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.
"Aim! Fire!"
The volley of salutation blazed out even with the chorus of the voyageurs' cheers. And cheers repeated and unceasing greeted them as they stepped from their boats to the wharf. In an instant they were half overpowered.
"Come with me!"
"No, with me!"
"With me!"
A score of eager voices of the first men of St. Louis claimed the privilege of hospitality for them. It was almost by force that Pierre Chouteau bore them away to his castle on the hill. And always questions, questions, came upon them--ejaculations, exclamations.
"Ma foi!" exclaimed more than one pretty French maiden. "Such men--such splendid men--savages, yet white! See! See!"
They had gone away as youths, these two captains; they had come back men. Four thousand miles out and back they had gone, over a country unmapped, unknown; and they brought back news--news of great, new lands. Was it any wonder that they stood now, grave and dignified, feeling almost for the first time the weight of what they had done?
They passed over the boat-landing and across the wharf, approaching the foot of the rocky bluff above which lay the long street of St. Louis. Silent, as was his wont, Meriwether Lewis had replied to most of the greetings only with the smile which so lighted up his face. But now, suddenly, he ceased even to smile. His eye rested not upon the faces of those acclaiming friends, but upon something else beyond them.