Page:The Conquest.djvu/315

 dog. When you hear the sound of a neighbour's gun it is time to move away."

Thus, solitary and apart, the American frontiersman took up Missouri.

Strolling along the Rue Royale, followed by admiring crowds, Lewis and Clark found themselves already at the Pierre Chouteau mansion, rising like an old-world chateau amid the lesser St. Louis. Up the stone steps, within the demi-fortress, there were glimpses of fur warehouses, stables, slaves' quarters, occupying a block,—practically a fort within the city.

Other guests were there before them,—Charles Gratiot, who had visited the Clarks in Virginia, and John P. Cabanné, who was to wed Gratiot's daughter, Julia. On one of those flatboats crowding the wharf that morning came happy Pierre Menard, the most illustrious citizen of Kaskaskia, with his bride of a day, Angelique Saucier. Pierre Menard's nephew, Michel Menard, was shortly to leave for Texas, to become an Indian trader and founder of the city of Galveston.

At the board, too, sat Pierre Chouteau, the younger, just returned from a trip up the Mississippi with Julien Dubuque, where he had helped to start Dubuque and open the lead mines.

Out of the wild summer grape the old inhabitants of St. Louis had long fabricated their choicest Burgundy. But of late the Chouteaus had begun to import their wine from France, along with ebony chairs, claw-footed tables, and other luxuries, the first in this Mississippi wild. For never had the fur-trade been so prosperous.

There was laughter and clinking of glasses, and questions of lands beyond the Yellowstone. Out of that hour arose schemes for a trapper's conquest along the trail on which ten future States were strung.

"The mouth of the Yellowstone commands the rich fur-trade of the Rocky mountains," said Captain Clark. Captain Lewis dwelt on the Three Forks as a strategic point for a fort. No one there listened with more breathless intent than the dark-haired boy, the young Chouteau, who was destined to become the greatest financier of the