The True Account by Howard Frank Mosher Read Free Book Online Page A

Kinneson.” He swept off his stocking cap and made a deep bow, in the process striking the bewildered President’s outstretched hand with the metal plate in his head.
    Then, with yet another flourish in my direction, “And my squire and nephew, Ticonderoga Kinneson.”
    Without further ceremony my uncle announced that though he respected no living man more than Tom Jefferson, he would, by the Great Jehovah, pay fealty to no one; nor suppress his opinion in regard to what he believed right; nor dance attendance on any man in the world. The President seemed very surprised but also amused at the figure of my uncle, looming up in his knight-errant’s habiliments as he pushed brusquely past into the study. Mr. Jefferson shook hands with me. “I like your name, sir,” he said. “Ticonderoga. I imagine there’s a story there.”
    â€œThere is, Mr. President. My uncle named me. It’s Ti for short.”
    â€œWell, Ti, come in and make yourself comfortable—as I see your excellent uncle has done. I admire a man who doesn’t stand on ceremony.”
    I loved Monticello, with its beds of multicolored tulips and stately white columns and clocks and books and pictures—grand pictures such as I had never dreamed of painting, by all the leading artists of the day. My uncle immediately conferred upon himself the full freedom of the President’s study, as if he were at home in his own Library at Alexandria. Unrolling his “Chart of the Interior,” he began to point out to the President the sources of the Missouri and the Columbia and many other hitherto unknown features from our “trip” the previous summer, at the same time declaring that he stood ready to command the expedition being assembled to penetrate the wilds of Louisiana. And to show the President how well prepared he was to undertake this great journey of discovery, he got out his Dutch clock and astrolabe and, with the further aid of a sundial with the face of Jupiter inscribed upon it, which stood in the iris bed outside the study window, determined our longitude to be exactly that of—Bombay.
    The President smiled. Assuring us that he was very impressed by the chart and by the drawings I had made on it of some bison and Indians, he asked if I would make a sketch of my uncle, which he would be honored to hang in his study next to Peale’s portrait of himself. I was happy to oblige. As the private posed in his heroic gear, he reiterated his desire to lead the expedition to the Pacific. To which the President replied that, while deeply appreciative of such a kind offer, he had already appointed a young army captain named Meriwether Lewis, formerly his private secretary, to this commission, adding that Captain Lewis’s official party would be leaving from St. Louis within a very few weeks.
    Seeing my uncle’s terribly disappointed expression, President Jefferson asked if he might have a word aside with me concerning my judgment of a little painting. My crestfallen uncle bowed his consent; whereupon Mr. Jefferson took me into an adjacent room and showed me a very pretty rendition of the Natural Bridge of Virginia. While I admired it, he said, “Ti, your uncle clearly has a superior imagination. Indeed, his faculties in that direction are those of a true genius. It appears to me that in his mind he really has traversed the continent, and back through time as well, and been in campaigns from Troy to Yorktown.”
    â€œHe was in fact with Ethan Allen at Fort Ticonderoga,” I said, unwilling to have the President suppose my uncle to be totally daft. “He was injured in the cranium there.”
    President Jefferson nodded. After a moment’s reflection, he said, “Do you think that if I were to furnish you and your uncle with two mounts suitable for this great adventure that he believes lies ahead, and you gently trended north with him, persuading him at the same time that