Snowbound and Eclipse

by Richard S. Wheeler

  Opium, I thought. Opium has got him.

  28. LEWIS

  Bates again. He stormed into my office in a fit, ruining a spring morning. He had in hand a fair copy of the contract I executed with the St. Louis Missouri Fur Company. He glared down at me, his woolly eyebrows arching and falling, his milky eyes bulging with antagonism for whatever reason I soon would know.

  “Yes, Mr. Bates?”

  “This contract, sir, is an abomination!”

  I settled back to receive the rodomontade, knowing I would not be spared by this uncivil man.

  “You have named General Clark as your agent in your absence. But I am your second. When you are absent, I am the acting governor. That is the law. You had no business violating the law of the land—”

  I raised a hand. “Mr. Secretary, this contract governs Indian affairs entirely. Will Clark is our Indian superintendent. He’s a partner in the company, fully aware of its difficulties. Who better to appoint than the one public official who is empowered to deal with Indian matters?”

  Bates didn’t subside. “You have offended me once again, sir. You and your coterie of privileged men. But things will change. There’s a new administration, and you’re no longer in the same position. You grasp that, sir? You are no longer protected by Mr. Jefferson. He’s retired from office, and a good thing if I may say so.”

  “I’m well aware of it, Mr. Bates.”

  “And I’ve written Secretary Eustis about your expenditures, and this abominable contract, which puts public funds into the hands of your cronies. Yes! Your cronies. You are mulcting the government.”

  “It’s the only way, Mr. Bates. The army can’t spare the troops to take Big White safely home. It is a matter of highest concern to the government to do just that.”

  “Hah! No one cares about that savage, save for you and those profiteers who will pillage the public treasury to do it. I shall, sir, let the entire world know. I will see you put out of office, sir, like a cur put out on the streets to starve.”

  I rose swiftly.

  That was a dismissal, but he ignored it. “This contract creates a monopoly. Who but your cronies will profit? No one! You will gouge the treasury, feed on public funds.”

  I stood, not feeling well, and motioned him toward the door.

  “Just remember, you no longer have Jefferson to bail you out of trouble!” he snapped.

  I quieted myself. “Mr. Bates, though you array yourself against me, let us at least maintain some civility in public. Pray you, confine your disputes to these private meetings.”

  He nodded curtly, which I took to be agreement.

  I watched the wretched man stalk away, marveled that he could work up such a temper about so little, but I counted him a danger to everything I had worked for so long and hard.

  I knew also I could not placate him. I could grant his every wish, cave in to his every demand, flatter him, publicly praise him, and that would only excite him to further assaults upon my person. I was puzzled. I had no idea what I had done or failed to do that excited such a violent passion in him.

  I knew for certain that his letters, which he had been mailing to Washington at the rate of one or two a week, would have their effect, and that I would be forced to return to that seat of government ere long to deal with the accusations. He had been bragging about town of his correspondence with two or three secretaries and Mr. Madison. I would have to go back there, as much as I dreaded it.

  I wanted to meet William Eustis, Madison’s new pinchpenny war secretary. I thought I could allay the suspicion and Bates’s wild accusations if we could but meet and if I could sit down with the secretary and the president and explain matters. Some things can’t be resolved through correspondence.

  It would take an armed force to deliver the Mandan chief to his village, past the hostile Arikaras. I offered the St. Louis Missouri Fur Company seven thousand dollars to do it, thirty-five hundred payable at the start, when they were properly organized and ready to go. But my terms were strict and if they failed to be properly prepared and off by May tenth they should forfeit three thousand dollars. The risk was all theirs.

  My contract with them required a hundred twenty-five armed Americans in their entourage, including forty riflemen, all in addition to the trappers and traders they wished to take along. They would be traveling in an armada that would carry over two hundred armed men, a force strong enough to compel the respect of the Arikaras.

