Page:The Conquest.djvu/443

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At the bedside of his dead wife, Governor Clark sat, holding her waxen hand, with their little six-year-old son, Jefferson, in his lap. "My child, you have no mother now," said the father with streaming tears. After the funeral, nothing was recorded in Clark's letter-books for some days, and when he began again, the handwriting was that of an aged man.

None mourned this sad event more than the tender-hearted Nez Percés, who remained until Spring.

When the new steamer Yellowstone of the American Fur Company, set out for its first great trip up the Missouri, Governor Clark made arrangements to send the chiefs home to their country. A day later, the other old Indian, The-Man-of-the-Morning, died and was buried near St. Charles.

Among other passengers on that steamer were Pierre Chouteau the younger and George Catlin, the Indian artist, who was setting out to visit the Mandans.

"You will find the Mandans a strange people and half white," said Governor Clark to his friend the artist, as he gave him his passport into the Indian country.

On the way up the river Catlin noticed the two young Nez Percés, and painted their pictures.

As if pursued by a strange fatality, at the mouth of the Yellowstone No-Horns-On-His-Head died,—Rabbit-Skin-Leggings alone was left to carry the word from St. Louis.

Earlier than ever that year the Nez Percés had crossed the snowy trails of the Bitter Root to the buffalo country in the Yellowstone and Judith Basin.

"For are not our messengers coming?"

And there, camped with their horses and their lodges, watching, Rabbit-Skin-Leggings met them and shouted afar off,—"A man shall be sent with the Book."

Back over the hills and the mountains the message flew,—"A man shall be sent with the Book."

Every year after that the Nez Percés went over to the east, looking for the man with the Book.

Nearly a year elapsed before William Walker got back from his explorations and wrote a public letter