Snowbound and Eclipse (55 page)

I notified Meriwether and invited him to see his namesake, but for some reason he delayed, at least until this Wednesday, the Ides of March. He promised to be here for supper, and we would visit Julia together. My wife remains mostly abed, having exhausted herself in this hard labor.

Meriwether is taut as a bowstring these days, and I ascribe it to the burdens of office. He walks catlike, as if afraid to put down a foot; a strange conduct after walking across a continent. He has often pleaded illness and no longer sups with us and I miss his lively company.

This evening he arrived in his blue uniform, gold braid shining, boots freshly blacked. He has often worn it since resigning his commission. He looks dashing in it, though it hangs loosely around him.

I greeted him in the parlor upon being notified of his arrival by my houseboy.

“Ah! Meriwether!”

“I've come to see the little gentleman,” he said.

“High time,” I replied. “You are got up for the occasion.”

He eyed me. “Let my namesake see a captain, not a governor. Let him follow the beat of drums, not the beat of politics.”

That puzzled me, but so did a lot of things about Meriwether in recent months.

I excused myself to see whether Julia was up and about.

She greeted me in her pink wrapper, sitting in her oak rocking chair.

“The governor's here to see the boy,” I said.

“Oh, pray wait until I make myself ready.”

Some lengthy time later—I cannot fathom why women consume the better part of an hour to make themselves ready—I ushered Meriwether into our chamber, where Julia held the infant in her lap.

“Ah, madame, it is so good to see you up and well!” he said.

She nodded demurely. “The same might be said of you, Your Excellency.”

“And here's the tyke!”

Meriwether circled about, as if he were examining an eaglet in its nest. “Like the sire, like the sire,” he said. “Yes, a Clark clear through.”

“Would you like to hold him?” Julia asked.

Meriwether fell back at once. “No, no, I would drop him,” he said, discovering that ten feet was safe enough distance from the ogre in Julia's lap. “Babies and captains have different humors.”

I laughed, but I didn't fail to note Meriwether's edginess.

“You are a lucky man,” he said. “I am just a musty old bachelor, and will never have a child of my own.”

“Why, of course you will, Meriwether. A woman is easier
to conquer than the Bitterroot Mountains, and you conquered the snowy Bitterroots twice.”

He didn't laugh as I thought he might. He just shook his head and then smiled brightly, his lips crooked. Then he remembered the graces: “I'm honored to have this boy named for me. May he be blessed. May he grow up strong and true.”

He bowed grandly before the boy and his mother.

Julia's face softened. She had not lost her reserve around the governor.

We repaired to the parlor for a glass of amontillado, and Meriwether hastily downed three before he settled into the horsehair settee opposite.

“A fine boy, a compliment to you and your mistress,” he said grandly.

I had not heard of an infant described as a compliment before. But then, Meriwether was acting in a most peculiar manner. I poured him a fourth drink from the cut glass decanter, but this time he only sipped.

“Will,” he said, “I'm pressed. Mostly medical bills. This ague, you know. Could you spare a few dollars again? It'll all be returned with the next voucher from Washington.”

“How much, Meriwether?”

“Twenty? I need to apply ten to the doctor, and my manservant needs something …” His voice trailed off.

I nodded, and dug into my purse for some national bank notes, Hamilton's work. I was hurting badly myself, but I would refuse my colleague and captain nothing. He had borrowed other small sums, still unpaid, but no mortal was more honest and I knew it would all be settled eventually. I only hoped I could hang on, myself.

He nodded and tucked it into his pocket. “It won't be long; I promise,” he said.

“I can wait. How is the editing coming?”

I had asked the wrong question. He looked like a rat
trapped on a sinking ship, and shook his head. “No time,” he said.

There had been time aplenty. I remembered the balls and card parties and Masonic lodge meetings he had attended. Reluctantly, I put aside all hope of seeing any immediate gain from the journals, or my investment in their preparation. I checked a tide of irritation that sloshed through me unbidden.

