ed.
"I'll see you yet well settled down as a Virginia squire--your white
hair hanging down on your shoulders and a score of grandchildren about
your knees to hamper you."

William Clark meant well--his friend knew that; so now he smiled, or
tried to smile.

"Merne," the red-headed one went on, throwing an arm across his
friend's shoulders, "pass over this affair--cut it out of your heart.
Believe me, believe me, the friendship of men is the only one that
lasts. We two have eaten from the same pannikin, slept under the same
bear-robe before now--we still may do so. And look at the adventures
before us!"

"You are a boy, Will," said Meriwether Lewis, actually smiling now,
"and I am glad you are and always will be; because, Will, I never was
a boy--I was born old. But now," he added sharply, as he rose, "a
pleasant journey to us both--and the longer the better!"

CHAPTER XIII

UNDER THREE FLAGS

The day was but beginning for the young American republic. All the air
was vibrant with the passion of youth and romance. Yonder in the West
there might be fame and fortune for any man with courage to adventure.
The world had not yet settled down to inexorable grooves of life, from
which no human soul might fight its way out save at cost of sweetness
and content and hope. The chance of one man might still equal that of
another--yonder, in that vast new world along the Mississippi, beyond
the Mississippi, more than a hundred years ago.

Into that world there now pressed a flowing, seething, restless mass,
a new population seeking new avenues of hope and life, of adventure
and opportunity. Riflemen, axmen, fighting men, riding men, boatmen,
plowmen--they made ever out and on, laughing the Cossack laugh at the
mere thought of any man or thing withstanding them.

Over this new world, alert, restless, full of Homeric youth, full of
the lust of life and adventure, floated three flags. The old war of
France and Spain still smoldered along the great waterway into the
South. The flag of Great Britain had withdrawn itself to the North.
The flag of our republic had not yet advanced.

Those who made the Western population at that time cared little enough
about flags or treaty rights. They concerned themselves rather with
possession. Let any who liked observe the laws. The strong made their
own laws from day to day, and wrote them in one general codex of
adventure and full-blooded, roistering life. The world was young. Buy