my daughter. She may be weeping at losing her escort so soon!”

They all smiled in proper fashion. Lewis bowed, and, lifting his hat, passed on. Burr, as they parted, fell for just a half-moment into thought, his face suddenly inscrutable, as if he pondered something.

“There is the ablest man I have seen in Washington,” blurted out Merry suddenly, apropos of nothing that had been said. “He has manners, and he rides like an Englishman.”

“Say not so!” said Burr, laughing. “Better—he rides like a Virginian!”

“Very well; it is the same thing. The Virginians are but ourselves—this country is all English yet. And I swear—Mr. Burr, may we speak freely?—I cannot see, and I never shall see, what is the sense in all this talk of a new democracy of the people. Now, what men like these—like you——”

“You know well enough how far I agree with you,” said Burr somberly.

“’Tis an experiment, our republic, I am willing to say that boldly to you, at least. How long it may last——”

“Depends on men like you,” said Merry, suddenly turning upon him as they rode. “How long do you suppose his Majesty will endure such slights as they put on us here day by day? My blood boils at the indignities we have had to suffer here—cooling our heels in your President’s halls. I call it mere presumptuousness. I cannot look upon this country as anything but a province to be taken back again when England is ready. And it may be, since so much turbulence and discourtesy seem growing here, that chance will not wait long in the coming!”

“It may be, Mr. Merry,” said Aaron Burr. “My own thoughts you know too well for need of repetition. Let us only go softly. My plans advance as well as I could ask. I was just wondering,” he added, “whether those two young people really were together there at the old mill—and whether they were there for the first time.”

“If not, ’twas not for the last time!” rejoined the older man. “Yonder young man was made to fill a woman’s eye. Your daughter, Mr. Burr, while the soul of married discreetness, and charming as any of her sex I have ever seen, must look out for her heart. She might find it divided into three equal parts.”

“How then, Mr. Minister?”

“One for her father——”

Aaron Burr bowed.

“Yes, her father first, as I verily believe. What then?”

“The second for her husband——”

“Certainly. Mr. Alston is a rising man. He has a thousand slaves on his plantations—he is one of the richest of the rich South Carolinian planters. And in politics he has a chance—more than a chance. But after that?”

“The third portion of so charming a woman’s heart might perhaps be assigned to Captain Meriwether Lewis!”

“Say you so?” laughed Burr carelessly. “Well, well this must be looked into. Come, I must tell my son-in-law that his home is in danger of being invaded! Far off in his Southern rice-lands, I fear he misses his young wife sometimes. I brought her here for the sake of her own health—she cannot thrive in such swamps. Besides, I cannot bear to have her live away from me. She is happier with me than anywhere else. Yes, you are right, my daughter worships me.”

“Why should she not? And why should she not ride with a gallant at sunrise for an early cup of coffee, egad?” said the older man.

Burr did not answer, and they rode on.

In the opposite direction there rode also the young man of whom they spoke. And at about the time that the two came to the old mill and saw Theodosia Alston sitting there—her face still cast down, her eyes gazing abstractedly into her untasted cup on the little table—Meriwether Lewis was pulling up at the iron gate which then closed the opening in the stone wall encircling the modest official residence of his chief and patron, President Jefferson.

CHAPTER IV

PRESIDENT AND SECRETARY

There stood waiting near the gate one of Mr. Jefferson’s private servants, Samson, who took the young man’s rein, grinning with his usual familiar words of welcome as the secretary dismounted from his horse.

“You-all suttinly did warm old Arcturum a li’l bit dis mawnin’, Mistah Mehywethah!”

Samson patted the neck of the spirited animal, which tossed its head and turned an eye to its late rider.

“Yes, and see that you rub him well. Mind you, if Mr. Jefferson finds that his whitest handkerchief shows a sweat-mark from the horse’s hide he will cut off both your black ears for you, Samson—and very likely your head along with them. You know your master!” The secretary smiled kindly at the old black man.

“Yassah, yassah,” grinned Samson, who no more feared Mr. Jefferson than he did the young gentleman with whom he now spoke. “I just lookin’ at you comin’ down that path right now, and I say to myself, ‘Dar come a ridah!’ I sho’ did, Mistah Mehywethah!”

The young man answered the negro’s compliment with one of his rare smiles, then turned, with just a flick of his gloves on his breeches legs, and marched up the walk to the door of the mansion.

At the step he turned and paused, as he usually did, to take one look out over the unfinished wing of stone still in process of erection. On beyond, in the ragged village, he saw a few good mansion houses, many structures devoted to business, many jumbled huts of negroes, and here and there a public building in its early stages.

The great system of boulevards and parks and circles of the new American capital was not yet apparent from the place where Mr. Thomas Jefferson’s young secretary now stood. But the young man perhaps saw city and nation alike advanced in his vision; for he gazed long and lingeringly before he turned back at last and entered the door which the old house servant swung open for him.

His hat and crop and gloves he handed to this bowed old darky, Ben—another of Mr. Jefferson’s plantation servants whom he had brought to Washington with him. Then—for such was the simple fashion of the ménage, where Meriwether Lewis himself was one of the President’s family—he stepped to the door beyond and knocked lightly, entering as he did so.

The hour was early—he himself had not breakfasted, beyond his coffee at the mill—but, early as it was, he knew he would find at his desk the gentleman who now turned to him.

“Good morning, Mr. Jefferson,” said Meriwether Lewis, in the greeting which he always used.

“Good morning, my son,” said the other man, gently, in his invariable address to his secretary. “And how did Arcturus perform for you this morning?”

“Grandly, sir. He is a fine animal. I have never ridden a better.”

“I envy you. I wish I could find the time I once had for my horses.” He turned a whimsical glance at the piled desk before him. “If our new multigraph could write a dozen letters all at once—and on as many different themes, my son—we might perhaps get through. I vow, if I had the money, I would have a dozen secretaries—if I could find them!”

The President rose now and stood, a tall and striking figure of a man, over six feet in height, of clean-cut features, dark hazel eye, and sandy, almost auburn, hair. His long, thin legs were clad in close-fitting knee breeches of green velveteen, somewhat stained. His high-collared coat, rolling above the loosely-tied stock which girded his neck, was dingy brown in color, and lay in loose folds. He was one of the worst-clad men in Washington at that hour. His waistcoat, of red, was soiled and far from new, and his woolen stockings were covered with no better footwear than carpet slippers, badly down at the heel.

Yet Thomas Jefferson, even clad thus, seemed the great man that he was. Stooped though his shoulders were, his frame was so strong, his eye so clear and keen, though contemplative, that he did not look his years.

Here was a man, all said who knew him, of whose large soul so many large deeds were demanded that he had no time for little and inconsequent things—indeed, scarce knew that they existed. To think, to feel, to create, to achieve—these were his absorbing tasks; and so exigent were the demands on his great intellectual resources that he seemed never to know the existence of a personal world.

He stood careless, slipshod, at the side of a desk cluttered with a mass of maps, papers, letters in packets or spread open. There were writing implements here, scientific instruments of all sorts, long sheets of specifications, canceled drafts, pages of accounts—all the manifold impedimenta of a man in the full swing of business life. It might have been the desk of any mediocre man; yet on that desk lay the future of a people and the history of a world.

He stood, just a trifle stooped, smiling quizzically at the young man, yet half lovingly; for to no other being in the world did he ever give the confidence that he accorded Meriwether Lewis.

“I do not see how I could be President without you, Merne, my son,” said he, employing the familiar term that Meriwether Lewis had not elsewhere heard used, except by his mother. “Look what we must do today!”

The young secretary turned his own grave eye upon the cluttered desk; but it was not dread of the redoubtable tasks awaiting him that gave his face all the gravity it bore.

“Mr. Jefferson—” he began, but paused, for he could see now standing before him his friend, the man whom, of all in the world, he loved, and the man who believed in him and loved him.

“Yes, my son?”

“Your burden is grievous hard, and yet——”

“Yes, my son?”

But Meriwether Lewis could not speak further. He stood now, his jaws set hard, looking out of the window.

The older man came and gently laid a hand upon his shoulder.

“Come, come, my son,” said he, his own voice low and of a kindness it could assume at times. “You must not—you must not yield to this, I say. Shake off this melancholy which so obsesses you. I know whence it comes—your father gave it you, and you are not to blame; but you have more than your father’s strength to aid you. And you have me, your friend, who can understand.”

Lewis only turned on him an eye so full of anguish as caused the older man to knit his brow in deep concern.

“What is it, Merne?” he demanded. “Tell me. Ah, you cannot tell? I know! ’Tis the old melancholy, and something more, Merne, my boy. Tell me—ah, yes, it is a woman!”

The young man did not speak.

“I have often told all my young friends,” said Mr. Jefferson slowly, after a time, “that they should marry not later than twenty-three—it is wrong to cheat the years of life—and you approach thirty now, my son. Why linger? Listen to me. No young man may work at his best and have a woman’s face in his desk to haunt him. That will not do. We all have handicap enough without that.”

But still Meriwether could only look into the face of his superior.

“I know very well, my son,” the President continued. “I know it all. Put her out of your heart, my boy. Would you shame yourself—and her—and me?”

“No! Never would I do that, Mr. Jefferson, believe me. But now I must beg of you—please, sir, let me go soon—let it be at once!”

The older man stood looking at him for a time in silence, as he went on hurriedly:

“I must say good-by to you, best and noblest of men. Indeed, I have said good-by to—everything.”

“As you say, your case is hopeless?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Ah, well, we have both been planning for our Western expedition these ten years, my son; so why should we fret if matters conspire to bring it about a trifle earlier than we planned?”

“I asked you when I was a boy to send me, but you could not then.”

“No, but instead I sent yonder maundering Michaux. He, Ledyard, and all the others failed me. They never saw the great vision. There it lies, unknown, tremendous—no man knows what—that new country. I have had to hide from the people of this republic this secret purpose which you and I have had of exploring the vast Western country. I have picked you as the one man fitted for that work. I do not make mistakes. You are a born woodsman and traveler—you are ready to my hand as the instrument for this magnificent adventure. I cannot well spare you now—but yes, you must go!”

They stood there, two men who made our great adventure for us—vision-seers, vision-owned, gazing each into the other’s eyes.

“Send me now, Mr. Jefferson!” repeated Meriwether Lewis. “Send me now. I will mend to usefulness again. I will work for you all my life, if need be—and I want my name clear with you.”

The old man laid a kindly hand upon his shoulder.

“I must yield you to your destiny,” said he. “It will be a great one.” He turned aside, a hand to his lip as he paced uncertainly. “But I still am wondering what our friends are doing yonder in France,” said he. “That is the question. Livingston, Monroe, and the others—what are they doing with Napoleon Bonaparte? The news from France—but stay,” he added. “Wait! I had forgotten. Come, we shall see about it!”

With the sudden enthusiasm of a boy he caught his young aide by the arm. They passed down the hall, out by the rear entrance and across the White House grounds to the brick stables which then stood at the rear.

Mr. Jefferson paid no attention to the sleek animals there which looked in greeting toward him. Instead, he passed in front of the series of stalls, and without excuse or explanation hurriedly began to climb the steep ladder which led to the floor above.

They stood at length in the upper apartment of the stable buildings. It was not a mow or feed loft, but rather a bird loft, devoted to the use of many pigeons. All about the eaves were arranged many boxes—nesting places, apparently, although none of the birds entered the long room, which seemed free of any occupancy.

Mr. Jefferson stood for a moment, eagerly scanning the rear of the tier of boxes. An exclamation broke from him. He hurried forward with a sudden gesture to a little flag which stood up, like the tilt of a fisherman on the ice, at the side of the box to which he pointed.

“Done!” said he.

He reached up to the box that he had indicated, pressed down a little catch, opened the back and looked in. Again an exclamation escaped him.

He put in a hand gingerly, and, tenderly imprisoning the bird which he found therein, drew it forth, his long fingers eagerly lifting its wings, examining its legs.

It could easily be seen that the box was arranged with a door on a tripping-latch, so that the pigeon, on entering, would imprison itself. It was apparent that Mr. Jefferson was depending upon the natural homing instinct of his carrier pigeons to bring him some message.

“I told them,” said he, “to loose a half-dozen birds at once. See! See!”

He unrolled from one leg of the prisoner a little cylinder of paper covered with tinfoil and tied firmly in its place. It was the first wireless message ever received at Washington. None since that time has carried a greater burden. It announced a transaction in empires.

Mr. Jefferson read, and spread out the paper that his aide might read:

General Bonaparte signed May 2—Fifteen millions—Rejoice!

In no wider phrasing than that came the news of the great Louisiana Purchase, by virtue of which this republic—whether by chance, by result of greed warring with greed, or through the providence of Almighty God, who shall say?—gained the great part of that vast and incalculably valuable realm which now reaches from the Mississippi to the Pacific Ocean. What wealth that great empire held no man had dreamed, nor can any dream today; for, a century later, its story is but beginning.

Century on century, that story still will be in the making. A home for millions of the earth’s best, a hope for millions of the earth’s less fortunate—granary of the peoples, mint of the nations, birthplace and growing-ground of the new race of men—who could have measured that land then—who could measure it today?

And its title passed, announced in seven words, carried by a bird wandering in the air, but bound unerringly to the ark of God’s covenant with man—the covenant of hope and progress.

Thomas Jefferson stretched out his right hand to meet that of Meriwether Lewis. Their clasp was strong and firm. The eye of each man blazed.

“Mr. Jefferson,” said Meriwether Lewis, “this is your monument!”

“And yours,” was the reply. “Come, then!”

He turned to the stairs, the pigeon still fondled in his arm. That bird—a white one, with slate-blue tips to its wings—never needed to labor again, for Mr. Jefferson kept it during its life, and long after its death.

“Come now,” he said, as he began to descend the ladder once more. “The bird was loosed yesterday, late in the afternoon. It has done its sixty or seventy-five miles an hour for us, counting out time lost in the night. The ship which brought this news docked at New York yesterday. The post stages carrying it hither cannot arrive before tomorrow. This is news—the greatest of news that we could have. Yesterday—this morning—we were a young and weak republic. Tomorrow we shall be one of the powers of the world. Go, now—you have been held in leash long enough, and the time to start has come. Tomorrow you will go westward, to that new country which now is ours!”

Neither said anything further until once again they were in the President’s little office-room; but Thomas Jefferson’s eye now was afire.

“I count this the most important enterprise in which this country ever was engaged,” he exclaimed, his hands clenched. “Yonder lies the greater America—you lead an army which will make far wider conquest than all our troops won in the Revolutionary War. The stake is larger than any man may dream. I see it—you see it—in time others also will see. Tell me, my son, tell me once more! Come what may, no matter what power shall move you, you will be faithful in this great trust? If I have your promise, then I shall rest assured.”

Thomas Jefferson, more agitated than any man had ever seen him, dropped half trembling into his chair, his shaggy red mane about his forehead, his long fingers shaking.

“I give you my promise, Mr. Jefferson,” said Meriwether Lewis.

CHAPTER V

THE PELL-MELL AND SOME CONSEQUENCES

It was late in the afternoon when the secretary to the President looked up from the crowded desk. “Mr. Jefferson,” ventured he, “you will pardon me——”

“Yes, my son?”

“It grows late. You know that today the British minister, Mr. Merry, comes to meet the President for the first time formally—at dinner. Señor Yrujo also—and their ladies, of course. Mr. Burr and Mr. Merry seem already acquainted. I met them riding this morning.”

“Hand and glove, then, so soon? What do you make of it? I have a guess that those three—Burr, Merry, Yrujo—mean this administration no special good. And yet it was I myself who kept our Spanish friend from getting his passports back to Madrid. I did that only because of his marriage to the daughter of my friend, Governor McKean, of Pennsylvania. But what were you saying now?”

“I thought perhaps I should go to my rooms to change for dinner. You see that I am still in riding-clothes.”

“And what of that, my son? I am in something worse!”

