The Magnificent Adventure

by Emerson Hough

  CHAPTER III

  THE DAY'S WORK

  "Roll out, men, roll out!"

  The sleeping men stirred under their robes and blankets and turnedout, quickly awake, after the fashion of the wilderness. The sentinelcame in, his moccasins wet, his tunic girded tight against the cool ofthe morning, which even at that season was chill upon the high plains.Soon the fires were alight and the odors of roasting meat arose. Thehour was scarce yet dawn.

  "Ordway! Gass! Pryor!" Lewis called in the sergeants in charge of thethree messes. "The boy Shannon has not returned. Which of your men,Ordway, will best serve to find Shannon and meet us up the river?"

  "Myself, sir," said Ordway, "if you please."

  "No, 'tis meself, sor," interrupted Patrick Gass.

  Pryor, with hand outstretched, also claimed the honor of the difficultundertaking.

  "You three are needed in the boats," said the leader. "No, I think itwill be better to send Drouillard and the two Fields boys. But tellme, Sergeant Ordway----"

  "Yes, sir!"

  "Has any boat passed up the river within the last day--for instance,while we were away at the hunt?"

  "I think not, sir. Surely any one coming up the river would haveturned in at our camp."

  Lewis turned to Gass, to Pryor; but both agreed that no boat couldhave gone by unnoticed.

  "And no man has come into the camp from below--no horseman?"

  They all shook their heads. Their leader looked from one to the otherkeenly, trying to see if anything was concealed from him; but thehonest faces of his men showed no suspicion of his own doubts.

  He dismissed them, feeling it beneath his dignity to make inquiry asto the bearer of the mysterious letter; nor did he mention it again toWilliam Clark. He knew only that some one of his men had a secret fromhis commander.

  "The men will find Shannon and bring him in ahead--we can't afford towait here for them. The water is falling now," said Clark. "We aredoing our twenty miles daily. The men laugh on the line, for the barsare exposed, and they can track along shore easily. Suppose Shannonwere out three days--that would make it sixty miles upstream--or less,for him, for he could cut the bends. I make no doubt that when hefound himself out for the night he started up the river; even beforethis time. _En avant_, Cruzatte!" he called. "You shall lead the linefor the first draw. Make it lively for an hour! Sing some song,Cruzatte, if you can--some song of old Kaskaskia."

  "Sure, the Frenchmans, she'll lead on the line this morning,_Capitaine_! I'll put nine, seven Frenchmans on the line, and she'llrun on the bank on her bare feet two hour--one hour. This buffalomeat, she make Frenchmans strong like nothing!"

  "Go on, Frenchy!" said Patrick Gass, Cruzatte's sergeant, who stoodnear by. "Wait until time comes for my squad on the line--'tis thinwe'll make the elkhide hum! There's a few of the Irish along."

  "Ho!" said Ordway, usually silent. "Wait rather for us Yankees--we'llshow you what old Vermont can do!"

  "As to that," said Pryor, "belike the Ohio and Kentucky men couldserve a turn as well as the Irish or the French. Old Kaintuck has tohelp out the others, the way she did in the French and Indian War!"

  "Well," broke in Peter Weiser, joining them as they argued, "I am fromPennsylvania; but I am half Virginian, and there are some others fromthe Old Dominion. When you are all done, call on us--ole Virginnynever tires!"

  The contagion of their light-heartedness, their loyalty and devotion,came as solace to the heart of Meriwether Lewis. He smiled in spite ofhimself, his eye kindling with confidence and admiration as he lookedover his men.

  They were stripping for their day's work, ready for mud or water orsun, as the case might be. Amidships, on the highest locker on thebarge, one of the Kentuckians was flapping his arms lustily and givingthe cockcrow, the river challenge of frontier days. Others seatedthemselves at the long sweeps of the barge, while yet others weremanning the pirogues.

  A few moments later, with joyous shouts, they were on their way oncemore--and not setting their faces toward home. In an hour they wereabove the first long bend. The wilderness had closed behind them. Notrace of the Indian village was left, no sight of the lingering smokeof their last camp fires.

  Faithfully, patiently, day by day, they held their way, sustained bythe renewed fascination of adventure, hardened and inured to risk andtoil alike. The distance behind them lengthened so enormously thatthey began to figure upon the unknown rather than the known.

  "We surely must be almost across now!" said some of the men.

  All of them were sore distressed over the loss of Shannon. Two weekshad passed since they left the Yankton Sioux, and four times thefaithful trailers had come back to the boats with no trace of themissing one.

  "It certainly is in the off chance now," assented William Clarkseriously, one day as they lay in the noon encampment. "But perhaps hemay be among the natives somewhere, and we may hear of him when wecome back--if ever we do."

  "If he got by the Teton Sioux, and kept on up the river, in time hewould find us somewhere among the Mandans," said Meriwether Lewis."But we will try once more before we give him up. Send a man to thetop of the bluff with my spyglass."

