Lewis could see the secretary’s brain churning. He was an exceedingly smart fellow—Lewis long since had lost the impression that Madison was a dried-up little wisp—but he rarely let you know what he was thinking.
Now he merely said, “Thank you, gentlemen. I’ll think on that.”
As Lewis emerged from the little brick building, he saw Miss Dolley approaching on the graveled walk. He liked her and he recognized a strength in her that somehow made him think of a ship under sail. He bowed. “Morning, ma’am.”
They chatted a moment. Then, without warning, she said, “Merry, tell me, has that little sister of mine given you—oh, I don’t know, some sort of sign—”
He stared at her in horror. “Oh, certainly not!” he cried. He knew he must be crimson; his face was hot as with sunburn. He shook his head wordlessly. Miss Dolley hesitated, then smiled and nodded and went on toward her husband’s office. He was deeply embarrassed. She knew something and he wondered if Anna had talked about their encounter and perhaps made more of it herself than was there. For his infatuation for Anna, beautiful through she was, now was fading rapidly. He felt a bit the fool for having taken her so seriously, but she really was a high-impact young woman. Sometimes he wondered if she herself understood the effect she had; but then he would realize that of course she did, that’s what it was about, all quite calculated. So she’d been playing with him and it had hurt at first, but it was all right now. He shrugged. He was a grown man and he’d survived plenty of hurts, and this one already was passing.
Though it was always possible she’d liked him and then had had a change of heart. That often happened, and he couldn’t say why. He’d meet a woman and she’d seem drawn to him and he’d get interested and they’d talk and laugh and maybe take a turn or two if there was dancing, and then next thing you know she’d be avoiding him, all stiff and formal when they met … .
But what it told him was the same old story: He didn’t belong in this setting. He didn’t understand these people. Didn’t fit. Didn’t want to fit, either. Set him on a horse and point him toward the setting sun, and by God, you’d find he fitted just fine. And as for the president, thank you for the honor, but Captain Lewis was just about full up of toting messages over to the Hill—
He paused outside the president’s office door, took a deep breath, composed himself. Mr. Jefferson was smoking a long clay pipe, his feet in old carpet slippers propped on his worktable, a book on his lap, two open on the table, a dozen others stacked with paper slips marking various places. As Lewis slipped into a chair, it crossed his mind that he might have been a whole lot smarter to have talked Ross over with the president before taking the idea to Madison, so he made haste to report.
“Tell me about it,” Mr. Jefferson said. “What he said, what you said.” He smiled when Lewis reached the reprimand he’d given Ross. “That’s rather good,” he said. “Makes the point without ruffling him unduly.” He studied Lewis a moment and then, as if making up his mind on something, said, “You’ve come a long way in a year, Merry. I’m not sure that riposte would have occurred to you when you first joined me.”
Lewis couldn’t help being pleased. He’d just about given up on Miss Dolley’s optimistic idea that the president had wanted him to learn his way around at high levels, but maybe she’d been right. Mr. Jefferson rambled on to the ef
fect that leadership turned on self-control and balance, on the capacity to see broadly, to anticipate pitfalls, to think under pressure, to rise to the need but not exceed the need. This encounter with Ross, in its way, demonstrated such qualities, so he said.
The president didn’t complain often, but he wasn’t lavish with compliments either. So Lewis enjoyed this, conscious his face was reddening, but it wasn’t lost on him that, leader or no, he was more errand boy than army officer these days.
He was trying to keep a sudden downturn of mood out of his expression when the president said in the same ruminative voice, not the slightest inflection change, so smooth that for a moment Lewis didn’t grasp the momentous bridge crossed, “So I suppose we should be talking about the expedition. No hurry, you understand. If we have to fight the French, that will delay everything. But how big a party do you suppose a march to the Pacific would require? Optimum number, so to speak.”
The expedition … just like that, after a year of hungering, hoping, dreaming, despairing, it came as suddenly as a thunderclap. Elation snatched his breath away, and he seemed to be choking as he struggled to keep an opposite surge of joy from his expression.
“Remember,” the president said, “it would be penetrating vast territory unknown to white men. A balance of numbers, I’d think. Enough to discourage attack, but not so many they’d appear an invading army.”
“Fifteen, perhaps,” Lewis said, getting control of his breath, “even a dozen.”
“Dozen sounds right, at least to start.” The president was talking of costs and the problems of getting a funding bill through Congress. Lewis was struck by how prosaic this momentous conversation really was. They might have been discussing improving a strain of cattle or locating a drainage ditch. How much time did Lewis suppose such a march to the Pacific would take? Two thousand miles or so, calculating the longitude of Saint Louis against that recorded by Captain Gray for the mouth of the Columbia when he’d discovered
the river, named it for his vessel, and claimed it for the United States. How long?
How utterly incredible and fantastic to march across two thousand miles of unknown terrain and then march back! Who in the world could possibly say how long it would take? But this was no time to raise doubts. Why, said Lewis, a year each way, estimate ten miles a day, seven months for travel, lay up for the winter, and march back. The president seemed to like that, keep it all manageable; maybe there would be narrow places to cross later, but let’s wait till we get to them. Well, after a year’s experience in Washington, Lewis could see the wisdom in that!
It must be a military expedition, Mr. Jefferson said, soldiers or men sworn into the military and led by an officer with the authority to enforce discipline. It would leave U.S. territory at the Mississippi and cross terrain claimed by Spain and, perhaps, in the northern reaches, by England, so it must have official imprimatur. Long term, he added onversationally, he knew all this country would end as American, claimed by force of the westering tide of settlers. But for now they must tend to the international amenities. After all, Ambassador Yrujo had already said in so many words that his nation would take umbrage at such an expedition.
