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+Project Gutenberg's The Young Alaskans on the Missouri, by Emerson Hough
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Young Alaskans on the Missouri
+
+Author: Emerson Hough
+
+Release Date: August 20, 2008 [EBook #26367]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE YOUNG ALASKANS ON THE MISSOURI ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by D Alexander and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+ THE
+ YOUNG ALASKANS
+ ON THE MISSOURI
+
+ By
+
+ EMERSON HOUGH
+
+ _Author of_
+ "YOUNG ALASKANS IN THE ROCKIES"
+ "YOUNG ALASKANS IN THE FAR NORTH"
+ ETC.
+
+ HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
+ NEW YORK AND LONDON
+
+
+
+
+ YOUNG ALASKANS ON THE MISSOURI
+
+ Copyright, 1922
+ By Harper & Brothers
+ Printed in the U. S. A.
+
+ _First Edition_
+
+
+
+
+ BOOKS BY
+ EMERSON HOUGH
+
+ THE YOUNG ALASKANS
+ YOUNG ALASKANS ON THE TRAIL
+ YOUNG ALASKANS IN THE ROCKIES
+ YOUNG ALASKANS IN THE FAR NORTH
+ YOUNG ALASKANS ON THE MISSOURI
+
+ Harper & Brothers Publishers
+
+
+
+
+ CONTENTS
+
+
+ CHAP.                                                       PAGE
+
+ I.       FOLLOWING LEWIS AND CLARK                           1
+
+ II.      READY FOR THE RIVER                                 9
+
+ III.     "ADVENTURER, OF AMERICA"                           17
+
+ IV.      THE EARLY ADVENTURERS                              23
+
+ V.       OFF UP THE RIVER                                   36
+
+ VI.      THE LOG OF THE "ADVENTURER"                        41
+
+ VII.     THE GATE OF THE WEST                               49
+
+ VIII.    HO! FOR THE PLATTE!                                59
+
+ IX.      SHIPWRECK                                          67
+
+ X.       AT THE PLATTE                                      73
+
+ XI.      AMONG THE SIOUX                                    83
+
+ XII.     THE LOST HUNTER                                    89
+
+ XIII.    GETTING NORTH                                     100
+
+ XIV.     IN DAYS OF OLD                                    115
+
+ XV.      AMONG THE MANDANS                                 128
+
+ XVI.     OLD DAYS ON THE RIVER                             144
+
+ XVII.    AT THE YELLOWSTONE                                155
+
+ XVIII.   WHERE THE ROAD FORKED                             168
+
+ XIX.     AT THE GREAT FALLS                                187
+
+ XX.      READY FOR THE RIVER HEAD                          201
+
+ XXI.     THE PACK TRAIN                                    210
+
+ XXII.    AT THE THREE FORKS                                226
+
+ XXIII.   SUNSET ON THE OLD RANGE                           235
+
+ XXIV.    NEARING THE SOURCE                                246
+
+ XXV.     BEAVERHEAD CAMP                                   262
+
+ XXVI.    THE JUMP-OFF CAMP                                 276
+
+ XXVII.   THE UTMOST SOURCE                                 294
+
+ XXVIII.  SPORT WITH ROD AND REEL                           302
+
+ XXIX.    THE HEAD OF THE GREAT RIVER                       310
+
+ XXX.     SPORTING PLANS                                    327
+
+ XXXI.    AMONG THE GRAYLING                                340
+
+ XXXII.   AT BILLY'S RANCH                                  349
+
+ XXXIII.  HOMEWARD BOUND                                    371
+
+
+
+
+ ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+ THEY TURNED AWAY FROM THE GREAT FALLS OF
+ THE ANCIENT RIVER WITH A FEELING OF
+ SADNESS                                         _Frontispiece_
+
+ THEY SAW HIM SCRAMBLE UP THE BANK, LIE
+ FOR AN INSTANT HALF EXHAUSTED, AND
+ THEN COME RUNNING DOWN THE SHORE TO
+ THEM                                            _Facing p._ 70
+
+ BEFORE ANYONE COULD HELP HIM HE WAS
+ FLUNG FULL LENGTH, AND LAY MOTIONLESS                "     216
+
+ JESSE SUDDENLY STOOPED, THEN ROSE WITH AN
+ EXCLAMATION                                          "     264
+
+
+
+
+THE YOUNG ALASKANS ON THE MISSOURI
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+FOLLOWING LEWIS AND CLARK
+
+
+"Well, sister," said Uncle Dick, addressing that lady as she sat busy
+with her needlework at the window of a comfortable hotel in the city of
+St. Louis, "I'm getting restless, now that the war is over. Time to be
+starting out. Looks like I'd have to borrow those boys again and hit
+the trail. Time to be on our way!"
+
+"Richard!" The lady tapped her foot impatiently, a little frown
+gathering on her forehead.
+
+"Well, then?"
+
+"Well, you're always just starting out! You've been hitting the trail
+all your life. Wasn't the war enough?"
+
+"Oh, well!" Uncle Dick smiled humorously as he glanced at his leg,
+which extended before him rather stiffly as he sat.
+
+"I should think it was enough!" said his sister, laying down her work.
+
+"But it didn't last!" said Uncle Dick.
+
+"How can you speak so!"
+
+"Well, it didn't. Of course, Rob got in, even if he had to run away
+and smouch a little about how old he was. But he wasn't through his
+training. And as for the other boys, Frank was solemn as an owl
+because the desk sergeant laughed at him and told him to go back to
+the Boy Scouts; and Jesse was almost in tears over it."
+
+"All our boys!"
+
+"Yes! All our boys. The whole country'd have been in it if it had gone
+on. America doesn't play any game to lose it."
+
+"Yes, and look at you!"
+
+Uncle Dick moved his leg. "Cheap!" said he. "Cheap! But we don't talk
+of that. What I was talking about, or was going to talk about, was
+something by way of teaching these boys what a country this America is
+and always has been; how it never has played any game to lose it, and
+never is going to."
+
+"Well, Richard, what is it this time?" His sister began to fold up her
+work, sighing, and to smooth it out over her knee. "We've just got
+settled down here in our own country, and I was looking for a little
+rest and peace."
+
+"You need it, after your Red Cross work, and you shall have it. You
+shall rest. While you do, I'll take the boys on the trail, the Peace
+Trail--the greatest trail of progress and peace all the world ever
+knew."
+
+"Whatever can you mean?"
+
+"And made by two young chaps, officers of our Army, not much more
+than boys they were, neither over thirty. They found America for us,
+or a big part of it. I call them the two absolutely splendidest and
+perfectly bulliest boys in history."
+
+"Oh, I know! You mean Lewis and Clark! You're always talking of them to
+the boys. Ever since we came to St. Louis----"
+
+"Yes, ever since we came to this old city, where those two boys started
+out West, before anybody knew what the West was or even where it was.
+I've been talking to our boys about those boys! Rather I should say,
+those two young gentlemen of our Army, over a hundred years ago--Captain
+Meriwether Lewis and Captain William Clark."
+
+His sister nodded gravely, "I know."
+
+"What water has run by here, since 1804, in these two rivers, the
+Mississippi and the Missouri! How the country has grown! How the world
+has changed! And how we have forgotten!
+
+"That's why I want to take them, even now, my dear sister, these young
+Americans, over that very same old trail--not so long and hard and full
+of danger now. Why? Lest we forget! Lest our young Americans forget! And
+we all are forgetting. Not right.
+
+"You see? Because this old town of St. Louis was then only a village,
+and we just had bought our unknown country of France, and this town was
+on the eastern edge of it, the gate of it--the gate to the West, it used
+to be, before steam came, while everything went by keel boat; oar or
+paddle and pole and sail and cordelle. Ah, Sis, those were the days!"
+
+"Think of the time it must have taken!"
+
+"Think of the times they must have been!"
+
+"But now one never hears of Lewis and Clark. We go by rail, so much
+faster. As for going up-river by steamboat, I never heard of such a
+thing!"
+
+"But the boys have. I caught Jesse, even, pondering over my Catlin,
+looking at the buffalo and Indian pictures."
+
+"I never heard of Catlin."
+
+"Of course not. Well, he came much later than my captains, and was an
+artist. But my captains had found the way. Rob and Frank know. They've
+read the worked-over _Journals_ of Lewis and Clark. Me, I've even seen
+the originals. I swear those curious pages make my heart jump to this
+very day, even after our travels on the soil of France just now--France,
+the country that practically gave us our country, or almost all of it
+west of the Missouri, more than a hundred years ago. She didn't know,
+and we didn't know. Well, we helped pay the rest of the price, if there
+was anything left back, at Chateau Thierry and in the Argonne."
+
+His sister was looking at the stiffened leg, and Uncle Dick frowned at
+that. "It's nothing," said he. "Think of the others."
+
+"And all for what?" he mused, later. "All for what, if it wasn't for
+America, and for what America was meant to be, and for what America was
+and is? So, about my boys--what d'ye think, my dear, if they wandered
+with me, hobbling back from the soil of old France, over the soil of the
+New France that once lay up the Big Muddy, yon--that New France which
+Napoleon gave to make New America? Any harm about that, what?... Lest
+we forget! Lest all this America of ours to-day forget! Eh, what?"
+
+By this time his sister had quite finished smoothing out the work on her
+knee. "Of course, I knew all along you'd go somewhere," she said. "You'd
+find a war, or anything like that, too tame! Will you never settle down,
+Richard!"
+
+"I hope not."
+
+"But you'll take the boys out of school."
+
+"Not at all. To the contrary, I'll put them in school, and a good one.
+Besides, we'll not start till after school is anyhow almost out for the
+spring term. We'll just be about as early as Lewis and Clark up the
+Missouri in the spring."
+
+"You'll be going by rail?"
+
+"Certainly not! We'll be going by boat, small boat, little boat, maybe
+not all boat."
+
+"A year! Two years!"
+
+Uncle Dick smiled. "Well, no. We've only got this summer to go up the
+Missouri and back, so, maybe as Rob did when he enlisted for eighteen,
+we'll have to smouch a little!"
+
+"I'll warrant you've talked it all over with those boys already."
+
+Uncle Dick smiled guiltily. "I shouldn't wonder!" he admitted.
+
+"And, naturally, they're keen to go!"
+
+"Naturally. What boy wouldn't be, if he were a real boy and a real
+American? Our own old, strange, splendid America! What boy wouldn't?"
+
+"Besides," he added, "I'd like to trace that old trail myself, some day.
+I've always been crazy to."
+
+"Yes, crazy! Always poring over old maps. Why do we need study the old
+passes over the Rockies, Richard? There's not an earthly bit of use in
+it. All we need know is when the train starts, and you can look on the
+time card for all the rest. We don't need geography of that sort now.
+What we need now is a geography of Europe, so we can see where the
+battles were fought, and that sort of thing."
+
+"Yes? Well, that's what I'm getting at. I've just a notion that we're
+studying the map of Europe--and Asia--to-day and to-morrow, when we
+study the old mountain passes of the Rockies, my dear.
+
+"And," he added, firmly, "my boys shall know them! Because I know that
+in that way they'll be studying not only the geography, but the history
+of all the world! When they come back, maybe they--maybe you--will know
+why so many boys now are asleep in the Argonne hills and woods in
+France. Maybe they'll see the old Lewis and Clark trail extending on out
+across the Pacific, even."
+
+"You're so funny, Richard!"
+
+"Oh, I reckon so, I reckon so! The old Crusaders were funny people,
+too--marching all the way from England and France, just to take
+Jerusalem. But look what a walk they had!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+READY FOR THE RIVER
+
+
+Uncle Dick made his way to the library room, where he found his three
+young companions on so many other trips of adventure.[1]
+
+[Footnote 1: See Vol. I, _The Young Alaskans_; Vol. II, _The Young
+Alaskans on the Trail_; Vol. III, _The Young Alaskans in the Rockies_;
+Vol. IV, _The Young Alaskans in the Far North_.]
+
+"So there you are, eh?" he began. "Rob, I see you're poring over some
+old book, as usual. What is it--same _Journal_ of Lewis and Clark?"
+
+"Yes, sir," said Rob McIntyre looking up, his eyes shining. "It's
+great!"
+
+"And here's John Hardy with his maps!" exclaimed Jesse Wilcox. "Look it!
+He's got a notion he can do a map as well as Captain William Clark."
+
+"He's something of a born map maker, then!" responded Uncle Dick. "There
+was one of the born geniuses of the world in map making. What a man he'd
+have been in our work--running preliminary surveys! He just naturally
+knew the way across country, and he just naturally knew how to set it
+down. On hides, with a burnt stick--on the sand with a willow twig--in
+the ashes with a pipe stem--that's how his maps grew. The Indians showed
+him; and he showed us."
+
+"I've often tried to tell," said Rob, "which was the greater of those
+two men, Clark or Lewis."
+
+"You never will," said his uncle. "They were the two greatest bunkies
+and buddies of all the world. Clark was the redhead; Lewis the dark and
+sober man. Clark was the engineer; Lewis the leader of men. Clark had
+the business man in him; Lewis something more--the vision, the faith of
+the soul as much as the self-reliance of the body. A great pair."
+
+"I'll say they were!" assented John. "My! what times!"
+
+"And what a country!" added Jesse, looking up from his map.
+
+"Yes, son; and what a country!" His uncle spoke seriously.
+
+"But now, fellows," he added, "about that little _pasear_ of ours--that
+slide of a couple of thousand miles this summer, up the little old
+Missouri to the Rockies and down the river again--thing we were talking
+of--what do you say?"
+
+"Oh, but we can't!" said Jesse.
+
+"Oh, but I'll bet we can!" said John, who caught a twinkle in Uncle
+Dick's eye.
+
+"Yes, and we will!" said Rob, also noting his smile.
+
+"Yes," said Uncle Dick. "I've just come from talking with the acting
+commanding officer. She says that on the whole she gives consent,
+provided I don't keep you out of school."
+
+"It took Lewis and Clark two years," demurred John. "But they were out
+of school--even though poor Will Clark hadn't learned much about
+spelling. They didn't have to get back by the first week in September."
+
+"And we don't want to scamp it," said thoroughgoing, sober Rob.
+
+"But we don't want to motor it," countered John.
+
+"I'll tell you," said Jesse Wilcox, the youngest and smallest of the
+three. "We can go by power boat, most way, anyhow. That's not scamping
+it, all things considered, is it?"
+
+"By Jove!" said Uncle Dick, and again: "By Jove! An idea!"
+
+"But about how big a boat do you think this particular family, just
+after the war, can afford?"
+
+"We could easy buy a riverman's fishing skiff," said Jesse, sagely;
+"twenty feet long and narrow bottomed, but she floats light and runs
+easy and can carry a load."
+
+"But that's not a motor boat, son," said Uncle Dick. "Do you think we
+can row to the head of the Missouri and get back by September?"
+
+"Outboard motor," said Jesse, calmly.
+
+"Hah! As though that could stem the June rise on the Muddy!"
+
+"Two outboard motors, one on each side the stern, rigged on a cross
+plank," said Jesse, never smiling. "Besides, a head sail when the wind
+is right behind. And a rope if we got a head wind. And the oars and
+paddles, too. We've paddled hours. Every little."
+
+"We could get gas easy," said John. "Lots of towns all along, now."
+
+"Easy as shooting fish," drawled Jesse. "I'm making a model of a new
+flying ship now, though it isn't all done. I can run one of those
+motors."
+
+"What say, Rob?" Uncle Dick turned to the oldest of the three, and the
+one of soberest judgment, usually.
+
+"I shouldn't wonder if it's the answer, sir," said Rob. "How many miles
+a day must we average?"
+
+"As many as we can. Lewis and Clark and their big boat did eight or ten,
+sometimes fifteen or twenty--the average was about nine miles a day. It
+took them all summer and fall to get to the Mandans. That's above
+Mandan, South Dakota--a thousand miles or so, eh?"
+
+"Just sixteen hundred and ten miles, sir," said Rob, "according to their
+figures. Just about nine miles a day, start to finish of that part of
+the run, here to the Mandans--though the modern estimates only call it
+fourteen hundred and fifty-two miles."
+
+"If we can't beat that average I'll eat the boat," said Jesse, gravely.
+
+"Well," said Uncle Dick, beginning to bite his fingers, as he often did
+when studying some problem, "let's see. A good kicker might do two or
+three miles an hour, by picking out the water. Two good kickers might
+put her up to five, good conditions. Some days we might do forty miles."
+
+"And some days, on long reaches and the wind O.K., we'd do forty-five or
+fifty," said Rob. "Of course, we can't figure on top notch all the way.
+We've got to include bad days, break-downs, accidents, delays we can't
+figure on at home, but that always get in their work somehow. Look at
+all our own other trips."
+
+"Depends on how many hours you work," said Frank. "We don't belong to
+the longshoremen's union, you know. Some days we might travel twelve
+hours, if we'd nothing else to do. And I don't think there's much
+fishing, and it would be off season for shooting, most of the time."
+
+"I'll tell you," said Uncle Dick, after a time. "I doubt if we could do
+it all the way by boat by September. But I'll see your teacher, here in
+St. Louis, where we're all going to winter this year, and arrange with
+him to let you study outside for the first few weeks of the fall term in
+case we don't get back. You'll have to work while you travel, understand
+that."
+
+The boys all agreed to this and gave their promise to do their best, if
+only they could be allowed to make this wonderful trip over the first
+and greatest exploring trail of the West.
+
+"It can perhaps be arranged," said Uncle Dick.
+
+"You mean, it has been arranged!" said Rob. "You've spoken to our school
+principal!"
+
+"Well, yes, then! And you can cut off a little from the spring term,
+too. But it's all on condition that you come back also with a knowledge
+of that much history, additional to your regular studies."
+
+"Oh, agreed to that!" said Rob; while John and Jesse began to drop their
+books and eagerly come closer to their older guide and companion.
+
+"What'll we need to take?" asked John. "We can't live on the country as
+we did up North."
+
+"Cut it light, young men. One week's grub at a time, say. The little
+tent, with a wall, and the poles along--we can spread it on the boat if
+we like."
+
+"Not the mosquito tent?" asked Jesse.
+
+"No, not after the seasoning you chaps have had in the North. Some
+mosquitoes, but not so many for us old-timers. Take bars, no head nets.
+We're not tenderfeet, you see."
+
+"A blanket, a quilt, and an eiderdown quilt each?" suggested John.
+
+"You'll not! Did Lewis and Clark have eiderdown?"
+
+"No, but they had buffalo robes!"
+
+"And so have we!" Uncle Dick laughed aloud in triumph. "I found three in
+an old fur trader's loft here, and--well, I bought them. He'd forgotten
+he had them--forty years and more. A blanket and a quilt and a robe
+each, or Jesse and John to divide the biggest robe--and there we are!"
+
+"A tarp to go over all," said Rob.
+
+"Yes. And our regular mess kit. And the usual wool scout clothes and
+good shoes and soft hat. That's about all. Two trout rods, for the
+mountains. One shotgun for luck, and one .22 rifle--no more. It'll make
+a load, but Jesse's river ship will carry it. Nasty and noisy, but nice,
+eh?"
+
+"It'll be fine!" said Jesse. "Of course, we take our maps and books and
+papers, in a valise?"
+
+"Yes. I'll have a copy of the original _Journal_."
+
+"And we'll always know where we are?" said John. "That is," he added,
+"where they were?"
+
+"Yes," said Uncle Dick, reverently enough. "As near as we can figure on
+the face of a country so changed. And we'll try to put in all the things
+they saw, try to understand what the country must have been at that
+time? Is that agreed?"
+
+Each boy came up and stood at attention. Each gave the Boy Scout's
+salute. Uncle Dick noted with a grim smile the full, snappy, military
+salute of the American Army which Rob now gave him. He returned it
+gravely and courteously, as an officer does.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+"ADVENTURER, OF AMERICA"
+
+
+It was on a morning in early spring that our four adventurers found
+themselves at the side of their boat, which rested on the bank of the
+great Missouri River, not far above its mouth. Their little tent stood,
+ready for striking, and all their preparations for the start now were
+made. Rob stood with a paint pot and brush in hand, at the bow of the
+boat.
+
+"She's dry, all right, by now, I think," said he. "If we put a name on
+the stern board the paint could dry without being touched. What shall we
+christen her?"
+
+"Call her 'Liberty,'" suggested Jesse, "or, say, 'America.'"
+
+"Fine, but too usual. Give us a name, John."
+
+"Well, I say, 'Columbia,' because we are headed for the Columbia, the
+same as Lewis and Clark."
+
+"Too matter-of-fact! Give us a jollier name."
+
+"Well, give us one yourself, Rob," said Uncle Dick, "since you're so
+particular."
+
+"All right! How'd 'Adventurer, of St. Louis,' do?"
+
+"Not so bad--not so bad. But to Lewis and Clark, St. Louis was only one
+point of their journey, important as it was."
+
+"I'll tell you," broke in Jesse, the youngest. "Call her '_Adventurer,
+of America_.' You can paint it all on, if you use small letters for
+part, like the steamboats."
+
+"That's the name!" said Rob. "Because that was a great adventure that
+Lewis and Clark were taking on; and it was all for America--then and
+now. Hard to live up to. But, you see, we're only following."
+
+"What do you say, Uncle Dick?" asked John.
+
+"I like it," replied the latter. "It will do, so paint it on, Rob; and
+all of you be careful not to smudge it. It'll be dry by to-morrow
+morning, for this fantail rides high above the motors.
+
+"Finish drying and packing the dishes now, and let's be off when Rob
+gets done. We're exactly one hundred and eighteen years to a day and an
+hour after the boats of Lewis and Clark at this very place--only, Lewis
+went across by land to St. Charles, and saved a little of his time by
+meeting the boats there."
+
+"And that was the real start, wasn't it, Uncle Dick?" demanded Frank.
+
+"In a way, yes. But over yonder, across the Mississippi, on the river Du
+Bois, in the American Bottoms, Will Clark had built the cabins for the
+men's winter quarters. And long before that, Meriwether Lewis had left
+Washington after saying good-by to Mr. Jefferson. And then he stopped
+awhile near where Pittsburgh is, to get his boats ready to go down the
+Ohio, and get men. And then he picked up Clark where Louisville now
+is. And then he left the Ohio River and crossed by horseback to
+the Army post across from here, to get still more men for the
+expedition--soldiers, you see, good hardy men they were, who knew the
+backwoods life and feared nothing. So after they got all of the
+expedition together, they made winter quarters over yonder, and in the
+spring they came over here, and the great fleet of three boats and
+forty-five men started off on their adventure.
+
+"Of course, Rob, you know the incident of the Three Flags?"
+
+Rob nodded.
+
+"That was a great day, when the American army of the West, twenty-nine
+men in buckskin, under this young captain of thirty years, marched into
+St. Louis to take possession of the Great West for America. And St.
+Louis in twenty-four hours was under the flags of three great countries,
+Spain, France, and the United States.
+
+"You see--and I want you to study these things hard some day--Napoleon,
+the Emperor of France, was at war. This Western region belonged to
+Spain, or she said it did, but she ceded it to Napoleon; and then when
+he didn't think he could hold it against Great Britain, he sold it to
+us.
+
+"Now this had all been country largely settled by French people who had
+come down long ago from the Great Lakes. They didn't think Spain had
+exercised real sovereignty. Now we had bought up both claims, the
+Spanish and the French; so we owned St. Louis all right, going or
+coming.
+
+"So, first the Spanish flag over the old fort was struck. Next came the
+French. And the French loved the place so much, they begged they might
+have their flag fly over it for at least one night. Captain Lewis said
+they might, for he was a courteous gentleman, of course. But orders were
+orders. So in the morning the flag of France came down and the Flag of
+the United States of America was raised, where it has been ever since,
+and I think will always remain. Those events happened on March 9 and 10,
+1804.
+
+"So there they were, with the Flag up over a country that nobody knew
+anything at all about. Then they started out, on May 14 of that year,
+1804. And since that time that unknown America has grown to be one of
+the richest, if not the very richest, land in the world. And since that
+time, so much has the world changed, I have seen three flags flying at
+the same time over a city in France--those of France, of Great Britain,
+and of America, and all at peace with one another, though all at war
+together as allies in a cause they felt was just. May they float
+together now! Aye, and may Spain have no fear of any of the three."
+
+"Are you about done with the painting, Rob?" concluded Uncle Dick.
+
+"Yes, sir, finished."
+
+"Look it!" said John.
+
+Jesse was coming down from the tent, unrolling something wrapped around
+a stick. "Well now, well now," he drawled, "where shall I put this?"
+
+"Company, 'tenshun!" barked Uncle Dick. "Colors pass!" And all snapped
+again into the salute while Jesse fastened the Flag into the bow of the
+_Adventurer, of America_.
+
+"Now we're about all ready," said Jesse, gravely. And he also stood at
+the salute which good Scouts give the Flag, as a little band of strong
+men in buckskin had done, not far away, more than a hundred years ago.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE EARLY ADVENTURERS
+
+
+"Well, are you all set, fellows?" demanded Uncle Dick, at last, turning
+to his young companions and taking a look over the dismantled camp.
+
+"Just about, sir," answered Rob, who always was accepted as the next
+officer to Uncle Dick in command.
+
+"Load her down by the head all you can," said the latter, as the boys
+began storing the remaining duffle aboard.
+
+"Why?" asked Jesse, who always wanted to know reasons.
+
+"I'll tell you. This water is so roily you can't see into it very deep.
+It has a lot of snags and sweepers and buried stuff. Now, if she rides
+with bows high, she slips farther up, say, on a sunken log. If her bow
+is down a little, she either doesn't slide on, or else she slips on
+over."
+
+"Oh! I hadn't thought of that."
+
+Uncle Dick grinned. "Well, maybe I wouldn't, either, if I hadn't been
+reading my Lewis and Clark _Journal_ all over again. They speak of that
+very thing. Oh, this is a bad old river, all right. Those men had a hard
+time."
+
+"But, sir," answered Rob, "if we load too far down by the bow, our stern
+motors won't take hold so well. We've got to bury them."
+
+"That's true, their weight throws the bow very high. I doubt if we can
+do much better than have an even keel, but if she'll kick all right,
+keep her down all you can in front, for if we ever do ride a log, we'll
+strip off the propellers, and maybe the end of the boat, too. Better be
+safe than sorry, always."
+
+"They didn't have as good a boat as ours, did they?" John spoke with a
+good deal of pride as he cast an eye over the long, racy hull of the
+_Adventurer_, whose model was one evolved for easy travel upstream under
+oars.
+
+"Well, no, but still they got along, in those days, after their own
+fashion. You see, they started out with three boats. First was a big
+keel boat, fifty-five feet long, with twenty-two oars and a big square
+sail. She drew three feet of water, loaded, and had a ten-foot deck
+forward, with lockers midship, which they could stack up for a
+breastworks against Indian attacks, if they had to. Oh, she was quite a
+ship, all right.
+
+"Then they had a large red perogue--must have been something like ours,
+a rangy river skiff, built of boards; certainly not like the little
+cypress dugouts they call 'peewoogs' in Louisiana.
+
+"Now they had a third boat, the 'white peroque,' they spell it. It was
+smaller, carrying six oars. The red skiff carried the eight French
+_voyageurs_----"
+
+"We ought to have all their names, those fellows," said Frank.
+
+"Well, write them down--I've got the _Journal_ handy. Here Captain Clark
+gives them, as they were set into squads, May 26th, far up the river.
+You see, they were a military party--there were twenty-nine on the
+official rolls as volunteers, not mentioning Captains Lewis and Clark,
+or York, Captain Clark's negro body servant, who all traveled on the big
+boat:
+
+   "'Orderly Book: Lewis.
+
+                             Detachment Orders
+                             _May 26th, 1804._
+
+    The Commanding Officers Direct, that the three Squads under the
+    command of Sergt{s.} Floyd, Ordway and Pryor, heretofore forming
+    two messes each, shall untill further orders constitute three
+    messes only, the same being altered and organized as follows (viz:)
+
+    Serg{t.} Charles Floyd             Serg{t.} Nathaniel Pryor
+         _Privates_                         _Privates_
+    Hugh McNeal                        George Gibson
+    Patric Gass                        George Shannon
+    Reuben Fields                      John Shields
+    John B. Thompson                   John Collins
+    John Newman                        Joseph Whitehouse
+    Francis Rivet and                  Peter Wiser
+         (French)                      Peter Crusat and
+    Joseph Fields                      Francis Labuche
+
+    Serg{t.} John Ordway               Patroon, Baptist
+         _Privates_                         Deschamps
+    William Bratton                         _Engages_
+    John Collen                        Etienne Mabbauf
+    Moses B. Reed (Soldier)            Paul Primant
+    Alexander Willard                  Charles Hebert
+    William Warner                     Baptist La Jeunesse
+    Silas Goodrich                     Peter Pinant
+    John Potts and                     Peter Roi and
+    Hugh Hall                          Joseph Collin
+
+                                       Corp{l.} Richard
+                                            Warvington
+                                            _Privates_
+                                       Robert Frazier
+                                       John Boleye
+                                       John Dame
+                                       Ebinezer Tuttle and
+                                       Isaac White
+
+    "'The Commanding Officers further direct that the messes of
+    Serg{ts.} Floyd, Ordway, and Pryor shall untill further orders
+    form the crew of the Batteaux; the Mess of the Patroon La Jeunesse
+    will form the permanent crew of the red Peroque; Corp{l.}
+    Warvington's men forming that of the white Peroque.'
+
+"There it all is, just as Captain Lewis wrote it, capitals and all. How
+many would it be, Rob--not forgetting the two captains and the negro
+York, Clark's body servant, who is not mentioned in the list?"
+
+"I make it forty-one names here in the messes," answered Rob, after
+counting, "or forty-four with the others added. That does not include
+Chaboneau or the Indian girl, Sacagawea, whom they took on at Mandan."
+
+"No, that's another list. It usually is said there were forty-five in
+the party at St. Louis. You see the name 'Francis Rivet and (French).'
+That would make forty-five if French were a man French and not a
+Frenchman. But they always spoke of the voyagers as 'the French.'
+Anyhow, there's the list of May 26, 1804."
+
+"Maybe they lost a man overboard somewhere," suggested John.
+
+"Not yet. They had a deserter or two, but that was farther up the river,
+and they caught one of these and gave him a good military trimming and
+expulsion, as we'll see later. But this I suppose we may call the actual
+party that found our Great West for us. They are the Company of
+Volunteers for Northwestern Discovery."
+
+The three boys looked half in awe as they read over the names of these
+forgotten men.
+
+"Yes. So there they were," resumed Uncle Dick, gravely. "And here in the
+_Journal_ the very first sentence says the party was 'composed of
+robust, healthy, hardy young men.' Well, that's the sort I've got along
+with me, what?"
+
+"But Uncle Dick--Uncle Dick--" broke in Jesse, excitedly, "your book is
+all wrong! Just look at the way the spelling is! It's awful. It wasn't
+that way in the copies we had."
+
+"That's because this is a real and exact copy of what they really did
+write down," said Uncle Dick. "Yours must have been one of the rewritten
+and much-edited volumes. To my mind, that's a crime. Here's the real
+thing.
+
+"Listen!" he added, suddenly, holding the volume close to him. "Would
+you like to know something about those two young chaps, Meriwether Lewis
+and William Clark, and what became of their _Journals_ after they got
+home? You'd hardly believe it."
+
+"Tell us," said Rob.
+
+Uncle Dick opened his book on his knee, as they all sat on the rail of
+the _Adventurer_.
+
+"They were soldiers, both of them, fighting men. Lewis had some
+education, and his mind was very keen. He was the private secretary of
+President Thomas Jefferson, but Jefferson says he was not 'regularly
+educated.' He studied some months in astronomy and other scientific
+lines, under Mr. Andrew Ellicott, of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, with the
+special purpose of fitting himself to lead this expedition. Mr. Ellicott
+had experience in astronomical observation, and practice of it in the
+woods, the record says.
+
+"Lewis was better educated than Clark, who was four years the
+older--thirty-three--while Lewis was twenty-nine. He spells better
+than Clark, who is about as funny as Josh Billings, though he
+certainly spelled his best. Of one thing you can be sure, whenever
+you see anything of the _Journal_ spelled correctly, it is false and
+spurious--that's not the original, for spelling was the one thing
+those two fellows couldn't do.
+
+"They used to make field notes, rough, just as you boys do. Clark had an
+elk-skin cover to his book--and that little book disappeared for over
+one hundred years. It was found in the possession of some distant
+relatives, descendants, by name of Voorhis, only just about ten years
+ago.
+
+"At night, by the camp fire, the two officers would write out their
+field notes, for they had to report very fully to President Jefferson.
+Sometimes one wrote, sometimes the other, and often one would copy the
+other's notes. Only the originals could make all that plain. And, alas!
+not all the original work is known to exist.
+
+"No one seems to have valued the written record of that wonderful trip.
+When the young men got to St. Louis on their return, they did try to
+make a connected book of it all, but no one valued that book, and they
+couldn't get a publisher--think of that! But at last they did get an
+editor, Mr. Nicholas Biddle, he was, of Philadelphia.
+
+"That poor man waded through over one million words of copy in the
+'notes' he got hold of at last! But by then President Jefferson was
+getting anxious about it. By then, too, poor Lewis was dead, and Clark
+was busy at St. Louis as Indian agent. And Will Clark never was a
+writer. So, slip by slip, the material faded and scattered.
+
+"Biddle saved the most of it, boiling it down quite a lot. Then he gave
+it over to Paul Allen, a newspaper man, also of Philadelphia, who did
+more things to it, getting it ready for the press. This book did not get
+published until February, 1814, five years after Lewis died and eight
+years after they got back. By that time a lot of people had had a hack
+at it. A lot more have had a hack since then; but Biddle is the man who
+really saved the day, and Allen helped him very much.
+
+"Of late, inside of the last twenty or thirty years, many editions of
+that great _Journal_ have been issued. The best is the one that holds
+closest to Clark's spelling. That's the best. And I'll tell you it took
+genius, sometimes, to tell what he meant, for that redhead spelled by
+ear.
+
+"Look here--and here. 'Catholic' he spells 'Carthlick'; 'Loups'--the
+Indians--he calls 'Loos.' He spells 'gnat' 'knat,' or spells 'mosquito'
+'musquitr,' and calls the 'tow rope' the 'toe rope'--as indeed Lewis did
+also. He spells 'squaw' as 'squar' always; and 'Sioux' he wrote down as
+'Cuouex'--which makes one guess a bit--and the 'Osages' are 'Osarges,'
+the Iowas, 'Ayauways.' His men got 'deesantary' and 'tumers,' which were
+'dificcelt to cure.' He gives a dog 'som meet,' and speaks of a storm
+which 'seased Instancetaniously.' He does a lot of odd things with big
+words and little ones, as spelling 'cedar' 'seeder'--at least the
+simplest way! As to jerked meat, I suppose it was as good if spelled
+'jurked,' or even 'jirked,' and a 'tirkey' is as good as turkey,
+perhaps.
+
+"Plain and matter-of-fact, he was, that Redhead Chief, as the Indians
+called him; yet very little escaped him or his friend, and both could
+note the beauty of nature. See here, where Clark writes on June 20th
+(his capitals are odd as his spelling): 'at Sunset the atmesphier
+presented every appearance of wind, Blue and White Streeks centiring at
+the Sun as she disappeared and the Clouds Situated to the S. W. Guilded
+in the most butiful manner.'
+
+"Can't you see the sunset? And can't you see Will Clark, his tongue on
+one side, frowning as he wrote by the firelight?
+
+"And Lewis wasn't so much better. For instance, he spelled squirrel as
+'squirril,' where Clark spells it 'squarl,' and he spells hawk 'halk,'
+and hangs a 'Meadle' on a chief's neck. Oh, this old _Journal_ certainly
+is a curious thing!"
+
+Jesse threw himself down on the sand in a fit of laughter. "I could do
+better'n that my own self," said he, at last. "Why, what sort of people
+were they, couldn't spell any better than that?"
+
+"Maybe you could," said Uncle Dick, "but you are not to laugh at William
+Clark, who was a great man. He did all that writing after a hard day's
+work, in a wild and strange country. I suppose it was hard for him to
+write, but he did it, and here it is.
+
+"Oddly enough, Clark wrote a very fine, clear hand--a gentleman's
+handwriting. The _Journals_ are always done in pen and ink. Clark did
+most of the work in the _Journal_, but Lewis at times took a hand.
+Between them they kept what might be called the log of the voyage.
+
+"They worked, all of that party. The oarsmen had to work under a
+taskmaster all day. Some one had to hunt, for they only had about a ton
+of cargo, all told, and they only had $2,500 to spend for the whole trip
+out and back, and to feed forty people two years. And at night the
+commanders made Gass and Ordway and Floyd and Whitehouse keep journals,
+too; and Pryor and Frazier did a bit of the same, like enough. They had
+to cover everything they saw.
+
+"So that is how we got this wonderful _Journal_, boys--one of the
+simplest and most manly books ever written. As I said, it was long
+forgotten and came near being ruined.
+
+"The book of Patrick Gass got out first, and it had many publishers on
+both sides the ocean--though, of course, it had to be rewritten a great
+deal. Up to 1851 there had been fifteen real and fake Lewis and Clark
+books printed, in English, French, and German; and there are about a
+dozen books with Sergeant Patrick Gass as the 'author.'
+
+"They had no cameras in those days, but those men brought out exact word
+pictures of that land and its creature inhabitants. The spelling we must
+forget--that day was different and schools were rare. But good minds and
+bodies they surely had. They were not traders or trappers--they were
+explorers and adventurers in every sense of the word, and gentlemen as
+well.
+
+"But now," concluded Uncle Dick, "that'll do for the story of the
+_Journal_. We've got it with us, and will use it right along. We're all
+ready, now? Well, let's be off, for now I see the wind is with us, and
+it's even more than William Clark started with when his three boats left
+the Wood River and started up the Missouri. He said they had a 'jentle
+brease.'
+
+"Off we go--on the greatest waterway in all the world, and on the trail
+of the greatest explorers the world has ever known."
+
+"Now then," commanded Rob, laying hold of the rail. "Heave--o!"
+The others also pushed. The good ship _Adventurer_ swung free of the
+sand and lay afloat. They sprang in. Uncle Dick steadied her with the
+oars. Jesse and John went ahead to trim ship. Rob gave a couple of
+turns to the flywheels of the two outboard motors and adjusted his feet
+to the special steering gear. The doubled motors began their busy
+sput-sput-sput! Like a thing of life the long craft, _Adventurer, of
+America_, turned into the current of the great Missouri, the echoes of
+the energetic little engines echoing far and wide.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+OFF UP THE RIVER
+
+
+"She's riding fine, sir," called Rob to Uncle Dick, over the noise of
+the two little propellers that kept the gunwales trembling. "I can head
+her square into the mid current and buck her through!"
+
+Uncle Dick smiled and nodded. "It's going to be all right! She rides
+like a duck. Spread that foresail, Frank, you and Jesse. We'll do our
+six miles an hour, sure as shooting! Haul that foresail squarer, Jesse,
+so she won't spill the wind. Now, Rob, keep her dead ahead."
+
+"How far did they go each day?" demanded Jesse, "and how often did they
+eat?"
+
+They all broke out in a roar of laughter over Jesse's appetite.
+
+"They ate when they could," answered Uncle Dick, "for they had their
+hands full, working that big scow upstream. She was loaded heavy, and
+they often had to drag her on the line. When the line broke, as it did
+several times, she'd swing into the current and there'd be trouble to
+pay.
+
+"How far did they go? Well, that's really hard to say. They usually set
+down the courses and distances on the bends. For instance, here is the
+first record of that sort, May 15th. 'S{t}' means starboard, right-hand
+side going up, and 'L{bd}' means larboard, to the left.
+
+    "'Course and Distance assending the Missourie Tuesday May 15.
+
+    Course             M{ls}
+    West               1-0--To p{t} on S{t} Side
+    N 80 deg.W         2-0--"   "   "   "    "
+    N 11 deg.W         2-1/2--" "   "   "    "
+    N 20 deg.W         1-1/2--" "   "  L{bd} "
+    S 10 deg.W         1-1/2--" "   "  S{t}  "
+    S 22 deg.W         1-0--"   "   "   "    "
+                       -----
+                       9-1/2'
+
+"We'll not try to keep our own courses, and we'll have to guess at our
+distances except as we can estimate it from average speed, which is what
+they also did. I suppose it seemed a long way. Patrick Gass says it was
+three thousand and ninety-six miles to the head of the river. Anyhow,
+they didn't make it as soon as we shall."
+
+They ran on steadily, both motors firing perfectly and the sun bright
+overhead, while the fresh breeze back of them still held fair for most
+of the bends. They made St. Charles by noon, as had been predicted, but
+did not pause, eating their lunch aboard as they traveled.
+
+"Our captains didn't do this," said Rob. "As near as I can learn, they
+camped and cooked on shore. And they certainly got plenty of game."
+
+"I know!" said Jesse, his mouth full of bread and marmalade. "Deer and
+turkey all along in here, then."
+
+"Sure!" added John. "Thirty deer, four bear, and two wolves in the first
+six weeks."
+
+Uncle Dick sighed. "Well, we'll have to live on rolls and marmalade, and
+if Jesse's appetite holds we'll have to make a good many towns for
+supplies. More's the pity, there's a good town now about every ten miles
+or so--two dozen towns in the first two hundred and fifty miles."
+
+"Aw now!" said Jesse. "Aw now! I guess a fellow can't help getting
+hungry. Maybe we can catch some fish, anyhow."
+
+"Gass said they did," nodded John. "They got a lot of fine catfish, and
+I think Patrick Gass must have liked them, way he talks. He says, 'We
+are generally well supplied with catfish, the best I have ever seen.'"
+
+"What kind of a grub list did they have?" inquired Jesse; and John was
+able to answer, for he found the page in the _Journal_, which was close
+at hand on a box top, so it could be consulted at any time.
+
+"They didn't have any marmalade or preserves, or fruit or acid of any
+kind, and they must have relied on the hunt. They had four bags of
+'parchmeal,' which I suppose was parched corn ground--the old frontier
+ration, you know. That was about twenty-eight bushels in all, with some
+eighteen bushels of 'common' and twenty-two bushels of hominy. Then they
+had thirty half barrels of flour, and a dozen barrels of biscuit, a
+barrel of meal, fifty bushels of meal, twenty-four bushels of Natchez
+hulled corn, four barrels of other hulled corn, and one of meal. That
+was their cereal list.
+
+"They only had one bag of coffee, and one each of 'Beens & pees,' as
+Clark spells them, and only two bags of sugar, though eight hundred and
+seventy pounds of salt."
+
+"Not much sweets," grumbled Jesse. "How about the grease list?" Jesse
+was rather wise about making up a good, well-balanced grub list for a
+camping trip.
+
+"Well," answered John, "they had forty-five hundred pounds of pork, a
+keg of lard, and six hundred pounds of 'grees,' as he calls it. Not so
+much; and they ran out of salt in a year, and out of flour, too, so they
+didn't have any bread for months. They had some stuff spoiled by getting
+wet.
+
+"They had some trade stuff for the Indians, and tools of all sorts, and
+other weapons and ammunition. They had sun glasses and an air gun and
+instruments for latitude and longitude. They were travelers, all right."
+
+"Lay her a half north, fifty-seven degrees west, and full steam ahead!"
+sang out Uncle Dick. "Cut this big bend and take the wind on the
+larboard quarter, Jesse. I'll promise you, if our gas holds out, we'll
+get somewhere before dark. The _Adventurer, of America_ is a mile eater,
+believe me!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE LOG OF THE "ADVENTURER"
+
+
+"One thing sure," said Rob, after a long silence, toward the close of
+the afternoon, "this isn't any wilderness now. Look at the fields and
+settlements we've passed. There's a town every ten miles."
+
+"Well, I don't think it was all wild, even when Lewis and Clark went
+through," John replied to him. "People had been all through here. The
+_Journal_ keeps on mentioning this creek and that--all the names were
+already on the country."
+
+"Shall we get as far as Charette to-day, Uncle Dick?" asked Jesse.
+
+"Hardly, this country has changed a lot in a hundred years and I don't
+know just where we are. I'm only guessing, doing dead reckoning on our
+motor speed. But we ought to see the place I've got in mind, before
+plumb dark."
+
+"See what, Uncle Dick? What is it?"
+
+"Never mind. I'll tell you if we make it."
+
+However, Uncle Dick was shrewd in his map work and his guessing. Toward
+dark the boys began to get anxious as the shadows fell along the deep,
+powerful river, but they had no sign to land until it was well after
+sunset. Then Uncle Dick began to whistle cheerfully.
+
+"All right, Rob," he called. "Hard a-lee! Get across. That creek on the
+right is the Femme Osage. There were forty families settled there, six
+miles up the river, and one of those farmers was--who do you think?"
+
+"I know!" exclaimed John. "It was Daniel Boone! I've read about his
+moving in here from Kentucky."
+
+"Right you are, son! He had a Spanish land grant in here and lived here
+till 1804. He died in 1820, at the town called Femme Osage, as you know.
+
+"Well now, here we are! In under the rocks, Rob--so! Now quick, Jesse,
+make fast at the bow!"
+
+"Well, what do you know!" exclaimed Jesse. "Regular cave, and
+everything!"
+
+"Yes," smiled his uncle, "a regular cave and all. Lucky to hit it so
+well and to find it still doing business--at least part way--after a
+hundred years!"
+
+They scrambled up the bank to the opening of the cavern which made back
+into the bold rocky shore, finding the interior about twelve feet wide
+and running back for forty feet, with a height of some twenty feet. It
+was blackened with smoke in places, and many names were cut in the rock.
+
+"Hard run up the swift chutes to get here," said Uncle Dick, "but I'm
+glad we made it. This old cave was called the 'Tavern,' even before
+Lewis and Clark, and all the river men used to stop here. Quite homey,
+eh?
+
+"We are lucky to have done in a day what it took Lewis and Clark nine
+hard days to do. They made only nine miles the last day, and found the
+water 'excessively swift.' Well, so did we; but here we are."
+
+With the swiftness born of many nights in camp together, the four now
+unpacked the needful articles, not putting up any tent, but spreading it
+down on the floor of the cave. Their fire lit up the rocks in a wild and
+picturesque manner as they sat near, cooking and eating their first meal
+of the actual voyage up the great Missouri.
+
+"They got a deer that day," said Rob, poring over the _Journal_, "I
+expect about their first deer."
+
+Rob was turning over the pages on ahead. "Hah!" said he. "The men didn't
+always take care of the grub; here it says, 'Lyed corn and Grece will
+be issued, the next day Poark and flour, and the following, Indian meal
+and Poark, according to this Rotiene till further orders. No Poark will
+be issued when we have fresh meat on hand!'"
+
+"You listen, now, Jesse. With breakfast bacon at sixty cents a pound,
+and your appetite, we'll have to go after meat. Get out that throw line
+of yours and see if we can't hang a catfish by morning. Here's a piece
+of beef for bait."
+
+Jesse scrambled down the shore and threw out his line, with a rock for
+sinker, while the others finished making ready the beds.
+
+"Jolly old place," ventured John, "though a little hard for a bed. What
+you looking at, Rob?"
+
+"I was trying to find if the old Indian images were left, that used to
+be scratched or painted on the walls. Clark says the _voyageurs_ and
+Indians were superstitious about this place. I think caves are always
+spooky places."
+
+Soon they all felt tired and began to unroll the beds. A screech owl
+made a tremulous, eerie note, but even Jesse only laughed at that.
+
+They had breakfast before the mist was off the water, and before the
+cooking was begun Jesse called out from below:
+
+"Hey, there! Wait for me! I've got the breakfast right here! Call in the
+lyed corn and pork. Here's a catfish, four pounds, anyhow!"
+
+"Clean him, Jess," called Rob, "and cut him up small enough to fry."
+
+Jesse did so, and soon the slices were sizzling in the pan.
+
+"Well, anyhow," commented their leader, "though not as good as venison,
+it's wild game, eh? And our way has always been to live off the country
+all we could without breaking laws."
+
+"What changes, from then till now!" said Rob. "It was spring and summer
+when they went up this river, but they killed deer, turkeys, elk,
+buffalo, antelope, and wild fowl--hundreds--all the time. Now, all
+that's unlawful."
+
+"And impossible. Yes, they lived as the Indians lived, and they killed
+game the year round. Now, about all we can do for a while will be to eat
+the trusty catfish.