The young man stood and looked at his chief for a moment. He realized the scarce dignified figure that the President presented in his long coat, his soiled waistcoat, his stained trousers, and his woolen stockings—not to mention the unspeakable slippers, down at the heel, into which he had thrust his feet that morning when he came into the office.

“You think I will not do?” Mr. Jefferson smiled at him frankly. “I am not so free from wisdom, perhaps, after all. Let this British minister see us as we are, for men and women, and not dummies for finery. Moreover, I remember well enough how we cooled our heels there in London, Mr. Madison and myself. They showed us little courtesy enough. Well, they shall have no complaint here. We will treat them as well as we do the others, as well as the electors who sent us here!”

Meriwether Lewis allowed himself a smile.

“Go,” added his chief. “Garb yourself as I would have you—in your best. But there will be no precedence at table this evening—remember that! Let them take seats pell-mell—the devil take the hindmost—a fair field for every one, and favor to none! Seat them as nearly as possible as they should not be seated—and leave the rest to me. All these—indeed, all history and all the records—shall take me precisely as I am!”

An hour later Meriwether Lewis stood before his narrow mirror, well and handsomely clad, as was seeming with one of his family and his place—a tall and superb figure of young manhood, as proper a man as ever stood in buckled shoes in any country of the world.

The guests came presently, folk of many sorts. With Mr. Jefferson as President, the democracy of America had invaded Washington, taking more and more liberties, and it had many representatives on hand. With these came persons of rank of this and other lands, dignitaries, diplomats, officials, ministers of foreign powers. Carriages with outriders came trundling over the partially paved roads of the crude capital city. Footmen opened doors to gentlemen and ladies in full dress, wearing insignia of honor, displaying gems, orders, decorations, jewels, all the brilliant costumes of the European courts.

They came up the path to the door of the mansion where, to their amazement, they were met only by Mr. Jefferson’s bowing old darky Ben, who ushered them in, helped them with their wraps and asked them to make themselves at home. And only old Henry, Mr. Jefferson’s butler, bowed them in as they passed from the simple entrance hall into the anteroom which lay between the hall and the large dining-saloon.

The numbers increased rapidly. What at first was a general gathering became a crowd, then a mob. There was no assigned place for any, no presentation of one stranger to another. Friends could not find friends. Mutterings arose; crowding and jostling was not absent; here and there an angry word might have been heard. The policy of pell-mell was not working itself out in any happy social fashion.

Matters were at their worst when suddenly from his own apartments appeared the tall and well-composed figure of Mr. Jefferson’s young secretary, social captain of matters at the Executive Mansion, and personal aide to the President. His quick glance caught sight of the gathering line of carriages; a second glance estimated the plight of those now jammed into the anteroom like so many cattle and evidently in distress.

In a distant corner of the room, crowded into some sort of refuge back of a huge davenport, stood a small group of persons in full official dress—a group evidently ill at ease and no longer in good humor. Meriwether Lewis made his way thither rapidly as he might.

“It is Mr. Minister Merry,” said he, “and Mme. Merry.” He bowed deeply. “Señor and Señora Yrujo, I bring you the respects of Mr. Jefferson. He will be with us presently.”

“I had believed, sir—I understood,” began Merry explosively, “that we were to meet here the President of the United States. Where, then, is his suite?”

“We have no suite, sir. I represent the President as his aide.”

“My word!” murmured the mystified dignitary, turning to his lady, who stood, the picture of mute anger, at his side, the very aigrets on her ginger-colored hair trembling in her anger.

“‘Mistah Thomas Jeffahson!’ was his sole announcement”

They turned once more to the Spanish minister, who, with his American wife, stood at hand. There ensued such shrugs and liftings of eyebrows as left full evidence of a discontent that none of the four attempted to suppress.

Meriwether Lewis saw and noted, but seemed not to note. Mr. Merry suddenly remembered him now as the young man he had encountered that morning, and turned with an attempt at greater civility.

“You will understand, sir, that I came supposing I was to appear in my official capacity. We were invited upon that basis. There was to have been a dinner, was there not—or am I mistaken of the hour? Is it not four in the afternoon?”

“You were quite right, Mr. Minister,” said Meriwether Lewis. “You shall, of course, be presented to the President so soon as it shall please his convenience to join us. He has been occupied in many duties, and begs you will excuse him.”

The dignity and courtesy of the young man were not without effect. Silence, at least, was his reward from the perturbed and indignant group of diplomats penned behind the davenport.

Matters stood thus when, at a time when scarce another soul could have been crowded into the anteroom, old Henry flung open the folding doors which he had closed.

“Mistah Thomas Jeffahson!” was his sole announcement.

There appeared in the doorway the tall, slightly stooped figure of the President of the United States, one of the greatest men of his own or of any day. He stood, gravely unconscious of himself, tranquilly looking out upon his gathered guests. He was still clad in the garb which he had worn throughout the day—the same in which he had climbed to the pigeon loft—the same in which he had labored during all these long hours.

His coat was still brown and wrinkled, hanging loosely on his long frame. His trousers were the stained velveteens of the morning; his waistcoat the same faded red; his hose the slack woolen pair that he had worn throughout the day. And upon his feet—horror of horrors!—he wore still his slippers, the same old carpet slippers, down at the heel, which had afforded him ease as he sat at his desk.

As Thomas Jefferson stood, he overtopped the men about him head and shoulders in physical stature, as he did in every other measure of a man.

Innocent or unconscious of his own appearance, his eye seeking for knowledge of his guests, he caught sight of the group behind the davenport. Rapidly making his way thither, he greeted each, offering his hand to be shaken, bowing deeply to the ladies; and so quickly passed on, leaving them almost as much mystified as before. Only Yrujo, the Spanish Minister, looked after him with any trace of recognition, for at this moment Meriwether Lewis was away, among other guests.

An instant later the curtained folding doors which separated the anteroom from the dining-saloon were thrown open. Mr. Jefferson passed in and took his place at the head of the table, casting not a single look toward any who were to join him there. There was no announcement; there was no pas, no precedence, no reserved place for any man, no announcement for any lady or gentleman, no servant to escort any to a place at table!

It had been worse, far worse, this extraordinary scene, had it not been for the swiftness and tact of the young man to whom so much was entrusted. Meriwether Lewis hastened here and there, weeding out those who could not convince him that they were invited to dine. He separated as best he might the socially elect from those not yet socially arrived, until at length he stood, almost the sole barrier against those who still crowded forward.

Here he was met once more by the party from behind the davenport.

“Tell me,” demanded Mr. Merry, who—seeing that no other escort offered for her—had given his angry lady his own arm, “tell me, sir, where is the President? To whom shall I present the greetings of his British Majesty?”

“Yonder is the President of the United States, sir,” said Meriwether Lewis. “He with whom you shook hands is the President. He stands at the head of his table, and you are welcome if you like. He asks you to enter.”

Merry turned to his wife, and from her to the wife of the Spanish minister.

“Impossible!” said he. “I do not understand—it cannot be! That man—that extraordinary man in breeches and slippers yonder—it cannot be he asks us to sit at table with him! He cannot be the President of the United States!”

“None the less he is, Mr. Merry!” the secretary assured him.

“Good Heavens!” said the minister from Great Britain, as he passed on, half dazed.

By this time there remained but few seats, none at all toward the head of the table or about its middle portion. Toward the end of the room, farthest from the official host, a few chairs still stood vacant, because they had not been sought for. Thither, with faltering footsteps, ere even these opportunities should pass, stepped the minister from Great Britain and the minister from Spain, their ladies with them—none offering escort.

Well disposed to smile at his chief’s audacious overturning of all social usage, yet not unadvised of the seriousness of all this, Meriwether Lewis handed the distinguished guests to their seats as best he might; and then left them as best he might.

At that time there were not six vacant places remaining at the long table. No one seemed to know how many had been invited to the banquet, or how many were expected—no one in the company seemed to know anyone else. It was indeed a pell-mell affair.

For once the American democracy was triumphant. But the leader of that democracy, the head of the new administration, the host at this official banquet, the President of the United States, Thomas Jefferson, stood quietly, serenely, looking out over the long table, entirely unconcerned with what he saw. If there was trouble, it was for others, not for him.

Those at table presently began to seat themselves, following the host’s example. It was at this moment that the young captain of affairs turned once more toward the great doors, with the intention of closing them. Old Henry was having his own battles with the remaining audience in the anteroom, as he now brought forward two belated guests. Old Henry, be sure, knew them both; and—as a look at the sudden change of his features might have told—so did Mr. Jefferson’s aide.

They advanced with dignity, these two—one a gentleman, not tall, but elegant, exquisitely clad in full-dress costume; a man whom you would have turned to examine a second time had you met him anywhere. Upon his arm was a young woman, also beautifully costumed, smiling, graceful, entirely at her ease. Many present knew the two—Aaron Burr, Vice-President of the United States; his daughter, Theodosia Burr Alston.

Mr. Burr passed within the great doors, turned and bowed deeply to his host, distant as he was across the crowded room. His daughter curtsied, also deeply. Their entry was dramatic. Then they stood, a somewhat stately picture, waiting for an instant while seemingly deciding their future course.

It was at this moment that Meriwether Lewis approached them, beckoning. He led them toward the few seats that still remained unoccupied, placed them near to the official visitors, whose ruffled feathers still remained unsmoothed, and then stood by them for an instant, intending to take his departure.

There was one remaining chair. It was at the side of Theodosia Alston. She herself looked up at him eagerly, and patted it with her hand. He seated himself at her side.

Thus at last was filled the pell-mell table of Mr. Thomas Jefferson. To this day no man knows whether all present had been invited, or whether all invited had opportunity to be present.

There were those—his enemies, men of the opposing political party, for the most part—who spoke ill of Mr. Jefferson, and charged that he showed hypocrisy in his pretense of democratic simplicity in official life. Yet others, even among his friends, criticised him severely for the affair of this afternoon—July 4, in the year of 1803. They said that his manners were inconsistent with the dignity of the highest official of this republic.

If any of this comment injured or offended Mr. Jefferson, he never gave a sign. He was born a gentleman as much as any, and was as fully acquainted with good social usage as any man of his day. His life had been spent in the best surroundings of his own country, and at the most polished courts of the Old World. To accuse him of ignorance or boorishness would have been absurd.

The fact was that his own resourceful brain had formed a definite plan. He wished to convey a certain rebuke—and with deadly accuracy he did convey that rebuke. It was at no enduring cost to his own fame.

If the pell-mell dinner was at first a thing inchoate, awkward, impossible, criticism halted when the actual service at table began. The chef at the White House had been brought to this country by Mr. Jefferson from Paris, and no better was known on this side the water.

So devoted was Mr. Jefferson known to be to the French style of cooking that no less a man than Patrick Henry, on the stump, had accused him of having “deserted the victuals of his country.” His table was set and served with as much elegance as any at any foreign court. At the door of the city of Washington, even in the summer season, there was the best market of the world. As submitted by his chef de cuisine, Mr. Jefferson’s menu was of no pell-mell sort. If we may credit it as handed down, it ran thus, in the old French of that day:

Huîtres de Shinnecock, Saulce Tempête
Olives du Luc
Othon Mariné à l’Huile Vierge
Amandes et Cerneaux Salés
Pot au Feu du Roy “Henriot”
Croustade Mogador
Truite de Ruisselet, Belle Meunière
Pommes en Fines Herbes
Fricot de tendre Poulet en Coquemare, au Vieux Chanturgne
Tourte de Ris de Veau, Financière
Baron de Pré Salé aux Primeurs
Sorbet des Comtes de Champagne
Dinde Sauvage flambée devant les Sarments de Vigne,
flanquée d’Ortolans
Aspic de Foie Gras Lucullus
Salade des Nymphes à la Lamballe
Asperges Chauldes enduites de Sauce
Lombardienne
Dessert et Fruits de la Réunion
Fromage de Bique
Café Arabe
Larmes de Juliette

Whatever the wines served at the Executive Mansion may have been at later dates, those owned and used by President Jefferson were the best the world produced—vintages of rarity, selected as could have been done only by one of the nicest taste. Rumor had it that none other than Señor Yrujo, minister from Spain, recipient of many casks of the best vintages of his country that he might entertain with proper dignity, had seen fit to do a bit of merchandizing on his own account, to the end that Mr. Jefferson became the owner of certain of these rare casks.

In any event, the Spanish minister now showed no fear of the wines which came his way. Nor, for that matter, did the minister from Great Britain, nor the spouses of these twain. Mr. Burr, seated with their party, himself somewhat abstemious, none the less could not refrain from an interrogatory glance as he saw Merry halt a certain bottle or two at his own plate.

“Upon my word!” said the sturdy Briton, turning to him. “Such wine I never have tasted! I did not expect it here—served by a host in breeches and slippers! But never mind—it is wonderful!”

“There may be many things here you have not expected, your excellency,” said Mr. Burr.

The Vice-President favored the little party at his left with one of his brilliant smiles. He had that strange faculty, admitted even by his enemies, of making another speak freely what he wished to hear, himself reticent the while.

The face of the English dignitary clouded again.

“I wish I could approve all else as I do the wine and the food; but I cannot understand. Here we sit, after being crowded like herrings in a box—myself, my lady here, and these others. Is this the placing his Majesty’s minister should have at the President’s table? Is this what we should demand here?”

“The indignity is to all of us alike,” smiled Burr. “Mr. Jefferson believes in a great human democracy. I myself regret to state that I cannot quite go with him to the lengths he fancies.”

“I shall report the entire matter to his Majesty’s government!” said Mr. Merry, again helping himself to wine. “To be received here by a man in his stable clothes—so to meet us when we come formally to pay our call to this government—that is an insult! I fancy it to be a direct and intentional one.”

“Insult is small word for it,” broke in the irate Spanish minister, still further down the table. “I certainly shall report to my own government what has happened here—of that be very sure!”

“Give me leave, sir,” continued Merry. “This republic, what is it? What has it done?”

“I ask as much,” affirmed Yrujo. “A small war with your own country, Great Britain, sir—in which only your generosity held you back—that is all this country can claim. In the South, my people own the mouth of the great river—we own Florida—we own the province of Texas—all the Southern and Western lands. True, Louis XV—to save it from Great Britain, perhaps, sir”—he bowed to the British minister—“originally ceded Louisiana to our crown. True, also, my sovereign has ceded it again to France. But Spain still rules the South, just as Britain rules the middle country out beyond; and what is left? I snap my fingers at this republic!”

Señor Yrujo helped himself to a brimming glass of his own wine.

“I say that Western country is ours,” he still insisted, warming to his oration now. “Suppose, under coercion, our sovereign did cede it to Napoleon, who claims it now? Does Spain not govern it still? Do we not collect the revenues? Is not the whole system of law enforced under the flag of Spain, all along the great river yonder? Possession, exploration, discovery—those are the rights under which territories are annexed. France has the title to that West, but we hold the land itself—we administer it. And never shall it go from under our flag, unless it be through the act of stronger foreign powers. Spain will fight!”

“Will Spain fight?” demanded a deep and melodious voice. It was that of Aaron Burr who spoke now, half in query, half in challenge. “Would Spain fight—and would Great Britain, if need were and the time came?”

He spoke to men heated with wine, smarting under social indignity, men owning a hurt personal vanity.

“Our past is proof enough,” said Merry proudly.

Yrujo needed no more than a shrug.

“Divide and conquer?” Burr went on, looking at them, and raising an eyebrow in query.

They nodded, both of them. Burr looked around. His daughter and Meriwether Lewis were oblivious. He saw the young man’s eyes, somber, deep, fixed on hers; saw her gazing in return, silent, troubled, fascinated.

One presumes that it was at this moment—at the instant when Aaron Burr, seeing the power his daughter held over young Meriwether Lewis, and the interest he held for her, turned to these foreign officials at his left—at that moment, let us say, the Burr conspiracy began.

“Divide that unknown country, the West, and how long would this republic endure?” said Aaron Burr.

The noise of the banquet now rose about them. Voices blended with laughter; the wine was passing; awkwardness and restraint had given way to good cheer. In a manner they were safe to talk.

