VI
_THE FIRST FORT IN MONTANA_
Manuel Lisa had enemies and ambition. These always go together.
Scarcely had Clark and his bride settled at St. Louis before down fromthe north came Manuel Lisa's boats, piled, heaped, and laden to thegunwale edge with furs out of the Yellowstone. His triumphant gunssaluted Charette, St. Charles, St. Louis. He had run the gauntlet ofSioux, Arikara, and Assiniboine. He had penetrated the Yellowstone andestablished Fort Lisa at the mouth of the Bighorn in the very heart ofthe Crow-land,--the first building in what is now Montana.
"Dey say you cause de attack on Big White," buzzed a Frenchman in hisear. Angry at such an imputation, the Spaniard hastened to GovernorLewis.
"I disclaim all responsibility for that disaster. The Arikaras firedacross my bow. I stopped. But I had my men-at-arms, my swivels ready.I understood presents. I smoked the pipe of peace, with a musket in myhand. Of course I passed. Even the Mandans fired on me, and theAssiniboines. Should that dismay a trader?"
Manuel Lisa, the successful, was now monarch of the fur trade. Evenhis enemies capitulated.
"If he is stern in discipline, the service demands it. He has gonefarther, dared more, accomplished more, and brought home more, thanany other. What a future for St. Louis! We must unite our forces."
And so the city on the border reached out toward her destiny. Pierreand Auguste Chouteau, William Clark and Reuben Lewis, locked fortuneswith the daring, indomitable Manuel Lisa. Pierre Menard, Andrew Henry,and others, a dozen altogether, put in forty thousand dollars,incorporating the Missouri Fur Company. Into the very heart of theRocky Mountains it was resolved to push, into those primeval beavermeadows whither Lewis and Clark had led the way.
"Abandon the timid methods of former trade,--plunge at once deep intothe wilderness," said Lisa; "ascend the Missouri to its utmostnavigable waters, and by establishing posts monopolise the trade ofthe entire region."
Already had Lisa dreamed of the Santa Fe,--now he looked toward thePacific.
And now, too, was the time to send Big White back to the Mandans.Under the convoy of two hundred and fifty people,--enlisted soldiersand _engages_, American hunters, Creoles, and Canadian voyageurs,--thefur flotilla set sail with tons of traps and merchandise.
As the flotilla pulled out, a tall gaunt frontiersman with two whitemen and an Indian came pulling into St. Louis. Clark turned a secondtime,--"Why, Daniel Boone!"
"First rate! first rate!" Furrowed as a sage and tanned as a hunter,with a firm hand-grasp, the old man stepped ashore. Two summers nowhad Daniel Boone and his two sons brought down to St. Louis a cargo ofsalt, manufactured by themselves at Boone's Lick, a discovery of theold pioneer.
"Any settlers comin'? We air prepared to tote 'em up."
Ever a welcome guest to the home of General Clark, Daniel Boone strodealong to the cottage on the Rue. At sight of Julia he closed his eyes,dazzled.
"'Pears to me she looks like Rebecca."
Never, since that day when young Boone went hunting deer in the Yadkinforest and found Rebecca Bryan, a ruddy, flax-haired girl, had heceased to be her lover. And though years had passed and Rebecca hadfaded, to him she was ever the gold-haired girl of the Yadkin. PoorRebecca! Hers had been a hard life in camp and cabin, with pigs andchickens in the front yard and rain dripping through the roof.
"Daniel!" she sometimes said, severely.
"Wa-al, now Rebecca, thee knows I didn't have time to mend that airleak in the ruff last summer; I war gone too long at the beaver. Butthee shall have a new house." And again the faithful Rebecca stuffed arag in the ceiling with her mop-handle and meekly went on bakinghoe-cake before the blazing forelog.
Daniel had long promised a new house, but now, at last, he was reallygoing to build. For this he was studying St. Louis.
A day looking at houses and disposing of his salt and beaver-skins,and back he went, with a boatload of emigrants and a cargo ofschool-books. Mere trappers came and went,--Boone brought settlers.Pathfinder, judge, statesman, physician to the border, he now carriedequipments for the first school up the Missouri.