+
+"One thing has not changed," their leader added, a little later, "and
+that is the current along the rock faces. Just above is what Clark
+called 'The Deavels race ground'--a half mile that will try your motors,
+Rob. The big keel boat got in all sorts of trouble that day, whirling
+around, getting on bars, breaking her line and all that. The expedition
+came near getting into grief--men had to go overboard and steady her,
+and they were swimming, poling, rowing, and tracking all that day."
+
+Indeed, the great river seemed disposed to show the young travelers that
+her prowess had not diminished. They had a hard fight that day in more
+than one fast chute, and twice dragged the propellers on bars which they
+did not see at all. Uncle Dick used the oars three or four hours that
+day, and Jesse, the boatman, spread his foresail to gain such added
+power as was possible. In this way they made very good time, so that by
+late evening they reached the mouth of the Gasconade, which comes in
+from the left from the hill country. They got a good camp near the
+mouth, with abundance of wood. Jesse was so lucky as to take two fine
+wall-eyed pike, here called jack salmon, on his set line, as well as two
+catfish. They let the latter go, as they had enough for the day, the
+wall-eyes proving excellent.
+
+"Now we're beginning to get into deer!" said Rob. "Here George Shannon
+killed a deer, and Reuben Fields got one the next day. And all the time,
+as you no doubt remember, we've been meeting canoes coming down from
+the Omahas and Osages and Pawnees and Kansas, loaded down with furs!"
+
+"I remember perfectly," asserted John, solemnly. "I can see them going
+by right now! Pretty soon we pick up old man Dorion, coming down from
+the Sioux, and hire him to go back as an interpreter for us."
+
+"Could catch a lot of catfish and 'jurk' the meat, the way Captain Clark
+did venison," said Jesse, at length.
+
+According to their usual custom when on the trail, they were off by
+sunup, the exhaust of the double motors making the wooded shore echo
+again. They made their third encampment at the mouth of a stream which
+they took to be that called Good Woman River in the _Journal_--a name no
+longer known on their map.
+
+"Whew!" complained Uncle Dick, as he got out and stretched his legs.
+"This is cramping me as bad as the trenches in the Argonne. You
+fellows'll 'do me in,' as the British used to say, if I don't look out!
+How far do you think we've come in the three days, Rob?"
+
+"Let's see. I figure about one hundred and ninety to two hundred miles,
+that's all! What Lewis and Clark needed was our boat and a few outboard
+kickers. It took them till June 7th, twenty-three days, to get to this
+point. We've gained, you might say, three weeks on their time."
+
+"Yes, but they got three bears at this camp, and we've got nothing! We
+don't dare kill even a squirrel, though I'm sure we could get some sort
+of game in this rough country not far back." John spoke ruefully.
+
+"Don't kick, John," advised Jesse, sagely. "I'll take care of you.
+Besides, look at the big help the wind was to-day. Clark says he had
+only a 'jentle breese' in here."
+
+"Or words to that effect," smiled Rob. "The main thing is, we travel
+many times faster than they possibly could. Even so, she's a long trail
+ahead."
+
+"All we know is that we'll get through!" said John. "We always have."
+
+"We're discovering romance," said Uncle Dick. "We're discovering
+America, too. Jesse, take down your Flag from the bow staff--don't you
+know the Flag must never be allowed to fly after sunset?"
+
+They were now lying in their blankets in their tent, on a wind-swept
+point. "I wonder if Captain Clark took down the flag. Now, I wonder----"
+
+But what Jesse wondered was lost, for soon he was asleep.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE GATE OF THE WEST
+
+
+Nearly a week had passed since the last recorded camp of the crew of the
+_Adventurer_--spent in steady progress across the great and beautiful
+state of Missouri and its rich bottom lands, its many towns, its farms
+and timber lands and prairies. Many an exclamation at the wild beauty of
+some passing scene had been theirs in the constant succession of
+changing river landscapes.
+
+Their own adventures they had had, too, with snags and sweepers and the
+dreaded "rolling sands" over which the current boiled and hissed
+ominously; but the handlers of the boat were well used to bad water on
+their earlier trips together, in the upper wildernesses of the
+continent, so they made light of these matters.
+
+"I don't believe that Patrick Gass put down all the bears they got,"
+said Jesse. "Clark says they got a lot, sometimes two a day, and they
+'jurked' the meat, the same as vension. Gee! I wish I'd been along!"
+
+Rob smiled. "I expect the hunters had a hard time enough. They had to
+work through heavy weeds and vines in these bottoms, and if they got
+back in very far they had to guess where the boat would be. And even
+Lewis complains of ticks and mosquitoes and heavy going ashore."
+
+"I believe things poisoned Clark worse than they did Lewis, he was so
+fair skinned," said John. "One of his regular entries all along was,
+'Mosquitrs (or musketos or muskeeters) very troublesome.'"
+
+"Poor Clark!" smiled Rob. "What with rubbing 'musquitr' bites and
+spelling in his daily report, he must have had a hard time. He had
+another regular entry, too, as you said, Jesse, that about the 'jentle
+brease.' I don't know how many ways he spelled it, but he seems to have
+had no confidence at all in his own spelling. Look here: on June 1st he
+has a 'jentle brease,' and on June 20th a 'jentle breese'; but not
+content when he got it right, he calls it a 'gentle Breeze' the next
+time, then drops back to 'gentle breeze' on July 21st. He repeats that
+on August 12th, the next raising it to 'gentle Breeze'; and then it's a
+'gentle breeze,' a 'jentle Breeze,' 'gentle breeze,' and 'gentle
+Brease'--till he gets perfectly irresponsible, up the river!"
+
+"What a funny man!" snickered Jesse, once more.
+
+"He didn't do it to be funny," said Rob. "Once I asked a kid cow puncher
+to make a horse pitch some more for me, so I could make a photo of it;
+and he said, 'Why, I didn't make him pitch--he just done that hisself.'
+Well, I guess that's how to account for Clark's spelling--he 'just done
+that hisself.'"
+
+Uncle Dick had not been paying much attention to the boys just then, but
+was watching the smoke clouds ahead. Passing trains whistled loudly and
+frequently. The shores became more populated.
+
+"Two miles more and we'll round to full view of Kansas City, young men,"
+said he. "We've crossed the whole and entire state of Missouri, three
+hundred and ninety miles--from one great city to another great one.
+
+"St. Louis--Kansas City! Each in her day has been the Gate to the West.
+In 1847, Independence, over to the left, was going back, and even the
+new boat landing of Westport was within the year to be called Kansas
+City. Then she was the Gate indeed, and so she has remained through
+various later sorts of transportation.
+
+"When St. Louis laid down the oar and paddle, Kansas City took up the
+ox whip. When the railroads came, she was sitting on the job.
+
+"You've seen one old town site of New Franklin, opposite Boonville,
+halfway across the state; and now I want you to study this great city
+here, hardly more than threescore years and ten of age--just a man's
+lifetime. Picture this place as it then was--full of the ox teams going
+west----"
+
+"Oh, can't we go over the Oregon Trail, too--next year, Uncle Dick?"
+broke in John.
+
+"Maybe. Don't ask me too many questions too far ahead. Now, think back
+to the time of Lewis and Clark--not a settlement or a house of a white
+man above La Charette, and not one here. To them this was just the mouth
+of the Kansas, or 'Kansau,' River, and little enough could they learn
+about that river. Look at the big bluffs and the trees. And yonder were
+the Prairies; and back of them the Plains. No one knew them then.
+
+"As you know, they had been getting more and more game as they
+approached this place. Now the deer and bears and turkeys fairly
+thronged. Patrick Gass says, 'I never saw so much sign of game in my
+life,' and the _Journals_ tell of the abundance of game killed--Clark
+speaks of the deer killed the day they got here, June 26th, and says,
+'I observed a great number of Parrot quetts this evening.' That Carolina
+parrakeet is mentioned almost all the way across Kansas by the Oregon
+Trail men, and it used to be thick in middle Illinois. All gone
+now--gone with many another species of American wild life--gone with the
+bears and turkeys and deer we didn't see. You couldn't find a parrakeet
+at the mouth of the 'Kanzas' River to-day, unless you bought it in a
+bird store, that's sure.
+
+"But think of the giant trees in here, those days--sycamores,
+cottonwoods, as well as oaks and ash and hickories and elms and
+mulberries and maples. And the grass tall as a man's waist, and
+'leavel,' as they called it. Is it any wonder that Will Clark got worked
+up over some of the views he saw from high points on the river bends?
+Those, my boys, were the happy days--oh, I confess, Jesse, many a time
+I've wished I'd been there my own self!"
+
+"How do you check up on the distances with Clark? How long did it take
+them to get this far?"
+
+"Just forty-three days, sir," replied Jesse, the youngest of them all,
+who also had been keeping count.
+
+"Yes--around seven miles a day! We've done seven miles an hour, many a
+time. Where they took a week we'll take a day, let us say. From here to
+Mandan, North Dakota, where they wintered, is more than fourteen hundred
+miles by river, and they took about one hundred and twenty days to
+it--averaging only nine and a half or ten miles a day of actual travel
+in that part of the river. Clark fails once or twice to log the day's
+distance. Gass calls it sixteen hundred and ten miles from the start to
+Mandan--I make it about fifteen hundred and fifty, with such figures as
+I find set down. The River Commission call it fourteen hundred and
+fifty-two. Give us fifty miles a day for thirty days, and that would be
+fifteen hundred miles--why, we're a couple of hundred miles beyond
+Mandan right now--on paper!
+
+"But I never saw anything that ran by gas that didn't get its back up
+sometimes. Suppose we allow a month to get up to Mandan--bringing us
+there by June 22d--call it June 30th. How'd that do? Do you think we can
+make it--say forty-odd miles a day--or even thirty?"
+
+"Sure we can!" said Jesse, stoutly.
+
+"Yes--on paper!" repeated Uncle Dick. "Well, there's many a sand bar
+between here and Mandan, and many a long mile. Lewis and Clark did not
+get there until October 26th--four months from here. If we allow
+ourselves one month, we'll only have to go four or five times as fast as
+they did. I've known a flat bottom 'John boat' do forty miles a day on
+the Current River of Missouri with only one outboard motor; and that's a
+six-mile current, good and stiff. Let us not count our chickens just
+yet, but keep on plugging. I must say Rob is a wizard with the engines,
+this far, at least.
+
+"And now, if we're done with the arithmetic----"
+
+"We're not," interrupted Jesse. "I've set down the fish I've caught this
+far, and it's three wall-eyes and twelve catfish. That's fifteen head of
+game against their thirty, about!"
+
+"Oh! And you want to know, if a boy of your size could catch fifteen
+head of fish in eight days, how many could we all catch in thirty days?
+That's getting out of my depth, Jesse! I don't know, but I hope that the
+gasoline and the catfish both hold out, for they are our main staffs of
+life just now."
+
+They ran up the left bluff of the river, mile after mile, under the edge
+of the great town whose chimneys belched black smoke, noting railway
+train after train, their own impudent little motors making as much
+noise as the next along the water front. Many a head was turned to catch
+sight of their curious twin-screw craft, with the flag at its bow, and
+on the stern the name _Adventurer, of America_, but Rob paid no
+attention to this, holding her stiff into the current and heading in
+answer to Uncle Dick's signals.
+
+At last they lay alongside a little landing to which a houseboat was
+moored, occupied by a riverman whom Uncle Dick seemed to know.
+
+"How do you do, Johnson," said he, as the man poked his head out of the
+companionway. "You see we're here."
+
+"And more'n I'd of bet on, at that!" rejoined the other. "I never
+expected ye could make it up at all. How long ye been--a month or so?"
+
+"A week or so," replied Uncle Dick, carelessly, and not showing his
+pride in the performance of the party. "You see, we've got double
+engines and we travel under forced draught, with the stokers stripped to
+the waist and doing eight shifts a day."
+
+"Like enough, like enough!" laughed Johnson, not crediting their run.
+"Well, what kin I do fer ye here?"
+
+"Get our tanks filled. Unpack our boat and store the stuff on your boat
+so it can't be stolen. Overrun our engines and oil her up. Clean out
+the bilge and make her a sweet ship."
+
+"When?"
+
+"To-day. But we'll not start until to-morrow morning. I've got a few
+friends to see here, and my Company of Volunteers for Northwestern
+Discovery will like to look around a little. We'll stop at a hotel
+to-night. I'm trusting you to have everything ready for us by nine
+to-morrow morning."
+
+"That's all right," replied Johnson. "I'll not fail ye, and I'll not let
+anything git losted, neither."
+
+"I know that," said Uncle Dick. "By the way, Johnson, which is the best
+outfitting store in Westport?"
+
+"As which, sir?"
+
+"In Westport, or say Independence. We could walk down there if we had
+to. Not so far."
+
+Old Johnson scratched his head. "Go on, Colonel, you're always havin'
+yer joke. I'm sure I don't know what ye mean by Indypendence, or
+Westport. But if you want to get uptown, the street cars is four blocks
+yan. Er maybe ye'd like a taxi?"
+
+"No, nothing that goes by gas, for one day, anyhow, Johnson. Well, see
+to the things--the crew have got the batteau about unloaded, and it's
+about time for our mess to go ashore to the cook fire. Sergeant
+McIntyre, issue the lyed corn with the bear and venison stew to-night,
+and see that my ink horn and traveling desk are at hand!"
+
+"Yes, sir, very good sir!" returned Rob, gravely. And without a smile
+the four stalked off up the stair, leaving Johnson to wonder what in the
+world they meant.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+HO! FOR THE PLATTE!
+
+
+Uncle Dick excused himself from the party for a time in the evening,
+having some business to attend to. He left the three boys in their room
+at a hotel, declaring they all would rather sleep on the houseboat with
+Johnson.
+
+"It's mighty quiet on this trip," said Jesse.
+
+"Nothing happens?" said Rob, looking up from his maps and the _Journal_
+which he had spread on the table. "That's what the explorers thought
+when they got here! They wanted to start in killing buffalo, but there
+were no buffalo so close to the river even then. All our hunters got was
+deer; they lay here a couple of days and got plenty of deer, and did
+some tanning and 'jurking.' Clark says they took this chance to compare
+their 'instrimunts,' and also they 'suned their powder and wollen
+articles.'
+
+"Clark killed a deer below here. Drewyer, one of the best hunters, had a
+fat bear and a deer, too. And Lewis killed a deer next day, so the party
+was in 'fine Sperrits.'"
+
+"Oh, so would I be in fine 'sperrits' if I could kill a deer or so,"
+grumbled Jesse. "Now look at us!"
+
+"Well," went on Rob, "look at us, then. See here, what Clark says about
+it:
+
+    "'The Countrey on each Side the river is fine, interspursed with
+    Praries, on which immence herds of Deer is seen. On the banks of
+    the river we observe number of Deer watering and feeding on the
+    young willow, Several killed to-day.... The Praries come within a
+    Short distance of the river on each Side, which contains in
+    addition to Plumbs Raspberries &c, and quantities of wild apples,
+    great numb{rs} of Deer are seen feeding in the young willows and
+    Earbarge on the Banks and on the Sand bars in the river.'"
+
+"I didn't know that deer liked willow leaves," said John.
+
+"I didn't, either, but here it is. And that was June 26th, when the
+grass was up. I've even known some naturalists to say that deer don't
+eat grass. We know they do.
+
+"But what we want to get here is the idea that now the expedition was
+just coming out of the hills and woods into the edge of the Prairies.
+Across these Prairies and the Plains came big river valleys that led out
+West toward the Rockies. If all that had been hills and timber, no road
+ever would have got through. It was the big waterways that made the
+roads into all the wilderness; we certainly learned that up in the Far
+North, didn't we?
+
+"So here was their crossroads of the waters, at old Independence, which
+now is Kansas City. Not much here, but a natural place for the Gate to
+the West.
+
+"Clark had a good real-estate eye. He says:
+
+    "'The Countrey about the mouth of this river is verry fine on each
+    Side as well as north of the Missourie. A high Clift on the upper
+    Side of the Kanses 1/2 a mile up, below the Kanses the hills is
+    about 1-1/2 Miles from the point on the North Side of the Missourie
+    the Hills or high lands is Several Miles back.... The high lands
+    come to the river Kansas on the upper Side at about 1/2 a mile, in
+    full view, & a butifull place for a fort, good landing place.'
+
+"He couldn't spell much, or put in his punctuation marks, but he
+certainly had a practical eye. And I reckon the first beginnings of the
+city were right then, for the _Journal_ says, 'Completed a strong
+redoubt or brestwork from one side to the other, of logs and Bushes Six
+feet high.' Yes, I suppose that was the first white building here at the
+Gate.
+
+"It's pretty hard to find any new part of the world to-day. Yonder runs
+the Kaw, leading to the Santa Fe Trail--and I'll bet there's a thousand
+motor cars going west right now, a hundred times as many cars each day
+as there used to be wagons in a year!"
+
+He closed his book for the time. "Maybe that's what Uncle Dick wanted us
+to get in our heads!" said he.
+
+"Some country!" said Jesse; and both John and Rob agreed.
+
+When their leader returned a little later in the evening, the boys told
+him what they had been doing.
+
+"Fine!" he said. "Fine! Well, I've just telegraphed home that we're all
+right and that we're off for the Platte to-morrow, early."
+
+"That's another old road to the Rockies," said Rob.
+
+"One of the greatest--the very greatest, when you leave out boat travel.
+The Platte Valley led out the men with plows on their wagons, the home
+makers who stayed West. You see, our young leaders were only
+pathfinders, not home makers."
+
+"And a jolly good job they had!" said Jesse.
+
+"Yes, and jolly well they did the job, son, as you'll see more and
+more."
+
+John was running a finger over the crude map which he and Jesse had been
+making from day to day. "Hah!" said he. "Here's the big Platte Valley
+coming in, but no big city at the mouth."
+
+"Oh yes, there is," corrected Uncle Dick. "Omaha and Council Bluffs you
+can call the same as at the mouth of the Platte, for they serve that
+valley with a new kind of transportation, that of steam, which did not
+have to stick to the watercourse, but took shorter cuts.
+
+"It's odd, but our explorers seem even then to have heard of a road to
+Santa Fe. They also say the Kansas River is described as heading 'with
+the river Del Noird in the black Mountain or ridge which Divides the
+Waters of the Kansas, Del Nord, & Collarado.' No doubt the early French
+or the Indians confused the Kaw with the Arkansas.
+
+"Enough! Taps, Sergeant! To bed, all of you," he concluded; and they
+were willing to turn in.
+
+In the morning early they were at the dock, and were greeted by Johnson,
+who, sure enough, had the gasoline cans filled and most of the heavy
+supplies aboard. By eight-thirty they were chugging away again up the
+water front of the city, their Flag flying, so that many thought it was
+a government boat of some sort.
+
+Jesse tried to write in his notebook, but did not make much of a
+success, owing to the trembling of the boat under the double power.
+
+"He always says 'we set out and proceeded on,'" Jesse explained. "I was
+trying to write how the expedition left the mouth of the Kansas River."
+
+"Look out for 'emence numbers of Deer on the banks,' now," sung out
+John, who had the _Journal_ on a box top near by. "'They are Skipping in
+every derection. The party killed 9 Bucks to-day!'"
+
+"But no buffalo yet," said Rob.
+
+"No, not till we get up around Council Bluffs--then we'll begin to get
+among them."
+
+"And by to-morrow afternoon we'll be where they celebrated their first
+Fourth of July. It was along in here. They celebrated the day by doing
+fifteen miles--closing the day by another 'Descharge from our Bow piece'
+and an extra 'Gill of Whiskey.' I don't call that much of a Fourth!"
+John seemed disgusted.
+
+"Well, maybe the soldiers didn't, for they had 'Tumers & Felons & the
+Musquiters were verry bad,'" he went on. "I don't think their grub list
+was right--too much meat and salt stuff. But from now on they certainly
+did get plenty of game--all kinds of it, bears, deer, elk, beaver,
+venison, buffalo, turkeys, geese, grouse, and fish. You see, Jesse, they
+got some of those 'white catfish' like the last one you caught--a
+'channel cat,' I suppose we'd call it. And they ate wild fruit along
+shore. I think the hunters had better chance than the oarsmen.
+
+"They saw elk sign not far above the Kansas River, but I don't think
+they got any elk till August 1st. Above there they got into the
+antelope, which they called 'goat,' and described very carefully. They
+sent President Jefferson the first antelope ever seen east of the
+Alleghanies. Then they got into the bighorn sheep, which also were
+altogether new, and the grizzly bear, which they called the 'white
+bear.' Oh, they had fun enough from here on north!"
+
+"Yes, and did their work besides, and a lot of it," affirmed Uncle Dick.
+"But while we are comparing notes we might just as well remember they
+had some bad storms. I don't like the look of that bank of clouds."
+
+They all noted the heavy ridges of black clouds to the west. The wind
+changed, coming down the river in squalls which tore up the surface of
+the water and threw the bow of the boat off its course.
+
+"Steady, Rob! Slow down!" called out Uncle Dick, who had begun to pull
+the tarpaulin over the cargo. "I can't judge the water in this wind.
+_Look out, all!_"
+
+Suddenly there came a jolt and a jar which drove them from their seats.
+The propellers had struck a sand bar and plowed into it. Caught by the
+wind, the bow of the boat swung around into the current. Careening, the
+lower rail went under and the water came pouring in.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+SHIPWRECK
+
+
+"Hold her, boys!" called out Uncle Dick. "Overboard! Hold her up!"
+
+Even as he spoke he had plunged overboard on the upstream side, throwing
+his weight on the rail. The water caught him nearly waist deep, for the
+treacherous bar shelved rapidly.
+
+It was not so deep where Rob went in, but Jesse and John, thoughtlessly
+plunging in on the lower side, were swept under the boat, which all the
+strength of the other two could not hold back against the combined power
+of the current and the wind.
+
+Without warning they were cast into an accident which in nine cases out
+of ten would have meant death to some or all of them.
+
+The boat was filling fast, and the great weight of the outboard motors
+buried her stern, so she was about to swamp in midstream. Uncle Dick in
+horror saw the set faces of two of his young friends at the rail beyond
+him, their legs under the boat, which was swinging on them, their terror
+showing in their eyes. He made one grasp across the boat, and luckily
+caught Jesse's hand. Their combined weight held the boat down by the
+bow, and she swung downstream, half full but not sinking.
+
+"Swim for it, John, as soon as we reach the island!"
+
+The voice of Uncle Dick rose high and clear. A willow-clad island lay
+below, toward which the boat now was setting. He knew the boys all could
+swim, and they were all lightly dressed, with canvas sneakers and no
+coat.
+
+"All right!" replied John, confidently, now getting his legs free. "I
+can make it." Indeed, it did not seem the boat could carry another
+pound. Rob was swimming on the upstream side, one hand on the stern.
+Keeping low in the water, they floated on down in the black squall of
+wind and rain which now came on them. Their course downstream was very
+rapid.
+
+"Now, John!" Uncle Dick gave the word, and John, without one instant's
+hesitation, struck out for the island, now not over forty yards away
+over the choppy, rain-whipped water. His head was seen bobbing over the
+waves, but gaining distance. Uncle Dick hardly breathed as he watched.
+
+The boat was lightened a little. Rob took a chance, climbed in over the
+stern, and, catching up a setting pole, began to reach for bottom on the
+upstream side. He caught it and, putting in all his strength, swung the
+bow across stream, repeating again and again, until the boat was not far
+back of John's bobbing head. Then all at once Uncle Dick gave a shout.
+His feet had struck bottom on the shelving sand once more. Between them
+they now could guide and drag the boat till they made a landing, with
+Jesse on top the cargo, only about fifty yards below where John was
+headed. They saw him scramble up the bank, lie for an instant half
+exhausted, and then come running down the shore to them. They all
+dragged at the water-logged boat until they had her ashore so she would
+hold.
+
+"And that's that!" panted John, coolly and slangily enough.
+
+Till then no one had spoken. Uncle Dick couldn't speak at first. He only
+drew Jesse and John to him, one to each arm, wet as they all were, and
+in the rain now pouring down. "Fine, boys!" said he.
+
+"The closest squeak we've ever had," said Rob, at last. "Right here in
+the settlements! There's the city of Leavenworth just around the bend."
+
+"Close enough!" said Uncle Dick. "And my compliments to you all, every
+one. If it had been a lot of chaps less cool and ready, we'd none of us
+have been saved. Rob, who taught you to paddle on the up side when
+crossing a current?"
+
+"I learned it of Moise Richard, on the Peace River, sir," replied Rob.
+
+"Right! Most people try to hold her nose against the current by working
+on the lower side. Upstream is right--and I must say the setting pole
+saved the day. But, John, you'll never know how I dreaded to tell you to
+cast free and swim for it. I thought it was safest for you."
+
+"Oh, that's nothing," said John. But at the same time he was very proud
+of his feat.
+
+They were wet to the skin and the rain was cold, their boat was full of
+water and their stores wet. At last, surely, they had an adventure on
+their hands. But they were not downhearted over it at all.
+
+"All hands lay to for camp!" called Uncle Dick.
+
+[Illustration: THEY SAW HIM SCRAMBLE UP THE BANK, LIE FOR AN INSTANT
+HALF EXHAUSTED, AND THEN COME RUNNING DOWN THE SHORE TO THEM]
+
+They began to unload the heavier stuff, so they could cant the boat and
+spill the bilge water out of her. The tarpaulin was thrown over some
+willow bushes for a shelter, and under this they piled their grub
+boxes and dunnage rolls. The beds were all in watertight canvas bags,
+and so were their spare clothes, so matters might have been worse. The
+guns could be dried, and the tarpaulin had kept the lighter articles
+from washing away. In a little while they got the tent up, and then they
+folded the wet tarpaulin for a floor and hurried their outfit inside,
+damp but yet not ruined.
+
+"Get some boughs to put inside," suggested their leader. "Get out that
+little forced-draught oil stove and let's see if we can dry out. It's
+going to be hard to get a fire on this island in this rain, for there's
+nothing but willows. They're wet. Get the little stove going and pull
+shut the flaps. When it gets a little warmer we'll open the bags and
+change our clothes. And as John would say, that'll be that! But it's
+only by mercy that we're here. You are right, Rob, this is the most
+serious accident we have ever had together."
+
+"Let's open a can of soup, and issue an extra gill of tea," said Rob.
+
+They broke into a roar of laughter. Inside of half an hour the little
+hut was steaming and they all were sitting on boxes eating their evening
+meal. The storm, which had culminated in a fierce thunder gust, now was
+muttering itself away.
+
+Jesse went out and brought in the Flag from its staff on the boat.
+"We'll have to dry her," he said. "She's silk, and fast colors."
+
+"And I think my expeditionary force is all true blue!" added Uncle Dick,
+quietly.
+
+In the night Jesse waked them all by suddenly crying out in a nightmare.
+Rob shook him awake.
+
+"What's wrong, old top?" he asked.
+
+"I guess I was scared," admitted Jesse, frankly, and pulled the covers
+over his head.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+AT THE PLATTE
+
+
+On the morning following the storm the sun broke through the clouds with
+promise of a clear, warm day. Our _voyageurs_ were astir early.
+
+"Take it easy, fellows," counseled the leader. "We've got to 'sun our
+powder,' as our _Journal_ would say. John, when you set down the day's
+doings in your own journal, make it simple as William Clark would. It's
+more manly. Well, here we are."
+
+Rob looked ruefully at the wet willow thicket in which their camp was
+pitched. "We can get a few dead limbs," he said, "but, wet as things are
+now, we'd only smoke the stuff and not dry it much."
+
+"Wait for the sun," advised John. And this they found it wise to do, not
+leaving the island until nearly noon.
+
+"Morale pretty good!" said Uncle Dick. "John, set down, 'Men in verry
+high sperrits.' And off we go!"
+
+They chugged up directly to the point, as nearly as they could
+determine, where they had met the disaster of the previous day. "Keep
+leading a horse up to a newspaper and he'll quit shying at it," said
+Uncle Dick. "Find the very spot where we struck."
+
+"There she is!" exclaimed Rob, presently. The boat stuck again and began
+to swing. But this time the setting pole held her bow firm, and, since
+there was no wind, a strong shove pushed her free without anyone getting
+overboard. They went on after that with greater confidence than ever,
+and Jesse began to sing the old canoe song of the voyagers, "_En roulant
+ma boule, roulant!_"
+
+They paused at none of the cities and towns now, and only set down the
+rivers and main features, as they continued their steady journey day
+after day for all of a week. At the end of that time the increasing
+shallowness of the river, the many sand bars and the nature of the
+discolored, rolling waters, made them sure they were approaching the
+mouth of the great Platte River, which, as they knew, rose far to the
+west in the Rocky Mountains.
+
+Here they went into a camp and rested for almost a day, bringing up
+their field notes and maps and getting a good idea of the country by
+comparing their records with the old journals of the great expedition.
+
+"Bear in mind that, after all, they were not the first," said Uncle
+Dick. "They had picked up old Dorion, their interpreter, from a canoe
+away down in Missouri, and brought him back up to help them with the
+Sioux, where he had lived. Their bowman Cruzatte and several other
+Frenchmen had spent two years up in here, at the mouth of the Loup.
+There were a lot of cabins, Indian trading camps, one of them fifty
+years old, along this part of the river.
+
+"But when they got up this far, they were coming into the Plains. New
+animals now, before so very long. They really were explorers, for there
+were no records to help them."
+
+"You say they found new animals now," Rob began. "You mean elk,
+buffalo?"
+
+"Yes. No antelope yet."
+
+"They made the Loup by July 9th, above the Nodaway," said John, his
+finger in the _Journal_. "Two days later they got into game all right,
+for Drewyer killed six deer that day himself, and another killed one, so
+they had meat in camp.
+
+"They made the Nemaha by July 14th, and I think that was almost the
+first time they got sight of elk. Clark fired at one that day, but
+didn't get him. That was where he first wrote his name and date on a
+rock--he says the rock 'jucted out over the water.' I think that was
+near the mouth, on the banks of the Nishnabotna River, but I don't
+suppose a fellow could find it now, do you?"
+
+"No. It never has been reported, like the two Boone signatures in
+Kentucky," replied Uncle Dick. "He only wrote his name twice--once up in
+Montana. But now, think how this new sort of country struck them.
+Patrick Gass says, 'This is the most open country I ever saw, almost one
+continued prairie.' What are you writing down, Jesse?"
+
+"'Musquitors verry troublesome,'" grinned Jesse, watching a big one on
+his wrist. "I'll bet they were awful."
+
+"And the men all had 'tumers and boils,' in spite of their 'verry high
+sperrits,'" broke in John, from the _Journal_. "And they gave Alexander
+Willard a hundred lashes and expelled him from the enlisted roll, for
+sleeping on sentinel post--which he had coming to him. But all the same,
+the _Journal_ says that this party was healthier than any party of like
+size 'in any other Situation.' His main worry was these pesky
+'musquitors.' He killed a deer, but they were so bad he found it
+'Painfull to continue a Moment Still'!
+
+"Here's something for you, Jesse!" he added, laughing. "One day in a
+'fiew minits Cought 3 verry large Cat fish, one nearly white, a quort of
+Oile came out of the Surpolous fat of one of those fish.' And all the
+time they are mentioning turkeys and geese and beaver--isn't it funny
+that all those creatures then lived in the same place? On August 2d,
+Drewyer and Colter, two of the hunters, brought in the horses loaded
+with elk meat. But that was just above the Platte, nearer Council
+Bluffs."
+
+"One thing don't forget," said Uncle Dick at this time. "All that
+hunting was incidental to those men. About the biggest part of their
+business was to get in touch with the Indian tribes and make friends
+with them. You'll see, they stuck around the mouth of the Platte quite a
+while, sending out word, to get the Indians in. The same day Drewyer and
+Colter got the elk the men brought in a 'Mr. Fairfong,' an interpreter,
+who had some Otoes and Missouri Indians. Then there were presents and
+speeches, and they hung some D.S.O. medals on a half dozen of the chiefs
+and told them to be good, or the Great Father at Washington would get
+them.
+
+"Well, that's all right. But what I want you to notice is the camp at
+Council Bluffs. That wasn't where the city of Council Bluffs, Iowa, is,
+but on the opposite side of the river, about twenty-five miles above
+Omaha--not far from Fort Calhoun. There was no Omaha then. I can
+remember my own self when Omaha was young. I used to shoot quail on the
+Elkhorn and the Papilion Creek, just above Omaha, and grand sport there
+was for quail and grouse and ducks all through that country then.
+
+"But Lewis and Clark had a wide eye. They knew natural points of
+advantage, and they must have foreseen what the Platte Valley was going
+to mean before long. They say that Council Bluffs was 'a verry proper
+place for a Tradeing Establishment and fortification.' Trust them to
+know the 'verry proper places'! Only, what I can't understand is the
+note that it is 'twenty-five days from this to Santafee.' That's a
+puzzler. The natural place of departure for Santa Fe was where Kansas
+City is, not Omaha. But, surely, they had heard of it, somehow."
+
+"Well," said Rob, "we're doing pretty well, pretty well. In spite of
+delays, we're at the mouth of the Platte, sixteen days out, and they
+didn't get there till July 21st. I figure three hundred and sixty-six
+miles to Kansas City, and two hundred and sixty-six miles to here, say
+six hundred and thirty-two miles for sixteen days--the river chart says
+six hundred and thirty-five miles. That keeps us pretty close to our
+average we set--over forty miles a day. We've got to boost that, though.
+
+"Are we going to stop at Omaha, sir?" he added, rather anxiously.
+
+"Not on anybody's life!" rejoined Uncle Dick. "Nice place, but we're a
+day late. No, sir, we'll skip through without even a salute to the
+tribes from our bow piece. We've got to get up among the Sioux. Dorion
+has been talking all the time about the Sioux. So good-by for the
+present to the Platte tribes, the Pawnees, Missouris, and Otoes."
+
+"Gee! I'd like to shoot something," said Jesse, wistfully. "Just reading
+about things, now!"
+
+"Forget it for a while, Jess," smiled his uncle. "Just remember that
+we're under the eaves of two great cities, here at Plattsmouth. Take
+comfort in the elk and beaver sign you can imagine in the sand, here at
+the mouth of this river. It still is six hundred yards wide, with its
+current 'verry rapid roleing over Sands.'
+
+"Two voyagers of the Lewis and Clark expedition had wintered here before
+that time, trapping--the beaver were so thick. Imagine yourself not far
+up the river and shooting at an elk four times, as Will Clark did--then
+not getting him. Imagine yourself along with that summer fishing party
+along this little old river, and getting upward of eight hundred fish,
+seventy-nine pike, and four hundred and ninety cats; and again three
+hundred and eighteen 'silver fish'--I wonder, now, if that really could
+have been the croppy? Lord! boy--what a time they had, strolling,
+hunting, fishing, exploring new lands, visiting Indians, having the time
+of their lives!"
+
+"Let's be off," suggested Rob. And soon they were plugging along up the
+great river, threading their way among the countless bars and shoals.
+
+"I can see the full boats coming down the Platte!" said Jesse, shading
+his eyes, "hide canoes, full of beaver bales, that float light! And
+there are the _voyageurs_, all with whiskers and long rifles and
+knives."
+
+"Yes," said Uncle Dick, gravely. "And here are our men, tall, in uniform
+coats and buckskin leggings. See now"--and he reached for John's
+volume--"they let off the deserter, Moses Reed, very light. He only had
+to run the gantlet of the entire party four times--each man with nine
+switches--and get dropped from the rolls of the Volunteers!
+
+"And here is where Captain Lewis, experimenting with some strange water
+he had found--with some cobalt and 'isonglass' in it--got very ill from
+it. His friend Clark says 'Copperas and Alum is verry pisen.'"
+
+"But when did they first find the buffalo?" demanded Jesse, fingering
+once more the little rifle which always lay near him in the boat. "Gee!
+now, I'd like to kill a buffalo!"
+
+"All in due time, all in due time, Jess!" his leader replied. "My, but
+you are bloodthirsty! Wait now till August 23d, above Sioux City. You
+are Captain William Clark, with your elk-hide notebook inside your shirt
+front, and you have gone ashore and have killed a fat buck. And when you
+get back to the boat J. Fields comes in and says he has killed a
+buffalo, in the plain ahead; and Lewis takes twelve men and has the
+buffalo brought to the boat at the next bend; so you just make no fuss
+over that first buffalo, and set it down in your elk-hide book. And that
+same day two elk swam across the river ahead of the boat. And that same
+evening R. Field brought in two deer on a horse, and another deer was
+shot from the boat; and they all saw elk standing on a sand bar, and
+several prairie wolves. And the very next day, don't you remember, you
+saw great herds of buffalo? Oh, now you're in the Plains! Everybody now
+is 'jurking meat.' What more do you want, son?"
+
+"Aw, now!" said Jesse. "Well, anyway, we're about in town."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+AMONG THE SIOUX
+
+
+"Now we are leaving the Pawnees and passing into the Sioux country!"
+said Rob.
+
+They were passing under the great railroad bridge which connected
+Council Bluffs, Iowa, with Omaha, Nebraska. The older member of the
+party nodded gravely. "And can't you see the long lines of the
+white-topped covered wagons going west--a lifetime later than Lewis and
+Clark, when still there was no bridge here at all? Can't you see the
+Mormons going west, with their little hand carts, and their cows hitched
+up to wagons with the oxen? Look at the ghosts, Rob! Hit her up. Let's
+get out of here!"
+
+"She's running fine," Rob went on. "Somehow I think this must be better
+water, above the Platte. You know, Lewis and Clark only averaged nine
+miles a day, but along in here for over two hundred miles they were
+beating that, doing seventeen and one-quarter, twenty and one-quarter,
+seventeen, twenty-two and one-half, seventeen and one-half, sixteen,
+seventeen, twenty and one-half, twenty and one-half, fifteen, ten and
+three-quarters, fifteen, ten--not counting two or three broken days.
+They seem to have got the hang of the river, somehow."
+
+"So have we," nodded the other. "I'll give you five days to make Sioux
+City."
+
+As a matter of fact, the stout little ship _Adventurer_ now began to
+pick up on her own when they had passed that Iowa city, going into camp
+on the evening of June 4th well above the town. They purchased bread,
+poultry, eggs, and butter of a near-by farmer, and opened a jar of
+marmalade for Jesse, to console him for the lack of buffalo.
+
+"It's my birthday, too, to-day," said Jesse. "I was born on the fourth
+day of June, fourteen years ago. My! it seems an awful long time."
+
+"Well, Captain Meriwether Lewis was not born on this day," said his
+uncle, "but his birthday was celebrated on this spot by his party, on
+August 18, 1805, and they celebrated it with a dance, and an 'extra gill
+of whiskey.'"
+
+"We'll issue an extra gill of marmalade to the men to-night, and
+conclude our day of hard travel with a 'Descharge of the Bow piece,'
+just because it's the Fourth of June. We're hitting things off in great
+style now, and I'm beginning to have more confidence in gasoline."
+
+"What made you want to get to this place, Uncle Dick?" asked John, his
+own mouth rather full of fried chicken.
+
+"Because of the location--the mouth of the Sioux River, and at the lower
+edge of the great Sioux nation.
+
+"Lewis and Clark tried to get peace among all these river tribes. They
+held a big council here, decorating a few more Otoes and Missouris, and
+telling them to make peace with the Omahas and the Pawnee Loups. The
+Sioux had not yet been found, though their hunting fires were seen all
+through here, and Lewis was very anxious to have his interpreter,
+Dorion, find some Sioux and bring them into council.
+
+"It was at Captain Lewis's birthday party that the first and only
+casualty of the trip ensued. You remember Sergeant Floyd--he spelled
+worse than Clark, and Ordway worse than either--and his journal of some
+twenty thousand words, which he had kept till now? Well, he danced hard
+at the birthday party or at the Indian council, and got overheated,
+after which he lay down on the damp sand and got chilled. It gave him
+what the _Journal_ calls a 'Biliose Chorlick,' and on the second day he
+died. He was buried on the bluffs below the town, at what still is
+called Floyd's Bluff, on the river they named after him, with military
+honors, and his grave long was known. His river still is known by his
+name, and it runs right into the town of Sioux City. The river washed
+the bank away under his grave, and in 1857 the remains were reburied,
+back from the river. That spot was marked by a slab in 1895, and a
+monument was put over it in May, 1901. I was a guest at the dedication
+of that obelisk. It was erected under the supervision of General Hiram
+Chittenden, the great engineer and great historian. It has a city park
+all of its own, and a marvelous landscape it commands.
+
+"Well, poor Floyd had no memorial in those rude days, beyond a 'seeder
+post.' They did what they could and then they 'set out under a gentle
+Breeze and proceeded on.'"
+
+"Well, but Dorion knew this country, then?" John began again, after a
+time.
+
+"Yes," Rob was first to answer, "and that's what puzzles me--how they
+got such exact knowledge of a wild region. I suppose it was because they
+had no railroads and so had to know geography. _The Journal_ says that
+the Sioux River heads with the St. Peter's (Minnesota) River, passing
+the head of the Des Moines; all of which is true. And it tells of the
+Red Pipestone quarry, on a creek coming into the Sioux. Clark puts down
+all those things and does not forget the local stuff. He says the
+'Countrey above the Platte has a great Similarity'--which means the
+Plains as they saw them. And look, in John's book--here he says 'I found
+a verry excellent froot resembling the read Current,' What was it--the
+Sarvice berry? He says it is 'about the Common hight of a wild Plumb.'
+Nothing escaped these chaps--geography, natural history, game, Indians,
+or anything else! They must have worked every minute of the day."
+
+"I think his new berry was what we used to call the buffalo berry, in
+our railway surveys out West," said Uncle Dick. "It was bigger than a
+currant and made very fair pies.
+
+"But now we've just begun to catch up with our story, for we were
+talking some time back where they first got a buffalo. That was about
+thirty or forty miles above here. By to-morrow night we'll camp in our
+fifth state since we left home--Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, South
+Dakota."
+
+"On our way!" sung out Rob. "We haven't got any antelope yet, nor found
+a prairie dog, nor seen a single Sioux."
+
+"Softly, softly!" smiled the older companion. "At least we're in the
+Sioux and antelope range."
+
+Their little tent was pitched within a short distance of the river, and
+their fire made shadows along the wall of willows. At times they all
+fell silent, bringing to mind the wild scenes of this same country in a
+time which now began to seem not so long ago.
+
+"My!" said Jesse, after a time, as he sat on his bed roll, his hands
+clasped before his knees. "Think of it! The Plains, the buffalo, the
+Indians! Weren't they the lucky guys!"
+
+"Well, yes," replied his uncle, "though I'd rather call them fortunate
+gentlemen than lucky guys. One thing sure, they were accurate when they
+said the 'musquitors were verry troublesom' in all this Missouri Valley.
+They had to issue nets and bars to the men, so it says, and the
+misquitr, or mosquiter, or musquitor, was about the only 'anamal' they
+feared. If we don't turn in, they'll carry us off to-night."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+THE LOST HUNTER
+
+
+"It's a long, long way up to the Mandans!" sang John at the second camp
+above the Council Bluffs. "Wonder if we ever will get there before
+winter! Here we are, just below the Vermilion, over nine hundred and
+fifty miles up the river, and over three weeks out, but we're only
+halfway to the Yellowstone, and still a good deal more than six hundred
+miles below the Mandan Villages, though I've counted fifty-three towns
+and cities we've passed in the river, coming this far. It certainly does
+look as though we'll have to winter up there, sure enough."
+
+"Oh, I don't know," demurred Rob, consulting the pages of his own
+notebook. "No fellow can ask an outboard motor to do better than ours
+have. I'll admit we're just inside our forty-mile-a-day stunt, but
+that's five miles an hour and only eight hours a day. I'll bet they
+would have been mighty glad to do half that."
+
+"I've been wondering how they were able to spurt so much, north of the
+Platte," said John.
+
+"I'll bet I know!" broke in Jesse. "It's because the shores were more
+open, so they could use the cordelle! They'd been doing it, too, for on
+August 26th they made a new 'Toe line' out of braided elk-hide. Clark
+killed an elk on August 25th, and Reuben Fields killed five deer that
+day, and George Shannon killed an elk that day, too. So they 'jurked the
+meet,' and made the hides into a tracking line. That beats rowing or
+paddling to get up a river. We saw that on the Peace River and the
+Mackenzie, didn't we?"
+
+"I believe you're right, son!" said Rob. "These long sandy reaches,
+where the men could trot on the line--that was where they got their
+mileage, I'll warrant."
+
+"George Shannon?" said Uncle Dick, who was listening as he sat on his
+bed roll near the fire. "George Shannon, eh? Well, he didn't bring in
+any more elk meat after that for many a day, that's sure."
+
+"I know!" Rob nodded. "That's the man that got lost!"
+
+"Yes, and trouble enough it gave the party and the leaders. They sent
+out two men, Shields and J. Fields, to find him and the horses. That was
+the second day. But they didn't find him. He didn't show up for sixteen
+days. Luckily, he kept on ahead of the boat all the time, but, as we
+all know, the most confusing way on earth to get lost from a party is
+while you are on foot and the party is in a boat. Even Sir Alexander
+Mackenzie got lost that way, on the Findlay River; and so have we all of
+us."
+
+"Well, poor Shannon nearly starved to death. I don't think he was a
+first-class hunter, either, or he'd not have gone out without his
+ammunition. In a country swarming with game he went for twelve days with
+only grapes to eat, except one rabbit that he shot with a piece of stick
+instead of a bullet. He held on to one horse, and lucky he did. Here's
+what the _Journal_ says about Shannon--whom Lewis himself found:
+
+    "'He became weak and feable deturmined to lay by and wait for a
+    tradeing boat, which is expected. Keeping one horse as a last
+    resorse, yet a man had like to have starved to death in a land of
+    Plenty for the want of Bullits or something to kill his meat.'"
+
+"Where was he when they found him?" John had his map ready.
+
+"Well, let's see. They found him on September 11th, and they had
+traveled thirteen days, not counting stops, and made one hundred and
+sixty miles by the river. They must by then have been at least thirty
+miles above what is now Fort Randall, South Dakota--I should say,
+somewhere near Wheeler, South Dakota. Well, something of a walk for
+George, eh?"
+
+"Rather!" was Jesse's comment. "Oh, I suppose it's easy to call him a
+dub, but the commanding officers didn't."
+
+"But now," went on their leader, "a lot of things have been happening
+since Shannon left, and here are a lot of interesting things to keep in
+mind. One thing is, they expected a trading boat up. That must have been
+from St. Louis, for Trudeau's post. That was long before the days of the
+regular fur forts, and that accounts for all this country having its
+French names on it.
+
+"Another thing or two: By this time, in lower South Dakota, everybody
+was killing buffalo and elk, great quantities of splendid meat. By now,
+also, in early September, they had got on the antelope range for the
+first time, and their first 'goat,' as they called it, was skinned and
+described. They got another new animal, which they called a 'barkeing
+squirel,' or 'ground rat'--on September 7th. That was the first prairie
+dog, a great curiosity to them--the same day they saw their first
+'goat.' They managed to drown out one prairie dog, which I never heard
+of anyone else being able to do. They dug down six feet, and did not get
+halfway to the 'lodge,' as they called the den.
+
+"Also, they saw the western magpie, which seemed a 'verry butifull' bird
+to them. Also again, on September 5th, they had seen their first
+blacktail deer, which now, until they got into the Mandan and
+Yellowstone country, was to outnumber the whitetail, which they called
+the 'common deer,' because they never had seen any other sort. On one
+day, September 17th, Lewis and his men killed two blacktail, eight
+'fallow' deer, and five 'common' deer. Gass--who by now has been elected
+sergeant to take poor Floyd's place--in his _Journal_ says they killed
+thirteen common deer, two blacktailed, three buffalo, and a 'goat' that
+day--not a half bad day, that, eh? Don't you wish we'd been along?
+
+"But Gass in his book also says something I want you to remember, for it
+may help explain the 'fallow' deer which Clark mentions, and which I
+don't understand at all. Gass says: 'There is another species of deer in
+this country, with small horns and long tails. The tail of one we killed
+was 18 inches long.' Now that precisely coincides with the 'fantail'
+deer which some old-time hunters of my acquaintance say they have
+killed in the Black Hills country, though scientists say there never was
+any fantail deer. Our men were now right east of the Black Hills. For
+myself, I am convinced there was a fantail deer, and that it has far
+more rights as a species than the dozen or more 'species' of bears which
+our Washington scientists keep on finding.
