"Will!"
"Merne!"
The two young men gripped hands as the great bateau swung inshore at the Point of Rocks on the Kentucky side of the Ohio. They needed not to do more, these two. The face of each told the other what he felt. Their mutual devotion, their generosity and unselfishness, their unflagging unity of purpose, their perfect manly comradeship--what wonder so many have called the story of these two more romantic than romance itself?
"It has been long since we met, Will," said Meriwether Lewis. "I have been eating my heart out up at Pittsburgh. I got your letter, and glad enough I was to have it. I had been fearing that I would have to go on alone. Now I feel as if we already had succeeded. I cannot tell you--but I don't need to try."
"And you, Merne," rejoined William Clark--Captain William Clark, if you please, border fighter, leader of men, one of a family of leaders of men, tall, gaunt, red-headed, blue-eyed, smiling, himself a splendid figure of a man--"you, Merne, are a great man now, famous there in Washington! Mr. Jefferson's right-hand man--we hear of you often across the mountains. I have been waiting for you here, as anxious as yourself."
"The water is low," complained Lewis, "and a thousand things have delayed us. Are you ready to start?"
"In ten minutes--in five minutes. I will have my boy York go up and get my rifle and my bags."
"Your brother, General Clark, how is he?"
William Clark shrugged with a smile which had half as much sorrow as mirth in it.
"The truth is, Merne, the general's heart is broken. He thinks that his country has forgotten him."
"Forgotten him? From Detroit to New Orleans--we owe it all to George Rogers Clark. It was he who opened the river from Pittsburgh to New Orleans. He'll not need, now, to be an ally of France again. Once more a member of your family will be in at the finding of a vast new country!"
"Merne, I've sold my farm. I got ten thousand dollars for my place--and so I am off with you, not with much of it left in my pockets, but with a clean bill and a good conscience, and some of the family debts paid. I care not how far we go, or when we come back. I thank Mr. Jefferson for taking me on with you. 'Tis the gladdest time in all my life!"
"We are share and share alike, Will," said his friend Lewis, soberly. "Tell me, can we get beyond the Mississippi this fall, do you think?"