offered. He had with him
Cruzatte, the one-eyed Frenchman. It was now that fortune frowned
ominously almost for the first time.

The two had not been gone more than a few minutes when the men
remaining at the boat heard a shot--then a cry, and more shouting.
Cruzatte came running back to them through the bushes, calling out at
the top of his voice:

"The captain! I've keeled him--I've keeled the captain--I've shot
him!"

"What is that you're saying?" demanded Patrick Gass. "If you've done
that, you would be better dead yourself!"

He reached out, caught Cruzatte's rifle, and flung it away from him.

"Where is he?" he demanded.

Cruzatte led the way back.

"I see something move on the bushes," said he, "and I shoot. It was
not elk--it was the captain. _Mon Dieu_, what shall we do?"

They found Captain Lewis sitting up, propped against a clump of
willows, his legging stripped to the thigh. He was critically
examining the path of the bullet, which had passed through the limb.
At seeing him still alive, his men gave a shout of joy, and Cruzatte
received a parting kick from his sergeant.

There were actual tears in the eyes of some of the men as they
gathered around their commander--tears which touched Meriwether Lewis
deeply.

"It is all right, men!" said he. "Do not be alarmed. Do not reprove
the man too much. The sight of a little blood should not trouble you.
We are all soldiers. This is only an accident of the trail, and in a
short time it will be mended. See, the bone is not broken!"

They aided him back to the boats and made a bed upon which he might
lie, his head propped up so that he could see what lay ahead. Other
men completed the evening hunt, and the boats hurried on down the
river. The next day found them fifty miles below the scene of the
accident.

"Sergeant," said Meriwether Lewis, "the natural fever of my wound is
coming on. Give me my little war-sack yonder--I must see if I can find
some medicine."

Gass handed him his bag of leather, and Lewis sought in it for a
moment. His hand encountered something that crinkled in the
touch--crinkled familiarly! For one instant he stopped, his lips
compressed as if in bodily pain.

It was another of the mysterious letters!

Before he opened it, he looked at it, frowning, wondering. Whence came
these messages, and how, by whose hand? All of them must have been
written before he left St. Louis in May of 1804. Now it was August of
1806. There was no