Meriwether excused himself to write letters, retreating with elaborate courtesy from the crowd. I knew it was painful for him to tear himself away; he was drinking in the adulation like a man craving for spirits. But I could see that familiar taut compression of his lips that told me he was enduring delays he could scarcely bear; that reporting to Tom Jefferson came above all else, and his sole passion was to scrape his quill across foolscap and wing the great news east. He had stood there as long as he could, hearing the music of the Creoles while chafing to send the letter that would burst upon a world that had supposed us all dead.
I knew I must write some letters, too, but first there was the matter of She-He-Ke, Big White, his squaw, Yellow Corn, his boy, and the interpreter, René Jessaume, his Mandan wife and family. The Mandan chief was ill at ease, trying his stone-faced best not to show it, glancing dumfounded at the white men’s structures, the whispering mob, the enameled carriages, the parasoled grandes dames in black.
The Creoles crowded around me, sharp with greed, as I oversaw the last of our debarkation. Ordway and Gass had marched the men toward Government House, freeing me to meet these calculating merchants, none of whom I knew well, for it had been Meriwether who had dealt with them all before the expedition while I erected Camp Wood across the river.
“Monsieur, Chouteau here. Bien, what a grand day, oui? It is a day always to remember!”
“Pierre Chouteau, I remember.”
“Ah, Capitaine, tell me every grand thing.”
I laughed. “Well, first of all, I want you to meet a friend of ours, Chief Big White of the Mandans.” I spotted the translator. “Jessaume, come help us out, and bring the chief.”
“It is so? This is a Mandan sauvage?”
“We’re taking him to meet the president, and maybe put together an alliance.”
“Ah! A concord.”
Jessaume arrived with the chief and his family, and the translation proceeded in French, which let me out. But that was fine. I had things to do.
A short swart Spaniard I knew slightly, who had been hovering about like a bumblebee, saw his chance and approached.
“Manuel Lisa, Captain. It was a formidable journey, and we are pleased. Have you a moment?”
I nodded, reluctantly.
“Are there perhaps beaver up the Missouri?”
I laughed; that was answer enough.
“And what are the little impediments to reaching them?”
I could see where this was heading. “The Sioux,” I said. “They block the river.”
“Could they be pacified, or stupefied, with gifts?”
“We weren’t able to, sir.”
“How many would it take to break through?”
“More than you can hire, and I doubt that the government would let you.”
“Are the British trading up there?”
“They certainly are. Nor’westers, mainly.”
“Do they have the tribes in their possession?”
“Yes, mostly they do.”
He was stroking his small jet-haired beard. “And have you a map showing the beaver streams?”
“Mister Lisa! I haven’t been on shore but half an hour!”
“I shall await your instruction,” he said.
I turned, discovering half a dozen men lusting after our words. St. Louis was a city built on furs; these were entrepreneurs, fur men, blotting up my every word, concupiscent for beaver that could earn them a bonanza. I grinned, perhaps cynically. I knew the sort. St. Louis was not so much celebrating our safe return as it was celebrating the opening of a Golconda. About our survival, about our reaching the Pacific, about a river route to the Pacific, about our charting an uncharted continent, they were indifferent; about the streams habited by Castor canadensis, they were ardent students.
“More later, gents,” I said, seeing their disappointment. Fortunes, empires, monopolies, rivalries, lives of ease hung on every word I breathed, but I had no time for that. We had a guest and his family, half awed, half afraid, stiff as a plank, and needful of my comforts.
“Jessaume, tell brother Big White we’re going to take them to the big chief’s house and get them settled,” I said.
The translator repeated that in Mandan, and soon the somber Mandan, a big, lumbering man gotten up for the occasion in his finest ceremonial leathers, and his entourage were trailing me, along with half of St. Louis, as I hiked upslope, past warehouses and then mercantile firms along the Rue Principale, on up to the decaying Spanish military post.
I found our men stacking their arms in stands, in an orderly’s quarters under the supervision of Patrick Gass.
“Good,” I said. “Who’s in command here?”
“Don’t know, Captain. They’re all down to the water thinking up ways to get rich.”
I took matters into my own hands, surveyed the old seat of government in Upper Louisiana erected by the Spanish, studied a dusty barracks that appeared unused, and rejected the idea of putting the Mandans in there. These savages were tribal royalty. Big White was a king. I would give my coppery brother a king’s billet.