+
+"But even this is not all I am trying to get into your minds about this
+country where our lost hunter Shannon was wandering alone. They were
+getting all sorts of elk, catfish, and beaver, from the last of August
+on, but better here--on September 5th they saw both 'goats' and wild
+turkeys on the same day. Did you know that wild turkeys ranged so far
+north? Well, they at that time overlapped the range of the buffalo, the
+elk, the blacktailed deer, the badger, the antelope, the prairie dog,
+and the magpie.
+
+"And in this hunting paradise, they killed on one day, September 8th,
+two buffalo, one large elk, one small elk, four deer, three turkeys, and
+a squirrel. All gone now, even almost all the prairie dogs and maybe the
+magpies; and we haven't seen any young wild geese on our trip, either.
+But now, following out the record of these men, we can see what a
+wonderful hunting country they had been in, almost every day from St.
+Louis, especially here, where the lower country began to blend with the
+high Plains and their game animals. Great days, boys--great days! Alas!
+that they are gone for you and me forever."
+
+"You're getting off the track, Uncle Dick," said John, critically, just
+now, as the former concluded his long talk on the game animals.
+
+"Why, what do you mean?"
+
+"While Shannon was lost, and while they were all having such good luck
+hunting, they at last had found their Sioux and got them in for a
+council. That was under an oak tree, at the mouth of the Jacque, or
+James, River, on August 29th. Old man Dorion had found his son Pierre,
+who was trading among the Sioux, it says. Well, they got five chiefs and
+about seventy others, and they all went into council."
+
+"Oak tree, did you say, John? Oak tree this far north?" Jesse was
+particular.
+
+"Yes, sir, oak tree--lots of them all through here then. Clark tells how
+the deer and elk ate the acorns, and how fond they were of them. Didn't
+you notice that?"
+
+"Well, let's push off and run up to the old council ground," said Rob,
+who was always for getting forward. "It can't be more than a few hours'
+run, for we don't stop at any towns, you know."
+
+They did this, and spent some time studying the spot, so that they could
+believe they were on the very council ground where Lewis and Clark first
+met the Sioux, below the Calumet Bluff, on the "Butifull Plain near the
+foot of the high land which rises with a gradual assent near this
+Bluff." At least a trace of the old abundance of the timber could be
+seen. They consulted their _Journal_ and argued for a long time.
+
+"This is where they sent out the two men to hunt for the lost man
+Shannon," said Rob. "And here is where our captains made their big
+treaty speeches with the Sioux and gave them medals and the D.S.O., and
+the Congressional Medal and things. They had a lot of government 'Good
+Indian' certificates all ready to fill in, and it peeved them when one
+of the chiefs handed back his certificate and said he didn't care for
+it, but would rather have some whiskey.
+
+"Those Sioux must have been a surly bunch," said Rob. "But Captain Lewis
+impressed them very much, and Captain Clark let down his long red hair
+and astonished them, and everybody fed them and gave them presents; and
+they appointed young Mr. Dorion a commissioner, and gave him a flag, and
+told him to bring about a peace between all these tribes--the Sioux,
+Omahas, Pawnees, Poncas, Otoes, and Missouris--and to try to get chiefs
+of each tribe to go down the river and to Washington, to see the Great
+Father. And the _Journal_ kept them good and busy, setting down the
+names of the different bands of the Sioux and telling how they looked."
+
+John grinned, and pointed to the page. "'The Warriers are Verry much
+deckerated with Paint Porcupine quils and feathers, large leagins and
+mockersons, all with buffalow robes of Different Colors, the Squars wore
+Peticoats and a White Buffalow roabe with the black hare turned back
+over their necks and Sholders.' I'll say they had plenty to do, writing
+and hunting and making speeches. It wasn't any pleasure party, when you
+come right down to it, now!"
+
+"We haven't found George Shannon yet," interrupted Jesse, dryly.
+
+"Give us time!" answered Rob. "I vote to stay here all night. I can see
+the blue smokes of their council fires, and see the men dancing, and the
+painted Indians sitting around, and the great council pipe passing--red
+pipestone, with eagle feathers on the stem; and meat hanging in camp,
+and the squaws cooking, dogs yelping, drums going. Oh, by Jove! Oh, by
+Jove! Those were the things to make you sit up late at night! I wish
+we'd been along."
+
+"We _are_ along!" said Uncle Dick, soberly. "If you can see those
+stirring scenes, we are along. So, Rob, as you say, we'll pitch our camp
+and dream, for at least a day, of our own wonderful America when it was
+young."
+
+John and Jesse were busy clearing a place for the tent. "I want the fire
+right close up to the tent," said John, "and we don't want to burn off
+either a tent pole or an overhead guy rope."
+
+"Oh," rejoined Jesse, the youngest of them all, "I'll show you how to do
+that!"
+
+He dug into his war bag and brought out a roll of stout wire. "Run this
+from the top of the front pole on out, ten or twelve feet, and stretch
+it over a couple of shear poles. See? That'll stiffen the tent, and yet
+you can build a fire right under the wire, and it won't hurt it any."
+
+"A good idea, Jesse," approved their leader as he saw this. "A mighty
+good idea for cold weather--about as good as your open fireplace of
+sheet steel with a stovepipe--open wider in front than behind, and
+reflecting the heat into the tent. I've tried that last invention of
+yours, Jess, and it works fine in coolish weather. We'll try it again,
+maybe."
+
+"I'm making me a new kind of airplane now," said Jesse, modestly. "It's
+different in some ways. I like to sort of figure things out, that way."
+
+"That's good. And to-night, son, I want you to see whether you can't
+figure out a nice fat catfish on your set line. We need meat in camp;
+and that's about what it'll have to be, I suppose."
+
+Thus, talking together of this thing and that, they made their own
+comfortable camp, spreading down their own buffalo robes on the ground
+for their beds, on the old council ground of the Sioux. They had a
+hearty supper and soon were ready to turn in, for the mosquitoes were
+bad enough, as they found. Rob sat late at night alone by the little
+fire.
+
+"Come on to bed, Rob," called Jesse. "What do you see out there,
+anyway?"
+
+"Indians," replied Rob. "Sioux in robes and feathers. Two men in uniform
+coats, one tall and dark, the other tall and with red hair. Don't you
+see them, too?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+GETTING NORTH
+
+
+"But we haven't found George Shannon yet," again insisted Jesse, at
+their breakfast.
+
+"And you haven't run your set line yet, Mr. Jess," reminded Rob; which
+was enough to cause Jesse to run down to the bank with his mouth full of
+bacon. He had forgotten all about his fishing at the time. At once they
+heard him shout in excitement, and joined him on the bank.
+
+"Geewhillikens!" called Jesse. "I got a whale on here now!"
+
+He was playing a fish on his hand line, taking in and giving line as he
+could, for the fish was strong. It was some time before they could get
+to see it, and when Jesse at last landed it on the bank he called for
+his .22 rifle and shot it through the head.
+
+"There!" he said. "I knew I'd find some big game to shoot. Isn't he a
+whale? I'll bet he'll go twelve pounds. He's a whiter cat, and a racier,
+than the big yellows, down below. He looks gamier and better to eat."
+
+"He goes in the gunny sack for supper," said Rob. "Do you suppose he'll
+keep for three days, a hundred and fifty miles? I shouldn't wonder if
+Shannon would enjoy a bite, for he'll be hungry by that time."
+
+"It's a long, long way, up to the Mandans!" John began to sing again.
+"Six hundred miles. And we'll have to have gas pretty soon."
+
+They finished their breakfast, and, with the skill they had gained in
+many camps together, soon were packed and on their way above the old
+council camp of the Sioux.
+
+"Buffalo and elk, every way you can look!" exclaimed John. "Elk swimming
+across the river. Herds of game feeding on the bluff sides! Grouse,
+foxes, prairie dogs, jack rabbits, pelicans, squirrels, deer,
+wolves--the boats full of meat all the time, and two or three beaver
+every night! Now there's cottonwoods. By and by the river'll begin to
+take a straighter shoot north. It's a long, long way up to the Mandans!"
+
+"And right through the country of those roaming, murdering Sioux!" added
+Rob.
+
+"Right you are, Rob," said Uncle Dick. "The Sioux used to hunt and rob
+as far as Fort Laramie, six hundred miles up the Platte, and on the head
+of the Jim River in Dakota, and all between. Their homes were where
+their hats were--and they hadn't any hats."
+
+For some days now they threaded their way among the countless islands
+and sand bars of the great river, until at last they made camp early on
+the evening of June 9th, near the point which, as closely as they could
+figure it, was about where the Lewis and Clark bateau lay at the time
+George Shannon was found wandering on the Plains, alone and ready to
+despair. This was about thirty miles below the mouth of the White River.
+
+"Well, we've got him," said Jesse, solemnly, "and told him never to
+leave camp without matches and ammunition and an ax. And that's that!"
+
+"Time for another catfish, Jesse," said their leader. "John, you take
+the .22 and wander along the edge of the bluff. You might see a young
+jack rabbit. I don't believe I'd bother the ducks, for that's against
+the law and we don't break laws even when we are not watched. Rob, you
+and I will make camp--we'll not need anything but the mosquito bars."
+
+Inside the hour a shout from Jesse informed them that he had another
+catfish on his throw line, and soon he had it flopping on the sand. He
+killed it stone dead by thrusting a stiff straw back into the brain
+through the "little hole in its face," as he called the sinus which
+leads into the head cavity.
+
+"I throw out my line," said he, "with a piece of meat or minnow on the
+hook. Then I stick a stick down in the bank, two or three feet long, and
+take a half hitch around the top. It acts as a sort of rod and gives
+when the fish bites. He pulls down and swallows the bait, and the spring
+of the stick holds him safer than a straight pull would. To skin him, I
+cut around back of his front side fins and take hold of the skin with my
+pliers--just slit the hide a little down the sides, and it comes off.
+These channel cats aren't bad to eat."
+
+John joined them before dark, with two half-grown jack rabbits which he
+had found on the bluffs below. He spoke of the fine view and of the
+splendid sunset he had seen. Rob was examining the rabbits, each of
+which had been shot squarely through the eye. "Dead-shot John, the old
+trapper!" said he. "That's the way!"
+
+"You didn't think I'd shoot 'em anywhere but through the head, did you?"
+John inquired. "No sir, not yet!"
+
+So, with meat in camp, they sat down, still in "verry good sperits," as
+John quoted from the _Journal_.
+
+Now day after day, hurrying hard as they could, they still drove on
+northward, along the great bends of what began to seem an interminable
+waterway. One bend, they fancied, they surely identified with the one
+mentioned in the _Journal_, which then was thirty miles around and not
+much over a half a mile across the neck. They reflected that in more
+than a hundred years the great river in all likelihood had cut through
+what Clark called the "Narost part," the necks of dozens of such bends.
+On the map they identified the Rosebud Indian Reservation to the west.
+The great Plains country into which they now were advancing seemed wild,
+lonely, and at times forbidding, and the settlements farther and farther
+apart. They were in cattle country rather than farming country much of
+the time.
+
+The _Journal_ brought up the second great Sioux council of Lewis and
+Clark, on the "Teton river"--near Pierre, South Dakota--on the date of
+September 25th; but so faithful had the motive power of the good ship
+_Adventurer_ proved, that our party pulled into the most suitable
+camping spot they could find not too near by, around noon of June 13th.
+
+"Can't complain," said Rob, taking off his grease-spattered overalls and
+wiping his hands on a bit of waste. "We've slipped a day on our
+schedule, but from what we now know of this little old river, we are
+mighty lucky to be here and not down by Council Bluffs, or maybe Kansas
+City! It's only a little over three hundred miles now to the Mandans.
+That's as far ahead as I can think."
+
+"And as to rowing and paddling and poling and tracking her this
+far," added John, "say, twelve hundred miles from the mouth of the
+Missouri--whew! It makes my back ache. Seems to me we've skipped
+along."
+
+"Well, why shouldn't we?" demanded Jesse. "Those fellows had the finest
+kind of hunting in the world; over a thousand of miles of it, to
+here--over four thousand miles of it altogether--not a single day that
+didn't have some sport in it, and they killed tons and tons of game.
+But all that is left for us is water and sand and willows. Ducks and
+grouse, yes, but we can't shoot 'em. And I've got so I don't crave to
+look a catfish in the face."
+
+Uncle Dick looked at the boys gravely and saw that the monotony of the
+long voyage was beginning to wear on them.
+
+"Stick her through to the Mandans, fellows," said he. "We'll see what
+we'll see. But Jesse, how can you complain of being bored when right
+now you are standing where Will Clark come pretty near being killed by
+the Teton Sioux?
+
+"Yes, sir, it was right here that they tried to stop him from going back
+to the big boat. Then, for the first time, the Redhead Chief drew his
+sword--they always went into uniform when they had a council on--and
+Lewis and the men on the boat trained the swivel gun on the band of
+Sioux who were detaining Clark.
+
+"You see, they had the council awning stretched on a sand bar in the
+mouth of the river, and the bateau was seventy yards off, anchored. They
+had sent out for the Sioux to come in, had smoked with them, given them
+provisions, made speeches to them, given them whisky and tobacco. The
+Sioux were arrogant, wanted more whisky and tobacco, and when Clark came
+ashore with only five men they tried to hold him up, grabbing the boat
+painter and pulling their bows. The second chief, says Clark, was bad,
+'his justures were of such a personal nature I felt Myself Compeled to
+Draw my Sword.... I felt Myself Warm and Spoke in verry positive terms.'
+Which is all he says of a very dangerous scrape."
+
+"Whyn't they bust into 'em with the swivel gun?" demanded Jesse. "At
+seventy yards they'd 'a' got plenty of 'em."
+
+"Sure they would. And then maybe the Sioux would never have let them
+through at all and would have shot into every boat of white men that
+later came up the river. No, those young men showed courage and good
+judgment both. They did not know fear, but they did not forget duty, and
+they were there to make peace among all the tribes along the Missouri.
+
+"President Jefferson knew that country would soon be visited by many of
+our fur traders, and he didn't want the boats stopped. Lewis and Clark
+both knew this."
+
+"But the Sioux didn't bluff them," said Rob, "because Lewis went ashore
+with only five men, in his turn, and then they all pulled off a dance,
+and a big talk in a big council tent--it must have been big, for there
+were seventy Sioux in it, and just those two young American officers.
+The big pipe was on forked sticks in front of the chief, and under it
+they had sprinkled swan's-down, and they all were dressed up to their
+limit. And though they could have been killed any minute, these two
+white men had that lot of Indians feeding from the hand, as the slang
+goes, Uncle Dick!"
+
+Uncle Dick nodded, and Rob went on, referring to his _Journal_. "And
+then the big chief said what they had done was O.K., and asked the
+white men to 'take pity on them'--which I think is an old Indian term
+of asking for some more gifts. Anyhow, the upshot was they smoked the
+peace pipe and ate 'some of the most Delicate parts of the Dog which
+was prepared for the fiest and made a Sacrefise to the flag.' Then
+they cleared away the floor, built up a fire in the lodge, and 'about
+10 Musitions began playing on Tambereens'--which made a 'gingling
+noise.' The women came in and danced, with staffs decorated with
+scalps, and everybody sang and everybody promised to be good."
+
+"Some party!" said Jesse, slangily; but Rob, now excited, went on with
+the story:
+
+"Poor Clark nearly got sick from lack of sleep. But the next day the
+Sioux held on to the cable again and wanted to stop the boat till they
+had more tobacco. Then Lewis told the chiefs they couldn't bluff him
+into giving them anything. Clark did give them a little tobacco and told
+the men not to fire the swivel. Then they ran up a red flag under the
+white, and the next Sioux that came aboard they told that those two
+flags meant peace or war, either way they wanted it, and if they wanted
+peace, they'd all better go back home and stay there, and not monkey
+with the buzz saw too long--well, you know, Uncle Dick, they didn't
+really say that, but that was what they meant.
+
+"The Sioux followed alongshore and begged tobacco for fifty miles, clean
+up to the Ree villages, near the mouth of the Cheyenne River. Oh, they
+found the Sioux, all right; and glad enough they were to get through
+them, even paying tribute as they had done."
+
+"That's a fair statement of the Teton affair," nodded the leader of the
+party. "Many a white life that tribe took, in the seventy-five years
+that were to follow. For the next hundred miles there were either Sioux
+or Rees pestering and begging and keeping the party uneasy all the
+time."
+
+"And I'll bet they were glad to get to the Rees, too," commented John.
+"Those half-Pawnees raised squashes, corn, and beans. But by now, if
+they had had a good shotgun or so along, they could have killed all
+sorts of swans, brant and other geese, and ducks, for they were running
+into the fall migration of the wild fowl. Grouse, too, were mentioned
+as very numerous. They stuck to big game--it was easy to get meat when
+you could see a 'gang of goats'--antelope--swimming the river, and the
+hills covered with game."
+
+"Uncle Dick," resumed Rob, as they again gathered around the map and
+_Journal_ spread down on the tent floor, "those men must have had some
+notion of the country, even had some map of it."
+
+"Yes, they had a map--made by one Evans, the best then to be had, and I
+suppose made up from the fur traders' stories. But it was incomplete.
+Even to-day few maps are anywhere near exactly accurate. For instance,
+when they came to the Cheyenne River--which, of course, the traders
+called the Chien, or Dog, River--Clark said that nothing was known of it
+till a certain Jean Valle told them that it headed in the Black Hills.
+
+"Of course, it's all easy now. We know the Black Hills are in the
+southwest corner of South Dakota, and that the Belle Fourche River of
+the old cow country runs into the Cheyenne, which flows almost east,
+into the Missouri. But if Mr. Valle had not been out to the Black Hills,
+Lewis and Clark would not have been able to give this information. Then,
+again, while they were at the Ree village, on October 10th, two more
+Frenchmen came to breakfast, 'Mr. Tabo and Mr. Gravolin,' who were
+already in this country.
+
+"To me, one of the most interesting things is to see the overlapping and
+blending of all these things--how the turkey once overlapped the
+antelope and prairie dog; how the Rees, who were only scattered branches
+of the Pawnees, properly at home away down in Kansas--overlapped the
+Sioux, who sometimes raided the Pawnees below the Platte.
+
+"And these French traders said the Spaniards sometimes came to the mouth
+of the Kaw River, and even on the Platte. So there we were, overlapping
+Spain to the west. And up above, Great Britain was overlapping our
+claims to the valley of the Columbia and even part of this Missouri
+Valley. You can see how important this journey was.
+
+"You'll remember the lower Brule Sioux Reservation, below us and west
+of the river. The Cheyenne Reservation is in above here, below the
+mouth of the Cheyenne River. From there the river takes a pretty
+straight shoot up into North Dakota. A great game country, a wild cow
+country, and now a quiet farming country. A bleak, snow-covered,
+wind-swept waste it then was. And it was winter that first stopped
+that long, slow, steady, tireless advance of the 'Corps of
+Vollenteers.'"
+
+"I see they broke one more private before they got to the Mandans,"
+said John, running ahead in the pages of the book.
+
+"Yes, that was Newman, who had been found guilty of mutinous
+expressions. Seventy-five lashes and expulsion from the Volunteers was
+what the court of nine men gave him. They always were dignified, and
+they enforced respect from whites and Indians alike."
+
+"Well," grumbled Jesse, "it looks to me like there had been a whole lot
+of people wandering around across this country long before Lewis and
+Clark got here."
+
+"Right you are, my boy. The truth is that right across these Plains
+there went west the first American exploring expedition that ever saw
+the Rockies. The French nobleman Verendrye, his three sons, and a
+nephew, not to mention quite a band of Indians, started west across from
+the Mandan country in 1742. On January 1, 1743, he records his first
+sight of the Rocky Mountains, which he calls the Shining Mountains--a
+fine name it is for them, too.
+
+"The Verendrye expedition was the first to cross Wyoming or the Dakotas
+so far in the west. They came back through the Bad Lands, above here,
+and Verendrye records in his journal that near a fort of the Arikara
+Indians he buried a plate of lead, with the arms and inscription of the
+king. He did this in March, 1743. It always was supposed that this was
+at or near Fort Pierre, South Dakota. That suspicion was absolutely
+correct.
+
+"In a little railway pamphlet put out by the Northern Pacific Railway it
+is stated that on Sunday, February 16, 1913--one hundred and seventy
+years after Verendrye got back that far east--a school girl playing with
+some others at the top of a hill scraped the dirt from the end of a
+plate, which then was exposed about an inch above the ground. She pulled
+it out. The story said it looked like a range-stove lining. It was eight
+and a half inches long by six and a half inches wide and an eighth of an
+inch in thickness. Well, it was discovered to be the old Verendrye lead
+plate--that's all!"
+
+"That's a most extraordinary thing!" said Rob. "Well, anyhow, it shows
+the value of leaving exploring records. So you couldn't blame William
+Clark for writing his name at least twice on the rocks."
+
+"No, the story of the Verendrye plate is, I think, one of the most
+curious things I have ever read in regard to early Western history. You
+never can tell about such things. Well, in any case Verendrye, the first
+white man who ever saw the Shining Mountains, died in 1749. That was
+fifty-five years before Lewis and Clark started up the river.
+
+"There is not a hundred miles, or ten miles, or one mile, along all
+these shores which has not historical value if you and I only knew the
+story."
+
+"But it's a long, long way up to the Mandans still," began John once
+more.
+
+His Uncle Dick gayly chided him.
+
+"It'll not be so long--only a little over three hundred miles from
+here."
+
+"If only there were the buffalo!" said Jesse.
+
+"Yes, if only there were the buffalo, and the antelope and the Indians!
+I'd give a good deal to have lived in those days, my own self. Good
+night, Jess. Good night, Rob and Frank."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+IN DAYS OF OLD
+
+
+The young travelers each night made their beds carefully, for they long
+since had learned that unless a man sleeps well he cannot enjoy the next
+day's work. It has been noted that they had three buffalo robes for part
+of their bedding, one each for Uncle Dick and Rob, while John and Jesse
+shared one between them. In the morning Uncle Dick noted that the latter
+two boys had their robe spread down with the hair side up.
+
+"I suppose you did that to get more of a mattress?" he said. "But
+suppose you wanted to keep warm in really cold weather, in a snowstorm,
+say. Which side of the robe would you wear outside?"
+
+"Why, the smooth side, of course!" replied Jesse, who was rolling the
+robe. "That'd have the warm fur next to you, so you'd be warmer that
+way."
+
+"No, there's where you are wrong," said his uncle. "The old-timers
+always slept with the hair outside, and the Indians wore their robes
+that way. 'Buffalo know how to wear his hide!' is the way an Indian put
+it. And, you see, a buffalo always did wear his hair outside! Next to
+the musk ox, he was the hardiest animal on this continent and could
+stand the most cold. No blizzards on these plains ever troubled him. He
+could get feed when other animals starved."
+
+"He'd paw down through the snow to the grass," said Jesse.
+
+"Again you are wrong. A horse paws snow. The buffalo threw the snow
+aside with his hairy jaws or his whole head--he rooted for the grass!"
+
+"Well, I didn't know that."
+
+"A good many things are now forgotten," said his friend. "Writers and
+artists and even scientists quite often are wrong. For instance, in
+pictures you almost always see the herd led by the biggest buffalo bull.
+In actual fact it was always an old cow that led the herd. The bulls
+usually were at the rear, to defend against wolves. And when a buffalo
+ran, he ran into the wind, not downwind, like the deer. Few remember
+that now.
+
+"Take the antelope, too. The old hunters always knew that the antelope
+shed his horns, same as a deer, but scientists denied that for years,
+because they didn't happen to see any shed horns. I have had an antelope
+buck's horn pull off in my hand, in the month of May, and it left the
+soft core exposed, covered with coarse black filaments like black hairs.
+Naturally, in the fall, at the time Lewis and Clark got their 'goat,' as
+they called the antelope, the horns were on tight, so they supposed they
+didn't shed.
+
+"They sent President Jefferson specimens of the new animals they
+found--the antelope, prairie dog, prairie badger, magpie, bighorn,
+and a grizzly-hide or so. They got their four bighorn heads at the
+Mandans, none very large, though 'two feet long and four inches
+diameter' seemed big to them. And I shouldn't wonder if those horns
+could have been pulled off the pith after they got good and dry. The
+horns of the bighorn will dry out and lose at least ten per cent of
+their measurement, in a few years' hanging on a wall. I have had a
+bighorn's curly horn come off the pith in rough handling three or four
+years after it was killed; but of course the horns never were shed in
+life."
+
+"Did they get them along the Missouri?" asked Jesse, now.
+
+"Not until they got above the mouth of the Yellowstone. There they
+killed a lot of them."
+
+"They saw one big grizzly track before they got to the Mandans," said
+Rob, who was listening.
+
+"Oh yes--that might have been. Alexander Henry the younger tells us of
+grizzlies in northern Minnesota in early days. In all the range country
+along the Missouri from lower South Dakota the grizzly used to range,
+and he was on the Plains all the way to the Rockies, and from Alaska to
+New Mexico and Utah, as I can personally testify. Just how far south he
+ran in here I don't know--some think as far south as upper Iowa, but we
+can't tell. He couldn't do much with deer and antelope, and worked more
+on elk and buffalo, when it came to big meat. He'd dig out mice and eat
+crickets, though, as well.
+
+"Yes, he'd been all along this country, I'm sure.
+
+"But Lewis and Clark didn't really kill any grizzlies until they got
+above the Yellowstone--and then they certainly got among them. Gass
+records sixteen grizzlies met with between the Yellowstone and the Great
+Falls of the Missouri. He usually calls them 'brown bears,' which shows
+the great color range of the grizzly. Lewis and the others call them
+'white bears.' The typical grizzly had a light-yellowish coat, often
+dark underneath.
+
+"Of course, color has nothing to do with it. I've seen them almost
+black. The silvertip is a grizzly. The giant California bear was a
+grizzly. The great Kadiak bears which you boys saw were grizzlies of a
+different habitat. I've seen a grizzly with a hide almost red. But of
+course you know that the 'cinnamon bear' is practically always a black
+bear; and a black bear mother may have two cubs, one red and one quite
+black.
+
+"Scientists try to establish a dozen or two 'species' of bears--even
+making different 'species' of the black bears of the southern
+Mississippi bottoms--Arkansas, Louisiana, etc.--and I don't know how
+many sorts of 'blue bears' and 'straw bears,' 'glacier bears,' etc.,
+among the grizzlies. Of course, bears differ, just as men do. But the
+one thing which remains constant is the length of the claws, or front
+toe nails--what the _Journal_ calls their 'talons.' In a black bear
+these are always short. In a grizzly they are always long--they get them
+up to four and one-half inches, and I believe some of your Kadiaks have
+even longer claws. Colors grade, but claws don't. I even think the polar
+bear is a grizzly of the North--white because he lives on snow and ice,
+and with a snaky head because he has to swim. But his claws he needed
+and kept.
+
+"The long-clawed bears were all predatory; the short-clawed ones never
+were. Not long ago I read a magazine story about a black bear which
+killed a moose with seven-foot horns. There never was a black bear ever
+killed any moose, and there never was any moose with horns that wide.
+Such things are nonsense--like a great part of the magazine animal
+fiction."
+
+Rob was interested. "Too bad they've trapped off about all the
+grizzlies," he said now. "I've tried a lot of kinds of sport, and of
+them all, I like grizzly hunting, quail shooting, and fly fishing for
+trout."
+
+"Not a bad selection! Well, the first is hard to get now. The grizzly is
+closer to extinction than the elk or the buffalo, for the buffalo breed
+in domestic life, and the grizzly--well, he hasn't domesticated yet.
+He's the one savage--he and the gray wolf--that would never civilize.
+And he's gone."
+
+"But, Uncle Dick, those bears must have been a different species from
+grizzlies nowadays. Look how they fought? Even Lewis came near being
+killed by them more than once."
+
+"Yes, they'd fight, in those days, for they were bigger and bolder, and
+they had not yet learned fear of the rifle. You must remember that
+while, in this country up to the Mandans, the early traders had been
+ahead of Lewis and Clark, above the Yellowstone no white man ever had
+gone. Those bears thought a white man was something good to eat, and
+they offered to eat him.
+
+"Their rifles were muzzle loaders--I've often and often tried to find
+just the size ball they used, but I can't find such exact mention of
+their weapons--but they were light and inefficient single-shot rifles,
+as we now look at it, even in the hands of exact riflemen, as all those
+men were. So the grizzlies jumped them. They shot one sixteen times.
+Lewis had to jump in the river to escape from one. Oh, they had merry
+times in those days, when grizzlies were regular fellows!"
+
+John nearly always had precise facts at hand. He now found his copy of
+the little journal of Patrick Gass. "Here's how big one was," he said.
+"Gass calls it a 'very large brown bear,' and it measured three feet
+five inches around the head, three feet eleven inches around the neck,
+five feet ten and one-half inches around the breast. His foreleg was
+twenty-three inches around, and his talons were four and three-eighths
+inches. He was eight feet seven and one-half inches long."
+
+"That was a big grizzly," Uncle Dick nodded, "a very big one, for this
+latitude. The biggest silvertip grizzly I ever knew in Montana weighed
+nine hundred pounds. But they were bigger in California and all up the
+Pacific coast--trees and bears grew bigger there, for some reason. You
+boys have killed Kadiaks as big as this Gass grizzly. But you didn't do
+it with a flintlock, small-bore, muzzle loader, fair stand-up fight. And
+your Kadiak bear would run when it saw you--so would a Lewis and Clark
+grizzly; only it would run toward you! Six men of them went out after
+one of them and wounded it, and it almost got the lot of them. Another
+time a grizzly chased a man down a bank into the river--bad actors,
+those grizzlies, in those times."
+
+John looked at his watch. "Getting late, folks," said he. "On our way?"
+
+"On our way!" And in a few moments the _Adventurer_ had her load aboard.
+
+"You will now notice the Sioux running along the bank," said John,
+"trailing the boat, shooting ahead of it, threatening to stop it,
+begging tobacco, asking for a ride--all sorts of a nuisance. But we
+spread the square sail, set out, and proceeded on!"
+
+In fact, so well had they cast out ahead, as usual, the nature of the
+country into which they were coming, and so well had they studied its
+history, that it needs not tell their daily journey among the great
+bluffs, the wide bars, and the willow-lined shores of the great river.
+
+Gradually, the course of the river being now more nearly to the north,
+they noted the higher and bleaker aspect of the Plains, which the
+_Journal_ described as land not so good as that below the Platte. Of the
+really arid country farther west, and of the uses of irrigation, the
+_Journal_ knew little, and spoke of it as a desert, though now, on the
+edge of the river, the clinging towns and the great ranch country back
+of them, with the green fields of farms and the smokes of not infrequent
+homes, warned them that the past was gone and that now another day and
+land lay before them.
+
+After many misadventures among the countless deceiving channels and bars
+of the river, and after locating the several Indian villages of the past
+and of to-day--the Rees, the Sioux bands, the Cheyennes--they did at
+last cross the North Dakota line at the Standing Rock agency, did pass
+the mouths of the Cannon Ball and Heart Rivers, and raise the smokes of
+Bismarck on the right, and Mandan on the left bank, with the great
+connecting railway bridge. They drove on, and at length chose their
+stopping place below Mandan, on the west shore.
+
+Now, as always at the river towns they had passed, they met many curious
+and inquisitive persons, eager to know who they were, where they were
+going, whence they had come, and how long they had been on the way.
+
+"Well, sir," said Rob to one newspaperman who drove up to their little
+encampment the next morning, in pursuit of a rumor he had heard that the
+boat had ascended the river from its mouth, "since you ask us, we are
+the perogue _Adventurer_, Company of Volunteers for Northwestern
+Discovery, under Captains Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. We are in
+search of winter quarters, and we hope the natives are peaceful. We have
+been, to this landing, just forty-nine days, five hours and thirty-five
+minutes, this second day of July."
+
+"But that's impossible! Why, it's over a thousand miles from here to St.
+Louis by water!" remarked the editor, himself a middle-aged man.
+
+"Would you say so, sir?"
+
+"Well, how far is it?"
+
+"You should know, sir; you live here."
+
+"But I never had any occasion to know or to care," smiled the visitor.
+
+Rob smiled also. "Well, sir, according to Patrick Gass----"
+
+"I never heard of him----"
+
+"----who kept track of it a hundred and seventeen years ago, it's about
+sixteen hundred and ten miles, though we don't figure it quite sixteen
+hundred. Call it fourteen hundred and fifty-two, as the river chart
+does."
+
+"Jerusalem! And you say you made it in forty-nine days? Why, that's--how
+many miles a day?"
+
+"Well, we set out to do over forty miles a day, but we couldn't quite
+make it. We ran against a good many things."
+
+"And broke all known and existing records at that, I'll bet a hat! How
+on earth!"
+
+"Well, you see, sir," Rob went on, politely, "we've rigged a double
+outboard, with an extension bed on the stern. They're specially made for
+us and they're powerful kickers. In fair water and all going good,
+they'll do six and eight an hour, with auxiliary sail; and we traveled
+ten hours nearly every day. But then, it wasn't always what you'd call
+fair water."
+
+"At least, we got here for the Fourth," he added. "We began to think,
+down by the Cannon Ball, that we wouldn't. We planned to spend the
+Fourth among the Mandans."
+
+"If there's ice cream," interrupted Jesse.
+
+"Ice cream?" The visitor turned to Uncle Dick, who sat smiling. "All you
+want, and won't cost you a cent! Come on up to my house, won't you, and
+spend the night? Have you got all the eggs and butter and bread and
+fruit you want--oranges, lemons, melons?"
+
+"Of melons we got quite a lot at the upper Arikaree village," said Rob,
+solemnly. "But oranges--and ice cream--they didn't have those!"
+
+Uncle Dick joined their visitor in a hearty laugh. "These chaps are
+great for making believe," said he. "We're crossing on the old Lewis and
+Clark trail, as nearly as we can. We're going to the head of the
+Missouri River, and my young friends are trying to restore the life of
+the old days as they go along."
+
+"Fine! I wish more would do so. I'm ignorant, myself, but I'm going to
+be less so. An idea, sir!
+
+"Well," he continued, "you'll have to come up to town and stop with me.
+I'll get a man to watch your boat--not that I think it would need much
+watching. You'll be here over the Fourth, at least?"
+
+"Oh, yes," replied Uncle Dick, now introducing himself, "we're ready to
+take a little rest and look around a little among the Mandans! Can you
+show us where the old Lewis and Clark winter quarters were?"
+
+"Sure! To-morrow we can steam on up to that place, and also the site of
+old Fort Clark. Then I'll show you around among the painted savages of
+our city!"
+
+They all laughed, and after pulling up the boat, drawing tight the tent
+flaps, and spreading the tarpaulin over the cargo, they joined their new
+friend in his motor car and sped off for the town, where they were made
+welcome and obliged to tell in detail the story of their long journey.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+AMONG THE MANDANS
+
+
+"Well," said Jesse, late the next afternoon, when, in accordance with
+his promise, this new friend had pointed out the place where, the expert
+investigators usually agreed, the explorers built their winter quarters
+in the year 1804--near the plot called Elm Point, even now heavily
+timbered. "I don't see much of a fort left here now. What's become of
+it?"
+
+"What becomes of any house built of cottonwood logs in ten or twenty
+years?" smiled his uncle. "But the _Journal_ and other books tell us
+that here or about here is where the old stockade once stood. It was
+opposite to where Fort Clark later was built in 1831. You see, Fort
+Clark was on the west side, on a high bluff, and in its time quite a
+post, for it was one hundred and thirty-two by one hundred and
+forty-seven feet in size, and well built. Fort Clark was about
+fifty-five miles above the Northern Pacific Railroad bridge at Bismarck,
+North Dakota. We've had a good day's run of it.
+
+"All Clark tells us about Fort Mandan is that it was on the north bank,
+that the ground was sandy, and that they cleared the timber to make
+room. He says they had cottonwood and elm and some small ash, but
+complains that the logs were large and heavy and they had to carry them
+in on hand spikes, by man power. They used no horses in rolling up the
+logs.
+
+"But Patrick Gass tells more about the way they did. They had two rows
+of cabins, in two wings, at right angles, and each cabin had four rooms
+in it. I think the men slept upstairs, for when the walls were up seven
+feet they laid a puncheon floor, covered with grass and clay, which Gass
+says made 'a warm loft.' This projected about a foot, and a puncheon
+roof was put over that.
+
+"The outer wall was about eighteen feet high. They had several
+fireplaces. They made a couple of storerooms in the angle of the two
+wings, and then put up their stockade in front, to complete their
+square. This stockade was made of upright logs, and had a gate, like
+most of the frontier posts, so that, what with their swivel gun and all
+their rifles, they could have made quite a fight against any sort of an
+attack, although they had no trouble of any kind.
+
+"They were not very far from the Mandan villages. Quite a settlement
+this was, in these parts--not mentioning nine deserted villages inside
+of sixty miles below--two Mandan villages, built with the Mandan
+dirt-covered lodges, like those of the Rees; and besides that, villages
+of Sioux and Gros Ventres, and of a band they called the Watasoons, and
+seventy lodges of Crees and Assiniboines who came in later and the
+fierce Minnetarees--plenty of savages to warrant the expedition in
+taking no chances."
+
+"I've read that the Indians at first were not so friendly," said Rob.
+"There were British traders among them, weren't there?"
+
+"Oh yes, the Northwest Fur Company was in there, and an Irishman by
+the name of McCracken was on the ground at the time. Alexander Henry
+got there in 1806, you know. Now, Lewis sent out a note by McCracken
+to the agent at Fort Assiniboine. Those traders were none too friendly,
+and tried to stir up trouble. Two more of the Nor'westers, Larocque
+and McKenzie, came in, with an interpreter and four men, and the
+interpreter, LaFrance, took it on him to speak sneeringly of the
+Americans. It did not take Captain Lewis long to call him to account."
+
+"Well, our fellows were up in there all alone, weren't they?" exclaimed
+Jesse.
+
+"They certainly were, but they held their fort; and they held all the
+Northwestern country for us. As soon as the Northwest Fur Company found
+out that Lewis and Clark intended to cross the Rockies to the Columbia,
+they sent word East, and that company sent one of their best men, Simon
+Fraser, to ascend the Saskatchewan and beat the Americans in on the
+Columbia. But he himself was beaten in that great race by about a couple
+of years! So we forged the chain that was to hold the Oregon country to
+the United States afterward. Oh yes, our young captains had a big game
+to play, and they played it beautifully.
+
+"They always talked peace among these Mandans and others, because they
+wanted the Missouri River opened to the American fur trade. They waited
+around, and held talks, and swapped tobacco for corn, and the American
+blacksmiths made for them any number of axes and hatchets and other
+things. By and by the Indians began to figure that they were more apt to
+get plenty of goods up the Missouri from the Americans than overland
+from the British traders. Do you see how that began to work out? Oh, our
+boys knew what they were about, all right. And the result was that our
+fur trade swept up that river like an army with banners as soon as Lewis
+and Clark got back home. In a few years we had a hundred and forty fur
+trading posts on the Missouri and its upper tributaries, and from these
+our bold traders pushed out by pack train into every corner of the Rocky
+Mountains."
+
+"Gee!" said Jesse, in his frequent and not elegant slang. "Gee! Those
+were the days!"
+
+"Right you are--those were the days! Those were the great days of
+adventure and romance and exploration. It was through the fur trade that
+we explored the Rocky Mountains. Can't you see our men of the fur posts,
+paddling, rowing, sailing, tracking--getting up the Missouri? Great
+days, yes, Jesse--great days indeed."
+
+"I wish we had a picture of that old stockade!" sighed John.
+
+"None exists. Not a splinter of it remains; it was burned down in 1805,
+and the ruins later engulfed by the river. But I fancy we can see it,
+from the description. So there our party spent that first winter, and
+long and cold enough it was.
+
+"They had to hunt or starve, but soon their buffalo and elk and deer
+and antelope got very thin, mere skin and bones. It was bitter cold, and
+the hunters came in frozen time and again--a hard, bare, bitter fight it
+was. From all accounts, it was an old-fashioned winter, for the
+mercury--they spelled it 'merkery'--froze solid in a few minutes one day
+when they set the thermometer out of doors!"
+
+"And it must have been cool inside the houses, too," ventured John. "But
+of course they had to do their writing and fix up their things."
+
+"Quite so--they had to get their specimens ready to ship down the river
+in the spring. Then they had to make six canoes for use the next year,
+and as they found the timber unsuitable near the river, the men had to
+camp out where they found the trees, and then they carried the canoes by
+hand over to the river, a mile and a half.
+
+"They sent the big flatboat, or bateau, down the river, and thirteen men
+went with it. The two perogues and the six new cottonwood dugouts they
+took on west, up the river, when they started, on March 7, 1805, to
+finish their journey across the continent. Of these men, the party who
+went through, there were thirty-one; and there was one woman."
+
+"I know!" said Jesse. "Sacagawea!"
+
+"Right! Sacagawea. Make it two words. 'Wea' means 'woman.' 'Bird Woman'
+was her name--Sacaga Wea. And of the entire party, that Indian girl--she
+was only a girl, though lately married and though she started west with
+a very young baby--was worth more than any man. If it had not been for
+her they never would have got across.
+
+"You see, up to this place, the Mandan towns, they had some idea of the
+country, and so also they had beyond here as far as the mouth of the
+Yellowstone--that's two hundred and eighty-eight miles above here. But
+beyond the mouth of the Ro' Jaune--it even then was called Roche Jaune,
+or Yellow Stone, by the early French _voyageurs_--it was said the foot
+of white man never then had passed. There was no map, no report or rumor
+to help them. If they had a guide, it couldn't be a white man.
+
+"Now among the Mandans they found a man called Chaboneau, or Charboneau,
+a Frenchman, married to two Indian women, one of whom was Sacagawea. He
+had bought her from the Minnetarees, where she was a captive.
+
+"Just think how the natives traveled in those days! You know the
+Sioux hunted on the upper Platte, as far as the Rockies. Well, this
+Minnetaree war party had been west of the Rockies, or in the big bend
+of the Rockies, at the very head of the Missouri River, among the
+Shoshonis. They took Sacagawea prisoner when she was a little girl,
+and brought her east, all the way over to Dakota, here. But she was
+Indian--she did not forget what she saw. She knew about the
+Yellowstone, and the Three Forks of the Missouri.
+
+"Well now, whether it was because Chaboneau, the new interpreter, wanted
+her along, or whether Lewis and Clark figured she might be useful,
+Sacagawea went along, all the way to the Pacific--and all the way back
+to the Mandans again. Be sure, her husband did not beat her any more,
+while they were with the white captains. In fact, I rather think they
+made a pet of her. They found they could rely on her memory and her
+judgment.
+
+"So the real guide they had in the nameless and unknown country was a
+Shoshoni Indian girl. It looked almost like something providential, the
+way they found her here, ready and waiting for them--the only possible
+guide in all that country. And to-day, such was the chivalry and justice
+of those two captains of our Army--and such the chivalry and justice of
+the men of Oregon and the enthusiasm of the women of Oregon--you may see
+in Portland, near the sea to which she helped lead our flag, the bronze
+statue of Sacagawea, the Indian girl. That, at least, is one fine thing
+we have done in memory of the Indian.
+
+"And within the last two or three years a bronze statue of Meriwether
+Lewis and William Clark has been erected at Charlotteville, Virginia,
+near the home of Meriwether Lewis--that was at Ivy station, to-day only
+a scattered settlement. And away down in Tennessee, in the forest of
+Lewis County, named after him, I have stood by the monument that state
+erected over the little-known and tragic grave of Captain Meriwether
+Lewis--far enough from the grave of the poor Indian girl who worshiped
+him more than she could her worthless husband.
+
+"No one knows where Sacagawea was buried, though her history was traced
+a little way after the return to this country. She was buried perhaps in
+the air, on a scaffold, and left forgotten, as Indian women were, and we
+no more can stand by her grave than we can be sure we stand on the exact
+spot where Will Clark built his winter quarters among the Mandans.
+
+"Great days, boys--yes, great days, and good people in them, too. So now
+I want you to study a little here.
+
+"Look back down the river, which has seemed so long for you. To-morrow
+will be the Fourth of July. It was Christmas that Lewis and Clark
+celebrated with their men in their stockade."
+
+Their new friend had for the most part been silent as he listened to
+this counselor of the party. He now spoke.
+
+"Then I take it that you are going on up the river soon, sir?" said he.
+"I wish you good journey through the cow country. You'll find the river
+narrower, with fewer islands, so I hear; and I should think it became
+swifter, but--I don't know."
+
+"I was going to come to that," said Uncle Dick, turning to Rob, John,
+and Jesse. "What do you think? I'd like you to get an idea of the river
+and all it meant, but we have only the summer and early fall to use. I
+don't doubt we could plug on up with the motors, and get a long way
+above Great Falls, but about the time we got to where we could have some
+fun fishing or maybe shooting, we'd have to start east by rail. So I'd
+planned that we might make a big jump here."
+
+"How do you mean, sir?" Rob asked.
+
+"Change our transportation."
+
+"Oh--because Lewis and Clark changed here?"
+
+"Natural place for us to change, if we do at all," said Uncle Dick. "We
+ought to stick as close to the river as we can, and as a matter of fact
+we have covered the most monotonous part of it. But we had to do that,
+for there was no other way to get here and still hang anywhere near to
+the river. And until we got here we struck no westbound railroad that
+would advance us on our journey.
+
+"Here we could get up the Yellowstone by rail, but we are working on
+the Missouri. If we run on by motor car up to Buford, there we can get
+by rail over to the Great Falls, and still hang closer to the river;
+although, of course, we'll not be following it."
+
+"But what'll we do with our boat?" began Jesse, ruefully. "Hate to leave
+the little old _Adventurer_."
+
+"Well, now," answered his uncle. "We couldn't so well take her along,
+could we?"
+
+"I'd like mighty well to buy her," interrupted the editor. "That is, if
+you care to sell her."
+
+"I never knew my boys to sell any of their sporting equipment," said the
+other. "But I expect they'd give it to you, right enough. Eh, boys?"
+
+They looked from one to another. "If the gentleman wanted her," began
+Rob, at last, "and if we've done with her, I don't see why we couldn't.
+But I think we ought to take the motors along as far as we can, because
+we might need them."
+
+"Good idea," Uncle Dick nodded. "We can get a trailer here, can't we?"
+he asked of their friend.
+
+"Sure; and a good car; too. I'll drive you up to Buford, myself, for the
+fun of it--and the value of it to me. I'll get a car at Bismarck. We can
+pack your outfit in the trailer and the motors, too, easily. You can
+check and express stuff through to Great Falls from Buford--and there
+you are. How'll you go from there--boat?"
+
+"I don't believe so," replied Uncle Dick. "I believe we'd have more
+freedom if we took a pack train above Great Falls, and cut across lots
+now and then, checking up in our _Journal_ all the way."
+
+"That's the stuff!" exclaimed John. "Horses!"
+
+"Lewis and Clark used horses for some distance, at the crossing," said
+Uncle Dick, "so I think we may dare do so. We want all the variety we
+can get, and all the fun we can get, too. What do you say, young
+gentlemen?"
+
+"It sounds good to me," said Rob. "I'd like to see the mountains pretty
+well. You see, a great part of our lives has been spent in Alaska and
+the northern country, and we're just getting acquainted with our own
+country, you might say. The Rockies this far south must be fine in the
+early fall."
+
+"It suits me," assented John. "I'd like to take the _Adventurer_ along,
+but Lewis and Clark didn't take their boats through all the way,
+either."
+
+"And if we had time," added Jesse, "we could run some river late in the
+fall, say from Great Falls down to here."
+
+"All good," nodded Uncle Dick. Then turning to their new friend,
+"Suppose we cross our camp to Bismarck the morning of July 5th, tie up
+our boat there for you, and then go on in the way you suggest--motor and
+trailer?"
+
+"Agreed," said the other. "I'll be there early that day."
+
+"Which way shall we go?" asked Rob. "If we took the road along the
+Northern Pacific west, we could see the Bad Lands, and go through
+Medora, Theodore Roosevelt's old town."
+
+The editor shook his head. "Bad, if there's rain," he said. "Besides,
+that takes you below the Missouri. I think we'd best go on the east side
+the river, north of Bismarck. We could swing out toward the Turtle
+Lakes, and then make more west, toward the Fort Berthold Reservation.
