mith--either can tinker a gun if need be. Then I have
John Coalter, an active, strapping chap, and the two Fields boys, whom
I know to be good men; and Charlie Floyd, Nate Pryor, and a couple of
others--Warner and Whitehouse. We should get the rest at the forts
around St. Louis. I want to take my boy York along--a negro is always
good-natured under hardship, and a laugh now and then will not hurt
any of us."

Lewis nodded assent.

"Your judgment of men is as good as mine, Will. But come, it is
September, and the leaves are falling. All my men have the fall hunt
in their blood--they will start for any place at any moment. Let us
move. Suppose you take the boat on down, and let me go across,
horseback, to Kaskaskia. I have some business there, and I will try
for a few more recruits. We must have fifty men."

"Nothing shall stop us, Merne, and we cannot start too soon. I want to
see fresh grass every night for a year. But you--how can you be
content to punish yourself for so long? For me, I am half Indian; but
I expected to have heard long ago that you were married and settled
down as a Virginia squire, raising tobacco and negroes, like anyone
else. Tell me, how about that old affair of which you once used to
confide to me when we were soldiering together here, years back? 'Twas
a fair New York maid, was it not? From what you said I fancied her
quite without comparison, in your estimate, at least. Yet here you
are, vagabonding out into a country where you may be gone for
years--or never come back at all, for all we know. Have a care,
man--pretty girls do not wait!"

As he spoke, so strange a look passed over his friend's face that
William Clark swiftly put out a hand.

"What is it, Merne? Pardon me! Did she--not wait?"

His companion looked at him gravely.

"She married, something like three years ago. She is the wife of Mr.
Alston, a wealthy planter of the Carolinas, a friend of her father and
a man of station. A good marriage for her--for him--for both."

The sadness of his face spoke more than his words to his warmest
friend, and left them both silent for a time. William Clark ceased
breaking bark between his fingers and flipping away the pieces.

"Well, in my own case," said he at length, "I have no ties to cut.
'Tis as well--we shall have no faces of women to trouble us on our
trails out yonder. They don't belong there, Merne--the ways of the
trappers are best. But we must not talk too much of this," he add