The Navigator (NUMA Files 7)

Angela nodded. “The members tutored him in botany, astronomy, geography, and other sciences. He was an apt student. The expedition was a huge success.”

“What happened to him after the expedition?” Gamay said.

“He made what might have been the biggest mistake of his life. In 1807, he accepted an appointment as governor of the LouisianaTerritory.”

“Mistake?” Paul said. “I would think he’d be a natural for the job.”

“Lewis was better suited for trekking through the wilderness. St. Louis was a frontier outpost filled with dangerous men, crooks, and fortune hunters. He had to deal with plots, feuds, and conspiracies. He was constantly undercut by his assistant. But he managed to last two and a half years as governor before his death.”

“Not bad, considering the difficulties he faced,” Paul said.

“It was a sedentary and confining job,” Angela said. “But, from most accounts, he did pretty well.”

“What were the circumstances leading to his decision to go to Washington?” Gamay said.

“Lewis had repatriated a Mandan chief. There was a five-hundred-dollar cost overrun, and the federal government rejected his claim. There were rumors of a land deal scandal. Lewis said he was in a financial bind, and he had to go back to Washington to clear his good name. He had some important documents to deliver as well.”

“Tell us about the trip that ended in his death,” Gamay said.

“The whole thing is full of contradictions and inconsistencies,” Angela said.

“In what way?” Gamay said.

Angela slid a map across the desk. “Lewis leaves St. Louis at the end of August 1809. He goes down the Mississippi River and arrives at Fort Pickering, Tennessee, on September fifteenth. Lewis is exhausted from the heat and may have a touch of malaria. A rumor circulates that he was out of his head during the trip and attempted suicide. Another rumor says he drank heavily the whole time with old army comrades. That’s funny, because he didn’t have any army friends at the fort.”

“Any truth to these rumors?” Gamay said.

“They were secondhand accounts. Lewis wrote a letter at the fort to President Madison that shows he was pretty clearheaded. He tells Madison he was exhausted but that he is much better. And that he plans to go overland through Tennessee and Virginia. He says he is carrying original papers from his Pacific expedition and doesn’t want them to fall into the hands of the British, who were expected to declare war.”

“What happened next?” Paul said.

“Two weeks after he arrived at the fort,” Angela continued, “Lewis set off again. He was carrying two trunks that held his papers from the Pacific expedition, a portfolio, memo book, and documents of a private and public nature. The expedition journals are contained in sixteen notebooks bound in red morocco leather.”

“It must have been tough carrying all that stuff overland on his own,” Paul said.

“Almost impossible. Which is why he accepted an offer of an extra horse from James Neelly, a former Indian agent for the Chickasaw nation. On September twenty-ninth, they left the fort: Lewis, his servant, Pernia, and a slave, and Neelly.”

“Hardly the sort of entourage you’d expect of a territorial governor,” Gamay noted.

“I can’t figure it either,” Angela said. “Especially in light of the legend of Lewis’s long-lost gold mine.”

“The plot thickens,” Paul said. “Tell us about this mine.”

“It was said that Lewis discovered a gold mine on his Pacific expedition. He told a few friends, and supposedly left a description of the mine so that if he died it might be of some use to the country. I’m sure the gold mine story was generally known. And it was common knowledge along the Trace that the governor would be passing through.”

“Lewis would have been in special danger,” Gamay said.

“Every bandit along the Trace would have been thinking about the map and how to get it away from Lewis,” Angela agreed.

“Wouldn’t Lewis have been aware of the risk?” Gamay said.

“Lewis knew the risks of traveling through the wilderness. He had faced danger before and might have thought he could handle it.”

“Or,” Gamay said, “he could have been so driven to get to Washington that he figured the risk was worth it.’

“Maybe the danger was closer than he thought,” Paul said. “Neelly.”

“More contradictions,” Angela said. “Neelly said later that Lewis was deranged, but the group did a hundred and fifty miles in three days.”