"Gass, Patrick Gass, you said?"
"Yis, sor, of the Tinth. Barrin' me love for fightin' I am a good soldier. There are stripes on me sleeves be rights, but me old coat's hangin' in the barracks down below."
Lewis stood looking curiously at the man before him, the power of whose grip he had felt in his own. He cast an eye over his erect figure, his easy and natural dropping into the position of a soldier.
"You say the Tenth?" said he briefly. "You have been with the colors? Look here, my man, do you want to serve?"
"I am going right back to Kaskasky for it, sor."
"Why not enlist with us? I need men. We are off for the West, up the Missouri--for a long trip, like enough. You seem a well-built man, and you have seen service. I know men when I see them. I want men of courage and good temper. Will you go?"
"I could not say, sor. I would have to ask leave at Kaskasky. I gave me word I'd come back after I'd had me fling here in the East, ye see."
"I'll take care of that. I have full authority to recruit among enlisted men."
"Excuse me, sor, ye are sayin' ye are goin' up the Missouri? Then I know yez--yez are the Captain Lewis that has been buildin' the big boat the last two months up at the yards--Captain Lewis from Washington."
"Yes, and from the Ohio country before then--and Kentucky, too. I am to join Captain Clark at the Point of Rocks on the Ohio. I need another oar. Come, my man, we are on our way. Two minutes ought to be enough for you to decide."
"I'll need not the half of two!" rejoined Patrick Gass promptly. "Give me leave of my captain, and I am with yez! There is nothin' in the world I'd liever see than the great plains and the buffalo. 'Tis fond of travel I am, and I'd like to see the ind of the world before I die."
"You will come as near seeing the end of it with us as anywhere else I know," rejoined Lewis quietly. "Get your war-bag and come aboard."
In this curious fashion Patrick Gass of the army--later one of the journalists of the expedition, and always one of its most faithful and efficient members--signed his name on the rolls of the Lewis and Clark expedition.
There was not one of the frontiersmen in the boat who had any comment to make upon any phase of the transaction; indeed, it seemed much in the day's work to them. But from that instant every man in the boat knew he had a leader who could be depended upon for prompt and efficient action in any emergency; and from that moment, also, their leader knew he could depend on his men.