“What?” demanded Aaron Burr once more. “Could a few francs transfer all that marvelous country from Spain to France? That were absurd. By what possible title could that region yonder ever come to this republic? It is still more absurd to think that. Civilization does not leap across great river valleys. It follows them. You have said rightly, Señor Yrujo. To my mind Great Britain has laid fair grasp upon the upper West; and Spain holds the lower West, with which our statesmen have interested themselves of late. By all the rights of conquest, discovery, and use, gentlemen, Great Britain’s traders have gained for her flag all the territory which they have reached on their Western trading routes. I go with you that far.”

Merry turned upon Burr suddenly a deep and estimating eye.

“I begin to see,” said he, “that you are open to conviction, Mr. Burr.”

“Not open to conviction,” said Aaron Burr, “but already convinced!”

“What do you mean, Colonel Burr?” The Englishman bent toward him, frowning in intentness.

“I mean that perhaps I have something to say to you two gentlemen of the foreign courts which will be of interest and importance to you.”

“Where, then, could we meet after this is over?”

The minister from Great Britain surely was not beyond close and ready estimate of events.

“At my residence, after this dinner,” rejoined Aaron Burr instantly. His eye did not waver as it looked into the other’s, but blazed with all the fire of his own soul. “Across the Alleghanies, along the great river, there is a land waiting, ready for strong men. Are we such men, gentlemen? And can we talk freely as such among ourselves?”

Their conversation, carried on in ordinary tones, had not been marked by any. Their brows, drawn sharp in sudden resolution, their glance each to the other, made their ratification of this extraordinary speech.

They had no time for anything further at the moment. A sound came to their ears, and they turned toward the head of the long table, where the tall figure of the President of the United States was rising in his place. The dinner had drawn toward its close.

Mr. Jefferson now stood, gravely regarding those before him, his keen eye losing no detail of the strange scene. He knew the place of every man and woman at that board—perhaps this was his own revenge for a reception he once had had at London. But at last he spoke.

“I have news for you all, my friends, today; news which applies not to one man nor to one woman of this or any country more than to another, but news which belongs to all the world.”

He paused for a moment, and held up in his right hand a tiny scrap of paper, thin, crumpled. None could guess what significance it had.

“May God in His own power punish me,” said he, solemnly, “if ever I halt or falter in what I believe to be my duty! I place no bounds to the future of this republic—based, as I firmly believe it to be, upon the enduring principle of the just and even rights of mankind.

“Our country to the West always has inspired me with the extremest curiosity, and animated me with the loftiest hopes. Since the year 1683 that great river, the Missouri, emptying into the Mississippi, has been looked upon as the way to the Pacific Ocean. One hundred years from that time—that is to say, in 1783—I myself asked one of the ablest of our Westerners, none other than General George Rogers Clark, to undertake a journey of exploration up that Western river. It was not done. Three years later, when accredited to the court at Paris, I met a Mr. Ledyard, an American then abroad. I desired him to cross Russia, Siberia and the Pacific Ocean, and then to journey eastward over the Stony Mountains, to find, if he could, the head of that Missouri River of which we know so little. But Ledyard failed, for reasons best known, perhaps, to the monarch of Russia.

“Later than that, and long before I had the power which now is mine to order matters of the sort, the Boston sailor, Captain Grey, in 1792, as you know, found the mouth of the Columbia River. The very next year after that I engaged the scientist Michaux to explore in that direction; but he likewise failed.

“All my life I have seen what great opportunities would be ours if once we owned that vast country yonder. As a private citizen I planned that we should at least explore it—always it was my dream to know more of it. It being clear to me that the future of our republic lay not to the east, but to the west of the Alleghanies—indeed, to the west of the Mississippi itself—never have I relinquished the ambition that I have so long entertained. Never have I forgotten the dream which animated me even in my younger years. I am here now to announce to you, so that you may announce to all the world, certain news which I have here regarding that Western region, which never was ours, but which I always wished might be ours.”

With the middle finger of his left hand the President flicked at the mysterious bit of crumpled paper still held aloft in his right. There was silence all down the long table.

“More than a year ago I once more chose a messenger into that country,” went on Thomas Jefferson. “I chose a leader of exploration, of discovery. I chose him because I knew I could trust in his loyalty, in his judgment, in his courage. Well and thoroughly he has fitted himself for that leadership.”

He turned his gaze contemplatively down the long table. The gaze of many of his guests followed his, still wonderingly, as he went on.

“My leader for this expedition into the West, which I planned more than a year ago, is here with you now. Captain Meriwether Lewis, will you stand up for a moment? I wish to present you to these, my friends.”

With wonder, doubt, and, indeed, a certain perturbation at the President’s unexpected summons, the young Virginian rose to his feet and stood gazing questioningly at his chief.

“I know your modesty as well as your courage, Captain Lewis,” smiled Mr. Jefferson. “You may be seated, sir, since now we all know you.

“Let me say to you others that I have had opportunity of knowing my captain of this magnificent adventure. In years he is not yet thirty, but he is and always was a leader, mature, wise, calm, and resolved. Of courage undaunted, possessing a firmness and perseverance of purpose which nothing but impossibilities can divert from its direction; careful as a father of those committed to his charge, and yet steady in the maintenance of order and discipline; intimate with the Indian character, customs, and principles; habituated to the hunting life; guarded by exact observation of the vegetables and animals of his own country against duplication of objects already possessed; honest, disinterested, liberal; of sound understanding, and of a fidelity to truth so scrupulous that whatever he shall report will be as certain as if seen by ourselves—with all these qualifications, I say, as if selected and implanted by nature in one body, for one purpose, I could have no hesitation in confiding this enterprise—the most cherished enterprise of my administration—to him whom now you have seen here before you.”

The President bowed deeply to the young man, who had modestly resumed his place. Then, for just a moment, Mr. Jefferson stood silent, absorbed, rapt, carried away by his own vision.

“And now for my news,” he said at length. “Here you have it!”

He waved once more the little scrap of paper.

“I had this news from New York this morning. It was despatched yesterday evening. Tomorrow it will reach all the world. The mails will bring it to you; but news like this could not wait for the mails. No horse could bring it fast enough. It was brought by a dove—the dove of peace, I trust. Let me explain briefly; what my news concerns.

“As you know, that new country yonder belonged at first to any one who might find it—to England, if she could penetrate it first; to Spain, if she were first to put her flag upon it; to Russia, if first she conquered it from the far Northwest. But none of these three ever completed acquisition by those means under which nations take title to the new territories of the world. Louisiana, as we term it, has been unclaimed, unknown, unowned—indeed, virgin territory so far as definite title was concerned.

“In the north, such title as might be was conveyed to Great Britain by France after the latter power was conquered at Quebec. The lower regions France—supposing that she owned them—conveyed, through her monarch, the fifteenth Louis, to Spain. Again, in the policy of nations, Spain sold them to France once more, in a time of need. France owned the territory then, or had the title, though Spain still was in possession. It lay still unoccupied, still contested—until but now.

“My friends, I give you news! On the 2d of May last, Napoleon Bonaparte, First Consul of France, sold to this republic, the United States of America, all of Louisiana, whatever it may be, from the Mississippi to the Pacific! Here are seven words which carry an empire with them—the empire of humanity—a land in which democracy, humanity, shall expand and grow forever! This is my news:

“General Bonaparte signed May 2—Fifteen millions—Rejoice!”

A deep sigh rose as if in unison all along the table. The event was too large for instant grasping. There was no applause at first. Some—many—did not understand. Not so certain others.

The minister from Great Britain, the minister from Spain, Aaron Burr and a few other men acquainted with great affairs, prominent in public life, turned and looked at the President’s tall figure at the head of the table, and then at that of the silent young man whom Mr. Jefferson had publicly honored.

The face of Aaron Burr grew pale. The faces of the foreign ministers showed sudden consternation. Theodosia Alston turned, her own eyes fixed upon the grave face of the young man sitting at her side, who made no sign of the strong emotion possessing his soul.

“I have given you my news,” the voice of Mr. Jefferson went on, rising now, vibrant and masterful, fearless, compelling. “There you have it, this little message, large as any ever written in the world. The title to that Western land has passed to us. We set our seal on it now! Cost what it may, we shall hold it so long as we can claim a flag or a country on this continent. The price is nothing. Fifteen millions means no more than the wine or water left in a half-empty glass. It might be fifty times fifteen millions, and yet not be one fiftieth enough. These things are not to be measured by known signs or marks of values. It is not in human comprehension to know what we have gained. Hence we have no human right to boast. The hand of Almighty God is in this affair! It was He who guided the fingers of those who signed this cession to the United States of America!

“My friends, now I am content. What remains is but detail. Our duty is plain. Between us and this purpose, I shall hold all intervention of whatever nature, friendly or hostile, as no more than details to be ignored. Yonder lies and has always lain the scene of my own ambition. Always I have hungered to know that vast new land beyond all maps, as yet ignorant of human metes and bounds. Always I have coveted it for this republic, knowing that without room for expansion we must fail, that with it we shall triumph to the edge of our ultimate dream of human destiny—triumph and flourish while governments shall remain known among men.

“I offer that faith to the eyes of the world today and of all the days to come, believing in every humility that God guided the hands of those who signed this title deed of a great empire, and that God long ago implanted in my unworthy bosom the strong belief that one day this might be which now has come to pass. It is no time for boasting, no time for any man to claim glory or credit for himself. We are in the face of events so vast that their margins leave our vision. We cannot see to the end of all this, cannot read all the purpose of it, because we are but men.

“Gentlemen, you Americans, men of heart, of courage! You also, ladies, who care most for gentlemen of heart and courage, whose pulses beat even with our own to the stimulus of our deeds! I say to you all that I would gladly lay aside my office and its honors—I would lay aside all my other ambitions, all my desires to be remembered as a man who at least endeavored to think and to act—if thereby I might lead this expedition of our volunteers for the discovery of the West. That may not be. These slackened sinews, these shrinking limbs, these fading eyes, do not suffice for such a task. It is in my heart, yes; but the heart for this magnificent adventure needs stronger pulses than my own.

“My heart—did I say that I had need of another, a better? Did I say that I had need of eyes and brains, of thews and sinews, of calm nerves and steady blood? Did I say I had need of courage and resolution—all these things combined? I have them! That Providence who has given us all needful instruments and agents to this point in our career as a republic has given us yet another, and the last one needful. Tomorrow my friend, my special messenger, Captain Meriwether Lewis, starts with his expedition. He will explore the country between the Missouri and the Pacific—the country of my dream and his. It is no longer the country of any other power—it is our own!

“Gentlemen, I give you a toast—Captain Meriwether Lewis!”

CHAPTER VI

THE GREAT CONSPIRACY

The simplicity dinner was at an end. Released by the President’s withdrawal, the crowd—it could be called little else—broke from the table. The anteroom filled with struggling guests, excited, gesticulating, exclaiming.

Meriwether Lewis, anxious only to escape from his social duties that he might rejoin his chief, felt a soft hand on his arm, and turned. Theodosia Alston was looking up at him.

“Do you forget your friends so soon? I must add my good wishes. It was splendid, what Mr. Jefferson said—and it was true!”

“I wish it might be true,” said the young man. “I wish I might be worthy of such a man.”

“You are worthy of us all,” returned Theodosia.

“People are kind to the condemned,” said he sententiously.

At the door they were once more close to the others of the diplomatic party who had sat in company at table. The usual crush of those clamoring for their carriages had begun.

“My dear,” said Mr. Merry to his irate spouse, “I shall, if Mrs. Alston will permit, ask you to take her up in your carriage with you to her home. I am to go with Mr Burr.”

The Spanish minister made similar excuse to his own wife. Thus Theodosia Alston left Meriwether Lewis for the second time that day.

It was a late conference, the one held that night at the home of the Vice-President of the United States. Burr, cool, calculating, always in hand, sat and weighed many matters well before he committed himself beyond repair. His keen mind saw now, and seized the advantage for which he waited.

“You say right, gentlemen, both of you,” he began, leaning forward. “I would not blame you if you never went to the White House again.”

“Should I ever do so again,” blazed the Spanish minister, “I will take my own wife in to dinner on my own arm, and place her at the head of the table, where she belongs! It was an insult to my sovereign that we received today.”

“As much myself, sir!” said Mr. Merry, his brows contracted, his face flushed still with anger. “I shall know how to answer the next invitation which comes from Mr Jefferson.[1] I shall ask him whether or not there is to be any repetition of this sort of thing.”

“So much for the rule of the plain people!” said Burr, as he laid the tips of his fingers together contemplatively.

“Yet, Colonel Burr, you are Vice-President under this administration!” broke out Merry.

“One must use agencies and opportunities as they offer. My dear sir, perhaps you do not fully know me. I took this election only in order to be close to the seat of affairs. I am no such rabid adherent to democracy as some may think. You would be startled if I told you that I regard this republic as no more than an experiment. This is a large continent. Take all that Western country—Louisiana—it ought not to be called attached to the United States. At this very moment it is half in rebellion against its constituted authorities. More than once it has been ready to take arms, to march against New Orleans, and to set up a new country of its own. It is geography which fights for monarchy, against democracy, on this continent—in spite of what all these people say.”

“Sir,” said the British minister, “you have been a student of affairs.”

“And why not? I claim intelligence, good education, association with men of thought. My reason tells me that conquest is in the blood of those men who settled in the Mississippi Valley. They went into Kentucky and Tennessee for the sake of conquest. They are restless, unattached, dissatisfied—ready for any great move. No move can be made which will seem too great or too daring for them. Now let me confess somewhat to you—for I know that you will respect my confidence, if you go no further with me than you have gone tonight. I have bought large acreages of land in the lower Louisiana country, ostensibly for colonization purposes. I do purpose colonization there—but not under the flag of this republic!”

Silence greeted his remark. The others sat for a moment, merely gazing at him, half stunned, remembering only that he was Jefferson’s colleague, Vice-President of the United States.

“You cannot force geography,” resumed Burr, in tones as even as if he had but spoken of bartering for a house and lot. “Lower Louisiana and Mexico together—yes, perhaps. Florida, with us—yes, perhaps. Indeed, territories larger perhaps than any of us dare dream at present, once our new flag is raised. All that I purpose is to do what has been discussed a thousand times before—to unite in a natural alliance of self-interest those men who are sundered in every way of interest and alliance from the government on this side of the Alleghanies. Would you call that treason—conspiracy? I dislike the words. I call it rather a plan based upon sound reason and common sense; and I hold that its success is virtually assured.”

“You will explain more fully, Colonel Burr?” Mr. Merry was intent now on all that he heard.

“I march only with destiny, yonder—do you not see, gentlemen?” Burr resumed. “Those who march with me are in alliance with natural events. This republic is split now, at this very moment. It must follow its own fate. If the flag of Spain were west of it on the south, and the flag of Britain west of it on the north, why, then we should have the natural end of the republic’s expansion. With those great powers in alliance at its back, with the fleets of England on the seas, at the mouth of the great river—owning the lands in Canada on the north—it would be a simple thing, I say, to crush this republic against the wall of the Appalachians, or to drive it once more into the sea.”

They were silent alike before the enormousness and the enormity of this. Reading their thoughts, Burr raised his hand in deprecation.

“I know what is in your minds, gentlemen. The one thing which troubles you is this—the man who speaks to you is Vice-President of the United States. I say what in your country would be treason. In this country I maintain it is not yet treason, because thus far we are in an experiment. We have no actual reign of reason and of law; and he marches to success who marches with natural laws and along the definite trend of existing circumstances and conditions.”

“What you say, Mr. Burr,” began Merry gravely, “assuredly has the merit of audacity. And I see that you have given it thought.”

“I interest you, gentlemen! You can go with me only if it be to your interest and to that of your countries to join with me in these plans. They have gone far forward—let me tell you that. I know my men from St. Louis to New Orleans—I know my leaders—I know that population. If this be treason, as Mr. Patrick Henry said, let us make the most of it. At least it is the intention of Aaron Burr. I stake upon it all my fortune, my life, the happiness of my family. Do you think I am sincere?”

