Snowbound and Eclipse

by Richard S. Wheeler

  “I will supply a departure date in the spring; you will need to leave before then or forfeit. I’ll put that in the contract. We will provide you with trading licenses and whatever other assistance you require.”

  Meriwether spelled out a great many details, almost as if they were rolling out of some articles of agreement already fashioned in his mind, while the partners—I should say future partners because no such articles of agreement have been completed—listened and smoked.

  I knew they would agree to it, without a murmur.

  There were men sitting in that parlor I did not trust. Lisa for one, the crafty Spaniard who had overcharged Captain Lewis for the goods he got us on the eve of the expedition. And Benjamin Wilkinson, brother of the conniving general. But such was my fever to conquer the upper Missouri that I resolved to stomach the opportunists.

  The British are up there, flagrantly and openly trading with the Mandans, Sioux, and Hidatsas, and other tribes in Upper Louisiana, and setting them against us. It is a part of their undeclared war, this nibbling at our sovereignty and our commerce.

  If war does break out, we might well face a massive Indian uprising, orchestrated by the North West Company in Canada and intended to sever the whole territory from our grasp. To stop that, I would make alliance with the devil. The very word Briton is enough to put me in a bilious humor.

  But these merchants are not devils, merely opportunists, and one way to secure their loyalty, and procure the allegiance of the tribes, is to let them profit.

  “Mes amis,” said Pierre Chouteau, “we have heard the governor. Are we to form the company or not?”

  We agreed to form one, a partnership in which we all would put in an equal share, as we had already discussed at length. I didn’t know where I’d find the means, but I would, somehow. I had land to trade. Andrew Henry was as strapped as I, but had made enough from his lead mines to invest. About Reuben Lewis I didn’t know, but he seemed as ready as the rest.

  We spent the remainder of that evening hammering out the articles, while Meriwether sat silently by. Quite possibly he was a silent partner, with Reuben as his proxy, but none of us would ever know. Given his position, he was judiciously staying apart. Most of the partners would go up the river themselves; I was exempted because of my office. They made me the accountant and offered me a small salary to handle all the receipts, expenditures, and disbursements. Given what I knew of the fur markets, I thought I could do a good job of it.

  The agreement had still to be drafted, copies made and signed, but we walked out of that meeting with a capitalized company. My fortunes would ride on its success. The government’s Indian diplomacy would ride on our ability to restore She-He-Ke and his family to his people. If we did that, and showed our muscle, we would hold the Missouri River.

  I started downslope that night with my cape drawn tightly about me, my mood as blustery as the wind. I rather hoped to encounter a pair of footpads, just so I could bang their skulls together. But no one molested me.

  I knew what was roiling me: I ached to go upriver. The talk in Chouteau’s parlor had unleashed a flood of memories, of breezy prairies under an infinite sky, of the river dancing in sunlight, of iridescent black-and-white magpies darting ahead of us and making as much commotion as they could, of standing on a bluff overlooking the sweet land, the sea of wilderness, seeing the bright snowy mountains on the farthest horizon, the backbone of the continent, and feeling more at home than at any hearth back in civilization. I wanted to go. The westering itch had nipped me. But I had a bride now, and a child on the way, and an army at my command, and a president looking over my shoulder.

  An icy gale banged me into my house, and I pulled off my cloak and stood a moment in the darkness. York materialized out of the gloom, but the candles were out.

  “You have a good meeting, mastuh?” he asked, taking my cloak and hanging it.

  “The partners are saying yes,” I replied.

  “Goin’ up de river?”

  “Beaver pelts and robes and maybe chasing the British back to Canada.”

  “Lots of men goin’ upriver, get past them Rees?”

  “Two hundred anyway, including a hundred twenty-five armed.” I grinned. “We’ll get Big White home this time.”

  “They leaving in the spring?”

  “May at the latest.”

  “You want anything, mastuh?”

  “No, York, I’ll go to bed.”