  How better to do it, as long as the army was unable to help me? The public funds were indeed the foundation for the whole business, but all of the partners were risking most of what they owned in the hope of reward. The company would have a monopoly on the fur business only above the Mandan villages; the government would show the Plains tribes that it could overwhelm any of them, and was not to be obstructed in its purposes. Out of it would come commerce and peace, and the firm hand of the republic ruling the new territory.

  Lisa and Chouteau had been working furiously to put the venture together, hire the entire company of men, supply the expedition, and obtain the keelboats to take them up the Missouri. Every partner was busy preparing. Reuben was collecting his medicines; Ben Wilkinson was purchasing supplies or providing them from his store; Will Clark was looking after the finances, along with Auguste Chouteau. Lisa was out on the levee, hiring the best rivermen, trappers, riflemen, cooks, translators, and traders in St. Louis, and finding more takers than anyone had imagined.

  I was busy, especially because I had lost so much time to my sickbed. I authorized payment of the translation of a court record into French, knowing Bates would object on narrow legal grounds, and sent the voucher off to Washington. He was objecting to everything, and perhaps that was all to the good. They would see him for the embittered man he was.

  Lisa visited me this afternoon.

  “Yes, Manuel?”

  “Ah, Your Excellency, I am glad to see you up and about. You look the very picture of health.”

  The man was prevaricating, but I ignored that. “How are you coming? Will you be off by May tenth?”

  He shook his head. “It is a worrisome thing, Governor. I come to talk about the diplomacy, yes?”

  “With the tribes?”

  “Since this is a government expedition, we think you should provide the gifts, the little items of honor, to give to the headmen and chiefs, to win their undying allegiance to the government of the republic, yes?”

  “That should come out of your funds.”

  He shook his head. “Every cent is committed. We will not have enough, even with the payment you have promised us.”

  “I’ve written Washington that I’ve committed seven thousand to this. I can’t go further.”

  He shrugged. “Then we go without the gifts. We have nothing to trade for food, for canoes, for what is necessary.”

  I remembered how valuable our small stock of trade items was during the great trip west and how I yearned for just a few more blue beads, or hatchets, or iron arrow points, to win the perfidious chiefs. Time after time, en route home, we had come to the brink of disaster because we lacked things to trade for food. Even so, I was reluctant.

  “You are going to have to provide those yourselves. The contract we signed is generous.”

  He shrugged. “And the risks are generous, too!”

  I rose and paced my office. With Bates howling about every cent, I couldn’t help much. And yet, I felt that I had to. I could not fail to return Big White to his people. That was Tom Jefferson’s mandate and it was written in a tone that brooked no failure.

  “What is the absolute minimum you need?” I asked.

  “Two thousand dollars for the purchase of gifts, beads, metal items, knives, awls.”

  “Two thousand dollars!”

  He nodded. But I knew the crafty Spaniard. He probably wanted five hundred and knew how to turn the screws.

  I was weary of being importuned for money. Half the people entering my office begged money from the government
.

  “What exactly would you spend it on?” I asked.

  Lisa shrugged. “You have told us many times what the Corps of Discovery needed and lacked. I would follow your wisdom, Your Excellency.”

  Blue beads.

  I nodded. At my desk I lifted a quill, sharpened the point with my blade, and dipped it into the inkpot. I scratched out a voucher on the United States Treasury, on the account of the secretary of war, for one thousand five hundred dollars, payable to Pierre Chouteau because I didn’t trust Lisa, to be employed in the purchase of public gifts to be given to the tribes as needed to insure their allegiance. I spilled ink on two occasions, my hand being unruly these days for some reason, blotted up the ink spots, and handed it to Lisa.

  “Wait,” I said. “I want to inform Will Clark of this.”

  I penned a second note for Will, letting him know I was adding trade items from the public purse to foster amity and help preserve the company’s passage.

  “Give this to the general, please.”