Merry sat engaged in thought. He could see vast movements in the game of nations thus suddenly shown before him on the diplomatic board. And on his part it is to be said that he was there to represent the interests of his own government alone.

In the same even tones, Burr resumed his astonishing statements.

“My son-in-law, Mr. Alston, of South Carolina—a very wealthy planter of that State—is in full accord with all my plans. My own resources have been pledged to their utmost, and he has been so good as to add largely from his own. I admit to you that I sought alliance with him deliberately when he asked my daughter’s hand. He is an ambitious man, and perhaps he saw his way to the fulfillment of certain personal ambitions. He has contributed fifty thousand dollars to my cause. He will have a place of honor and profit in the new government which will be formed yonder in the Mississippi Valley.”

“So, then,” began Yrujo, “the financing is somewhat forward! But fifty thousand is only a drop.”

“We may as well be plain,” rejoined Burr. “Time is short—you know that it is short. We all heard what Mr. Jefferson said—we know that if we are to take action it must be at once. That expedition must not succeed! If that wedge be driven through to the Pacific—and who can say what that young Virginian may do?—your two countries will be forever separated on this continent by one which will wage successful war on both. Swift action is my only hope—and yours.”

“Your funds,” said Mr. Merry, “seem to me inadequate for the demands which will be made upon them. You said fifty thousand?”

Burr nodded.

“I pledge you as much more—on one condition that I shall name.”

Burr turned from Mr. Merry to Señor Yrujo. The latter nodded.

“I undertake to contribute the same amount,” said the envoy of Spain, “but with no condition attached.”

The color deepened in the cheek of the great conspirator. His eye glittered a trifle more brilliantly.

“You named a certain condition, sir,” he said to Merry.

“Yes, one entirely obvious.”

“What is it, then, your excellency?” Burr inquired.

“You yourself have made it plain. The infernal ingenuity of yonder Corsican—curse his devilish brain!—has rolled a greater stone in our yard than could be placed there by any other human agency. We could not believe that Napoleon Bonaparte would part with Louisiana thus easily. No doubt he feared the British fleet at the mouth of the river—no doubt Spain was glad enough that our guns were not at New Orleans ere this. But, I say, he rolled that stone in our yard. If title to this Louisiana purchase is driven through to the Pacific—as Mr. Jefferson plans so boldly—the end is written now, Colonel Burr, to all your enterprises! Britain will be forced to content herself with what she can take on the north, and Spain eventually will hold nothing worth having on the south. By the Lord, General Bonaparte fights well—he knows how to sacrifice a pawn in order to checkmate a king!”

“Yes, your excellency,” said Burr, “I agree with you, but——”

“And now my condition. Follow me closely. I say if that wedge is driven home—if that expedition of Mr. Jefferson’s shall succeed—its success will rest on one factor. In short, there is a man at the head of that expedition who must fight with us and not against us, else my own interest in this matter lacks entirely. You know the man I have in mind.”

Burr nodded, his lips compressed.

“That young man, Colonel Burr, will go through! I know his kind. Believe me, if I know men, he is a strong man. Let that man come back from his expedition with the map of a million square miles of new American territory hanging at his belt, like a scalp torn from his foes—and there will be no chance left for Colonel Burr and his friends!”

“All that your excellency has said tallies entirely with our own beliefs,” rejoined Burr. “But what then? What is the condition?”

“Simply this—we must have Captain Lewis with us and not against us. I want that man! I must have him. That expedition must never proceed. It must be delayed, stopped. Money was raised twenty years ago in London to make this same sort of journey across the continent, but the plan fell through. Revive it now, and we English still may pull it off. But it will be too late if Captain Lewis goes forward now—too late for us—too late for you and your plan, Mr. Burr. I want that man! We must have him with us!”

Burr sat in silence for a time.

“You open up a singular train of thought for me, your excellency,” said he at length. “He does belong with us, that young Virginian!”

“You know him, then?” inquired the British minister. “That is to say, you know him well?”

“Perfectly. Why should I not? He nearly was my son-in-law. Egad! Give him two weeks more, and he might have been—he got the news of my daughter’s marriage just too late. It hit him hard. In truth, I doubt if he ever has recovered from it. They say he still takes it hard. Now, you ask me how to get that man, your excellency. There is perhaps one way in which it could be accomplished, and only one.”

“How, then?” inquired Merry.

“The way of a woman with a man may always be the answer in matters of that sort!” said Aaron Burr.

The three sat and looked each at the other for some time without comment.

“I find Colonel Burr’s brain active in all ways!” began Señor Yrujo dryly. “Now I confess that he goes somewhat in advance of mine.”

“Listen,” said Aaron Burr. “What Mr. Jefferson said of Captain Lewis is absolutely true—his will has never been known to relax or weaken. Once resolved, he cannot change—I will not say he does not, but that he cannot.”

“Then even the unusual weapon you suggest might not avail!” Mr. Merry’s smile was not altogether pleasant.

“Women would listen to him readily, I think,” remarked Yrujo.

“Gallant in his way, yes,” said Burr.

“Then what do you mean by saying something about the way of a woman with a man?”

“Only that it is the last remaining opportunity for us,” rejoined Aaron Burr. “The appeal to his senses—of course, we will set that aside. The appeal to his chivalry—that is better! The appeal to his ambition—that is less, but might be used. The appeal to his sympathy—the wish to be generous with the woman who has not been generous with him, for the reason that she could not be—here again you have another argument which we may claim as possible.”

“You reason well,” said Merry. “But while men are mortal, yonder, if I mistake not, is a gentleman.”

“Precisely,” said Burr. “If we ask him to resign his expedition we are asking him to alter all his loyalty to his chief—and he will not do that. Any appeal made to him must be to his honor or to his chivalry; otherwise it were worse than hopeless. He would no more be disloyal to my son-in-law, the lady’s husband—in case it came to that—than he would be disloyal to the orders of his chief.”

“Fie! Fie!” said Yrujo, serving himself with wine from a decanter on the table. “All men are mortal. I agree with your first proposition, Colonel Burr, that the safest argument with a man—with a young man especially, and such a young man—is a woman—and such a woman!”

“One thing is sure,” rejoined Burr, flushing. “That man will succeed unless some woman induces him to change—some woman, acting under an appeal to his chivalry or his sense of justice. His reasons must be honest to him. They must be honest to her alike.”

Burr added this last virtuously, and Mr. Merry bowed deeply in return.

“This is not only honorable of you, Colonel Burr, but logical.”

“That means some sort of sacrifice for him,” suggested Yrujo presently. “But some one is sacrificed in every great undertaking. We cannot count the loss of men when nations seek to extend their boundaries and enhance their power. Only the question is, at what sacrifice, through what appeal to his chivalry, can his assistance be carried to us?”

“We have left out of our accounting one factor,” said Burr after a time.

“What, then?”

“One factor, I repeat, we have overlooked,” said Burr. “That is the wit of a woman! I am purposing to send as our agent with him no other than my daughter, Mrs. Alston. There is no mind more brilliant, no heart more loyal, than hers—nor any soul more filled with ambition! She believes in her father absolutely—will use every resource of her own to upbuild her father’s ambitions.[2] Now, women have their own ways of accomplishing results. Suppose we leave it to my daughter to fashion her own campaign? There is nothing wrong in the relations of these two, but at table today I saw his look to her, and hers to him in reply. We are speaking in deep and sacred confidence here, gentlemen. So I say to you, ask no questions of me, and let me ask none of her. Let me only say to her: ‘My daughter, your father’s success, his life, his fortune—the life and fortune and success of your husband as well—depend upon one event, depend upon you and your ability to stop yonder expedition of Captain Meriwether Lewis into the Missouri country!’”

“When could we learn?” demanded the British minister.

“I cannot say how long a time it may take,” Burr replied. “I promise you that my daughter shall have a personal interview with Captain Lewis before he starts for the West.”

“But he starts at dawn!” smiled Minister Merry.

“Were it an hour earlier than that, I would promise it. But now, gentlemen, let us come to the main point. If we succeed, what then?”

The British minister was businesslike and definite.

“Fifty thousand dollars at once, out of a special fund in my control. Meantime I would write at once to my government and lay the matter before them.[3] We shall need a fleet at the south of the Mississippi River. That will cost money—it will require at least half a million dollars to assure any sort of success in plans so large as yours, Mr. Burr. But on the contingency that she stops him, I promise you that amount. Fifty thousand down—a half-million more when needed.”

The dark eye of Aaron Burr flashed.

“Then,” said he firmly, “success will meet our efforts—I guarantee it! I pledge all my personal fortune, my friends, my family, to the last member.”

“I am for my country,” said Mr. Merry simply. “It is plain to see that Napoleon sought to humble us by ceding that great region to this republic. He meant to build up in the New World another enemy to Great Britain. But if we can thwart him—if at the very start we can divide the forces which might later be allied against us—perhaps we may conquer a wider sphere of possession for ourselves on this rich continent. There is no better colonizing ground in all the world!”

“You understand my plan,” said Aaron Burr. “Reduced to the least common denominator, Meriwether Lewis and my daughter Theodosia have our fate in their hands.”

The others rose. The hour was past midnight. The secret conference had been a long one.

“He starts tomorrow—is that sure?” asked Merry.

“As the clock,” rejoined Burr. “She must see him before the breakfast hour.”

“My compliments, Colonel Burr. Good night!”

“Good night, sir,” added Yrujo. “It has been a strange day.”

“Secrecy, gentlemen, secrecy! I hope soon to have more news for you, and good news, too. Au revoir!”

Burr himself accompanied them to the door.

CHAPTER VII

COLONEL BURR AND HIS DAUGHTER

One instant Aaron Burr sat, his head dropped, revolving his plans. The next, he pulled the bell-cord and paced the floor until he had answer.

“Go at once to Mrs. Alston’s rooms, Charles,” said he to the servant. “Tell her to rise and come to me at once. Tell her not to wait. Do you hear?”

He still paced the floor until he heard a light frou-frou in the hall, a light knock at the door. His daughter entered, her eyes still full of sleep, her attire no more than a loose peignoir caught up and thrown above her night garments.

“What is it, father—are you ill?”

“Far from it, my child,” said he, turning with head erect. “I am alive, well, and happier than I have been for months—years. I need you—come, sit here and listen to me.”

He caught her to him with a swift, paternal embrace—he loved no mortal being as he did his daughter—then pushed her tenderly into the deep seat near by the lamp, while he continued pacing up and down the room, voluble and persuasive, full of his great idea.

The matters which he had but now discussed with the two foreign officials he placed before his daughter. He told her all—except the truth. And Aaron Burr knew how to gild falsehood itself until it seemed the truth.

“Now you have it, my dear,” said he. “You see, my ambition to found a country of my own, where a man may have a real ambition. This dirty village here is too narrow a field for talents like yours or mine. Let me tell you, Napoleon has played a great jest with Mr. Jefferson. There is nothing in the Constitution of the United States—I am lawyer enough to know that—which will make it possible for Congress to ratify the purchase of Louisiana. We cannot carve new States from that country—it is already settled by the subjects of another government. Hence the expedition of Mr. Lewis must fail—it must surely fall of its own weight. It is based upon an absurdity. Not even Mr. Jefferson can fly in the face of the supreme laws of the land.

“But as to the Mississippi Valley, matters are entirely different. There is no law against that country’s organizing for a better government. There is every natural reason for that. As these States on the East confederated in the cause against oppression, so can those yonder. There will be more opportunity for strong men there when that game is on the board—men like Captain Lewis, for instance. Should one ally one’s self with a foredoomed failure? Not at all. I prefer rather success—station, rank, power, money, for myself, if you please. With us—a million dollars for the founding of our new country. With him—for the undertaking of yonder impracticable and chimerical expedition, twenty-five hundred dollars! Which enterprise, think you, will win?

“But, on the other hand, if that expedition of Mr. Jefferson’s should succeed by virtue of accident, or of good leadership, all my plans must fail—that is plain. It comes, therefore, to this, Theo, and I may tell you plainly—Captain Lewis must be seen—he must be stopped—we must hold a conference with him. It would be useless for me to undertake to arrange all that. There is only one person who can save your father’s future—and that one, my daughter, is—you!”

He caught Theodosia’s look of surprise, her start, the swift flush on her cheek—and laughed lightly.

“Let me explain. Aaron Burr and all his family—all his friends—will reach swift advancement in yonder new government. Power, place—these are the things that strong men covet. That is what the game of politics means for strong men—that is why we fight so bitterly for office. I plan for myself some greater office than second fiddle in this tawdry republic along the Atlantic. I want the first place, and in a greater field! I will take my friends with me. I want men who can lead other men. I want men like Captain Lewis.”

“It seems that you value him more now than once you did.”

“Yes, that is true, Theo, that is true. I did not favor his suit for your hand at that time. Although he had a modest fortune in Virginia lands, he could not offer you the future assured by Mr. Alston. I was rejoiced—I admit it frankly—when I learned that young Captain Lewis came just too late, for I feared you would have preferred him. And yet I saw his quality then—Mr. Jefferson sees it—he is a good chooser of men. But Captain Lewis must not advance beyond the Ohio. That is a large task for a woman.”

“What woman, father?”

A flush came to her pale cheek. Her father turned to her directly, his own piercing gaze aflame.

“There is but one woman on earth could do that, my daughter! That young man’s fate was settled when he looked on that woman—when he looked on you!”

She swiftly turned her head aside, not answering.

“Am I so engaged in affairs that I cannot see the obvious, my dear?” went on the vibrant voice. “Had I no eyes for what went on at my side this very evening, at Mr. Jefferson’s dinner-table? Could I fail to observe his look to you—and, yes, am I not sensible to what your eyes said to him in reply?”

“Do you believe that of me—and you my father?”

“I believe nothing dishonorable of you, my dear,” said Burr. “Neither could I ask anything dishonorable. But I know what young blood will do. Your eyes said no more than that for me. I know you wish him well—know you wish well for his ambition, his success—am sure you do not wish to see him doomed to failure. What? Would you see his career blighted when it should be but begun?”

“There would be prospects for him?”

“All the prospects in the world! I would place him only second to myself, so highly do I value his talents in an enterprise such as this. Alston’s money, but Lewis’s brains and courage! They both love you—do I not know?”

Troubled, again she turned her gaze aside.

“Listen, my daughter. That young man is wise—he has no such vast belief in yonder expedition. He is going in desperation, to escape a memory! Is it not true? Tell me—and believe that I am not blind—is not Captain Lewis going into the Missouri country in order to forget a certain woman? And do we not know, my daughter, who that woman is?”

Still her downcast eye gave him no reply.

“Meriwether Lewis yonder among the savages is a failure. Meriwether Lewis with me is second only to the vice-regent of the lower Louisiana country. Texas, Florida, much of Mexico, will join with us, that is sure. We fight with the great nations of the world, not against them—we fight with the stars in their courses, and not against them.

“Now, you have two pictures, my dear—one of Meriwether Lewis, the wanderer, a broken and hopeless man, living among the savages, a log hut his home, a camp fire the only hearth he knows. Picture that hopeless and broken man—condemned to that by yourself, my dear—and then picture that other figure whom you can see rescued, restored to the world, placed by your own hand in a station of dignity and power. Then, indeed, he might forget—he might forgive. Yonder he will forsake his manhood—he will relax his ideals, and go down, step by step, until he shall not think of you again.

“There are two pictures, my daughter. Which do you prefer—what do you decide to do? Shall you condemn him, or shall you rescue him? Forgive your father for having spoken thus plainly. I know your heart—I know your generosity as well as I know your loyalty and ambition. There is no reason, my dear, why, for the sake of your father, for the sake of yourself, and for the sake of that young man yonder, you should not go to him immediately and carry my message.”

“Could it be possible,” she began at length, half musing, “that I, who made Captain Lewis so unhappy, could aid a man like him to reach a higher and better place in life? Could I save him from himself—and from myself?”

