"Go on, Frenchy!" said Patrick Gass, Cruzatte's sergeant, who stood near by. "Wait until time comes for my squad on the line--'tis thin we'll make the elkhide hum! There's a few of the Irish along."
"Ho!" said Ordway, usually silent. "Wait rather for us Yankees--we'll show you what old Vermont can do!"
"As to that," said Pryor, "belike the Ohio and Kentucky men could serve a turn as well as the Irish or the French. Old Kaintuck has to help out the others, the way she did in the French and Indian War!"
"Well," broke in Peter Weiser, joining them as they argued, "I am from Pennsylvania; but I am half Virginian, and there are some others from the Old Dominion. When you are all done, call on us--ole Virginny never tires!"
The contagion of their light-heartedness, their loyalty and devotion, came as solace to the heart of Meriwether Lewis. He smiled in spite of himself, his eye kindling with confidence and admiration as he looked over his men.
They were stripping for their day's work, ready for mud or water or sun, as the case might be. Amidships, on the highest locker on the barge, one of the Kentuckians was flapping his arms lustily and giving the cockcrow, the river challenge of frontier days. Others seated themselves at the long sweeps of the barge, while yet others were manning the pirogues.
A few moments later, with joyous shouts, they were on their way once more--and not setting their faces toward home. In an hour they were above the first long bend. The wilderness had closed behind them. No trace of the Indian village was left, no sight of the lingering smoke of their last camp fires.
Faithfully, patiently, day by day, they held their way, sustained by the renewed fascination of adventure, hardened and inured to risk and toil alike. The distance behind them lengthened so enormously that they began to figure upon the unknown rather than the known.
"We surely must be almost across now!" said some of the men.
All of them were sore distressed over the loss of Shannon. Two weeks had passed since they left the Yankton Sioux, and four times the faithful trailers had come back to the boats with no trace of the missing one.
"It certainly is in the off chance now," assented William Clark seriously, one day as they lay in the noon encampment. "But perhaps he may be among the natives somewhere, and we may hear of him when we come back--if ever we do."
"If he got by the Teton Sioux, and kept on up the river, in time he would find us somewhere among the Mandans," said Meriwether Lewis. "But we will try once more before we give him up. Send a man to the top of the bluff with my spyglass."