“Speaking of that, if Spain did send a party to intercept such an expedition, what chance do you think they’d have of finding our people?”
It was at just this moment that Lewis noticed that the president was speaking in an abstract, theoretical fashion. He wasn’t asking what chance the Spanish would have of finding
you
and your men
—nothing he had said suggested he intended any role for Lewis beyond offering insight on frontier travel! The initial rush of joy was passing rapidly.
The president unrolled a map of Spanish Louisiana, the vast territory covering the central third of the continent. It stretched along the Gulf of Mexico roughly from Mobile Bay in West Florida to New Orleans and down the Texas coast to the Rio Grande, beyond which you could say Mexico began. Northward, it ran all the way to some point at
which it merged imperceptibly with British territory and became more a part of Canada than of Louisiana, though of course no one knew just where that point might be.
The eastern flank of this vast range was marked by the west bank of the Mississippi. On its western flank it ran northward from the Gulf along the Rio Grande, through lonely Spanish outposts at El Paso del Norte and Santa Fe, and on to the north along the eastern flank of the great range that some called the Stony Mountains and some the Shining Mountains. Louisiana, in short, was the central wedge against the United States to the east of the Mississippi, the Pacific fringe to the west, beyond the Stony Mountains. There Spanish California, as an extension of Mexico, ran up the Pacific shore to another indeterminate point at which the Northwest began, where Captain Gray’s claim of the Columbia River was more or less in conflict with the British claims made by Captain Cook and Captain Vancouver.
It was this whole central wedge for which the French now hungered, though as a practical matter New Orleans, with its control of the river, was all that really mattered.
Within this wide outline on the map were huge stretches of unmarked white space across which a few wriggling lines represented the sum total of geographic knowledge of the center third of the continent. Lewis brushed his fingers along the wandering line representing the Missouri River, which he knew from hard experience in the field probably ran in some totally different way.
“That’s a wonderful stretch,” he said. “Spanish patrol would play the devil trying to find—an expedition. Pure chance if they did.” He had stopped himself just in time from saying “find us.” His mood steadily darkened. What irony that after ten years of dreaming and a solid year of waiting, when the absolute heart of his own dreams appeared to be coming true, he should find himself discussing them as a mere advisor. He kept his voice even, his expression interested but not eager.
Mr. Jefferson dug in a drawer. “You know we planned an expedition in ninety-three?”
Lewis stiffened: Did the man play with him? “I remember, sir.”
“Oh, yes, of course. I believe you wrote me about it. Well, these are the orders I drafted for Monsieur Michaux, the French naturalist who was to lead it. Then it turned out he was a subversive agent of the French government, and that was the end of it. But these stand as a model for what I would issue now. You might want to review them for an idea of what will be required of the expedition.”
The expedition. Not “of you.” Very well; so be it.
These instructions, the president was saying, would be inadequate today, but they did cover the basic ground. There would be many objectives, but the overriding purpose must always be finding a water route across the nation—the Northwest Passage. The president paused. He had a somber, pensive look. Find it and anchor it as American, find it before the British went further in establishing themselves in country that ultimately must be ours. They were already hungering and on the move, and—again that somber look, a deepening of his voice—he thought that someday far down the road we would be at loggerheads with them over this country in the Pacific Northwest. That could be extraordinarily dangerous. It would be on some future president’s watch, but let’s do that gentleman the favor of getting our claims solidly set now. Put us on sound ground when we face them.
So, the expedition would run up the Missouri to the Stony Mountains, which doubtless were more or less a match for the Appalachians in the East. There the expedition would search out the height of land that logic said must be nearby, and from which there must flow a westward river more or less matching the eastward Missouri. That westward river, surely, was the Columbia, the mouth of which they already knew from Captain Gray. It just made perfect sense.
Thus the Northwest Passage, water route to the mountains and an easy portage to another direct water route to the Pacific. And from there, straight on to the China trade: Direct, simple, logical, and, Lewis suspected, having traveled in
rough country and knowing you never find what you expect to find, much too easy. But he said nothing. The president was a theoretician, an idealist, a dreamer of great dreams and vast constructs, not concerned with the mile-by-mile details as one traversed strange country, the fading trails, the search for water and grass, the need for game, the alerts against attack, the stony, steep climbs and the perilous descents with animals slipping and falling and loads spilling … but this was no time to challenge his president’s most firmly held dream.
He saw Mr. Jefferson was running down. He’d said what was on his mind, said all he wanted to say. The president picked up his book, gentle sign of dismissal. Lewis stood to go and then stopped, irresolute. He felt crushed. But Goddamn it, he wouldn’t be much man if he let this go by; he’d deserve to be crushed. He simply must get it out in the open. But how to put it? Don’t whine, don’t mew like a damned pussycat, don’t crawl—put it positively.
So, face hot and doubtless gone scarlet, the president now looking up in faint surprise, he said, with his voice sounding like a frog’s croak, “Sir, is it your intention that I—that I won’t be accompanying this expedition we discuss?”
Something like chagrin flashed over the president’s mobile face. “Well, I’m sorry, son,” he said. “Obviously I should have clarified it earlier. You are to command it … .”
Sudden tears he couldn’t control stood in Lewis’s eyes.
Mr. Jefferson rose, now obviously concerned. “I should have said it clearly at the start of this talk. It’s what I’d always planned, you see. But you know, Merry, I had to be sure too. You’ll be taking a body of men over two thousand miles of terrain unknown to anyone but the tribes that live there, terrain claimed by other nations that are jealous of their prerogatives. You’ll be on your own, out of reach of either help or advice. Of course you must be able to command men, but that’s just the start. Any good company commander, any good foreman, can command men. I wanted to see how you handled a strange new situation—which Washington certain is—before I decided.”