  “The mistress, she done gone an hour ago.”

  I nodded.

  “You mind I ask a question, mastuh?”

  I stood, waiting.

  “I’s wanting to go up the river. You sell my services, you make plenty money, and I go work my way with them that goes to the mountains.”

  I stared at him. He stood in the shadows, his hands wringing, his cat-eyes soft upon me.

  “Mastuh? I been up that river. I knows the ropes. I’s experienced. I’s good with a gun. I’s a good cook. I’s a man can skin a hide off any critter. I’s a man been there and back …”

  He wanted to go up there plenty. I could see it in him. I could sell his labor, profit from him, two hundred dollars in my pocket and I wouldn’t have to feed or clothe him. He’d be an asset to them. He’d be one of a handful who had been over every inch, who knew every trick.

  “No, and don’t ask me again,” I said, a steely tone in my voice.

  “Mastuh?”

  “I said no! No! You’ve got an eye for those savage women, and you can just forget that.”

  “That ain’t it, mastuh.”

  I knew that wasn’t it. Up in the mountains he would be a free man for a few months. He would do better than most of the whites, especially the greenhorns.

  “York, go to bed. You will do as I say, when I say, and without objection.”

  I heard a moan, an exhalation, a collapsing of his lungs, and watched him shuffle off through bleak shadows.

  “York! You can go to Louisville and see your woman for a few weeks.”

  “Thank you, mastuh.”

  I heard him shuffle up the narrow stairs.

  Anger percolated through me. The trip west had sabotaged a good slave. But I pitied him, too, old York. I knew exactly what he was hoping for. Just before the wind blew me into my house, I was thinking of the shining mountains, and longing for the boundless land. York was longing for it, too, but for different reasons.

  Well, damn him. I’d whip him if he asked me again, damn his black hide. Old York, my friend from childhood.

  23. LEWIS

  A great weariness afflicts me. The more I achieve, the more rebuff I encounter. Now it is Bates again. Let me decide on a course of action or appoint a man to any office, and he will take the opposite tack or complain that I have selected the wrong man.

  I gave him some advice, hoping to slow down the galloping gossip floating around St. Louis: “When we meet in public, let us at least address each other with cordiality,” I said.

  He seemed to accept the prescription.

  I thought I had patched things up. He promised to bring his objections to me privately, where we could discuss them frankly, but that scarcely lasted a week. He fumes and fulminates and complains and imagines rebuffs and insults in such number that I am baffled. The effect of all this is to make my burdens heavier and impede my progress.

  And now about the ball. It is the December social season, and these affairs occur almost nightly and will continue until well into the new year. It is de rigueur to invite the governor, and I go to as many as I can, enjoying the company, and the belles.

  But there Bates was, self-important and dour, at the punch bowl, discussing affairs of state with a guest, and staring daggers at me as I approached. I had no wish to offend, nor did I wish to speak or suffer yet another altercation so I simply sat nearby and began conversing with a Creole dowager who knew a little English.

  Ah, that was my mistake! I had ventured in public too close to his person!

  A great quiet settled ove
r the hall. Bates had proclaimed far and wide in Missouri that he would meet me only officially, and never socially, and here we were, only a few yards apart. The gossips were watching.

  With an affronted mien, the secretary of the territory abandoned the punch bowl and walked as far from me as he could, an obvious and blatant insult.

  That offended me more than any other of Bates’s malicious acts. The ball was over, at least for me, and I stalked into the cold night, boiling at the man, thinking to meet him on the field of honor, outraged at his infinite capacity to cause trouble. I have never been so angry.

  This time, I sent my new mulatto manservant, John Pernia, to Clark, thinking I needed a second. Clark hastened to my office, where I met him in the cold darkness, without lighting a lamp, and there I told him I had had my fill of the obnoxious secretary, and that his conduct was intolerable, and I would seek redress. I would not let it pass.

  The general calmed me down. “I’ll talk to him, Meriwether, and see whether I can win an apology.”

