CHAPTER II
THE MYSTERIOUS LETTER
Late in the night the Yanktonnais drums still sounded, long after adozen Sioux had spoken, and after the two white chieftains had arisenand left the council fire. The people of the village were feastingaround half a hundred fires. The village was joyous, light-hearted,and free of care. The hunt had been successful.
"Look at them, Will," said Meriwether Lewis, as they paused at theedge of the bluff and turned back for a last glimpse at the savagescene. "They are like children. I swear, I almost believe their lot inlife is happier than our own!"
"Tut, tut, Merne--moralizing again?" laughed William Clark, thelight-hearted. "Come now, help me get my eelskin about my hair. We mayneed this red mane of mine further up the river. I trust to take itback home with me, after all, now that we seem safe to pass theseSioux without a fight. I am happy enough that our business today hascome out so well. I am a bit tired, and an old bull gave me a smashwith his horn this morning; so I am ready to turn into my blankets.Are all the men on the roll tonight?"
"Sergeant Ordway reports Shannon still absent. It seems he went out onthe hunt this morning, and has not yet come back. I'll wait up a time,I think, Will, to see if he comes in. It is rather a wild business fora boy to lie out all night in such a country, with only the wolves forcompany. Go you to your blankets, as you say. For me, I might be abetter sleeper than I am."
"Yes, that is true," rejoined Will Clark, rubbing his bruised leg. "Itis beginning to show on you, too, Merne. Isn't it enough to beastronomer and doctor and bookkeeper and record-keeper and all that?No, you think not--you must sit up all night by your little fire underthe stars and think and think. Oh, I have seen you, Merne! I have seenyou sitting there when you should have been sleeping. Do you call thatleadership, Captain Lewis? The men are under you, and if the leader isnot fit, the men are not. Now, a human body will stand only somuch--or a human mind, either, Merne. There is a limit to effort andendurance."
His friend turned to him seriously.
"You are right, Will," said he. "I owe duty to many besides myself."
"You take things too hard, Merne. You cannot carry the whole world onyour shoulders. Look now, I have not been so blind as not to see thatsomething is going wrong with you. Merne, you are ill, or will be.Something is wrong!"
His companion made no reply. They marched on to their own part of theencampment, and seated themselves at the little fire which had beenleft burning for them.[4]
[Footnote 4: The original journals of these two astonishing youngmen--one of them just thirty years old, the other thirty-four--shouldrank among the epic literature of the world. Battered about,scattered, separated, lost, hawked from hand to hand, handed down asunvalued heritages, "edited" first by this and then by that littleman, sometimes to the extent of actual mutilation or alteration oftheir text--the journals of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark holdtheir ineffacable clarity in spite of all. Their most curious qualityis the strange blending of two large souls which they show. It wasonly by studying closely the individual differences of handwriting,style, and spelling, that it could be determined what was the work ofLewis, which that done by Clark.
And what a labor! After long days of toil and danger, under unvaryinghardships, in conditions of extremest discomfort and inconvenience forsuch work, the two young leaders set down with unflagging faithfulnesscountless thousands of details, all in such fashion as showed thekeenest and most exact powers of observation. Botanists, naturalists,geographers, map-makers, builders, engineers, hunters, journalists,they brought back in their notebooks a mass of information neverequaled by the records of any other party of explorers.
We cannot overestimate the sum of labor which all this meant, dayafter day, month after month; nor should we underestimate thequalities of mind and education demanded of them, nor the variedexperience of life in primitive surroundings which needed to be partof their requisite equipment. It was indeed as if the two friends werefitted by the plan of Providence for this great enterprise which theyconcluded in such simple, unpretending, yet minutely thorough fashion.Neither thought himself a hero, therefore each was one. The largestglory to be accorded them is that they found their ambition and theircontent in the day's work well done.]
William Clark went on with his reproving.
"Tell me, Merne, what are you thinking of? It is not that woman?"
He seemed to feel the sudden shrinking of the tall figure at his side.
"I have touched you on the raw once more, haven't I, Merne?" heexclaimed. "I never meant to. I only want to see you happy."
"You must not be too uneasy, Will," returned Meriwether Lewis, atlast. "It is only that sometimes at night I lie awake and ponder overthings. And the nights themselves are wonderful!"
"Saw you ever such nights, Merne, in all your life? Breathed you eversuch air as these plains carry in the nighttime? Why do you notexult--what is it you cannot forget? You don't really deceive me,Merne. What is it that you _see_ when you lie awake at night under thestars? Some face, eh? What, Merne? You mean to tell me you are stillso foolish? We left three months ago. I gave you two months forforgetting her--and that is enough! Come, now, perhaps some maid ofthe Mandans, on ahead, will prove fair enough to pipe to you, or totouch the bull-hide tambourine in such fashion as to charm you fromyour sorrows! No, don't be offended--it is only that I want to tellyou not to take that old affair too hard. And now, it is time for youto turn in."
William Clark himself arose and strolled to his own blanket-roll,spread it out, and lay down beneath the sky to sleep. Meriwether Lewissought to follow his example, and spread open his robe and blanketsclose to the fire. As he leaned back, he felt something hard andcrackling under his hand, and looked down.
It was his custom to carry in his blankets, for safekeeping, his longspyglass, a pair of dry moccasins and a buckskin tunic. These articleswere here, as he expected to find them. Yet here among them was afolded and sealed envelope--a letter! He had not placed it here; yethere it was.
He caught it up in his hand, looked at it wonderingly, kicked the endsof the embers together so that they flamed up, bent forward to readthe superscription--and paused in amazement. Well enough he knew thefirm, upright, characterful hand which addressed this missive to him:
TO CAPTAIN MERIWETHER LEWIS.--ON THE TRAIL IN THE WEST.
