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 busywith her needlework at the window of a comfortable hotel in the city ofSt. Louis, "I'm getting restless, now that the war is over. Time to bestarting out. Looks like I'd have to borrow those boys again and hitthe trail. Time to be on our way!"

"Richard!" The lady tapped her foot impatiently, a little frowngathering on her forehead. 

"Well, then?"

"Well, you're always just starting out! You've been hitting the trailall 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 awayand smouch a little about how old he was. But he wasn't through histraining. And as for the other boys, Frank was solemn as an owlbecause the desk sergeant laughed at him and told him to go back tothe 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 goneon. 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 talkof that. What I was talking about, or was going to talk about, wassomething by way of teaching these boys what a country this America isand always has been; how it never has played any game to lose it, andnever is going to. "

"Well, Richard, what is it this time?" His sister began to fold up herwork, sighing, and to smooth it out over her knee. "We've just gotsettled down here in our own country, and I was looking for a littlerest and peace. "

"You need it, after your Red Cross work, and you shall have it. Youshall rest. While you do, I'll take the boys on the trail, the PeaceTrail--the greatest trail of progress and peace all the world everknew. "

"Whatever can you mean?"

"And made by two young chaps, officers of our Army, not much morethan boys they were, neither over thirty. They found America for us, or a big part of it. I call them the two absolutely splendidest andperfectly bulliest boys in history. "

"Oh, I know! You mean Lewis and Clark! You're always talking of them tothe boys. Ever since we came to St. Louis----"

"Yes, ever since we came to this old city, where those two boys startedout 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--CaptainMeriwether Lewis and Captain William Clark. "

His sister nodded gravely, "I know. "

"What water has run by here, since 1804, in these two rivers, theMississippi and the Missouri! How the country has grown! How the worldhas changed! And how we have forgotten!

"That's why I want to take them, even now, my dear sister, these youngAmericans, over that very same old trail--not so long and hard and fullof danger now. Why? Lest we forget! Lest our young Americans forget! Andwe 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 wason the eastern edge of it, the gate of it--the gate to the West, it usedto be, before steam came, while everything went by keel boat; oar orpaddle 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 muchfaster. As for going up-river by steamboat, I never heard of such athing!"

"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 anartist. But my captains had found the way. Rob and Frank know. They'veread the worked-over _Journals_ of Lewis and Clark. Me, I've even seenthe originals. I swear those curious pages make my heart jump to thisvery 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 itwest 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 therewas anything left back, at Château Thierry and in the Argonne. "

His sister was looking at the stiffened leg, and Uncle Dick frowned atthat. "It's nothing, " said he. "Think of the others. "

"And all for what?" he mused, later. "All for what, if it wasn't forAmerica, and for what America was meant to be, and for what America wasand is? So, about my boys--what d'ye think, my dear, if they wanderedwith me, hobbling back from the soil of old France, over the soil of theNew France that once lay up the Big Muddy, yon--that New France whichNapoleon gave to make New America? Any harm about that, what?. . . Lestwe 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 herknee. "Of course, I knew all along you'd go somewhere, " she said. "You'dfind 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 thespring term. We'll just be about as early as Lewis and Clark up theMissouri in the spring. "

"You'll be going by rail?"

"Certainly not! We'll be going by boat, small boat, little boat, maybenot all boat. "

"A year! Two years!"

Uncle Dick smiled. "Well, no. We've only got this summer to go up theMissouri 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 realAmerican? 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 oldpasses over the Rockies, Richard? There's not an earthly bit of use init. All we need know is when the train starts, and you can look on thetime 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 thebattles were fought, and that sort of thing. "

"Yes? Well, that's what I'm getting at. I've just a notion that we'restudying the map of Europe--and Asia--to-day and to-morrow, when westudy the old mountain passes of the Rockies, my dear. 

"And, " he added, firmly, "my boys shall know them! Because I know thatin that way they'll be studying not only the geography, but the historyof all the world! When they come back, maybe they--maybe you--will knowwhy so many boys now are asleep in the Argonne hills and woods inFrance. Maybe they'll see the old Lewis and Clark trail extending on outacross 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 takeJerusalem. 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 threeyoung companions on so many other trips of adventure. [1]

[Footnote 1: See Vol. I, _The Young Alaskans_; Vol. II, _The YoungAlaskans 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 someold book, as usual. What is it--same _Journal_ of Lewis and Clark?"

"Yes, sir, " said Rob McIntyre looking up, his eyes shining. "It'sgreat!"

"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. "Therewas one of the born geniuses of the world in map making. What a man he'dhave been in our work--running preliminary surveys! He just naturallyknew the way across country, and he just naturally knew how to set itdown. On hides, with a burnt stick--on the sand with a willow twig--inthe ashes with a pipe stem--that's how his maps grew. The Indians showedhim; and he showed us. "

"I've often tried to tell, " said Rob, "which was the greater of thosetwo men, Clark or Lewis. "

"You never will, " said his uncle. "They were the two greatest bunkiesand buddies of all the world. Clark was the redhead; Lewis the dark andsober man. Clark was the engineer; Lewis the leader of men. Clark hadthe business man in him; Lewis something more--the vision, the faith ofthe 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--thatslide of a couple of thousand miles this summer, up the little oldMissouri to the Rockies and down the river again--thing we were talkingof--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 UncleDick's eye. 

"Yes, and we will!" said Rob, also noting his smile. 

"Yes, " said Uncle Dick. "I've just come from talking with the actingcommanding 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 outof school--even though poor Will Clark hadn't learned much aboutspelling. 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 thethree. "We can go by power boat, most way, anyhow. That's not scampingit, 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, justafter 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 runseasy and can carry a load. "

"But that's not a motor boat, son, " said Uncle Dick. "Do you think wecan 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 crossplank, " said Jesse, never smiling. "Besides, a head sail when the windis right behind. And a rope if we got a head wind. And the oars andpaddles, 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 newflying ship now, though it isn't all done. I can run one of thosemotors. "

"What say, Rob?" Uncle Dick turned to the oldest of the three, and theone of soberest judgment, usually. 

"I shouldn't wonder if it's the answer, sir, " said Rob. "How many milesa 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. Ittook them all summer and fall to get to the Mandans. That's aboveMandan, South Dakota--a thousand miles or so, eh?"

"Just sixteen hundred and ten miles, sir, " said Rob, "according to theirfigures. Just about nine miles a day, start to finish of that part ofthe run, here to the Mandans--though the modern estimates only call itfourteen 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 didwhen studying some problem, "let's see. A good kicker might do two orthree miles an hour, by picking out the water. Two good kickers mightput 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 orfifty, " 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'tfigure on at home, but that always get in their work somehow. Look atall our own other trips. "

"Depends on how many hours you work, " said Frank. "We don't belong tothe longshoremen's union, you know. Some days we might travel twelvehours, if we'd nothing else to do. And I don't think there's muchfishing, 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 doit all the way by boat by September. But I'll see your teacher, here inSt. Louis, where we're all going to winter this year, and arrange withhim to let you study outside for the first few weeks of the fall term incase we don't get back. You'll have to work while you travel, understandthat. "

The boys all agreed to this and gave their promise to do their best, ifonly they could be allowed to make this wonderful trip over the firstand 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 schoolprincipal!"

"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 knowledgeof that much history, additional to your regular studies. "

"Oh, agreed to that!" said Rob; while John and Jesse began to drop theirbooks 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 aswe did up North. "

"Cut it light, young men. One week's grub at a time, say. The littletent, with a wall, and the poles along--we can spread it on the boat ifwe like. "

"Not the mosquito tent?" asked Jesse. 

"No, not after the seasoning you chaps have had in the North. Somemosquitoes, 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 inan old fur trader's loft here, and--well, I bought them. He'd forgottenhe had them--forty years and more. A blanket and a quilt and a robeeach, 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 andgood shoes and soft hat. That's about all. Two trout rods, for themountains. One shotgun for luck, and one . 22 rifle--no more. It'll makea 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 andpapers, 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 onthe face of a country so changed. And we'll try to put in all the thingsthey saw, try to understand what the country must have been at thattime? Is that agreed?"

Each boy came up and stood at attention. Each gave the Boy Scout'ssalute. Uncle Dick noted with a grim smile the full, snappy, militarysalute of the American Army which Rob now gave him. He returned itgravely and courteously, as an officer does. 

CHAPTER III

"ADVENTURER, OF AMERICA"

It was on a morning in early spring that our four adventurers foundthemselves at the side of their boat, which rested on the bank of thegreat Missouri River, not far above its mouth. Their little tent stood, ready for striking, and all their preparations for the start now weremade. Rob stood with a paint pot and brush in hand, at the bow of theboat. 

