_ PART I CHAPTER XI. THE TAMING OF PATRICK GASS
"Shannon, go get the men!"
It was midnight. For more than an hour Meriwether Lewis had sat, his head drooped, in silence.
"We are going to start?" Shannon's face lightened eagerly. "We'll be off at sunup?"
"Before that. Get the men--we'll start now! I'll meet you at the wharf."
Eager enough, Shannon hastened away on his midnight errand. Within an hour every man of the little party was at the water front, ready for departure. They found their leader walking up and down, his head bent, his hands behind him.
It was short work enough, the completion of such plans as remained unfinished. The great keel-boat lay completed and equipped at the wharf. The men lost little time in stowing such casks and bales as remained unshipped. Shannon stepped to his chief.
"All's aboard, sir," said he. "Shall we cast off?"
Without a word Lewis nodded and made his way to his place in the boat. In the darkness, without a shout or a cheer to mark its passing, the expedition was launched on its long journey.
Slowly the boat passed along the waterfront of Pittsburgh town. Here rose gauntly, in the glare of torch or camp fire, the mast of some half-built schooner. Houseboats were drawn up or anchored alongshore, long pirogues lay moored or beached, or now and again a giant broadhorn, already partially loaded with household goods, common carrier for that human flood passing down the great waterway, stood out blacker than the shadows in which it lay.
Here and there camp fires flickered, each the center of a ribald group of the hardy rivermen. Through the night came sounds of roistering, songs, shouts. Arrested, pent, dammed up, the lusty life of that great waterway leading into the West and South scarce took time for sleep.
The boat slipped on down, now crossing a shaft of light flung on the water from some lamp or fire, now blending with the ghostlike shadows which lay in the moonless night. It passed out of the town itself, and edged into the shade of the forest that swept continuously for so many leagues on ahead.
"Hello, there!" called a voice through the darkness, after a time. "Who goes there?"
The splash of a sweep had attracted the attention of someone on shore. The light of a camp fire showed.
Every one in the boat looked at the leader, but none vouchsafed a reply to the hail.
"Ahoy there, the boat!" insisted the same voice.
"Shall I fire on yez to make yez answer a civil question? Come ashore wance--I can lick the best of yez in three minutes, or me name's not Patrick Gass!"
The captain of the boat turned slowly in his seat, casting a glance over his silent crew.
"Set in!" said he, sharply and shortly.
Without a word they obeyed, and with oar and steering-sweep the great craft slowly swung inshore.
Lewis stepped from the boat, and, not waiting to see whether he was followed--as he was by all of his men--strode on up the bank into the circle of light made by the camp fire. About the fire lay a dozen or more men of the hardest of the river type, which was saying quite enough; for of all the lawless and desperate characters of the frontier, none have ever surpassed in reckless audacity and truculence the men of the old boat trade of the Ohio and the Mississippi.
These fellows lay idly looking at Lewis as he entered the light, not troubling to accost him.
"Who hailed us?" demanded the latter shortly.
"Begorrah, 'twas me," said a short, strongly built man, stepping forward from the other side of the fire.
Clad in loose shirt and trousers, like most of his comrades, he showed a powerful man, a shock of reddish hair falling over his eyes, a bull-like neck rising above his open shirt in such fashion that the size of his shoulder muscles might easily be seen.
"'Twas me hailed yez, and what of it?"
"That is what I came ashore to learn," said Meriwether Lewis. "We are about our business. What concern is that of yours? I am here to learn."
"Yez can learn, if ye're so anxious," replied the other. "'Tis me have got three drinks of Monongahaly in me that says I can whip you or anny man of your boat. And if that aint cause for ye to come ashore, 'tis no fighting man ye are, an' I'll say that to your face!"
It was the accepted fashion of challenge known anywhere along two thousand miles of waterway at that time, in a country where physical prowess and readiness to fight were the sole tests of distinction. Woe to the man who evaded such an issue, once it was offered to him!
The speaker had stepped close to Lewis--so close that the latter did not need to advance a foot. Instead, he held his ground, and the challenger, accepting this as a sign of willingness for battle, rushed at him, with the evident intent of a rough-and-tumble grapple after the fashion of his kind. To his surprise, he was held off by the leveled forearm of his opponent, rigid as a bar against his throat.
