"You must go back!" said the hot-headed Irishman. "I shall tell my factor, Chaboillez, at Fort Assiniboine. We want no more traders here. This is our country!"
"We do not come to trade," said Meriwether Lewis. "We play a larger game. I know that the men of the Northwest Company have found the Arctic Ocean--you are welcome to it until we want it--we do not want it now. I know you have found the Pacific somewhere above the Columbia--we do not want what we have not bought or found for ourselves, and you are welcome to that. But when you ask us to turn back on our own trail, it is a different matter. We are on our own soil now, and we will not turn for any order in the world but that of the President of the United States!"
McCracken, irritated, turned away from the talk.
"It is a fine fairy tale they tell us!" said he to his fellows.
Drouillard came a moment later to his chief.
"Those men she'll take her dog-team for Assiniboine now--maybe so one hundred and fifty miles that way. He'll told his factor now, on the Assiniboine post."
Lewis smiled.
"Tell him to take this letter to his factor, Drouillard," said he. "It is a passport given me by Mr. Thompson, representing Mr. Merry, of the British Legation at Washington. I have fifty other passports, better ones, each good at a hundred yards. If Mr. Chaboillez wishes to find us, he can do so. If we have gone, let him come after us in the spring."
"My faith," said Jussaume, the Frenchman, "you come a long way! Why you want to go more farther West? But, listen, Monsieur Capitaine--the Englishman, he'll go to make trouble for you. He is going for send word to Rocheblave, the most boss trader on Lake Superior, on Fort William. They are going for send a man to beat you over the mountain--I know!"
"'Tis a long road from here to the middle of Lake Superior's north shore," said Meriwether Lewis. "It will be a long way back from there in the spring. While they are planning to start, already we shall be on our way."
"I know the man they'll send," went on Jussaume. "Simon Fraser--I know him. Long time he'll want to go up the Saskatchewan and over the mountain on the ocean."
"We'll race Mr. Fraser to the ocean," said Meriwether Lewis; "him or any other man. While he plans, we shall be on our way!"
Well enough the Northern traders knew the meaning of this American expedition into the West. If it went on, all the lower trade was lost to Great Britain forever. The British minister, Merry, had known it. Aaron Burr had known it. This expedition must be stopped! That was the word which must go back to Montreal, back to London, along the trail which ended here at the crossroads of the Missouri.