“You speak like my own daughter! If that generous wish bore fruit, I think that in the later years of life, for both of you, the reflection would prove not unwelcome. I know, as well as I know anything, that no other woman will ever hold a place in the heart of Meriwether Lewis. There is a memory there which will shut out all other things on earth. We deal now in delicate matters, it is true; but I have been frank with you, because, knowing your loyalty and fairness, knowing your ambition, even-paced with mine, none the less I know your discretion and your generosity as well. You see, I have chosen the best messenger in all the world to advance my own ambition. Indeed, I have chosen the only one in all the world who might undertake this errand with the slightest prospect of success.”

“What can I do, father?”

“In the morning that young man will start. It is now two by the clock. We are late. He will start with the rising sun. It is doubtful if he will see his bed at all tonight.”

“You have called me for a strange errand, father,” said Theodosia Alston, at length. “So far as my brain grasps these things, I go with you in your plans. I could plan no treachery against this country, nor could you—you are its sworn servant, its high official.”

“Treachery? No, it is statesmanship, it is service to mankind!”

“My consent to that, yes. But as to seeing Captain Lewis, there is, as you know, but one way. I go not as Theodosia Burr, but as Mrs. Alston of Carolina. I am a woman of honor; he is a man of honor. No argument on earth would avail with him except such as might be based upon honor and loyalty. Nor would any argument, even if offered by my father, avail otherwise with me.”

She turned upon him now the full gaze of her dark eyes, serious, luminous, yet tender, her love for him showing so clearly that he came to her softly, took her hands, caught her to his bosom, and kissed her tenderly.

“Theodosia,” said he, “aid me! If the fire of my ambition has consumed me, I have come to you, because I know your love, because I know your loyalty! I have not slept tonight,” he added, passing a hand across his forehead.

“There will be no more sleep for me tonight,” was her reply.

“You will see him in the morning?”

“Yes.”

CHAPTER VIII

THE PARTING

There were others in Washington who did not sleep that night. A light burned until sunrise in the little office-room of Thomas Jefferson. Spread upon his desk, covering its litter of unfinished business, lay a large map—a map which today would cause any schoolboy to smile, but which at that time represented the wisdom of the world regarding the interior of the great North American continent. It had served to afford anxious study for two men, these many hours.

“Yonder it lies, Captain Lewis!” said Mr. Jefferson at length. “How vast, how little known! We know our climate and soil here. It is but reasonable to suppose that they exist yonder as they do with us, in some part, at least. If so, yonder are homes for millions now unborn. Had General Bonaparte known the value of that land, he would have fought the world rather than alienate such a region.”

The President tapped a long forefinger on the map.

“This, then,” he went on, “is your country. Find it out—bring back to me examples of its soil, its products, its vegetable and animal life. Espy out especially for us any strange animals there may be of which science has not yet account. I hold it probable that there may be yonder living examples of the mastodon, whose bones we have found in Kentucky. You yourself may see those enormous creatures yet alive.”

Meriwether Lewis listened in silence. Mr. Jefferson turned to another branch of his theme.

“I fancy that some time there will be a canal built across the isthmus that binds this continent to the one below—a canal which shall connect the two great oceans. But that is far in the future. It is for you to spy out the way now, across the country itself. Explore it—discover it—it is our new world.

“A few must think for the many,” he went on. “I had to smuggle this appropriation through Congress—twenty-five hundred dollars—the price of a poor Virginia farm! I have tampered with the Constitution itself in order to make this purchase of a country not included in our original territorial lines. I have taken my own chances—just as you must take yours now. The finger of God will be your guide and your protector. Are you ready, Captain Lewis? It is late.”

Indeed, the sun was rising over Washington, the mists of morning were reeking along the banks of the Potomac.

“I can start in half an hour,” replied Meriwether Lewis.

“Are your men ready, your supplies gathered together?”

“The rendezvous is at Harper’s Ferry, up the river. The wagons with the supplies are ready there. I will take boat from here myself with a few of the men. Not later than tomorrow afternoon I promise that we will be on our way. We burn the bridges behind us, and cross none until we come to them.”

“Spoken like a soldier! It is in your hands. Go then!”

There was one look, one handclasp. The two men parted; nor did they meet again for years.

Mr. Jefferson did not look from his window to see the departure of his young friend, nor did the latter again call at the door to say good-by. Theirs was indeed a warrior-like simplicity.

The sun still was young when Meriwether Lewis at length descended the steps of the Executive Mansion.

He was clad now for his journey, not in buckskin hunting-garb, but with regard for the conventions of a country by no means free of convention. His jacket was of close wool, belted; his boots were high and suitable for riding. His stock, snowy white—for always Meriwether Lewis was immaculate—rose high around his throat, in spite of the hot summer season, and his hands were gloved. He seemed soldier, leader, officer, and gentleman.

No retinue, however, attended him; no servant was at his side. He went afoot, and carried with him his most precious luggage—the long rifle which he never entrusted to any hands save his own. Close wrapped around the stock, on the crook of his arm, and not yet slung over his shoulder, was a soiled buckskin pouch, which went always with the rifle—the “possible sack” of the wilderness hunter of that time. It contained his bullets, bullet-molds, flints, a bar or two of lead, some tinder for priming, a set of awls.

Such was the leader of one of the great expeditions of the world.

Meriwether Lewis had few good-bys to say. He had written but one letter—to his mother—late the previous morning. It was worded thus:

The day after tomorrow I shall set out for the Western country. I had calculated on the pleasure of visiting you before I started, but circumstances have rendered it impossible. My absence will probably be equal to fifteen or eighteen months.

The nature of this expedition is by no means dangerous. My route will be altogether through tribes of Indians friendly to the United States, therefore I consider the chances of life just as much in my favor as I should conceive them were I to remain at home. The charge of this expedition is honorable to myself, as it is important to my country.

For its fatigues I feel myself perfectly prepared, nor do I doubt my health and strength of constitution to bear me through it. I go with the most perfect preconviction in my own mind of returning safe, and hope, therefore that you will not suffer yourself to indulge in any anxiety for my safety.

I will write again on my arrival at Pittsburgh. Adieu, and believe me your affectionate son.

No regrets, no weak reflections for this man with a warrior’s weapon on his arm—where no other burden might lie in all his years. His were to be the comforts of the trail, the rude associations with common men, the terrors of the desert and the mountain; his fireside only that of the camp. Yet he advanced to his future steadily, his head high, his eye on ahead—a splendid figure of a man.

He did not at first hear the gallop of hoofs on the street behind him as at last, a mile or more from the White House gate, he turned toward the river front. He was looking at the dull flood of the Potomac, now visible below him; but he paused, something appealing to the strange sixth sense of the hunter, and turned.

A rider, a mounted servant, was beckoning to him. Behind the horseman, driven at a stiff gait, came a carriage which seemed to have but a single occupant. Captain Lewis halted, gazed, then hastened forward, hat in his hand.

“Mrs. Alston!” he exclaimed, as the carriage came up. “Why are you here? Is there any news?”

“Yes, else I could not have come.”

“But why have you come? Tell me!”

He motioned the outrider aside, sprang into the vehicle and told the driver to draw a little apart from the more public street. Here he caught up the reins himself, and, ordering the driver to join the footman at the edge of the roadway they had left, turned to the woman at his side.

“Pardon me,” said he, and his voice was cold; “I thought I had cut all ties.”

“Knit them again for my sake, then, Meriwether Lewis! I have brought you a summons to return.”

“A summons? From whom?”

“My father—Mr. Merry—Señor Yrujo. They were at our home all night. We could not—they could not—I could not—bear to see you sacrifice yourself. This expedition can only fail! I implore you not to go upon it! Do not let your man’s pride drive you!”

She was excited, half sobbing.

“It does drive me, indeed,” said he simply. “I am under orders—I am the leader of this expedition of my government. I do not understand——”

“At this hour—on this errand—only one motive could have brought me! It is your interest. Oh, it is not for myself—it is for your future.”

“Why did you come thus, unattended? There is something you are concealing. Tell me!”

“Ah, you are harsh—you have no sympathy, no compassion, no gratitude! But listen, and I will tell you. My father, Mr. Merry, the Spanish minister, are all men of affairs. They have watched the planning of this expedition. Why fly in the face of prophecy and of Providence? That is what my father says. He says that country can never be of benefit to our Union—that no new States can be made from it. He says the people will pass down the Mississippi River, but not beyond it; that it is the natural line of our expansion—that men who are actual settlers are bound not into the unknown West, but into the well-known South. He begs of you to follow the course of events, and not to fly in the face of Providence.”

“You speak well! Go on.”

“England is with us, and Spain—they back my father’s plans.”

He turned now and raised a hand.

“Plans? What plans? I must warn you, I am pledged to my own country’s service.”

“Is not my father also? He is one of the highest officers in the government of this country.”

“You may tell me more or not, as you like.”

“There is little more to tell,” said she. “These gentlemen have made certain plans of which I know little. My father said to me that Thomas Jefferson himself knows that this purchase from Napoleon cannot be made under the Constitution of the United States—that, given time for reflection, Mr. Jefferson himself will admit that the Louisiana purchase was but a national folly from which this country cannot benefit. Why not turn, then, to a future which offers certainties? Why not come with us, and not attempt the impossible? That is what he said. And he asked me to implore you to pause.”

He sat motionless, looking straight ahead, as she went on.

“He only besought me to induce you, if I could, either to abandon your expedition wholly as soon as you honorably might do so, or to go on with it only to such point as will prove it unfeasible and impracticable. Not wishing you to prove traitorous to a trust, these gentlemen wish you to know that they would value your association—that they would give you splendid opportunity. With men such as these, that means a swift future of success for one—for one—whom I shall always cherish warmly in my heart.”

The color was full in her face. He turned toward her suddenly, his eye clouded.

“It is an extraordinary matter in every way which you bring for me,” he said slowly; “extraordinary that foreigners, not friends of this country, should call themselves the friends of an officer sworn to the service of the republic! I confess I do not understand it. And why send you?”

“It is difficult for me to tell you. But my father knew the antagonism between Mr. Jefferson and himself, and knew your friendship for Mr. Jefferson. He knew also the respect, the pity—oh, what shall I say?—which I have always felt for you—the regard——”

“Regard! What do you mean?”

“I did not mean regard, but the—the wish to see you succeed, to help you, if I could, to take your place among men. I told you that but yesterday.”

She was all confusion now. He seemed pitiless.

“I have listened long enough to have my curiosity aroused. I shall have somewhat to ponder—on the trail to the West.”

“Then you mean that you will go on?”

“Yes!”

“You do not understand——”

“No! I understand only that Mr. Jefferson has never abandoned a plan or a promise or a friend. Shall I, then, who have been his scholar and his friend?”

“Ah, you two! What manner of men are you that you will not listen to reason? He is high in power. Will you not also listen to the call of your own ambition? Why, in that country below, you might hold a station as proud as that of Mr. Jefferson himself. Will you throw that away, for the sake of a few dried skins and flowers? You speak of being devoted to your country. What is devotion—what is your country? You have no heart—that I know well; but I credited you with the brain and the ambition of a man!”

He sat motionless under the sting of her reproaches; and as some reflection came to her upon the savagery of her own words, she laughed bitterly.

“Think you that I would have come here for any other man?” she demanded. “Think you that I would ask of you anything to my own dishonor, or to your dishonor? But now you do not listen. You will not come back—even for me!”

In answer he simply bent and kissed her hand, stepped from the carriage, raised his hat. Yet he hesitated for half an instant and turned back.

“Theodosia,” said he, “it is hard for me not to do anything you ask of me—you do not know how hard; but surely you understand that I am a soldier and am under orders. I have no option. It seems to me that the plans of your father and his friends should be placed at once before Mr. Jefferson. It is strange they sent you, a woman, as their messenger! You have done all that a woman could. No other woman in the world could have done as much with me. But—my men are waiting for me.”

This time he did not turn back again.

Colonel Burr’s carriage returned more slowly than it had come. It was a dejected occupant who at last made her way, still at an early hour, to the door of her father’s house.

Burr met her at the door. His keen eye read the answer at once.

“You have failed!” said he.

She raised her dark eyes to his, herself silent, mournful.

“What did he say?” demanded Burr.

“Said he was under orders—said you should go to Mr. Jefferson with your plan—said Mr. Jefferson alone could stop him. Failed? Yes, I failed!”

“You failed,” said Burr, “because you did not use the right argument with him. The next time you must not fail. You must use better arguments!”

Theodosia stood motionless for an instant, looking at her father, then passed back into the house.

“Listen, my daughter,” said Burr at length, in his eye a light that she never had known before. “You must see that man again, and bring him back into our camp! We need him. Without him I cannot handle Merry, and without Merry I cannot handle Yrujo. Without them my plan is doomed. If it fails, your husband has lost fifty thousand dollars and all the moneys to which he is pledged beyond that. You and I will be bankrupt—penniless upon the streets, do you hear?—unless you bring that man back. Granted that all goes well, it means half a million dollars pledged for my future by Great Britain herself, half as much pledged by Spain, success and future honor and power for you and me—and him. He must come back! That expedition must not go beyond the Mississippi. You ask me what to tell him? Ask him no longer to return to us and opportunity. Ask him to come back to Theodosia Burr and happiness—do you understand?”

“Sir,” said his daughter, “I think—I think I do not understand!”

He seemed not to hear her—or to toss her answer aside.

“You must try again,” said he, “and with the right weapons—the old ones, my dear—the old weapons of a woman!”

CHAPTER IX

MR. THOMAS JEFFERSON

Not in fifty years, said Thomas Jefferson in the last days of his life, had the sun caught him in bed. On this morning, having said good-by to the man to whose hands he had entrusted the dearest enterprise of all his life, he turned back to his desk in the little office-room, and throughout the long and heated day, following a night spent wholly without sleep, he remained engaged in his usual labors, which were the heavier in his secretary’s absence.

He was an old man now, but a giant in frame, a giant in mind, a giant in industry as well. He sat at his desk absorbed, sleepless, with that steady application which made possible the enormous total of his life’s work. He was writing in a fine, delicate hand—legible to this day—certain of those thousands of letters and papers which have been given to us as the record of his career.

In what labor was the President of the United States engaged on this particularly eventful day? It seems he found more to do with household matters than with affairs of state. He was making careful accounts of his French cook, his Irish coachman, his black servants still remaining at his country house in Virginia.

All his life Thomas Jefferson kept itemized in absolute faithfulness a list of all his personal expenses—even to the gratuities he expended in traveling and entertainment. We find, for instance, that “John Cramer is to go into the service of Mr. Jefferson at twelve dollars a month and twopence for drink, two suits of clothes and a pair of boots.” It seems that he bought a bootjack for three shillings; and the cost of countless other household items is as carefully set down.

We may learn from records of this date that in the past year Mr. Jefferson had expended in charity $1,585.60. He tells us that in the first three months of his presidency his expenses were $565.84—and he was wrong ten cents in his addition of the total! In his own hand he sets down “A View of the Consumption of Butchers’ Meat from September 6, 1801, to June 12, 1802.” He knew perfectly well, indeed, what all his household expenses were, also what it cost him to maintain his stables. He did all this bookkeeping himself, and at the end of each year was able to tell precisely where his funds had gone.

We may note one such annual statement, that of the year ended five months previous to the time when Captain Lewis set forth into the West:

Mr. Jefferson says in rather shamefaced fashion to his diary:

The whole of the nails used for Monticello and smithwork are omitted, because no account was kept of them. This makes part of the error, and the article of nails has been extraordinary this year.

There was a curious accuracy in the analytical tests which Mr. Jefferson applied to all the ordinary transactions of life. It was not enough for him to know exactly how many dollars and cents he had expended; he must know what should be the average result of such expenditures. In the middle of a life of tremendous and marvelously varied activities he finds time to leave for us such records as these:

Mr. Remsen tells me that six cord of hickory last a fireplace well the winter.

Myrtle candles of last year out.

Pd Farren an impudent surcharge for Venetn blinds, 2.66.

Borrowed of Mr. Maddison order on bank for 150d.

Enclosed to D. Rittenhouse, Lieper’s note of 238.57d, out of which he is to pay for equatorial instrument for me.