"She's dry, all right, by now, I think, " said he. "If we put a name onthe stern board the paint could dry without being touched. What shall wechristen 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, thesame 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 soparticular. "

"All right! How'd 'Adventurer, of St. Louis, ' do?"

"Not so bad--not so bad. But to Lewis and Clark, St. Louis was only onepoint 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 forpart, like the steamboats. "

"That's the name!" said Rob. "Because that was a great adventure thatLewis and Clark were taking on; and it was all for America--then andnow. 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; andall of you be careful not to smudge it. It'll be dry by to-morrowmorning, for this fantail rides high above the motors. 

"Finish drying and packing the dishes now, and let's be off when Robgets done. We're exactly one hundred and eighteen years to a day and anhour after the boats of Lewis and Clark at this very place--only, Lewiswent across by land to St. Charles, and saved a little of his time bymeeting 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 DuBois, in the American Bottoms, Will Clark had built the cabins for themen's winter quarters. And long before that, Meriwether Lewis had leftWashington after saying good-by to Mr. Jefferson. And then he stoppedawhile near where Pittsburgh is, to get his boats ready to go down theOhio, and get men. And then he picked up Clark where Louisville nowis. And then he left the Ohio River and crossed by horseback tothe Army post across from here, to get still more men for theexpedition--soldiers, you see, good hardy men they were, who knew thebackwoods life and feared nothing. So after they got all of theexpedition together, they made winter quarters over yonder, and in thespring they came over here, and the great fleet of three boats andforty-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-ninemen in buckskin, under this young captain of thirty years, marched intoSt. 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 toSpain, or she said it did, but she ceded it to Napoleon; and then whenhe didn't think he could hold it against Great Britain, he sold it tous. 

"Now this had all been country largely settled by French people who hadcome down long ago from the Great Lakes. They didn't think Spain hadexercised real sovereignty. Now we had bought up both claims, theSpanish and the French; so we owned St. Louis all right, going orcoming. 

"So, first the Spanish flag over the old fort was struck. Next came theFrench. And the French loved the place so much, they begged they mighthave their flag fly over it for at least one night. Captain Lewis saidthey might, for he was a courteous gentleman, of course. But orders wereorders. So in the morning the flag of France came down and the Flag ofthe 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 knewanything 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 ofthe richest, if not the very richest, land in the world. And since thattime, so much has the world changed, I have seen three flags flying atthe 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 wartogether as allies in a cause they felt was just. May they floattogether 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 arounda stick. "Well now, well now, " he drawled, "where shall I put this?"

"Company, 'tenshun!" barked Uncle Dick. "Colors pass!" And all snappedagain 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 atthe salute which good Scouts give the Flag, as a little band of strongmen 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, turningto his young companions and taking a look over the dismantled camp. 

"Just about, sir, " answered Rob, who always was accepted as the nextofficer to Uncle Dick in command. 

"Load her down by the head all you can, " said the latter, as the boysbegan 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 rideswith bows high, she slips farther up, say, on a sunken log. If her bowis down a little, she either doesn't slide on, or else she slips onover. "

"Oh! I hadn't thought of that. "

Uncle Dick grinned. "Well, maybe I wouldn't, either, if I hadn't beenreading my Lewis and Clark _Journal_ all over again. They speak of thatvery thing. Oh, this is a bad old river, all right. Those men had a hardtime. "

"But, sir, " answered Rob, "if we load too far down by the bow, our sternmotors 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 cando 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'llstrip off the propellers, and maybe the end of the boat, too. Better besafe than sorry, always. "

"They didn't have as good a boat as ours, did they?" John spoke with agood 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 underoars. 

"Well, no, but still they got along, in those days, after their ownfashion. You see, they started out with three boats. First was a bigkeel boat, fifty-five feet long, with twenty-two oars and a big squaresail. She drew three feet of water, loaded, and had a ten-foot deckforward, with lockers midship, which they could stack up for abreastworks against Indian attacks, if they had to. Oh, she was quite aship, 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 littlecypress dugouts they call 'peewoogs' in Louisiana. 

"Now they had a third boat, the 'white peroque, ' they spell it. It wassmaller, 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 Clarkgives 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 theofficial rolls as volunteers, not mentioning Captains Lewis and Clark, or York, Captain Clark's negro body servant, who all traveled on the bigboat:

 "'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 _Engagés_ 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. Howmany would it be, Rob--not forgetting the two captains and the negroYork, Clark's body servant, who is not mentioned in the list?"

"I make it forty-one names here in the messes, " answered Rob, aftercounting, "or forty-four with the others added. That does not includeChaboneau or the Indian girl, Sacágawea, whom they took on at Mandan. "

"No, that's another list. It usually is said there were forty-five inthe 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 aFrenchman. 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 andexpulsion, as we'll see later. But this I suppose we may call the actualparty that found our Great West for us. They are the Company ofVolunteers for Northwestern Discovery. "

The three boys looked half in awe as they read over the names of theseforgotten men. 

"Yes. So there they were, " resumed Uncle Dick, gravely. "And here in the_Journal_ the very first sentence says the party was 'composed ofrobust, healthy, hardy young men. ' Well, that's the sort I've got alongwith me, what?"

"But Uncle Dick--Uncle Dick--" broke in Jesse, excitedly, "your book isall wrong! Just look at the way the spelling is! It's awful. It wasn'tthat way in the copies we had. "

"That's because this is a real and exact copy of what they really didwrite down, " said Uncle Dick. "Yours must have been one of the rewrittenand much-edited volumes. To my mind, that's a crime. Here's the realthing. 

"Listen!" he added, suddenly, holding the volume close to him. "Wouldyou like to know something about those two young chaps, Meriwether Lewisand William Clark, and what became of their _Journals_ after they gothome? You'd hardly believe it. "

"Tell us, " said Rob. 

Uncle Dick opened his book on his knee, as they all sat on the rail ofthe _Adventurer_. 

"They were soldiers, both of them, fighting men. Lewis had someeducation, and his mind was very keen. He was the private secretary ofPresident Thomas Jefferson, but Jefferson says he was not 'regularlyeducated. ' He studied some months in astronomy and other scientificlines, under Mr. Andrew Ellicott, of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, with thespecial purpose of fitting himself to lead this expedition. Mr. Ellicotthad experience in astronomical observation, and practice of it in thewoods, the record says. 

"Lewis was better educated than Clark, who was four years theolder--thirty-three--while Lewis was twenty-nine. He spells betterthan Clark, who is about as funny as Josh Billings, though hecertainly spelled his best. Of one thing you can be sure, wheneveryou see anything of the _Journal_ spelled correctly, it is false andspurious--that's not the original, for spelling was the one thingthose two fellows couldn't do. 

"They used to make field notes, rough, just as you boys do. Clark had anelk-skin cover to his book--and that little book disappeared for overone hundred years. It was found in the possession of some distantrelatives, descendants, by name of Voorhis, only just about ten yearsago. 

"At night, by the camp fire, the two officers would write out theirfield notes, for they had to report very fully to President Jefferson. Sometimes one wrote, sometimes the other, and often one would copy theother'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 tomake a connected book of it all, but no one valued that book, and theycouldn't get a publisher--think of that! But at last they did get aneditor, 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 wasgetting anxious about it. By then, too, poor Lewis was dead, and Clarkwas busy at St. Louis as Indian agent. And Will Clark never was awriter. So, slip by slip, the material faded and scattered. 

"Biddle saved the most of it, boiling it down quite a lot. Then he gaveit over to Paul Allen, a newspaper man, also of Philadelphia, who didmore things to it, getting it ready for the press. This book did not getpublished until February, 1814, five years after Lewis died and eightyears after they got back. By that time a lot of people had had a hackat it. A lot more have had a hack since then; but Biddle is the man whoreally saved the day, and Allen helped him very much. 

"Of late, inside of the last twenty or thirty years, many editions ofthat great _Journal_ have been issued. The best is the one that holdsclosest to Clark's spelling. That's the best. And I'll tell you it tookgenius, sometimes, to tell what he meant, for that redhead spelled byear. 

