are the things women
covet _from_ a man--yes, but they are not the things a woman
_loves in_ a man. No; it is the stiff-necked man, bound in
his own ambition, whom women love, even as they swear they
do not.

_Therefore, do not come back to me_, Meriwether Lewis! Do
not come--forget all that I have said to you before--do not
return until you have done your work! Do not come back to me
until you can come content. Do not come to me with your
splendid will broken. Let it triumph even over the will of a
Burr, not used to yielding, not easily giving up anything
desired.

This is almost the last letter I shall ever write to any man
in all my life. I wonder who will read it--you, or all the
world, perhaps! I wish it might rest with you at the last.
Oh, let this thought lie with you as you sleep--you did not
come back to me, _and I rejoiced that you did not_!

Tell me, why is it that I think of you lying where the wind
is sweet in the trees? Why is it that I think of myself,
too, lying at last, with all my doubts composed, all my
restless ambitions ended, all my foolish dreams answered--in
some place where the sound of the unceasing waters shall
wash out from the memory of the world all my secrets and all
my sins? Always I hear myself crying:

"I hope I shall not be unhappy, for I do not feel that I
have been bad."

Adieu, Meriwether Lewis, adieu! I am glad you can never read
this. I am glad that you have not come back. I am glad that
I have failed!

CHAPTER XI

THE BEE

"Captain, dear," said honest Patrick Gass, putting an arm under his
wounded commander's shoulders as he eased his position in the boat,
"ye are not the man ye was when ye hit me that punch back yonder on
the Ohio, three years ago. Since ye're so weak now, I have a good mind
to return it to ye, with me compliments. 'Tis safer now!"

Gass chuckled at his own jest as his leader looked up at him.

The boiling current of the great Missouri, bend after bend, vista
after vista, had carried them down until at length they had reached
the mouth of the Yellowstone, and had seen on ahead the curl of blue
smoke on the beach--the encampment of their companions, who were
waiting for them here. These wonderful young men, these extraordinary
wilderness travelers, had performed one more miracle. Separated by
leagues