Jefferson slapped the volume neatly shut.
“Scandalous!” I observed.
“Horsemint!” Uncle muttered.
The President sighed.
“I have always admired the French,” he said, “but they are an obdurate race, especially in matters of scientific theory and particularly when they are wrong. When I was ambassador to the court at Versailles, I endeavored to dispute these falsehoods by presenting a specimen of moose to the Comte de Buffon, to show him that the largest European reindeer could easily walk ’neath the belly of our great native ruminant. I asked General Sullivan of New Hampshire to procure one for me. The bones and hide were shipped to Paris and mounted. Unfortunately, the moose in question was a cow of the species and, thinking to correct this deficiency, they had screwed the antlers of a common deer to the beast’s skull. The result was droll. Buffon pretended to be impressed and said he would mention the beast in his revised edition of Histoire Naturelle. He died shortly thereafter and his uncorrected slanders still stand, persisting across Europe to dangerous effect. How, gentlemen, are we to command the respect of other nations in the face of these scurrilities? Milk in our breasts! Feeble? Dwarfed? Tractable? Timid? These lies must be extinguished so that no one will dare mistake America for a land of stunted feeblings!”
“Hear, hear!” I applauded as though at a performance in the Park Theatre, so persuasive was Jefferson’s oratory. Uncle reproved me with a sharp glance. Jefferson stood staunchly at his place, whitened knuckles pressed against the tabletop, his face firm with determination, as though he were posing for a statue. A moment later that opaquely seductive smile returned to his lips, and he invited us to step across the room.
Beside his desk was a large box about the size of a sea chest. We gathered ’round it. The President lifted its creaking lid. Inside was a heap of huge bones, gray, dusty, cloaked with grit and sediment. Many were larger than the bones of cattle.
“Here,” he intoned, “is the colossus that will change the world’s opinion!”
Uncle bent to inspect the moldering artifacts. He sifted through the contents and withdrew what appeared to be a digit bone, but attached to which was a terrifying claw fully ten inches long.
“Good heavens above, Thomas!” Uncle gasped. “What monster is this?”
“Is it not a prodigious wonder, William?”
“I am stupefied.”
The President took the gigantic claw from Uncle and held it to the sunlight in the window, running his index finger up the burnished brown, scythelike weapon.
“A few years ago,” he said, “two neighbors of mine in Albemarle discovered the skeleton of this colossus in a saltpeter cave. There were, in addition, etchings of a lionlike beast upon the walls of the cave—it had been the haunt of Indians some years previous. White men in the locality, hunters of the Blue Ridge, had long reported horrible roaring noises quite unlike the shriek of panthers or the howl of wolves. It seemed evident to me that these bones were the remains of a native cat of the lion family, but”—Jefferson’s voice grew hushed—“but as preeminent over the panther as the mastodon is over the wild pig!”
“We are astounded, Thomas,” Uncle said.
“These bones came to light in ’95,” Jefferson went on. “I took the liberty of dubbing the beast ‘megalonyx’—giant claw—but, before I could read my paper at the Philosophical Society, a young Frenchman named Georges Cuvier discovered an identical set of bones in the South American country of Paraguay. This Cuvier asserted that the creature was an herbivore, not a cat but a great lumbering ruminant ground sloth. I shall not bore you with the details, gentlemen, except to say that his arguments were sound. He called it … ‘megatherium.’ Giant beast.”
“This claw, then, is a digging apparatus and not a weapon of predation,” Uncle adduced out loud.
“I suppose so,” Jefferson replied wearily and tossed the fearsome-looking thing back into the chest as though it were a potsherd. He took his seat behind the presidential desk, tilted the chair on its rear legs, clasped his hands behind his head, and gazed dreamily into the ceiling. “If only we could somehow procure a specimen of this beast,” he mused. “What victorious evidence it would be.”
“It would compare to thy moose as a white-headed eagle to an housefly,” Uncle declared.
Suddenly, Jefferson tipped upright again, leaned forward across his desk, and looked directly at Uncle, his gaze unwavering for the first time.
“This is why I have summoned you here, William,” he said gravely. “For it must be accomplished. And you are the best-fitted man I know for the task.”
“What…! Me? An old herbalist?”
“You are not so old as you pretend. Why, was it not a year ago that you swam the Niagara River to procure a single specimen of giant purple hyssop (Agastache scrophulariifolia)? Don’t deny it, sir, for I read your account in the society’s minutes.”
“’Tis true, Thomas,” Uncle admitted with a sigh, secretly proud but never boastful. “But, sir, such an undertaking as thee proposes might take months, a year! And who is to mind my affairs at Owl’s Crossing whilst I am upon it?”
“And who minds Monticello whilst I drudge in this sinkhole of politics?” the President peevishly countered. But his point was unmistakable. A momentous pause ensued. I held my breath.
“I am thine obedient servant, Mr. President,” Uncle at last pronounced.
“Bravo, William!” Jefferson cried. “A grateful republic embraces you!” And so saying, the President hurried around his massive desk and clapped his long arms around Uncle’s casklike trunk, patting his back with affection. “Now, here is the plan.” He released Uncle. “You are to proceed directly to the Treasury headquarters. Secretary Gallatin is waiting with an hundred dollars currency to secure the necessaries of your expedition—”
“An hundred dollars! Thomas—”
“Do not protest. You must have the very best in equipments. Now, come here.”
Jefferson withdrew a large, crinkly parchment from behind his desk and brought it to the luncheon table, pushing aside the water glasses. It was a map of the wilderness between the Ohio River and the Gulf of Mexico, including those two barely settled states, Kentucky and Tennessee. Uncle bent over it making noises of cogitation.
“I believe this is where we are likely to find our megatherium.” The President pointed a slender finger at the terra incognita that today comprises the states of Mississippi and Alabama. On this map, of course, it was practically a blank, save for a few squiggly postulated tributaries of the Mississippi River. “Here is the habitat of our shy colossus.”
“A logical place to look, by heaven,” Uncle avouched unconvincingly.
“Take this, then, old friend,” the President said, rolling up the map. “Samuel—”
“Sir…?”
“I am told that you are a formidable artist of the brush and paintbox species.”
“A dabbler,” I answered modestly.
“Your reputation as a miniaturist has proceeded you here.”
(I, of course, was ignorant of the correspondence between Uncle and Jefferson that had preceded this interview.)
“I—”
“Here is what I want you to do, young man,” the President said, handing me a printed monograph. “Take the Cuvier back to your lodgings tonight. It contains a sketch of the skeleton as he found it in Paraguay. See if you might contrive a fleshed-out likeness of the creature based upon its bone structure. I should like to see it myself, and no doubt it will