The Magnificent Adventure by Emerson Hough (best books for 20 year olds .TXT) đź“–
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With one movement, Meriwether Lewis flung off the uniform coat that he wore. They stood now, man to man, stripped, and neither gave back from the other.
“Shannon,” said Lewis, “I’m not your officer now. I’m going to choke the truth out of you. Will you fight me, or are you afraid?”
The last cruelty was too much. The boy began to gulp.
“I’m not afraid to fight, sir. I’d fight any man, but you—no, I’ll not do it! Even stripped, you’re my commander still.”
“Is that the reason?”
“Not all of it. You’re weak, Captain, your wound has you in a fever. ’Twould not be fair—I could do as I liked with you now. I’ll not fight you. I couldn’t!”
“What? You will not obey me as your officer, and will not fight me as a man? Do you want to be whipped? Do you want to be shot? Do you want to be drummed out of camp tomorrow morning? By Heaven, Private Shannon, one of these choices will be yours!”
But something of the icy silence of the youth who heard these terrible words gave pause even to the madman that was Meriwether Lewis now. He halted, his hooked hands extended for the spring upon his opponent.
“What is it, boy?” he whispered at last. “What have I done? What did I say?”
Shannon was sobbing now.
“Captain,” he said, and thrust a hand into the bosom of his tunic—“Captain, for Heaven’s sake, don’t do that! Don’t apologize to me. I understand. Leave me alone. Here’s the letter. There were six—this is the last.”
Lewis’s strained muscles relaxed, his blazing eyes softened.
“Shannon!” he whispered once more. “What have I done?”
He took the letter in his hand, but did not look at it, although his fingers could feel the seal unbroken.
“Why do you give it to me now, boy?” he asked at length. “What changed you?”
“Because it’s orders, sir. She ordered me—that is, she asked me—to give you these letters at times when you seemed to need them most—when you were sick or in trouble, when anything had gone wrong. We couldn’t figure so far on ahead when I ought to give you each one. I had to do my best. I didn’t know at first, but now I see that you’re sick. You’re not yourself—you’re in trouble. She told me not to let you know who carried them,” he added rather inconsequently. “She said that that might end it all. She thought that you might come back.”
“Come back—when?”
“She didn’t know—we couldn’t any of us tell—it was all a guess. All this about the letters was left to me, to do my best. I couldn’t ask you, Captain, or any one. I don’t know what was in the letters, sir, and I don’t ask you, for that’s not my business; but I promised her.”
“What did she promise you?”
“Nothing. She didn’t promise me pay, because she knew I wouldn’t have done it for pay. She only looked at me, and she seemed sad, I don’t know why. I couldn’t help but promise her. I gave her my word of honor, because she said her letters might be of use to you, but that no one else must know that she had written them.”
“When was all this?”
“At St. Louis, just before we started. I reckon she picked me out because she thought I was especially close to you. You know I have been so.”
“Yes, I know, Shannon.”
“I thought I was doing something for you. You see, she told me that her name must not be mentioned, that no one must know about this, because it would hurt a woman’s reputation. She thought the men might talk, and that would be bad for you. I could not refuse her. Do you blame me now?”
“No, Shannon. No! In all this there is but one to blame, and that is your officer, myself!”
“I did not think there was any harm in my getting the letters to you, Captain. I knew that lady was your friend. I know who she is. She was more beautiful than any woman in St. Louis when we were there—more a lady, somehow. Of course, I’m not an officer or a gentleman—I’m only a boy from the backwoods, and only a private soldier. I couldn’t break my promise to her, and I couldn’t very well obey your orders unless I did. If I’ve broken any of the regulations you can punish me. You see, I held back this letter—I gave it to you now because I had the feeling that I ought to—that she would want me to. It is the fever, sir!”
“Aye, the fever!”
Silence fell as they stood there in the night. The boy went on, half tremblingly:
“Please, please, Captain Lewis, don’t call me a coward! I don’t believe I am. I was trying to do something for you—for both of you. It was always on my mind about these letters. I did my best and now——”
And now it was the eye of Meriwether Lewis that suddenly was wet; it was his voice that trembled.
“Boy,” said he, “I am your officer. Your officer asks your pardon. I have tried myself. I was guilty. Will you forget this?”
“Not a word to a soul in the world, Captain!” broke out Shannon. “About a woman, you see, we do not talk.”
“No, Mr. Shannon, about a woman we gentlemen do not talk. But now tell me, boy, what can I do for you—what can I ever do for you?”
“Nothing in the world, Captain—but just one thing.”
“What is it?”
“Please, sir, tell me that you don’t think me a coward!”
“A coward? No, Shannon, you are the bravest fellow I ever met!”
The hand on the boy’s shoulder was kindly now. The right hand of Captain Meriwether Lewis sought that of Private George Shannon. The madness of the trail, of the wilderness—the madness of absence and of remorse—had swept by, so that Lewis once more was officer, gentleman, just and generous man.
Shannon stooped and picked up the coat that his captain had cast from him. He held it up, and aided his commander again to don it. Then, saluting, he marched off to his bivouac bed.
From that day to the end of his life, no one ever heard George Shannon mention a word of this episode. Beyond the two leaders of the party, none of the expedition ever knew who had played the part of the mysterious messenger. Nor did any one know, later, whence came the funds which eventually carried George Shannon through his schooling in the East, through his studies for the bar, and into the successful practise which he later built up in Kentucky’s largest city.
Meriwether Lewis, limp and lax now, shivering in the chill under the reaction from his excitement, turned away, stepped back to his own lodge, and contrived a little light, after the frontier fashion—a rag wick in a shallow vessel of grease. With this uncertain aid he bent down closer to read the finely written lines, which ran:
My Friend:
This is my last letter to you. This is the one I have marked Number Six—the last one for my messenger.
Yes, since you have not returned, now I know you never can. 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 NEWSA 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 passed Charette, had passed 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 horny 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—ejaculations, 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
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