  Lisa took the note, nodded, and smiled. Was it slyly? Had he gulled me? Was this the crafty Spaniard’s way of enlarging the profit at the expense of the public purse?

  I exhaled, and watched him go. He didn’t linger about for social amenities, and I wondered if the Spaniard was a friend of anyone, or loyal to anything other than himself.

  I made a notation to put the draft on record. Bates would cause more trouble. I felt unwell, and settled into my chair, my mind climbing the skies like a hawk.

  Oh, to go with them! Oh, to walk those golden prairies, and see the eagles own the sky! Oh, to be young and strong and filled with life again! Oh, to dream great dreams!

  29. CLARK

  Secretary Bates sprang upon me moments after I arrived at my office, and he was in a wrathy mood. I had scarcely hung my cape over the antler coatrack in the corner and opened the casements to let in some April breezes when he burst in, fires glittering in those milkstone eyes.

  “General, sir, I have come for a confidential talk about certain matters pertaining to the lawful governance of the territory!” he exclaimed.

  I said nothing and made no assurances about confidentiality. I have made it a lifetime habit to listen attentively, and keep my counsel, by which means I get along with all manner of men, and even a man so fiddle-strung as Secretary Bates.

  I could tell at a glance that he had rehearsed this moment all night, and perhaps for days.

  I gestured him to a seat, but he declined, preferring to pace about like an advocate before the bar, making his case with a multitude of theatrical gestures and postures.

  “I know, General, that you are a close companion of the governor, the partner in a long journey, and therefore my views are likely to be instantly dismissed. But I am compelled by the law and justice and propriety to make the case before the only other official in the territory whose conduct influences the affairs of Upper Louisiana.”

  I nodded. This was going to take some time. Bates often talked like that, using twice the words he needed to. He paced again, his hands clasped behind him, his kinked dark hair drawn tight into a disciplined queue without a strand out of place. I wondered how a man of such unruly feeling could rule his hair with such total sovereignty.

  “By appointing you his agent in his absence, in the matter of the St. Louis Missouri Fur Company, General, he violates the law. The code is explicit. The territorial secretary shall act as governor in the absence of the governor. He is wilfully and wantonly offending the government, offending me, and insulting me by demonstrating his lack of confidence in me.”

  I thought it would be this. I had hoped he would let it pass.

  I said nothing, as was my wont, but nodded.

  “This is a dangerous and unlawful precedent,” he said. “I have written Secretary Eustis about it, intending that the authorities should know at once. I fear, General, that the tides that will wash over the governor will wash against your shore, also.”

  “I see,” I said.

  He took that for encouragement. “The man is behaving in a most improper manner. He signs warrants for any small expense, expecting Washington to pay. Why, sir, without any authority he had a public notice translated into the French and printed in French, though there is no provision for it. I sent it along to the treasury secretary as directed, but over my protest.”

  I wanted to tell Bates that if some official matter is made public in Louisiana it must be made so in two tongues and the government must shoulder the cost. But I get more from listening than I do from debating, so I simply nodded.

  Bates stopped pacing suddenly, and faced me. “All this will come down upon his head. I will make sure of it. He cannot govern improperly without the eyes of responsible men observing his misconduct and taking the necessary steps.”

  He was proclaiming he was the tattletale, which interested me. I nodded.

  “He borrows money right and left, General. From you, I know, from Chouteau, even from me. Why, he had the audacity to press me for twenty dollars a day or two ago, knowing that a mere servant and underling cannot refuse his governor, and so I lent it. I have eyes and ears in this town, sir, and I get wind of how he spends all this money. It is upon draughts and pills.”

  He leaned close, his air confidential. “I happen to know that he consumes large numbers of one-gram pills of opium. One gram! Several times daily. It is a frightful habit. Where will it end? In madness? Do you know what that does to his judgment? He is falling into grievous error, General, because his mind is clouded by opium.”

  I hadn’t known it was so bad, but I suspected it was true. Bates had an amazing intelligence network feeding him dirt. I wondered what he knew about me, or thought he knew.