  Busy in their labors over their maps, and in the recording of theircompass bearings, for half an hour they forgot their messenger, untila shout called their attention. He was waving his hands, wildlybeckoning. Yonder, alone in the plains, bewildered, hopeless,wandering, was the lost man, who did not even know that the river wasclose at hand! Shannon's escape from a miserable fate was but one moreinstance of the almost miraculous good fortune which seemed to attendthe expedition.

  "And she was lucky man, too!" said Drouillard, a half-hour later,nodding toward the opposite shore. "Suppose he is on that side, she'llnot go in today!"

  "Two weeks on his foot!"

  They looked where he pointed. Red men, mounted, were visible, a dozenof them, motionless, on the rim of the farther bank, watching theexplorers as they began to make ready for their journey. Lewis turnedhis great field glass in that direction.

  "Sioux!" said he. "They are painted, too. I fancy," he added, as heturned toward his associates, "that this must be Black Buffalo's bandof Tetons you've told us about, Drouillard."

  "_Oui, oui_, the Teton!" exclaimed Drouillard. "I'll not spoke hislanguage, me; but she'll be bad Sioux. _Prenez garde, Capitaine,prenez garde pour ces sauvages, les Sioux!_"

  And indeed this warning proved well founded. More Indians gathered intoward the shore that afternoon, riding along, parallel with thecourse of the boats, whooping, shouting to the boatmen. At nightfallthere were a hundred of them assembled--painted warriors, decked inall their savage finery, bold men, showing no fear of the newcomers.

  The white men went about their camp duties in a mingling of figures,white and red. Lewis lined up his men, beat his drums, fired the greatswivel piece to impress the savages.

  "Bring out the flag, Will," said he. "Put up our council awning. I'llhave a parley with their head man. Can you make him out, Drouillard?"

  "He'll said he was Black Buffalo," replied the Frenchman. "I don'tunderstand him very good."

  "Take him these things, Drouillard," said Lewis. "Give him a lace coatand hat, a red feather, some tobacco, and this medal. Tell him thatwhen we get ready we'll make a talk with him."

  But Black Buffalo and his men were not in the mood to wait for theirparley. They crowded down to the bank angrily, excitedly, even afterthey had received the presents sent them. Lewis, busy about the barge,which had not yet found a good landing-place, turned at the sound ofhis friend's voice, to see Clark struggling in the grasp of two orthree of the Sioux, among them the Teton chief. A savage had his handflung about the mast of the pirogue, others laid hold upon thepainter. Clark, flushed and angry at the touch of another man's hand,had whipped out his sword, and the Indians were drawing their bowsfrom their cases.

  At that moment Lewis gave a loud order, which arrested them all. TheSioux turned toward the barge, to see the black mouth of the greatswivel
gun pointing at them--the gun whose thunder voice they hadheard.

  "Big medicine!" called out Black Buffalo in terror, and ordered hismen back.

  Clark offered his hand to Black Buffalo, but it was refused. Angry, hesprang into the pirogue and pushed off for the barge. Three of theIndians stepped into the pirogue with him, jabbering excitedly, and,with Clark, went aboard the barge, where they made themselves verymuch at home.

  "_Croyez moi!_" ejaculated Drouillard. "These Hinjun, she'll think heown this country!"

  Here, then, they were, in the Teton country. No sleep that night foreither of the leaders, nor for any of the men. They pulled thepirogues alongside the barge and sat, barricaded behind their goods,rifle in hand.

  They kept their visitors prisoners all that night, and whatever mighthave been the construction the Tetons placed on their act, theythemselves by dawn were far more placable. Continually they motionedthat the whites should come ashore, that they must stop, that theymust not go on further up the river. But when all was prepared for thestart on the following morning, Lewis ordered the great cable of thebarge cast off.

  Black Buffalo in turn ordered his men to lay hold upon it and retainthe boat. Once more the Indians began to draw their bows. Once moreLewis turned upon them the muzzle of his cannon. His men shook thepriming into their pieces, and made ready to fire. An instant, andmuch blood might have been shed.

  "Black Buffalo," said Lewis, as best he might through his interpreter,"I heard you were a chief. You are not Black Buffalo, but some squaw!We are going to see if we can find Black Buffalo, the real chief. Ifhe were here, he would accept our tobacco. The geese are flying downthe river. Soon the snow will come. We cannot wait. See, I give youthis tobacco on the prairie. Go and see if you can find Black Buffalo,the real chief!"

  "Ha!" exclaimed the Teton leader, his dignity outraged. "You say I amnot Black Buffalo--that I am not a chief. I will show you!"

  He caught the twists of good black Virginia tobacco tossed to him, andcast the rope far from him upon the tawny flood of the Missouri. Aninstant later the oars had caught the water and Cruzatte had spreadthe bowsail of the barge. So they won through one more of the mostdangerous of the tribes against whom they had been warned.

  "A near thing, Merne!" said Will Clark after a time. "There is somemighty Hand that seems to guide us--is it not the truth?"