He must have sensed my distress. “My investments are going well. Three farms, over four thousand arpents. I have them rented out. Some city lots, too. I've put the family estate at Ivy up for sale, and I'll move my mother out here just as soon as I can. We'll be together here. But it's been a struggle, finding the means. I owe Chouteau another sixteen hundred in May, and a like sum in May of 1810. And then …” He left the rest unsaid, his mind elsewhere.

He was leaving much unsaid these days. I had noticed it, the incomplete thoughts. He either supposed his auditors knew what he would say, or else he was groping for words. I never imagined I would see the day when Meriwether groped for words.

I nodded, not wishing to express my true feelings. What was the governor doing, borrowing small sums from me, from the Chouteaus, and others, while engaging in grandiose land schemes to ride what might be merely a bubble?

Was this the competent, prudent man who had governed his mother's estate at Ivy for so many years?

Would those farms really appreciate? We were on the brink of war with England. Mr. Jefferson's embargo had bottled up the traffic in furs to Europe. The economy of St. Louis was faltering because peltries were heaping up in warehouses. He knew all that, and yet had plunged every shred of income into Missouri farmland.

We were soon at supper. The servants brought Meriwether's
favorite dish, curried lamb, and he beamed brightly as they set the plate before him.

“Ah!” he exclaimed, all starchy blue and gold braid, across from me. He dug into his tunic, extracted a small phial, and poured several drops of something into his tumbler of water. This he downed before corking the phial and returning it to its nest upon his bosom.

His countenance changed dramatically in the next moments.

“Now,” he said peacefully, “tell me about the fur company. Are you gentlemen going to get Big White home at long last?”

Opium, I thought. Opium has got him.

Bates again. He stormed into my office in a fit, ruining a spring morning. He had in hand a fair copy of the contract I executed with the St. Louis Missouri Fur Company. He glared down at me, his woolly eyebrows arching and falling, his milky eyes bulging with antagonism for whatever reason I soon would know.

“Yes, Mr. Bates?”

“This contract, sir, is an abomination!”

I settled back to receive the rodomontade, knowing I would not be spared by this uncivil man.

“You have named General Clark as your agent in your absence. But I am your second. When you are absent, I am the acting governor. That is the law. You had no business violating the law of the land—”

I raised a hand. “Mr. Secretary, this contract governs Indian affairs entirely. Will Clark is our Indian superintendent. He's a partner in the company, fully aware of its difficulties. Who better to appoint than the one public official who is empowered to deal with Indian matters?”

Bates didn't subside. “You have offended me once again, sir. You and your coterie of
privileged
men. But things will change. There's a new administration, and you're no longer in the same position. You grasp that, sir? You are no longer
protected
by Mr. Jefferson. He's retired from office, and a good thing if I may say so.”

“I'm well aware of it, Mr. Bates.”

“And I've written Secretary Eustis about your expenditures, and this abominable contract, which puts public funds into the hands of your cronies. Yes! Your cronies. You are mulcting the government.”

“It's the only way, Mr. Bates. The army can't spare the troops to take Big White safely home. It is a matter of highest concern to the government to do just that.”

“Hah! No one cares about that savage, save for you and those profiteers who will pillage the public treasury to do it. I shall, sir, let the entire world know. I will see you put out of office, sir, like a cur put out on the streets to starve.”

I rose swiftly.

That was a dismissal, but he ignored it. “This contract creates a monopoly. Who but your cronies will profit? No one! You will gouge the treasury, feed on public funds.”

I stood, not feeling well, and motioned him toward the door.

“Just remember, you no longer have Jefferson to bail you out of trouble!” he snapped.

I quieted myself. “Mr. Bates, though you array yourself against me, let us at least maintain some civility in public. Pray you, confine your disputes to these private meetings.”

He nodded curtly, which I took to be agreement.

I watched the wretched man stalk away, marveled that he could work up such a temper about so little, but I counted him a danger to everything I had worked for so long and hard.

