It was the accepted fashion of challenge known anywhere along two thousand miles of waterway at that time, in a country where physical prowess and readiness to fight were the sole tests of distinction. Woe to the man who evaded such an issue, once it was offered to him!

The speaker had stepped close to Lewis--so close that the latter did not need to advance a foot. Instead, he held his ground, and the challenger, accepting this as a sign of willingness for battle, rushed at him, with the evident intent of a rough-and-tumble grapple after the fashion of his kind. To his surprise, he was held off by the leveled forearm of his opponent, rigid as a bar against his throat.

At this rebuff he roared like a bull, and breaking back rushed in once more, his giant arms flailing. Lewis swung back half a step, and then, so quickly that none saw the blow, but only its result was visible, he shifted on his feet, leaned into his thrust, and smote the joyous challenger so fell a stroke in the throat as laid him quivering and helpless. The brief fight was ended all too soon to suit the wishes of the spectators, used to more prolonged and bloodier encounters.

A sort of gasp, a half roar of surprise and anger, came from the group upon the ground. Some of the party rose to their feet menacingly. They met the silent front of the boat party, the clicking of whose well-oiled rifle-locks offered the most serious of warnings.

The sudden appearance of these visitors, so silent and so prompt--the swift act of their leader, without threat, without warning--the instant readiness of the others to back their leader's initiative--caught every one of these rude fighting men in the sudden grip of surprise. They hesitated.

"I am no fighting man," said Meriwether Lewis, turning to them; "yet neither may I be insulted by any lout who chooses to call me ash.o.r.e to thrash him. Do you think that an officer of the army has no better business than that? Who are you that would stop us?"

The group fell back muttering, lacking concerted action. What might have occurred in case they had reached their arms was prevented by the action of the party of the first part in this _rencontre_--of the second part, perhaps, he might better have been called. The fallen warrior sat up, rubbing his throat; he struggled to his knees, and at length stood. There was something of rude river chivalry about him, after all.

"An officer, did ye say?" said he. "Oh, wirra! What have I done now, and me a soldier! But ye done it fair! And ye niver wance gouged me nor jumped on me whin I was down! Begorrah, I felt both me eyes to see if they was in! Ye done it fair, and ye're an officer and a gintleman, whoever ye be. I'd like to shake hands with ye!"

"I am not shaking hands with ruffians who insult travelers," Captain Lewis sternly rejoined; but he saw the crestfallen look which swept over the strong face of the other. "There, man," said he, "since you seem to mean well!"

He shook hands with his opponent, who, stung by the rebuke, now began to sniffle.

"Sor," said he, "I am no ruffian. I am a soldier meself, and on me way to join me company at Kaskasky, down below. Me time was out awhile back, and I came East to the States to have a bit av a fling before I enlisted again. Now, what money I haven't give to me parents I've spint like a man. I have had me fling for awhile, and I'm goin' back to sign on again. Sor, I am a sergeant and a good wan, though I do say it. Me record is clean. I am Patrick Ga.s.s, first sergeant of the Tinth Dragoons, the same now stationed at Kaskasky. Though ye are not in uniform, I know well enough ye are an officer. Sor, I ask yer pardon--'twas only the whisky made me feel sportin' like at the time, do ye mind?"

"Ga.s.s, Patrick Ga.s.s, you said?"

"Yis, sor, of the Tinth. Barrin' me love for fightin' I am a good soldier. There are stripes on me sleeves be rights, but me old coat's hangin' in the barracks down below."

Lewis stood looking curiously at the man before him, the power of whose grip he had felt in his own. He cast an eye over his erect figure, his easy and natural dropping into the position of a soldier.

"You say the Tenth?" said he briefly. "You have been with the colors?

Look here, my man, do you want to serve?"

"I am going right back to Kaskasky for it, sor."

"Why not enlist with us? I need men. We are off for the West, up the Missouri--for a long trip, like enough. You seem a well-built man, and you have seen service. I know men when I see them. I want men of courage and good temper. Will you go?"

"I could not say, sor. I would have to ask leave at Kaskasky. I gave me word I'd come back after I'd had me fling here in the East, ye see."

"I'll take care of that. I have full authority to recruit among enlisted men."

"Excuse me, sor, ye are sayin' ye are goin' up the Missouri? Then I know yez--yez are the Captain Lewis that has been buildin' the big boat the last two months up at the yards--Captain Lewis from Washington."

"Yes, and from the Ohio country before then--and Kentucky, too. I am to join Captain Clark at the Point of Rocks on the Ohio. I need another oar. Come, my man, we are on our way. Two minutes ought to be enough for you to decide."

"I'll need not the half of two!" rejoined Patrick Ga.s.s promptly. "Give me leave of my captain, and I am with yez! There is nothin' in the world I'd liever see than the great plains and the buffalo. 'Tis fond of travel I am, and I'd like to see the ind of the world before I die."

"You will come as near seeing the end of it with us as anywhere else I know," rejoined Lewis quietly. "Get your war-bag and come aboard."

