Snowbound and Eclipse

by Richard S. Wheeler

  “Over a year past,” I said. “It was the middle of August of eighteen and five.”

  My diminutive physician paced about, his hands decorously clasped behind his back, his black beard thrust forward like a bayonet. “You soon will enter the third and final stage, which does widespread damage to your organs. The heart and arteries especially, the brain, the system of the nerves that carry the messages of the mind to muscles.”

  I blanched.

  “But we will try to arrest it. Monsieur le capitaine, the salt of mercury slows and arrests, but only for a while, and then the disorder gains ground again, becomes puissant, dangerous. Ah, how a man regrets his impulses then! Ah, Capitaine, what this infirmity does to the soul!”

  A cold fear crawled through me.

  “But there is much hope,” he continued. “Many times, the disease diminishes, disappears, and it is as if nothing had ever afflicted the sufferer. I have found that perhaps a third of those who suffer it escape its effects entirely and many more are only mildly afflicted. And oftentimes years, decades, go by and nothing at all happens, as if the pox lies dead within you. I believe half of those who suffer this disorder survive it.”

  That heartened me. There was ample reason to hope. “Well, what shall I do?”

  “We will begin a course of treatment, Capitaine. It will take some little while.”

  “But I must go to Washington! The president is expecting me. The whole world is expecting me. It’s not possible.”

  Saugrain shrugged, a Gallic gesture that contained within it an entire argument. “Your condition prevents it. In a few weeks you will be sufficiently improved to go. You must avoid all spirits whatsoever; they accelerate the affliction. Here now, I shall mix the first batch of pills, oui?”

  And so I knew I must tarry in St. Louis, even though I itched to head up the rivers to Philadelphia where a great reception would await me, for I had learned that I had been elected to the membership of the American Philosophical Society; to Washington and Monticello; to Locust Hill, and my family.

  I paid Dr. Saugrain with a chit, for I hadn’t a shilling, and arranged for him to examine my corps discreetly. I would put out the word for those suffering from the venereal, and I would charge my men with secrecy. We were heroes, and there would be no public sign of pestilence.

  “I will do what I can, which is much,” Saugrain said, as we parted. “Send them to me.”

  I stepped into the afternoon, looking both ways to see if anyone might see me emerge from the French doctor’s chambers. I saw a few people down the street and a cart hitched to a mule, but no one was looking, so I slipped into the middle of the street. Not a soul in St. Louis knew where I had been, not even Will. There were things a man needed to keep entirely to himself.

  Will and I would be the honored guests at a banquet at Christie’s Tavern given by the leading men of St. Louis the next evening, and our great journey would be toasted and celebrated the entire night. And even before Doctor Saugrain’s courses began their work, I would be violating his advice. But a man being toasted would have no choice. I would raise a glass, too.

  4. CLARK

  I have taken my leisure this late October Sabbath, enjoying the fine autumnal weather. I don’t have much else to do. I thought we would be off for Washington City long since, but Meriwether tarries, I know not why. The president awaits us, and so does the whole republic, eager to give us the approbation that we have no doubt earned.

  When I broached the matter to Meriwether, reminding him that winter is closing in swiftly, he grew short with me.

  “I’m not ready. Don’t press so hard, Will. I’m outfitting the whole entourage, you know. We’re taking Big White and his family, and several of our men, too. The merchants don’t have half of what we need. Just getting the men some money took me days. I’ve not gotten them a quarter of what they’re owed. And not just my party, either. I’ve agreed to outfit Pierre Chouteau, so he can get his Osages to Washington. I’m going to auction off some of the rifles and gear, and raise something that way for the men.”

  It wasn’t what he said that seemed testy to me but the way he said it, impatiently and shrill. I couldn’t remember that metallic tone during our days on the trail.

  He has been in a peculiar humor for weeks, at once drinking in draughts of acclaim along with the endless draughts of wine, but melancholic.

