Part Two Chapter 13 The News

A horseman rode furiously over the new road from Fort Bellefontaine to St. Louis village. He carried news. The expedition of Lewis and Clark had returned!

Yes, these men so long thought lost, dead, were coming even now with their own story, with their proofs. The boats had passed Charette, had passed Bellefontaine, and presently would be pulling up the river to the water front of St. Louis itself.

"Run, boys!" cried Pierre Chouteau to his servants. "Call out the people! Tell them to ring the bells--tell them to fire the guns at the fort yonder. Captains Lewis and Clark have come back again--those who were dead!"

The little settlement was afire upon the instant. Laughing, talking, ejaculating, weeping in their joy, the people of St. Louis hurried out to meet the men whose voyage meant so much.

At last they saw them coming, the paddles flashing in unison in the horny hands which tirelessly drove the boats along the river. They could see them--men with long beards, clad in leggings of elk hide, moccasins of buffalo and deer; their head-dresses those of the Indians, their long hair braided. And see, in the prow of the foremost craft sat two men, side by side--Lewis and Clark, the two friends who had arisen as if from the grave!

"Present arms!" rang out a sharp command, as the boats lined up along the wharf.

The brown and scarred rifles came to place.