"Look here--and here. 'Catholic' he spells 'Carthlick'; 'Loups'--theIndians--he calls 'Loos. ' He spells 'gnat' 'knat, ' or spells 'mosquito''musquitr, ' and calls the 'tow rope' the 'toe rope'--as indeed Lewis didalso. 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 stormwhich 'seased Instancetaniously. ' He does a lot of odd things with bigwords and little ones, as spelling 'cedar' 'seeder'--at least thesimplest 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 Indianscalled him; yet very little escaped him or his friend, and both couldnote the beauty of nature. See here, where Clark writes on June 20th(his capitals are odd as his spelling): 'at Sunset the atmesphierpresented every appearance of wind, Blue and White Streeks centiring atthe Sun as she disappeared and the Clouds Situated to the S. W. Guildedin the most butiful manner. '

"Can't you see the sunset? And can't you see Will Clark, his tongue onone 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_ certainlyis a curious thing!"

Jesse threw himself down on the sand in a fit of laughter. "I could dobetter'n that my own self, " said he, at last. "Why, what sort of peoplewere they, couldn't spell any better than that?"

"Maybe you could, " said Uncle Dick, "but you are not to laugh at WilliamClark, who was a great man. He did all that writing after a hard day'swork, in a wild and strange country. I suppose it was hard for him towrite, but he did it, and here it is. 

"Oddly enough, Clark wrote a very fine, clear hand--a gentleman'shandwriting. The _Journals_ are always done in pen and ink. Clark didmost 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 ataskmaster all day. Some one had to hunt, for they only had about a tonof cargo, all told, and they only had $2, 500 to spend for the whole tripout and back, and to feed forty people two years. And at night thecommanders made Gass and Ordway and Floyd and Whitehouse keep journals, too; and Pryor and Frazier did a bit of the same, like enough. They hadto cover everything they saw. 

"So that is how we got this wonderful _Journal_, boys--one of thesimplest and most manly books ever written. As I said, it was longforgotten and came near being ruined. 

"The book of Patrick Gass got out first, and it had many publishers onboth sides the ocean--though, of course, it had to be rewritten a greatdeal. Up to 1851 there had been fifteen real and fake Lewis and Clarkbooks printed, in English, French, and German; and there are about adozen books with Sergeant Patrick Gass as the 'author. '

"They had no cameras in those days, but those men brought out exact wordpictures of that land and its creature inhabitants. The spelling we mustforget--that day was different and schools were rare. But good minds andbodies they surely had. They were not traders or trappers--they wereexplorers and adventurers in every sense of the word, and gentlemen aswell. 

"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 allready, now? Well, let's be off, for now I see the wind is with us, andit's even more than William Clark started with when his three boats leftthe Wood River and started up the Missouri. He said they had a 'jentlebrease. '

"Off we go--on the greatest waterway in all the world, and on the trailof 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 thesand and lay afloat. They sprang in. Uncle Dick steadied her with theoars. Jesse and John went ahead to trim ship. Rob gave a couple ofturns to the flywheels of the two outboard motors and adjusted his feetto the special steering gear. The doubled motors began their busysput-sput-sput! Like a thing of life the long craft, _Adventurer, ofAmerica_, turned into the current of the great Missouri, the echoes ofthe 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 ofthe two little propellers that kept the gunwales trembling. "I can headher square into the mid current and buck her through!"

Uncle Dick smiled and nodded. "It's going to be all right! She rideslike a duck. Spread that foresail, Frank, you and Jesse. We'll do oursix 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 theyeat?"

They all broke out in a roar of laughter over Jesse's appetite. 

"They ate when they could, " answered Uncle Dick, "for they had theirhands full, working that big scow upstream. She was loaded heavy, andthey often had to drag her on the line. When the line broke, as it didseveral times, she'd swing into the current and there'd be trouble topay. 

"How far did they go? Well, that's really hard to say. They usually setdown the courses and distances on the bends. For instance, here is thefirst record of that sort, May 15th. 'S{t}' means starboard, right-handside 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°W 2-0--" " " " " N 11°W 2-1/2--" " " " " N 20°W 1-1/2--" " " L{bd} " S 10°W 1-1/2--" " " S{t} " S 22°W 1-0--" " " " " ----- 9-1/2'

"We'll not try to keep our own courses, and we'll have to guess at ourdistances except as we can estimate it from average speed, which is whatthey also did. I suppose it seemed a long way. Patrick Gass says it wasthree 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 brightoverhead, while the fresh breeze back of them still held fair for mostof the bends. They made St. Charles by noon, as had been predicted, butdid not pause, eating their lunch aboard as they traveled. 

"Our captains didn't do this, " said Rob. "As near as I can learn, theycamped and cooked on shore. And they certainly got plenty of game. "

"I know!" said Jesse, his mouth full of bread and marmalade. "Deer andturkey all along in here, then. "

"Sure!" added John. "Thirty deer, four bear, and two wolves in the firstsix weeks. "

Uncle Dick sighed. "Well, we'll have to live on rolls and marmalade, andif Jesse's appetite holds we'll have to make a good many towns forsupplies. More's the pity, there's a good town now about every ten milesor 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 gettinghungry. Maybe we can catch some fish, anyhow. "

"Gass said they did, " nodded John. "They got a lot of fine catfish, andI think Patrick Gass must have liked them, way he talks. He says, 'Weare generally well supplied with catfish, the best I have ever seen. '"

"What kind of a grub list did they have?" inquired Jesse; and John wasable to answer, for he found the page in the _Journal_, which was closeat 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 anykind, and they must have relied on the hunt. They had four bags of'parchmeal, ' which I suppose was parched corn ground--the old frontierration, you know. That was about twenty-eight bushels in all, with someeighteen bushels of 'common' and twenty-two bushels of hominy. Then theyhad thirty half barrels of flour, and a dozen barrels of biscuit, abarrel of meal, fifty bushels of meal, twenty-four bushels of Natchezhulled corn, four barrels of other hulled corn, and one of meal. Thatwas their cereal list. 

"They only had one bag of coffee, and one each of 'Beens & pees, ' asClark spells them, and only two bags of sugar, though eight hundred andseventy pounds of salt. "

"Not much sweets, " grumbled Jesse. "How about the grease list?" Jessewas rather wise about making up a good, well-balanced grub list for acamping trip. 

"Well, " answered John, "they had forty-five hundred pounds of pork, akeg of lard, and six hundred pounds of 'grees, ' as he calls it. Not somuch; and they ran out of salt in a year, and out of flour, too, so theydidn't have any bread for months. They had some stuff spoiled by gettingwet. 

"They had some trade stuff for the Indians, and tools of all sorts, andother weapons and ammunition. They had sun glasses and an air gun andinstruments 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 thelarboard quarter, Jesse. I'll promise you, if our gas holds out, we'llget 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 ofthe afternoon, "this isn't any wilderness now. Look at the fields andsettlements we've passed. There's a town every ten miles. "

"Well, I don't think it was all wild, even when Lewis and Clark wentthrough, " John replied to him. "People had been all through here. The_Journal_ keeps on mentioning this creek and that--all the names werealready 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'tknow just where we are. I'm only guessing, doing dead reckoning on ourmotor speed. But we ought to see the place I've got in mind, beforeplumb 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. Towarddark 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 aftersunset. Then Uncle Dick began to whistle cheerfully. 

"All right, Rob, " he called. "Hard a-lee! Get across. That creek on theright is the Femme Osage. There were forty families settled there, sixmiles 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 hismoving in here from Kentucky. "

"Right you are, son! He had a Spanish land grant in here and lived heretill 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, andeverything!"

"Yes, " smiled his uncle, "a regular cave and all. Lucky to hit it sowell and to find it still doing business--at least part way--after ahundred years!"

They scrambled up the bank to the opening of the cavern which made backinto the bold rocky shore, finding the interior about twelve feet wideand running back for forty feet, with a height of some twenty feet. Itwas 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'mglad we made it. This old cave was called the 'Tavern, ' even beforeLewis 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 ninehard days to do. They made only nine miles the last day, and found thewater 'excessively swift. ' Well, so did we; but here we are. "

With the swiftness born of many nights in camp together, the four nowunpacked the needful articles, not putting up any tent, but spreading itdown on the floor of the cave. Their fire lit up the rocks in a wild andpicturesque manner as they sat near, cooking and eating their first mealof the actual voyage up the great Missouri. 

"They got a deer that day, " said Rob, poring over the _Journal_, "Iexpect about their first deer. "

Rob was turning over the pages on ahead. "Hah!" said he. "The men didn'talways take care of the grub; here it says, 'Lyed corn and Grece willbe issued, the next day Poark and flour, and the following, Indian mealand Poark, according to this Rotiene till further orders. No Poark willbe 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 lineof yours and see if we can't hang a catfish by morning. Here's a pieceof beef for bait. "

Jesse scrambled down the shore and threw out his line, with a rock forsinker, while the others finished making ready the beds. 