+From there we could maybe get through till we struck the Great Northern
+Railroad; and then we could get west to Buford, on the line, and on the
+river again. If we got lost we could find ourselves again some time."
+
+"How long would it take?" inquired Rob.
+
+"If it's two hundred and eighty-eight miles by the river, it would be
+maybe two hundred and fifty by trail. We could do it in a day, on a
+straightaway good road like one of the motor highways, but we'll have
+nothing of the sort. I'll say two days, three, maybe four--we'd know
+better when we got there."
+
+"That sounds more adventurish," said Jesse. And what the youngest of
+them thought appealed to the others also.
+
+"Very well. All set for the morning after the Fourth," said Uncle Dick.
+"And when we go back to Mandan be sure not to eat too much ice cream,
+for we're not apt to run across very many doctors on the way. And now
+we'd better get ready to camp here to-night. We can make Mandan by noon
+to-morrow--it's faster, downstream."
+
+"On the way," said their friend, "I want you to go around to the coulee
+below town, where there's three or four tepees of Sioux in camp. What do
+they do? Oh, make little things to sell in town--and not above begging a
+little. There's one squaw we call Mary, who has been coming here a good
+many years. She makes about the finest moccasins we ever get. She made
+my wife a pair, out of buckskin white as snow. I don't know where she
+got it."
+
+"The Sioux had parfleche soles to all their moccasins," said John,
+wisely. "All the buffalo and Plains Indians did. The forest Indians had
+soft soles."
+
+"You're right, son," said the editor. "For modern bedroom moccasins, to
+sell to white women, Mary makes them all soft, with a shallow ankle
+flap. Most of the Indian men wear shoes now, but when she makes a pair
+of men's moccasins she always puts on the raw-hide soles. You can see
+the hair on the bottoms, sometimes."
+
+"Buffalo hair?" smiled Jesse.
+
+"Well, no. The Indians use beef-hide now. But they don't like it."
+
+"Neither do I," said Jesse.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+OLD DAYS ON THE RIVER
+
+
+"Not so bad, not so bad at all," was John's comment as they all sat
+around the camp fire on the evening of July 5th. They had spent two
+pleasant days in town and now were forty miles out into the Plains
+country above the railroad; they had pitched camp at the edge of a
+willow-lined stream which ran between steep bluffs whose tops rose level
+with the plain. The smoke of their camp fire drifted down the troughlike
+valley from their encampment. The boys had found enough clean wood for a
+broiling fire, and John just now had taken off the thick beefsteak which
+they had brought along with them.
+
+"You will observe that this is from the tenderloin of the three-year-old
+fat buffalo cow that I killed this morning," said he. "I always did like
+buffalo. We will break open some marrow bones about midnight, and I'll
+grill some boss ribs for breakfast."
+
+"And for luncheon," added Jesse, joining readily in the make-believe,
+"we'll try some of the cold roast of the last bighorn I killed, over in
+the breaks of the Missouri. Not so bad!"
+
+Their friend from Mandan looked at them, smiling. "I hope you haven't
+shot any tame sheep," said he. "No, not a bad camp, except that the
+mosquitoes are eating me alive. How do these boys stand it the way they
+do?"
+
+"Oh, they're tough," laughed Uncle Dick. "We've had so many trips up
+North together, where the mosquitoes really are bad, we've got immune,
+so we don't mind a little thing like this. It takes two or three years
+to get over fighting them. For the first year they almost drive a man
+crazy, up there in Alaska."
+
+"I expect, sir, you'd better go inside the tent with our uncle
+to-night," said Rob. "We have our buffalo robes and bed rolls and don't
+need any tent, but if you drop the bar to the tent door, and take a wet
+sock to the mosquitoes that get in, I think you'll not be bothered."
+
+"But how will you sleep, outside?"
+
+"Oh, we pull a corner of the blanket over our faces if they get too bad.
+By nine or ten o'clock they'll be gone--until sunup; then they're the
+worst. If we had camped up on the rim it would have been better."
+
+"I'm going up on the rim after supper," said Jesse, "to see if I can't
+find an antelope--I suppose you'd call it a jack rabbit. I saw three
+coveys of prairie chickens cross the road to-day. If it was legal, now!"
+
+Indeed, an hour later the youngest of the party came in at dark,
+carrying a pair of long-legged jacks, one of them young and fat. "I
+always was good on antelopes," said he. "These were in at the edge of a
+farmer's clover field. I'm glad we're getting into good game country!"
+
+"Yes," Uncle Dick said, "between the Mandans and the mouth of the
+Yellowstone, Lewis and Clark began to find the bighorn, which was new to
+them. And as we've said, they now were meeting the first 'white bears'
+or grizzlies. All along, from here to Great Falls, was the best grizzly
+country they found in all the way across."
+
+"If only they were in there now!" said John.
+
+"Why, would you dare tackle a grizzly?" smiled their friend. John did
+not say much.
+
+"These boys have done it," replied their uncle for them. "I'd hate to be
+the bear. They shoot straight, and the rifles they have are far more
+powerful than the ones the first explorers had."
+
+"We'll call this exploring," said Jesse, with sarcasm. "I'll have to
+get help to hang up my antelopes so they'll cool out.
+
+"But, anyhow," he added, "this is as much fun as plugging along among
+the sand bars in the motor boat. We beat the oars, and now this gas
+wagon beats our boat motors!"
+
+"Uncle Dick," suddenly interrupted Rob, "we've been talking about the
+fur trade on the river a hundred years ago. I understand the fur posts
+were supplied by steamboats, at the height of the fur trade, anyhow.
+Now, how long did it take a steamer in those days to make the run, say,
+from St. Louis to the mouth of the Yellowstone?"
+
+"That's easy to answer," his uncle replied. "The records and logs of
+some of the old boats still exist in St. Louis, and while I was there I
+looked up some of them.
+
+"Now as nearly as I can learn there was no exact way of estimating
+distances by any of those travelers--the speedometer was not invented,
+nor the odometer, nor the ship's log. Now I don't know how the steamboat
+captains got at it, but they kept a daily log of distance, and they had
+the different stopping places all logged for distance. We make it a
+little less than sixteen hundred miles to Mandan. The _Journal_ makes it
+sixteen hundred and ten--close enough. The river chart calls it
+fourteen hundred and fifty-two to the bridge; over fifty miles below the
+Mandan villages.
+
+"But the _Journal_ makes it eighteen hundred and eighty-eight miles to
+the mouth of the Yellowstone. My steamboat records call it seventeen
+hundred and sixty miles--more than a hundred miles shorter. At least,
+that was what the traders called it to Fort Union, which was just above
+the mouth of the Yellowstone, as nearly as now is known; you must bear
+in mind that practically every one of the old fur posts was long ago
+wiped out. How? Well, largely by the steamboats themselves! The captains
+were always short of wood. They tore down and burned up first one and
+then another of the early posts. Settlers did the rest.
+
+"At first, as early as 1841, it took eighty days to do that seventeen
+hundred and sixty miles upstream, and twenty-one days to run back
+downstream. In 1845 they did it in forty-two days up, and fifteen down.
+In 1847 it was done in forty days up, and fourteen days down; and they
+didn't beat that much, if any."
+
+"That's an average of about forty-four miles a day," said Rob, who was
+doing some figuring on his notebook. "Going down, about one hundred and
+twenty-three miles."
+
+"Why, they beat our average!" complained John. "We didn't climb her in
+much over forty, if that."
+
+"Well, we could pick the way easier, but she had more power," said Rob.
+"Everybody knows a big boat beats a little one. But she didn't beat us
+much, at that."
+
+"The _Adventurer's_ a good boat," nodded Uncle Dick, "and I think on the
+whole we've got a pretty good idea of the travel of 1804 and 1805, or
+will have before we're done.
+
+"But now, one thing or two I want you also to bear in mind. Life isn't
+all adventure. Commerce follows on the trail of adventure. The fur
+traders forgot the romance, and hurried in up the Missouri, as soon as
+they could. And what fur they did get! No wonder Great Britain was sorry
+to meet Lewis and Clark up here!
+
+"There were a lot of important fur posts that fed into the Missouri. The
+mouth of the James River was a good post. Fort Pierre--on the Teton,
+down below--was the best post on the river except Union, at the
+Yellowstone. Pierre covered two and a half acres of ground, but Union
+was better built--she had twenty-foot palisades a foot square, and she
+stood two hundred and forty by two hundred and twenty feet, with stone
+bastions at two corners, pierced for cannon, and a riflemen's banquette
+clear around inside.
+
+"They were right in the middle of the Sioux and near the Blackfeet, and
+after the smallpox came on the river, the Indians got bitter and hated
+the thought of a white man. But they had only fur to trade for rifles
+and traps and blankets, and the white traders made the only market.
+
+"I was speaking of Fort Pierre, because of a journal kept in 1832 by the
+trader at that place. It is largely a record of weather and water, but
+has a touch or so of interest now and then--I made some notes from it.
+Thus, I find that on June 24th the steamer _Yellowstone_ arrived, down
+bound, and they put six hundred packs of buffalo robes on her. That boat
+on the next day had on board one thousand three hundred packs of robes
+and beaver. In the old trade a pack was ninety to one hundred pounds.
+
+"On July 9th three bateaux got in from Fort Union with a lot of robes.
+They loaded on one bateau one hundred and twenty packs of beaver and
+other fur, and on another thirty packs of robes, and she was to take on
+one hundred and twenty to one hundred and thirty packs more at Yankton
+post.
+
+"On July 11th four bateaux left Fort Pierre for St. Louis, and they
+carried three hundred and fifty-five packs of robes and ten thousand two
+hundred and thirty pounds of beaver. And on July 30th another bateau
+came down from Union with six thousand beaver skins on board.
+
+"From this you can see something of the size of the big bateaux--or
+Mackinaws--of that time, and something of the size of the fur trade as
+well. And all the time the big river was outfitting the hardy pack-train
+men who brought out fortunes in beaver from the rivers of the Rockies.
+Great times, boys--great times! And all of that trade rested on the
+Lewis and Clark expedition.
+
+"You now have seen how important the mouth of the Yellowstone was--where
+Fort Union was located in 1828. That was for a time pretty near the end
+of the road, just as it was for Lewis and Clark a quarter century
+earlier. Above there were the Blackfeet, and they were bad Indians.
+About the first man up in there was James Kipp.
+
+"Now I want to tell you something very curious--one of those things now
+rapidly getting out of record and remembrance. James Kipp lived among
+the Mandans and married there. He had a son, Joe Kipp, whom he once took
+home to Illinois to educate, after he had left the trade and married a
+white woman. He loved Joe, but told him he must never let it be known
+that he was the Indian son of James Kipp, the respected white man.
+
+"Well, the boy Joe couldn't stand that. He ran away up the river, and
+never came back. He went back to his mother, a Mandan woman. In later
+days, since the fur trade passed and the Indians all were put on
+reservations, Joe Kipp was the post trader for years. He was a bold
+trader and went into Canada at one time. He founded old Fort Whoop-up.
+He got to be worth some money in his stores, though always liberal with
+the Indians. He was the man who showed the engineers of the Great
+Northern Railroad the pass which they built through. It is the lowest
+railroad pass of them all, though the one farthest north of all our
+railroads over the Rockies.
+
+"Now, I knew Joe Kipp very well and often met him on the Blackfeet
+Reservation. He lived in a big frame house there, had a bathtub and a
+Chinaman cook, and showed his Indians how to 'follow the path of the
+white man.'
+
+"But what I want you to remember is this: Joe Kipp had his Mandan mother
+with him until she died. I have seen her, too, a very tall, old woman,
+and wild as a hawk. Joe built her a little cabin all her own, where no
+one else ever went. In her little cabin she spent her last years as she
+had lived in her earlier days among the Mandans, making moccasins for
+Joe, decorating tobacco pouches and fire bags with beads and porcupine
+quills. I have a fire bag of hers that Joe gave me, and I prize it very
+much. She no longer had the buffalo, but on the rafters of her lodge she
+had her dried meat hanging, and the interior was something no man living
+will see again.
+
+"Joe Kipp's Mandan mother was the last living soul of the pure-blood
+Mandan tribe, one of the most curious and puzzling ones of the
+West--they were a light-colored people, the children with light eyes; no
+one knows how they came on the Missouri. But the smallpox got them
+almost all. They went crazy, jumped in the river--died--passed.
+
+"Well, Joe's mother, so he said, was the last, a very old woman, I
+presume nearly a hundred then. Often she would take her blanket and go
+out on a hilltop and sit there motionless hours at a time, with her
+blanket over her face--thinking, thinking, I presume, over the days
+that you and I are studying together now.
+
+"And just a little while ago I heard of Joe Kipp's death, too. His
+mother died some years earlier. So that is some Mandan history which I
+presume even our Mandan friend here never has heard before--about the
+last of the Mandans, who came down, broken and helpless, even into our
+own time."
+
+"Don't!" suddenly said Rob. "Please don't! It makes me sad."
+
+They fell silent as presently each found his way to his blankets.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+AT THE YELLOWSTONE
+
+
+The motor-car journey of the party had not much of eventfulness, being
+practically, most of the way, through a farm or range country where
+roads of least passable sort led them in the general northwesterly
+direction which they desired to take. All three of the young explorers
+could drive, so they took turns occasionally, while the editor sat in
+the back seat and conversed with Uncle Dick.
+
+Beyond a few grouse and rabbits, with a half dozen coyotes, they saw no
+game except wild fowl on the sloughs. The cabins and tepees on the Fort
+Berthold Indian Reservation afforded them a change of scene, and they
+were delighted to find three of the native Mandan earth lodges, one
+nearly fifty feet in diameter. They learned that the remnants of the
+Mandan tribe, few in number and comprising few, if any, pure blood, were
+located with reservation here, and were clinging to their tribal customs
+the best they could.
+
+"Well, here's what Patrick Gass says about the old Mandan huts and how
+they were built--and he was a carpenter and so ought to know." John was
+always ready with his quotations:
+
+    "'A Mandane's circular hut is spacious. I measured the one I lodged
+    in, and found it 90 feet from the door to the opposite side. The
+    whole space is first dug out about 1-1/2 feet below the surface of
+    the earth. In the center is the square fireplace, about five feet
+    on each side, dug out about two feet below the surface of the
+    ground flat. The lower part of the hut is constructed by erecting
+    strong posts about six feet out of the ground, at equal distances
+    from each other, according to the proposed size of the hut, as they
+    are not all of the same dimensions. Upon these are laid logs as
+    large as the posts, reaching from post to post to form the circle.
+    On the outer side are placed pieces of split wood seven feet long,
+    in a slanting direction, one end resting on the ground, the other
+    leaning against the cross-logs or beams. Upon these beams rest
+    rafters about the thickness of a man's leg, and 12 to 15 feet long,
+    slanting enough to drain off the rain, and laid so close to each
+    other as to touch. The upper ends of the rafters are supported upon
+    stout pieces of squared timber, which last are supported by four
+    thick posts about five feet in circumference, 15 feet out of the
+    ground and 15 feet asunder, forming a square. Over these squared
+    timbers others of equal size are laid, crossing them at right
+    angles, leaving an opening about four feet square. This serves for
+    chimney and windows, as there are no other openings to admit light,
+    and when it rains even this hole is covered over with a canoe (bull
+    boat) to prevent the rain from injuring their gammine (sic) and
+    earthen pots. The whole roof is well thatched with the small
+    willows in which the Missourie abounds, laid on to the thickness of
+    six inches or more, fastened together in a very compact manner and
+    well secured to the rafters. Over the whole is spread about one
+    foot of earth, and around the wall, to the height of three or four
+    feet, is commonly laid up earth to the thickness of three feet, for
+    security in case of an attack and to keep out the cold. The door is
+    five feet broad and six high, with a covered way or porch on the
+    outside of the same height as the door, seven feet broad and ten in
+    length. The doors are made of raw buffalo-hide stretched upon a
+    frame and suspended by cords from one of the beams which form the
+    circle. Every night the door is barricaded with a long piece of
+    timber supported by two stout posts set in the ground in the inside
+    of the hut, one on each side of the door.'"
+
+"Well," remarked Jesse, "that sort of a house was big enough, so it is
+no wonder they could keep their horses in there with them, too, in the
+wintertime. And they fed them cottonwood limbs when there wasn't any
+grass to eat."
+
+"Yes," remarked Uncle Dick, "that's what we call adjusting to an
+environment. I will say these Mandans were rather efficient on the
+whole, and not bad engineers and architects."
+
+They did not tarry long, although they made their second encampment
+within the lines of the old Fort Berthold Reservation, for they found
+all the Indians wearing white men's clothing, and using wagons and farm
+implements, and Jesse said they had more Indianish Indians in Alaska.
+
+Now they bore rather sharply to the north, feeling for the line of the
+railway, which they struck at a village about midway between the Little
+Knife and the White Earth Rivers. The early afternoon of their fourth
+day brought them back once more to the sight of the Missouri, at the
+town of Buford, near the Montana line and opposite the mouth of the
+Yellowstone.
+
+Following their usual custom, they made camp outside the vicinity of the
+town, after purchasing the supplies they needed for the day and for the
+return trip of their obliging friend from Mandan, who now reluctantly
+decided that he could accompany them no farther.
+
+"I'd rather go on with you than do anything I know," said he, "but it's
+going to be quite a trip, and I won't have time, even if we could get
+through with a car."
+
+Uncle Dick nodded. "Really the best way to do this would be to take ship
+again here and follow the river up the Great Falls," he said; "but by
+the time we got a boat rigged and had made the run up--best part of six
+hundred miles--we'd be almost a month further into the summer--because
+the river is swifter above here. They made good time, but it was mostly
+cordelle work. And, using gas motors, the boys wouldn't have much chance
+of any real sport and exercise, which, of course, I want them to have
+every summer when possible.
+
+"Get your map, John--the big government map--and let's have a look at
+this country in west of here."
+
+John complied. They all bent over the map, which they spread down on the
+floor of the tent. Their gasoline camp lantern shed its brilliant light
+over them all as they bent down in study of the map.
+
+"You'll see now that we're almost at the farthest north point on the
+Missouri River. From here it runs almost west to the Great Falls, and
+then almost south. Now our new railroad (the Great Northern Railroad)
+will take us to the Great Falls of the Missouri, but it by no means
+follows the Missouri. On the contrary, a little over two hundred miles
+from here, I'd guess, it strikes the Milk River--as Lewis and Clark
+called it--and follows that river half across the state of Montana. It
+would carry us out to the Blackfeet Reservation, and what is now Glacier
+Park--my own hunting ground among the Blackfeet, where I knew Joe
+Kipp--but that is entirely off the map for us."
+
+"Why, sure it is!" said Jesse, following the line of the river with his
+finger. "Look it! It runs away south, hundreds of miles, into the
+southwest corner of the state; and the railroad goes almost to Canada.
+And there's a lot of river between here and Great Falls, too--bad water,
+you say?"
+
+"And see here where the Yellowstone goes!" added Rob. "It's away below
+the Missouri, a hundred, a hundred and fifty miles in places--no
+railroads and no towns."
+
+"No," remarked their leader, "but one of the real wild places of the
+West in its day--as cow range or hunting range, that wild and broken
+country in there had no superior, and not many men know all of it even
+now. Part of it is wonderfully beautiful.
+
+"At no part of the journey did Lewis and Clark have more exciting
+adventures than in precisely this country that we've got to skip, too.
+The buffalo fairly swarmed, and elk and antelope and bighorn sheep and
+blacktail deer were all around them all the time. It was a wonderful new
+world for them. How many of the great fighting grizzlies they met in
+that strip of the river, I wouldn't like to say, but in almost every
+instance it meant a fight, until half the crew would no longer go after
+a grizzly, they were so scared of them. One they shot through eight
+times, and it chased the whole party even then. I tell you, those bears
+were bad!
+
+"But we'd not see one now--they're all gone, every one. Nor would we see
+a bighorn--besides, they are protected by a continuous closed season in
+Montana. Pretty country, yes, wild and bold and risky; but better coming
+down than going up. We miss some grand scenery, but save a month's time,
+maybe.
+
+"But now see here--about halfway out to the Blackfeet is Havre Junction.
+There we can take a train southwest to the town of Great Falls; and
+above there we can stop at the mouth of the Marias River. Between there
+and the Falls is Fort Benton, and that is one of the most important
+points, in a historical way, there was on the whole river, although its
+glory departed long ago. From there we'd get to our pack train and be
+off for the head of the Missouri. What do you think, Rob?"
+
+Rob was silent for a time. "Well," said he, at length, "I think we'd get
+pretty much a repetition of the river work, and not much sport--hard
+river, too.
+
+"Now, it would be fine to go to old Benton by river, to the head of
+navigation; but we know that Fort Benton was not one of the early fur
+posts--indeed, it came in when the last of the buffalo were being
+killed. It was where the traveling traders got their goods, and where
+the bull outfits got their freight in 1863 for the placer mines of
+Montana and was the outfit place for Bozeman and all those early points.
+But that was after the fur trade was over."
+
+"That's right," said Uncle Dick. "First came the explorers; then the fur
+traders; then the miners; then the cow men; then the farmers. The end of
+the buffalo came in 1883--a million robes that year; and the next, none
+at all--the most terrible wild-life tragedy that ever was known. After
+that came the cattle and the sheep and the irrigation men."
+
+He sat musing for the time.
+
+"But listen now to a little more of the early stuff. You, Jesse, do you
+follow up the Yellowstone with your finger till you come to the mouth of
+the Big Horn River. Got it?"
+
+"Yes, sir," replied Jesse. "Here she is."
+
+"All right. Now, at that place, in the year 1807--the next year after
+Lewis and Clark got back home--a shrewd St. Louis trader by name of
+Manuel Lisa, of Spanish descent he was, heard all those beaver stories,
+and he pushed up the Missouri and up the Yellowstone, and built a post
+called Fort Manuel there. He wanted to trade with the Blackfeet and
+Crows both, but found those tribes were enemies. He couldn't hold the
+fort. He dropped back to St. Louis and formed the first of the great fur
+companies, the Missouri River Company. They were the pioneers of many
+later companies.
+
+"The Missouri River Company had their post at the Three Forks of the
+Missouri--away up yonder, eight hundred miles from here--as early as
+1810; that was crowding Lewis and Clark pretty fairly close, eh? Well,
+then came the Rocky Mountain Company, and the American Fur Company, and
+the Pacific Fur Company, and the Columbia Fur Company, and I don't know
+how many other St. Louis partnerships up-river--not mentioning the
+pack-train outfits under many names--and so all at once, as though by
+magic, there were posts strung clear to the head of the river--one
+hundred and forty of them, as I have told you. And of them all you could
+hardly find a trace of one of them to-day.
+
+"There's dispute even as to the site of Fort Union, which was just above
+here and up the river a little above the Yellowstone. That was built in
+1828.
+
+"Long before that, and for twenty years after that, the fur traders kept
+on building, until the mouth of every good-sized river running into the
+Missouri had not only one, but sometimes three or four posts, all
+competing all or part of the time! Risky business it was. Some made
+fortunes; most of them died broke. Well, I reckon they had a good run
+for their money, eh?"
+
+"And when did it end?" asked the Mandan friend, who had sat an absorbed
+listener to a story, the most of which was new to him.
+
+"It has not ended yet," answered Uncle Dick. "St. Louis is to-day the
+greatest fur market in the world, though now skunk and coon and rat have
+taken the place of beaver and buffalo and wolf. But within the past four
+years a muskrat pelt has sold for five dollars. In 1832 the average
+price for the previous fifteen years had been twenty cents for a
+rat-hide--many a boy in my time thought he was rich if he got ten cents.
+A buffalo robe averaged three dollars; a beaver pelt, four dollars; an
+otter, three dollars. Think of what they bring now! Well, the demand
+combs the country, that's all.
+
+"But in 1836 beaver slumped--because that was the year the silk hat was
+invented. Did you know that? And in 1883 the buffalo robes ended. I'd
+say that 1850 really was about the end of the big days of the early fur
+trade--what we call the upper-river trade."
+
+Rob put his hand down over the map. "And here it was," said he, "in this
+country west of here, up the Yellowstone, up the Missouri, all over and
+in between!"
+
+"Quite right, yes," his companion nodded. "Of all the days of romance
+and adventure in the Far West, those were the times and this was the
+place--from here west, up the great waterway and its branches.
+
+"No one can estimate the value of the Missouri River to the United
+States. It made more history for us than the Mississippi itself. It made
+our first maps--the fur trade did that. It led us across and got us
+Oregon. It led us to the placers which settled Montana. It took the
+first horses and wagons and plows into the upper country in its day, as
+well as the first rifles and steel traps. It brought us into war with
+the Indians, and helped us win the war. It carried our hunters up to the
+buffalo, and carried all the buffalo down, off from the face of the
+earth. And it rolls and boils and tumbles on its way now as it did when
+the great bateaux swept down its flood, over a hundred miles a day,
+loaded with robes and furs."
+
+"I wish we could see it all!" grumbled Jesse, again.
+
+"You can see it all now, Jess," said his uncle, "better than you could
+if you plugged up its stream without looking at a map or book. And even
+if you did look at both, you've got to see the many different periods
+the old Missouri has had in its history, and balance one against the
+other.
+
+"Dates are not of so much importance, but reasons for great changes are
+important. If I had to select just one date in Western history, do you
+know what that would be?"
+
+"Eighteen hundred and four, when our men started up with the flag!" said
+Rob.
+
+Uncle Dick shook his head.
+
+"Eighteen hundred and six, when they got back," ventured Jesse.
+
+"No."
+
+"Eighteen hundred and forty-eight, when they found gold in California!"
+said John.
+
+"No! Great years, yes, and the discovery of gold was a great event in
+changing all the country. But to the man who really has studied all the
+story of the Missouri River, I believe that the year 1836 was about the
+pivotal date. And it only marks the invention of the silk hat! But that
+year the plow began to take the place of the steel trap in the way of
+making a living in the West. That was the year, I might say, when the
+mystery and romance of the unknown West found their end, and the day
+began of what we call business and civilization.
+
+"That's all. Go to bed, fellows. Our friend has been most kind to us,
+and we have to get him a good breakfast in the morning, since he must
+leave us then."
+
+The Mandan friend rose and put out his hand. "I want to thank you, sir,"
+he said. "I'm in your debt. I wish my own boys were along with this
+party."
+
+The next day they parted and the young Alaskans were speeding west by
+rail, making the great jump of about six hundred miles, between the
+mouth of the Yellowstone and the Great Falls of the Missouri.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+WHERE THE ROAD FORKED
+
+
+"Well, fellows," began Rob, "this is a place I've always wanted to see.
+I've read about old Fort Benton many a time. Now, here we are!"
+
+The little party stood curiously regarding an old and well-nigh ruined
+square structure of sun-dried brick, not far from which lay yet more
+dilapidated remnants of what once had been the walls and buildings of an
+old abode inclosure. They were on their third day out from the mouth of
+the Yellowstone River, having come by rail, and were spending the day at
+Fort Benton, between the junction point of Havre and the modern city of
+Great Falls.
+
+"There's not much of it left," scoffed Jesse. "I don't call this so much
+of a fort. You could pretty near push over all that's left of it."
+
+"Not so, Jess," replied Rob, the older of the three boys. "Nothing can
+push over the walls of old Fort Benton! It has foundations in history."
+
+"Oh, history!" said Jesse. "That's all right. But I'm sore we didn't
+run the river up from Buford. Just when we hit some wild stuff, we take
+the cars! Besides, we might have seen some white bears or some bighorn
+sheep."
+
+John smiled at Jesse. "Not a chance, Jess," said he, "though it's true
+we have jumped over what was the most interesting country we had struck
+till then--castles and towers and walls and fortresses; and as you say,
+plenty of game. Tell him about it, Uncle Dick. He's grouching."
+
+Uncle Dick smiled and put his hand on Jesse's curly head. "No, he
+isn't," said he. "He just isn't satisfied with jack rabbits where there
+used to be grizzlies and bighorns. I don't blame him.
+
+"Yet to the east of us, to the end of the river at Buford, to the south
+along the Yellowstone, and on all the great rivers that the cowmen used
+for range--along the Little Missouri and the Musselshell and the Judith
+and countless other streams whose names you have heard--lay the greatest
+game country the world ever saw, the best outdoor country in the world!
+
+"This was the land of the Wild West Indian and buffalo days, so wild a
+country that it never lived down its reputation. Buffalo, antelope, and
+elk ranged in common in herds of hundreds of thousands, while in the
+rough shores of the river lived countless bighorns, hundreds of
+grizzlies, and a like proportion of buffalo and antelope as well, not to
+mention the big wolves and other predatories. Yes, a great wilderness it
+was!"
+
+"And we jumped it!" said Jesse.
+
+"Yes, because I knew we'd save time, and we have to do that, for we're
+not out for two years, you see.
+
+"Now look at your notes and at the _Journal_. It took Lewis and Clark
+thirty-five days to get here from the mouth of the Yellowstone, and
+we've done it in one, you might say. The railroad calls it three hundred
+and sixty-seven miles."
+
+"Well, the _Journal_ calls it more," broke in Rob, "yet it sticks right
+to the river."
+
+"And now they began to travel," added John. "They did
+twenty--eighteen--twenty-five--seventeen miles a day right along, more'n
+they did below Mandan, a lot.
+
+"They make it six hundred and forty-one miles from the Yellowstone to
+the Marias, which is below where we are now. That's about eighteen miles
+a day. Yet they all say the river current is much stiffer."
+
+"We'd have found it stiff in places," said their leader. "But the
+reason they did so well--on paper--was that now they couldn't sail the
+canoes very well, and so did a great deal of towing. The shores were
+full of sharp rocks and the going was rough, and they had only
+moccasins--they complained bitterly of sore feet.
+
+"Their hardships made them overestimate the distances they did--and they
+did overestimate them, very much. When we were tracking up on the Rat
+Portage, in the ice water, at the Arctic Circle, don't you remember we
+figured on double what we had actually done? A man's wife corrected him
+on how long they had been married. He said it was twenty years, and she
+said it was ten, by the records. 'Well, it seems longer,' he said. Same
+way, when they did ten miles a day stumbling on the tracking line, they
+called it twenty. It seemed longer.
+
+"Now, when the river commission measured these distances accurately,
+they called it seventeen hundred and sixty miles from the mouth of the
+river to the mouth of the Yellowstone, and not eighteen hundred, as the
+_Journal_ has it. And from Buford to Benton, by river, is not six
+hundred and forty-one miles, as the _Journal_ makes it, but only five
+hundred and three. So the first white men through those canyons and
+palisades below us yonder were one hundred and thirty-eight miles over
+in their estimates, or more than one-fourth of the real distance.
+
+"This tendency to overestimate distances is almost universal among
+explorers who set the first distances, and it ought to be reckoned as a
+factor of error, like the dip of the magnetic needle. But they did their
+best. And we want to remember that they were the first white men to come
+up this river, whereas we are the last!"
+
+"Anyhow," resumed Rob, "we are at old Benton now."
+
+"Yes, and I think even Jesse will agree, when we stop to sum up here,
+that this is a central point in every way, and more worth while as a
+standing place that any we would have passed in the river had we run it.
+
+"This is the heart of the buffalo country, and the heart of the old
+Blackfoot hunting range--the most dreaded of all the tribes the early
+traders met. We're above the breaks of the Missouri right here. Look at
+the vast Plains. This was the buffalo pasture of the Blackfeet. The
+Crows lay below, on the Yellowstone.
+
+"Now as they came up through the Bad Lands and the upper breaks of the
+big river, the explorers gave names to a lot of creeks and buttes, most
+of which did not stick. Two of them did stick--the Judith and the
+Marias. Clark called the first Judith's river, after Miss Julia Hancock,
+of Virginia, the lady whom he later married. Her friends all called her
+Judy, and Clark figured it ought to be Judith.
+
+"In the same way Lewis called this river, near whose mouth we now are
+standing, Maria's River, after his cousin, Miss Maria Wood. Clark's
+river, famous in military days, and now famous as the wheat belt of the
+Judith Basin, lost the possessive and is now plain Judith. That of
+Meriwether Lewis still has all the letters, but is spelled Marias River,
+without the possessive apostrophe. So these stand even to-day, the names
+of two Virginia girls, and no doubt will remain there while the water
+runs or the grass grows, as the Indians say."
+
+"But even now you've forgotten something, Uncle Dick," interrupted John.
+"You said this was the Forks of the Road. How do you mean?"
+
+"Yes. This later proved one of the great strategic points of the West.
+As you know, this was the head of steamboat navigation, and the
+outfitting point for the bull trains that supplied all the country west
+and south and north of us. No old post is more famous. But that is not
+all.
+
+"I have reference now, really, not to Fort Benton, but to the mouth of
+the Marias River, below here. Now, see how nearly, even to-day, the
+Marias resembles the Missouri River. Suppose you were captain, Jess, and
+you had no map and nothing to go by, and you came to these two rivers
+and didn't have any idea on earth which was the one coming closest to
+the Columbia, and had no idea where either of them headed--now, what
+would you do?"
+
+"Huh!" answered Jesse, with no hesitation at all. "I know what I'd have
+done."
+
+"Yes? What, then?"
+
+"Why, I'd have asked that Indian girl, Sacagawea, that's what I'd have
+done. She knew all this country, you say."
+
+"By Jove! Not a bit bad, Jess, come to think of it. But look at your
+_Journal_. You'll find that at precisely the first time they needed to
+ask her something they could not! The girl was very sick, from here to
+above the Great Falls. They thought she was going to die, and it's a
+wonder she didn't, when you read what all they gave her by way of
+medicines. She was out of her head part of the time. They never asked
+her a thing on the choice of these rivers!
+
+"Well now, what did they do? They spent more than a week deciding, and
+it was time well spent. They sent out small parties up each fork a
+little way, and the men all thought the Marias, or right-hand fork, was
+the true Missouri. Then Clark was sent up the south fork, which was
+clearer than the other. He went thirty-five miles. If he had gone twenty
+miles farther, he'd have been at the Great Falls; and the Minnetaree
+Indians had told of those falls, and of an eagle's nest there, though
+they said nothing about the river to the north. Chaboneau had never been
+here. His wife was nearly dead. No one could help.
+
+"Lewis took a few men and went up the Marias for about sixty miles. They
+came back down the Marias, and decided on the left-hand fork, against
+the judgment of every man but Clark.
+
+"His reasoning is good. The men all pointed out that the right-hand fork
+was roily, boiling, and rolling, exactly like the Missouri up which they
+had come, whereas the other fork was clear. But Lewis said that this
+showed that the Marias ran through plains country and did not lead close
+to the Rockies, from which the water would run clearer; and they did
+not want to skirt the mountains northerly, but to cross them, going
+west.
+
+"Lewis had an old English map, made by a man named Arrowsmith, based on
+reports of a Hudson's Bay trader named Fidler, who had gone a little
+south of the Saskatchewan and made some observations. Now look at your
+_Journal_, and see what Lewis thought of Mr. Fidler.
+
+"The latter marked a detached peak at forty-five degrees latitude. Yet
+Lewis--who all this time has been setting down his own latitude and
+longitude from his frequent observations--makes the Marias as
+forty-seven degrees, twenty-four minutes, twelve and eight-tenths
+seconds. He says:
+
+    "'The river must therefore turn much to the south between this and
+    the rocky mountain to have permitted Mr. Fidler to have passed
+    along the eastern border of these mountains as far south as nearly
+    45 deg. without even seeing it.... Capt. Clark says its course is
+    S. 29 W. and it still appeared to bear considerably to the W. of
+    South.... I think therefore that we shall find that the Missouri
+    enters the rocky mountains to the North of 45 deg. We did take the
+    liberty of placing his discoveries or at least the Southern
+    extremity of them about a degree farther North ... and I rather
+    suspect that actual observations will take him at least one other
+    degree further North. The general course of Marias river ... is 69
+    deg. W. 59'.'
+
+"Lewis also figured that Fidler in his map showed only small streams
+coming in from the west, 'and the presumption is very strong that those
+little streams do not penetrate the Rocky Mountains to such distance as
+would afford rational grounds for a conjecture that they had their
+sources near any navigable branch of the Columbia.' He was right in
+that--and he says those little creeks may run into a river the Indians
+called the Medicine River. Now that is the Sun River, which does come in
+at the Falls, but which Lewis had never seen!
+
+"Again, the Minnetaree Indians had told him, in their long map-making
+talks at the Mandan winter quarters, that the river near the Falls was
+clear, as he now saw this stream. The Minnetarees told him the Missouri
+River interlocked with the Columbia. And as he was now straight west of
+the Minnetarees, he figured that when they went hunting to the head of
+the Missouri, as they had, they couldn't have passed a river big as this
+south fork without mentioning it. And the Indians said that the Falls
+were a 'little south of the sunset' from the Mandans--and Lewis had his
+latitude to show he was still on that line and ought to hold to it.
+
+"Lastly, he reasoned that so large a river must penetrate deeply into
+the Rockies--and that was what he wanted. He knew it could not rise in
+dry plains. So, relying on his Minnetarees and his horse sense, and not
+on Mr. Fidler, Lewis refused to go any farther north, because he could
+not figure out there a big river penetrating into the Rockies. He was
+absolutely right, as well as very shrewd and wise.
+
+"Now, reasoning at first shot, the _voyageurs_ would have gone up the
+Marias. Cruzatte especially, their best riverman, was certain the Marias
+was the true Missouri. They would then maybe have met the Blackfeet and
+would never have crossed the Rockies; which would have meant failure, if
+not death; whereas this cold-headed, careful young man, Meriwether
+Lewis, by a chain of exact reasoning on actual data, went against the
+judgment of the entire party and chose the left-hand fork, which we know
+is the true Missouri; and which we'll find hard enough to follow to its
+head, even to-day.
+
+"Think over that, boys. Do you begin to see what a man must be, to be a
+leader? We have had plenty of Army men in Western exploration since
+then, plenty of engineers who could spell. But in all the records you'll
+not find one example of responsibility handled as quietly and
+decisively as that. You must remember the pressure he was under. It
+would have been so easy to take the united conviction of all these old,
+grizzled, experienced _voyageurs_ and hunters.
+
+"Well, if Clark and he argued over it, at least that is not known. But
+all the men took the decision of the two leaders without a whimper. I
+think the personnel of that party must have been extraordinary. And
+their leaders proved their judgment later.
+
+"Now, with poor Sacagawea expected to die, and with all the
+responsibility on their shoulders, our captains acted as though they had
+no doubts. If they did have, Lewis solved it all when he ascended the
+Marias on his way home next year.
+
+"Now the water was getting swift. They knew nothing of what was ahead,
+but their load was heavy. So now they hid their biggest boat in the
+willows on an island, at the mouth of the Marias, and dug a _cache_ for
+a great deal of their outfit--axes, ammunition, casks of provisions, and
+much superfluous stuff. They dug this bottle shaped, as the old fur
+traders did, lined it with boughs and grass and hides, filled it in and
+put back the cap sod--all the dirt had been piled on skins, so as not to
+show. Stores would keep for years when buried carefully in this way.
+
+"So now, lighter of load, but still game--with Cruzatte playing the
+fiddle for the men to dance of evenings--on June 12th they 'set out and
+proceeded on,' leaving this great and historical fork of the water road
+on the morning of June 12th, with Sacagawea so very sick that the
+captains took tender care of her all the trip, though they speak
+slightingly of Chaboneau, her husband, who seems to have been a bit of a
+mutt. One of the men has a felon on his hand; another with toothache has
+taken cold in his jaw; another has a tumor and another a fever. Three
+canoes came near being lost; and it rained. But they 'proceeded on,' and
+on that day they first saw the Rockies, full and fair! And three days
+later Lewis found the Great Falls, hearing the noise miles away, and
+seeing the great cloud of mist arising above the main fall.
+
+"And then they found the eagle's nest on the cottonwood island, of which
+the Minnetarees had told them. And then Sacagawea got well, and gave the
+O.K. after her delirium had gone! And then every man, woman, and child
+in that party agreed that their leaders were safe to follow!
+
+"It took them one month to get over that eighteen miles portage. That
+made five weeks they had lost here out of direct travel. But they never
+did lose courage, never did reason wrong, and never did go back one
+foot. Leadership, my boys! And both those captains, Lewis especially,
+had a dozen close calls for death, with bears, floods, rattlesnakes,
+gun-shot, and accidents of all kinds. Their poor men also were in bad
+case many a time, but they held through. No more floggings now, this
+side of Mandan--maybe both men and captains had learned something about
+discipline."
+
+Their leader ceased for the time, and turned, hat in hand, to the ruined
+quadrangle of adobe, the remnants of old Fort Benton. The boys also for
+a moment remained silent. Jesse approached and touched the sleeve of his
+Uncle Dick.
+
+"I wouldn't have missed this for anything," said he. "I can see how they
+all must have felt when they got here, where they could see out over the
+country once more. Do you suppose it was right here that they stood?"
+
+John was ready with his copy of the _Journal_, which now the boys all
+began to prize more and more.
+
+"Here it is," said he, "all set down in the finest story book I ever
+read in all my life. Captain Lewis and Captain Clark say they
+
+    "'stroled out to the top of the hights in the fork of these rivers,
+    from whence we had an extensive and most inchanting view. The
+    country in every direction about was one vast plain in which
+    innumerable herds of Buffalow were seen attended by their shepperds
+    the wolves; the solatary antalope which now had there young were
+    distributed over its face, some herds of Elk were also seen; the
+    verdure perfectly cloathed the ground, the wether was plesent and
+    fair; to the South we saw a range of lofty mountains which we
+    supposed to be a continuation of the Snow Mountains stretching
+    themselves from S.E. to N.W. terminating abruptly about S.West from
+    us, these were partially covered with snow; behind these Mountains
+    and at a great distance a second and more lofty range of mountains
+    appeared to strech across the country in the same direction with
+    the others, reaching from West, to the N. of N.W.--where their
+    snowy tops lost themselves beneath the horizon, the last range was
+    perfectly covered with snow.'"
+
+"Does it check up, boys?" Uncle Dick smiled. "I think it does, except
+that our old ruins are not right where they then stood on the Missouri.
+The river mouth is below here. There is a high tongue of land between
+the Teton River, just over there, where it runs close along the
+Missouri, two or three hundred yards away, but I hardly think that was
+where they stood.
+
+"But though the works of man have changed many times, and themselves
+been changed by time, the works of God are here, as they were in June of
+1805--except that the wild game is gone forever.
+
+"Lewis or Clark could not dream that in 1812 a steamboat would go down
+the Ohio and the Mississippi; nor that some day a steamboat would land
+here, close to the Marias River.
+
+"But after Lewis and Clark the fur traders poured up here. Then came the
+skin hunters and their Mackinaws, following the bull boats which took
+some _voyageurs_ downstream. Then the river led the trails west, and the
+bull outfits followed the pack trains. So when the adventurers found
+gold at the head of the Missouri they had a lane well blazed, surely.
+
+"Fort Benton was not by any means the first post to be located at or
+near this great point, the mouth of the Marias. In 1831 James Kipp, the
+father of my friend, Joe Kipp, put up a post here, but he did not try to
+hold it. The next year D. D. Mitchell built Fort McKenzie, about six
+miles above the Marias, on the left bank--quite a stiff fort, one
+hundred and twenty by one hundred and forty feet, stockaded--and this
+stuck till 1843. Then their continual troubles with the Blackfeet drove
+them out. Then there was Fort Lewis, in the neighborhood, somewhere, in
+1845.
+
+"Fort Benton was put up in 1850. And as the early stockades of
+Booneville and Harrodsburg and Nashville in Kentucky were on 'Dark and
+bloody ground,' so ought the place where we now are standing be called
+the dark and bloody ground of the Missouri River, for this indeed was a
+focus of trouble and danger, even before the river trade made Benton a
+tough town."
+
+"Well, the glory of old Benton is gone!" said Rob, at last. "Just the
+same, I am glad we came here. So this is all there is left of it!"
+
+"Yes, all there is left of the one remaining bastion, or corner tower.
+It was not built of timber, but of adobe, which lasted better and was as
+good a defense and better. Many a time the men of Benton have flocked
+down to meet the boat, wherever she was able to land; and many a wild
+time was here--for in steamboat days alcohol was a large part of every
+cargo. The last of the robes were traded for in alcohol, very largely.
+And by 1883, after the rails had come below, the last of the hides were
+stripped from the last of the innumerable herds of buffalo that Lewis
+and Clark saw here, at the great fork of the road into the Rockies; and
+soon the last pelt was baled from the beaver. If you go to the Blackfeet
+now you find them a thinned and broken people, and the highest ambition
+of their best men is to dress up in modern beef-hide finery and play
+circus Indian around the park hotels.
+
+"Well, this was their range, young excellencies, and this was the head
+of the disputed ground between the Crows, Nez Perces, Flatheads, and
+Shoshonis, all of whom knew good buffalo country when they saw it.
+
+"And yet, what luck our first explorers had! They surely did have luck,
+for they had good guidance of the Minnetarees among the Mandans, and
+then, from the time they left the Mandans until the next fall, beyond
+the Three Forks of the Missouri, they never saw an Indian of any sort!
+At the Great Falls, a great hunting place, they found encampments not
+more than ten days or so old, but not a soul.
+
+"Thus endeth the lesson for to-day! I'm sorry we haven't a camp to go to
+to-night instead of a hotel, but I promise to mend that matter for you
+in a day or so, if Billy Williams is up from Bozeman with his pack
+train, as I wired him. I said the fifteenth, and this is the thirteenth,
+so we've two days for the Falls. I wish we didn't know where they were!
+I wish I didn't know the Marias isn't the Missouri. I wish--well, at
+least I can wish that old Fort Benton was here and the whistle of the
+steamboat was blowing around the bend!"
+
+"Don't, sir!" said Rob. "Please don't!"
+
+"No," said John. "To-day is to-day."
+
+"All the same," said Jesse, "all the same----"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+AT THE GREAT FALLS
+
+
+"The only thing," said Jesse, as the three young companions later stood
+together on the bank of the river, looking out; "the only thing is----"
+
+He did not finish his sentence, but stood, his hands thrust into the
+side pockets of his jacket, his face not wholly happy.
+
+"Yes, Jesse; but what is the only thing?" John smiled, and Rob, tall and
+neat in his Scout uniform, also smiled as he turned to the youngest of
+their party. They were alone, Uncle Dick having gone to town to see
+about the pack train. They had walked up from their camp below the
+flourishing city of Great Falls.
+
+"Well, it's all right, I suppose," replied Jesse. "I suppose they have
+to have cities, of course. I suppose they have to have those big
+smelters over there and all those other things. Maybe it's not the same.
+The buffalo are not here, nor the elk--though the _Journal_ says
+hundreds of buffalo were washed over the falls and drowned, right along.
+Then, the bears are not here any more, though it was right here that
+they were worst; they had to fight them all the time, and the only
+wonder was that no one was killed, for those bears were _bad_, believe
+me----"
+
+"Sure, they must have been," assented John. "There were so many dead
+buffalo, below the falls, where they washed ashore, that the grizzlies
+came in flocks, and didn't want to be disturbed or driven away from
+their grub. And these were the first boats that ever had come up that
+river, the first white men. So they jumped them. Why, over yonder above
+the falls were the White Bear Islands; so many bears on them, they kept
+the camp so scared up all the time, they had to make up a boat party and
+go over and hunt them off. They used to swim this river like it was a
+pond, those bears! They kept the party on the alert all day and all
+night. They had a dozen big fights with them."
+
+"Humph!" Jesse waved an arm to the broad expanse of flat water above the
+great dam of the power company. "Is that so? Well, that's what I mean.
+Where's the big tree with the black eagle's nest? How do we know this is
+the big portage of the Missouri at all? No islands, no eagle. Yet you
+know very well it was the sight of that eagle's nest that made Lewis
+and Clark know for sure that they were on the right river. The Indians
+didn't say anything about the Marias River being there at all; they
+never mentioned that to either Clark or Lewis when they made their maps
+in the winter with the Mandans. But they did mention that eagle nest on
+the island at the big falls--they thought everybody would notice
+that--and when you come to think of it, that did nail the thing to the
+map--no getting around the nest on the island at the falls.
+
+"Oh, I suppose this town's all right, way towns go. Only thing is, they
+ought not to have spoiled the island and the eagle nest with their old
+dam. How do we know this is the place?"
