From Sea to Shining Sea (147 page)

George and William stood looking at each other now and nodding, and they were both thinking about a kind of camaraderie that the others could only try to imagine.

And then William turned back to Lucy and Bill Croghan, raised his glass to them, and said:

“That Christmas I dreamed all day of a Christmas Day and a family feast like this. My host and hostess, this is the best one ever. But,” he added, putting the glass on the table, “I reckon I’ll always remember that one, fleas and all, as a good second best. Now, by Heaven!” He clapped his hands together loudly. “All follow me up to the ballroom! I’ve something up there for you all to see, and a thousand tales to tell!”

T
HEY GASPED AND MURMURED, ADULTS AND CHILDREN
alike, when William swung open the big ballroom doors. Into the second-floor hallway poured a flood of candlelight and a profusion of musky odors.

The ballroom was lit by fifty candles and a Yule log fire. All William’s trophies from the voyage had been laid out like a museum exhibit, all manner of things such as no one had ever seen. There were antelope horns, and hides covered with Indian paintings. There were poggamoggan war clubs and bone-bows, shields and stone-tipped spears; there were weasel-fur tippets and intricate baskets and waterproof Clatsop straw hats; there were curled horns of mountain goats, and stuffed birds of strange plumage, and mountain-lion skins, and Indian jewelry made from bear claws and teeth and colored quills and stones and bones and seashells and dyed feathers and glazed ceramic beads; there were snake rattles and rodent skulls. There were seal-skins and otterpelt robes, the finest fur anyone had ever touched. There were grizzly bear skins as big as ox-hides. And with every one of these articles from the great Western wilderness, there was a tale of how it was got. For hours, till almost midnight, the family prowled among the exotic articles and listened in wonderment to William’s tales.

“This I got from an island in the Columbia when we started back last March. Named it Fanny’s Island, I did, and ye may guess in whose honor.

“I’ve set up a company in St. Louis, Jonathan. The Missouri Fur Company is its name. Some of my old boys are involved. I know you’re disappointed there’s no waterway to the Western Sea, but listen: furs from out there will make us rich, and trade will open up in that space just like it did here after George won the war.

“Here, look at this sea-otter robe. We spent half a day barterin’ for that. By then, though, we hardly had anything left to barter with but brass buttons off our uniforms. I swear those Clatsops
wouldn’t ha’ given up this robe ever, till Janey our squaw took off her precious belt o’ blue beads—the one we’d give ’er after she saved all our cargo in that capsize I spoke of—and let us offer ’em that. That dear lady! She prized that belt over everything she owned! We tried to compensate ’er for it, gave her a blue coat, and she took it and tried to smile, but she cried days for the loss o’ that belt. That girl, I swear, would do just anything for me—for us.” He paused. “Hand me that passel o’ white furs yonder with the black tail-tips. Thank’ee. This is what Janey gave me as my gift that Christmas. Ever felt anything so perfectly soft?”

They looked at him curiously and wondered just what that squaw-girl might have meant to him. It was true he was going to go on to Fincastle after the holidays and ask for Judy Hancock’s hand again, but they had all heard that something in his voice and seen that something in his eyes. George looked at him most keenly, and thought for a moment of his black-haired Teresa, who had loved him without hope in the midst of his own great adventure, a quarter of a century ago.

William told of the Corps’ eventful six-month return voyage, during which he had doctored hundreds of sick Indians in return for food and assistance, and had split off with a party to explore the length of the Yellowstone River, while the proud and moody Lewis suffered the pain and indignity of being shot through the buttocks by the near-sighted, one-eyed Cruzatte, who mistook him for an elk. He told how they had gathered a large contingent of Mandan and Arikara and Osage chiefs on the way back down the Missouri, chiefs eager to go to Washington and meet the President. And he told of their triumphant, gun-popping return to St. Louis in September, long after they had been generally given up for dead. The family crooned with joy at the telling of this, and for the hundredth time smothered him with hugs. Because they, too, had almost come to believe he was dead.

But what the family could not hear enough about was the ferocious grizzly, its temper, its toughness. They kept returning to the huge silvery-yellow hides, stroking them, responding with shivery laughter to his tales of the expedition’s wild bear-shoots and pursuits.

“Just giant bears, then,” George chuckled. “No mammoths, eh?”

“No mammoths,” William replied. “And if there had a-been, there might not be now, as our boys could’ve eat a whole one at every meal!

“Now,” he exclaimed, turning to the family, “let’s divide up this booty amongst ourselves!”

Then, late in the night, when only the grown-ups remained in the ballroom, George found William standing at a window, gazing westward into the black of night outside. He clumped over to him on his cane and put a hand on his shoulder. Their silhouettes were on the reflecting window-glass, the two of them, tall and big. George said nothing, but William answered the question that was in his mind.

“I was thinking o’ Ma and Pa lyin’ over there at Mulberry Hill, thinking how they would have liked this Christmas. And, thinkin’ o’ them made me think o’ poor Sergeant Floyd, in his grave out there on a bluff above the river, with nothin’ but the wolves howlin’ for a Christmas song.”

“Eh, well. At least ye can’t blame yourself for that. I like what Jonathan said. You got glory, and no man o’ yours died for it on your account. I had that same satisfaction after Vincennes, and I’ll say this, Billy: You and I been uncommon lucky. Not many soldiers get to come out with their honor good
and
no ghosts on their conscience.” They stood there thinking about that, and then George said, “I’m so proud o’ you, Billy, I could …” He blinked and shook his head instead of trying to find words emphatic enough.

After a while William said, “D’ye remember the days when
you’d
come home from th’ West and tell
me
all the stories?”

They grunted then to clear their throats, and stood there together looking westward into the night beyond the window panes, while Fanny and Edmund stood behind them counting the bullet holes in a grizzly bear’s hide, and the clock began striking midnight.

James Alexander Thom lives in the southern Indiana hill country, near Bloomington, in an antique log cabin.

Jim Thom has been a U.S. Marine, a newspaper and magazine editor, a freelance writer, and a member of the Indiana University Journalism School faculty. He now devotes all his time to writing.

Jim Thom researches his American historical novels meticulously, traveling, tracking down primary sources, and even walking in the footsteps of his characters. To convey the experiences of the frontier soldiers in
Long Knife
, he mastered the use of 18th century tools and weapons, and waded the icy flood waters of the Wabash. He walked, climbed, and camped along much of the New River gorge in preparation for writing
Follow the River.
And he traveled the entire route of the Lewis and Clark Expedition while writing
From Sea to Shining Sea.

Frances Slocum, kidnapped from her frontier home when she was five by the Lenape, was raised by them to become an honored leader and healer of her adopted people.

When she has a chance, as an adult, to return to her white family, there is no doubt in her mind that her heart is a red one.

THE RED HEART
by
James Alexander Thom

This powerful story about a real woman out of history adds another strong chapter to the large contribution James Alexander Thom is making to American literature.

Published by Ballantine Books.
Available in bookstores everywhere.

They came to North America three hundred years before Columbus, mingling their blood, their legends, and their dreams with the New World’s Native peoples.

THE CHILDREN
OF FIRST MAN
by
James Alexander Thom

Sweeping from the blood-soaked castles of medieval Wales to the landmark expedition of Lewis and Clark, from virgin wilderness to native villages, based on the legendary story of the Madoc people.

Published by Ballantine Books.
Available in bookstores everywhere.