"Jolly old place, " ventured John, "though a little hard for a bed. Whatyou looking at, Rob?"

"I was trying to find if the old Indian images were left, that used tobe scratched or painted on the walls. Clark says the _voyageurs_ andIndians were superstitious about this place. I think caves are alwaysspooky places. "

Soon they all felt tired and began to unroll the beds. A screech owlmade a tremulous, eerie note, but even Jesse only laughed at that. 

They had breakfast before the mist was off the water, and before thecooking was begun Jesse called out from below:

"Hey, there! Wait for me! I've got the breakfast right here! Call in thelyed 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 countryall we could without breaking laws. "

"What changes, from then till now!" said Rob. "It was spring and summerwhen they went up this river, but they killed deer, turkeys, elk, buffalo, antelope, and wild fowl--hundreds--all the time. Now, allthat's unlawful. "

"And impossible. Yes, they lived as the Indians lived, and they killedgame the year round. Now, about all we can do for a while will be to eatthe trusty catfish. 

"One thing has not changed, " their leader added, a little later, "andthat is the current along the rock faces. Just above is what Clarkcalled '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, whirlingaround, getting on bars, breaking her line and all that. The expeditioncame 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 thather prowess had not diminished. They had a hard fight that day in morethan one fast chute, and twice dragged the propellers on bars which theydid not see at all. Uncle Dick used the oars three or four hours thatday, and Jesse, the boatman, spread his foresail to gain such addedpower as was possible. In this way they made very good time, so that bylate evening they reached the mouth of the Gasconade, which comes infrom the left from the hill country. They got a good camp near themouth, with abundance of wood. Jesse was so lucky as to take two finewall-eyed pike, here called jack salmon, on his set line, as well as twocatfish. They let the latter go, as they had enough for the day, thewall-eyes proving excellent. 

"Now we're beginning to get into deer!" said Rob. "Here George Shannonkilled 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 fromthe Omahas and Osages and Pawnees and Kansas, loaded down with furs!"

"I remember perfectly, " asserted John, solemnly. "I can see them goingby right now! Pretty soon we pick up old man Dorion, coming down fromthe 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 Clarkdid venison, " said Jesse, at length. 

According to their usual custom when on the trail, they were off bysunup, the exhaust of the double motors making the wooded shore echoagain. They made their third encampment at the mouth of a stream whichthey took to be that called Good Woman River in the _Journal_--a name nolonger 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. Youfellows'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 outboardkickers. It took them till June 7th, twenty-three days, to get to thispoint. 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! Wedon't dare kill even a squirrel, though I'm sure we could get some sortof 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 hadonly a 'jentle breese' in here. "

"Or words to that effect, " smiled Rob. "The main thing is, we travelmany times faster than they possibly could. Even so, she's a long trailahead. "

"All we know is that we'll get through!" said John. "We always have. "

"We're discovering romance, " said Uncle Dick. "We're discoveringAmerica, too. Jesse, take down your Flag from the bow staff--don't youknow the Flag must never be allowed to fly after sunset?"

They were now lying in their blankets in their tent, on a wind-sweptpoint. "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 beautifulstate of Missouri and its rich bottom lands, its many towns, its farmsand timber lands and prairies. Many an exclamation at the wild beauty ofsome passing scene had been theirs in the constant succession ofchanging river landscapes. 

Their own adventures they had had, too, with snags and sweepers and thedreaded "rolling sands" over which the current boiled and hissedominously; but the handlers of the boat were well used to bad water ontheir earlier trips together, in the upper wildernesses of thecontinent, 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 towork through heavy weeds and vines in these bottoms, and if they gotback in very far they had to guess where the boat would be. And evenLewis complains of ticks and mosquitoes and heavy going ashore. "

"I believe things poisoned Clark worse than they did Lewis, he was sofair 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 andspelling in his daily report, he must have had a hard time. He hadanother regular entry, too, as you said, Jesse, that about the 'jentlebrease. ' I don't know how many ways he spelled it, but he seems to havehad no confidence at all in his own spelling. Look here: on June 1st hehas a 'jentle brease, ' and on June 20th a 'jentle breese'; but notcontent when he got it right, he calls it a 'gentle Breeze' the nexttime, then drops back to 'gentle breeze' on July 21st. He repeats thaton August 12th, the next raising it to 'gentle Breeze'; and then it's a'gentle breeze, ' a 'jentle Breeze, ' 'gentle breeze, ' and 'gentleBrease'--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 puncherto 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 donethat hisself. '"

Uncle Dick had not been paying much attention to the boys just then, butwas watching the smoke clouds ahead. Passing trains whistled loudly andfrequently. 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, threehundred 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 thenew boat landing of Westport was within the year to be called KansasCity. Then she was the Gate indeed, and so she has remained throughvarious later sorts of transportation. 

"When St. Louis laid down the oar and paddle, Kansas City took up theox 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 cityhere, hardly more than threescore years and ten of age--just a man'slifetime. Picture this place as it then was--full of the ox teams goingwest----"

"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 backto the time of Lewis and Clark--not a settlement or a house of a whiteman above La Charette, and not one here. To them this was just the mouthof the Kansas, or 'Kansau, ' River, and little enough could they learnabout that river. Look at the big bluffs and the trees. And yonder werethe Prairies; and back of them the Plains. No one knew them then. 

"As you know, they had been getting more and more game as theyapproached this place. Now the deer and bears and turkeys fairlythronged. Patrick Gass says, 'I never saw so much sign of game in mylife, ' and the _Journals_ tell of the abundance of game killed--Clarkspeaks of the deer killed the day they got here, June 26th, and says, 'I observed a great number of Parrot quetts this evening. ' That Carolinaparrakeet is mentioned almost all the way across Kansas by the OregonTrail men, and it used to be thick in middle Illinois. All gonenow--gone with many another species of American wild life--gone with thebears and turkeys and deer we didn't see. You couldn't find a parrakeetat the mouth of the 'Kanzas' River to-day, unless you bought it in abird 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 andmulberries 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 workedup 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 timeI've wished I'd been there my own self!"

"How do you check up on the distances with Clark? How long did it takethem 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 atime. Where they took a week we'll take a day, let us say. From here toMandan, North Dakota, where they wintered, is more than fourteen hundredmiles by river, and they took about one hundred and twenty days toit--averaging only nine and a half or ten miles a day of actual travelin that part of the river. Clark fails once or twice to log the day'sdistance. Gass calls it sixteen hundred and ten miles from the start toMandan--I make it about fifteen hundred and fifty, with such figures asI find set down. The River Commission call it fourteen hundred andfifty-two. Give us fifty miles a day for thirty days, and that would befifteen hundred miles--why, we're a couple of hundred miles beyondMandan right now--on paper!

"But I never saw anything that ran by gas that didn't get its back upsometimes. Suppose we allow a month to get up to Mandan--bringing usthere by June 22d--call it June 30th. How'd that do? Do you think we canmake 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 barbetween here and Mandan, and many a long mile. Lewis and Clark did notget there until October 26th--four months from here. If we allowourselves one month, we'll only have to go four or five times as fast asthey did. I've known a flat bottom 'John boat' do forty miles a day onthe Current River of Missouri with only one outboard motor; and that's asix-mile current, good and stiff. Let us not count our chickens justyet, 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 thisfar, and it's three wall-eyes and twelve catfish. That's fifteen head ofgame against their thirty, about!"

"Oh! And you want to know, if a boy of your size could catch fifteenhead 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 thegasoline and the catfish both hold out, for they are our main staffs oflife just now. "

They ran up the left bluff of the river, mile after mile, under the edgeof the great town whose chimneys belched black smoke, noting railwaytrain after train, their own impudent little motors making as muchnoise as the next along the water front. Many a head was turned to catchsight of their curious twin-screw craft, with the flag at its bow, andon the stern the name _Adventurer, of America_, but Rob paid noattention to this, holding her stiff into the current and heading inanswer to Uncle Dick's signals. 

At last they lay alongside a little landing to which a houseboat wasmoored, 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 thecompanionway. "You see we're here. "

"And more'n I'd of bet on, at that!" rejoined the other. "I neverexpected 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 hispride in the performance of the party. "You see, we've got doubleengines and we travel under forced draught, with the stokers stripped tothe 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 boatso it can't be stolen. Overrun our engines and oil her up. Clean outthe bilge and make her a sweet ship. "

"When?"