I knew also I could not placate him. I could grant his every wish, cave in to his every demand, flatter him, publicly praise him, and that would only excite him to further assaults upon my person. I was puzzled. I had no idea what I had done or failed to do that excited such a violent passion in him.

I knew for certain that his letters, which he had been mailing to Washington at the rate of one or two a week, would have their effect, and that I would be forced to return to that seat of government ere long to deal with the accusations. He had been bragging about town of his correspondence with two or three secretaries and Mr. Madison. I would have to go back there, as much as I dreaded it.

I wanted to meet William Eustis, Madison's new pinchpenny war secretary. I thought I could allay the suspicion and Bates's wild accusations if we could but meet and if I could sit down with the secretary and the president and explain matters. Some things can't be resolved through correspondence.

It would take an armed force to deliver the Mandan chief to his village, past the hostile Arikaras. I offered the St. Louis Missouri Fur Company seven thousand dollars to do it, thirty-five hundred payable at the start, when they were properly organized and ready to go. But my terms were strict and if they failed to be properly prepared and off by May tenth they should forfeit three thousand dollars. The risk was all theirs.

My contract with them required a hundred twenty-five armed Americans in their entourage, including forty
riflemen, all in addition to the trappers and traders they wished to take along. They would be traveling in an armada that would carry over two hundred armed men, a force strong enough to compel the respect of the Arikaras.

How better to do it, as long as the army was unable to help me? The public funds were indeed the foundation for the whole business, but all of the partners were risking most of what they owned in the hope of reward. The company would have a monopoly on the fur business only above the Mandan villages; the government would show the Plains tribes that it could overwhelm any of them, and was not to be obstructed in its purposes. Out of it would come commerce and peace, and the firm hand of the republic ruling the new territory.

Lisa and Chouteau had been working furiously to put the venture together, hire the entire company of men, supply the expedition, and obtain the keelboats to take them up the Missouri. Every partner was busy preparing. Reuben was collecting his medicines; Ben Wilkinson was purchasing supplies or providing them from his store; Will Clark was looking after the finances, along with Auguste Chouteau. Lisa was out on the levee, hiring the best rivermen, trappers, riflemen, cooks, translators, and traders in St. Louis, and finding more takers than anyone had imagined.

I was busy, especially because I had lost so much time to my sickbed. I authorized payment of the translation of a court record into French, knowing Bates would object on narrow legal grounds, and sent the voucher off to Washington. He was objecting to everything, and perhaps that was all to the good. They would see him for the embittered man he was.

Lisa visited me this afternoon.

“Yes, Manuel?”

“Ah, Your Excellency, I am glad to see you up and about. You look the very picture of health.”

The man was prevaricating, but I ignored that. “How are you coming? Will you be off by May tenth?”

He shook his head. “It is a worrisome thing, Governor. I come to talk about the diplomacy, yes?”

“With the tribes?”

“Since this is a government expedition, we think you should provide the gifts, the little items of honor, to give to the headmen and chiefs, to win their undying allegiance to the government of the republic, yes?”

“That should come out of your funds.”

He shook his head. “Every cent is committed. We will not have enough, even with the payment you have promised us.”

“I've written Washington that I've committed seven thousand to this. I can't go further.”

He shrugged. “Then we go without the gifts. We have nothing to trade for food, for canoes, for what is necessary.”

I remembered how valuable our small stock of trade items was during the great trip west and how I yearned for just a few more blue beads, or hatchets, or iron arrow points, to win the perfidious chiefs. Time after time, en route home, we had come to the brink of disaster because we lacked things to trade for food. Even so, I was reluctant.

“You are going to have to provide those yourselves. The contract we signed is generous.”

He shrugged. “And the risks are generous, too!”

I rose and paced my office. With Bates howling about every cent, I couldn't help much. And yet, I felt that I had to. I could not fail to return Big White to his people. That was Tom Jefferson's mandate and it was written in a tone that brooked no failure.