I found General Wilkinson’s chambers, but no Wilkinson, made a swift decision, and put Big White and his family in them, explaining to Jessaume, who barely grasped English, that this place was the very home of the American big chief, and Big White would be his guest for now. This was high diplomacy; the navigation of the Missouri River was at stake, and the friendly Mandans would be our passport.
I liked Big White. He had a powderhorn full of courage to come down the river with us to meet his new Father, past his enemies the Arikaras, and the truculent Sioux, and there had been wailing aplenty when he stepped into our canoe. Most of his people thought they would never see him again.
Big White nodded. I hoped it would do.
“Tell him we’ll feed him just as soon as we can,” I said to Jessaume. “Settle yourself and stay with him.”
The interpreter nodded. I didn’t much trust him, and never had, since meeting him on the way out to the Pacific.
And then, for the first time since debarking, I had a moment to reflect. Where was that damned York? Never in sight when I needed him. Where would I billet myself? Probably in a tent somewhere, in my buffalo robe. What about the men? Turn them all loose?
I found Sergeant Ordway posting the corps to that empty barracks. He approached me.
“Don’t know what you intend, sir. Some signed on for the trip, and should be released. Most are still regulars, and still under command,” he said.
I seconded that. “Look to their mess, and let ’em loose tonight. You, too. All the sergeants, all the corps, so long as there’s a guard here tonight. I’ll find out who’s commanding here.” I grinned. “Whether or not Captain Lewis comes up with some back pay, I don’t imagine you’ll suffer for the want of spirits.”
He nodded wryly. We understood each other. For three years we had been understanding each other.
I stepped into sunlight and found myself strangely alone, even though we had scarcely arrived. It was over. We were safe, but plentifully embroidered with boils and rashes and wounds. I had seen feet so lacerated I wondered how a man could put weight on them; men so ravaged I wondered how they could step one more time through hip-high snow. I had seen Meriwether vomit every last shred of camas root he had eaten, turn so sick I thought he’d expire; and most of the men, too. I’d been fevered and bilious more times than I could remember. I don’t know how we survived, though I credit Meriwether, who learnt something from Doctor Rush, and plenty more from his mother.
Upper St. Louis was deserted and hushed. I hiked back toward the crowded levee, absorbing the city’s foul stench, fetid air, the cess in the mucky lanes, the stone structures with real glass in the windows, the temporary squared log ones. Not a brick had been set to mortar in St. Louis, yet stone mansions rose upslope, and shacks jostled one another everywhere.
I wouldn’t stay here long. I knew exactly where I was headed. Miss Judith required my attention. As soon as we could put matters in order here, Meriwether and I would head east, stopping at Mulberry Hill, our family home near Louisville, en route.
I remembered how she looked the last time I saw her, this cousin of mine, Judith Hancock. She was trying to deal with a disobedient horse. She was twelve, not yet a woman, a pretty thing, flat chested, in a girl’s brown skirts, bright-eyed. She captured me then. I named a river for her, Judith’s River, high up the Missouri. I had the same design then as now; when I got back—if I got back—I would head for Fincastle, Virginia, where Colonel Hancock resided, and put my designs forward.
They were affluent people, the Hancocks, landed and comfortable, but I didn’t suppose I’d long be poor or unequal to their measure. Jefferson had promised me much: the captaincy had been turned down by the War Department, much to Meriwether’s disgust, but as for the rest, land warrants, back pay, bonus, I’d be comfortable … if Judy would have me. It had been a long time, and I hadn’t the faintest idea of her circumstance. I knew only my own condition, which was to make haste and claim her whilst I could. For nigh three years I had been thinking on it.
Meriwether and I had talked much of what we would do: we needed first to see the president and present him with the fruits of our labors; not merely an account of our journey, but my maps, of which I am proud because I know they are true. And the specimens, pressed and skinned and pickled by the hundreds. We plucked them up. We shot them, skinned them, preserved them, and packed their bones. We had boxes and barrels full of them, diligently described by Meriwether, less by me, though I copied out many of his pages to give ourselves a duplicate record. All of that we would soon deliver to the President’s House in Washington City, or Monticello if Tom Jefferson so desired, for we had been faithful to his command, and except that our diplomacy with the tribes has to some degree failed, we had met his every objective.
But first, I would put a letter in that post bag being delayed for us at Cahokia; and soon we will be rowing and poling up the Ohio to my family home on Mulberry Hill where my older brothers George Rogers and Jonathan will be waiting.