In this curious fashion Patrick Ga.s.s of the army--later one of the journalists of the expedition, and always one of its most faithful and efficient members--signed his name on the rolls of the Lewis and Clark expedition.

There was not one of the frontiersmen in the boat who had any comment to make upon any phase of the transaction; indeed, it seemed much in the day's work to them. But from that instant every man in the boat knew he had a leader who could be depended upon for prompt and efficient action in any emergency; and from that moment, also, their leader knew he could depend on his men.

"I have nothing to complain of," said Patrick Ga.s.s, addressing his new friends impartially, as he shifted his belongings to suit him and took his place at a rowing seat. "I have nothing to complain of. I've been sayin' I would like to have one more rale fight before I enlisted--the army is too tame for a fellow of rale spirit. None o' thim at the camp yonder, where I was two days, would take it on with me after the first day. I was fair longin' for something to interest me--and be jabers, I found it! Now I am continted to ind me vacation and come back to the monothony of business life."

The boat advanced steadily enough thereafter throughout the night.

They pulled ash.o.r.e at dawn, and, after the fashion of experienced travelers, were soon about the business of the morning meal.

The leader of the party drew apart for the morning plunge which was his custom. Cover lacking on the bare bar where they had landed, he was not fully out of sight when at length, freshened by his plunge, he stood drying himself for dressing. Unconsciously, his arm extended, he looked for all the world the very statue of the young Apoxyomenos of the Vatican--the finest figure of a man that the art of antiquity has handed down to us.

As that smiling youth out of the past stood, sc.r.a.per in hand, drying himself after the games, so now stood this young American, type of a new race, splendid as the Greeks themselves in the immortal beauty of life. His white body shining in the sun, every rolling muscle plainly visible--even that rare muscle over the hip beloved of the ancients, but now forgotten of sculptors, because rarely seen on a man today--so comely was he, so like a G.o.d in his clean youth, that Patrick Ga.s.s, unhampered by backwardness himself, turned to his new companions, whom already he addressed each by his first name.

"George," said he to young Shannon, "George, saw ye ever the like of yon? What a man! Lave I had knowed he could strip like yon, niver would I have taken the chance I did last night. 'Tis wonder he didn't kill me--in which case I'd niver have had me job. The Lord loves us Irish, anny way you fix it!"

CHAPTER XII

CAPTAIN WILLIAM CLARK

"Will!"

"Merne!"

The two young men gripped hands as the great bateau swung insh.o.r.e at the Point of Rocks on the Kentucky side of the Ohio. They needed not to do more, these two. The face of each told the other what he felt.

Their mutual devotion, their generosity and unselfishness, their unflagging unity of purpose, their perfect manly comradeship--what wonder so many have called the story of these two more romantic than romance itself?

"It has been long since we met, Will," said Meriwether Lewis. "I have been eating my heart out up at Pittsburgh. I got your letter, and glad enough I was to have it. I had been fearing that I would have to go on alone. Now I feel as if we already had succeeded. I cannot tell you--but I don't need to try."

"And you, Merne," rejoined William Clark--Captain William Clark, if you please, border fighter, leader of men, one of a family of leaders of men, tall, gaunt, red-headed, blue-eyed, smiling, himself a splendid figure of a man--"you, Merne, are a great man now, famous there in Washington! Mr. Jefferson's right-hand man--we hear of you often across the mountains. I have been waiting for you here, as anxious as yourself."

"The water is low," complained Lewis, "and a thousand things have delayed us. Are you ready to start?"

"In ten minutes--in five minutes. I will have my boy York go up and get my rifle and my bags."

"Your brother, General Clark, how is he?"

William Clark shrugged with a smile which had half as much sorrow as mirth in it.

"The truth is, Merne, the general's heart is broken. He thinks that his country has forgotten him."

"Forgotten him? From Detroit to New Orleans--we owe it all to George Rogers Clark. It was he who opened the river from Pittsburgh to New Orleans. He'll not need, now, to be an ally of France again. Once more a member of your family will be in at the finding of a vast new country!"

"Merne, I've sold my farm. I got ten thousand dollars for my place--and so I am off with you, not with much of it left in my pockets, but with a clean bill and a good conscience, and some of the family debts paid. I care not how far we go, or when we come back. I thank Mr. Jefferson for taking me on with you. 'Tis the gladdest time in all my life!"

"We are share and share alike, Will," said his friend Lewis, soberly.

"Tell me, can we get beyond the Mississippi this fall, do you think?"

"Doubtful," said Clark. "The Spanish of the valley are not very well reconciled to this Louisiana sale, and neither are the French. They have been holding all that country in partnership, each people afraid of the other, and both showing their teeth to us. But I hear the commission is doing well at St. Louis, and I presume the transfer will be made this fall or winter. After that they cannot stop us from going on. Tell me, have you heard anything of Colonel Burr's plan? There have come new rumors of the old attempt to separate the West from the government at Washington, and he is said to have agents scattered from St. Louis to New Orleans."