  “Do it now.”

  “No, not now. I’m going to let him cool down.”

  “He gave deadly insult. I’m ready for what comes!”

  Will eyed me quietly. “One Aaron Burr is too many.”

  I thought of Tom Jefferson’s embarrassments and how I might add to them out of rashness, and subsided. Vice President Burr had fallen into disgrace after killing Alexander Hamilton in a duel; he had dabbled with empire building out here, inviting the British and then the Spanish to help him detach Louisiana from the republic.

  He had been acquitted of treason for want of firm evidence, and had fled to Europe in voluntary exile. His lovely daughter, Theodosia Burr Alston, wife of a Carolina governor, was an acquaintance of mine. The gossips had linked us, but there never was a thing to it. I had watched the Burr trial in Richmond as the president’s observer, and that was as close as I ever wanted to get to Aaron Burr.

  The image of that hollow-eyed, haunted, and bitter man, sitting in the dock, flooded through me, and I realized that my old friend Will was steering me away from the dock in his own gentle way. It was not the first time I felt a flood of gratitude toward my old comrade.

  But Will was not done with me. “Governor, it behooves you to consider what you have said or done that maddens Frederick Bates,” he said.

  The heat boiled up in me. “Are you accusing me?”

  Will grinned. “Just that sometimes we don’t see what we do to others.”

  “I have treated him with perfect civility.”

  “And so you have, old friend. Why then, do you set him off?”

  “I haven’t the faintest idea,” I said sharply, my tone telling Clark I had no wish to pursue the matter further.

  “Do you seek his opinions? Counsel with him?”

  “His views aren’t worth my attention.”

  Will started to say something, and then obviously checked himself. “I get along with him all right,” he said at last.

  “You’re not the governor! He was the acting governor until I arrived, and he can’t forget it.”

  Clark clapped me on the back. “Guess he can’t,” he said cheerfully. “Guess you can’t, either.”

  That last lanced through me, and it was all I could do to stop the black mood that surged through me. Was he telling me the fault was mine? What was he telling me? Was he my friend, or had he turned on me, too?

  “Let’s go home,” he said gently.

  I parted with him in the dark street, my thoughts riding furiously in all directions. Will was settled and happy; a baby was coming soon. He enjoyed St. Louis. I had never heard a whisper of malice directed toward him. What had Fate given him that Fate denied me? I watched him vanish into the closeness of a starless foggy night, and turned toward my rooms, my mind still churning.

  Would anyone ever honor me for all that I had accomplished in Louisiana? Not even Will knew what I had done. As I walked, I took refuge in my accomplishments.

  I had made great progress, started a road to Ste. Genevieve and New Madrid, published the territorial codes, proclaimed an Indian territory, promulgated a law allowing villages to incorporate, curbed promiscuous licensing of traders, put up forts on the Osage and Des Moines Rivers that helped check the British, appointed good men to various offices, put out a spy network to keep an eye on the Spanish along our southwest border, put Nicholas Boilvin, my best man with the Indians, to work dealing with the Sauk and Fox tribes up north, and bringing to justice some murderers they were harboring.

  And with Will’s help I had dealt with the Osages and submitted a treaty to the Senate, cashiered the disloyal and lazy elements from the militia and put good men in command, settled some of the bold stakery, or the claim disputes, over the Ste. Genevieve lead mines, started work on a shot tower, won over the wary Creoles to the republic, and now, at long last, was closing in on the hardest and most urgent of all tasks, getting Big White back to the Mandan villages.

  I should have been proud. Instead, I was weary in a strange way that seemed to rise from my very bones. Secretary Dearborn had become more and more abrupt and demanding, and also more obtuse about the dangers here; and Mr. Jefferson, a man I regarded as my father, had written sharply to me about my failure to correspond, and to put the journals in order.