At this rebuff he roared like a bull, and breaking back rushed in once more, his giant arms flailing. Lewis swung back half a step, and then, so quickly that none saw the blow, but only its result was visible, he shifted on his feet, leaned into his thrust, and smote the joyous challenger so fell a stroke in the throat as laid him quivering and helpless. The brief fight was ended all too soon to suit the wishes of the spectators, used to more prolonged and bloodier encounters.
A sort of gasp, a half roar of surprise and anger, came from the group upon the ground. Some of the party rose to their feet menacingly. They met the silent front of the boat party, the clicking of whose well-oiled rifle-locks offered the most serious of warnings.
The sudden appearance of these visitors, so silent and so prompt--the swift act of their leader, without threat, without warning--the instant readiness of the others to back their leader's initiative--caught every one of these rude fighting men in the sudden grip of surprise. They hesitated.
"I am no fighting man," said Meriwether Lewis, turning to them; "yet neither may I be insulted by any lout who chooses to call me ashore to thrash him. Do you think that an officer of the army has no better business than that? Who are you that would stop us?"
The group fell back muttering, lacking concerted action. What might have occurred in case they had reached their arms was prevented by the action of the party of the first part in this
rencontre--of the second part, perhaps, he might better have been called. The fallen warrior sat up, rubbing his throat; he struggled to his knees, and at length stood. There was something of rude river chivalry about him, after all.
"An officer, did ye say?" said he. "Oh, wirra! What have I done now, and me a soldier! But ye done it fair! And ye niver wance gouged me nor jumped on me whin I was down! Begorrah, I felt both me eyes to see if they was in! Ye done it fair, and ye're an officer and a gintleman, whoever ye be. I'd like to shake hands with ye!"
"I am not shaking hands with ruffians who insult travelers," Captain Lewis sternly rejoined; but he saw the crestfallen look which swept over the strong face of the other. "There, man," said he, "since you seem to mean well!"
He shook hands with his opponent, who, stung by the rebuke, now began to sniffle.
"Sor," said he, "I am no ruffian. I am a soldier meself, and on me way to join me company at Kaskasky, down below. Me time was out awhile back, and I came East to the States to have a bit av a fling before I enlisted again. Now, what money I haven't give to me parents I've spint like a man. I have had me fling for awhile, and I'm goin' back to sign on again. Sor, I am a sergeant and a good wan, though I do say it. Me record is clean. I am Patrick Gass, first sergeant of the Tinth Dragoons, the same now stationed at Kaskasky. Though ye are not in uniform, I know well enough ye are an officer. Sor, I ask yer pardon--'twas only the whisky made me feel sportin' like at the time, do ye mind?"
"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.
"I have nothing to complain of," said Patrick Gass, addressing his new friends impartially, as he shifted his belongings to suit him and took his place at a rowing seat. "I have nothing to complain of. I've been sayin' I would like to have one more rale fight before I enlisted--the army is too tame for a fellow of rale spirit. None o' thim at the camp yonder, where I was two days, would take it on with me after the first day. I was fair longin' for something to interest me--and be jabers, I found it! Now I am continted to ind me vacation and come back to the monothony of business life."
The boat advanced steadily enough thereafter throughout the night. They pulled ashore at dawn, and, after the fashion of experienced travelers, were soon about the business of the morning meal.
The leader of the party drew apart for the morning plunge which was his custom. Cover lacking on the bare bar where they had landed, he was not fully out of sight when at length, freshened by his plunge, he stood drying himself for dressing. Unconsciously, his arm extended, he looked for all the world the very statue of the young Apoxyomenos of the Vatican--the finest figure of a man that the art of antiquity has handed down to us.
As that smiling youth out of the past stood, scraper in hand, drying himself after the games, so now stood this young American, type of a new race, splendid as the Greeks themselves in the immortal beauty of life. His white body shining in the sun, every rolling muscle plainly visible--even that rare muscle over the hip beloved of the ancients, but now forgotten of sculptors, because rarely seen on a man today--so comely was he, so like a god in his clean youth, that Patrick Gass, unhampered by backwardness himself, turned to his new companions, whom already he addressed each by his first name.
"George," said he to young Shannon, "George, saw ye ever the like of yon? What a man! Lave I had knowed he could strip like yon, niver would I have taken the chance I did last night. 'Tis wonder he didn't kill me--in which case I'd niver have had me job. The Lord loves us Irish, anny way you fix it!" _