A feeling somewhat akin to awe fell upon Meriwether Lewis. He felt acold prickling along his spine. It was for him, yes--but whence had itcome? There had been no messenger from outside the camp. For one briefinstant it seemed, indeed, as if this bit of paper--which of allpossible gifts of the gods he would most have coveted--had droppedfrom the heavens themselves at his feet here in the savage wilderness.His heart had been on the point of breaking, it seemed to him--and ithad come to comfort him! It was from her. It ran thus:
DEAR SIR AND FRIEND:
Greetings to you, wherever you may be when this shall find you. Are you among the Gauls, the Goths, the Visigoths, the Huns, the Vandals, or the Cimbri? Wherever you be, our hopes and faith go with you. You are, as I fancy, in a desert, a wilderness, worth no man's owning. Life passes meantime. To what end, my friend?
I fancy you in the deluge, in the hurricane, in the blaze of the sun, or in the bleak winds, alone, cheerless, perhaps athirst, perhaps knowing hunger. I know that you will meet these things like a man. But to what end--what is the purpose of all this? You have left behind you all that makes life worth while--fortune, fame, life, ambition, honor--to go away into the desert. At what time are you going to turn back and come to us once more?
Oh, if only I had the right--if only I dared--if only I were in a position to lay some command on you to bring you back! Methinks then I would. You could do so much for us all--so much for me. It would mean so much to my own happiness if you were here.
Meriwether Lewis, come back! You have gone far enough. On ahead are only cruel hardship and
continual failure. Here are fortune, fame, wealth, ambition, honor--and more. I told you one time I would lay my hand upon your shoulder out yonder, no matter where you were. I said that you should look into my face yonder when you sat alone beside your fire under the stars. You said that it would be torment. I said that none the less I would not let you go. I said my face still should stay with you, until you were willing to turn back.
Turn back _now_, Meriwether Lewis! Come back!
The letter was not signed, and needed not to be. Meriwether Lewis satstaring at the paper clutched in his hand.
Her face! Ah, did he not see it now? Was it not true what she hadsaid? He saw her face now--but not smiling, happy, contented, as itonce had been. No, he saw it pale and in distress. He saw tears in hereyes. And she had written him:
Oh, if only I had the right to lay some command on you!
Was not he, who had forgotten honor, subject now to any command thatshe might give him?
"Will, Will!" exclaimed Meriwether Lewis, sharply, imperatively, tohis friend, whom he could see dimly at a little distance as he lay.
The long figure in its robes straightened quickly, for by day or nightWilliam Clark was instantly ready for any sudden alarm. He started upon his robe, with his hand on his rifle.
"Who calls there? Who goes?" he cried, half awake.
"It is I, Will," said Meriwether Lewis, advancing toward him."Listen--tell me, Will, why did you do this?"
"Why did I do what? Merne, what is wrong?"
Clark was now on his feet, and Lewis held out the letter to him. Hetook it in his hand, looked at it wonderingly.
"This letter----" began Meriwether Lewis. "Certainly you carried itfor me--why did you not bring it to me long ago?"
"What letter? Whose letter is it, Merne? I never saw it before. Whatis it you are saying? Are you mad?"
"I think so," said Lewis, "I think I must be. Here is a letter--Ifound it but now in my bed. I thought perhaps you had had it for me along time, and placed it there as a surprise."
"Who sends it, Merne. What does it say?"
"It is from the woman whose face I have seen at night, Will. She asksme to come back!"
"Burn it--throw it in the fire!" said William Clark sharply. "Go back?What, forsake Mr. Jefferson--leave me?"
"God forgive me, Will, but you search my very heart! For one moment Iwas on the point of declaring myself too ill to finish thisjourney--on the point of letting you have all the honor of it. I wasgoing to surrender my place to you."
"You cannot desert us, Merne! You shall not! Go back to bed! Give methe letter! Bah! it is some counterfeit, some trick of one of themen!"
"It would be worth any man's life to try a jest like that," saidMeriwether Lewis. "It is no counterfeit. I know it too well. Thisletter was written before we left St. Louis. How it came here I knownot, but I know who wrote it."
"She had no right----"
"Ah, but that is the cruelty of it--she _did_ have the right!"
"There are some things which a man must work out for himself," saidWilliam Clark slowly, after a time. "I don't think I'll ask anyquestions. If there is any place where I can take half your burden,you know what I will do. We've worked share and share alike, butperhaps some things cannot be shared, even by you and me. It is foryou to tell me if I can help you now. If not, then you must decide."
Even as he spoke, his beloved friend was turning away from him.Meriwether Lewis walked out alone into the night. Stumbling, he passedon out among the shadows, under the starlight. Without much plan, hefound himself on a little eminence of the bluff near by.
He sat down, his blanket drawn over his head, like an Indian,motionless, thinking, fighting out his own fight, as sometimes a manmust, alone. He did not know that William Clark, most faithful offriends, himself silent as a Sioux, had followed, and sat a littledistance apart, his eyes fixed on the motionless figure outlinedagainst the sky.
The dawn came at last and kindled a red band along the east. The graylight at length grew more clear. A coyote on the bluff raised a longand quavering cry, like some soul in torture. As if it were his ownvoice, Meriwether Lewis stirred, rose, drew back the blanket from hisshoulders, and turned down the hill.
He saw his friend rising and advancing to him. Once more their handsgripped, as they had when the two first met on the Ohio, almost a yearago, at the beginning of their journey.
Lewis frowned heavily. He could not speak for a time.
"Give the orders to the men to roll out, Captain Clark," said he atlength.
"Which way, Captain Lewis--upstream or down?"
"The expedition will go forward, Captain Clark."
"God bless you, Merne!" said the red-headed one.