+
+"Well, we'll have to chance that, Jess," said Rob. "Quite a drop here,
+anyhow, all these cascades. If we'd brought the _Adventurer_ all the way
+up the river from Mandan, and got to the head of the rapids, I guess
+we'd think it was the place to portage."
+
+"Yes; and where'd we get any cottonwood tree around here, to cut off
+wheels for our boat wagon?" demanded John. "Eighteen miles and more, it
+was, that they portaged, after they'd dug their second big _cache_ and
+hid their stuff and covered up the white perogue at the head of their
+perogue navigation (they'd left the big red perogue at the Marias).
+
+"And it took them a solid month to do that eighteen miles. The little
+old portage right here was the solidest jolt they'd had, all the way up
+the river to here--two thousand five hundred and ninety-three miles they
+called it, to the mouth of the Medicine River; which means the Sun
+River, that comes in just above the falls. Portage? Well, I'll call it
+some portage, even for us, if we had to make it!"
+
+"Huh! Dray her out and put her on bicycle wheels and hitch her to a
+flivver and haul her around--two or three whole hours! Mighty risky and
+adventurous, isn't it? I want my bears! Especially I want my eagle! I've
+been counting on that old black eagle, all the way up, cordelling from
+the mouth of the Yellowstone."
+
+"Well," resumed Rob, "at least they've named the Black Eagle Falls here
+after him. They've honored him with a dam and a bridge and a power house
+and a smelter and a few such things. And if we'd got here a little
+earlier--any time up to 1866 or 1872, or even later, maybe, we'd have
+seen Mr. Eagle, and he'd have shown us that this was his place."
+
+"I know it!" broke in John. "You didn't get that from the _Journal_.
+That's another book, later."[2]
+
+[Footnote 2: _Trail of Lewis and Clark_, Olin D. Wheeler, 1904.]
+
+"Well, it said that Captain Reynolds of the army saw that eagle nest on
+the cottonwood tree on the island in 1866, and he thought it like enough
+was Lewis's eagle. And then in 1872 T. P. Roberts, in his survey, was
+just below those falls, and a big eagle sailed out from its nest in the
+old broken cottonwood, on the island below the falls, and it tackled
+him! He says it came and lit on the ground near him and showed fight.
+Then it flew around, not ten feet away, and dropped its claws almost in
+his face. He was going to shoot it. One of his men did shoot at it.
+Well, I suppose some fellow did shoot it, not long after that. I'd not
+like to have the thought on my mind that I'd been the man to kill the
+Meriwether Lewis black eagle." Rob spoke seriously, and added:
+
+"Yet in Alaska the government pays a fifty-cent bounty on eagle heads,
+and they killed six thousand in one year--maybe several times that, in
+all, for all I know--because the eagles eat salmon! Well, that didn't
+save the salmon. The Fraser River, even, isn't a salmon river any more;
+and you know how our canneries have dropped."
+
+"Poor old eagle!" said Jesse. "Well, for one, I refuse to believe that
+this is the Big Portage. Nothing to identify it."
+
+"Not much," admitted Rob. "Not very much now. The falls that Roberts
+named the Black Eagle Falls are wiped out by the dam. The island is
+gone, the cottonwood is gone, the eagle and his mate are gone. That's
+the uppermost fall of the five. It's inside the city limits, where we
+are now."
+
+"She was just twenty-six feet five inches of a drop," said the exact
+John. "Clark measured them all, the whole five of them, with the spirit
+level. They call the little fellow, only six feet seven inches, the
+Colter Falls, after John Colter, one of the expedition--only Lewis and
+Clark didn't name it at all, for Colter hadn't become famous then as the
+discoverer of the Yellowstone.
+
+"Lewis liked the big Rainbow Fall about the best of the lot--it was so
+clean cut, all the way across the river. He named that one, and it
+stuck. He named the Crooked Falls, too, and that stuck. It must have
+been natural for somebody to name the Great Falls, because the drop
+there is eighty-seven feet and three-fourths of an inch, as Clark made
+it with his little old hand level. But they didn't name the big fall,
+though they did the Crooked, which is only nineteen feet high."
+
+"Lewis saw the rainbow below this fall," said Jesse. "Of course, that's
+why he named it. We could go down the stair easily and see it, if we
+wanted to. If it's the same rainbow, and if it's still there, the only
+reason is they couldn't melt up the rainbow and sell it, somehow. I
+don't want to see it. I don't care about all the smelters. I want my old
+cottonwood tree and my island and my eagle!
+
+"I wonder who killed the eagle!" he went on. "Probably he threw it in
+the river and let it float over the falls. Maybe some section hand stuck
+a feather of that eagle in his hat and called it macaroni! For me, I'm
+never going to shoot at an eagle again, not in all my life."
+
+"Nor am I," nodded Rob, gravely.
+
+"Neither shall I," John also agreed.
+
+"Well, at least the rainbow is left," said Rob, at length, "and the Big
+Spring that Clark found is still doing business at the edge of the river
+below the smelter above the Colter Fall--cold as it was one hundred and
+sixteen years ago, and more than a hundred yards across. Nature
+certainly does things on a big scale here. What a sight all this must
+have been to those explorers who were the first to see it!
+
+"But, so far as that goes, talking of changes, I don't think the general
+look and feel of this portage has changed as much as lots of the flat
+country away down the river--Floyd's Bluff, or the Mandan villages, lots
+of places where the river cut in. Here the banks are hard and rocky.
+They can't have altered much. It was a hard enough scramble over the
+side ravines, when we were coming up from camp, wasn't it, even if we
+didn't have dugout canoes on cottonwood solid wheels and willow
+axles--breaking down all the time?"
+
+"But, Rob, a month--a whole month!" said John. "That must have made them
+worry a good deal, because now it was the middle of summer, and they
+didn't know where they were going or how they would get across."
+
+"They did worry, more than they had till then. Now, I think they must
+have had quite a lot of stuff along, all the time. They had whisky, for
+instance--they drank the last of it right here at the Great Falls, and
+Uncle Dick says that was the first time Montana went dry! They had a
+grindstone. And they had an iron boat--or the iron frame of a
+boat--brought it all the way from Harper's Ferry, in Virginia, where
+Lewis had it made.
+
+"That boat was the only bad play they made. She was Lewis's pet. I don't
+know why they never set her up before, but, anyhow, they did, at the
+head of the falls here. She had iron rods for gunwales, and they spliced
+willows to stiffen her. She was thirty-six feet long, and four and
+one-half feet beam, a couple of feet deep, and would carry all their
+cargo, while a few men could carry her. You see, Lewis had the skin-boat
+coracle in mind before he left Washington.
+
+"Well, Lewis wanted elk-hides for his boat, and the elk were scarce; he
+had his men out everywhere after elk-hides. He got twenty-eight hides,
+and took off the hair, and that wasn't enough; so he took four
+buffalo-hides to piece her out. And then she wouldn't do! No. Failure;
+the first and only failure of a Lewis and Clark outdoor idea.
+
+"Well, Lewis was fair enough, though it mortified him to lose days and
+days on his pet boat. They sewed the skins with edged awls, and that cut
+the holes rather big, so when the hides dried and shrunk, the threads
+didn't fill the holes any more. He had no tar to pay the seams with, or
+he'd have been all right. They tried tallow and ashes, but it wouldn't
+work. For a few minutes she sat high and light; then the filling soaked
+out. Poor Lewis!--he had to give it up. So they buried her, somewhere
+opposite the White Bear Islands, I suppose, where they had their camp."
+
+"Yes, and then Clark had to go and hustle cottonwood for some more
+dugouts, and cottonwood was a long, long way off," contributed John.
+"Oh, they had their troubles. Hah! We complained, coming up Portage
+Creek, and over the heads of the draws, trying to find their old portage
+trail. What if we'd been in moccasins? What if we'd been packing a
+hundred pounds or dragging at a hide wagon rope? And what if the buffalo
+had cut up the ground in rainy times, so it dried in little pointed
+lumps like so many nails--how'd that go in moccasins? Well, they had to
+lie down and rest, it was so awfully hard on them. But they never a one
+flickered, leader or enlisted men, and they put her through!"
+
+"It was a whole month?" queried Jesse.
+
+"Yes," John informed him, referring to the _Journal_ once again. "It was
+June 14th when Shields came back downstream from Lewis, and told Clark's
+boat party that they had found the falls, and it was July 15th when
+they got their new canoes done and started off up the river."
+
+"And I'll bet they were fussed up about things," said Jesse. "Must have
+been scared."
+
+"No, I don't think they were," said Rob. "Well, anyhow, in one month
+they had surveyed and staked out their portage trail around the big
+falls, had _cached_ their heavy stores, had built new boats, had killed
+all the meat they could use, and had proceeded on. They now knew that
+they were almost to the western edge of the buffalo. On west, as I
+expect Sacagawea also told them, they might have to come to horse meat
+and salmon. That didn't stop our fellows. They proceeded on."
+
+"Time they did!" said Jesse.
+
+"Yes. They had been away from St. Louis just a year and two months, when
+they left the Falls, here. Let's have a look at the map."
+
+They sat down, here on the bank of the great river, on the edge of the
+great modern town, in sight of many smelter smokes, and bent over the
+old maps that William Clark had made with such marvelous exactness more
+than a hundred years ago.
+
+"She seems to go in long sweeps, the old Missouri," said John, pointing
+with his finger.
+
+"First we went almost west, to Kansas City, Missouri. Then almost north,
+to Sioux City, Iowa. Then northwest to Pierre, South Dakota, and then
+north to Bismarck, North Dakota. Then she runs strong northwest to the
+Yellowstone, and then straight west to here. From here she takes one
+more big angle, and runs almost south to the Three Forks."
+
+"Look it!" pointed Jesse. "She starts below Forty, at St. Louis, and
+goes north almost to Forty-nine, and then she drops down again to
+Forty-five at the Three Forks. And Lewis had observations on latitude
+and longitude right along. Wonder what he thought!"
+
+"He did a great deal of thinking," said Rob. "He had the conviction that
+so great a river must run deep into the Rockies--he insisted on that.
+Then he had the Indians at Mandan to give him some local maps. And he
+had Sacagawea, worth more than them all for local advice in a tight
+place where no one else had been ahead. It's wonderful, if you study it,
+to see how he made all those things work together, and how he used his
+brains and his reason all the way across. Even about his pet portable
+boat, he didn't sit down and cry. He did the next thing."
+
+"And proceeded on!"
+
+"And proceeded on, yes."
+
+"Well," concluded Jesse, "even if my eagle and my island are gone, I
+suppose I'll have to admit that this place is the real portage. They saw
+the Rockies right along now. They threw those canoes into the high,
+too!"
+
+"Tracking and poling, pretty soon now, and a fine daily average," nodded
+Rob. "And now I don't suppose that we need just feel that we've funked
+anything by not sticking to our boat all the time, and taking a pack
+train here; because Clark or Lewis, or both of them, and a good many of
+the men, walked a lot of the time from here, hunting and scouting and
+figuring on ahead."
+
+"That's so!" said Jesse. "Where were their horses all the time?"
+
+"None above the Mandans," said Rob; "maybe not that far. They started
+with two, and picked up one, and one died--that's the record up to the
+Sioux. But beyond the Mandans they hoofed it, or poled and paddled and
+pulled. They couldn't sail the canoes--they gave that up. And now both
+their perogues were left behind. So when they left the old eagle on his
+broken tree, and the savage white bears all along here, and the
+rattlesnakes and everything else that tried to stop them here, they
+drew their belts in and threw her in the high--that's right, Jess."
+
+"And speaking of the portage," he continued, "Uncle Dick told me to get
+a wagon and follow down as close as we could to our camp and get our
+stuff all up to a place above the White Bear Islands, and go into camp
+there until he came in with Billy Williams and the pack horses, from his
+ranch on the Gallatin, near the Forks. So that's a day's work, even with
+a flivver--which I think we'll use part way. Time we set out and
+proceeded on, fellows."
+
+They turned away from the Great Falls of the ancient river, in part with
+a feeling of sadness. Jesse waved his hand toward the Black Eagle Falls.
+
+"The only thing is----" said he.
+
+The others knew Jesse was wishing for the wild days back again.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+READY FOR THE RIVER HEAD
+
+
+The young explorers, used as they were to outdoor life, had no
+difficulty in getting their outfit up a long coulee to the level of the
+prairie, where a small car quickly carried them into and beyond the city
+to a point where another gradual descent led down to the point usually
+believed to be that where the "White Bear" camp of Lewis and Clark was
+pitched above the falls. Here the great river was wide and more quiet,
+as though making ready for its great plunges below. Not far from the
+railway tracks they put up their temporary camp, as the pack horses had
+not yet arrived.
+
+"The reader will suppose one hundred years to have elapsed!" said Jesse,
+sarcastically. "All right; but I want something besides fried eggs and
+marmalade."
+
+"Easy now, Jess," rejoined his older friend. "Leave that to Uncle Dick.
+He told me he was going to get us some sport within ten days from
+here--fishing, I mean--trout, and even grayling. Of course, at this
+season there'd be nothing to shoot. Lewis and Clark killed all sorts of
+game at all sorts of seasons, but they had to do that to live. They had
+thirty-two people in their party, all working hard and eating plenty.
+They would eat a whole buffalo every day, or a couple of elk, so
+somebody had to be busy. It would have taken a lot of fried eggs and
+marmalade to put them up and over those rapids. But as you say, we've
+got to suppose a hundred years to have elapsed, so we don't kill a
+buffalo every day."
+
+"I could eat half of one, any day!" said John. "I get awfully hungry,
+just from fighting the mosquitoes."
+
+"I'll bet they were bad enough. The old _Journal_ says more about
+mosquitoes than any other hardship. Even Gass in his journal tells how
+bad they were here at the Great Falls--I think they feared them more
+than they did the white bears or the rattlesnakes; and they had plenty
+of them all. In one day Lewis was chased into the river by a grizzly,
+charged by three buffalo bulls, and nearly bitten by a rattler!"
+
+"Must have been a busy day!" said John.
+
+"Well, I expect every day was busy for them. For instance, when they got
+to this camp for the upper headquarters, they had to build two more
+canoes, ten miles above here. That made eight in all for the thirty-two
+people, or four to a canoe. I don't think they ever carried that many
+with their cargo; and they had quite a lot of cargo, even then. They
+were eating pork on the Continental Divide--their last pork!"
+
+"No," said Jesse, "they never did all ride at once. First one captain
+went ahead on foot, then the other. You see, they got into mountain
+water pretty soon now. They used the tow line a great deal, or poled the
+boats rather than paddled. Comes to getting a heavily loaded boat up a
+heavy river, you've got to put on the power, I'm telling you."
+
+"Yes, sir," nodded Rob. "They knew they had to travel now. About all
+they had to go on was the girl Sacagawea's word that pretty soon they'd
+come to her people.
+
+"So they set out from here on July 15th, the very day that we will, if
+we get off to-morrow; only it took them one year more to get here than
+it did us. And two men were in each canoe--not enough to drive her, they
+found. And Lewis and the girl walked on this side the river, and after a
+while Clark walked on the other side--all on foot, of course. He had
+Fields and Potts and his servant York with him--all alone in the Indian
+country, of which not one of them knew a foot.
+
+"And now," went on Rob, "they were once more against that same old very
+risky proposition of a divided party, part in boats and part on shore. I
+tell you, and we ought to know it, from our own experiences up North,
+that that's the easiest way to get into trouble that any wilderness
+travelers could think up. They simply had marvelous luck. For instance,
+after Clark left them above here, on July 18th, he never saw them
+oftener than once a day again until July 22d, and that was away up at
+the head of the big Canyon.
+
+"To the Three Forks was two hundred and fifty-two and one-half miles, as
+Clark called it, though engineers now say it is only two hundred and ten
+miles. He walked clean around the big Canyon of the Missouri at the Gate
+of the Mountains--below Helena, that is--and never saw it at all! Now if
+you say he walked the whole ten days from the head of the falls to the
+Forks, and say it was only two hundred and ten miles and not over two
+hundred and fifty, that's over twenty miles a day, on foot, in the
+mountains, under pack and a heavy rifle, in moccasins, and over
+prickly-pear country that got their feet full of thorns. Clark pulled
+out seventeen spines, broken off in his feet, one day when he stopped.
+
+"Now that takes good men to do that. Not many sportsmen of to-day could
+do it, I know that. And yet, after four days' absence spent in this wild
+country where they were the first white men, they met again at the head
+of the Canyon below the Forks, just as easy and as natural as if they had
+telephoned to each other every day! I call that exploring! I call those
+chaps great men!"
+
+"Reader will suppose one hundred years to have elapsed," drawled Jesse,
+again. "I'd telephone Uncle Dick now, if I knew where he was."
+
+"Leave him alone," said John. "I give him till to-morrow. It was only a
+week ago he got word through to Billy Williams, in the Three Forks
+Valley, to come on with his horses."
+
+"Well," said Jesse, "if I'm not to have half a buffalo to-night, and if
+Cruzatte, the bow man, isn't here to play a jig for us, I'll see what I
+can do about some fried eggs and marmalade."
+
+"And I'll like to get a leg over leather once more," said John. "I'm
+looking for horses now, same as Lewis and Clark did along in here for a
+few weeks."
+
+The young travelers did not have so long to wait as they had feared.
+That very night, as they sat about their fire on their bed rolls,
+talking of their many trips together, they heard in the darkness not far
+away the tremulous note of a screech owl, repeated again a moment later.
+Jesse stopped talking, turning his head. Rob laughed: "That's Uncle Dick
+now!" he said, in a low tone; and answered with an owl call just like
+the one they had heard. They heard a laugh in the dark, and from behind
+the tent stepped Uncle Dick.
+
+"How!" said he.
+
+"How!" said each of the boys gravely. Rob made the Indian sign of "sit
+down"--his fist struck down on the robe that was spread by the little
+fire.
+
+Their companion sat down, not saying a word. Pretty soon he began to
+talk in "sign talk," the boys all watching closely.
+
+_"Me. Gone. Two sleeps. I come here, now, me. Sun comes up. We go. We.
+Cross water. Horse--four. Ah! Two----"_
+
+Uncle Dick broke out laughing. John shook his fingers, loosely, to say,
+"What's that?"
+
+"That's what I don't know!" Uncle Dick said, laughing again. "I don't
+know what the sign is for 'mule.' It isn't elk, or deer, or wolf, or
+buffalo. Oh, of course, split fingers over another finger--that means
+'Ride horse.' But that does not mean 'mule'! And if I put on ears, how'd
+you know I didn't mean 'deer with-big-ears,' or 'mule deer,' and not
+'mule'? The Indians had mule deer, but they didn't have mules!"
+
+"Yes, they did!" said Jesse. "The _Journal_ says they bought one mule of
+the Shoshonis, away west of here!"
+
+"Does it? I'd forgotten. Well, I'd like to know where those people got
+that mule out here, in 1805! I'd have been no more surprised to see a
+mastodon really walking around out here. Of course, you know that
+President Jefferson wrote Lewis not to be surprised if he did see the
+mastodon still living in this unknown country. You see, all of them knew
+about the mastodon bones found in the Big Lick, Kentucky. They didn't
+know a thing about this new world we'd just bought of Napoleon,
+mastodons, mules, and all.
+
+"Well, anyhow, Billy Williams has his camp five or six miles from here,
+across, and he has four saddle broncs and two perfectly good mules for
+the packs--one plumb black and one plumb white--both ex-army mules and
+I suppose fifty years or so old. I think old Sleepy, the white one, is
+the wisest animal I ever saw on four legs--I've been out with Sleepy
+before, and with Billy, too. Good outfit, boys--small, no frills, all we
+need and nothing we don't.
+
+"I've left our outboard motors here in town with a friend. Most wish we
+hadn't brought them around. But we'll see how much time we have when we
+get done projecting around at the head of the river.
+
+"I can promise you some knotty problems up in there. To me, what's ahead
+of us in the next two weeks was the most exciting part of the whole
+Lewis and Clark trip across."
+
+"But, Uncle Dick, you promised us some sport--fishing, I mean--trout and
+grayling."
+
+"Jesse," said his uncle, "yes, I did. And being a good Indian myself,
+I'm going to keep my word to the paleface. We'll take a week off with
+Billy's flivver, if Billy's mules connect with the flivver; and I'll
+promise you, even now, hard hit as every trout water is all through
+here, the finest trout fishing--and the only grayling fishing--there is
+left in all America. How does that strike you?"
+
+"Good! Where's it going to be?" demanded Jesse.
+
+"Never you mind. That's a secret just yet. Billy knows."
+
+"And we don't have to suppose a hundred years have elapsed?"
+
+"No! Now turn in, fellows, or Billy'll think we're lazy in the morning."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+THE PACK TRAIN
+
+
+Before sunup Rob had the camp fire going, while Jesse brought in water
+and wood and John bent over his cooking. Uncle Dick walked up the river
+to where he had landed his boat the evening previous, and dropped down
+closer to the camp. The day still was young when the tent was struck and
+everything packed aboard the boat, which presently landed them on the
+farther shore, ready for the next lap of their journey and the new
+transportation that was now in order.
+
+They were met by their new companion, the young rancher, Billy
+Williams, who had struck his own camp and brought the animals down
+to meet them. They found him a quiet, pleasant-spoken young man of
+perhaps thirty, lean and hardy, dressed much like a farmer except
+that he wore a pair of well-worn, plain, calfskin chaps to protect his
+legs in riding--something in which the boys could not imitate him, for
+they were cut down to their Scout uniforms; which, however, did very
+well.
+
+They shook hands all around, the young rancher quietly estimating his
+young charges, and they in turn making up their opinions regarding him,
+which, needless to say, were not unfavorable, for none were quicker than
+they to know a good outdoor man when they saw him.
+
+"So this is old Sleepy?" said Jesse, going up to the sleek big white
+mule that stood with drooping head, the stalk of a thistle hanging out
+of a corner of his mouth. "He's fat and strong, isn't he? What makes him
+look so sad? And aren't you afraid he'll run away? He hasn't even a
+halter on him."
+
+"No, he won't run away," replied Billy. "You couldn't drive him away
+from the packs. He always comes up every morning to be packed, and he
+always stands around like he was going to die--but he isn't. Sleepy'll
+live another hundred years, anyhow.
+
+"I never hobble or tie or picket Sleepy at night; he sticks close to old
+Fox. That's my horse, the red one. You'd think Fox was going to die,
+too, but he isn't. He used to be a cow horse; and a mean one, too, they
+say; but all at once he reformed and since then he's led a Christian
+life, same as Sleepy.
+
+"About that thistle. Sleepy is very fond of thistles--he'll stop the
+whole train to eat one. Usually he carries one hanging in his mouth,
+so's to eat it when he gets hungry. He's a wise one, that mule. I'll bet
+you, an hour before camp to-night you'll see him wake up and get frisky;
+all his tired look is just a bluff. And I'll bet you, too, you can't
+manage to ride ahead of Sleepy on the trail. He never will take the last
+place on the trail."
+
+"Why, how's that?" said Jesse. "I should think he'd like to loaf behind,
+if he's so wise."
+
+"No, Sleepy has got brains. He knows that if he gets a stone in his
+foot, or if his pack slips, a man is his best friend. So he just goes
+ahead where folks can see that he's comfortable. You can't ride ahead of
+him; he'll gallop on and won't let you pass him; so don't try.
+
+"Nigger, that other mule, doesn't care--some one'll have to keep him
+moving. I usually carry a little rubber sling shot in my pocket, and
+when Nigger gets too lazy and begins to straggle off I turn around and
+peck him one with a pebble. Then you ought to see him get into his place
+and promise to be good!
+
+"I've got quite a pack train, at home on the Gallatin, but your uncle
+said this was all I was to bring. Can we take all your stuff?"
+
+Uncle Dick smiled at that and showed him the four rolls, neat and
+compact. "The robes make most of the bulk," said he.
+
+"Yes. Well, I hope they can keep warm in July," said Billy.
+
+"But we like 'em," said Jesse. "It's more like the old times."
+
+"Yes. Well, I hope you've got some mosquito bar. We've still got a few
+old-time mosquitoes in the valley; but in a week or two now they'll all
+be gone."
+
+"Trust these boys to have what they need, and no more," said Uncle Dick.
+"Now fall to and get on the loads while I take back my borrowed skiff."
+
+Billy looked at the boys dubiously. "Well, I'll make it the 'lone
+packer' hitch," said he.
+
+"Oh, they'll help you," said Uncle Dick. "They can throw almost any
+diamond, from the 'government' hitch down to the 'squaw' hitch. You see,
+we've lived up North a good deal, and learned to pack anything--man,
+dog, or mule."
+
+"So? Well, all right." He turned to Rob. "Better take off side," he
+said; "the mules are more used to me for near side. I never blindfold
+them."
+
+They began with Sleepy, and soon had two packs in the sling ropes, a
+third on top, with all ready to lash. Rob asked no questions, but went
+on, taking slack and cinching at the word. Billy laughed.
+
+"Tried you on the old U. S. hitch," said he. "None better. Set?"
+
+"All set!"
+
+"Cinch!" Rob put his foot against Sleepy's far side and drew hard. In a
+jiffy the ropes flew into the tight diamond and Billy tied off. "She's a
+good one!" intoned Rob. Billy laughed again.
+
+"I guess you've been there before," said he.
+
+"How about you boys--can you all ride? My saddle stock's all quiet, far
+as I know, but----"
+
+"I think we can get by," said Rob. "We're not fancy, but we can ride all
+day."
+
+"Well, you try out the lengths of the stirrup leathers for yourselves,
+and I'll lace them for you. First let's get your loose stuff in the
+panniers on Nigger--I brought along one pair of kyacks, for it's easier
+to carry the cooking stuff and the loose grub that way than it is to
+make up packs in the mantas every day."
+
+John, who was cook for that week, now began to open and rearrange his
+kitchen pack; and Rob was standing off side, ready to handle the lash
+rope, when all at once they heard a snort and the trampling of hoofs.
+
+They turned, to see Jesse just manage to get his seat on one of the
+horses, which plunged away, his head down, bucking like a good fellow.
+For a moment or so Jesse hung on, but before anyone could mount and help
+him he was flung full length, and lay, his arms out, motionless. It all
+happened in a flash.
+
+They ran to him. At once Rob dragged him up, sitting, in front of him,
+and dragged his shoulders back, pressing his own knee up and down the
+boy's spine. He saw that no bones were broken, and was using some
+revival methods he had learned on the football field.
+
+"Ouch! Leggo!" said Jesse, after a little. "What's the matter?"
+
+Rob let him up. He staggered around in a circle two or three times,
+dazed. "Gee!" said he, laughing at last. "Where'd I drop from?" Then
+they all laughed, very gladly, seeing he had only been stunned by the
+fall.
+
+"All right, son?" asked Billy, coming to him anxiously. "I'm sorry! I
+didn't know----"
+
+"My fault, sir," said Jesse, stoutly. "I admit it. I ought to have known
+more than to mount any Western horse from the right side and not the
+left. My fault. But, you see, I had the laces loose on the stirrup, so
+I just thought I'd climb up on the other side and try the length there."
+
+"You're right--that's not safe," said Billy. "I never knew that cayuse
+to act bad before. Are you afraid of him now?"
+
+"Naw!" said Jesse, scoffing. "Bring him over--only fasten that leg
+leather. I'll ride him."
+
+"Better let me top him off first."
+
+"No, sir! He's in my string and I'll ride him alone!"
+
+Billy allowed him to try, since he saw that the horse was now over his
+fright, but he mounted his own horse first and rode alongside, after he
+had the stirrup fixed. To the surprise of all, the horse now was gentle
+as a lamb, and Jesse kicked him in the side to make him go.
+
+"Horse is a funny thing," said Billy. "He ain't got any real brains,
+like a mule. He gets scared at anything he ain't used to, and he can't
+reason any. Now look at Sleepy!"
+
+That animal did not even turn his head, but stood under his pack with
+eyes closed, taking no interest in their little matters.
+
+[Illustration: BEFORE ANYONE COULD HELP HIM HE WAS FLUNG FULL LENGTH,
+AND LAY MOTIONLESS]
+
+They had all the saddles ready and the last rope cinched by the time
+Uncle Dick returned. He rebuked Jesse for a "tenderfoot play" when
+they told him what had happened, much annoyed. "I'm responsible for
+you," said he, "and while I'm willing you each should take all fair
+chances like a man, I'll not have any needless risks. Learn to do things
+right, in the field, and then do them that way always. You know better
+than to mount a horse on the off side. That's an Indian trick, but
+you're not an Indian and this isn't an Indian horse."
+
+Jesse was much crestfallen for being thrown and then scolded for it.
+
+"Is he hurt any?" asked Uncle Dick of Rob, aside.
+
+Rob shook his head. "I don't think so. Just knocked the wind out of him.
+He was lying with his eyes wide open. He's all right."
+
+"On our way!" exclaimed Uncle Dick. They all swung into saddle now,
+Billy leading, old Sleepy next to Fox, the place he always claimed; then
+Uncle Dick, Jesse, John, and Rob, Nigger coming last, poking along
+behind, his ears lopping. In a few moments they all were shaken into
+place in the train, and all went on as usual, the gait being a walk,
+only once in a while an easy trot.
+
+"We set out and proceeded on under a gentle breeze," quoted John.
+
+"Reader will suppose one hundred years to have elapsed," began Jesse,
+trying to be funny.
+
+"Jess," said his uncle at that, "rather you'd not poke fun at the
+_Journal_, or at our trip. I want you to take it seriously and to feel
+it's worth while."
+
+"I'm sorry, sir," said Jesse, presently, who was rather feeling
+disgraced that morning. "I won't, any more. I'm glad we've got horses."
+
+"Now I want you to remember that when Captain Clark and his three men
+came in here, on foot, they found an old Indian road, marked plain by
+the lodge poles. They went up Little Prickly Pear Creek, over the ridge
+and down the Big Pear Creek.
+
+"You see, Clark was hunting Indians. He wanted horses; because he could
+see, even if the Indian girl had not told him, that before long they
+must run their river to its head, and then, if they couldn't get horses,
+their expedition was over for keeps. They all were anxious now.
+
+"Billy, all I have to say about the road is that we'll make long days;
+and we'll keep off the main motor roads all the way when we get toward
+Marysville and Helena, over east and south--no towns if we can help it.
+It's going to be hard to dodge them."
+
+"Pretty hard to help it, that's no lie," said Billy. "This country's all
+settled now. They been running a steamer up and down the Canyon above the
+Gate of the Mountains. You folks going to take that trip? Want to see
+the big dam at the head, at the old ferry?"
+
+Uncle Dick turned in his saddle, to see what the boys would say. John
+made bold to answer.
+
+"Well, I don't know how the other fellows feel," said he. "Of course, we
+know the Gate is a wonderful spot, where the two ranges pinch in; and
+the five miles above, they all say, is one of the greatest canyons in
+America--river deep, banks a thousand, fifteen hundred feet----"
+
+"Sure fine!" nodded Billy, who had dropped back alongside.
+
+"Yes, but you see, we've been in all sorts of canyons and things, pretty
+much, first. Now, way it seems to me is, anybody can go, if it's a
+steamboat trip. And if there's dams, she isn't so wild any more. We'd
+rather put in our time wilder, I believe."
+
+The others thought so, too. "Besides, we're following Clark now," said
+Rob, "and he never saw the Gate at all, famous as it got to be after
+Lewis described it. Lewis went wild over it."
+
+"Let's sidestep everything and get up to the Forks," voted John. "I
+didn't know this river was so long. We've got to hustle."
+
+"I've got another book," said Uncle Dick, slapping his coat pocket. "It
+covers the trail later on--1904. To-night in camp, I'll show you
+something that it says about this country in here at the head of the
+Missouri River.
+
+"You maybe didn't know that Helena, on below us, used to be Last Chance
+Gulch, where they panned $40,000,000 of gold--and had a Hangman's Tree
+until not so very long ago, where they used to hang desperadoes.
+
+"And off to Clark's right, when he topped the Ordway Creek divide, was
+where Marysville is now. They only took $20,000,000 out of one mine,
+over there! And so on. Wait till to-night, and I'll let you read
+something about the great gold mines and other mines in this book.[3] I
+told you the Missouri River leads you into the heart of the wildest and
+most romantic history of America, though much of it is slipping out of
+mind to-day."
+
+[Footnote 3: _The Trail of Lewis and Clark_; Olin D. Wheeler, 1904.]
+
+And that night, indeed around their first pack train camp fire, with the
+light of a candle stuck in a little heap of sand on top a box, he did
+read to an audience who sat with starting eyes, listening to the talks
+of gold which were new to them.
+
+"Listen here, boys," he said, after they had traced out the course of
+the day and made the field notes which served them as their daily
+journals. "Here's what it says about the very country we're in right
+now:
+
+    "'Gold was discovered in Montana in 1852 and the principal mining
+    camps of the early days were, in the orders of discovery and
+    succession, Grasshopper Gulch--Bannack--1862; Alder Gulch--Virginia
+    City--1863; Last Chance Gulch--Helena--1864; Confederate
+    Gulch--Diamond City--1865. Smaller placers were being worked on
+    large numbers of streams, many of them very rich, but the four here
+    named were those which achieved national renown from the vast
+    wealth they produced and from various incidents connected with
+    their rise and fall. In 1876 there were five hundred gold-bearing
+    gulches in Montana....
+
+    "'The California gold wave reached its zenith in 1853. What more
+    natural than that the army of miners, with the decadence of the
+    California fields, should search out virgin ground?...
+
+    "'When Captain Clark crossed the divide between Ordway's and
+    Pryor's Creeks he had at his right-hand the spurs of the Rockies
+    about Marysville, where one mine was afterward to be located from
+    which more than $20,000,000 of gold was to be taken. As he
+    proceeded across the prickly-pear plains toward the Missouri, he
+    came in sight of the future Last Chance Gulch, whereon Helena, the
+    capital of the state, is located, and from whose auriferous gravels
+    the world was to be enriched to the amount of $40,000,000 more.
+
+    "'From the gravel bars along the Missouri and its tributaries gold
+    dust and nuggets running into millions of dollars have been taken,
+    and the total production from placer mining through Montana,
+    including hydraulic mining, from 1862 to 1900 was, probably, not
+    far from $150,000,000, the total gold production from the state
+    being reckoned at about $250,000,000.
+
+    "'On July 23d the narrative mentions a Creek "20 yards wide" which
+    they called Whitehouse's Creek, after one of their men. This stream
+    was either Confederate or Duck Creek. The two flow into the
+    Missouri near together--the U. S. Land Office map combines them
+    into one creek. If Confederate Creek--this was the stream above the
+    mouth, in the heart of the Belt Mountains.
+
+    "'This gulch is said to have been discovered by Confederate
+    soldiers of Price's army, who, in 1861-62, after the battles of
+    Lexington, Pea Ridge, etc., in Missouri, made their way to Montana
+    _via_ the Missouri River and Fort Benton. On their way to Last
+    Chance Gulch they found "color" near the mouth of this creek.
+    Following up the stream, they found the pay dirt growing richer,
+    and they established themselves in the gulch, naming it
+    Confederate; and within a short time Diamond City, the town of the
+    gulch, was the center of a population of 5,000 souls.
+
+    "'Confederate Gulch was in many respects the most phenomenal of all
+    the Montana gulches. The ground was so rich that as high as $180 in
+    gold was taken from one pan of dirt; and from a plat of ground four
+    feet by ten feet, between drift timbers, $1,100 worth of gold was
+    extracted in twenty-four hours. At the junction of Montana Gulch--a
+    side gulch--with Confederate, the ground was very rich, the output
+    at that point being estimated at $2,000,000.
+
+    "'Montana Bar, which lies some distance up the gulch and at
+    considerable of an elevation above it, was found in the latter part
+    of 1865 to be marvelously rich. There were about two acres in
+    reality, that were here sluiced over, but the place is spoken of as
+    "the richest acre of gold-bearing ground ever discovered in the
+    world." I quote A. M. Williams, who has made a special study of
+    these old gulches:
+
+    "'"The flumes on this bar, on cleaning up, were found to be
+    burdened with gold by the hundredweight, and the enormous yield
+    of $180 to the pan in Confederate and Montana Gulches was forgotten
+    in astonishment, and a wild delirium of joy at the wonderful yield
+    of over a hundred thousand dollars to the pan of gravel taken from
+    the bedrock of Montana bar."'
+
+    "'From this bar seven panfuls of clean gold were taken out at one
+    "clean-up," that weighed 700 pounds and were worth $114,800. A
+    million and a half dollars in gold was hauled by wagon from Diamond
+    City to Fort Benton at one time for shipment to the East. This
+    gulch is reputed to have produced $10,000,000, from 1864 to 1868,
+    and it is still being sluiced.
+
+    "'Some very large gold nuggets were found in this region. Many were
+    worth from $100 to $600 or $700. Several were worth from $1,500 to
+    $1,800; one, of pure gold, was worth $2,100 and two or three
+    exceeded $3,000 in value.'"
+
+The boys sat silent, hardly able to understand what they had heard.
+Billy Williams nodded his head gravely.
+
+"It's all true," said he. "When I was a boy I heard my father tell of
+it. He was in on the Confederate Creek strike. He helped sluice five
+thousand dollars in one day, and they didn't half work. He said it was
+just laying there plumb yellow. They thought it would last always; but
+it didn't.
+
+"You see, I was born out here. My dad was rich in the 'sixties, then he
+went broke, like everybody. When he got old he married and settled. He
+took to ranching and hunting, and I've taken to ranching. Times are
+quieter now. They weren't always quiet, along this little old creek,
+believe me!"
+
+"Gee!" said Jesse, rubbing his head, which had a bump on it, "I'd like
+to pan some gold!"
+
+"I expect you could," said Billy. "Might get the color, even now, on the
+Jefferson bars, I don't know. Of course, they've learned how to work the
+low-grade dirt now--cyanide and dredges and all. It's a business now!
+
+"Yes, and when we get along a day or so farther, beyond the Forks, I'll
+locate a few more spots that got to be famous for reasons that Lewis and
+Clark never dreamed. From the head of the Canyon up the beaver swarmed;
+this was the best beaver water in America, and known as such. That was
+the wealth those boatmen understood. No wonder Lewis thought it would be
+a good place for a fort. And the traders did build a fur post at the
+Forks, in 1808. And the Blackfeet came. And they killed poor old
+Drewyer and a lot of others of the fur traders. Oh, this was the dark
+and bloody Blackfeet ground, all right."
+
+"Tell us about it, Uncle Dick!" Jesse was eager.
+
+"Wait, son. We are still on foot with Clark, you know, and we don't know
+where the boats are, and we haven't found any Shoshonis and we've not
+too much to eat. Wait a day or so. We've only done about twenty-five
+miles, and that's a big day for the packs--not a much faster rate than
+Clark was marching. He nearly wore out himself and his men, on that
+march. I fancy not even York, his cheerful colored man, came in that
+night as frisky as old Sleepy."
+
+"That's right," said John. "It was just as Mr. Williams said--he
+freshened up and came in playing, kicked up his heels when his load was
+off, and bit me on the arm and kicked old Nigger. And there he is now,
+with another thistle saved up!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+AT THE THREE FORKS
+
+
+Something of the feverish haste which had driven Capt. William Clark,
+when, weary and sore-footed, he and his little party has crowded on up
+along the great bend of the Missouri and into the vast southerly dip of
+the Continental Divide, now animated the members of the little pack
+train, which followed as nearly as they could tell the "old Indian road"
+which Clark had followed. They felt that they at least must equal his
+average daily distance of twenty-one miles.
+
+Keeping back from the towns all they could, though often in sight or
+hearing of the railway, they passed above the Gate of the Mountains and
+the Bear Tooth Rock, and skirted the flanks of the Belt range, which
+forked out on each side of the lower end of that great valley in which
+Nature for so long had concealed her secrets of the great and mysterious
+river.
+
+A feeling almost of awe came over them all as they endeavored to check
+up their own advance with the records of these others who had been the
+first white men to enter that marvelous land which ought to be called
+the Heart of America, hidden as it is, having countless arteries and
+veins, and pulsing as it is even now with mysterious and unfailing
+power--the most fascinating spot in all America.
+
+"Here they passed!" Uncle Dick would say. "Sometimes Clark met them, or
+hung up a deer on the bank for them. Always in the boats, or on shore
+when she was walking, the Indian girl would say that soon they would
+come to the Three Rivers, where years ago she had been captured by the
+Minnetarees, from the far-off Mandan country. 'Bimeby, my people!' I
+suppose she said. But for weeks they did not find her people."
+
+"Was Clark on his 'Indian road' all the time?" asked Rob.
+
+"He must have been a good deal of the time, or rather on two branches of
+it. That's natural. You see, this was on the road to the Great Falls,
+and the Shoshonis, Flatheads, and Nez Perces all went over there each
+summer to get meat. The Flatheads and Nez Perces took the cut-off from
+east of Missoula, direct to the Falls--the same way that Lewis went
+when they went east. They came from the salmon country west of the
+Rockies. So did the Shoshonis, part of the time, but their usual trail
+to the buffalo was along the Missouri and this big bend. Their real home
+was around the heads of the river, where they had been driven back in.
+
+"But they were bow-and-arrow people, while the Blackfeet had guns that
+they got of the traders, far north and east. Two ways the Blackfeet
+could get horses--over the Kootenai Trail, where Glacier Park is, or
+down in here, where the Shoshonis lived; for the Shoshonis also had
+horses--they got them west of the Rockies. So this road was partly war
+road and partly hunting road. I don't doubt it was rather plain at that
+time.
+
+"When the first fur traders of the Rocky Mountain Company came in here,
+right after Lewis and Clark came back and told their beaver stories, the
+country was known, you might say. It was at the Three Forks that Colter
+and Potts, two of the Lewis and Clark men, were attacked by the
+Blackfeet, and Potts killed and Colter forced to run naked, six miles
+over the stones and cactus--till at last he killed his nearest pursuer
+with his own spear, and hid under a raft of driftwood in the Jefferson
+River.
+
+"And when the fur men came up and built their fort, they had the Lewis
+and Clark hunter Drewyer to guide them at first. But the Blackfeet made
+bitter war on them. They killed Drewyer, as I told you, not far ahead of
+us now, at the Forks. And they drove out Andrew Henry, the post trader.
+He just naturally quit and fled south, over into the Henry's Lake
+country, in Idaho, and kept on down the Snake there, till he built his
+famous fort in there, so long known as Fort Henry. Well, he came in this
+way; and on ahead is where he started south, on a keen lope.
+
+"Can we get across, south from here, into Henry's Lake, Billy?" he
+asked.
+
+"Easy as anything," said Billy, "only the best way is to go by car from
+my place. Lots of folks go every day, from Butte, Helena, all these
+towns all along the valleys. Perfectly good road, and that's faster than
+a pack train."
+
+"That's what I have been promising my party!" said Uncle Dick. "But they
+shall not go fishing until they have got a complete notion of how all
+this country lies and how Lewis and Clark got through it."
+
+"They hardly ever were together any more, in here," said Rob. "First
+one, then the other would scout out ahead. And they both were sick.
+Clark was laid up after he met the boat party at the Forks, and Lewis
+took his turn on ahead. What good sports they were!"
+
+"Yes," said John, "and what good sports the men were! They'd had to
+track and pole up here, all the way from the Falls, and at night they
+were worn out. Grub was getting scarce and they hadn't always enough to
+keep strong on. And above the Forks they had to wade waist deep in ice
+water, for hours, slipping on the stones, in their moccasins, and their
+teeth chattering. I'll bet they hated the sight of a beaver, for it was
+the beaver dams that kept all the shores full of willows and bayous, so
+they couldn't walk and track the boat, but had to take to the stream
+bed. Why, the beaver were so bad that Lewis got lost in the dams and had
+to lie out, one night! And he didn't know where his boats were, either."
+
+"Well, that's what brought in the first wave of whites," said Uncle
+Dick--"the beaver. Then after they had got the beaver about all trapped
+out, say fifty years, in came the placer mines. Then came the deep lode
+mines--silver and copper. And then the farmers. Eh, Billy?"
+
+"Sure," said Billy. "And then the tourists! Lots of folks that run dude
+ranches make more than they could raising hay. The Gallatin Valley,
+above me, is settled solid. It's the finest black-land farm country in
+all the Rockies, and pretty as a picture. So's the Beaverhead Valley,
+and all these others, pretty, too. Irrigation now, instead of sluices;
+and lots of the dry farmers from below go up to Butte and work in the
+mines in the wintertime--eight or ten thousand men in mines there all
+the time."
+
+"And all because we'd bought this country from Napoleon!" said John.
+
+"I'm reading about that," said Billy. "I've got lots of books and maps,
+and, living right in here, I've spent a lot of time studying out where
+Lewis and Clark went. I tell it to you, they just naturally hot-footed
+it plumb all through here, one week after another. They did more travel,
+not knowing a thing about one foot of this country, and got over more of
+it, and knew more about it every day, than any party of men since then
+have done in five times the time they took."
+
+"And didn't know where they were, or what would be next," assented
+John. "Those chaps were the real, really real thing!"
+
+In this way, passing through or near one town after another, traveling,
+talking, hurrying, too busy in camp to loaf an hour, our young explorers
+under their active leaders exceeded the daily average of William Clark
+to the point where, above the present power dam, the valley of the
+Missouri opens out above the Canyon into that marvelous landscape which
+not even a century of occupancy has changed much, and which lay before
+them, wildly but pleasingly beautiful, now as it had for the first
+adventurers.
+
+"And it's ours!" said Rob, jealously. He took off his hat as he stood
+gazing down over the splendid landscape from the eminence which at that
+time they had surmounted.
+
+"Down near the power dam, somewhere," said Billy, "is where Clark must
+have struck into the river again from the trail he'd followed. He was
+about all in, and his feet in bad shape, but he would not give up. Then
+he lit on out ahead again, and was first at the Forks."
+
+"Why, you've read the _Journal_, too!" said John, and Billy nodded,
+pleasantly.
+
+"Why, yes, I think every man who lives in Montana ought to know it by
+heart. Yes, or in America. I'd rather puzzle it all out, up in here,
+than read anything else that we get in by mail.
+
+"My dad was all over here in early days. Many a tale he told of the
+placers and the road agents--yes, and of the Vigilantes, too, that
+cleaned out the road agents and made it safe in here, to travel or
+live."
+
+"Was your father a Vigilante, sir?" asked Jesse.
+
+"Well now, son," grinned Billy, "since you ask me, I more'n half believe
+he was! But you couldn't get any of those old-time law-and-order men to
+_admit_ they'd ever been Vigilantes. They kept it mighty secret. Of
+course, when the courts got in, they disbanded. But they'd busted up the
+old Henry Plummer's gang and hung about twenty of the road agents, by
+that time. They was some active--both sides."
+
+At last the party, after a week of steady horse work, pitched their
+little camp about mid-afternoon at the crest of a little promontory from
+which they commanded a marvelous view of the great valley of the Three
+Forks. On either hand lay a beautiful river, the Gallatin at their feet,
+a little town not far, the Jefferson but a little way.
+
+"I know where this is!" exclaimed John. "I know----"
+
+"Not a word, John!" commanded Uncle Dick. "Enjoy yourselves now, in
+looking at this valley. After we've taken care of the horses and made
+camp, I'll see how much you know."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+SUNSET ON THE OLD RANGE
+
+
+They completed their camp on the high point which they had reached.
+Billy brought in Nigger's panniers full of wood for the cooking fire,
+and they had water in the desert bag which always was part of their camp
+equipment, so they needed not seek a more convenient spot; nor would
+they have exchanged this for any other.
+
+"We've seen many a view, fellows," said John, as the three stood near
+the edge of the little promontory almost in the village, "but of them
+all, in any country, all up this river, and all the way north to Kadiak
+Island, or to the Arctic Circle--nothing that touches this."
+
+They had hurriedly finished their evening meal. Their robes were spread
+on the ground, their guns and rod cases lay at the saddles or against
+the panniers. Their maps, journals, and books lay on the robes before
+them. But they all turned to take in the beauties of the summer sunset
+now unfolding its vast screen of vivid coloring in the West. Thence they
+looked, first up one valley and then another, not so much changed, in
+spite of the occasional fields.
+
+"Of course," said John, after a time, "we know this spot, and know why
+you and Mr. Billy brought us here. It's the Fort Rock of Meriwether
+Lewis--it couldn't be anything else!"
