For the second time in my life, I looked to be heading for a decent existence, using my talents as one who had read law, and being willing and able to lawyer for a price. I was welcome as a satellite on occasion at the Governor's home, and was careful not to abuse the privilege. Nor did I fail in my manners to the many hangers-on and courtesans of both genders that inevitably cluster around the seat of power in a world as full of change as Missouri was at that time.

There were two things which contrived my downfall, after so auspicious a beginning on the frontier (well, I thought of it as the frontier, although Saint Joe was becoming known even then as the last outpost of our kind of CIvilization).

I suppose that means I should tell you what they were, or you will never understand how I came to follow the Missouri West in the bootprints of Clark. And I shall. But give me a brief moment to reflect on these strange turns, and let me mention, oddly enough that both of them hinged on the magic of women -- two women of different ages, different Color, different estate altogether.    And both as beautiful and loveable as Eve incarnate...and thereby hangs a piece of my tale.