Part Two Chapter 5 The Appeal

"Well done, Will Clark!" said Meriwether Lewis, when, at length, one cold winter morning, they stood within the walls of the completed fortress. "Now we can have our own fireplace and go on with our work in comfort. The collection is growing splendidly!"

"Yes, Mr. Jefferson will find that we have been busy," rejoined Clark. "The barge will go down well loaded in the spring. They'll have the best of it--downhill, and over country they have crossed."

"True," mused Lewis. "We are at a blank wall here. We lack a guide now, that is sure. Two interpreters we have, who may or may not be of use, but no one knows the country. But now--you know our other new interpreter, the sullen chap, Charbonneau--that polygamous scamp with two or three Indian wives?"

"Yes, and a surly brute he is!"

"Well, it seems that last summer Charbonneau married still another wife, a girl not over sixteen years of age, I should judge. He bought her--she was a slave, a captive brought down from somewhere up the river by a war-party. She is a pleasant girl, and always smiles. She seems friendly to us--see the moccasins she made for me but now. And I only had to knock her husband down once for beating her!"

"Lucky man!" grinned William Clark. "I have knocked him down half a dozen times, and she has made me no moccasins at all. But what then?"