  And so he tarries here in St. Louis. I wondered whether he wanted the word of our safe return to spread before us, thus making our passage east a sort of triumphal progress. But Meriwether is not so vain as all that. He is simply in a peculiar mood that I have not ever seen in him.

  A few days ago an elderly butcher in a soiled bib approached us and shook Meriwether’s hand. “I want to touch the hand of the man who walked to the Pacific,” he said. “Walked to the western sea, tasted the brine, and walked back again. Now, sir, having taken that very hand in mine, I am content.”

  Meriwether smiled, and then reminded the old man that over twenty more had done the same thing. He is eager to share his accomplishments, and I count it a virtue in him.

  But I never doubted that the command was really his, not mine, and in those cases in which I disagreed, especially about the Indians, I held my peace and found ways to be agreeable, preferring to modify his thoughts by degrees. He consulted with me frequently, usually in the confines of our tent when we still had one, or at least apart from the men, and always heard me out. But tacitly, we both knew the decisions were his to make, and he made them, and still makes them. He really gives me more credit than is due me.

  He has written generous letters to the president, urging a reward for me equal to his own, including a captain’s pay, and likewise he has written a commendation for almost every man in the corps, and has singled out a few for special compensation; he always was good with his men; reserved and distant, but a man to follow without question. I did follow his lead and still do, marveling in so grand a vision and keen a mind and withal, an eager quest for every scrap of knowledge that might advance science.

  Time drags. I proposed a fortnight ago that I leave at once, visiting my brothers and family at Mulberry Hill until he might arrive, but he forbade it. I know exactly what I wish to do: hasten to Fincastle, Virginia, just as swiftly as foot and horse and sail can transport me, and lay siege to the castle of my dreams.

  She for whom I named a crystal virgin stream.

  Judy is much on my mind. She is of marriageable age now; if she will have me I intend to wed her. The vision of her sustained me during our long progress, and stayed me in moments when I might have plucked the ripe fruits being offered by tribal women. And now I am prepared to win her. My battery will consist of telling her that I named a beautiful stream for her, one that pours out of mountains and is as clear as pond ice. What woman can resist so tender an assault as that?

  I think of little else. I will not be an impoverished suitor, not with three years of double back pay owing and land warrants promised me. I have already resigned my commission, having served my country well, and will begin a family, fashion a comfortable plantation in Kentucky not far from my brothers at Mulberry Hill across the Ohio, and prosper for as long as health permits. Assuming, of course, that Mr. Jefferson and the Congress keep their commitments.

  Not that one can trust any government to honor its commitments. My brother is painfully aware of it. It mattered to no one, apparently, that George Rogers Clark secured the whole northwestern territory clear to the Mississippi for the republic, beating the British regulars and their savages out of it with little more than an undisciplined militia. When it came time for the commonwealth of Virginia to make good the warrants by which he equipped and provisioned his ragtag militia, the commonwealth’s clerks reneged, found excuses, reproached him for the loss of receipts, and tossed him to the creditors, and so my brother was ruined save for a small amount of almost worthless land. I wonder whether that will be my fate as well. Let it be a Clark motto: put no trust in the government!r />
  And that is why I found myself, this warm and sunny October 26, strolling the riverbank, my eyes peering across the rolling river to the east, where my heart is tugged. I am a prisoner here. I am weary of the banquets. We have been to several at Christie’s Tavern where I now abide; the businessmen toast us, celebrate us—but I do not delude myself. They pump us for every scrap of knowledge about the high Missouri they can glean, knowing that their fortunes swell with such information.

  The wily Spaniard Manuel Lisa makes it his business to learn everything we have to teach, and I am wary of him. Meriwether, who was almost abstemious during the expedition, has taken much to drink and at the end of such evenings needs a steadying friend to get him safely to his bed, which consists of a buffalo robe he spreads on the floor, for he cannot find sleep lying upon straw or feathers or stuffed cotton.