"To-day. But we'll not start until to-morrow morning. I've got a fewfriends to see here, and my Company of Volunteers for NorthwesternDiscovery will like to look around a little. We'll stop at a hotelto-night. I'm trusting you to have everything ready for us by nineto-morrow morning. "

"That's all right, " replied Johnson. "I'll not fail ye, and I'll not letanything git losted, neither. "

"I know that, " said Uncle Dick. "By the way, Johnson, which is the bestoutfitting store in Westport?"

"As which, sir?"

"In Westport, or say Independence. We could walk down there if we hadto. 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, orWestport. But if you want to get uptown, the street cars is four blocksyan. Er maybe ye'd like a taxi?"

"No, nothing that goes by gas, for one day, anyhow, Johnson. Well, seeto the things--the crew have got the batteau about unloaded, and it'sabout time for our mess to go ashore to the cook fire. SergeantMcIntyre, 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 smilethe four stalked off up the stair, leaving Johnson to wonder what in theworld 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 roomat a hotel, declaring they all would rather sleep on the houseboat withJohnson. 

"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 thoughtwhen they got here! They wanted to start in killing buffalo, but therewere no buffalo so close to the river even then. All our hunters got wasdeer; they lay here a couple of days and got plenty of deer, and didsome tanning and 'jurking. ' Clark says they took this chance to comparetheir 'instrimunts, ' and also they 'suned their powder and wollenarticles. '

"Clark killed a deer below here. Drewyer, one of the best hunters, had afat bear and a deer, too. And Lewis killed a deer next day, so the partywas 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 aboutit:

 "'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 thegrass was up. I've even known some naturalists to say that deer don'teat grass. We know they do. 

"But what we want to get here is the idea that now the expedition wasjust 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 outWest toward the Rockies. If all that had been hills and timber, no roadever would have got through. It was the big waterways that made theroads into all the wilderness; we certainly learned that up in the FarNorth, didn't we?

"So here was their crossroads of the waters, at old Independence, whichnow is Kansas City. Not much here, but a natural place for the Gate tothe 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 hecertainly had a practical eye. And I reckon the first beginnings of thecity were right then, for the _Journal_ says, 'Completed a strongredoubt or brestwork from one side to the other, of logs and Bushes Sixfeet high. ' Yes, I suppose that was the first white building here at theGate. 

"It's pretty hard to find any new part of the world to-day. Yonder runsthe Kaw, leading to the Santa Fe Trail--and I'll bet there's a thousandmotor cars going west right now, a hundred times as many cars each dayas there used to be wagons in a year!"

He closed his book for the time. "Maybe that's what Uncle Dick wanted usto 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 toldhim what they had been doing. 

"Fine!" he said. "Fine! Well, I've just telegraphed home that we're allright 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 homemakers who stayed West. You see, our young leaders were onlypathfinders, 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 andmore. "

John was running a finger over the crude map which he and Jesse had beenmaking from day to day. "Hah!" said he. "Here's the big Platte Valleycoming in, but no big city at the mouth. "

"Oh yes, there is, " corrected Uncle Dick. "Omaha and Council Bluffs youcan call the same as at the mouth of the Platte, for they serve thatvalley with a new kind of transportation, that of steam, which did nothave to stick to the watercourse, but took shorter cuts. 

"It's odd, but our explorers seem even then to have heard of a road toSanta Fe. They also say the Kansas River is described as heading 'withthe river Del Noird in the black Mountain or ridge which Divides theWaters of the Kansas, Del Nord, & Collarado. ' No doubt the early Frenchor the Indians confused the Kaw with the Arkansas. 

"Enough! Taps, Sergeant! To bed, all of you, " he concluded; and theywere 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 heavysupplies aboard. By eight-thirty they were chugging away again up thewater front of the city, their Flag flying, so that many thought it wasa government boat of some sort. 

Jesse tried to write in his notebook, but did not make much of asuccess, owing to the trembling of the boat under the double power. 

"He always says 'we set out and proceeded on, '" Jesse explained. "I wastrying to write how the expedition left the mouth of the Kansas River. "

"Look out for 'emence numbers of Deer on the banks, ' now, " sung outJohn, who had the _Journal_ on a box top near by. "'They are Skipping inevery 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 getamong them. "

"And by to-morrow afternoon we'll be where they celebrated their firstFourth of July. It was along in here. They celebrated the day by doingfifteen 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 & theMusquiters were verry bad, '" he went on. "I don't think their grub listwas right--too much meat and salt stuff. But from now on they certainlydid get plenty of game--all kinds of it, bears, deer, elk, beaver, venison, buffalo, turkeys, geese, grouse, and fish. You see, Jesse, theygot 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 alongshore. I think the hunters had better chance than the oarsmen. 

"They saw elk sign not far above the Kansas River, but I don't thinkthey got any elk till August 1st. Above there they got into theantelope, which they called 'goat, ' and described very carefully. Theysent President Jefferson the first antelope ever seen east of theAlleghanies. Then they got into the bighorn sheep, which also werealtogether new, and the grizzly bear, which they called the 'whitebear. ' 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 theyhad 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 windchanged, coming down the river in squalls which tore up the surface ofthe water and threw the bow of the boat off its course. 

"Steady, Rob! Slow down!" called out Uncle Dick, who had begun to pullthe 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 thewind, the bow of the boat swung around into the current. Careening, thelower 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, throwinghis weight on the rail. The water caught him nearly waist deep, for thetreacherous bar shelved rapidly. 

It was not so deep where Rob went in, but Jesse and John, thoughtlesslyplunging in on the lower side, were swept under the boat, which all thestrength of the other two could not hold back against the combined powerof the current and the wind. 

Without warning they were cast into an accident which in nine cases outof ten would have meant death to some or all of them. 

The boat was filling fast, and the great weight of the outboard motorsburied her stern, so she was about to swamp in midstream. Uncle Dick inhorror saw the set faces of two of his young friends at the rail beyondhim, their legs under the boat, which was swinging on them, their terrorshowing in their eyes. He made one grasp across the boat, and luckilycaught Jesse's hand. Their combined weight held the boat down by thebow, 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 laybelow, toward which the boat now was setting. He knew the boys all couldswim, and they were all lightly dressed, with canvas sneakers and nocoat. 

"All right!" replied John, confidently, now getting his legs free. "Ican make it. " Indeed, it did not seem the boat could carry anotherpound. 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 ofwind and rain which now came on them. Their course downstream was veryrapid. 

"Now, John!" Uncle Dick gave the word, and John, without one instant'shesitation, struck out for the island, now not over forty yards awayover the choppy, rain-whipped water. His head was seen bobbing over thewaves, but gaining distance. Uncle Dick hardly breathed as he watched. 

The boat was lightened a little. Rob took a chance, climbed in over thestern, and, catching up a setting pole, began to reach for bottom on theupstream side. He caught it and, putting in all his strength, swung thebow across stream, repeating again and again, until the boat was not farback 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 themthey now could guide and drag the boat till they made a landing, withJesse on top the cargo, only about fifty yards below where John washeaded. They saw him scramble up the bank, lie for an instant halfexhausted, and then come running down the shore to them. They alldragged at the water-logged boat until they had her ashore so she wouldhold. 

"And that's that!" panted John, coolly and slangily enough. 

Till then no one had spoken. Uncle Dick couldn't speak at first. He onlydrew Jesse and John to him, one to each arm, wet as they all were, andin the rain now pouring down. "Fine, boys!" said he. 

"The closest squeak we've ever had, " said Rob, at last. "Right here inthe settlements! There's the city of Leavenworth just around the bend. "

"Close enough!" said Uncle Dick. "And my compliments to you all, everyone. If it had been a lot of chaps less cool and ready, we'd none of ushave been saved. Rob, who taught you to paddle on the up side whencrossing 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 workingon the lower side. Upstream is right--and I must say the setting polesaved the day. But, John, you'll never know how I dreaded to tell you tocast 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 proudof his feat. 

They were wet to the skin and the rain was cold, their boat was full ofwater and their stores wet. At last, surely, they had an adventure ontheir 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 INSTANTHALF EXHAUSTED, AND THEN COME RUNNING DOWN THE SHORE TO THEM]

They began to unload the heavier stuff, so they could cant the boat andspill the bilge water out of her. The tarpaulin was thrown over somewillow bushes for a shelter, and under this they piled their grubboxes and dunnage rolls. The beds were all in watertight canvas bags, and so were their spare clothes, so matters might have been worse. Theguns could be dried, and the tarpaulin had kept the lighter articlesfrom washing away. In a little while they got the tent up, and then theyfolded 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 thatlittle forced-draught oil stove and let's see if we can dry out. It'sgoing to be hard to get a fire on this island in this rain, for there'snothing but willows. They're wet. Get the little stove going and pullshut the flaps. When it gets a little warmer we'll open the bags andchange our clothes. And as John would say, that'll be that! But it'sonly by mercy that we're here. You are right, Rob, this is the mostserious 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 littlehut was steaming and they all were sitting on boxes eating their eveningmeal. The storm, which had culminated in a fierce thunder gust, now wasmuttering 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 coversover his head. 