+
+Uncle Dick smiled and nodded.
+
+"That's what she is," nodded Billy. "Right here's where Cap'n Lewis
+stood and where he said was a good place for a fort--so high, you see,
+so no Indians could jump them easy. But they never did build the first
+fur fort here; that was higher up, on the Jefferson, little ways.
+
+"Up yonder's the Gallatin--we're up her valley a little way. My ranch is
+up in ten miles. Yonder used to be quite a little town like, right down
+below us. Yon's the railroad, heading for the divide, where we came over
+from Prickly Pear. Other way, upstream, is the railroad to Butte. Yon
+way lies the Madison; she heads off southeast, for Yellowstone Park. And
+yon's the main Jefferson; and the Madison joins her just a little way
+up. And you've seen the Gallatin come in--the swiftest of the three.
+
+"Now what would you do, if you was Lewis?" he added. "And which way
+would you head if you wanted to find the head of the true Missouri and
+get on across the Rockies?
+
+"You see, we're in a big pocket of the Rockies here--the great
+Continental Divide sweeps away down south in a big curve here--made just
+so these three rivers and their hundred creeks could fan out in here.
+She's plumb handsome even now, and she was plumb wild then. What would
+you do? Which river would you take?"
+
+"I'd scout her out," said John.
+
+"They did. You look in your book and you'll find that, while Lewis was
+in here Clark was nigh about forty miles above here; he plumb wore his
+men out, twenty-five miles the first day above the Forks, twelve miles
+the next. That was up the Jefferson, you see; they picked it for the
+real Missouri, you see, because it was fuller and quieter.
+
+"They didn't waste any time, either of them, on the Gallatin. That left
+the Madison. So Clark comes back down the Jefferson and they forded her,
+away above the Forks--no horses, on foot, you see--and near drowned that
+trifling fellow Chaboneau, the Indian girl's husband.
+
+"Then Clark--he wasn't never afraid of getting lost or getting drowned,
+and he never did get lost once--he strikes off across the ridges,
+southeast, heading straight for the Madison, just him and his men, and
+I'll bet they was good and tired by now, for they'd walked all the way
+from Great Falls, hunting Indians, and hadn't found one yet, only plenty
+tracks.
+
+"So he finds the Madison all right, and comes down her to the Forks. And
+there--July 27th, wasn't it, the _Journal_ says?--he finds Lewis and all
+eight of the canoes and all of the folks, in camp a mile above the
+Forks, just as easy and as natural as if they hadn't ever known anything
+except just this country here. Of course, they had met almost every day,
+but not for two days now.
+
+"By that time they had their camp exactly on the spot where that Indian
+girl had been captured by the Minnetarees six or eight years earlier.
+She'd had a long walk, both ways! But she was glad to get back home!
+Nary Indian, though now it was getting time for all the Divide Indians
+to head down the river, over the two trails, to the Falls, where the
+buffalo were."
+
+"That's a story, Billy!" said Jesse. Billy stopped, abashed, forgetting
+how enthusiasm had carried him on.
+
+"Go ahead," said Uncle Dick.
+
+"Well, you see, I read all about it all, and I get all het up, even
+now," said Billy; "me raised right in here, and all."
+
+"No apologies, Billy. Go on."
+
+"Well then, by now Clark, he was right nigh all in. His feet was full of
+thorns and he had a boil on his ankle, and he'd got a fever from
+drinking cold water when he was hot--or that's how he figured it.
+Nothing had stopped him till now. But now he comes in and throws down on
+a robe, and he says, 'Partner, I'm all in. I haven't found a Indian. But
+I allow that's the branch to follow.'
+
+"He points up the Jefferson. Maybe the Indian girl said so, too, but I
+think they'd have taken the Jefferson, anyhow. They all agreed on that.
+
+"Now I've heard that the Indian girl kept pointing south and saying that
+over that divide--that would be over the Raynolds Pass--was water that
+led to the ocean. I don't know where they get that. Some say the Indian
+girl went up the Madison with Clark. She didn't; she was with Lewis at
+the boats all the time. Some say that Clark got as far south as the
+canyon of the Madison, northwest of the Yellowstone Park. He didn't and
+couldn't. Even if he did and was alone, that wouldn't have led him over
+Raynolds Pass. That's a hundred miles, pretty near.
+
+"I wonder what would have happened to them people, now, if they all had
+picked the wrong branch and gone up the Madison? If they'd got on
+Henry's Lake, which is the head of one arm of the Snake, and had got
+started on the Snake waters--good night! We'd never have heard of them
+again.
+
+"But I don't think the Indian girl knew anything much about the Snake,
+though her people hunted all these branches. Her range was on the
+Jefferson. She was young, too. Anyhow, that's what they called the
+Missouri, till she began to peter out. That was where they named this
+place where we are now. They concluded, since all the three rivers run
+so near even, and split so wide, they'd call them after three great men,
+Jefferson, Madison, and Gallatin. But that wasn't till two weeks after
+they'd left the Forks. Most folks thought they'd sprung the names as
+soon as they seen the Forks, but they didn't.
+
+"Lots of people right in here, too, even now, they think that Lewis and
+Clark wintered right here at the Forks or on up near Dillon. I've heard
+them argue that and get hot over it. Some said they wintered on an
+island, near Dillon. Of course, they allow that Lewis and Clark got
+across, but they say they was gone three years, not two. That's about as
+much as the old _Journal_ is known to-day!
+
+"Me living in here, I know all the creeks from here to the Sawtooth and
+Bitter Roots, and my dad knew them, and I'll tell you it's a fright,
+even now, to follow out exactly where all they went, or just how they
+got over. The names on most of their creeks are changed now, so you
+can't hardly tell them. About the best book to follow her through on is
+that railroad man, Wheeler. He took a pack train, most ways, and stayed
+with it.
+
+"People get all mixed up on the old stuff, because we travel by rail
+now, so much. For instance, Beaverhead Rock--and that's been a landmark
+ever since Lewis and Clark come through--is disputed even now. You can
+start a fight down at Dillon any time by saying that their Beaverhead
+Rock is really Rattlesnake Rock--though I'll have to own it looks a lot
+more like a beaver than the real rock does. That real one now is mostly
+called the Point of Rocks.
+
+"That's the way it goes, you see--everything gets all mixed up. The
+miners named a lot of the old Lewis and Clark streams all over again.
+Boulder Creek once was Frazier's Creek; Philosophy Creek they changed to
+Willow Creek, just to be original. The Blacktail, away up in, was first
+named after McNeal, and the North Boulder, this side of there, was first
+called after Fields. The Pipestone used to be the Panther. You know the
+Big Hole River, of course, where Butte gets the city water piped
+from--used to be fine fishing till they spoiled it by fishing it to
+death--well, that was called Wisdom River by Lewis. And I think if he'd
+been right wise, he'd have left his boats at the mouth and started right
+up there, on foot, and not up the Jefferson. She was shallow, but if
+he'd only known it, she'd have led him to the Divide easier than the way
+they went, and saved a lot of time. But, of course, they didn't know
+that."
+
+"Go on, Billy, go on!" said Rob, eagerly. "You're the first man I ever
+knew who'd actually been over this ground in here. All we've done has
+been to read about it; and that's different. A country on a map is one
+thing, but a country lying out of doors on the ground is different."
+
+"I'll agree to that," said Billy. "If you ever once figure out a country
+by yourself, you never get lost in it again. You can easy get lost with
+a map and a compass.
+
+"Well now, the miners changed more names, too. It was on Willard's
+Creek, named after one of the Lewis and Clark men, that they found the
+gold at Bannack camp. They called that Grasshopper Creek and left poor
+Willard out. And then they called the Philanthropy River, which comes in
+from the south, opposite to the Wisdom--Lewis called them that because
+Thomas Jefferson was so wise and so philanthropic, you know--well, they
+changed that to the Stinking Water!
+
+"Yet 'Philanthropy' would have been a good name for that. On one of the
+side creeks to it they found Alder Gulch in 1863; and Alder Gulch put
+Montana on the map and started the bull outfits moving out from Benton,
+at the head of navigation. That's where Virginia City is now. Nice
+little town, but not wild like she was.
+
+"Now, the old trail--where the road agents used to waylay the
+travelers--led from Bannack to the Rattlesnake, down the Rattlesnake to
+the Jefferson, down the Jefferson to the Beaverhead Rock, then across
+the Jefferson and over the Divide to Philanthropy. And that was one
+sweet country to live in, in those days, my dad said! The road agents
+had a fine organization, and they knew every man going out with dust. So
+they'd lay in wait and kill him. They killed over a hundred men, that
+way, till the Vigilantes broke in on them. The best men in early Montana
+were among the Vigilantes--all the law-and-order men were. But right
+from where we're standing now, on the Lewis Rock, you're looking over
+one of the wildest parts of this country, or any other country. You
+ought to read Langford's book, _Vigilante Days and Ways_. I've got that
+in my library, up at my ranch, too."
+
+"You know your part of this country mighty well, Billy," said Uncle
+Dick, after a time. "I've known you did, for a long time."
+
+"I love it, that's all!" said the young ranchman.
+
+"Now what shall we do, sir?" he added, after a time; "go on up to my
+ranch, or go on to the mouth of the Columbia River, or go to the true
+head of the Missouri River, or go back to Great Falls--or what?"
+
+"What do you want to do, Billy?"
+
+"Anything suits me. Barring the towns, I can go anywhere on earth with
+Sleepy and Nigger, and almost anywhere on earth with my flivver. I
+wouldn't stay here for a camp, because it's not convenient. The
+mosquitoes are about done now, and the camping's fine all over.
+Fishing's good, too, right now; and I know where they are."
+
+"I'll tell you," said Uncle Dick; "we'll move up one more march or so,
+to the Beaverhead Rock. We'll camp there, and make a little more
+medicine before we decide.
+
+"I came here"--he turned to the others--"to have you see the sunset,
+here on the old range. Are you satisfied with the trip thus far?"
+
+"We'd not have missed it for the world," said Rob, at once. "It's the
+best we've ever had. In our own country--and finding out for ourselves
+how they found our country for us! That's what I call fine!"
+
+"Roll up the plunder for to-night," said Uncle Dick. "The sunset's
+over."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+NEARING THE SOURCE
+
+
+"Well, Jesse, how'd you sleep last night?" inquired Billy in the
+morning, as he pushed the coffee pot back from the edge of the little
+fire and turned to Jesse when he emerged from his blankets.
+
+"Not too well," answered Jesse, rubbing his eyes. "Fact is, it's too
+noisy in this country. Up North where we used to live, it was quiet,
+unless the dogs howled; but in here there's towns and railroads all
+over--more than a dozen towns we passed, coming up from the Great Falls,
+and if you don't hear the railroad whistles all night, you think you do.
+Down right below us, you can throw a rock into the town, almost, and up
+at the Forks there'll be another squatting down waiting for you. All
+right for gasoline, Billy, but we're supposed to be using the tracking
+line and setting pole."
+
+"Sure we are--until we meet the Shoshonis and get some horses."
+
+"Well, I don't want to camp by a railroad or a wire fence any more."
+
+"No? Well, we'll see what we can do. Anyhow, one thing you ought to be
+glad about."
+
+"What's that?"
+
+"Why, that you don't have to walk down into that ice water and pole a
+boat or drag it for two or three hours before breakfast. Yet that's what
+those poor men had to do. And three times they mention, between the
+Forks and the mountains, the whole party had to wait breakfast till
+somebody killed some meat. Anyhow, we've got some eggs and marmalade."
+
+"Well, they got meat," demurred Jesse, seating himself as he laced his
+shoes.
+
+"Thanks to Drewyer, they usually did. He got five deer, one day, and
+about every time he went out he hung up something. I think he'd got to
+the front in the party now, next to Lewis and Clark. Chaboneau they
+don't speak well of.
+
+"Shields was a good man, and the two Fields boys. But, though Clark was
+mighty sick, and Lewis got down, too, for a day or so, in here, they
+were about the best men left. The others were wearing out by now.
+
+"You see"--here Billy flipped a cake over in the pan--"they couldn't
+have had much wool clothing left by now--they were in buckskin, and
+buckskin is about as good as brown paper when it's wet. They had no
+hobnails, and their broken, wet moccasins slipped all over those slick
+round stones. You ever wade a trout stream, you boys?"
+
+"I should say so!"
+
+"Well, then you know how it is. While the water is below your knees you
+can stand it quite a while. When it gets along your thighs you begin to
+get cold. When it's waist deep, you chill mighty soon and can't stand it
+long--though Lewis stripped and dived in eight feet of water to get an
+otter he had shot. And slipping on wet rocks----"
+
+"Don't we know about that! We waded up the Rat River, on the Arctic
+Circle."
+
+"You did! You've traveled like that? Well, then you can tell what the
+men were standing here. They hadn't half clothes, a lot of them were
+sick with boils and 'tumers,' as Clark calls them. Some were nearly
+crippled. But in this water, ice water, waist deep, they had to get
+eight boats up that big creek yonder--beaver meadows all along, so they
+couldn't track. Sockets broke off their setting poles, so Captain Lewis,
+he ties on some fish gigs he'd brought along. One way or another, they
+got on up.
+
+"They now began to get short rations, too. At first they couldn't get
+any trout, or the whitefish--those fish with the 'long mouths' that
+Lewis tells about. I'll bet they never tried grasshoppers. But along
+above here they began to get fish, as the game got scarcer. Lewis tells
+of setting their net for them."
+
+"You certainly have been reading that little old _Journal_, Billy!"
+
+"Why shouldn't I? It's one great book, son. More I read it, the more I
+see how practical those men were. Now, those men were all fine rifle
+shots, and they'd go against anything, though along here there wasn't
+many grizzlies, and all of them shy, not bold like the buffalo grizzlies
+at the Falls. But they didn't hunt for sport--it was meat they wanted.
+Once in a while a snag of venison; antelope hard to get; no buffalo now,
+and very few elk; by now, even ducks and geese began to look good, and
+trout.
+
+"The ducks and geese and cranes were all through here--breeding grounds
+all along. That was molting time and they caught them in their hands.
+They killed beaver with the setting poles, and one day the men killed
+several otter with their tomahawks, though I doubt if they could eat
+otter. You see, as Clark's notes say, the beaver were here in thousands.
+I suppose when so big a party went splashing up the creek the beaver
+and otter would get scared and swim out to the main stream, and there
+some one would hit them over the head as they swam by."
+
+"One thing," said Jesse, "I don't think they flogged any of the men any
+more. I don't remember any since they left the Mandans."
+
+"Maybe they didn't need it, and maybe their leaders had learned more.
+Ever since Lewis picked the right river at the Marias forks, I reckon
+the men relied on him more. Then, he'd be poking around shooting at the
+sun and stars with his astronomy machines, and that sort of made them
+respect him. Clark was a good sport. Lewis, I reckon, was harder to get
+along with. But they both must have been pretty white with the men. They
+tell of the hardships of the men, and how game and patient they are--not
+a whimper about quitting."
+
+"I know," said Jesse, hauling out his worn copy of the _Journal_ from
+his bed roll and turning the leaves; "they speak of the way the men
+felt:
+
+    "'We Set out early (Wind N.E.) proceeded on passed Several large
+    Islands and three Small ones, the river much more Sholey than below
+    which obliges us to haul the Canoes over those Sholes which
+    Suckceed each other at Short intervales emencely laborious; men
+    much fatigued and weakened by being continually in the water
+    drawing the Canoes over the Sholes, encamped on the Lard Side men
+    complain verry much of the emence labour they are obliged to
+    undergo & wish much to leave the river. I passify them, the weather
+    Cool, and nothing to eate but venison, the hunters killed three
+    Deer to day.'
+
+"Anxious times about now, eh? But still, I don't think the leaders ever
+once lost their nerve. Here's what Lewis wrote about it:
+
+    "'We begin to feel considerable anxiety with rispect to the Snake
+    Indians. if we do not find them or some other nation who have
+    horses I fear the successful issue of our voyage will be very
+    doubtfull or at all events much more difficult in it's
+    accomplishment. we are now several hundred miles within the bosom
+    of this wild and mountanous country, where game may rationally be
+    expected shortly to become scarce and subsistence precarious
+    without any information with rispect to the country not knowing how
+    far these mountains continue, or wher to direct our course to pass
+    them to advantage or intersept a navigable branch of the Columbia,
+    or even were we on such an one the probability is that we should
+    not find any timber within these mountains large enough for canoes
+    if we judge from the portion of them through which we have passed.
+    however I still hope for the best, and intend taking a tramp myself
+    in a few days to find these yellow gentlemen if possible. my two
+    principal consolations are that from our present position it is
+    impossible that the S.W. fork can head with the waters of any other
+    river but the Columbia, and that if any Indians can subsist in the
+    form of a nation in these mountains with the means they have of
+    acquiring food we can also subsist.'"
+
+"No wonder the men wanted horses now--they knew the river's end was
+near. And yet they were four hundred miles, right here, from the head of
+the Missouri!" Billy had his _Journal_ pretty well in mind, so he went
+on frying bacon.
+
+"Why, what you talking about, Billy? They made the Forks by July 27th,
+and by the end of August they were over the Divide, headed for the
+Columbia!"
+
+"Sure. And at the Two Forks, where the Red Rock River turns south, the
+other creek--Horse Prairie Creek that they took--only ran thirty miles
+in all. The south branch was the real Missouri, but they kept to the one
+that went west. That was good exploring, and good luck, both. It took
+them over, at last."
+
+"But, Billy, everybody knows that Lewis and Clark went to the head of
+the Missouri."
+
+"Then everybody knows wrong! They didn't. If they had they'd never have
+got over that year, nor maybe ever in any year. I tell you they had
+luck--luck and judgment and the Indian girl. Sacagawea kept telling them
+this was her country; that her people were that way--west; that they'd
+get horses. For that matter, there were strong Indian trails, regular
+roads, coming in from the south, north and west; but it wasn't quite
+late enough for the Indians to be that far east on the fall buffalo hunt
+at the Great Falls. It took them more than a month to figure out the
+trail from here to the top. But if they had started south, down the Red
+Rock----"
+
+"Tell me about that, Billy."
+
+"We're working too hard before breakfast, son! Go get the others up
+while I fry these eggs. If we don't get off the Fort Rock and on our
+way, somebody'll think we're crazy, camping up here."
+
+Soon they were all sitting at breakfast around the remnants of the
+little fire, and after that Billy went after the horses while the others
+got the packs ready.
+
+Jesse was excitedly going over with Rob and John some of the things
+which Billy had been saying to him. Uncle Dick only smiled.
+
+"First class in engineering and geography, stand up!" said he, as he
+seated himself on his lashed bed roll. The three boys with pretended
+gravity stood and saluted.
+
+"Now put down a few figures in your heads, or at least your notebooks.
+How high up are we here?"
+
+"Do you mean altitude, or distance, sir?" asked Rob.
+
+"I mean both. Well, I'll tell you. Our altitude here is four thousand
+and forty-five feet. That's twenty-five hundred and twenty feet higher
+than the true head of the Mississippi River--and we're not to the head
+of the Missouri by a long shot, even now.
+
+"And how far have we come, say to the Three Forks, just above here?"
+
+"That's easy," answered John, looking at his book. "It's twenty-five
+hundred and forty-seven miles, according to the last river measurements;
+but Lewis and Clark call it twenty-eight hundred and forty-eight miles."
+
+"That's really of no importance," said Uncle Dick. "The term 'mile'
+means nothing in travel such as theirs. The real unit was the day's work
+of 'hearty, healthy, and robust young men.' One set of figures is good
+as the other.
+
+"Still, it may be interesting to see how much swifter the Missouri River
+is than the Father of Waters. From the Gulf of Mexico to the source of
+the Mississippi is twenty-five hundred and fifty-three miles. Up our
+river, to where we stand, is just six miles short of that, yet the drop
+is more than twenty-five hundred feet more. One drops eight and a
+quarter inches to the mile, and the other nineteen inches to the mile.
+
+"But understand, we're talking now of the upper thread of the
+Mississippi River, and of the Three Forks of our river--which isn't by
+any means at its head, even measuring to the head of the shortest of the
+three big rivers that meet here. Now, add three hundred and ninety-eight
+miles to twenty-five hundred and forty-seven miles. See what you got?"
+
+"That's twenty-nine hundred and forty-five miles!" exclaimed John. "Is
+it that far from the head to St. Louis?"
+
+"Yes, it is. And if you took the Lewis and Clark measurements to the
+Forks it would be thirty-two hundred and forty-seven miles.
+
+"And if we took their distances to the place where they left their
+canoes--that's what they called Shoshoni Cove, where the river petered
+out for boats--we'd have three thousand and ninety-six miles; two
+hundred and forty-seven miles above here, as they figured it, and they
+weren't at the summit even then. Now if we'd take their probable
+estimate, if they'd finished the distance to the real head of the
+Missouri, we'd have to allow them about thirty-two hundred and
+forty-nine miles plus their overrun, at least fifty miles.
+
+"Yes, if they'd have gone to the real source, they'd have sworn it was
+over thirty-three hundred miles to St. Louis, and over forty-five
+hundred miles to the Gulf. The modern measurements make it forty-two
+hundred and twenty-one miles.
+
+"So, young gentlemen, you can see that you are now coming toward the
+head of the largest continuous waterway in the world. It is five hundred
+miles longer than the Amazon in South America, and more than twelve
+hundred miles longer than the river Nile, in Africa.
+
+"Now, Meriwether Lewis did not know as much about all these things as we
+do now, yet see how he felt about it, at his camp fire, not so far from
+here:
+
+    "'The mountains do not appear very high in any direction tho' the
+    tops of some of them are partially covered with snow, this
+    convinces me that we have ascended to a great hight since we have
+    entered the rocky Mountains, yet the ascent has been so gradual
+    along the vallies that it was scarcely perceptable by land. I do
+    not believe that the world can furnish an example of a river runing
+    to the extent which the Missouri and Jefferson's rivers do through
+    such a mountainous country and at the same time so navigable as
+    they are. if the Columbia furnishes us such another example, a
+    communication across the continent by water will be practicable and
+    safe.'
+
+"Class dismissed. I see Billy has got the horses." The boys put away
+their maps and rolled their beds.
+
+All of the party being good packers, it was not long before they had
+left their camp ground on the knoll and were off upstream once more,
+edging the willow flats and swinging to the ford of the Madison, which
+they made with no great danger at that stage of the water. Thence they
+headed back for the Jefferson fork, having by now got a good look at the
+great valleys of the Three Forks.
+
+"Which way, sir?" asked Billy now of their leader. "Shall we stop at the
+real headquarters camp of the Three Forks, just about a mile up--where
+the Indian girl told them she had been taken prisoner when she was a
+child?"
+
+"Too near town!" sung out Jesse, who overheard the question. "Let's
+shake the railroad."
+
+"She's right hard to shake, up in here," rejoined Billy. "Off to the
+right is the N.P., heading for Butte, up the Pipestone. We couldn't
+shake the left-hand branch of her this side of Twin Bridges, and that's
+above the Beaverhead Rock. From there upstream to Dillon, along the
+Beaverhead River, there isn't any railroad. We can swing wide, except
+where she canyons up on us, and may be get away from the whistles. Only,
+if we go as far as Dillon, we hit the O.S.L. She runs south, down the
+Red Rock, which is the real Missouri River. And she runs up the Big
+Hole, which the _Journal_ calls the Wisdom River. And there's a railroad
+up Philosophy Creek, too----"
+
+"And up all the cardinal virtues!" exclaimed Uncle Dick. "I don't blame
+the boys for getting peeved. Now, we don't care for canyon scenery so
+much, nor for willow flats with no beaver in them. I would like the boys
+to see the Beaverhead Rock and get a general notion of how many of these
+confusing little creeks there were that had to be worked out.
+
+"I'd like them, too, to get a general idea of the old gold fields. We're
+right in the heart of those tremendous placers that Lewis and Clark
+never dreamed about. I'd like them to know, on the ground, not on the
+map, how the old road agents' trail ran, between Bannack and Virginia
+City. I'd like them to get a true idea of how Lewis and Clark worked out
+their way, over the Divide. Lastly, I'd like them to see where the true
+Missouri heads south and leaves the real Lewis and Clark trail.
+
+"Now, what's the best point to head for, Billy, for a sort of central
+camp? I don't think we can do more than go to the summit, this trip.
+What do you say?"
+
+"Well, sir, I'd say the Shoshoni Cove, where they left their canoes and
+took horses, would be about the most central point for that. That'll
+bring us to the last forks--what they call the Two Forks."
+
+"But how about the Beaverhead Rock?"
+
+"We ought to see that," said Rob, at the time. "That's as famous as a
+landmark as almost anything on the whole river."
+
+"We can get in there easy enough and get out," said Billy. "It's just a
+question of time on the trail. Taking it easy, give us a week, ten days,
+on the way to the Cove, taking in the Rock for one camp. It's not half
+as far by land as it is by water."
+
+"What do you say, boys? Shall we travel by rail or pack train now?"
+
+With one shout they all voted for the pack train. "We couldn't get along
+without Billy now, anyhow," said Jesse, "because he knows the _Journal_
+as well as we do, and he knows the country better."
+
+"Thank you, son. Well, I guess old Sleepy won't die before we get there,
+though he pretends he can hardly go. Say we get back into the side
+creeks a little and pick up a mess of fish now and then, and make the
+Beaverhead a couple of camps later? How'd that be?"
+
+"That's all right, I think," said Rob. "I'd like to get a look at the
+main river, to see why the names change on it so. First it's the main
+Missouri; then they conclude to call it the Jefferson--only because the
+other two forks spread so wide there. Then it runs along all right, and
+all at once they call it the Beaverhead. And before it gets used to that
+name they change it to Red River for no reason at all, or because it
+heads south and runs near a painted butte. Yet it is one continuous
+river all the way."
+
+"The real way to name a river," said Billy, sagely, "is after you know
+all about it. You got to remember that Lewis and Clark saw this for the
+first time. By the time we make the Beaverhead Rock, we'll be willing to
+say they had a hard job. People could get lost in these hills even now,
+if they stepped off the road."
+
+"All set for the Beaverhead Rock!" said Uncle Dick, decisively.
+
+Soon they had settled to their steady jog, Nigger sometimes getting lost
+in the willows, and Sleepy straying off in his hunt for thistles when
+the country opened out more. They did not hurry, but moved along among
+the meadows and fields, talking, laughing, studying the wide and varying
+landscape about them. That night, as Billy had promised them, they had
+their first trout for supper, which Billy brought in after a short sneak
+among the willows with a stick for a rod and a grasshopper for bait.
+
+"That's nothing," said he. "I'll take you to where's some real fishing,
+if you like."
+
+"Where's that?" demanded John, who also was getting very keen set for
+sport of some sort.
+
+"Oh, off toward the utmost source of the true Missouri!" said he. "You
+just wait. I'll show you something."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+BEAVERHEAD CAMP
+
+
+"It's quite a bit of country, after all, between the Forks and the head,
+isn't it?" remarked Rob, on their fourth day out from the junction of
+the river. "I don't blame them for taking a month to it."
+
+"We're beating them on their schedule, at that," said the studious John.
+"At the Forks we were exactly even up, July 27th; we'd beat them just
+exactly one year at that point, which they called the head of the river.
+But they went slow in here, in these big beaver meadows; ten miles daily
+was big travel, wading, and not half of that gained in actual straight
+distance. It took them ten days to the Beaverhead. How far's that from
+here, Billy?"
+
+"Well, what do you think?" said Billy, pulling up and sitting crosswise
+in his saddle as he turned. "See anything particular from this side the
+hills?"
+
+"I know!" exclaimed Rob. "That's the Rock over yonder--across the
+river."
+
+"Check it up on the _Journal_, Rob," said Uncle Dick.
+
+Rob dismounted and opened his saddle pocket, producing his copy of the
+cherished work.
+
+"Sure it is!" said he. "Here it says:
+
+    "'The Indian woman recognized the point of a high plain to our
+    right which she informed us was not very distant from the summer
+    retreat of her nation on a river beyond the mountains which runs to
+    the west. this hill she says her nation calls the beaver's head
+    from a conceived re(se)mblance of it's figure to the head of that
+    animal. she assures us that we shall either find her people on this
+    river or on the river immediately west of it's source; which from
+    it's present size cannot be very distant. as it is now all important
+    with us to meet with those people as soon as possible I determined
+    to proceed tomorrow with a small party to the source of the
+    principal stream of this river and pass the mountains to the
+    Columbia; and down that river untill I found the Indians; in short
+    it is my resolution to find them or some others who have horses if
+    it should cause me a trip of one month.'
+
+"So that must be the Rock over yonder. We're below the canyon, and below
+the Wisdom, and below the Philanthropy, and below the end of the
+railroad, and in the third valley. Besides, look at it. Just as sure as
+Sacagawea was about it!"
+
+"You're right," said Billy. "That's the Point of Rocks, as it's called
+now."
+
+They made down to the edge of the valley and went into camp across from
+the great promontory which so long had served as landmark in all that
+country. That night all of them forded the river horseback and rode
+close to the historic point. Jesse, who was prowling around on foot, as
+was his habit, closely examining all he saw, suddenly stooped, then rose
+with an exclamation.
+
+"See what I've found!" said he.
+
+"What is it--a gold nugget?" asked his uncle.
+
+"No. An arrowhead. Funny one--looks like it was made of glass, and black
+glass at that."
+
+Uncle Dick examined it closely.
+
+"Jesse," said he, "that's one of the most interesting things we've run
+across on this whole trip. Did you know that?"
+
+"No. Why?"
+
+"You wouldn't think that arrowhead was going to take you to the true
+head of the Missouri, and to good fishing for trout and grayling, would
+you?"
+
+"Why, no! How's that?"
+
+[Illustration: JESSE SUDDENLY STOOPED, THEN ROSE WITH AN EXCLAMATION]
+
+"I'll tell you. That's an obsidian arrowhead. The Bannacks and Shoshonis
+got that black, glassy stuff at one place--the Obsidian Cliff, in
+Yellowstone Park! Those old trails that Lewis saw to the south were
+trails that crossed the Divide south of here. They put the Indians on
+Snake River waters. These tribes hunted down there. They knew the head
+of the Red Rock. They knew the head of the Madison. They knew the Gibbon
+River, and they knew the Norris Geyser Basin, up in Yellowstone Park.
+It's all right to say the Indians were afraid to go into Yellowstone
+Park among the geysers, but they did. They knew the Obsidian
+Cliff--close by the road, it is, and one of the features of the Park, as
+it now is.
+
+"It's a far shot that arrow will carry you, son. It will show you more
+of these Indian trails than even Lewis and Clark ever knew. Of course,
+they didn't want to go south; they wanted north and west, because they
+knew the latitude and longitude of the mouth of the Columbia River. They
+knew that was northwest. They knew any water they got on, once over the
+Divide, would run into the Columbia, and they could see the Rockies,
+just on ahead to the west. As Billy has said, the Indian girl always was
+telling them that her people lived along in here. An obsidian arrow
+meant nothing to them. But it meant much to later explorers to the south
+of here."
+
+"It's a good specimen he's got," said Billy, looking it over. "The
+Indians liked to work obsidian; it would cleave so sharp and clean. I
+thought they had them all picked up, long ago. Up in the Shoshoni Cove
+they found a good many, first and last. All this was their hunting
+ground. A little over the Divide it gets awfully rough, and not much
+game."
+
+They spent some time around the Rock, examining it, finding the cliff to
+be about one hundred and fifty feet in height and giving a good view out
+over the valley plains, over which one could see many miles, and from
+which the great rock itself could be seen for great distances.
+
+"Here was the old ford of the road agents' trail," said Billy. "They
+crossed here and headed out, east and south, for the hills between here
+and Virginia City. They were hunting for easier money than beaver then,
+though--gold! This was the murderers' highway, right by here. Over a
+hundred men were murdered on this hundred miles."
+
+They went back to their encampment and, after their simple preparations
+were over for the evening, spread out their books and maps once more,
+John endeavoring laboriously to fill in the gaps of his own map; rather
+hard to do, since they had not followed the actual stream course on
+their way up with the pack train.
+
+"This Wisdom River, now," said he, "must have been a puzzler, sure
+enough. That's called the Big Hole to-day. I'll bet she was a beaver
+water, too, as well as full of trout. Wonder if she had any grayling in
+her. Here's a town down below here, near the mouth of the Red Rock,
+called Grayling."
+
+"Must have been grayling in all these upper Missouri waters," nodded
+Billy. "I don't think the _Journal_ mentions them, but they saw
+whitefish, and the two often go together, though by no means always. The
+Madison is a grayling stream, or was--the South Fork's good now, and so
+is Grayling Creek, or was. The headwaters of the Red Rock were full of
+grayling once. The trouble is, so many motor cars now, that everybody
+gets in, and they soon fish a stream out."
+
+"Shall we get to see a grayling?" asked Rob. "You know, we got the
+Arctic grayling on the Bell River, in the Arctic regions. They call them
+'bluefish' up there. They're fine."
+
+"So are these fine. I'd rather catch one grayling than a dozen trout.
+But they're getting mighty scarce, and I think before long there won't
+be any left.
+
+"But look what a beaver country this must have been!" he added, waving a
+hand each way. "Fifty by two hundred miles, and then some. No wonder the
+trappers came. It wasn't long before they and the Blackfeet mixed it,
+all along in here."
+
+"Listen," said Uncle Dick, "and I'll tell you a little beaver story,
+right out of the _Journal_."
+
+"Aw--the _Journal_!" said Jesse. "I'd rather catch one!"
+
+"Wait for my story, and you'll see how important a small thing may be
+that might make all the difference in the world. Now the hero of my
+story is a beaver. I don't know his name.
+
+"Look on your map, just above here--that's the mouth of the Wisdom, or
+Big Hole, River, that Lewis and Drewyer explored first, while poor
+Clark, with his sore leg, was toiling up with his boat party, after he
+was better of his sickness.
+
+"Now the Wisdom was a good-sized river, too, almost as big as the
+Jefferson, though broken into channels. Lewis worked it out and came
+back to the Jefferson at its mouth, and started on again, up the
+Jefferson. As was their custom, he wrote a note and put it in a cleft
+stick and stuck it up where Clark could see it when he got up that far.
+He put it on a green stick, poplar or willow, and stuck it in the bar.
+It told Clark to take the left-hand stream, not the one on the
+right--the Wisdom.
+
+"Well, along comes Mr. Beaver that night, and gnaws off the pole and
+swims away with it, note and all! I don't know what his family made out
+of the note, but if he'd been as wise as some of the magazine-story
+beavers, he could have read it, all right.
+
+"Now when Clark came along, tired and worn out, all of them, the note
+was gone. They also, therefore, went up the Wisdom and not the
+Jefferson. Clark sent Shannon ahead up the Wisdom to hunt. But he turned
+back when the river got too shallow. Result, Shannon lost for three
+days, and not his fault. He went away up till he found the boats could
+not have passed; then he hustled back to the mouth and guessed the party
+were above him up the other fork--where he guessed right. They then were
+all on the Jefferson. Lost time, hunting for Shannon, and they couldn't
+find him. All due to the beaver eating off the message pole. If Shannon
+had died, it would have been due to that beaver.
+
+"That's only part. In the shallow water a canoe swept down out of
+control. It ran over Whitehouse, another man, on a bar, and nearly broke
+his leg; it would have killed him sure if the water had been three
+inches shallower. That would have been another man lost.
+
+"Not all yet. A canoe got upset in the shallow water up there on
+the Wisdom, and wet everything in it. Result, they lost so much
+cargo--foodstuffs, etc.--that they just abandoned that canoe right there
+and lost her cargo, after carrying it three thousand miles, for over a
+year! All to be charged to the same beaver. Well, you and I have spoken
+before about the extreme danger of a land party and a boat party trying
+to travel together.
+
+"The next time Lewis left a note, he used a dry stick, and he felt
+mortified at not having thought to do that in the first place. Well,
+that's my beaver story. It shows how a little thing may have big
+consequences--just as this arrowhead that Jesse found points out a long
+trail."
+
+"And by that time," said John, bending again over his map, "they were
+needing every pound of food and every minute of their time and every bit
+of every man's strength. The poor fellows were almost worn out. Now they
+began to complain for the first time. We don't hear any more now about
+dances at night around the camp fire."
+
+"Yes," said Uncle Dick. "Now they all were having their proving. It
+would have been easy for them to turn back; most men would have done so.
+But they never thought of that. All the men wanted was to get away from
+the boats and get on horseback."
+
+"But they didn't yet know where to go!"
+
+"No, not yet. And now comes the most agonizing and most dramatic time in
+the whole trip, when it needed the last ounce and the last inch of
+nerve. Read us what Lewis said in his _Journal_, Rob. He was on ahead,
+and every man now was hustling, because there were the mountains 'right
+at them,' as they say down South."
+
+Rob complied, turning the pages of their precious book until he reached
+the last march of Lewis beyond the last forks of the river:
+
+    "'Near this place we fell in with a large and plain Indian road
+    which came into the cove from the N.E. and led along the foot of
+    the mountains to the S.W. o(b)liquely approaching the main stream
+    which we had left yesterday. this road we now pursued to the S.W.
+    at 5 miles it passed a stout stream which is a principal fork of
+    the ma(i)n stream and falls into it just above the narrow pass
+    between the two clifts before mentioned and which we now saw before
+    us. here we halted and breakfasted on the last of our venison,
+    having yet a small piece of pork in reserve. after eating we
+    continued our rout through the low bottom of the main stream along
+    the foot of the mountains on our right the valley for 5 M{ls.}
+    further in a S.W. direction was from 2 to 3 miles wide the main
+    stream now after discarding two stream(s) on the left in this
+    valley turns abruptly to the West through a narrow bottom betwe(e)n
+    the mountains. the road was still plain, I therefore did not not
+    dispair of shortly finding a passage over the mountains and of
+    taisting the waters of the great Columbia this evening.'"
+
+"Well, what do you think? Clean nerve, eh? I think so, and so do you. If
+he had not had, he never would have gotten across. And Simon Fraser then
+would have beaten us to the mouth of the Columbia, and altered the whole
+history of the West and Northwest. Well, at least our beaver, that
+carried off Lewis's note, did not work that ruin, but it might have been
+responsible, even for that; for now a missed meeting with the Shoshonis
+would have meant the failure of the whole expedition.
+
+"A great deal more Lewis did than he ever was to know he had done. He
+died too soon even to know much about the swift rush of the fur traders
+into this bonanza. And few of the fur traders ever lived to guess the
+rush of the placer miners of 1862 and 1863 into this same bonanza--right
+where we are camping now, on the old Robbers' Trail. And not many of
+the placer miners and other early adventurers of that day dreamed of
+anything but gold. The copper mines of this country have built up towns
+and cities, not merely camps.
+
+"Even had Lewis and his man Fields, whose name he gave to Boulder Creek,
+and who killed the panther which gave Panther Creek its name--pushed on
+up Panther Creek, which now is known as Pipestone Creek, and stepped
+over the crest to where the city of Butte is to-day, they hardly would
+have suspected copper. Lewis set down the most minute details in botany,
+even now. He studied and described his last new bird, the sage hen, with
+much detail. Yet for more than a month and a half he and his men had
+been wearing out their moccasins on gold pebbles, and they never panned
+a color or dreamed a dream of it. It was lucky for America they did not.
+
+"They found copper at Butte in 1876, the year of the Custer massacre. I
+wouldn't like to say how much Butte, just over yonder hills, has earned
+to date, but in her first twenty years she turned out over five hundred
+million dollars. And twenty years ago she paid in one year fourteen
+million dollars in dividends, and carried a pay roll of two million
+dollars a month, for over eight thousand miners, and gave the world
+over fifty million dollars in metals in that one year! In ten years she
+paid in dividends alone over forty-three million dollars. In one year
+she sold more copper, gold, and silver from her deep mines than would
+have paid three times the whole price we paid for all the Louisiana that
+Lewis and Clark and you and I have been exploring! And that doesn't
+touch the fur and the placer gold and the other mines and the cattle and
+wool and the farm products and the lumber. No man can measure what
+wealth has gone out from this country right under our noses here. And
+all because Lewis and his friend and their men wouldn't quit. And their
+expense allowance was twenty-five hundred dollars!
+
+"This was on our road to Mandalay, young gentlemen, right here through
+these gray foothills and green willow flats! Beyond the hills was still
+all the wealth of the Columbia, of the Pacific Northwest also. This
+trail brought us to the end of all our roads--face to face with Asia.
+Was it enough, all this, as the result of one young man's wish to do
+something for the world? Did he do it? Did he have his wish?"
+
+His answer was in the silence with which his words were received. Our
+young adventurers, though they had been used to stirring scenes all
+their lives, had never yet been in any country which gave them the
+thrill they got here, under the Beaverhead Rock.
+
+"She's one wonderful river!" said Billy Williams, after a time. "And
+those two scouts were two wonderful men!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+THE JUMP-OFF CAMP
+
+
+Two days later, on August 4th, the travelers had pushed on up the valley
+of the Missouri, to what was known as the Two Forks, between the towns
+of Grayling and Red Rock. They pitched their last camp, as nearly as
+they could determine, precisely where the Lewis and Clark party made
+their last encampment east of the Rockies, at what they called the
+Shoshoni Cove. This the boys called the Jump-off Camp, because this was
+where the expedition left its boats, and, ill fed and worn out, started
+on across the Divide for the beginning of their great journey into the
+Pacific Northwest.
+
+Now they were under the very shoulders of the Rockies, and, so closely
+had they followed the narrative of the first exploration of the great
+river, and so closely had their own journey been identified with it,
+that now they were almost as eager and excited over the last stages of
+the journey to the summit as though it lay before them personally, new,
+unknown and untried. They hardly could wait to resume their following
+out of the last entangled skein of the great narrative.
+
+"We've caught them at last, Uncle Dick!" exclaimed Jesse, spreading out
+his map on top of one of the kyacks in which Nigger had carried his load
+of kitchen stuff. "We've got almost a week the start of them here. This
+is August 4th, and it was August 10th when Lewis got here."
+
+"And by that time he'd been everywhere else!" said Rob. "Let's figure
+him out--tying him up with that note the beaver carried off. That beaver
+certainly made a lot of trouble.
+
+"Lewis left the note at the mouth of the Wisdom on August 4th. On August
+5th Clark got there and went up the Wisdom. On August 6th, 7th, 8th and
+9th, Shannon was lost up the Wisdom. On August 6th, Drewyer met Clark
+coming up the Wisdom River and turned him back; and Clark sent Field up
+the Wisdom after Shannon. Meantime Lewis had gone down to the junction
+at the Wisdom, not meeting the boats above the junction. He met Clark,
+coming back down the Wisdom with the boats. They then all went down to
+the mouth of the Wisdom and camped--that's about a day's march below
+where we camped, at the Beaverhead Rock.
+
+"Then Lewis saw something had to be done. He told Clark to bring
+on the boats as fast as he could. He then made up a fast-marching
+party--himself, Drewyer, Shields, and McNeal--with packs of food and
+Indian trading stuff; he didn't forget that part--and they four hit the
+trail in the high places only, still hunting for those Indians they'd
+been trying to find ever since they left the Great Falls. They were
+walkers, that bunch, for they left the Wisdom early August 9th, and they
+got here late on August 10th. That was going some!"
+
+"Yes, but poor Clark didn't get up here to where we are now until August
+17th, a whole week later than Lewis. And by that time Lewis had come
+back down to this place where we are right now, and he was mighty glad
+to meet Clark. If he hadn't, he'd have lost his Indians. You tell it
+now, Billy!" concluded Jesse, breathless.
+
+"You mean, after Captain Lewis started west from here to cross the
+summit?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"All right. You can see why he went up this upper creek--it was the one
+that led straight to the top. The Red Rock River, as they now call the
+stream below what they call the Beaverhead River--it's all one
+stream--bends off sharp south. The Horse Prairie Creek takes you
+straight up to Lemhi Pass, which ought to be called the Lewis Pass, but
+isn't, though he was the first across it. Lewis was glad when he got to
+what they called the source, the next day after that.
+
+"Now, he didn't find any Indians right away. I allow he'd followed an
+Indian road toward that pass, but the tracks faded out. He knew he was
+due to hit Columbia waters now, beyond yon range, but what he wanted was
+Indians, so he kept on.
+
+"Now all at once--I think it was August 11th, the same day he left camp
+here--about five miles up this creek, he saw an Indian, on horseback,
+two miles off! That was the first Indian they had seen since they left
+the Mandans the spring before. But Mr. Indian pulled his freight. That
+was when Lewis was 'soarly chagrined' with Shields, who had not stayed
+back till Lewis got his Indian gentled down some; he had him inside of
+one hundred yards at one time. He 'abraided' Shields for that; he says.
+
+"But now, anyhow, they knew there was such a thing as an Indian, so they
+trailed this one, but they couldn't catch him, and Lewis was scared
+he'd run all the other Indians back West. But on the next morning he ran
+into a big Indian road, that ran up toward the pass. There was a lowish
+mountain, running back about a half mile. The creek came out of the foot
+of that mountain----"
+
+"I know," interrupted John, who had his _Journal_ spread before him.
+"Here's what he said:
+
+    "'At the distance of 4 miles further the road took us to the most
+    distant fountain of the waters of the Mighty Missouri in surch of
+    which we have spent so many toilsome days and wristless nights.
+    thus far I had accomplished one of those great objects on which my
+    mind has been unalterably fixed for many years, judge then of the
+    pleasure I felt in all(a)ying my thirst with this pure and ice-cold
+    water which issues from the base of a low mountain or hill of a
+    gentle ascent for 1/2 a mile. the mountains are high on either hand
+    leave this gap at the head of this rivulet through which the road
+    passes.'"
+
+"Go on, Billy," said Uncle Dick. "That's all he says about actually
+crossing the Divide at Lemhi Pass! Tell us where they found the
+village."
+
+"Well, sir, that was beyond the Lemhi Pass, up in there, thirty miles
+from here, about. They'd been traveling, all right. Now that was August
+12th, and on August 13th they were over, and had their first drink of
+'chaste and icy water out a Columbia river head spring.' And all the
+while, back of us, poor old Clark and his men were dragging the boats up
+the chaste and icy waters of the Jefferson.
+
+"Now that day they got into rough country, other side; but they didn't
+care, because that day they saw two women and a man. They run off, too,
+and Lewis was 'soar' again; but all at once they ran plumb into three
+more--one an old woman, one a young woman, and one a kid. The young
+woman runs off. Now you ought to seen Cap. Lewis make friends with them
+people.
+
+"He gives them some beads and awls and some paint. Drewyer don't know
+their language, but he talks sign talk. He gets the old girl to call the
+young woman back. She comes back. Lewis gives her some things, too. He
+paints up their cheeks with the vermilion paint. From that time he had
+those womenfolks, young and old, feeding from the hand.
+
+"So now they all start out for the village, which Lewis knew was not far
+away. Sure enough, they meet about sixty braves riding down the trail;
+and I reckon if Meriwether Lewis ever felt like stealing horses, it was
+then.
+
+"Now the women showed their paint and awls and things. Lewis pulls up
+his shirt sleeve and shows his white skin. The chief gets down and hugs
+him, though that was the first white man they'd ever met in their lives.
+Then they had a smoke, like long-lost brothers. Then they went back to
+the Indian camp, four miles. Then Lewis allows something to eat would go
+fine, but old Cameahwait, the head man, hands him a few berries and
+choke cherries, which was all they had to eat. You see, this band was
+working east now, in the fall, to better hunting range--they had only
+bows and arrows.
+
+"Lewis sends Drewyer and Shields out to kill some meat. The old chief
+makes a sand map for Lewis, but says he can't get through, that
+way--meaning down the Salmon River, west of the Divide. Anyhow, they'd
+have no boats, for the timber was no good. So horses begin to look still
+better to Lewis.
+
+"They had a good party, but nothing to eat, and the Indians were scared
+when he got them to know there were more white men back of him, on the
+east side the hill. He couldn't talk, so he told it in beads, and
+jockeyed along till he got a half dozen to start back with him. So on
+August 16th he got back to this place here again, east of the summit,
+right where we're camped now, and he had plenty Indians now--and nothing
+to feed them.
+
+"But he waited to find Clark, and he didn't know how far downstream
+Clark was, and he was afraid he'd lose his Indians any minute. So he
+writes a note to Clark, and gives it to his best man, Drewyer, to carry
+downstream fast as he can go. Lewis had promised to trade goods for
+horses, but the Shoshonis didn't see any boats, and so they got
+suspicious.