Hitzeimer says that a horse well fed with grain requires 100 lb. of hay, and without grain 130 lb.

T. N. Randolph has had 9 galls. whisky for his harvest.

My first pipe of Termo is out—begun soon after I came home to live from Philadelphia.

Agreed with Robt. Chuning to serve me as overseer at Monticello for £25 and 600 lb. pork. He is to come Dec. 1.

Agreed with —— Bohlen to give 300 livres tournois for my bust made by Ceracchi, if he shall agree to take that sum.

My daughter Maria married this day.

March 16—The first shad at this market today.

March 28—The weeping willow shows the green leaf.

April 9—Asparagus come to table.

April 10—Apricots blossom.

April 12—Genl. Thaddeus Kosciusko puts into my hands a Warrant of the Treasury for 3,684.54d to have bills of exchange bought for him.

May 8—Tea out, the pound has lasted exactly 7 weeks, used 6 times a week; this is 8-21 or .4 of an oz. a time for a single person. A pound of tea making 126 cups costs 2d, 126 cups or ounces of coffee—8 lb. cost 1.6.

May 18—On trial it takes 11 dwt. Troy of double refined maple sugar to a dish of coffee, or 1 lb. avoirdupois to 26.5 dishes, so that at 20 cents per lb. it is 8 mills per dish. An ounce of coffee at 20 cents per lb. is 12.5 mills, so that sugar and coffee of a dish is worth 2 cents.

As to the code of official etiquette which we have seen to exist in Washington, the President himself was responsible for it, for we have, written out in his own delicate hand, the following explicit instructions:

The families of foreign ministers, arriving at the seat of government, receive the first visit from those of the national ministers, as from all other residents. Members of the legislature and of the judiciary, independent of their offices, have a right as strangers to receive the first visit. No title being admitted here, those of foreigners give no precedence. Difference of grade among the diplomatic members gives no precedence.

At public ceremonies the government invites the presence of foreign ministers and their families. A convenient seat or station will be provided for them, with any other strangers invited, and the families of the national ministers, each taking place as they arrive, and without any precedence.

To maintain the principle of equality, or of pell-mell, and prevent the growth of precedence out of courtesy, the members of the executive will practise at their own houses, and recommend an adherence to the ancient usages of the country of gentlemen in mass giving precedence to the ladies in mass, in passing from one apartment where they are assembled into another.

And so on, through reams and reams of a strange man’s life records.

Why should we care to note his curious concern over details? The answer to that question is this—obviously, Thomas Jefferson’s estimate of a man must also in all likelihood have been curiously exact. He did not make public to the world his judgment of Colonel Aaron Burr, at that time Vice-President of the United States; but in his diary, written in frankness by himself for himself, he put down the following:

I have never seen Colonel Burr till he became a member of the Senate. His conduct very soon inspired me with distrust. I habitually cautioned Mr. Madison against trusting him too much. I saw that under General W. and Mr. Adams, where a great military appointment or a diplomatic one was to be made, he came post to Philadelphia to show himself, and in fact he was always in the market if they wanted him. He was indeed told by Dayton in 1800 that he might be Secretary at War, but this bid was too late. His election as Vice-President was then foreseen. With these impressions of Colonel Burr, there never has been any intimacy between us, and but little association.

A certain plan of this same Colonel Burr’s now went forward in such fashion as involved the loyalty of Meriwether Lewis, the man to whom, of all others of his acquaintance, Thomas Jefferson gave first place in trust and confidence and friendship—the young man who but now was making his unostentatious departure on the great adventure that they two had planned.

His garb ill cared-for, his hair unkempt, his face a trifle haggard, working on into the day whose dawn he had seen arise, the tall, gaunt old man set aside first one minor matter, then another, leaving them all exactly finished. At last he wrote down, for later forwarding, the last item of his own knowledge regarding the new country into which he had sent his young friend.

I have received word from Paris that Mr. Broughton, one of the companions of Captain Vancouver, went up the Columbia River one hundred miles in December, 1792. He stopped at a point he named Vancouver. Here the river Columbia is still a quarter of a mile wide. From this point Mount Hood is seen about twenty leagues distant, which is probably a dependency of the Stony Mountains. Accept my affectionate salutations.

This was the last word Meriwether Lewis received from his chief. As the latter finished it, he sat looking out of the window toward that West which meant so much to him.

He did not at first note the interruption of his reverie. Long ago he had made public his announcement that the time of Thomas Jefferson belonged to the public, and that he might be seen at any time by any man. He hesitated now but a moment, therefore, when old Henry, his faithful black, threw open the door and stated simply that there was “a lady wantin’ to see Mistah Jeffahson.”

“Who is she, Henry?” inquired the President of the United States mildly. “I am somewhat busy today.”

“’Tain’t no diff’rence, she say—she sho’ly want see Mistah Jeffahson.”

The tired old man smiled and shrugged his shoulders. A moment later the persistent caller was ushered into the office of the nation’s chief executive. He rose courteously to meet her.

It was Theodosia Alston, whom he had known from her childhood. Mr. Jefferson greeted her with his hand outstretched, and, her arm still in his, led her to a seat.

“My dear,” said he, “you will pardon our confusion here, I am sure. There are many matters——”

“I know it is an intrusion, Mr. Jefferson,” began Theodosia Alston again, her face flushing swiftly. “But you are so good, so kind, so great in your patience that we all take advantage of you. And yet you are so tired,” she added impulsively, as she caught sight of his haggard face.

“I was not so fortunate as to find time for sleep last night.” He smiled again with humorous, half twisted mouth.

“Nor was I.”

“Tut, tut! No, no, my dear, that sort of thing will not do.” He looked at her in silence for some time. “Perhaps, my dear,” said he at last, “you come regarding Captain Lewis?”

“How did you know?” she exclaimed, startled.

“Why should I not know?” He pushed his chair so close that he might lay a hand upon her arm. “Listen, Theo, my child. I am an old man, and I am your friend, and his also. I had need to be very blind had I not known long ago what I did know. I am, perhaps, the only confidant of Captain Lewis, and I repose in him confidences that I would venture to no other man; but he is not the sort to speak of such matters. It is only by virtue of exceptional circumstances, my dear, that I know the story of you two.”

She was looking straight into his face, her eyes mournful.

“I was glad to send him away, sorely as I miss him. But then, you said, you come to me about him?”

“Yes, after he is gone—knowing all that you say—because I trust your great kindness and your chivalry. I come to ask you to call him back! Oh, Mr. Jefferson, were it any other man in the world but yourself I had not dared come here; but you know my story and his. It is your right to believe that he and I were—that is to say, we might have been—ah, sir, how can I speak?”

“You need not speak, my dear, I know.”

“I shall be faithful to my husband, Mr. Jefferson.”

The old man nodded.

“Captain Lewis knows that also. He would be the last to wish it otherwise. But, since it was his misfortune to set his regard upon one so fair as yourself, and since fate goes so hard for a strong man like him, then I must admit it needed strong medicine for his case. I sent him away, yes. Would you ask him back—for any cause?”

In turn she laid a small hand upon the President’s arm.

“Only for himself—for that reason alone, Mr. Jefferson, and not to change your plans—for himself, because you love him. Oh, sir, even the greatest courts sometimes arrest their judgment if there is new evidence to be introduced. At the last moment justice gives a condemned man one more chance.”

“What is it, Theodosia?” he said quietly. “I do not grasp all this.”

“Able men say that this government cannot take advantage of the sale of Louisiana to us by Napoleon—that our Constitution prevents our taking over a foreign territory already populated to make into new States of our own——”

“Good, my learned counsel—say on!”

“Forgive my weak wit—I only try to say this as I heard it, well and plainly.”

“As well as any man, my dear! Go on.”

“Therefore, even if Captain Lewis does go forward, he can only fail at the last. This is what is said by the Federalists, by your enemies.”

“And perhaps by certain of my own party not Federalists—by Colonel Aaron Burr, for instance!” Thomas Jefferson smiled grimly.

“Yes!” She spoke firmly and with courage.

“I cannot pause to inquire what my enemies say, my dear lady. But in what way could this effect our friend, Captain Lewis? He is under orders, on my errand.”

“I saw him this very morning—I took my reputation in my hands—I followed him—I urged him, I implored him to stop!”

“Yes? And did he?”

“Not for an instant. Ah, I see you smile! I might have known he would not. He said that nothing but word from you could induce him to hesitate for a moment.”

“My dear young lady, I said to Captain Lewis that no report from any source would cause me for an instant to doubt his loyalty to me. If anything could shake him in his loyalty, it would be his regard for you yourself; but since I trust his honor and your own, I do not fear that such a conflict can ever occur!”

She did not reply. After a time the President went on gently:

“My dear, would you wish him to come back—would you condemn him further to the tortures of the damned? And would you halt him while he is trying to do his duty as a man and a soldier? What benefit to you?”

She drew up proudly.

“What benefit, indeed, to me? Do you think I would ask this for myself? No, it was for him—it was for his welfare only that I dared to come to you. And you will not hear new evidence?”

But now she was speaking to Thomas Jefferson, the President of the United States, man of affairs as well, man of firm will and clear-cut decision.

“Madam,” said he, coldly, “in this office we do a thing but once. Had I condemned yonder young man to his death—and perhaps I have—I would not now reconsider that decision. I would not speak so long as this over it, did I not know and love you both—yes, and grieve over you both; but what is written is written.”

His giant hand fell lightly, but with firmness, on the desk at his side. The inexorableness of a great will was present in the room as an actual thing. Tears swam in her eyes.

“You would not hear what was the actual cause of my wish for him——”

“No, my dear! We have made our plans.”

“There are other plans afoot these days, Mr. Jefferson.”

“Tut, tut! Are you my enemy, too? Oh, yes, I know there are enemies enough in wait for me and my administration on every side. Yes, I know a plan—I know of many such. But one thing also I do know, madam, and it is this—not all the enemies on this earth can alter me one iota in this undertaking on which I have sent Captain Lewis. As against that magnificent adventure there is nothing can be offered as an offset, nothing that can halt it for an instant. No reward to him or me—nay, no reward to any other human being—shall stop his advancement in that purpose which he shares with me. If he fails, I fail with him—and all my life as well!”

She rose now, calm before the imperious quality of his nature, so unlike his former gentleness.

“You refuse, then, Mr. Jefferson? You will not reopen this case?”

“I refuse nothing to you gladly, my dear lady. But you have seen him—you have tested him. Did he turn back? Shall I, his friend and his chief, halt him at such a time? Now that were the worst kindness to him in the world. And I am convinced that you and I both plan only kindness for him.”

Suddenly he saw the tears in her eyes. At once he was back again, the courteous gentleman.

“Do not weep, Theodosia, my child,” said he. “Let me kiss you, as your father or your grandfather would—one who holds you tenderly in his heart. Forgive me that I pass sentence on you both, but you must part—you must not ask him back. There now, my dear, do not weep, or you will make me weep. Let me kiss you for him—and let us all go on about our duties in the world. My dear, good-by! You must go.”

CHAPTER X

THE THRESHOLD OF THE WEST

Meriwether Lewis, having put behind him one set of duties, now addressed himself to another, and did so with care and thoroughness. A few of his men, a part of his outfitting, he found already assembled at Harper’s Ferry, up the Potomac. Before sunset of the first day the little band knew they had a leader.

There was not a knife or a tomahawk of the entire equipment which he himself did not examine—not a rifle which he himself did not personally test. He went over the boxes and bales which had been gathered here, and saw to their arrangement in the transport-wagons. He did all this without bluster or officiousness, but with the quiet care and thoroughness of the natural leader of men.

In two days they were on their way across the Alleghanies. A few days more of steady travel sufficed to bring them to Pittsburgh, the head of navigation on the Ohio River, and at that time the American capital in the upper valley of the West. At Pittsburgh Captain Lewis was to build his boats, to complete the details of his equipment, to take on additional men for his party—now to be officially styled the Volunteers for the Discovery of the West. He lost no time in urging forward the necessary work.

The young adventurer found this inland town half maritime in its look. Its shores were lined with commerce suited to a seaport. Schooners of considerable tonnage lay at the wharfs, others were building in the busy shipyards. The destination of these craft obviously was down the Mississippi, to the sea. Here were vessels bound for the West Indies, bound for Philadelphia, for New York, for Boston—carrying the products of this distant and little-known interior.

As he looked at this commerce of the great West, pondered its limitations, saw its trend with the down-slant of the perpetual roadway to the sea, there came to the young officer’s mind with greater force certain arguments that had been advanced to him.

He saw that here was the heart of America, realized how natural was the insistence of all these hardy Western men upon the free use of the Mississippi and its tributaries. He easily could agree with Aaron Burr that, had the fleet of Napoleon ever sailed from Haiti—had Napoleon ever done otherwise than to cede Louisiana to us—then these boats from the Ohio and the Mississippi would at this very moment, perhaps, be carrying armed men down to take New Orleans, as so often they had threatened.

There came, however, to his mind not the slightest thought of alteration in his own plans. With him it was no question of what might have been, but of what actually was. The cession by Napoleon had been made, and Louisiana was ours. It was time to plot for expeditions, not down the great river, but across it, beyond it, into that great and unknown country that lay toward the farther sea.

The keen zest of this vast enterprise came to him as a stimulus—the feel of the new country was as the breath of his nostrils. His bosom swelled with joy as he looked out toward that West which had so long allured him—that West of which he was to be the discoverer. The carousing riffraff of the wharfs, the flotsam and jetsam of the river trade, were to him but passing phenomena. He shouldered his way among them indifferently. He walked with a larger vision before his eyes.

Now, too, he had news—good news, fortunate news, joyous news—none less than the long-delayed answer of his friend, Captain William Clark, to his proposal that he should associate himself with the Volunteers for the Discovery of the West. Misspelled, scrawled, done in the hieroglyphics which marked that remarkable gentleman, William Clark’s letter carried joy to the heart of Meriwether Lewis. It cemented one of the most astonishing partnerships ever known among men, one of the most beautiful friendships of which history leaves note. Let us give the strange epistle in Clark’s own spelling:

Dear Merne:

Yours to hand touching uppon the Expedishon into the Missourie Country, & I send this by special bote up the river to mete you at Pts’brgh, at the Foarks. You convey a moast welcome and appreciated invitation to join you in an Enterprise conjenial to my Every thought and Desire. It will in all likelyhood require at least a year to make the journey out and Return, but although that means certain Sacrifises of a personal sort, I hold such far less than the pleasure to enlist with you, wh. indeed I hold to be my duty allso.

I need not say how content I am to be associated with the man moast of all my acquaintance apt to achieve Success in an undertaking of so difficult and perlous nature. As you know, it is in the wilderness men are moast sevearly tried, and there we know a man. I have seen you so tried, and I Know what you are. I am proud that you apeare to hold me and my own qualities in like confident trust and belief, and I shall hope to merit no alteration in your Judgment.

There is no other man I would go with on such an undertaking, nor consider it seriously, although the concern of my family largely has been with things military and adventurous, and we are not new to life among Savidges. Too well I know the dangers of bad leadership in such affairs, yes and my brother, the General, also, as the story of Detroit and the upper Ohio country could prove. All of that country should have been ours from the first, and only lack of courage lost it so long to us.

You are so kind as to offer me a place equal in command with you—I accept not because of the Rank, which is no moving consideration, eather for you or for me—but because I see in the jenerosity of the man proposing such a division of his own Honors, the best assurance of success.

You will find me at or near the Falls of the Ohio awaiting the arrival of your party, which I taik it will be in early August or the Midel of that month.

Pray convey to Mr. Jefferson my humble and obedient respects, and thanks for this honor wh. I shall endeavor to merit as best lies within my powers.

With all affec’n, I remain,

Your friend,

Wm. Clark.

P. S.—God alone knows how mutch this all may mean to You and me, Merne—Will.

Clark, then, was to meet him at the Falls of the Ohio, and he, too, counseled haste. Lewis drove his drunken, lazy workmen in the shipyards as hard as he might, week after week, yet found six weeks elapsed before at last he was in any wise fitted to set forth. The delay fretted him, even though he received word from his chief bidding him not to grieve over the possible loss of a season in his start, but to do what he might and to possess his soul in patience and in confidence.