CHAPTER X

AT THE PLATTE

On the morning following the storm the sun broke through the clouds withpromise of a clear, warm day. Our _voyageurs_ were astir early. 

"Take it easy, fellows, " counseled the leader. "We've got to 'sun ourpowder, ' as our _Journal_ would say. John, when you set down the day'sdoings in your own journal, make it simple as William Clark would. It'smore manly. Well, here we are. "

Rob looked ruefully at the wet willow thicket in which their camp waspitched. "We can get a few dead limbs, " he said, "but, wet as things arenow, 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, notleaving the island until nearly noon. 

"Morale pretty good!" said Uncle Dick. "John, set down, 'Men in verryhigh sperrits. ' And off we go!"

They chugged up directly to the point, as nearly as they coulddetermine, where they had met the disaster of the previous day. "Keepleading a horse up to a newspaper and he'll quit shying at it, " saidUncle Dick. "Find the very spot where we struck. "

"There she is!" exclaimed Rob, presently. The boat stuck again and beganto swing. But this time the setting pole held her bow firm, and, sincethere was no wind, a strong shove pushed her free without anyone gettingoverboard. They went on after that with greater confidence than ever, and Jesse began to sing the old canoe song of the voyagers, "_En roulantma boule, roulant!_"

They paused at none of the cities and towns now, and only set down therivers and main features, as they continued their steady journey dayafter day for all of a week. At the end of that time the increasingshallowness of the river, the many sand bars and the nature of thediscolored, rolling waters, made them sure they were approaching themouth of the great Platte River, which, as they knew, rose far to thewest in the Rocky Mountains. 

Here they went into a camp and rested for almost a day, bringing uptheir field notes and maps and getting a good idea of the country bycomparing their records with the old journals of the great expedition. 

"Bear in mind that, after all, they were not the first, " said UncleDick. "They had picked up old Dorion, their interpreter, from a canoeaway down in Missouri, and brought him back up to help them with theSioux, where he had lived. Their bowman Cruzatte and several otherFrenchmen 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 fiftyyears old, along this part of the river. 

"But when they got up this far, they were coming into the Plains. Newanimals now, before so very long. They really were explorers, for therewere 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, hisfinger in the _Journal_. "Two days later they got into game all right, for Drewyer killed six deer that day himself, and another killed one, sothey had meat in camp. 

"They made the Nemaha by July 14th, and I think that was almost thefirst time they got sight of elk. Clark fired at one that day, butdidn't get him. That was where he first wrote his name and date on arock--he says the rock 'jucted out over the water. ' I think that wasnear the mouth, on the banks of the Nishnabotna River, but I don'tsuppose a fellow could find it now, do you?"

"No. It never has been reported, like the two Boone signatures inKentucky, " replied Uncle Dick. "He only wrote his name twice--once up inMontana. But now, think how this new sort of country struck them. Patrick Gass says, 'This is the most open country I ever saw, almost onecontinued prairie. ' What are you writing down, Jesse?"

"'Musquitors verry troublesome, '" grinned Jesse, watching a big one onhis wrist. "I'll bet they were awful. "

"And the men all had 'tumers and boils, ' in spite of their 'verry highsperrits, '" broke in John, from the _Journal_. "And they gave AlexanderWillard a hundred lashes and expelled him from the enlisted roll, forsleeping 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 likesize '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 ofOile came out of the Surpolous fat of one of those fish. ' And all thetime they are mentioning turkeys and geese and beaver--isn't it funnythat all those creatures then lived in the same place? On August 2d, Drewyer and Colter, two of the hunters, brought in the horses loadedwith elk meat. But that was just above the Platte, nearer CouncilBluffs. "

"One thing don't forget, " said Uncle Dick at this time. "All thathunting was incidental to those men. About the biggest part of theirbusiness was to get in touch with the Indian tribes and make friendswith them. You'll see, they stuck around the mouth of the Platte quite awhile, sending out word, to get the Indians in. The same day Drewyer andColter got the elk the men brought in a 'Mr. Fairfong, ' an interpreter, who had some Otoes and Missouri Indians. Then there were presents andspeeches, and they hung some D. S. O. Medals on a half dozen of the chiefsand told them to be good, or the Great Father at Washington would getthem. 

"Well, that's all right. But what I want you to notice is the camp atCouncil Bluffs. That wasn't where the city of Council Bluffs, Iowa, is, but on the opposite side of the river, about twenty-five miles aboveOmaha--not far from Fort Calhoun. There was no Omaha then. I canremember my own self when Omaha was young. I used to shoot quail on theElkhorn and the Papilion Creek, just above Omaha, and grand sport therewas for quail and grouse and ducks all through that country then. 

"But Lewis and Clark had a wide eye. They knew natural points ofadvantage, and they must have foreseen what the Platte Valley was goingto mean before long. They say that Council Bluffs was 'a verry properplace for a Tradeing Establishment and fortification. ' Trust them toknow the 'verry proper places'! Only, what I can't understand is thenote that it is 'twenty-five days from this to Santafee. ' That's apuzzler. The natural place of departure for Santa Fe was where KansasCity is, not Omaha. But, surely, they had heard of it, somehow. "

"Well, " said Rob, "we're doing pretty well, pretty well. In spite ofdelays, we're at the mouth of the Platte, sixteen days out, and theydidn't get there till July 21st. I figure three hundred and sixty-sixmiles to Kansas City, and two hundred and sixty-six miles to here, saysix hundred and thirty-two miles for sixteen days--the river chart sayssix hundred and thirty-five miles. That keeps us pretty close to ouraverage 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 aday late. No, sir, we'll skip through without even a salute to thetribes from our bow piece. We've got to get up among the Sioux. Dorionhas been talking all the time about the Sioux. So good-by for thepresent to the Platte tribes, the Pawnees, Missouris, and Otoes. "

"Gee! I'd like to shoot something, " said Jesse, wistfully. "Just readingabout things, now!"

"Forget it for a while, Jess, " smiled his uncle. "Just remember thatwe're under the eaves of two great cities, here at Plattsmouth. Takecomfort in the elk and beaver sign you can imagine in the sand, here atthe mouth of this river. It still is six hundred yards wide, with itscurrent 'verry rapid roleing over Sands. '

"Two voyagers of the Lewis and Clark expedition had wintered here beforethat time, trapping--the beaver were so thick. Imagine yourself not farup the river and shooting at an elk four times, as Will Clark did--thennot getting him. Imagine yourself along with that summer fishing partyalong this little old river, and getting upward of eight hundred fish, seventy-nine pike, and four hundred and ninety cats; and again threehundred and eighteen 'silver fish'--I wonder, now, if that really couldhave been the croppy? Lord! boy--what a time they had, strolling, hunting, fishing, exploring new lands, visiting Indians, having the timeof their lives!"

"Let's be off, " suggested Rob. And soon they were plugging along up thegreat river, threading their way among the countless bars and shoals. 

"I can see the full boats coming down the Platte!" said Jesse, shadinghis eyes, "hide canoes, full of beaver bales, that float light! Andthere are the _voyageurs_, all with whiskers and long rifles andknives. "

"Yes, " said Uncle Dick, gravely. "And here are our men, tall, in uniformcoats and buckskin leggings. See now"--and he reached for John'svolume--"they let off the deserter, Moses Reed, very light. He only hadto run the gantlet of the entire party four times--each man with nineswitches--and get dropped from the rolls of the Volunteers!