  I nodded.

  He liked my attentiveness; it encouraged him. “And that’s not all, General. He doses himself with cinchona, calomel, and other powders. But it is not for the ague or intermittent fever. Not for bilious fever. Not for consumption. Have you seen his gums, General? Blue! The Mark of Cain.”

  I knew what he was talking about.

  I hadn’t noticed, and the accusation worried me. Perhaps I had been too close to Meriwether to see him clearly. Then again, maybe Bates was merely imagining things. I had not seen any such mark of mercury poisoning upon the governor. But it was possible. He had borrowed, he said, to pay medical bills.

  “Mark my words, General. The time of protection, when our heroic governor was untouchable because he was harbored in the esteem of a president, has passed. Now he will be scrutinized with care and integrity, and by men who are less impressed with Meriwether Lewis than he is impressed with himself.”

  That was the unkindest cut but I wanted to let Bates run with his indictment. I was learning fast.

  He continued in that vein a while more, and when he finally wound down I knew that Lewis had a genuine enemy in Bates, a man who itched to depose the governor and rule the territory himself. I felt certain also that Bates could do considerable damage to Lewis with those letters; that Bates did have a certain punctilio about the law on his side, and that his sort of songs would find receptive ears among a certain class of lesser clerks in the warrens of the government.

  “Well?” said Bates, having emptied himself.

  “Mr. Bates, I would like to offer my good offices toward reconciling you and the governor,” I said.

  “No, you will only take the governor’s part,” he retorted.

  “I will follow my own counsel, I assure you. It is an offer set before you. Perhaps I can help you work out some common ground.”

  “I do not wish to share any ground with that cur, that dog,” Bates said. “Look at me! I am here complaining! Yes, complaining about another mortal, and thus demeaning myself before your very eyes. You know what the world thinks of complainers! But I have no recourse, sir. I must complain because that is the only avenue open to me, even though it besmirches me to speak so ill of another.”

  “What do you want of me?” I asked.

>   “I came to warn you that you are under scrutiny as well, sir. And that you might properly distance yourself from the governor.”

  I grinned. “Mr. Lewis is my friend and I hope you can be also, Mr. Bates. You are a skillful man and needed here.”

  He puffed up. “I should hope so,” he said. “I mean no man harm who has done me none.”

  That’s how it ended. Like a steam kettle breathing its last vapor into the atmosphere. I saw him off, and settled into my chair, running over the accusations and threats, and finding little in them but wind. Still, a man wrapped in such passion could be nettlesome, and I resolved to brace Meriwether about Bates, as I had several times in the past.

  The danger lay in Bates’s objections to various expenditures, including those for the St. Louis Missouri Fur Company for the delivery of Big White safely home. I resolved then and there that I must head for Washington before the travel season ended, and talk to Eustis and the president myself. If money was the bone of contention, then I would contend about it.

  I settled back in my desk chair, remembering Captain Lewis of the Corps of Discovery. He had been occasionally severe, especially in the way he meted out punishment for military infractions. And yet, no man of the corps, not the lowest private, had grounds to loathe Lewis, and in fact he inspired in them a great devotion and a yearning to excel.

  Without Meriwether’s skills in dealing with our men the corps might have faltered; might even have died, to the last man. They loved him, love him still. They admired him in the field, and admire him still. He has seen to their back pay, their pensions, their honors, their retirement, their medical needs. He nursed them through desperate times and brought them safely home, as only a great man will.

  He preferred to walk the banks of the rivers while the rest of us poled or rowed or pulled ourselves upstream. He walked in perfect grace, his lithe footsteps keeping pace with us, even though he took the time to examine every plant and animal that caught his eye. His great mind is what mesmerized us all. There was something grand in everything he did, as if he could see over horizons, anticipate the next crisis or triumph. He had no Frederick Bates along to whittle him down.