Recruits of proper sort for his purposes did not grow on trees, he found, but he added a few men to his party now and then, picking them slowly, carefully. One morning, while engaged in his duties of supervising the work in progress at the shipyards, he had his attention attracted to a youth of some seventeen or eighteen years, who stood, cap in hand, at a little distance, apparently too timid to accost him.

“What is it, my son?” said he. “Did you wish to see me?”

The boy advanced, smiling.

“You do not know me, sir. My name is Shannon—George Shannon. I used to know you when you were stationed here with the army. I was a boy then.”

“You are right—I remember you perfectly. So you are grown into a strapping young man, I see!”

The boy twirled his cap in his hands.

“I want to go along with you, Captain,” said he shyly.

“What? You would go with me—do you know what is our journey?”

“No. I only hear that you are going up the Missouri, beyond St. Louis, into new country. They say there are buffalo there, and Indians. ’Tis too quiet here for me—I want to see the world with you.”

The young leader, after his fashion, stood silently regarding the other for a time. An instant served him.

“Very well, George,” said he. “If your parents consent, you shall go with me. Your pay will be such that you can save somewhat, and I trust you will use it to complete your schooling after your return. There will be adventure and a certain honor in our undertaking. If we come back successful, I am persuaded that our country will not forget us.”

And so that matter was completed. Strangely enough, as the future proved, were the fortunes of these two to intermingle. From the first, Shannon attached himself to his captain almost in the capacity of personal attendant.

At last the great bateau lay ready, launched from the docks and moored alongside the wharf. Fifty feet long it was, with mast, tholes and walking-boards for the arduous upstream work. It had received a part of its cargo, and soon all was in readiness to start.

On the evening of that day Lewis sat down to pen a last letter to his chief. He wrote in the little office-room of the inn where he was stopping, and for a time he did not note the presence of young Shannon, who stood, as usual, silent until his leader might address him.

“What, is it, George?” he asked at length, looking up.

“Someone waiting to see you, sir—they are in the parlor. They sent me——”

“They? Who are they?”

“I don’t know, sir. She asked me to come for you.”

“She. Who is she?”

“I don’t know, sir. She spoke to her father. They are in the room just across the hall, sir.”

The face of Meriwether Lewis was pale when presently he opened the door leading to the apartment which had been indicated. He knew, or thought he knew, who this must be. But why—why?

The interior was dim. A single lamp of the inefficient sort then in use served only to lessen the gloom. Presently, however, he saw awaiting him the figure he had anticipated. Yes, it was she herself. Almost his heart stood still.

Theodosia Alston arose from the spot where she sat in the deeper shadows, and came forward to him. He met her, his hands outstretched, his pulse leaping eagerly in spite of his reproofs. He dreaded, yet rejoiced.

“Why are you here?” he asked at length.

“My father and I are on a journey down the river to visit Mr. Blennerhasset on his island. You know his castle there?”

“Why is it that you always come to torment me the more? Another day and I should have been gone!”

“Torment you, sir?”

“You rebuke me properly. I presume I should have courage to meet you always—to speak with you—to look into your eyes—to take your hands in mine. But I find it hard, terribly hard! Each time it is worse—because each time I must leave you. Why did you not wait one day?”

She made no reply. He fought for his self-control.

“Mr. Jefferson, how is he?” he demanded at length. “You left him well?”

“Unchangeable as flint. You said that only the order of your chief could change your plans. I sought to gain that order—I went myself to see Mr. Jefferson, that very day you started. He said that nothing could alter his faith in you, and that nothing could alter the plan you both had made. He would not call you back. He ordered me not to attempt to do so; but I have broken the President’s command. You find it hard! Do you think this is not hard for me also?”

“These are strange words. What is your motive? What is it that you plan? Why should you seek to stop me when I am trying to blot your face out of my mind? Strange labor is that—to try to forget what I hold most dear!”

“You shall not leave my face behind you, Captain Lewis!” she said suddenly.

“What do you mean, Theodosia? What is it?”

“You shall see me every night under the stars, Meriwether Lewis. I will not let you go. I will not relinquish you!”

He turned swiftly toward her, but paused as if caught back by some mighty hand.

“What is it?” he said once more, half in a whisper. “What do you mean? Would you ruin me? Would you see me go to ruin?”

“No! To the contrary, shall I allow you to hasten into the usual ruin of a man? If you go yonder, what will be the fate of Meriwether Lewis? You have spoken beautifully to me at times—you have awakened some feeling of what images a woman may make in a man’s heart. I have been no more to you than any woman is to any man—the image of a dream. But, that being so beautiful, ought I to allow you to turn it to ruin? Shall I let you go down in savagery? Ah, if I thought I were relinquishing you to that, this would be a heavy day for me!”

“Can you fancy what all this means to me?” he broke out hoarsely.

“Yes, I can fancy. And what for me? So much my feeling for you has been—oh, call it what you like—admiration, affection, maternal tenderness—I do not know what—but so much have I wished, so much have I planned for your future in return for what you have given me—ah, I do not dare tell you. I could not dare come here if I did not know that I was never to see or speak to you again. It tears my heart from my bosom that I must say these things to you. I have risked all my honor in your hands. Is there no reward for that? Is my recompense to be only your assertion that I torment you, that I torture you? What! Is there no torture for me as well? The thought that I have done this covertly, secretly—what do you think that costs me?”

“Your secret is absolutely safe with me, Theodosia. No, it is not a secret! We have sworn that neither of us would lay a secret upon the other. I swear that to you once more.”

“And yet you upbraid me when I say I cannot give you up to any fate but that of happiness and success—oh, not with me, for that is beyond us two—it is past forever. But happiness——”

“There are some words that burn deep,” he said slowly. “I know that I was not made for happiness.”

“Does a woman’s wish mean nothing to you? Have I no appeal for you?”

Something like a sob was torn from his bosom.

“You can speak thus with me?” he said huskily. “If you cannot leave me happiness, can you not at least leave me partial peace of mind?”

She stood slightly swaying, silent.

“And you say you will not relinquish me, you will not let me go to that fate which surely is mine? You say you will not let me be savage? I say I am too nearly savage now. Let me go—let me go yonder into the wilderness, where I may be a gentleman!”

He saw her movement as she turned, heard her sigh.

“Sometimes,” she said, “I have thought it worth a woman’s life thrown away that a strong man may succeed. Failure and sacrifice a woman may offer—not much more. But it is as my father told me!”

“He told you what?”

“That only chivalry would ever make you forget your duty—that you never could be approached through your weakness, but only through your strength, through your honor. I cannot approach you through your strength, and I would not approach you through your weakness, even if I could. No! Wait. Perhaps some day it will all be made clear for both of us, so that we may understand. Yes, this is torture for us both!”

He heard the soft rustle of her gown, her light footfall as she passed; and once more he was alone.

CHAPTER XI

THE TAMING OF PATRICK GASS

“

Shannon, go get the men!”

It was midnight. For more than an hour Meriwether Lewis had sat, his head drooped, in silence.

“We are going to start?” Shannon’s face lightened eagerly. “We’ll be off at sunup?”

“Before that. Get the men—we’ll start now! I’ll meet you at the wharf.”

Eager enough, Shannon hastened away on his midnight errand. Within an hour every man of the little party was at the water front, ready for departure. They found their leader walking up and down, his head bent, his hands behind him.

It was short work enough, the completion of such plans as remained unfinished. The great keel-boat lay completed and equipped at the wharf. The men lost little time in stowing such casks and bales as remained unshipped. Shannon stepped to his chief.

“All’s aboard, sir,” said he. “Shall we cast off?”

Without a word Lewis nodded and made his way to his place in the boat. In the darkness, without a shout or a cheer to mark its passing, the expedition was launched on its long journey.

Slowly the boat passed along the waterfront of Pittsburgh town. Here rose gauntly, in the glare of torch or camp fire, the mast of some half-built schooner. Houseboats were drawn up or anchored alongshore, long pirogues lay moored or beached, or now and again a giant broadhorn, already partially loaded with household goods, common carrier for that human flood passing down the great waterway, stood out blacker than the shadows in which it lay.

Here and there camp fires flickered, each the center of a ribald group of the hardy rivermen. Through the night came sounds of roistering, songs, shouts. Arrested, pent, dammed up, the lusty life of that great waterway leading into the West and South scarce took time for sleep.

The boat slipped on down, now crossing a shaft of light flung on the water from some lamp or fire, now blending with the ghostlike shadows which lay in the moonless night. It passed out of the town itself, and edged into the shade of the forest that swept continuously for so many leagues on ahead.

“Hello, there!” called a voice through the darkness, after a time. “Who goes there?”

The splash of a sweep had attracted the attention of someone on shore. The light of a camp fire showed.

Every one in the boat looked at the leader, but none vouchsafed a reply to the hail.

“Ahoy there, the boat!” insisted the same voice.

“Shall I fire on yez to make yez answer a civil question? Come ashore wance—I can lick the best of yez in three minutes, or me name’s not Patrick Gass!”

The captain of the boat turned slowly in his seat, casting a glance over his silent crew.

“Set in!” said he, sharply and shortly.

Without a word they obeyed, and with oar and steering-sweep the great craft slowly swung inshore.

Lewis stepped from the boat, and, not waiting to see whether he was followed—as he was by all of his men—strode on up the bank into the circle of light made by the camp fire. About the fire lay a dozen or more men of the hardest of the river type, which was saying quite enough; for of all the lawless and desperate characters of the frontier, none have ever surpassed in reckless audacity and truculence the men of the old boat trade of the Ohio and the Mississippi.

These fellows lay idly looking at Lewis as he entered the light, not troubling to accost him.

“Who hailed us?” demanded the latter shortly.

“Begorrah, ’twas me,” said a short, strongly built man, stepping forward from the other side of the fire.

Clad in loose shirt and trousers, like most of his comrades, he showed a powerful man, a shock of reddish hair falling over his eyes, a bull-like neck rising above his open shirt in such fashion that the size of his shoulder muscles might easily be seen.

“’Twas me hailed yez, and what of it?”

“That is what I came ashore to learn,” said Meriwether Lewis. “We are about our business. What concern is that of yours? I am here to learn.”

“Yez can learn, if ye’re so anxious,” replied the other. “’Tis me have got three drinks of Monongahaly in me that says I can whip you or anny man of your boat. And if that aint cause for ye to come ashore, ’tis no fighting man ye are, an’ I’ll say that to your face!”

It was the accepted fashion of challenge known anywhere along two thousand miles of waterway at that time, in a country where physical prowess and readiness to fight were the sole tests of distinction. Woe to the man who evaded such an issue, once it was offered to him!

The speaker had stepped close to Lewis—so close that the latter did not need to advance a foot. Instead, he held his ground, and the challenger, accepting this as a sign of willingness for battle, rushed at him, with the evident intent of a rough-and-tumble grapple after the fashion of his kind. To his surprise, he was held off by the leveled forearm of his opponent, rigid as a bar against his throat.

At this rebuff he roared like a bull, and breaking back rushed in once more, his giant arms flailing. Lewis swung back half a step, and then, so quickly that none saw the blow, but only its result was visible, he shifted on his feet, leaned into his thrust, and smote the joyous challenger so fell a stroke in the throat as laid him quivering and helpless. The brief fight was ended all too soon to suit the wishes of the spectators, used to more prolonged and bloodier encounters.

A sort of gasp, a half roar of surprise and anger, came from the group upon the ground. Some of the party rose to their feet menacingly. They met the silent front of the boat party, the clicking of whose well-oiled rifle-locks offered the most serious of warnings.

The sudden appearance of these visitors, so silent and so prompt—the swift act of their leader, without threat, without warning—the instant readiness of the others to back their leader’s initiative—caught every one of these rude fighting men in the sudden grip of surprise. They hesitated.

“I am no fighting man,” said Meriwether Lewis, turning to them; “yet neither may I be insulted by any lout who chooses to call me ashore to thrash him. Do you think that an officer of the army has no better business than that? Who are you that would stop us?”

The group fell back muttering, lacking concerted action. What might have occurred in case they had reached their arms was prevented by the action of the party of the first part in this rencontre—of the second part, perhaps, he might better have been called. The fallen warrior sat up, rubbing his throat; he struggled to his knees, and at length stood. There was something of rude river chivalry about him, after all.

“An officer, did ye say?” said he. “Oh, wirra! What have I done now, and me a soldier! But ye done it fair! And ye niver wance gouged me nor jumped on me whin I was down! Begorrah, I felt both me eyes to see if they was in! Ye done it fair, and ye’re an officer and a gintleman, whoever ye be. I’d like to shake hands with ye!”

“I am not shaking hands with ruffians who insult travelers,” Captain Lewis sternly rejoined; but he saw the crestfallen look which swept over the strong face of the other. “There, man,” said he, “since you seem to mean well!”

He shook hands with his opponent, who, stung by the rebuke, now began to sniffle.

“Sor,” said he, “I am no ruffian. I am a soldier meself, and on me way to join me company at Kaskasky, down below. Me time was out awhile back, and I came East to the States to have a bit av a fling before I enlisted again. Now, what money I haven’t give to me parents I’ve spint like a man. I have had me fling for awhile, and I’m goin’ back to sign on again. Sor, I am a sergeant and a good wan, though I do say it. Me record is clean. I am Patrick Gass, first sergeant of the Tinth Dragoons, the same now stationed at Kaskasky. Though ye are not in uniform, I know well enough ye are an officer. Sor, I ask yer pardon—’twas only the whisky made me feel sportin’ like at the time, do ye mind?”

“Gass, Patrick Gass, you said?”

“Yis, sor, of the Tinth. Barrin’ me love for fightin’ I am a good soldier. There are stripes on me sleeves be rights, but me old coat’s hangin’ in the barracks down below.”

Lewis stood looking curiously at the man before him, the power of whose grip he had felt in his own. He cast an eye over his erect figure, his easy and natural dropping into the position of a soldier.

“You say the Tenth?” said he briefly. “You have been with the colors? Look here, my man, do you want to serve?”

“I am going right back to Kaskasky for it, sor.”

“Why not enlist with us? I need men. We are off for the West, up the Missouri—for a long trip, like enough. You seem a well-built man, and you have seen service. I know men when I see them. I want men of courage and good temper. Will you go?”

“I could not say, sor. I would have to ask leave at Kaskasky. I gave me word I’d come back after I’d had me fling here in the East, ye see.”

“I’ll take care of that. I have full authority to recruit among enlisted men.”

“Excuse me, sor, ye are sayin’ ye are goin’ up the Missouri? Then I know yez—yez are the Captain Lewis that has been buildin’ the big boat the last two months up at the yards—Captain Lewis from Washington.”

“Yes, and from the Ohio country before then—and Kentucky, too. I am to join Captain Clark at the Point of Rocks on the Ohio. I need another oar. Come, my man, we are on our way. Two minutes ought to be enough for you to decide.”

“I’ll need not the half of two!” rejoined Patrick Gass promptly. “Give me leave of my captain, and I am with yez! There is nothin’ in the world I’d liever see than the great plains and the buffalo. ’Tis fond of travel I am, and I’d like to see the ind of the world before I die.”

“You will come as near seeing the end of it with us as anywhere else I know,” rejoined Lewis quietly. “Get your war-bag and come aboard.”

In this curious fashion Patrick Gass of the army—later one of the journalists of the expedition, and always one of its most faithful and efficient members—signed his name on the rolls of the Lewis and Clark expedition.

There was not one of the frontiersmen in the boat who had any comment to make upon any phase of the transaction; indeed, it seemed much in the day’s work to them. But from that instant every man in the boat knew he had a leader who could be depended upon for prompt and efficient action in any emergency; and from that moment, also, their leader knew he could depend on his men.