"And here is where Captain Lewis, experimenting with some strange waterhe had found--with some cobalt and 'isonglass' in it--got very ill fromit. His friend Clark says 'Copperas and Alum is verry pisen. '"

"But when did they first find the buffalo?" demanded Jesse, fingeringonce 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, butyou are bloodthirsty! Wait now till August 23d, above Sioux City. Youare Captain William Clark, with your elk-hide notebook inside your shirtfront, and you have gone ashore and have killed a fat buck. And when youget back to the boat J. Fields comes in and says he has killed abuffalo, in the plain ahead; and Lewis takes twelve men and has thebuffalo brought to the boat at the next bend; so you just make no fussover that first buffalo, and set it down in your elk-hide book. And thatsame day two elk swam across the river ahead of the boat. And that sameevening R. Field brought in two deer on a horse, and another deer wasshot from the boat; and they all saw elk standing on a sand bar, andseveral prairie wolves. And the very next day, don't you remember, yousaw great herds of buffalo? Oh, now you're in the Plains! Everybody nowis '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 connectedCouncil Bluffs, Iowa, with Omaha, Nebraska. The older member of theparty nodded gravely. "And can't you see the long lines of thewhite-topped covered wagons going west--a lifetime later than Lewis andClark, when still there was no bridge here at all? Can't you see theMormons going west, with their little hand carts, and their cows hitchedup to wagons with the oxen? Look at the ghosts, Rob! Hit her up. Let'sget out of here!"

"She's running fine, " Rob went on. "Somehow I think this must be betterwater, above the Platte. You know, Lewis and Clark only averaged ninemiles a day, but along in here for over two hundred miles they werebeating 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 andthree-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 SiouxCity. "

As a matter of fact, the stout little ship _Adventurer_ now began topick up on her own when they had passed that Iowa city, going into campon 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 ofmarmalade for Jesse, to console him for the lack of buffalo. 

"It's my birthday, too, to-day, " said Jesse. "I was born on the fourthday of June, fourteen years ago. My! it seems an awful long time. "

"Well, Captain Meriwether Lewis was not born on this day, " said hisuncle, "but his birthday was celebrated on this spot by his party, onAugust 18, 1805, and they celebrated it with a dance, and an 'extra gillof whiskey. '"

"We'll issue an extra gill of marmalade to the men to-night, andconclude 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 greatstyle now, and I'm beginning to have more confidence in gasoline. "

"What made you want to get to this place, Uncle Dick?" asked John, hisown mouth rather full of fried chicken. 

"Because of the location--the mouth of the Sioux River, and at the loweredge of the great Sioux nation. 

"Lewis and Clark tried to get peace among all these river tribes. Theyheld a big council here, decorating a few more Otoes and Missouris, andtelling them to make peace with the Omahas and the Pawnee Loups. TheSioux had not yet been found, though their hunting fires were seen allthrough 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 onlycasualty of the trip ensued. You remember Sergeant Floyd--he spelledworse than Clark, and Ordway worse than either--and his journal of sometwenty thousand words, which he had kept till now? Well, he danced hardat 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 himwhat the _Journal_ calls a 'Biliose Chorlick, ' and on the second day hedied. He was buried on the bluffs below the town, at what still iscalled Floyd's Bluff, on the river they named after him, with militaryhonors, and his grave long was known. His river still is known by hisname, and it runs right into the town of Sioux City. The river washedthe 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 amonument was put over it in May, 1901. I was a guest at the dedicationof that obelisk. It was erected under the supervision of General HiramChittenden, the great engineer and great historian. It has a city parkall of its own, and a marvelous landscape it commands. 

"Well, poor Floyd had no memorial in those rude days, beyond a 'seederpost. ' They did what they could and then they 'set out under a gentleBreeze and proceeded on. '"

"Well, but Dorion knew this country, then?" John began again, after atime. 

"Yes, " Rob was first to answer, "and that's what puzzles me--how theygot such exact knowledge of a wild region. I suppose it was because theyhad no railroads and so had to know geography. _The Journal_ says thatthe Sioux River heads with the St. Peter's (Minnesota) River, passingthe head of the Des Moines; all of which is true. And it tells of theRed Pipestone quarry, on a creek coming into the Sioux. Clark puts downall those things and does not forget the local stuff. He says the'Countrey above the Platte has a great Similarity'--which means thePlains as they saw them. And look, in John's book--here he says 'I founda verry excellent froot resembling the read Current, ' What was it--theSarvice 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, inour railway surveys out West, " said Uncle Dick. "It was bigger than acurrant and made very fair pies. 

"But now we've just begun to catch up with our story, for we weretalking some time back where they first got a buffalo. That was aboutthirty or forty miles above here. By to-morrow night we'll camp in ourfifth state since we left home--Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, SouthDakota. "

"On our way!" sung out Rob. "We haven't got any antelope yet, nor founda prairie dog, nor seen a single Sioux. "

"Softly, softly!" smiled the older companion. "At least we're in theSioux and antelope range. "

Their little tent was pitched within a short distance of the river, andtheir fire made shadows along the wall of willows. At times they allfell silent, bringing to mind the wild scenes of this same country in atime which now began to seem not so long ago. 

"My!" said Jesse, after a time, as he sat on his bed roll, his handsclasped before his knees. "Think of it! The Plains, the buffalo, theIndians! Weren't they the lucky guys!"

"Well, yes, " replied his uncle, "though I'd rather call them fortunategentlemen than lucky guys. One thing sure, they were accurate when theysaid the 'musquitors were verry troublesom' in all this Missouri Valley. They had to issue nets and bars to the men, so it says, and themisquitr, or mosquiter, or musquitor, was about the only 'anamal' theyfeared. 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 campabove the Council Bluffs. "Wonder if we ever will get there beforewinter! Here we are, just below the Vermilion, over nine hundred andfifty miles up the river, and over three weeks out, but we're onlyhalfway to the Yellowstone, and still a good deal more than six hundredmiles below the Mandan Villages, though I've counted fifty-three townsand cities we've passed in the river, coming this far. It certainly doeslook as though we'll have to winter up there, sure enough. "

"Oh, I don't know, " demurred Rob, consulting the pages of his ownnotebook. "No fellow can ask an outboard motor to do better than ourshave. I'll admit we're just inside our forty-mile-a-day stunt, butthat's five miles an hour and only eight hours a day. I'll bet theywould have been mighty glad to do half that. "

"I've been wondering how they were able to spurt so much, north of thePlatte, " said John. 

"I'll bet I know!" broke in Jesse. "It's because the shores were moreopen, so they could use the cordelle! They'd been doing it, too, for onAugust 26th they made a new 'Toe line' out of braided elk-hide. Clarkkilled an elk on August 25th, and Reuben Fields killed five deer thatday, and George Shannon killed an elk that day, too. So they 'jurked themeet, ' and made the hides into a tracking line. That beats rowing orpaddling to get up a river. We saw that on the Peace River and theMackenzie, 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 theirmileage, I'll warrant. "

"George Shannon?" said Uncle Dick, who was listening as he sat on hisbed roll near the fire. "George Shannon, eh? Well, he didn't bring inany 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 sentout two men, Shields and J. Fields, to find him and the horses. That wasthe second day. But they didn't find him. He didn't show up for sixteendays. Luckily, he kept on ahead of the boat all the time, but, as weall know, the most confusing way on earth to get lost from a party iswhile you are on foot and the party is in a boat. Even Sir AlexanderMackenzie got lost that way, on the Findlay River; and so have we all ofus. "

"Well, poor Shannon nearly starved to death. I don't think he was afirst-class hunter, either, or he'd not have gone out without hisammunition. In a country swarming with game he went for twelve days withonly grapes to eat, except one rabbit that he shot with a piece of stickinstead of a bullet. He held on to one horse, and lucky he did. Here'swhat 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 hadtraveled thirteen days, not counting stops, and made one hundred andsixty miles by the river. They must by then have been at least thirtymiles above what is now Fort Randall, South Dakota--I should say, somewhere near Wheeler, South Dakota. Well, something of a walk forGeorge, eh?"

"Rather!" was Jesse's comment. "Oh, I suppose it's easy to call him adub, but the commanding officers didn't. "

"But now, " went on their leader, "a lot of things have been happeningsince Shannon left, and here are a lot of interesting things to keep inmind. One thing is, they expected a trading boat up. That must have beenfrom St. Louis, for Trudeau's post. That was long before the days of theregular fur forts, and that accounts for all this country having itsFrench names on it. 

"Another thing or two: By this time, in lower South Dakota, everybodywas killing buffalo and elk, great quantities of splendid meat. By now, also, in early September, they had got on the antelope range for thefirst time, and their first 'goat, ' as they called it, was skinned anddescribed. They got another new animal, which they called a 'barkeingsquirel, ' or 'ground rat'--on September 7th. That was the first prairiedog, a great curiosity to them--the same day they saw their first'goat. ' They managed to drown out one prairie dog, which I never heardof anyone else being able to do. They dug down six feet, and did not gethalfway to the 'lodge, ' as they called the den. 

