Part Two Chapter 12 What Voice Had Called?

"Hoh!" he exclaimed at length, almost like an Indian, as if in some definite conclusion.

He had run his trail to the end, had finished the problem in the ashes.

"Hoh!" his voice again rumbled in his chest.

And now he threw his tracing-stick away. He sat, his head on one side, as if looking at some distant star. It seemed that he heard a voice calling to him in the night, so faintly that he could not be sure. His face, thin, gaunt, looked set and hard in the light of his little fire. Something stern, something wistful, too, showed in his eyes, frowning under the deep brows. Was Meriwether Lewis indeed gone mad? Had the hardships of the wilderness at last taken their toll of him--as had sometimes happened to other men?

He rose, limping a little, for he still was weak and stiff from his wound, though disdaining staff or crotched bough to lean upon. He looked about him cautiously.

The camp was slumbering. Here and there, stirred by the passing breeze, the embers of a little fire glowed like an eye in the dark. The men slept, some under their rude shelters, others in the open under the stars, each rolled in his robe, his rifle under the flap to keep it from the dew.

Meriwether Lewis knew the place of every man in the encampment. Ordway, Pryor, Gass--each of the three sergeants slept by his own mess fire, his squad around him. McNeal, Bratton, Shields, Cruzatte, Reuben Fields, Goodrich, Whitehouse, Coalter, Shannon--the captain knew where each lay, rolled up like a mummy. He had marked each when he threw down his bed-roll that night; for Meriwether Lewis was a leader of men, and no detail escaped him.