+
+"Well, it was night. Lewis had the head man and about a couple of dozen
+others in camp. He was plumb anxious. But next day, the 17th, he tells
+Drewyer to hot-foot down the river, with an Indian or two along with
+him. About two hours, an Indian came back and said that Lewis had told
+the truth, for he had seen boats on the river.
+
+"Now between seven and eight o'clock that morning, Clark and Chaboneau
+and the Indian girl, Sacagawea, all were walking on ahead of the boats,
+the girl a little ahead. All at once she begins to holler. They look up,
+and here comes several Indians and Drewyer with the note from Lewis.
+There's nothing to it, after that."
+
+"Go on, Uncle Dick; you tell it now!" demanded Jesse, all excited.
+
+"You mean about Sacagawea?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"It sounds like a border romance--and it was a border romance,
+literally.
+
+"Here, on the river where she used to live, a young Indian woman ran out
+of the crowd and threw her arms around Sacagawea. It was the girl who
+had been captured with her at the Three Forks, six years or more ago, by
+the Minnetarees! They had been slaves together. This other girl had
+escaped and got back home, by what miracle none of us ever will know.
+
+"But now, when Sacagawea had told her people how good the white men
+were, there was no longer any question of the friendship all around. As
+Billy expresses it, there was nothing to it, after that.
+
+"You'd think that was asking us to believe enough? But no. The girl
+rushes up to Cameahwait, the chief, and puts her arms around him, too.
+He's her brother, that's all!
+
+"Well, this seemed to give them the entree into the best Shoshoni
+circles. Beyond this it was a question of details. Lewis stayed here
+till August 24th, trading for horses for all he was worth. He got five,
+for five or six dollars each in goods. They _cached_ what goods they
+could spare or could not take, hid their canoes, and on August 24th
+bade the old Missouri good-by--for that year at least.
+
+"They now went over west of the Divide, to the main village, to trade
+for more horses. They cut up their oars and broke up their remaining
+boxes and made pack saddles to carry their goods.
+
+"Meantime, Clark and eleven men, all the good carpenters, had started on
+August 18th to cross the Divide and explore down for a route on the
+stream which we now know took them to the Salmon River. They traveled
+two days, to the Indian camp. Now the _Journal_ takes page after page,
+describing these Indians.
+
+"Now it was Clark's turn to go ahead and find a way by horse or boat
+down to the Columbia. His notes tell of his troubles:
+
+    "'August 20th Tuesday 1805 'So-So-ne' the Snake Indians Set out at
+    half past 6 oClock and proceeded on (met many parties of Indians)
+    thro' a hilley Countrey to the Camp of the Indians on a branch of
+    the Columbia River, before we entered this Camp a Serimonious hault
+    was requested by the Chief and I smoked with all that Came around,
+    for Several pipes, we then proceeded on to the Camp & I was
+    introduced into the only Lodge they had which was pitched in the
+    Center for my party all the other Lodges made of bushes, after a
+    fiew Indian Seremonies I informed the Indians (of) the object of
+    our journey our good intentions toward them my Consirn for their
+    distressed Situation, what we had done for them in makeing a piece
+    with the Minitarras Mandans Rickara &c. for them. and requested
+    them all to take over their horses & assist Capt Lewis across &c.
+    also informing them the o(b)ject of my journey down the river, and
+    requested a guide to accompany me, all of which was repeited by the
+    Chief to the whole village.
+
+    "'Those pore people Could only raise a Sammon & a little dried
+    Choke Cherries for us half the men of the tribe with the Chief
+    turned out to hunt the antilopes, at 3 oClock after giveing a fiew
+    Small articles as presents I set out accompanied by an old man as
+    a Guide I endevered to procure as much information from thos people
+    as possible without much Suckcess they being but little acquainted
+    or effecting to be So. I left one man to purchase a horse and
+    overtake me and proceeded on thro a wide rich bottom on a beaten
+    Roade 8 miles Crossed the river and encamped on a Small run, this
+    evening passed a number of old lodges, and met a number of men
+    women children & horses, met a man who appeared of Some
+    Consideration who turned back with us, we halted a woman & gave us
+    3 Small Sammon, this man continued with me all night and partook of
+    what I had which was a little Pork verry Salt. Those Indians are
+    verry attentive to Strangers &c. I left our interpreter & his woman
+    to accompany the Indians to Capt Lewis to-morrow the Day they
+    informed me they would Set out I killed a Pheasent at the Indian
+    Camp larger than a dungal (dunghill) fowl with f(l)eshey
+    protubrances about the head like a turkey. Frost last night.'
+
+"Clark got more and more discouraging news about getting down the Lemhi
+River, on which they were camped, and the big river below--the Salmon
+River. But with the old man for guide, he went about seventy miles, into
+the gorge of the Salmon River, before he would quit. But he found that
+no man could get down that torrent, with either boat or pack train. He
+gave it up. They were nearly starved when they got back at the Indian
+camp, where Lewis and the other men were trading. Sacagawea had kept all
+her people from going on east to the buffalo country, though now they
+none of them had anything to eat but a few berries and choke cherries.
+If the Indians had left, or if they had been missed by the party, the
+expedition would have ended there. The Indian girl once more had saved
+the Northwest for America, very likely.
+
+"Now the old Indian guide said he knew a way across, away to the north.
+They hired him as guide. They traded for twenty-nine horses, and at last
+packed them and set out for the hardest part of their journey and the
+riskiest, though they did not know that then. On August 30th they set
+out. At the same time Cameahwait and his band set off east, after their
+fall hunt.
+
+"That was the last that Sacagawea ever saw of her brother or her girl
+friend. She went on with her white husband, into strange tribes--nothing
+further for her to look forward to now, for she was leaving home for
+another thousand miles, in the opposite direction.
+
+"And that ended the long, hard, risky time the company of Volunteers for
+Discovery of the Northwest had in crossing the Continental Divide. We
+lie at the foot of their pass. Yonder they headed out for the setting
+sun!"
+
+"Let's go on after them, Uncle Dick!" exclaimed Jesse. "We've got a good
+outfit, and we're not afraid!"
+
+"I've been expecting that," rejoined their leader. "I was afraid you'd
+want to go through! But we can't do it, fellows, not this year at least.
+There's the school term we've got to think of. We're nearly three
+thousand miles from St. Louis. That means we'll have to choose between
+two or three weeks of the hardest kind of mountain work and back out
+when we've got nowhere, and taking a fast and simple trip to the true
+head of the Missouri. Which would you rather do?"
+
+"We don't like to turn back," said Rob.
+
+"Well, it wouldn't be turning back, really. It would be going to the
+real head of the Missouri--and neither Lewis nor Clark ever did that, or
+very many other men." Billy spoke quietly.
+
+"But don't think," he added, "that I'm not game to go on into the Bitter
+Roots, if you say so. I'm promising you she's rough, up in there. The
+trail they took was a fright, and I don't see how they made it. It ran
+to where this range angles into the corner of the Bitter Roots, and
+crossed there. They crossed another pass, too, and that makes three
+passes, from here. They got here July 10th, and three days later at last
+they hit the Lolo Creek trail, over the Lolo Pass--the way old Chief
+Joseph came east when he went on the war trail; he fought Gibbon in the
+battle of the Big Hole, above here."
+
+Rob sighed. "Well, it only took Lewis and Clark a couple of months to
+get through. But still, we've only got a couple of weeks."
+
+"What do you say, John? Shall we go south to the head with Billy?" Uncle
+Dick did not decide it alone.
+
+"Vote yes, in the circumstances," said John. "Hate to quit her, though!"
+
+"You, Jess?"
+
+"Oh, all right, I'll haul off if the rest do. We'll get to fish some,
+won't we?"
+
+"All you want. The best trout and grayling fishing there is left
+anywhere."
+
+"It's a vote, Uncle Dick!" said Rob. "This is our head camp on this leg
+of the trip."
+
+"I think that's wise," said Uncle Dick.
+
+"But before we leave here I want you to have a last look at the map."
+
+They spread it open in the firelight.
+
+"This point is where Clark came and got the canoes the next year, 1806.
+They came back over the Lolo, but took a short cut, east of this
+mountain range, forty miles east of the other trail. They came over the
+Gibbon Pass--which ought to be called Clark's Pass and isn't--and headed
+southeast, the Indian girl being of use again now. They came down
+Grasshopper Creek, walking over millions of dollars of gold gravel, and
+found their canoes, not over a few hundred yards from where we sit, like
+enough.
+
+"Then Clark and his men got in the boats and headed home. Sacagawea
+showed them the trail up the Gallatin, over the Bozeman Pass, to the
+Yellowstone. And they went down that to its mouth.
+
+"And now, one last touch to show what nerve those captains really had.
+Either could cut loose.
+
+"Near what is now Missoula, on the Bitter Root--which Lewis called
+Clark's Fork, after Clark, just as Clark named his Salmon River
+tributary after Lewis--Lewis took ten men and headed across lots for
+the Great Falls and then for the head of the Marias River!
+
+"Surely, they began to scatter. Clark had left twenty men, the Indian
+girl and her baby, and they had fifty horses. At this place here, where
+we are in camp, Clark split his party again, some going down in the
+boats, some on horseback, but all traveling free and happy. They got
+here July 10th, and three days later were at the Three Forks, both
+parties, only one hour apart! They certainly had good luck in getting
+together.
+
+"On that same day, Sergeant Ordway took six boats and nine men and
+started down the Missouri to meet Lewis at the Great Falls, or the mouth
+of the Marias. They made it down all right, and that is all we can say,
+for no record exists of that run downstream.
+
+"Now, get all this straight in your heads and see how they had
+scattered, in that wild, unknown country, part in boats, part on
+shore--the riskiest way to travel. All the sergeants are captains now.
+We have four different companies.
+
+"Gass is at the Great Falls, where Lewis split his party. Ordway is on
+his way down the river from the Three Forks to the Falls. Clark is with
+the horses now, headed east for the Yellowstone--which not a soul in
+that party knew a thing about, except the Indian girl, who insisted they
+would come out on the Yellowstone. And on that river the Clark party
+divided once more, part going in boats and part on horseback!
+
+"Now figure five parties out of thirty-one men. Look at your map,
+remembering that the two land parties were in country they had never
+seen before. Yet they plan to meet at the mouth of the Yellowstone, over
+twelve hundred miles from where we are sitting here! That's traveling!
+That's exploring! And their story of it all is as plain and simple and
+modest as though children had done it. There's nothing like it in all
+the world."
+
+He ceased to speak. The little circle fell silent.
+
+"Go on, go on, Uncle Dick!" urged Jess. "You've not allowed us to read
+ahead that far. You said you'd rather we wouldn't. Tell us, now."
+
+"No. Fold up your maps and close your journals for a while, here at our
+last camp on the greatest trail a river ever laid.
+
+"We're going fishing now, fellows--to-morrow we start east, gaining two
+years on Lewis and Clark. When we get down near the Yellowstone and
+Great Falls country again, going east ourselves, we'll just finish up
+the story of the map till we reach the Mandans--which is where we left
+our own good ship _Adventurer_.
+
+"To-morrow we head south, the other way. 'This story is to be continued
+in our next,' as the story papers say.
+
+"Good night. Keep all this in your heads. It is a great story of great
+men in a great valley, doing the first exploring of the greatest country
+in the world--the land that is drained by the Missouri and its streams!
+
+"Good luck, old tops!" he added, as he rose and stepped to the edge of
+the circle of light, waving his hand to the Divide above them. He stood
+looking toward the west.
+
+"Whom are you speaking to, Uncle Dick?" asked John, as he heard no
+answer.
+
+"I was just speaking to my friends, Captain Meriwether Lewis and Captain
+William Clark. Didn't you see them pass our camp just now?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+THE UTMOST SOURCE
+
+
+The young Alaskans, who had followed faithfully the travels of Lewis and
+Clark from the mouth of the Missouri to the Continental Divide, now felt
+exultation that they had finished their book work so soon. But they felt
+also a greater interest in the thought that they now might follow out a
+part of the great waterway which not even Lewis and Clark ever had seen.
+They were all eagerness to be off. The question was, what would be the
+best route and what would be the transportation?
+
+"We still can spare a month in the West," said Uncle Dick, "and get back
+to St. Louis in time to catch the fall school term. That will give us
+time for a little sport. How shall we get down south, two hundred miles,
+and back to the Three Forks? What do you say, Billy?"
+
+"Well, sir," answered the young ranchman, "we've got more help than
+Lewis and Clark had. We can use the telegraph, the telephone, the
+railway cars, and the motor car--besides old Sleepy and Nigger and the
+riding horses. We can get about anywhere you like, in as much or little
+time as you like. If you leave it to me, I'd say, get a man at Dillon or
+Grayling--I've friends in both towns--to take the pack train back to my
+ranch on the Gallatin----"
+
+"But we don't want to say good-by to Sleepy!" broke in Jesse. "He's a
+lot of fun."
+
+"Well, don't say good-by to him--we'll see him when we come north again,
+and maybe we'll all go in the mountains together again, some other year.
+
+"But now, to save time and skip over a lot of irrigated farm country,
+how would it do to take the O.S.L. Railway train, down at the Red Rock,
+and fly south, say to Monida on the line between Montana and Idaho?
+That's right down the valley of the Red Rock River, which is our real
+Missouri source.
+
+"Now, at Monida we can get a motor car to take us east across the
+Centennial Valley and the Alaska Basin----"
+
+"That's good--Alaska!" said Rob.
+
+"Yes? Well, all that country is flat and hard and the motor roads are
+perfect, so we could get over the country fast--do that two hundred
+miles by rail and car a lot faster than old Sleepy would.
+
+"Now, we can go by motor car from Monida right to the mouth of Hell
+Roaring Canyon, at the foot of Mount Jefferson, and up in there, at the
+head of that canyon, there is a wide hole in the top of the mountains,
+where the creek heads that everybody now calls Hell Roaring Creek. J. V.
+Brower went up in there with a rancher named Culver, who lived at the
+head of Picnic Creek, at the corner of the Alaska Basin, and Brower
+wrote a book about it.[4] He called that canyon Culver Canyon, but the
+name does not seem to have stuck. Now, Culver's widow, the same Lilian
+Hackett Culver whose picture Brower prints as the first woman to see the
+utmost source of the Missouri, still lives on her old homestead, where a
+full-sized river bursts out from a great spring, right at the foot of a
+rocky ridge. She's owner of the river a couple of miles, I guess, down
+to the second dam.
+
+[Footnote 4: _The Missouri and Its Utmost Source_, J. V. Brower, 1896.]
+
+"She stocked that water, years ago, every kind of trout she could
+get--native cutthroat, rainbow, Dolly Varden, Eastern brook, steelheads,
+and I don't know what all, including grayling--and she has made a living
+by selling the fishing rights there to anglers who stop at her house.
+I've been there many times.
+
+"I've fished a lot everywhere, but that is the most wonderful trout
+water in all the world, in my belief. I've seen grayling there up to
+three pounds, and have taken many a rainbow over eight pounds; one was
+killed there that went twelve and one-half pounds. I've caught lots of
+steelheads there of six and seven pounds, and 'Dollies' as big, and
+natives up to ten pounds--there is no place in the West where all these
+species get such weights.
+
+"They call the place now 'Lil Culver's ranch.' She is held in a good
+deal of affection by the sportsmen who have come there from all over the
+country. She is now a little bit of an old lady, sprightly as a cricket,
+and very bright and well educated. She was from New England, once, and
+came away out here. She's a fine botanist and she used to have books and
+a lot of things. Lives there all alone in a little three-room log house
+right by the big spring. And she's the first woman to see the head of
+the Missouri. Her husband was the first man. That looks sort of like
+headquarters, doesn't it?"
+
+"It certainly does!" said Rob. "Let's head in there. What do you say,
+Uncle Dick?"
+
+"It looks all right to me," said Uncle Dick. "That's right on our way,
+and it's close, historically and topographically, to the utmost source.
+You surely have a good head, Billy, and you surely do know all this
+country of the Big Bend."
+
+"I ought to," said Billy. "Well, then suppose we call that a go? We can
+fish on the spring creek, and live at Lil Culver's place; you can drive
+right there with a car. Then the mail road runs right on east, past the
+foot of Jefferson Mountain and over the Red Rock Pass--Centennial Pass,
+some call it--to Henry's Lake. All the fishing you want over there--the
+easiest in the world--but only one kind of trout--natives--and they
+taste muddy now, at low water. Too easy for fun, you'll say.
+
+"But at the head of Henry's Lake is a ranch house, what they call a
+'dude place.' I know the owner well; he's right on the motor road from
+Salt Lake to Helena and Butte, and just above the road that crosses the
+Targhee Pass, east of Henry's Lake, to the Yellowstone Park.
+
+"Now, Henry's Lake was named after Andrew Henry, who was chased south
+from the Three Forks by the Blackfeet. Just north of there is the low
+divide called Raynold's Pass, after Captain Raynolds, a government
+explorer, about 1872. Suppose we kept our Monida car that far, and then
+sent it back home? Then I could telegraph my folks to send my own car
+down there from my ranch, to meet us there at the head of Henry's Lake,
+say one week from now; that'll give us time to run the river up, easy.
+
+"Then we'd have my car to run across Targhee, to the South Fork of the
+Madison--another source of the Missouri--and try out the grayling. We
+are now on the only grayling waters left in the West. All the heads of
+the Missouri used to have them. I thought you all might like to have a
+go at that. I can promise you good sport. We can have a tent and cook
+outfit brought down on my car from the ranch."
+
+"Well, that looks like a time saver, sure," said John. "We finish things
+faster than Lewis and Clark, don't we?"
+
+"Sure. Well, when you feel you have to start back east we can jump in
+the car and run back up north to my ranch, up the Gallatin. You can
+follow Sleepy over to Bozeman and Livingston, then; or you can go east
+by rail down the Yellowstone; or you can divide your party and part go
+by rail down the river to Great Falls, and meet at the Mandan villages,
+or somewhere. We can plan that out later if you like.
+
+"But in this way you cover all that big sweep of country where the arm
+of the Continental Divide bends south and holds all these hundreds of
+streams around the Three Forks and below. We'd be skirting the rim of
+that great bend in the mountains, a sort of circle of something like two
+hundred miles across; and we'd be coming back to the old river again at
+the Forks. Looks to me that's about the quickest way we can cover our
+trip and the way to get the fullest idea of the real river."
+
+"What do you vote, fellows?" asked their leader. "This looks like a very
+well-laid-out campaign, to me."
+
+"So say we all of us!" answered Rob.
+
+"That's right," added John and Jesse.
+
+"All right, then," nodded Billy. "On our way! Roll them beds. Keep out
+your fishing tackle. I'll stop in town and telephone to Andy Sawyer to
+come on down to the livery at Red Rock and pick up our stock there, so
+we won't lose any time getting the train."
+
+This well-thought-out plan worked so well that nothing of special
+interest happened in their steady ride down to the railroad, out of the
+historic cove, in among the fields and houses of the later land.
+
+And to make quite as brief the story of their uneventful journey across
+the wide and treeless region below, it may be said that on the evening
+of the next day they pulled in at the little log-cabin hotel of Mrs.
+Culver, the first woman who ever saw the head of the true Missouri.
+
+That lady, quaint and small, came out and made them welcome. "I've three
+beds, in two rooms," said she, "and you'll have to double up, but I can
+feed you all, I guess."
+
+"Is there any fishing?" asked Jesse. But an instant later he answered
+himself. "Great Scott!" said he. "Look at that trout jump. He's big as a
+whale. Look it--look it, fellows!"
+
+They turned as he pointed down the hill to the wide, clear water of the
+spring creek. A dozen splashes and rings showed feeding fish, and large
+ones.
+
+"Oh, yes," said their hostess, indifferently. "There's a good many of
+them in there. They seem to run around more along toward evening."
+
+The young sportsmen could not wait for supper. Hurriedly getting
+together their rods and reels, they soon had leaders and flies ready and
+were running down the slope after what bid fair to be rare sport with
+the great fish which they saw leaping.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+SPORT WITH ROD AND REEL
+
+
+The three young Alaskans were all very fair masters of the art of
+fishing with the fly, and now surely had excellent opportunity to
+practice it. The trout and grayling were rising in scores, and for half
+a mile the surface of the bright water was broken into countless rings
+and ripples. Now and then some fish sprang entirely above the water.
+John and Jesse took the nearer shore, while Rob hurried around over the
+pole bridge at the head of the stream, just below the head spring.
+
+"What have you got on, John?" asked Jesse.
+
+"Jock Scott, No. 4," replied John. "Try a good big Silver Doctor; these
+big fellows ought to take it."
+
+They began to cast, trying to reach the mid-channel, where, over the
+white sand of the channel, the fish were rising most vigorously. All at
+once Jesse gave an exclamation.
+
+"Wow! Look at that, hey?"
+
+His fly had been taken by a great fish which had made for it a dozen
+feet away. The rod went up into an arch. Again and again the fish
+sprang high above the water, four, five, six times, one leap after
+another; and then came a long, steady savage run which carried Jesse
+down along the bank, following the fish. He had all he could do to
+master the powerful fish, but, keeping on a steady pressure, he at last
+got him close inshore, where John netted him.
+
+"That's a steelhead--that's why he's such a jumper!" exclaimed John.
+"Well done, Jess!" exclaimed John, holding up the splendid fish to view.
+"Six pounds, if he's an ounce!"
+
+A sudden shout from Rob, across the water, called their attention. He
+also was playing a heavy fish, which broke water again and again.
+
+"What you got, Rob?" called John.
+
+"Rainbow!" answered Rob, across the stream. "He's a buster, too!" And
+truly it was a fine one, for that night it weighed five and
+three-quarter pounds.
+
+"Hurry, John--your turn now!" shouted Jess. "They're the fightingest
+fish you ever saw."
+
+John began casting, while Jesse watched, working his fly to where he saw
+a heavy fish moving. An instant and he struck, the reel screeching as
+the fish made its run. This time the fish did not jump, but played deep,
+boring and surging, but at last John conquered it and Jesse slipped the
+net under it.
+
+"My! It's just like a big brook trout," said he. "I'll bet he'll go over
+five pounds."
+
+"No," said John, sagely. "That's a Dolly Varden--looks a lot like a
+brook trout, but look at the blue ring around the red spots. They fight
+deep--don't jump like a rainbow. But the steelhead out jumps them all!
+Did you ever see such fishing! This beats the Arctic trout on Rat
+Portage."
+
+They followed down the pond made by the dam, and literally one or other
+of the three was all the time playing a fish, and they all ran very
+large. When at last they answered the supper horn, Rob had five fish,
+John four, and Jesse two--the last a fine, fat grayling, the first he
+had ever taken below the Arctic Circle.
+
+Uncle Dick's eyes opened very wide. "Well, Billy," said he, "you've made
+good! I never saw so many big trout taken that soon in any water I ever
+knew!"
+
+"They get a lot of feed in that stream," said Billy. "The watercress
+holds a lot of stuff they eat, and there must be minnows in there, too.
+I've heard lots of men say that, for big fish, this beats any water they
+ever knew."
+
+"Oh, maybe they don't run as big as they did," said Mrs. Culver; "I've
+known several rainbows over ten pounds taken here. One gentleman came
+for specimens to mount, and he caught a five-pound rainbow, but his
+friend made him throw it back because it was too little. Then they
+fished two days and didn't get any more rainbow at all; they're so
+savage, I think they get caught first. But you've got some good ones,
+haven't you? Well, I like to see a person have some sport when he comes
+here."
+
+"How long have you lived here, Mrs. Culver?" asked Billy, that night at
+the dinner table.
+
+"Oh, all my life, it seems," she laughed. "I was here early, in the
+'nineties, when Mr. Brower came to get to the head of Hell Roaring. That
+was in 1895. He and my husband, Mr. William N. Culver, and Mr. Isaac
+Jacques went up there horseback. They called that Hell Roaring Canyon
+then, and I think most folks do yet, though Mr. Brower as a scientific
+explorer said he would call it Culver Canyon after that. He did, but his
+story of the exploration never got to be very widely known. I guess they
+were the first to get to the head, except Indians. The government
+surveyors never followed out the river above Upper Red Rock Lake.
+
+"They made two tries at it. The first time was August 5, 1895. They left
+their horses and waded up the creek, till they came to a perpendicular
+rock across the canyon. It was hard going, so they turned back that day.
+
+"On August 29th they tried it again. They went up Horse Camp Creek and
+left their horses at the foot of Hanson Mountain, and took one pack
+horse and cut across over Hanson Mountain and then went down into the
+Hell Roaring Creek; but they had to leave their pack horse then. Beyond
+that they took to the stream bed on foot, and this time they got up on
+top and followed the creek to its source.
+
+"They came back all excited, saying they were the first ever to follow
+the Missouri to its head. They named a little lake, up near the summit,
+in a marshy flat, Lilian Lake, after me. Just a little way beyond that
+they found a big saucer-like spot in the round little hole up
+there--peaks all around it, like it had sunk down. Well, out of that
+circular marsh the creek comes. That's the head--the utmost source. The
+snow from the peaks feeds into that cup, or rather saucer, up on top,
+back of Mount Jefferson.
+
+"I don't think they went as far toward the actual head as I did myself,
+for it was late and they had their horses to find. Now on September 26,
+1895, I rode horseback up in there with Mr. Allen, and we rode right on
+up over Hanson, and down into Hell Roaring, and beyond where they left
+their pack horse. We rode almost all the way, and got into that Hole in
+the Mountains, as Mr. Brower calls the depressed valley up on top. But
+we rode on clear past it, three miles, and found the creek plain that
+far.
+
+"Almost up to the top of the divide, the creek turns northeast. It comes
+out from under a big black rock, near a clump of balsam--like my spring
+here, only not so big. Mr. Brower and Mr. Culver had marked a rock and
+put down a copper plate for their discovery. I had a tin plate, and I
+scratched my name and the date on that. There wasn't any mark of anyone
+else there, and we were quite beyond the place where Mr. Brower stopped.
+So maybe I am the first person, certainly the first woman, to see the
+real upper spring of the Missouri River.
+
+"Now here I am, all alone in the world, as you see. Would you like to
+see my pressed flowers and my other things?"
+
+The young explorers looked at the tiny, thin little old lady with
+reverence, and did not say anything for a long time, before they began
+to look at the treasured belongings of the faraway cabin home.
+
+"Do you boys want to go up?" she asked, after a time.
+
+"We came for that," said Rob.
+
+"You couldn't climb up the canyon all the way, maybe. Do you think you
+could get up over the mountain, the way we did?"
+
+"You don't know these boys," remarked Uncle Dick to her. "They're old
+mountain climbers and can go anywhere."
+
+"They'd want a guide, and I couldn't go, now. And they'd want horses."
+
+"Well, we'll leave out the guide, and we could leave out the horses,
+like enough, for we can go to the foot of the mountain in the car. But
+on the whole I can think we'll ride up, for a change."
+
+"You can get horses down at the ranch a little way. I have none here
+now."
+
+"All right. To-morrow we'll outfit for the climb."
+
+"Well, I rode all the way. Now you go on the shoulder of this mountain
+back of us, above the spring, and work up the best you can, but keep
+your eye on Jefferson. Get up right high, before you head across to the
+canyon of the Missouri, so you can be above the high cliff that you
+can't get over in the bed of the stream. Then you go down in the canyon
+and cross, best you can, and then ride up on the far side, and then work
+off for the top of Jefferson.
+
+"You'll know the little bowl on top the mountain. That's the top sponge.
+But the real head stream is even beyond that. You'll find my tin plate
+there, I guess, with my name and date.
+
+"I'm glad you had some good fishing here. We'll have some of your trout
+for breakfast. The feather beds are made from wild-goose and duck
+feathers. It's been a great country for them."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+THE HEAD OF THE GREAT RIVER
+
+
+Bright and early they were in the saddle and off for the crowning
+experience of their long quest for the head of the great Missouri. Billy
+brought up the horses from the ranch below. The chauffeur from Monida
+said he "had not lost any mountains" and preferred not to make the
+ascent, so only five were in the party, Billy, of course, insisting on
+seeing the head of the river, in which he had had such interest all his
+life.
+
+They took one pack horse, a few cooking implements, and such blankets as
+their hostess could spare, their own bed rolls and most of their
+equipment having gone back to Billy's ranch by his pack train. Their
+supply of food was only enough for two meals--supper and breakfast--but
+this gave them two days for the ascent, whereas Mrs. Culver had made it
+in one; so they felt sure of success.
+
+Well used to mountain work, and guided by a good engineer, their Uncle
+Dick, who had spent his life in work among wild countries, they wound
+easily in and among the shoulders of the hills, taking distance rather
+than sharp elevation, and so gradually and without strain to the horses
+working up the mountain that lay at one side of Mount Jefferson. When
+they were well up, they followed a long hogback that swung a little to
+the left, and at length turned for their deliberate plunge down into the
+steep valley of the stream. Here, among heavy tracts of fallen timber
+and countless tumbled rocks, they came at last to the white water of
+their river, now grown very small and easily fordable by the horses.
+
+"As near as I can tell," said Uncle Dick, "we've got her whipped right
+now. This must be a good way above the place Brower and Culver left
+their horse. We're up seventy-six hundred and forty feet now by the
+aneroid. The valley is around seven thousand feet, and Brower makes the
+summit at eight thousand feet; so we've not so far to go now. We crossed
+above the upper Red Rock Lake, and Brower makes the whole distance,
+along the longest branch, only twenty miles from the head spring to the
+lake. A mile or two should put us at the edge of the Hole in the
+Mountains, as he calls his upper valley. What do you say--shall we
+leave our horses and walk it, or try on up in the same way?"
+
+"I vote against leaving the horses," said Rob. "It's nearly always bad
+to split an outfit, and bad to get away from your base of supplies. I'd
+say keep to the horses as high as they can get. A good mountain horse
+can go almost any place a man can, if you leave him alone. If it gets
+hard to ride, we can walk and lead, or drive them ahead of us over the
+down timber."
+
+"And then, if we get them up to the Hole, we could camp up in there all
+night," suggested John. "Like enough, we'd be the first to do that,
+anyhow."
+
+"And maybe the last," laughed Billy. "It'll sure be cold up in there,
+with no tent and not much bedding and none too much to eat. We're above
+the trout line, up here, and not far to go to timber line, if you ask
+me."
+
+"Not so bad as that, Billy," commented Jesse. "Nine thousand,
+ninety-five hundred--isn't that about average timber line? We're only
+eight thousand at our upper valley, and we're not going to climb to the
+top of the peaks."
+
+"Well, I'm game if you all are," said Billy. "We can make it through for
+one night, all right, for when the firewood runs out we can make camp
+and finish on foot."
+
+"Go on ahead, Jesse," said Uncle Dick. "You're the youngest. Let's see
+how good a mountain man you are."
+
+"All right!" said Jesse, stoutly. "You see." Accordingly, they rode on
+up, slowly, for a little distance, allowing the horses plenty of time to
+make their way among rocks and over fallen poles. At last Jesse came to
+a halt and dismounted, leading his horse for a way, until he brought up
+at the foot of such a tangle of down timber and piled boulders that he
+could not get on. He turned, his face red with chagrin. "Well," he said,
+"I've never been here before. I guess a fellow has to figure it out."
+
+"You go ahead now, John," laughed Uncle Dick. "Jess, fall to the rear;
+you're in disgrace."
+
+"All right!" said John. "You watch me."
+
+This time John rode back downstream a little, until clear of the patch
+of heavy down timber. Then he turned and swung up above the bed of the
+stream, angling up on the side of the mountain, and finally heading
+close to the foot of a tall escarpment which barred the horses for a
+way. Here he hugged the cut face for a few yards and by good fortune
+found the way passable beyond for quite a distance.
+
+"Not bad," said his leader. "Go on. I see you've got the idea of
+distance for elevation."
+
+"Yes, sir," said John. "But I'm like Jesse--I've never been here before,
+and I don't know just where I'm going."
+
+"Humph! Isn't that about the way Lewis and Clark were fixed, only all
+the way across?" scoffed Uncle Dick. "Go ahead, and if we have to get
+down and lead, I'll put Rob ahead, or Billy."
+
+John gritted his teeth and spurred up his horse. "You give me time,"
+said he, "and I'll take you up there."
+
+He did pursue his edging away from the stream until he could no longer
+see the exact course. At last he pulled up. "We must have climbed three
+hundred feet," said he. "Where is it?"
+
+"What do you say, Rob?" asked Uncle Dick.
+
+"I'll stay behind and see that Mr. Pack Horse comes," replied Rob. "But
+I should think we might angle down a little now, because we're going up
+the wrong split. It's two-thirty o'clock, now, and we ought to raise the
+Hole pretty soon. I'd say off to the right a little now, wouldn't you,
+Billy, till we raised the Hole for sure?"
+
+Billy nodded, and presently set out ahead. His practiced eye found a way
+through the hard going until at last they stood, at the left and above
+the stream's entrance into a roughly circular little depression,
+surrounded by a broken rim of high peaks.
+
+"Here she is, fellows!" exclaimed Uncle Dick. "This is what we've been
+looking for! Yonder's the thread of the water, headed for New Orleans
+and the last jetty of the Mississippi. What's your pleasure now?"
+
+"Well, sir," said Rob, who had for some time been afoot, leading his own
+horse and driving the pack horse ahead, "why not throw off here and
+finish her on foot, to the clean head, where Mrs. Culver left her tin
+plate? Here's a trickle of water and enough wood for fire, and the
+horses can get enough feed to last them for one night."
+
+"All right," said Uncle Dick. "It's all in plain sight and we can't lose
+our horses, especially if we halter them all tight till we get back."
+
+They now all dismounted and made their animals fast to the trees and
+stout bushes, first unlashing the pack.
+
+"Good work, Billy!" said Rob, as he helped cast off the lash rope. "She
+hasn't slipped an inch."
+
+"More'n I can say," rejoined Billy. "I slipped a good many times, coming
+up, and barked my shins more'n an inch, I'm thinking."
+
+"Lead off, Jess," said Uncle Dick, as they stood ready for the last
+march. "No, don't leave your coat; it will soon be cold, and it is
+always cold in the mountains when you stop walking. And you all have
+your match boxes?"
+
+"Why, Uncle Dick," expostulated Jesse, "it's just over there, and we
+won't need any fire there, for we're coming right back."
+
+"But, Jesse, haven't I told you always in new country to travel with
+matches and a hatchet, or at least a knife? No man can tell when he may
+get hurt or lost in mountain work, and then a fire is his first need.
+It's all right to know how to make a fire by friction, Indian way, but
+you can't always do that, and matches are surer and quicker. Never leave
+them."
+
+They set out, their leader now in advance, Billy bringing up the rear.
+Skirting the edge of the marshlike depression which acted as a holding
+cup for the upper snows, they at last headed it and caught the ultimate
+trickle that came in beyond it. This, following the example of their
+late hostess, they rapidly ascended, until at last, by a clump of dark
+balsam trees, high up toward the white top of Jefferson, where a light
+snow had fallen not long before, even in the summertime, they picked out
+the dark rock from under which a tiny thread of water, icy cold and
+sufficiently continuous to be called perennial, issued and began its way
+to a definite and permanent channel.
+
+Without any comment, each one of the party, almost unconsciously,
+removed his hat. A feeling almost of awe fell upon them as they stood in
+that wild, remote, silent and sheltered spot, unknown and unnoted of the
+busy world, which now they knew was the very head spring of the greatest
+waterway of all the world.
+
+"'Shun!" barked Uncle Dick. The three boys fell into line, heels
+together, in the position of the soldier, Billy following suit. Uncle
+Dick drew from his pocket a tiny, folded flag, no more than four or five
+inches in its longest dimension, and pinned it on a twig which he placed
+upright at the side of the spring.
+
+"Colors!" Sharply Uncle Dick's hand swept to his eyes, in the army
+salute. And the hand of every one of the others followed. Then, with
+swung hat, Rob led them with the Scouts' cheer.
+
+"Let's look for the Culver plate now!" exclaimed Jesse, and scrambled on
+hands and knees. Indeed, he did unearth the rusted fragments of what
+might have been the original record plate, but small trace now remained
+of any inscription. With some pride he next drew out from his shirt
+front a plate which he himself had concealed thus long, brought for a
+purpose of like sort to that of the rusted remnant they now had found.
+But his Uncle Dick gently restrained him.
+
+"No, better not, son," said he. "You and I have done very little. We
+have discovered nothing at all, except one Indian arrowhead a hundred
+miles north of here. To leave our names here now would only be egotism,
+and that's not what we want to show. Reverence is what we want to show,
+for this place that was here before Thomas Jefferson was born, and will
+be here unchanged after the last President of the United States shall
+have passed on.
+
+"Let old Mount Jefferson have his own secret still for his own--see how
+he wipes out all traces of human beings, steadily and surely!
+
+"In all their great journey across, Meriwether Lewis did not once write
+his name on rock or tree. Will Clark wrote his twice--once on Pompey's
+Pillar, on the Yellowstone, and once on the rock far down in Nebraska,
+as we noted when we passed near that place. But the simplicity, the
+modesty of those two, sinking everything in their great duty to their
+country--it's those things, my boys, which make their _Journal_ the
+model of its kind and class, and their journey the greatest of its kind
+in all the history of the world.
+
+"Now hats off to Captain Meriwether Lewis and Captain William Clark of
+the army! Had they come where we are now, they would not have reached
+the Columbia. In courage, good sense, and modesty, the first and best."
+
+They did salute, once more and in silence. But Uncle Dick put a hand on
+Jesse's shoulder as he saw tears in his eyes.
+
+"It's all right, son," said he. "Don't mind, but don't forget. Good men
+come and go; it's good deeds that live. Now, we're by no means first at
+this spot, and it's of no vast consequence now. We'll even let our
+little flag flutter here alone, till the snows come, and the slides give
+it its evening gun."
+
+They turned back down the edge of the depression in the mountain top,
+and by deep dusk once more were at the horse camp, where Billy quickly
+went to work to find grass and wood. All bore a hand. They got up all
+the dry wood they could find, cut stakes for a back log pile of green
+logs, spread the half of a quilt back of their slim bed, and so prepared
+to pass a night which they found very long and cold. Their supper now
+was cooked, and before the small but efficient fire they now could
+complete the labors of their own day--each boy with his notes, and John
+with the map which he always brought up each day at least in sketch
+outline.
+
+"I don't know just how many people ever have been in here," said Billy,
+after a time. "Not so very many, sure, for nearly all try to get up the
+canyon. I heard that a man and his wife once climbed up the canyon, but I
+doubt that. There's Bill Bowers, from the head of Henry's Lake, he's
+been up to the top, but I don't know just how far--he said you couldn't
+follow the canyon all the way. I don't doubt that prospectors and hunters
+have been across here, and the Bannacks hunted these mountains for
+sheep, many a year. Used to be great bighorn country, and of course, if
+this country never was known by anybody, the bighorns would still be
+here. There's stories that there's a few in back, but I don't believe
+it. You can ride up the south slope of Sawtelle Mountain, in the timber,
+almost to the top, and almost this high. I guess she's been traveled
+over, all right, by now. Only, they couldn't carry off the old river. If
+they could, I guess they'd have done that, too."
+
+That night the stars came out astonishingly brilliant and large. The
+silence of the great hills was unbroken even by a coyote's howl. To them
+all, half dozing by their little fire, it did indeed seem they had found
+their ultimate wilderness, after all.
+
+The chill of morning still was over all the high country when they got
+astir and began to care for the horses on their picket ropes and to
+finish the cooking of their remaining food. Then, each now leading his
+horse, they began to thread their way downhill. Over country where now
+they had established the general courses, it was easier for such good
+mountain travelers to pick out a feasible way down. They crossed the
+canyon at about the same place, but swung off more to the right, and
+early in the morning were descending a timbered slope which brought them
+to the edge of the Alaska Basin and the Red Rock road. They now were on
+perfect footing and not far from the Culver camp, so they took plenty of
+time.
+
+"The name 'Culver Canyon' did not seem to stick," said Billy, as they
+marked the gorge where the river debouched, far to their right, now. "I
+don't know what the surveyors call it--they never have done much over in
+here but guess at things mostly--but the name 'Hell Roaring Canyon' is
+the one that I've always heard used for it. It's not much known even
+now. A few people call it the 'real head of the Missouri,' but nobody in
+here seems to know much about its history, or to care much about it.
+They all just say it's a mighty rough canyon, up in. Somehow, too, the
+place has a bad name for storms. I've heard a rancher say, over east of
+the pass, on Henry's Lake, that in the winter it got black over in here
+on Jefferson, and he couldn't sleep at night, sometimes, because of the
+noise of the storms over in these canyons. Oh, I reckon she's wild, all
+right.
+
+"Now, below the mouth, you'll see all the names are off. Hell Roaring
+breaks into four channels just at the mouth, over the wash. Fact is,
+there's seven channels across the valley, in all, but four creeks are
+permanent, and they wander all out yonder, clean across the valley, but
+come together below, above the upper lake; and that's the head of the
+Red Rock, which ought to be called the Missouri by rights.
+
+"And you ought to have seen the grayling once, in all these branches!"
+he added. "No finer fishing ever was in the world. The water's as
+bright as glass, fast and clean, and not too deep to wade, with bends
+and willow coves on below--loveliest creeks you ever saw. Then, over
+across, is a creek where Jim Blair, a rancher, planted regular brook
+trout, years ago. They get to a half pound, three quarters, and take
+the fly like gentlemen. But all this country's shot to pieces
+now--automobiles everywhere, and all sorts of men who kill the last fish
+they can."
+
+"But have they got them all?" asked Rob. "It would be easy planting and
+keeping up such waters as these."
+
+"Sure it would. Well, maybe some day folks'll learn that the old times
+in their country are gone. We act like they wasn't, but that's because
+we've got no sense--don't know our history.
+
+"Now," he added, as they forded one bright, merry stream that crossed
+their way, "you all ride down the road to where the bridge is--that's
+the main stream again, and she's pretty big--regular river, all right.
+Wait for me there at the bridge. I'll see if I can pick out a fish or
+so. I see a dry quaking asp lying here that some fellow has left, and
+I'll just try it myself. You know, get a quaking-asp pole that's dry
+and hasn't been dead too long, it's the lightest and springiest natural
+fishing rod that grows. The tip is strong enough, if it hasn't rotted,
+and she handles almost as good as a boughten rod. Now Rob, you lead my
+horse on down, and I'll try it along the willows with a 'hopper.'"
+
+"Oh, let me go along, too!" exclaimed Jesse. "Lead my horse, John?"
+
+"All right," said John. "Good luck."
+
+At the bridge, a half mile below, the three remaining members of the
+party picketed the horses on a pleasant grass plat near the road. Rob
+went exploring for a little way, then, without saying anything, began to
+get together some dry wood for a fire, and also began cutting some short
+willow twigs which he sharpened at each end.
+
+"The 'old way,' Rob?" said John, smiling.
+
+"Yes," nodded Uncle Dick. "Rob has seen what I have seen--there's trout
+in this water, and grayling, too. Do you see that grayling between the
+bridge there, over the white bar? I've been watching him rise. So, by
+the time we get a broiling fire, maybe Rob'll have need for his
+skewers--to hold a fish flat for broiling before a fire, in the 'old
+way' we learned in the far North. Eh, Rob?"
+
+"That's the way I figured it, sir," replied Rob, smiling. "Billy'll get
+something on hoppers, at this season, for that's what the trout and
+grayling are feeding on, right now."
+
+Sure enough, in not much over a half hour, Billy and Jesse met them at
+the bridge, with five fine fish--two grayling and three trout--Jesse
+very much excited.
+
+"All you have to do is just to sneak up and drop a hopper right in the
+deep water at the bends, and they nail it!" said he. "Billy showed me.
+He always carries a few hooks and a line in his vest pocket, he told me.
+Fish all through this country!"
+
+It took the boys but a few minutes to split the fish down the back and
+skewer them flat, without scaling them at all. Then they hung them
+before the fire, flesh side to the flame, and soon they were sizzling in
+their own fat.
+
+"Now, you can't put them on a plate, Billy!" said Jesse, as Billy began
+searching in the pack. "Just some salt--that's all. You have to eat it
+right off the skin, you know."
+
+"Well, that ain't no way to eat," grumbled Billy. "It's awful
+mussy-looking, to my way of thinking."
+
+"Try it," said Uncle Dick, whittling himself a little fork out of a
+willow branch. And very soon Billy also was a believer that the 'old
+way' of the Arctic Indians is about the best way to cook a fish.
+
+Now, having appeased their hunger, they saddled again and made their way
+slowly to the ranch of Mrs. Culver at the Picnic Spring, as the place
+was called--in time for Jesse and John each to catch a brace of great
+trout before dusk had come.
+
+They now were all willing to vote their experience of the past two days
+to be about the pleasantest and most satisfying of any of the trip,
+which now they felt had drawn to a natural close. That evening they all,
+including their sprightly hostess, bent late over the table, covered
+with maps and books.
+
+"I surely will be sorry to see you leave," said the quaint little woman
+of the high country. "It's not often I see many who know any history of
+the big river, or who care for it. But now I can see that you all surely
+do. You know it, and you love it, too."
+
+"If you know it well, you can't well help loving it, I reckon," said
+Billy Williams.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+SPORTING PLANS
+
+
+"Let's see, Rob--what day of the month is this?" began John, the
+following morning, when, their bills for the horses and themselves all
+discharged and their motor car purring at the gate, they bade farewell
+to their interesting friend and prepared to head eastward once more.
+
+"Well," said Rob, "we were at the Three Forks on July 27th, and we spent
+a week getting to the Shoshoni Cove--that's August 4th; and we left on
+August 5th, and got to Monida August 6th, and came here that day; and
+day before yesterday was the 7th, and we came down the mountain
+yesterday, the 8th; this must be about August 9th, I suppose."
+
+"That's right," said Uncle Dick; "giving us a full week or even more if
+we want it, to explore the Madison Fork, which is another head of the
+big river. Then we'll wind up on the Gallatin head, at Billy's place,
+and figure there what we want to do next. We might well stop at the head
+of Henry's Lake, and in a day or so we'll pick up Billy's car there and
+be on our way, with a camp outfit of our own again."
+
+Their journey over the clean, hard road around the rim of the wide
+Alaska Basin was one of delight. They sped down the farther slope of the
+Red Rock Pass, along the bright waters of Duck Creek, until early in the
+afternoon they raised the wide and pleasing view of Henry's Lake, one of
+the most beautiful valleys of the Rockies. Around this the road led them
+comfortably enough to the cluster of log cabins and tents which was now
+to make their next stopping place. Here they sent back the Monida car,
+whose driver said he could make the Picnic Creek camp by nightfall if he
+drove hard. Soon they all were made comfortable in the cabins of this
+"dude ranch," as the Western people call any place where tourists are
+taken in for pay.
+
+The proprietor of this place was an old-time settler who could remember
+the days of buffalo and beaver in this country, and who told them
+marvelous tales of the enormous number of trout in the lake.
+
+"Go down to the landing, below the tamarack swamp," said he, "and get a
+boat and just push out over the moss a little way. Off to the right
+you'll see a stake sticking up in the water. Drop your anchor a little
+way from it and cast that way; it marks a spring, or cold hole, and they
+lie in there."
+
+The three boys did as advised, and to their great surprise began to
+catch trout after trout as they cast their flies toward the indicated
+spot. They all were about the same size, just under two pounds, all
+native or cutthroat trout. They soon tired of it, and returned nearly
+all of their catch to the water as soon as taken. Sometimes a fish,
+tired with the struggle, would lie at the bottom, on its side, as though
+dead, but if touched with the end of the landing-net handle would
+recover and swiftly dart away.
+
+"From all I learn," said Rob, "this fishing is too easy to be called
+sport--they lie in all the spring holes and creek mouths. This is the
+head of the Henry's Fork of the Snake River, and a great spawning
+ground. Now, you want to remember you're not on Missouri waters, but
+Pacific waters. If Lewis and Clark had come over that shallow gap
+yonder--the Raynolds Pass, which cuts off the Madison Valley--they'd
+have been on one of the true heads of the Columbia. But they probably
+never would have got through, that year, at least."