  I strolled hard by the blue Mississippi this bright chill morn, and an hour out of town I spotted the solitary figure of a familiar and esteemed man before me, also stretching his legs. Drouillard, our Shawnee-French guide, interpreter, and hunter was the most valuable of all our men, supplying our hungry bellies with meat where none among us could find anything to shoot at. He is a dark, heavy-boned, and solitary man, preferring to roam apart from us, keeping much to himself, and yet he always had a kind word for me, and I mark him among my favorite of all those in the Corps of Discovery.

  He saw me and paused.

  “George, taking the air, I suppose?”

  “Yes, Captain.”

  “How is your circumstance? Were you released?”

  “Yes, sir. Captain Lewis paid me my twenty-five a month, which he got out of the merchants, and my service is over.”

  “You linger here, though.”

  “It is a place to make money, Captain. Half a dozen merchants have approached me about going upriver. Lisa, Chouteau, all of them. I may do so. I’ve been where they want to go, so it seems I am a man of some value.”

  “Along with most of the others,” I said.

  “A few. Most are indisposed.”

  “And the regulars are still under command. Who’s indisposed?”

  “Captain Lewis could tell you better than I.”

  “I thought by now most of the corps would have recovered. Better food, plenty of rest, warmth, and comfort.”

  Drouillard grunted.

  “But maybe too much to drink, is that it?”

  “There’s a parade of them visiting Doctor Saugrain, Captain.”

  I knew of it, and knew why. “Poxed, are they? Captain Lewis told me he had appointed Saugrain an army surgeon; it would be cheaper than paying for every visit.”

  “Poxed, yes. Half the corps.”

  “But not you. You were lucky.”

  “No, Captain, it was not luck. I do not live by luck, but by calculation. I did not like the chances.”

  I thought back to all those evenings among the Mandans, Hidatsas, Shoshones, Nez Percés, Clatsops, and all the others, when men slipped away into the darkness with the laughing women. Meriwether and I had to guard our stores to keep the men from stealing a hank of ribbon or an awl or a mirror to give to the squaws. I could not remember Drouillard indulging himself. Maybe he was, like me, a careful man. We could no more stop our men than we could stop a waterfall.

  That put me in mind of York. The squaws had fallen all over him, and yet he was unscathed by pox, though he had lain, I reckoned, with more Indian women than anyone else in the corps. How he fascinated them! I could not fathom it, though I would have been much vexed if he had sickened and lost his value to me. He bothers me now; the expedition taught him too much independence, and he looks at me now with a gaze I don’t like, and intend to do something about.

  I had Judy to think of, and a dream of a good life, and that was enough to teach me prudence. I thought it would suffice for Captain Lewis, also. Meriwether had several belles in mind, and a physician’s knowledge in his head, garnered from his mother, Doctor Rush of Philadelphia, and Saugrain as well before we started. No doubt he was aware of the venereal, but maybe thought to avoid it or heal it.

  He didn’t. He was poxed like the rest and was dosing himself with the calomel, though no word of it entered our journals. I do not know whether he suffered the drip, or worse. I cannot name the time or place, though it was plain he was suffering by the time we descended from the Bitterroots into the Columbia drainage. I myself treated those festering eruptions on his legs and arms when we were among the Nez Percés, though he bade me do so privately in our tent, fearing discovery by our men. I kept his secret.

  Though Drouillard had said nothing specific, I realized suddenly why Meriwether had not headed for Washington earlier. He would not go until Doctor Saugrain was done with him. That put a new light on things, and I pitied my co-commander. Were Drouillard and I the only two of the corps who had kept our senses—and our health?

  He fell silent as we blotted up sun. Then he paused.

  “You will excuse me, I trust, Captain,” he said, and turned off the path. That was the way of him, to vanish from our midst after the briefest encounter.

  I hiked well north of the town that day, restless and itching to get on with life, but actually still under orders. We managed to go clear to the Pacific while maintaining the fiction that we were co-commanders; but that was solely because I, Lieutenant Clark, did not press the issue when we differed. I would not press it here. It was Lewis’s expedition, and he was admirably suited to the task, and to my dying day, I will view him with unbounded admiration and affection.

