The Magnificent Adventure Part 39

Rest well, then, sir, and let me be strong to bear the news when at length it comes, if it ever shall come. Let the winds and the waters sound your requiem in that wilderness which you loved more than me--which you loved more than fame or fortune, honor or glory for yourself. The wilderness! It holds you. And for me--when at last I come to lay me down, I hope, too, some wilderness of wood or waters will be around me with its vast silences.

After all, what is life? Such a brief thing! Little in it but duty done well and faithfully. I know you did yours while you lived. I have tried to do mine. It has been hard for me to see what was duty. If I knew as absolute truth that conviction now in my heart--that you never can come back--how then could I go on?

Meriwether--Merne--Merne--I have been calling to you! Have you not heard me? Can you not hear me now, calling to you across all the distances to come back to me? I cannot give you up to the world, because I have loved you so much for myself. It was a cruel fate that parted us--more and more I know that, even as more and more I resolve to do what is my duty. But, oh, I miss you! Come back to me--to one who never was and never can be, but _is_----

Yours,

THEODOSIA.

It took him long to read this letter. At last his trembling hand dropped the creased and broken sheets. The guttering light went out.

The men were silent, sleeping near their fires. The peace of the great plains lay all about.

She had said it--had said that last fated word. Now indeed he knew what voice had called to him across the deeps!

He reflected now that all these messages had been written to him before he left her; and that when he saw her last she was standing, tears in her eyes, outraged by the act of the man whom she had trusted--nay, whom she had loved!

CHAPTER XIII

THE NEWS

A horseman rode furiously over the new road from Fort Bellefontaine to St. Louis village. He carried news. The expedition of Lewis and Clark had returned!

Yes, these men so long thought lost, dead, were coming even now with their own story, with their proofs. The boats had pa.s.sed Charette, had pa.s.sed Bellefontaine, and presently would be pulling up the river to the water front of St. Louis itself.

"Run, boys!" cried Pierre Chouteau to his servants. "Call out the people! Tell them to ring the bells--tell them to fire the guns at the fort yonder. Captains Lewis and Clark have come back again--those who were dead!"

The little settlement was afire upon the instant. Laughing, talking, ejaculating, weeping in their joy, the people of St. Louis hurried out to meet the men whose voyage meant so much.

At last they saw them coming, the paddles flashing in unison in the h.o.r.n.y hands which tirelessly drove the boats along the river. They could see them--men with long beards, clad in leggings of elk hide, moccasins of buffalo and deer; their head-dresses those of the Indians, their long hair braided. And see, in the prow of the foremost craft sat two men, side by side--Lewis and Clark, the two friends who had arisen as if from the grave!

"Present arms!" rang out a sharp command, as the boats lined up along the wharf.

The brown and scarred rifles came to place.

"Aim! Fire!"

The volley of salutation blazed out even with the chorus of the voyageurs' cheers. And cheers repeated and unceasing greeted them as they stepped from their boats to the wharf. In an instant they were half overpowered.

"Come with me!"

"No, with me!"

"With me!"

A score of eager voices of the first men of St. Louis claimed the privilege of hospitality for them. It was almost by force that Pierre Chouteau bore them away to his castle on the hill. And always questions, questions, came upon them--e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns, exclamations.

"_Ma foi!_" exclaimed more than one pretty French maiden. "Such men--such splendid men--savages, yet white! See! See!"

They had gone away as youths, these two captains; they had come back men. Four thousand miles out and back they had gone, over a country unmapped, unknown; and they brought back news--news of great, new lands. Was it any wonder that they stood now, grave and dignified, feeling almost for the first time the weight of what they had done?

They pa.s.sed over the boat-landing and across the wharf, approaching the foot of the rocky bluff above which lay the long street of St.

Louis. Silent, as was his wont, Meriwether Lewis had replied to most of the greetings only with the smile which so lighted up his face. But now, suddenly, he ceased even to smile. His eye rested not upon the faces of those acclaiming friends, but upon something else beyond them.

Yes, there it was--the old fur-shed, the storage-house of the traders here on the wharf, just as he had left it two years before! The door was closed. What lay beyond it?

Lewis shuddered, as if caught with chill, as he looked at yonder door.

Just there she had stood, more than two years ago, when he started out on this long journey. There he had kissed that face which he had left in tears--he saw it now! All the glory of his safe return, all the wonderful results which it must mean, he would have given now, could he have had back that picture for a different making.

"My matches--my thermometers--my instruments--how did they perform?"

The speaker was Dr. Saugrain, eager to meet again his friends.

"Perfect, doctor, perfect! We have some of the matches yet. As to the thermometers, we broke the last one before we reached the sea."

"You found the sea? _Mon Dieu!_"

"We found the Pacific. We found the Columbia, the Yellowstone--many new rivers. We have found a new continent--made a new geography. We pa.s.sed the head of the Missouri. We found three great mountain ranges."

"The beaver--did you find the beaver yonder?" demanded the voice of a swarthy man who had attended them.

It was Manuel Liza, fur-trader, his eyes glowing in his interest in that reply.

"Beaver?" William Clark waved a hand. "How many I could not tell you!

Thousands and millions--more beaver than ever were known in the world before. Millions of buffalo--elk in droves--bears such as you never saw--antelope, great horned sheep, otters, muskrat, mink--the greatest fur country in all the world. We could not tell you half!"

"Your men, will they be free to make return up the river with trading parties?"

William Clark smiled at the keenness of the old French trader.

"You could not possibly have better men," said he.

The men themselves shook their heads in despair. Yes, they said, they had found a thousand miles of country ready to be plowed. They had found any quant.i.ty of hardwood forests and pine groves. They had seen rivers packed with fish until they were half solid--more fish than ever were in all the world before. They had found great rivers which led far back to the heart of the continent. They had seen trees larger than any man ever had seen--so large that they hardly could be felled by an ax.

They had found a country where in the winter men perished, and another where the winters were not cold, and where the bushes grew high as trees. They had found all manner of new animals never known before--in short, a new world. How could they tell of it?

"Captain," inquired Chouteau at length, "your luggage, your boxes--where are they?"

Meriwether Lewis pointed to a skin parfleche and a knotted bandanna handkerchief which George Shannon carried for him.

"That is all I have left," said he. "But the mail for the East--the mail, M. Chouteau--we must get word to the President!"

"The President has long ago been advised of your death," said Chouteau, laughing. "All the world has said good-by to you. No doubt you can read your own obituaries."

"We bring them better news than that. What news for us?" asked the two captains of their host.