+
+The young anglers found that their catch of trout created no enthusiasm
+at the camp. The cook told them that he didn't care for these trout
+very much, because you had to soak them overnight in salt and water to
+make them fit to eat, they tasted so muddy in the summertime. So they
+said they would not fish any more at that place.
+
+That evening as they sat about their table engaged with their maps and
+notebooks, they were joined by Jim, the son of the rancher, a young man
+still in the half uniform of the returned soldier, with whom they all
+rapidly made friends, the more so since he proved very well posted in
+the geography of that part of the country. He readily agreed to take the
+young explorers on a trip over the Raynolds Pass on the following
+morning, so that they might get a better idea of the exact situation of
+the Madison River.
+
+They made an early start, leaving their Uncle Dick and Billy Williams at
+the ranch to employ themselves as they liked. It was a drive of only a
+few miles from the northern end of Henry's Lake, along a very good road,
+to the crest of the gentle elevation which lay to the northward. The
+young ranchman pulled up the car at last and pointed to an iron plug
+driven down into the ground.
+
+"Here's the Divide," said he. "You now are on top of the Rocky
+Mountains, although it doesn't look like it."
+
+"Why," said Jesse, "this looks like almost any sort of prairie country.
+We have been in lots of places higher than this."
+
+"Yes," said his new friend, "you can see lots of places higher than this
+any way you look. She's only six thousand nine hundred and eleven feet
+here. There are snow-topped mountains on every side of you. Where we are
+right now is the upper line of the state of Idaho. Idaho sticks up in
+here in a sort of pocket--swings up to the north and then back again.
+The crest of the Divide is what makes the state line between Montana and
+Idaho. Four feet that way we are on Idaho ground, but there's Montana
+east of us, north of us, and west of us.
+
+"Over southwest, where you came over the Red Rock Pass, is the head of
+the Missouri. On north of here is the Madison River; it comes in,
+running northwest out of the upper corner of Yellowstone Park. We could
+drive down there in a little while to the mouth of the West Fork, but I
+think we can get better fishing somewhere else.
+
+"If we went on, an hour or so, we would come to the mouth of the Madison
+Canyon. Up toward the head of that is the big power dam--ninety feet
+high it is--which cuts off the big Madison, and the South Fork, too.
+That makes a lake that runs over back into the country. They say it is
+seventy miles or so around the shore line, I don't know just how far.
+That place is full of big fish, and when you catch it just right, there
+is great sport there. I don't call it sport to fish for trout under that
+big dam. They jump and jump there, day after day, until they wear
+themselves out. There ought to be a ladder in that dam, but there
+isn't."
+
+"I suppose here is where the road comes down from Three Forks, over this
+Raynold's Pass," said John, with pencil in hand, ready to continue his
+own personal map of the country.
+
+"No, not exactly," continued the young ranchman. "This road runs up to
+Virginia City. They tell me that between there and Three Forks the roads
+are hard to get over."
+
+"But they come down here from Butte, don't they?" inquired Rob. "I
+thought this was right on the Butte road."
+
+"No, the best road to Butte comes in over Red Rock Pass just exactly
+where you came in yourselves. Only it runs along to the north side of
+the Centennial Valley and not on the south side, where you came in. They
+have to follow up the Red Rock Valley to Dillon, where it comes in from
+the north. That's the quickest and easiest way to get between Butte and
+Henry's Lake. It is something over a hundred miles."
+
+"Well, anyway," argued John, "this is the way Billy Williams will have
+his car come in from Bozeman."
+
+"No," smiled the young man, "you are wrong again on that. The Bozeman
+road cannot come down the Gallatin, and through to here, south of the
+Three Forks. When we come over to the edge of Yellowstone Park I will
+show you how the road runs to Bozeman. It angles in north, to the east
+of the South Fork of the Madison. Then it crosses the main river and
+swings off to the northeast, and then north up to Bozeman, in the valley
+of the Gallatin River."
+
+"Well," said Rob, turning to his younger associates, "that seems to give
+us a pretty good look in at this whole proposition of the Missouri
+River. We have been on the head of the Jefferson Fork; we are going
+fishing on the South Fork of the Madison and motor to the head of the
+North Fork, inside of Yellowstone Park, if we wanted to; and then we are
+going on up to the Gallatin and maybe east on that to its head in the
+Bozeman Pass. In that way we would be covering all three of the great
+tributaries."
+
+"Yes, and be having some pretty good sport besides," said the young
+ranchman. "I will promise you, if you don't like this lake fishing--I
+don't much care for it myself--we will make up a party and go over and
+camp out on the South Fork of the Madison as soon as your car comes in
+from Bozeman. I will take my car over, too, and we'll pick up a young
+chap about your age, Mr. Rob, at one of the ranches below. His name is
+Chester Ellicott, and he's descended from the Andrew Ellicott of
+Pennsylvania, who taught astronomy to Meriwether Lewis.
+
+"Then we can spend a couple of days or so over there on what I think is
+the finest fishing river in the world. You will still be right on your
+road to Bozeman and the Gallatin, because you will then be only about
+six or eight miles from the town of Yellowstone, and near where the
+Bozeman road comes in."
+
+"That certainly does sound mighty good to me," said Jesse. "I haven't
+caught a fish now for a couple of days, except those we caught at the
+lake this afternoon. There were so many of them, it was too easy."
+
+"Well," said their new companion, "you won't find catching grayling on
+the South Fork quite so easy as all that. I always liked stream fishing
+myself better than lake fishing."
+
+"Do we wade over there, in that stream?" asked Rob. "We haven't got our
+waders along, ourselves, not even rubber boots."
+
+"We'll fix you up somehow at the place," responded the other. "My
+friends in here have all got waders. You could fish from the banks, but
+it is better to have waders, so you can cross once in a while. There are
+holes in there ten or fifteen feet deep, and I will show you two or
+three hundred grayling and white fish on the bottom of some of those
+holes. The water is clear as air, and just about as cold as ice. You
+couldn't have come at a better time for fishing, because the
+grasshoppers are on now and even the whitefish are feeding on the
+surface."
+
+"I wish Billy's man would hurry up with the car," complained Jesse. "He
+said to be down here in about a week. We might have to wait an extra
+day."
+
+"Well, out here," smiled his new-found friend, "we don't mind waiting a
+day or so, but I suppose you folks from back in the East get in more of
+a hurry. Anyhow, we will promise you a good time."
+
+They now returned to the ranch house at the head of Henry's Lake,
+without going on to the Madison River below the mouth of the canyon,
+where the young rancher thought the fishing would not be so much worth
+while. To their great surprise, they found yet another car waiting for
+them at the camp--none less than Billy Williams's car, with all their
+camp outfit. This had been brought down from Bozeman by Con O'Brien, one
+of Billy's neighbors in the Gallatin, as they learned when they had had
+time to make inquiries.
+
+"Well, that's what I call fast work!" said John, after they had shaken
+hands all round. "Here's our bed rolls and everything, all waiting for
+us! Yet we have been two hundred miles from them on one side of the
+circle, and they've been around two or three hundred miles on the other
+side."
+
+"Well, the pack train came in from Dillon early yesterday morning," said
+Con, "and I already had Billy's message. So I just unpacked old Sleepy
+and Nigger, threw the stuff in the car, and hit the trail south."
+
+"But how did you get here so soon?" demanded Rob. "It must be a good
+deal over a hundred miles."
+
+"You don't know our mountain roads in this country," smiled Con.
+"Besides, it is only about ninety miles from Bozeman, the way we figure
+it. Anyhow, here we are and ready for any sort of frolic you want to
+name. If I had started a little earlier, I would have been in here last
+night. But I was fixing up a tire at Yellowstone, so I just thought I
+would sleep there last night and come out in the morning early."
+
+"What shall we do, young gentlemen," asked Uncle Dick. "The day is still
+young."
+
+"Well," said Rob, "I am for heading right back to the South Fork of the
+Madison and going into camp there for the rest of the trip--that is,
+until we have to start up to Billy's ranch."
+
+They all agreed to this, and accordingly after they had finished their
+luncheon, they said good-by to the obliging ranchman, whose son, as he
+had promised, now accompanied them in his own car. In the course of an
+hour they had picked up the latter's friend from his ranch at the foot
+of the Lake and soon were speeding rapidly eastward over the Targhee
+Pass--once more leaving Idaho and going into the state of Montana; a
+proposition which they now from their maps could easily understand. They
+traced out carefully the great southward swing of the Continental
+Divide which comes through the Yellowstone Park, bends around over to
+the south, thence swings north and west, making the great mountain
+pocket which holds all the headwaters of the Missouri River.
+
+Both cars halted at the summit of a hill before they swung down into the
+valley of the South Fork. The view which lay before them was one of
+extreme beauty. The sky was very clear and blue, with countless clean
+white clouds. Over to the left rose great ragged mountain peaks, on some
+of which snow still was to be seen. On ahead stretched the road leading
+into Yellowstone Park. On the further side of the valley, where the
+winding willow growth showed the course of the stream, rose a black
+forest ridge stretching indefinitely eastward toward the waters of the
+main Madison.
+
+Not even Uncle Dick, experienced traveler that he was, could suppress an
+exclamation of surprise at the beauty of the scene.
+
+"I never get tired of it. Do you, Chet?" said young Bowers to his ranch
+friend. The latter only smiled.
+
+"It used to be a great beaver country, of course," went on the former.
+"All through here the elk come down even yet, though not so many as
+there used to be. The big fall migration that came down the Madison and
+Grayling Creek used to come out the northwest corner of the Park more
+than it does now. I have seen lots of grouse all through here, and if
+you could wait until the season opened we would have some fun, for I
+have a fine old dog. But since game is getting scarcer now, maybe we had
+better just content ourselves with the fishing. I promise you good
+sport--if you know how to cast a fly."
+
+"And I'll promise you they do," said Uncle Dick, smiling.
+
+The two young local anglers looked at them politely, but said nothing.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+AMONG THE GRAYLING
+
+
+Turning at a point upon the further side of the valley, where the road
+forked off for the Yellowstone Park, the two cars passed on to the
+northward, through two or three gates of wire fences inclosing a ranch
+that lay in the valley. They found the ranchman himself at home, and
+most courteous and obliging. He insisted they should camp near his house
+and stay as long as they liked, where they could get chickens, butter,
+and eggs without any inconvenience.
+
+"I post my land," said he, "to keep off the general public, who soon
+would ruin all the fishing here as they have almost everywhere else, but
+I have no desire to keep off decent fishermen like yourselves; and I
+know the young men who are with you now.
+
+"You are just in time for the evening rise. I was over and picked out a
+couple for breakfast just now. If I were in your place I would go
+straight across and then work up the stream a little way, to some big
+holes you will see, then you can fish on down about as far as you like.
+By being careful at the crossings, some of you can keep to the stream
+pretty much all the time, but you can fish from the bank if you are
+patient. Toward dusk there will be fish enough rising from almost any
+one hole to give you all the fishing you will like.
+
+"I think you will find a very small gray hackle will be good. Sometimes
+they take the Professor. Just the other day a man came down here with a
+little Silver Doctor fly, and they couldn't keep away from it. Sometimes
+they take Queen of the Waters--dressed long, like a grasshopper--in the
+bright time of the day. If they take little flies in the evening, then
+you use little flies, too. There are certainly plenty of the grayling
+there."
+
+On any stream but this the number of rods now present would have spoiled
+the sport for some one, but so extensive was the good fishing water that
+there was room enough for all six of those who intended to fish--Billy
+said he would go along and carry the basket for Jesse, and Con O'Brien
+laughed at the idea of fishing, as he had already had so much that
+summer; so he went with Uncle Dick. They broke into three parties, one
+each of the men going along with one of the young anglers, although
+Chet and his friend were so used to the stream that they needed no
+advice. These two for a time did not fish at all, but showed the
+newcomers how and where the sport would be found.
+
+The prediction of the rancher was more than verified. The day had been
+warm, and now, as the cool of the evening came, the grayling began to
+rise. At the heads of the bluffs where the current swept in they could
+be seen breaking almost continually, taking in some small floating
+insects. Inside of a few minutes each of the anglers was fast to a fine
+fish; and after that one strike after another followed fast and furious.
+
+"You will have to be careful, son," said Billy Williams to Jesse, who
+had raised three fine grayling and lost them all. "The mouth of a
+grayling is very tender. You can't fight him as hard as you can a trout.
+Let him run. When he gets that big black fin up crossways of the stream
+he pulls like a ton. After a while he will begin to go deep; then you
+want to lift him gently all the time, until in a few minutes you can get
+the net under him. I would rather fish grayling than trout, although
+some think trout fishing is more fun.
+
+"Now look at that fellow jumping over there under the bushes. He's
+rising right in the same place. You walk around there at that little
+sand bar, and float your fly right over him and see what happens."
+
+Jesse did as instructed, Billy following a little distance behind him.
+Whipping his fly backward and forward a few times to dry it well, Jesse,
+who was really a good fisherman for his years, managed to land the fly
+just short of the bushes, so that it floated down directly over the
+rising fish.
+
+There came a sudden splash and an excited shout from Jesse. "I've got
+him!" exclaimed he.
+
+"Maybe so," said Billy. "You had them other three, too, but you didn't
+get them in the basket. Now you go easy, young man, and put this one
+where I can get my hands on him."
+
+Thus warned, Jesse played the fish gently and carefully, allowing it to
+run down into the deep water, but keeping his rod tip up all the time
+and giving line when the fish surged too hard with the current. After
+several minutes of careful work Billy waded in knee deep and slipped the
+landing net under the fish--a beautiful specimen, of a pound and a half,
+clean, fat, and very beautiful with its great spotted fin.
+
+"There you are, son," said he. "That's your first grayling, isn't it?"
+
+"It's my first one of this sort," said Jesse, bending over the fish.
+"You know, I didn't catch either of those over on the Red Rock. Of
+course, I have caught them up North on the Bell River, on the Arctic
+Circle, but they are a deep-blue color up there and this fish is white,
+or, anyhow, gray. He is just the same shape as far as I can see."
+
+"Well, get back at your work now," said Billy. "This is the only
+grayling stream left in the West. You are on it at the right time of the
+year and the right time of the day. Ten years from now may be too late.
+So catch a few--but not too many."
+
+"You needn't fear," said Jesse. "If either of us boys brought in more
+than half a dozen, Uncle Dick would give us a good calling down."
+
+"Well, that's right enough, too," said Billy. "The state limit is twenty
+pounds a day, but that's too high. If everybody got twenty pounds they
+would soon all be gone. Yet on the spawning run above, on the stream up
+here, I have seen fellows stand on the bank and snake out strings of
+them as long as a long willow would hold. I have known one man to say
+he had caught ninety grayling out of one hole. Well, that's where they
+go."
+
+They wandered along slowly in the late afternoon, passing around one
+willow plant to the next, usually fishing at some place where the grassy
+meadow ran clean to the bank of the stream. They did not lack in sport,
+and before long Jesse had a half dozen fine fish in his basket; then,
+sighing, he said regretfully he thought he ought not to fish any longer.
+
+"I will not urge you to," said Billy Williams. "'Most anybody else
+would. But if you have got enough, let's go back to camp. We have got to
+feed ourselves, of course, and give plenty to the ranchman if he will
+take them; he may have friends to whom he would like to send a mess."
+
+At dusk that evening they all gathered around their little camp fire,
+which they had built not very far from the hospitable ranchman's house,
+in acceptance of his kind invitation. Soon Billy and Con had grayling
+frying, with enough and to spare for all, since Rob had taken a half
+dozen fish, Uncle Dick as many, and John had come in with seven--one of
+them rather small, as he explained it. The two young ranchmen had
+baskets equally heavy, for, as they explained, they had neighbors who
+did not like to eat the Henry's Lake trout, but preferred grayling, so
+they thought it wise to take some home with them.
+
+"Well I did go a little light on the fishing, fellows," said Uncle Dick,
+"because I want you to stay here one more day before we start out for
+Bozeman. That means two nights in camp, which will bring us into Bozeman
+just past the middle of the month, with our summer's job pretty well
+whipped."
+
+"Which way are we going from Billy's, Uncle Dick?" demanded Jesse, with
+his usual curiosity.
+
+"Not yet decided," replied the other. "Wait until we get up there. We
+still have a little work to do in studying out the return trip of
+Meriwether Lewis and William Clark in the summer of 1806."
+
+That night they had what John called a map party on the table in the
+friendly ranchman's home. He and the two young Westerners joined them
+all in examining the maps and the great river from St. Louis.
+
+"That's something of a journey, I should say!" commented the ranchman.
+"I'll warrant you have learned a good many things you did not know
+before. Some things in here I didn't know before, myself."
+
+"It's much pleasanter," said Rob, "to follow out a country on the ground
+than it is to do it on the map. Not all maps are correct--except John's,
+here! But no matter how good a map is, it never means anything to you
+until you have followed it out on the ground. Just look here, for
+instance, at the great crooked sweep of the Continental Divide. Yet here
+we have crossed three passes over the Continental Divide within the last
+three days--Red Rock, Raynolds, and Targhee--and the Targhee divides the
+Madison, which is Atlantic water, from Henry's Lake, which is Pacific
+water."
+
+"Yes," nodded Uncle Dick. "There are not many more interesting
+countries, geographically speaking, than this right where we are, at the
+head of the great river. Lewis and Clark crossed the Rocky Mountain
+Divide seven times, at six different places--up North there. They
+crossed the Lemhi Pass, both of them. Then they crossed the Divide twice
+more into the Bitter Roots, then crossed it again on the Lolo Trail.
+Then they came back over that when they went East, and Lewis crossed the
+pass over to the north, alone, and that ought to be called his pass. And
+Clark came down to the Gallatin and crossed that pass alone to the
+Yellowstone waters. Yet their names are on almost none of the great
+passes and great rivers which they found. Soon they will have passed."
+
+One more day of beautiful sport on the crystal stream that ran through
+the beautiful valley, and the pleasant party of new-made friends met
+around the camp fire for the last time.
+
+"I have got to get back for my haying," said Chet, who had proved
+himself a fine angler as well as a good companion.
+
+"The same for me," added the young rancher from the head of the lake. So
+it was agreed that on the next morning they should separate.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+AT BILLY'S RANCH
+
+
+The blue smoke of their last camp fire on the South Fork rose almost
+straight in the still air of a clear summer day as their party sat
+around their last breakfast. Although not actually at the end of their
+journey, they felt that now they were heading away from these
+interesting scenes, so that a sort of sadness fell upon them.
+
+"Cheer up, fellows!" said Billy Williams. "You are not out of scenery,
+nor out of sport yet, by any means, if you want to stop for sport.
+Besides, there is one other thing we haven't finished yet," he added
+turning to Uncle Dick.
+
+"Feel in your right-hand waistcoat pocket, Jesse," said the latter.
+
+Jesse did so with a smile and produced the black, glassy-looking
+arrowhead which he had found at the Beaverhead Rock over to the
+northward, many days before.
+
+"We are a few miles west of the Yellowstone Park here," said Uncle Dick.
+"We will have quite a party in our car with all the luggage, but they
+are used to seeing cars in the Park with bundles tied all over the
+running boards. Now I move you that we go over to Yellowstone and go
+into the Park as far as the forks of the Gibbon and the Madison, and
+leave our stuff there for our camp, with Con to take charge of it and
+make camp. Then we can go on up the Gibbon and on to the Beaver Meadows,
+where the great black cliff is that is known through all this country as
+the Obsidian Cliff. I shall show you there, Jesse, the whole face of a
+mountain of this same black glass, as you call it. And that mountain, as
+sure as you live, was known by all the Indians for hundreds of miles
+around here. It was just like the great Red Pipestone quarries of
+Minnesota.
+
+"Now you begin to see something about exploring and getting across
+country. You found that arrowhead on the hunting ground of the Shoshonis
+and the Bannacks. Those people hunted clear down across the lower end of
+what is now Montana, down the Red Rock River, the way we came by rail;
+and over the Raynolds Pass, where you boys were; and over the Targhee
+Pass, and up the Madison and the Gibbon, to this place where they get
+the heads for their arrows.
+
+"How did they know? Who found it first? Nobody can answer those
+questions. But one great truth about white explorations on this
+Continent you must know--there was not one great pass, not one great
+river, not one great natural scenic feature, which was not known to one
+or more Indian tribes centuries before the white men came. So after all,
+we as explorers are not so much. Fremont was not much of an explorer,
+much as you reverence him. Even Lewis and Clark had been preceded in all
+this country by the Indian girl and her people. And those people had
+been every place that we have been--and even as far as Yellowstone Park
+and into its interior as far as the Obsidian Cliff. There is no doubt or
+question about that, although it is quite true that obsidian was found
+in other volcanic regions of different parts of the West.
+
+"Jesse, your arrowhead has been a long way from home! Are you going to
+take it back? Has it served its purpose in teaching you something about
+your own country?"
+
+Jesse sat silent for a time, then, "Uncle Dick," said he, at last, "I am
+going to take my arrowhead back. When we get to that rock you tell
+about, I am going to put it down right at the foot, just the way it is,
+with other pieces like those the Indians took away."
+
+"Good!" said Uncle Dick. "The little sentiment won't hurt you, anyhow. I
+suppose your arrowhead will remain there undiscovered for a thousand
+years. The tourists who come there now in their touring cars look at
+that black-faced rock about half a second and whiz by. They want to make
+the next lunch station."
+
+"That's no lie," said Billy Williams. "Folks nowadays don't know how to
+travel."
+
+They concluded their packing arrangements, rolling their bed rolls tight
+and storing them along the hood of the car and on the running boards,
+where Con had fixed up a little rack to carry the extra baggage. Saying
+good-by to their hospitable friends, the two parties now separated.
+
+Without incident the journey of that day was completed as outlined by
+their leader, and that night they spread their tent in a public camping
+ground on the banks of the Madison River, in sight of twenty other tents
+besides their own.
+
+"Nothing much here of interest," said Uncle Dick, "except yonder
+mountains. The Madison here is a beautiful stream, but fished to death.
+That mountain is not much changed."
+
+"What about it?" said Rob, curiously.
+
+"That's National Park Mountain. We are camping now precisely where the
+Hayden, Doane, and Langford exploring party camped when they were going
+out in 1871 after finishing the first exploration of Yellowstone Park.
+It was right here, at this camping place, that Cornelius Hedges, one of
+their number, proposed the establishment of the Yellowstone Park, so
+that all of this wonderland should be preserved forever."
+
+"Well," said Rob, drawing a long breath, "we are getting into some
+history now around here!"
+
+But they talked no more history at the time, for by now all were weary
+with the journey. As early as the next their camp fire was alight the
+following morning. Billy took Jesse up to Gibbon and across to the
+Obsidian Cliff, where he carried out his intention, and hid his obsidian
+arrowhead at the foot of the great rock. "There!" said he, "I'll bet, if
+anybody finds it, he'll wonder who made it!"
+
+Soon they were on their way back to Yellowstone Station on the Bozeman
+road. Following it out, under Con O'Brien's steady driving, and asking a
+hundred questions of Billy en route, they finally swept down late in the
+evening into the beautiful valley of the Gallatin. Winding among the
+farms, they pulled up at last at Billy Williams's comfortable ranch
+house and soon were made at home.
+
+"Here we are, fellows, east of the Three Forks of the Missouri," said
+Uncle Dick, when they had gotten out their maps for that evening's
+study. "At first, neither Lewis nor Clark followed the Gallatin at all.
+As we know, Clark went but a short distance up the Madison. But when the
+explorers were going east, as we saw before, Clark came down to the
+Shoshoni Cove, at the junction where we made our last camp, over west.
+When he struck in here, on the Gallatin, Clark had with him the Indian
+girl, Sacagawea. Besides the Indian woman and her child, he had eleven
+men and fifty horses. Ordway, as we have seen, had taken nine men and
+started downstream with the boats. No one knew this country except the
+Indian girl.
+
+"Yes, and she must have been across here before, too," said Billy.
+"There are three passes at the head of the East Gallatin--the Bozeman
+and the Bridger and the Flathead. The Indian girl told them to take the
+one farthest south, which is Bozeman Pass.
+
+"The books say that on July 13th Clark camped just where the town of
+Logan is, in the Gallatin Valley. They say he followed southeast from
+there and crossed Bozeman Creek near this town. The Indian girl knew
+there was a buffalo road there, and they stuck to that. Good authorities
+think that they camped, July 14th, near where old Fort Ellis afterward
+was located. That's across the East Gallatin. There is an easy pass
+there, and there is no doubt at all that the Indian girl led Clark
+through that easiest pass, which the Indians would be sure to find when
+going between their hunting ranges.
+
+"Of course, old man Bozeman did not come in here until the mining
+strikes, 1863 or 1864. He was a freighter and knew this country,
+although he didn't know it well enough to keep from getting killed by
+the Indians.
+
+"Up the Gallatin, too," went on Billy, "is where they say John Colter
+ran after he got away from the Blackfeet. He didn't have any clothes on
+to speak of even then--he sure traveled light. But, anyhow, he lived to
+discover Yellowstone Park, or part of it, and to tell a lot of stories
+which everybody said were lies."
+
+"Can we see much of the trail, if we go over with the pack train?" asked
+Rob.
+
+"Not so very much," said Billy. "Even the old road is wiped out, now
+that the railroad has come. In some places you can find where the trail
+once ran, or is supposed to have run, but you have to go by the general
+landmarks now.
+
+"When you come to the central ridge beyond old Ellis, you get the last
+summit between here and Yellowstone waters. The tunnel runs under that
+now. The railroad books say that is fifty-five hundred and sixty-five
+feet--the highest of the three northern transcontinental passes.
+
+"So you can figure now, I reckon," he concluded, "that you are mighty
+near at the head of the Gallatin, a day's march from here. And if you
+want to, you can take the railroad in town, all the way down the
+Yellowstone and clean on home to Chicago or St. Louis, without getting
+off the cars."
+
+"Well, since we are so near the end of the trail, young gentlemen,"
+began Uncle Dick, at this point, "what do you say we ought to do?"
+
+"Well, the first thing we ought to do," said John, "before we go home,
+is not to leave all those people out in the wilderness. We have got
+Clark and eleven people here on the Gallatin, and Captain Lewis is away
+up on the Marias, and Gass and Ordway are scattered every which way
+between here and the Great Falls."
+
+"All right, all right!" rejoined Uncle Dick. "Get out your _Journal_
+now, and we will see what became of Captain Lewis. We won't follow him
+day by day, and we will just take up his trail somewhere near Missoula.
+
+"See here, now. He must have crossed what is called Clark's Fork--all of
+that river, part of which is called Hell Gate River, ought to be called
+after Clark. He went up the Hell Gate River, without any guides, but he
+must have struck an Indian trail which led him over east. On the fourth
+day, that is on July 7th, he reached the pass which is called even now
+Lewis and Clark's Pass--the only pass named after either of those
+explorers, although only one of them ever saw it.
+
+"Now, you see, they were opposite the headwaters of the Dearborn
+River--the same stream where Clark left the boats and went up the river
+on foot when they were going west the preceding year. They knew where
+they were when they got here, and felt pretty fairly safe.
+
+"But Lewis wanted to see about that country north of the Great Falls.
+They were now among the buffalo once more and glad enough to find them.
+They hunted down the Sun River to their old camp above the Great Falls.
+Here they made a couple of bull boats, and on July 12th they crossed to
+the old camp and found the _cache_ which they had made there. A good
+many of the things were spoiled in the _cache_, which they had built too
+low, so that the high water had flooded it.
+
+"Now they reached their old friends, the white bears, which were just as
+ferocious as ever. So were the mosquitoes. Lewis dreads these mosquitoes
+more than anything else.
+
+"Now the _Journal_ says that Lewis determined to go up the Marias River.
+He left McNeal, Thompson and Goodrich, Gass, Frazier and Werner, here at
+the Falls. He took with him six horses and had along Drewyer and the two
+Fields boys--about his best hunters. They left Sergeant Gass four
+horses, so that he could get the boats around the portage as soon as
+Ordway and the boats came down the Missouri.
+
+"Now I want you to stop and think how these people were making
+connections, scattered all through this country as they were. On July
+19th, here came Ordway and his nine men with the canoes! Then they
+doubled party again, to portage, and in four days, with the aid of the
+horses, they got the stuff all below the Falls. Gass and one man swam
+the horses across the river; Ordway and the others took the canoes. They
+all reached the mouth of the Marias River July 28th. By that time, of
+course, Clark was over on the Yellowstone, having crossed the Gallatin
+Pass from here.
+
+"Now Lewis was on the north side of the river with three men. He knew he
+was going up into the Blackfeet country, and he must have known
+something of the reputation of that tribe. But those men would go almost
+anywhere. Now they were among the buffalo, so they felt safe for food.
+
+"They left the river July 16th, and on July 21st they got into country
+which you and I can identify--the mouth of Two Medicine Creek, where it
+meets the Cutbank, both of which rise in Glacier Park. I've had fine
+fishing up in there.
+
+"Now they pushed on up north up the Cutbank, forded where the Great
+Northern Railroad is now, and went on five miles beyond that. You see,
+they were now clear up almost to the northern line of Montana; whereas
+you and I have seen them almost to the southern line of Montana. And
+look at all the waterways they had covered!
+
+"This was Lewis's farthest north. Drewyer found out that there were
+Indians in that country. Perhaps that accounted for the scarcity of game
+they now felt. They concluded to turn back down the river, and on July
+26th--which is the day Gass and Ordway finished their portage at the
+Great Falls--they headed southeast for the mouth of the Marias, trusting
+to Providence they would meet their men there and that they would
+eventually meet Clark at the mouth of the Yellowstone.
+
+"Now when you come to make all these things tally out on the ground, it
+is quite a proposition, isn't it?"
+
+The boys all looked at him with open eyes, as they followed out on the
+map the widely separated journeys of the two great chiefs.
+
+"Very well," resumed Uncle Dick, "they got down a mile below Badger
+Creek, on the Two Medicine River. Now they had the one and only
+dangerous encounter with the Indians which any of them met throughout
+the whole two years' trip. It was at that time hostility of the
+Blackfeet against the whites began. They ran into a bunch of Indians.
+There were eight of them, who turned out to be the Minnetarees of the
+North, whom they knew to be one of the most dangerous bands of all that
+neighborhood.
+
+"It seemed best to make friends, so they camped with the Indians that
+night and slept in their tents. Toward morning the Indians made their
+break--seized the guns of all four of the men and started out to steal
+the horses.
+
+"J. Fields and his brother started out after one Indian with the rifles.
+The fellow hung on to them, and R. Fields stabbed the Indian, killing
+him on the spot. This uproar woke up Drewyer and Lewis, who were in the
+tepee. Drewyer and Lewis got possession of their rifles. Lewis called to
+the Indians to stop running off his horses. These savages showed fight,
+and Lewis shot one of them through the body, which accounted for two of
+the savages in a few moments.
+
+"In a very little time longer the four white men had all their camp
+outfit and four horses belonging to the Indians, although they had lost
+one of their own horses. They had met their first Indian fight, and got
+out of it rather well.
+
+"Now followed what I suppose was one of the fastest rides ever made on
+the Western prairies. Lewis and his men mounted and started hot-foot for
+the mouth of the Marias River. To make the story of it, at least, short,
+they rode about one hundred and twenty miles in a little over
+twenty-four hours.
+
+"We have seen that Gass, Ordway, and the other men were coming down from
+the Falls with the boats. As a matter of fact, they had just rounded the
+bend, approaching the place where old Fort Benton later was to stand,
+when Lewis and his men met them. That was what I call good luck, and a
+whole lot of it! Just look where they had been and what they had been
+through!
+
+"Well, now, part of our men had got together. Lewis and his companions
+cut loose their horses on the plains. They all hurried into the canoes
+and dropped down to the mouth of the Marias. Here they abandoned the
+rest of their horses. They dug up the _cache_ which they had left here
+in the previous year. This _cache_ also was pretty badly damaged, but
+they got some stuff out of it. Indeed, some of the _caches_ were in good
+condition, although the big red boat they had left was no longer of any
+use. They stripped her of her iron and set out by canoes, as soon as
+they could, because by that time they did not know what the Indians
+would be apt to do to them.
+
+"Now they got down to the mouth of the Milk River on August 4th, and
+they reached the mouth of the Yellowstone on August 7th. And there what
+do you suppose they found? Was Clark there ahead of them, or was Lewis
+to wait for Clark?"
+
+"I know!" said Jesse. "Clark beat them down. He left a letter for them,
+didn't he?"
+
+"That's just what he did, and this time he didn't leave it on a green
+stick for a beaver to carry off, either.
+
+"No, just as if he had stepped to a post-office window and asked for a
+letter, Lewis found this note awaiting him, telling him Clark had been
+there for several days and would wait for them a few miles down the
+river, on the right-hand side. They were at this time making ninety
+miles a day--one hundred miles on the last day of their travels.
+
+"Now it would seem that Clark was taking a good many chances, because
+all he had done was to write a note which might have been lost, and to
+scratch a few words in the sand which might have been washed out. But
+the luck of Lewis held until August 11th. On that day, as you remember,
+he was accidentally shot through the hips by one of his men while
+hunting elk, so that when, on August 12th, he finally overtook Captain
+Clark, Lewis was lying in his boat, crippled. All through the trip Lewis
+had had many more dangerous situations and narrow escapes than Clark
+had.
+
+"In this way, traveling many times faster coming east than they had
+going west, these two young men, and all of their widely scattered
+parties, met in this singular reunion, at no place in particular,
+without ever having had any reason in particular for hoping they ever
+would meet at all!
+
+"But they did hope. And they did meet. And if you put it to me as an
+engineer, young gentlemen, I shall say that was the most extraordinary
+instance of going through unknown country on workmanlike basis I ever
+heard of in all my life! Nor do I think all the world could produce its
+like."
+
+They sat in wondering silence for a time, marveling at the perfect
+ability shown by these young army officers in this formerly wild and
+unknown country. Uncle Dick closed the pages of his _Journal_, which he
+had been following through rapidly, and seemed inclined to talk no
+further.
+
+"You tell it, Billy!" said Jesse, turning to Billy Williams, who had
+been an attentive listener on the opposite side of the table.
+
+"You mean that I shall bring up the Clark story?"
+
+The boys assented to this.
+
+Billy went on, his finger now on the map in turn.
+
+"Take Clark along in here on the Gallatin, near this ranch, say July
+15th, about one month ahead of our date now. He is going east with his
+party. He has got the Indian girl and some horses and some good men. All
+right. On July 15th he starts across the Divide, heading for the
+Yellowstone Valley.
+
+"Naturally, he found that plumb easy. He struck into one of the creeks
+that run down into the Yellowstone. It was only nine miles down that to
+the Yellowstone River itself, and they hit that just a mile below where
+it comes out of the Rockies from up yonder in Yellowstone Park, where we
+all were only yesterday.
+
+"Clark had the easiest end of it, in some ways. He said he had to go
+only forty-eight miles from the Three Forks to hit the Yellowstone. If
+he had poled a canoe up the Gallatin, he would not have had to portage
+over eighteen miles.
+
+"Those are the distances that Clark estimates, but for once he
+underestimates, I don't know why. Wheeler points out that from Three
+Forks to Livingston is fifty-four miles, and Clark came down off the
+Divide at a place just above Livingston. Anyhow, I'll bet he was glad
+when he saw the old Yellowstone Valley. He had horses now, you see, and
+he was hitting the trail hard.
+
+"He went down the north side of the Yellowstone, and by July 17th he was
+down as far as Big Timber and Boulder River. I suppose they would have
+kept on downstream on horseback, but one of their men, Gibson, got
+snagged in a fall from his horse, so somewhere near the mouth of the
+Stillwater they concluded to make some canoes, so that Gibson could ride
+by boat.
+
+"Now, on July 21st, along comes a nice party of Crows and steals
+twenty-four of their horses. They hunt a couple of days for the horses,
+but can't find them--trust the Crows for that! So the canoes are mighty
+useful. They built two of them twenty-eight feet long and about two feet
+in the beam and lashed them together, so they had quite a craft.
+
+"On July 24th, about the time Gass and his men were making the portage
+at the Great Falls, Clark took to the boats, but he put the rest of the
+horses in charge of Pryor, Shannon, and Windsor.
+
+"So, you see, they were busted up again, half afloat and half on shore,
+which is always bad. Pryor had it the hardest. He could hardly keep his
+horses together. But they joined up somewhere near where Billings is
+to-day. It was plumb easy getting downstream in the boats, for the
+Yellowstone is lively water, and plenty of it. They could make fifty,
+sixty, or seventy miles a day, with no trouble at all; but horses can't
+go that fast.
+
+"On July 25th they got down to a place called Pompey's Pillar, a big
+rock that sticks up out of the valley floor. Clark cut his name on this
+rock, which is not so far from the railway station they call Pompey's
+Pillar to-day. The first engineers of the railroad that came up the
+valley of the Yellowstone put a double iron screen over Clark's
+inscription on this rock, drilled in the corner posts and anchored them,
+so no one could get at the old signature. A lot of other names are
+there, but I reckon you could still see the name of William Clark, July
+25, 1806. It has been photographed, so there is no mistake.
+
+"Now the _Journal_ says they got at the mouth of the Big Horn River on
+July 26th. That, you know, is the place where Manuel Lisa made his
+trading post in 1807. So now we are beginning to lap over a lot of dates
+and a lot of things.
+
+"Well, the big Custer fight on June 25, 1876, took place not so far from
+the mouth of the Big Horn River. From the time that Lewis and Clark came
+through, up to the time of the railroads and the army posts, the Indians
+had kept getting worse.
+
+"From now on the Clark parties were in the game country, of course. The
+boats had all the best of it--except for the mosquitoes, of which Clark
+continually complained. It was the mosquitoes that drove Clark away from
+the mouth of the Yellowstone, which he reached August 3d.
+
+"He kept going on down the river below the mouth of the Yellowstone,
+trying to get away from the mosquitoes. When he dodged the mosquitoes he
+ran into white bears. There was something doing every minute in those
+days.
+
+"They seemed to have had a trustful way of hoping everything would come
+out all right, those fellows. Clark did not know where Lewis was, or
+Ordway, or Gass, or where Pryor and his men were. Well, the Pryor party
+didn't catch up with Clark until August 8th--and they didn't have a
+horse to their name!
+
+"You see, three days after they left Clark, near where Billings is, the
+Indians jumped them once more and stole their last horse. They took a
+lesson from the Indians and made two bull boats, round ones like the
+Mandans used. I don't suppose they liked that kind of traveling, but
+they had to do it. Anyhow, it worked, and hard as it is to believe, they
+made their way downstream without any serious accident.
+
+"I don't know whether you call all of this good traveling as much as it
+was good luck, but anyhow they were beginning to pick up their friends.
+Just look on the map and see how far it is from the mouth of the Big
+Horn River up across to the mouth of Two Medicine Creek--that's how far
+Clark and Lewis were apart, and they had been apart for considerable
+over a month. Lewis might have been killed and no one could have known
+it had happened, and so might Clark.
+
+"Now they met a couple of white men who were pushing up the river,
+intending to hunt up the Yellowstone. Colter and his pal go along up the
+river a little ways, too.
+
+"And now you pick up the Lewis story. Lewis goes down in his boat,
+crippled. Colter and the other man and the two traders turn back; and
+pretty soon, on August 12th, they come on Clark's party landed on the
+shore of the Missouri; fighting mosquitoes!
+
+"Well, it only took them a couple of days from that time to get to the
+Mandan villages."
+
+"That's where we left our boat, the _Adventurer_!" exclaimed Jesse. "Now
+what do you say, boys--hasn't this been one exciting finish?"
+
+"But you haven't told us yet, Uncle Dick, what we are going to do," said
+Rob.
+
+"I'll tell you what to do now," said Uncle Dick. "Go to bed, all of you.
+In the morning we will make our plans at the breakfast table."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+HOMEWARD BOUND
+
+
+They met at the breakfast table where Billy, who kept a bachelor home,
+had busied himself preparing a final good meal for them. They had
+abundance of nicely browned trout with fresh eggs, milk, and good bread.
+
+The young travelers ate in silence, with the presentiment that this was
+their last breakfast on the trail. At length Rob turned to the leader of
+their party with an inquiring look.
+
+"Well, I'll tell you how I feel, after thinking it over," said Uncle
+Dick. "I know you hate to say good-by to Sleepy and Nigger, not to
+mention our friend Billy Williams here, who is as good a mountain man as
+you are apt to find and who surely has been fine to us.
+
+"But now we are right on a wagon road. There is no excitement in taking
+a pack train for a couple of days from here over to Livingston. There is
+not much excitement in taking a train at Bozeman and going over to
+Livingston and stopping off.
+
+"Of course, we can go back to the junction and take a train to Great
+Falls, if you want to do that. We have left our two outboard motors over
+there, not knowing what we might want to do going back. Now we could
+have those motors shipped over to us here, and we could go down to the
+Yellowstone in a skiff, no doubt. Or we could go up to Great Falls and
+buy a boat, and run down the Missouri. We'd make mighty good time either
+way, by river.
+
+"But I somehow feel that we have brought our men out of the expedition
+and we have in a way worn the edge off our trip. So what I think we had
+better do is to call this our last morning in camp with Billy here,
+hoping we may meet him some other time. We can take our train here,
+straight through to St. Paul, and transfer there for St. Louis--all by
+rail. That will put us home about August 20th, or, say, a week longer
+than three months out from the mouth of the Missouri.
+
+"As you know, Lewis and Clark came down the Missouri in jig time. They
+left the Mandan villages on August 17th. Here Colter had left them and
+gone back up the Yellowstone with the two white traders, later to become
+famous as the first discoverer of the Yellowstone. Here they left
+Chaboneau, and the game little Indian woman, his wife Sacagawea.
+
+"I somehow can't fancy that they ever did enough for that Indian girl.
+Without her they never would have got across and never would have got
+back the way they did. She was worth any ten men of the entire party.
+Well, Lewis and Clark were brief men. Perhaps they did more for her,
+perhaps they thanked her more, than they have set down in their
+journals. Knowing them as we ought to, I rather think they did, but they
+were too shy to say much about it. So there at the Mandans we are
+obliged to leave some of our party. The others all reached St. Louis
+about noon on September 23d.
+
+"What they must have left, how they were received is something which we
+do not need to take up now. At least, they were kept busy by their
+friends in St. Louis, be sure of that.
+
+"And so closed that story of the two great travelers in whose footsteps
+we have been traveling this summer, my young friends. They did not claim
+ever to be heroes. They did their work simply and quietly, with no bluff
+and no pretense. I don't believe anyone in all the world to-day can
+realize what those men actually did.
+
+"Perhaps we, who have followed after them, doing in three months as much
+as we have, can get a little notion of a part of what their journey
+meant, even skipping as we have. But that they have been sufficiently
+honored, or that enough of our Americans really understand what they
+did, I myself never have believed."
+
+Uncle Dick turned away from the table and walked out into the open air,
+where he was silent for quite a time.
+
+"Give your bed rolls to Billy," said he, at length, to his young
+friends. "He will take care of those buffalo robes forever. We may need
+them again, some time, all together. I will telegraph to have the
+outboard motors sent down to be fitted on our boat, the _Adventurer_, at
+Mandan. Of course, we could run down the Missouri a hundred or maybe one
+hundred and fifty miles a day; but as I said to you, that country is
+getting old now and the edge of our trip is wearing off. We have been
+dodging towns and farms long enough. Let's get on the train and go
+straight home!"
+
+And so now, after most reluctant farewells to Billy Williams and Con
+O'Brien, the young explorers, light of luggage, and, indeed, not heavy
+of heart, after all, changed their transportation that very day to the
+"medicine wagons," as the Indians formerly called railway trains, and
+soon were speeding eastward out of the Rocky Mountains and across the
+great Plains and Prairies.
+
+At St. Paul they changed for the train to St. Louis. En route they made
+no further reference to their own journals, and even John had ceased his
+interminable work on his handmade maps. The _Journal_, however--that
+great record of the Lewis and Clark expedition up the Missouri--remained
+always easily accessible; and just before the termination of their
+journey Uncle Dick picked it up once more and called his young friends
+around him.
+
+"We will soon be in St. Louis now," said he. "Here is where our
+explorers started out, and here is where they returned. Here is where
+William Clark did his great work as the first Indian Commissioner. Here
+is where poor Meriwether Lewis started east, three years after he had
+finished his great journey, and met his tragic death in the forests of
+Tennessee. No one will know what that man thought. Perhaps even then he
+was pondering on the ingratitude of republics.
+
+"But here is one thing which I wish every admirer of Lewis and Clark
+would read and remember--you can remember it, young friends, if you
+please. It is what Meriwether Lewis wrote, out there in the mountains
+near the Continental Divide, when he made up his _Journal_ on the
+evening of his birthday. Write it down, boys, just as he wrote it, ill
+spelling and all, so that you may see what he was doing and what he was
+thinking part of the time at least:
+
+    "'To-day I had the raw-hides put in the water in order to cut them
+    in throngs proper for lashing the packages and forming the
+    necessary geer for pack horses, a business which I fortunately had
+    not to learn on this occasion. Drewyer Killed one deer this
+    evening. a beaver was also caught on by one of the party. I had the
+    net arranged and set this evening to catch some trout which we
+    could see in great abundance at the bottom of the river.
+
+    "'This day I completed my thirty first year, and conceived that I
+    had in all human probability now existed about half the period
+    which I am to remain in this Sublunary world. I reflected that I
+    had as yet done but little, very little, indeed, to further the
+    hapiness of the human race, or to advance the information of the
+    succeeding generation. I viewed with regret the many hours I have
+    spent in indolence, and now soarly feel the want of that
+    information which those hours would have given me had they been
+    judiciously expended. but since they are past and cannot be
+    recalled, I dash from me the gloomy thought, and resolved in
+    future, to redouble my exertions and at least indeavour to promote
+    those two primary objects of human existence, by giving them the
+    aid of that portion of talents which nature and fortune have
+    bestoed on me; or in future, to live for mankind, as I have
+    heretofore lived for myself.'
+
+"So there you are, young men," concluded Uncle Dick, rising and reaching
+for his hat as the train began to near the environs of the busy city.
+"If you must think of something striking, something worth remembering,
+out of all the pleasant memories you hold from our little journey this
+year--you Young Alaskans, now beginning to explore the history of your
+own wonderful country--set down this picture of Captain Meriwether
+Lewis, thirty-one years old, with more responsibilities, more of
+consequences, more future, on his shoulders right then than any other
+officer of our army ever had, sitting there by his little fire writing
+in his notebook the same as you, Rob, and you, Jesse, and you, John,
+have written in yours--and after that, remember what he wrote. Not so
+very conceited, was he?
+
+"There were two men who were not thinking of politics nor of personal
+profit in any way. They did not hunt for advancement, they let that hunt
+them. They were not working for money; they never had much money, either
+one of them. They were not working for glory; they never had much glory,
+either of them; they always lacked the recognition they ought to have
+had, and they are almost forgotten to-day, as they ought not to be. They
+did their work because it was there to do, out of a sense of duty; they
+were content with that.
+
+"So now out of all our travels up to this date, I don't know that there
+is any experience we've had that will bring us a much bigger lesson than
+this one. Write it in your notebooks--what Meriwether Lewis wrote in his
+notebook, that day in the mountains. When you are thirty-one, check back
+in your notebooks and see if you can write what he could.
+
+"Yes, I hope that you may resolve in future to 'redouble your
+exertions.' I hope you may give a 'portion of the talents which nature
+and fortune have bestowed on you,' for the sake of mankind--for the sake
+of your country, young gentlemen, and not wholly for the sake of
+yourselves."
+
+The train rolled into the great railway station. Wondering onlookers
+stopped for a moment and turned as they saw three lean, sunbrowned boys
+stand at attention and give the Scout salute to the older man who turned
+to them and, smiling, snapped his hand into the regulation salute of the
+Army.
+
+And so, as Jesse smilingly said, the Company of Volunteers for
+Northwestern Discovery disbanded for that year.
+
+                         THE END
+
+
+
+
+TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES:
+
+1. Words with one or more letters enclosed in {} indicate that the
+original word, in the book, had those characters in superscript.
+
+2. No changes have been made in the spelling, punctuation or
+capitalization in the sections quoted from Meriwether Lewis's Journal.
+
+3. Minor changes have been made to correct typesetters errors;
+otherwise, every effort has been made to remain faithful to the author's
+words and intent.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Young Alaskans on the Missouri, by
+Emerson Hough
+
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