“I have nothing to complain of,” said Patrick Gass, addressing his new friends impartially, as he shifted his belongings to suit him and took his place at a rowing seat. “I have nothing to complain of. I’ve been sayin’ I would like to have one more rale fight before I enlisted—the army is too tame for a fellow of rale spirit. None o’ thim at the camp yonder, where I was two days, would take it on with me after the first day. I was fair longin’ for something to interest me—and be jabers, I found it! Now I am continted to ind me vacation and come back to the monothony of business life.”

The boat advanced steadily enough thereafter throughout the night. They pulled ashore at dawn, and, after the fashion of experienced travelers, were soon about the business of the morning meal.

The leader of the party drew apart for the morning plunge which was his custom. Cover lacking on the bare bar where they had landed, he was not fully out of sight when at length, freshened by his plunge, he stood drying himself for dressing. Unconsciously, his arm extended, he looked for all the world the very statue of the young Apoxyomenos of the Vatican—the finest figure of a man that the art of antiquity has handed down to us.

As that smiling youth out of the past stood, scraper in hand, drying himself after the games, so now stood this young American, type of a new race, splendid as the Greeks themselves in the immortal beauty of life. His white body shining in the sun, every rolling muscle plainly visible—even that rare muscle over the hip beloved of the ancients, but now forgotten of sculptors, because rarely seen on a man today—so comely was he, so like a god in his clean youth, that Patrick Gass, unhampered by backwardness himself, turned to his new companions, whom already he addressed each by his first name.

“George,” said he to young Shannon, “George, saw ye ever the like of yon? What a man! Lave I had knowed he could strip like yon, niver would I have taken the chance I did last night. ’Tis wonder he didn’t kill me—in which case I’d niver have had me job. The Lord loves us Irish, anny way you fix it!”

CHAPTER XII

CAPTAIN WILLIAM CLARK

“

Will!”

“Merne!”

The two young men gripped hands as the great bateau swung inshore at the Point of Rocks on the Kentucky side of the Ohio. They needed not to do more, these two. The face of each told the other what he felt. Their mutual devotion, their generosity and unselfishness, their unflagging unity of purpose, their perfect manly comradeship—what wonder so many have called the story of these two more romantic than romance itself?

“It has been long since we met, Will,” said Meriwether Lewis. “I have been eating my heart out up at Pittsburgh. I got your letter, and glad enough I was to have it. I had been fearing that I would have to go on alone. Now I feel as if we already had succeeded. I cannot tell you—but I don’t need to try.”

“And you, Merne,” rejoined William Clark—Captain William Clark, if you please, border fighter, leader of men, one of a family of leaders of men, tall, gaunt, red-headed, blue-eyed, smiling, himself a splendid figure of a man—“you, Merne, are a great man now, famous there in Washington! Mr. Jefferson’s right-hand man—we hear of you often across the mountains. I have been waiting for you here, as anxious as yourself.”

“The water is low,” complained Lewis, “and a thousand things have delayed us. Are you ready to start?”

“In ten minutes—in five minutes. I will have my boy York go up and get my rifle and my bags.”

“Your brother, General Clark, how is he?”

William Clark shrugged with a smile which had half as much sorrow as mirth in it.

“The truth is, Merne, the general’s heart is broken. He thinks that his country has forgotten him.”

“Forgotten him? From Detroit to New Orleans—we owe it all to George Rogers Clark. It was he who opened the river from Pittsburgh to New Orleans. He’ll not need, now, to be an ally of France again. Once more a member of your family will be in at the finding of a vast new country!”

“Merne, I’ve sold my farm. I got ten thousand dollars for my place—and so I am off with you, not with much of it left in my pockets, but with a clean bill and a good conscience, and some of the family debts paid. I care not how far we go, or when we come back. I thank Mr. Jefferson for taking me on with you. ’Tis the gladdest time in all my life!”

“We are share and share alike, Will,” said his friend Lewis, soberly. “Tell me, can we get beyond the Mississippi this fall, do you think?”

“Doubtful,” said Clark. “The Spanish of the valley are not very well reconciled to this Louisiana sale, and neither are the French. They have been holding all that country in partnership, each people afraid of the other, and both showing their teeth to us. But I hear the commission is doing well at St. Louis, and I presume the transfer will be made this fall or winter. After that they cannot stop us from going on. Tell me, have you heard anything of Colonel Burr’s plan? There have come new rumors of the old attempt to separate the West from the government at Washington, and he is said to have agents scattered from St. Louis to New Orleans.”

He did not note the sudden flush on his friend’s face—indeed, gave him no time to answer, but went on, absorbed in his own executive details.

“What sort of men have you in your party, Merne?”

“Only good ones, I think. Young Shannon and an army sergeant by the name of Gass, Patrick Gass—they should be very good men. I brought on Collins from Maryland and Pete Weiser from Pennsylvania, also good stuff, I think. McNeal, Potts, Gibson—I got those around Carlisle. We need more men.”

“I have picked out a few here,” said Clark. “You know Kentucky breeds explorers. I have a good blacksmith, Shields, and Bill Bratton is another blacksmith—either can tinker a gun if need be. Then I have John Coalter, an active, strapping chap, and the two Fields boys, whom I know to be good men; and Charlie Floyd, Nate Pryor, and a couple of others—Warner and Whitehouse. We should get the rest at the forts around St. Louis. I want to take my boy York along—a negro is always good-natured under hardship, and a laugh now and then will not hurt any of us.”

Lewis nodded assent.

“Your judgment of men is as good as mine, Will. But come, it is September, and the leaves are falling. All my men have the fall hunt in their blood—they will start for any place at any moment. Let us move. Suppose you take the boat on down, and let me go across, horseback, to Kaskaskia. I have some business there, and I will try for a few more recruits. We must have fifty men.”

“Nothing shall stop us, Merne, and we cannot start too soon. I want to see fresh grass every night for a year. But you—how can you be content to punish yourself for so long? For me, I am half Indian; but I expected to have heard long ago that you were married and settled down as a Virginia squire, raising tobacco and negroes, like anyone else. Tell me, how about that old affair of which you once used to confide to me when we were soldiering together here, years back? ’Twas a fair New York maid, was it not? From what you said I fancied her quite without comparison, in your estimate, at least. Yet here you are, vagabonding out into a country where you may be gone for years—or never come back at all, for all we know. Have a care, man—pretty girls do not wait!”

As he spoke, so strange a look passed over his friend’s face that William Clark swiftly put out a hand.

“What is it, Merne? Pardon me! Did she—not wait?”

His companion looked at him gravely.

“She married, something like three years ago. She is the wife of Mr. Alston, a wealthy planter of the Carolinas, a friend of her father and a man of station. A good marriage for her—for him—for both.”

The sadness of his face spoke more than his words to his warmest friend, and left them both silent for a time. William Clark ceased breaking bark between his fingers and flipping away the pieces.

“Well, in my own case,” said he at length, “I have no ties to cut. ’Tis as well—we shall have no faces of women to trouble us on our trails out yonder. They don’t belong there, Merne—the ways of the trappers are best. But we must not talk too much of this,” he added. “I’ll see you yet well settled down as a Virginia squire—your white hair hanging down on your shoulders and a score of grandchildren about your knees to hamper you.”

William Clark meant well—his friend knew that; so now he smiled, or tried to smile.

“Merne,” the red-headed one went on, throwing an arm across his friend’s shoulders, “pass over this affair—cut it out of your heart. Believe me, believe me, the friendship of men is the only one that lasts. We two have eaten from the same pannikin, slept under the same bear-robe before now—we still may do so. And look at the adventures before us!”

“You are a boy, Will,” said Meriwether Lewis, actually smiling now, “and I am glad you are and always will be; because, Will, I never was a boy—I was born old. But now,” he added sharply, as he rose, “a pleasant journey to us both—and the longer the better!”

CHAPTER XIII

UNDER THREE FLAGS

The day was but beginning for the young American republic. All the air was vibrant with the passion of youth and romance. Yonder in the West there might be fame and fortune for any man with courage to adventure. The world had not yet settled down to inexorable grooves of life, from which no human soul might fight its way out save at cost of sweetness and content and hope. The chance of one man might still equal that of another—yonder, in that vast new world along the Mississippi, beyond the Mississippi, more than a hundred years ago.

Into that world there now pressed a flowing, seething, restless mass, a new population seeking new avenues of hope and life, of adventure and opportunity. Riflemen, axmen, fighting men, riding men, boatmen, plowmen—they made ever out and on, laughing the Cossack laugh at the mere thought of any man or thing withstanding them.

Over this new world, alert, restless, full of Homeric youth, full of the lust of life and adventure, floated three flags. The old war of France and Spain still smoldered along the great waterway into the South. The flag of Great Britain had withdrawn itself to the North. The flag of our republic had not yet advanced.

Those who made the Western population at that time cared little enough about flags or treaty rights. They concerned themselves rather with possession. Let any who liked observe the laws. The strong made their own laws from day to day, and wrote them in one general codex of adventure and full-blooded, roistering life. The world was young. Buy land? No, why buy it, when taking it was so much more simple and delightful?

Based on this general lust of conquest, this Saxon zeal for new territories, must have been that inspiration of Thomas Jefferson in his venture of the far Northwest. He saw there the splendid vision of his ideal republic. He saw there a citizenry no longer riotous and roistering, not yet frenzied or hysterical, but strong, sober, and constant. His was a glorious vision. Would God we had fully realized his dream!

There were three flags afloat here or there in the Western country then, and none knew what land rightly belonged under any of the three. Indeed, over the heart of that region now floated all the three banners at the same time—that of Spain, passing but still proud, for a generation actual governor if not actual owner of all the country beyond the Mississippi, so far as it had any government at all; that of France, owner of the one great seaport, New Orleans, settler of the valley for a generation; and that of the new republic only just arriving into the respect of men either of the East or the West—a republic which had till recently exacted respect chiefly through the stark deadliness of its fighting and marching men.

It was a splendid game in which these two boys, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark—they scarcely were more than boys—now were entering. And with the superb unconsciousness and self-trust of youth, they played it with dash and confidence, never doubting their success.

The prediction of William Clark none the less came true. In this matter of flags, autocratic Spain was not disposed to yield. De Lassus, Spanish commandant for so many years, would not let the young travelers go beyond St. Louis, even so far as Charette. He must be sure that his country—which, by right or not, he had ruled so long—had not only been sold by Spain to France, but that the cession had been duly confirmed; and, furthermore, he must be sure that the cession by France to the United States had also been concluded formally.

Traders and trappers had been passing through from the plains country, yes—but this was a different matter. Here was a flotilla under a third flag—it must not pass. Spanish official dignity was not thus to be shaken, not to be hurried. All must wait until the formalities had been concluded.

This delay meant the loss of the entire winter. The two young leaders of the expedition were obliged to make the best of it they could.

Clark formed an encampment in the timbered country across the Mississippi from St. Louis, and soon had his men comfortably ensconced in cabins of their own building. Meanwhile he picked up more men around the adjacent military posts—Ordway and Howard and Frazer of the New England regiment; Cruzatte, Labiche, Lajeunesse, Drouillard and other voyageurs for watermen. They made a hardy and efficient band.

Upon Captain Lewis devolved most of the scientific work of the expedition. It was necessary for him to spend much time in St. Louis, to complete his store of instruments, to extend his own studies in scientific matters. Perhaps, after all, the success of the expedition was furthered by this delay upon the border.

Twenty-nine men they had on the expedition rolls by spring—forty-five in all, counting assistants who were not officially enrolled. Their equipment for the entire journey out and back, of more than two years in duration, was to cost them not more than twenty-five hundred dollars. A tiny army, a meager equipment, for the taking of the richest empire of the world!

But now this army of a score and a half of men was to witness the lowering before it of two of the greatest flags then known to the world. It already had seen the retirement of that of Great Britain. The wedge which Burr and Merry and Yrujo had so dreaded was now about to be driven home. The country must split apart—Great Britain must fall back to the North—these other powers, France and Spain, must make way to the South and West.

The army of the new republic, under two loyal boys for leaders, pressed forward, not with drums or banners, not with the roll of kettledrums, not with the pride and circumstance of glorious war. The soldiers of its ranks had not even a uniform—they were clad in buckskin and linsey, leather and fur. They had no trained fashion of march, yet stood shoulder and shoulder together well enough. They were not drilled into the perfection of trained soldiers, perhaps, but each could use his rifle, and knew how far was one hundred yards.

The boats were coming down with furs from the great West—from the Omahas, the Kaws, the Osages. Keel boats came up from the lower river, mastering a thousand miles and more of that heavy flood to bring back news from New Orleans. Broadhorns and keel-boats and sailboats and river pirogues passed down.

The strange, colorful life of the little capital of the West went on eagerly. St. Louis was happy; Detroit was glum—the fur trade had been split in half. Great Britain had lost—the furs now went out down the Mississippi instead of down the St. Lawrence. A world was in the making and remaking; and over that disturbed and divided world there still floated the three rival flags.

Five days before Christmas of 1803, the flag of France fluttered down in the old city of New Orleans. They had dreaded the fleet of Great Britain at New Orleans—had hoped for the fleet of France. They got a fleet of Americans in flatboats—rude men with long rifles and leathern garments, who came under paddle and oar, and not under sail.

Laussat was the last French commandant in the valley. De Lassus, the Spaniard, holding onto his dignity up the Missouri River beyond St. Louis, still clung to the sovereignty that Spain had deserted. And across the river, in a little row of log cabins, lay the new army with the new flag—an army of twenty-nine men, backed by twenty-five hundred dollars of a nation’s hoarded war gold!

It was a time for hope or for despair—a time for success or failure—a time for loyalty or for treason. And that army of twenty-nine men in buckskin altered the map of the world, the history of a vast continent.

While Meriwether Lewis gravely went about his scientific studies, and William Clark merrily went about his dancing with the gay St. Louis belles, when not engaged in drilling his men beyond the river, the winter passed. Spring came. The ice ceased to run in the river, the geese honked northward in millions, the grass showed green betimes.

The men in Clark’s encampment were almost mutinous with lust for travel. But still the authorities had not completed their formalities; still the flag of Spain floated over the crossbars of the gate of the stone fortress, last stronghold of Spain in the valley of our great river.

March passed, and April. Not until the 9th of May, in the year 1804, were matters concluded to suit the punctilio of France and Spain alike. Now came the assured word that the republic of the United States intended to stand on the Louisiana purchase, Constitution or no Constitution—that the government purposed to take over the land which it had bought. On this point Mr. Jefferson was firm. De Lassus yielded now.

On that May morning the soldiers of Spain manning the fortifications of the old post stood at parade when the drums of the Americans were heard. One company of troops, under command of Captain Stoddard, represented our army of occupation. Our real army of invasion was that in buckskin and linsey and leather—twenty-nine men; whose captain, Meriwether Lewis, was to be our official representative at the ceremony of transfer.

De Lassus choked with emotion as he handed over the keys and the archives which so long had been under his charge.

“Sir,” said he, addressing the commander, “I speak for France as well as for Spain. I hand over to you the title from France, as I hand over to you the rule from Spain. Henceforth both are for you. I salute you, gentlemen!”

With the ruffle of the few American drums the transfer was gravely acknowledged. The flag of Spain slowly dropped from the staff where it had floated. That of France took its place, and for one day floated by courtesy over old St. Louis. On the morrow arose a strange new flag—the flag of the United States. It was supported by one company of regulars and by the little army of joint command—the army of Lewis and Clark—twenty-nine enlisted men in leather!

“Time now, at last!” said William Clark to his friend. “Time for us to say farewell! Boats—three of them—are waiting, and my men are itching to see the buffalo plains. What is the latest news in the village, Merne?” he added. “I’ve not been across there for two weeks.”

“News enough,” said Meriwether Lewis gravely. “I just have word of the arrival in town of none other than Colonel Aaron Burr.”

“The Vice-President of the United States! What does he here? Tell me, is he bound down the river? Is there anything in all this talk I have heard about Colonel Burr? Is he alone?”

“No. I wish he were alone. Will, she is with him—his daughter, Mrs. Alston!”

“Well, what of that? Oh, I know—I know, but why should you meet?”