  And as great as my accomplishments were, the combined dissatisfaction of the president, Secretary Dearborn, and the territorial secretary, who loathed my very presence, weighed more on me than everything I had achieved. They were hovering over my shoulder like ghosts, wanting to undo my decisions.

  Governing was harder than I had ever imagined. I had expected to make enemies as well as friends; I hadn’t expected the backbiting, gossip, malice, and secret machinations intended to undo my every act, and drive me from office.

  I am feeling indisposed again, and fear another bout of ague is coming. But these come and go, and I am in the pink of health, except for an odd and inexplicable malaise, like a crouched wolf within me. I do not call on Reuben for treatment, and have not seen a physician on my own account since I arrived here. Such remedies as I need for the ague, such as cinchona bark extract called quinine, I can get easily enough from the Creole apothecaries in town.

  There is a bright spot. Through my solicitation, I have gotten a newspaper into the territory, the Missouri Gazette, and by it I am broadcasting my ideas and publishing my laws and regulations. Though I am consumed by territorial business, I still find time to pen my thoughts, which are duly published under the nom de plume Clatsop. What better means could there be to shape the opinions of my citizens? I much prefer penning my thoughts for publication than writing to all those in Washington who demand things of me. My own father died when I was a boy; it is painful for me to correspond with those who presume to govern my conduct.

  I have not neglected my own fortunes, either. I have written my mother to tell her that I am putting the family estate at Ivy up for sale to finance my purchases here. It is my intent to bring her and the rest of my family here and settle them on the generous and fruitful farmlands I have acquired from the Chouteaus. I have already paid three thousand for these lands, and owe two more large payments next May and the following May. And then the Lewis and Marks families will be handsomely established here in the West.

  But until I effect that sale in Virginia, I will be pressed to the limit. Just the other day, I borrowed $49.50 from Will for two barrels of whiskey. I have had to borrow from him, from the Chouteaus, and others, mostly for ordinary medicines and spirits, and the care of my manservant, Pernia. I have a few dozen small notes about town, which I will redeem as soon as I can.

  There is no margin of error: I have put every cent into real estate and fur trade interests, which should profit me handsomely and secure a comfortable income for my family. But such is the rising value of land here that I can scarcely go astray, and I am deeply indebted to the Chouteaus who have made such rich farmland available to me.

  I live in great expectation, sensin
g that everything for which I was put upon the earth is coming to fulfillment.

  24. CLARK

  This Wednesday, December 7, 1808, I shipped York to Louisville on a keelboat and gave him four dollars to feed himself. I told him to be back here before the end of May. I supplied him with papers and had him carry a letter to my brother in which I said that if York should prove refractory, he should be sent to the auction in New Orleans and sold.

  I am glad to have him out of the house. He was a sullen presence here, full of the notion that he should be freed because of his service during the expedition. He’s not fit to be a free man, though he thinks he is. He will visit his wife while hiring out for her master, and if that doesn’t cure him I will ship him south to the slave auction myself.

  This aggravates me. He was a faithful friend and servant until he got back from the West. Now he is hardly worth the auction price of an aged male. Let him find out what life as a field hand is like, if he continues to spread his malcontent in my household. I blame myself: I never should have taken him with me. He got notions out there that will never go away.

  I am having a bad time with the slaves. They don’t like their attic quarters, and I am growing impatient with them. Maybe a taste of the whip will cure them. Meriwether tells me to contain myself. I think he has an eye to the national acclaim we share, and doesn’t want my dealings with York to intrude upon our celebrity. He is kind to York, but that is only because he doesn’t own York or face his daily insolence.

  The holidays are upon us, and my household is greatly improved by the absence of discord. My niece, Alice, left a fortnight ago, having had her fill of St. Louis. Suddenly we have room and privacy. Julia has not yet closeted herself, but will soon. She is suffering from a variety of ailments, including nausea in the mornings. She is feeling ungainly but when she thinks of the child she brightens, and her eyes glow. She takes my hand and presses it to her swollen middle, and I marvel at the life that is blossoming there.