The winter was wearing away. The wild fowl were passing northward, landward. The game had changed its haunts. March was coming, the month between the seasons for the tribes, the time of want, the leanest period of the year.
Meriwether Lewis, alone one morning in the comfortable cabin which served as a house for himself and his friend, sat pondering on these things, as was his wont. His little Indian dog, always his steady companion, had taken its place on the top of the flatted stump which served as a desk, near the maps and papers which Lewis had pushed away. Here the small creature sat, motionless, mute, its eyes fixed adoringly upon its master.
The captain did not notice it. He did not at first hear the rap on the door, nor the footfall of the man who entered inquiringly.
"Yes, Sergeant Ordway?" said he presently, looking up.
Ordway saluted.
"Something for you, sir. It seems to be a letter."
"A letter! How could that be?"
"That is the puzzle, sir," said Ordway, extending a folded and sealed bit of paper. "We do not know how it came. Charbonneau's wife, the Indian woman, found it in the baby's hammock just now. She brought it to me, and I saw it was addressed to you. It must have been overlooked by you some time."
"Possibly--possibly," said Lewis. His face was growing pale. "That is all, I think, Sergeant," he added.
Now alone, he turned toward the letter, which lay upon the table. His face lighted with a wondrous smile, though none might see it save the little dog which watched his every movement. For Meriwether Lewis had received once more the thing for which every fiber of his being clamored!
He knew, without one look, that the number scratched in the wax of the seal would be the figure "4." He opened the letter slowly. There fell from it a square of stiff, white paper--all white, he thought, until he turned it over. Then he saw it looking up at him--her face indeed!
It was a little silhouette in black, done in that day before the camera, when small portraits were otherwise well-nigh impossible. The artist, skilled as were many in this curious form of portraiture, had done his work well. Lewis gazed with a sudden leap of his pulses upon the features outlined before him--the profile so cleanly cut and lofty--the hair low over the forehead, the chin round and firm, yet delicate and womanly withal. Here even the long lashes of her eyes were visible, just as in life. Yes, it was her face!
And now he read the letter, which covered many closely written sheets: Meriwether Lewis, I said to you that my face should come to you, wherever you might be. This time it has been long--I cannot tell how long. That is for my messenger to determine, not for you or me. But that it has been long I shall know, else long since there would have been no need of my adding this letter to the others.