  I returned to St. Louis with a breeze at my back.

  I supped this evening with Meriwether at Christie’s Tavern, as we usually do, now that the city’s merchants had at last wearied of our tales of great brown bears, buffalo beyond number, tribes that subsist on salmon, and the presence of sea trader’s items far up the Columbia.

  I examined him with some care, it having been revealed to me why he tarries so long in St. Louis. He looked well enough; certainly better than when we had arrived. Dr. Saugrain has done him some good. As if to confirm it, he announced that we would leave for Washington City in a week or so.

  He ordered porter, and then another goblet of it.

  “I’ve had to outfit quite a party, you know. The Osages and Mandans. Chouteau’s people. Several of our corps. But I imagine in a few days, Will, you’ll be in the bosom of your family.”

  “And then Fincastle,” I said, smiling.

  “Ah! You are a lucky man. I have never had much luck with women, though I plan to change that,” he said lightly. “Miss Randolph, for one. Miss Wood, for another. But my burdens have been so heavy, I haven’t given it much thought … until now. Wish me luck, eh?”

  There was something in the way he said it that saddened me.

  I truly wished him luck.

  5. LEWIS

  My joy upon arriving at my Virginia home, Locust Hill, was unalloyed. I discovered my mother, Lucy Marks, my brother, Reuben, my half-brother, John Marks, and my half-sister, Mary, all present and in good health.

  My mother met me on the lawn that sixteenth day of December, for word of our arrival preceded us. When I dismounted, she clasped me to her, her hands telling me how glad and grateful she was, and how proud, too.

  “My very own Meriwether,” she whispered. “At last my fears are behind me. And now I have a mother’s pride. Ah, my son, alive and honored …”

  I laughed, told her we would have a long visit in which I promised to reveal to her every wonder, every success, every danger. Her fingers lingered on my arm, touching the son she had thought she would never see again.

  I had Big White and his family and our translators with me, and Private Frazier, who served as my aide; but Sergeants Ordway and Gass and Private Labiche, who had left St. Louis with us, had gone their separate ways. At Frankfort, on November 13, we had split up: Will had taken the trace to Fincastle, Virginia, Pierre Chouteau headed for Washington City with his Osages, and I took my party to Iv
y, in Albemarle County. Ultimately I would progress to the City of Washington.

  It had been a triumphant progress, and we were greatly slowed because every hamlet along the Ohio River wished to banquet us and celebrate with grand oratory, toasts, and bonfires. Most of all they wanted to hear our stories, and we had obliged them as best we could. I am sure they were disappointed that we did not encounter mountains of rubies, fields of gold, giraffes, elephants, and pygmies.

  Little girls in dimity met us with bouquets tied with yellow ribbons; raggedy barefoot boys wanted to inspect our Harper’s Ferry rifles. Clerks and butchers and harness-makers wanted to shake hands, and memorize maps, and learn if the soil out west was fertile. They all wanted souvenirs, anything at all, even a patch of cloth, that had been to the far Pacific. And everywhere, towns spread their bunting, the red, white, and blue, and hoorahed us, and told us we were as bright as the circle of stars in the flag, and men of destiny.

  But at last I was home in sweet hazy Virginia; we settled Big White and his family in a spare bedroom. We were at once beset by convivial neighbors, for word of our arrival had preceded us, and in the hubbub I discovered that we would be honored at a great banquet in Charlottesville two days hence, with all the leading lights of that part of Virginia attending us.

  “You look splendid,” my mother said, when at last we had a moment. “I would have supposed to find you worn to a skeleton.”

  “That aptly describes our circumstance on more than one occasion,” I replied. “We had moments so desperate I despaired of feeding my men. But somehow we survived, and we had learned the woodsman’s art so well that we made meals of things civilized people scorn.”