"Also, they saw the western magpie, which seemed a 'verry butifull' birdto them. Also again, on September 5th, they had seen their firstblacktail deer, which now, until they got into the Mandan andYellowstone country, was to outnumber the whitetail, which they calledthe 'common deer, ' because they never had seen any other sort. On oneday, September 17th, Lewis and his men killed two blacktail, eight'fallow' deer, and five 'common' deer. Gass--who by now has been electedsergeant to take poor Floyd's place--in his _Journal_ says they killedthirteen common deer, two blacktailed, three buffalo, and a 'goat' thatday--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 itmay help explain the 'fallow' deer which Clark mentions, and which Idon't understand at all. Gass says: 'There is another species of deer inthis country, with small horns and long tails. The tail of one we killedwas 18 inches long. ' Now that precisely coincides with the 'fantail'deer which some old-time hunters of my acquaintance say they havekilled in the Black Hills country, though scientists say there never wasany fantail deer. Our men were now right east of the Black Hills. Formyself, I am convinced there was a fantail deer, and that it has farmore rights as a species than the dozen or more 'species' of bears whichour Washington scientists keep on finding. 

"But even this is not all I am trying to get into your minds about thiscountry where our lost hunter Shannon was wandering alone. They weregetting all sorts of elk, catfish, and beaver, from the last of Auguston, but better here--on September 5th they saw both 'goats' and wildturkeys on the same day. Did you know that wild turkeys ranged so farnorth? Well, they at that time overlapped the range of the buffalo, theelk, 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, anda squirrel. All gone now, even almost all the prairie dogs and maybe themagpies; 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 awonderful hunting country they had been in, almost every day from St. Louis, especially here, where the lower country began to blend with thehigh 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, justnow, 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 luckhunting, they at last had found their Sioux and got them in for acouncil. That was under an oak tree, at the mouth of the Jacque, orJames, 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 andabout seventy others, and they all went into council. "

"Oak tree, did you say, John? Oak tree this far north?" Jesse wasparticular. 

"Yes, sir, oak tree--lots of them all through here then. Clark tells howthe deer and elk ate the acorns, and how fond they were of them. Didn'tyou 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 couldbelieve they were on the very council ground where Lewis and Clark firstmet the Sioux, below the Calumet Bluff, on the "Butifull Plain near thefoot of the high land which rises with a gradual assent near thisBluff. " At least a trace of the old abundance of the timber could beseen. They consulted their _Journal_ and argued for a long time. 

"This is where they sent out the two men to hunt for the lost manShannon, " said Rob. "And here is where our captains made their bigtreaty speeches with the Sioux and gave them medals and the D. S. O. , andthe Congressional Medal and things. They had a lot of government 'GoodIndian' certificates all ready to fill in, and it peeved them when oneof the chiefs handed back his certificate and said he didn't care forit, but would rather have some whiskey. 

"Those Sioux must have been a surly bunch, " said Rob. "But Captain Lewisimpressed them very much, and Captain Clark let down his long red hairand astonished them, and everybody fed them and gave them presents; andthey appointed young Mr. Dorion a commissioner, and gave him a flag, andtold him to bring about a peace between all these tribes--the Sioux, Omahas, Pawnees, Poncas, Otoes, and Missouris--and to try to get chiefsof each tribe to go down the river and to Washington, to see the GreatFather. And the _Journal_ kept them good and busy, setting down thenames of the different bands of the Sioux and telling how they looked. "

John grinned, and pointed to the page. "'The Warriers are Verry muchdeckerated with Paint Porcupine quils and feathers, large leagins andmockersons, all with buffalow robes of Different Colors, the Squars worePeticoats and a White Buffalow roabe with the black hare turned backover their necks and Sholders. ' I'll say they had plenty to do, writingand hunting and making speeches. It wasn't any pleasure party, when youcome 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 seethe blue smokes of their council fires, and see the men dancing, and thepainted Indians sitting around, and the great council pipe passing--redpipestone, with eagle feathers on the stem; and meat hanging in camp, and the squaws cooking, dogs yelping, drums going. Oh, by Jove! Oh, byJove! Those were the things to make you sit up late at night! I wishwe'd been along. "

"We _are_ along!" said Uncle Dick, soberly. "If you can see thosestirring scenes, we are along. So, Rob, as you say, we'll pitch our campand dream, for at least a day, of our own wonderful America when it wasyoung. "

John and Jesse were busy clearing a place for the tent. "I want the fireright close up to the tent, " said John, "and we don't want to burn offeither a tent pole or an overhead guy rope. "

"Oh, " rejoined Jesse, the youngest of them all, "I'll show you how to dothat!"

He dug into his war bag and brought out a roll of stout wire. "Run thisfrom the top of the front pole on out, ten or twelve feet, and stretchit over a couple of shear poles. See? That'll stiffen the tent, and yetyou 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 mightygood idea for cold weather--about as good as your open fireplace ofsheet steel with a stovepipe--open wider in front than behind, andreflecting the heat into the tent. I've tried that last invention ofyours, 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'sdifferent 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'tfigure 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 owncomfortable camp, spreading down their own buffalo robes on the groundfor their beds, on the old council ground of the Sioux. They had ahearty supper and soon were ready to turn in, for the mosquitoes werebad enough, as they found. Rob sat late at night alone by the littlefire. 

"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 uniformcoats, one tall and dark, the other tall and with red hair. Don't yousee them, too?"

CHAPTER XIII

GETTING NORTH

"But we haven't found George Shannon yet, " again insisted Jesse, attheir breakfast. 

"And you haven't run your set line yet, Mr. Jess, " reminded Rob; whichwas enough to cause Jesse to run down to the bank with his mouth full ofbacon. He had forgotten all about his fishing at the time. At once theyheard 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 hecould, for the fish was strong. It was some time before they could getto see it, and when Jesse at last landed it on the bank he called forhis . 22 rifle and shot it through the head. 

"There!" he said. "I knew I'd find some big game to shoot. Isn't he awhale? 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'llkeep for three days, a hundred and fifty miles? I shouldn't wonder ifShannon 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 inmany camps together, soon were packed and on their way above the oldcouncil camp of the Sioux. 

"Buffalo and elk, every way you can look!" exclaimed John. "Elk swimmingacross 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 beaverevery night! Now there's cottonwoods. By and by the river'll begin totake a straighter shoot north. It's a long, long way up to the Mandans!"

"And right through the country of those roaming, murdering Sioux!" addedRob. 

"Right you are, Rob, " said Uncle Dick. "The Sioux used to hunt and robas far as Fort Laramie, six hundred miles up the Platte, and on the headof the Jim River in Dakota, and all between. Their homes were wheretheir hats were--and they hadn't any hats. "

For some days now they threaded their way among the countless islandsand sand bars of the great river, until at last they made camp early onthe evening of June 9th, near the point which, as closely as they couldfigure it, was about where the Lewis and Clark bateau lay at the timeGeorge Shannon was found wandering on the Plains, alone and ready todespair. This was about thirty miles below the mouth of the White River. 

"Well, we've got him, " said Jesse, solemnly, "and told him never toleave camp without matches and ammunition and an ax. And that's that!"

"Time for another catfish, Jesse, " said their leader. "John, you takethe . 22 and wander along the edge of the bluff. You might see a youngjack rabbit. I don't believe I'd bother the ducks, for that's againstthe law and we don't break laws even when we are not watched. Rob, youand 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 anothercatfish on his throw line, and soon he had it flopping on the sand. Hekilled it stone dead by thrusting a stiff straw back into the brainthrough the "little hole in its face, " as he called the sinus whichleads into the head cavity. 

"I throw out my line, " said he, "with a piece of meat or minnow on thehook. Then I stick a stick down in the bank, two or three feet long, andtake a half hitch around the top. It acts as a sort of rod and giveswhen the fish bites. He pulls down and swallows the bait, and the springof the stick holds him safer than a straight pull would. To skin him, Icut around back of his front side fins and take hold of the skin with mypliers--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 hehad found on the bluffs below. He spoke of the fine view and of thesplendid sunset he had seen. Rob was examining the rabbits, each ofwhich had been shot squarely through the eye. "Dead-shot John, the oldtrapper!" 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, " asJohn quoted from the _Journal_. 

Now day after day, hurrying hard as they could, they still drove onnorthward, along the great bends of what began to seem an interminablewaterway. One bend, they fancied, they surely identified with the onementioned in the _Journal_, which then was thirty miles around and notmuch over a half a mile across the neck. They reflected that in morethan a hundred years the great river in all likelihood had cut throughwhat 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 fartherapart. They were in cattle country rather than farming country much ofthe time. 

The _Journal_ brought up the second great Sioux council of Lewis andClark, on the "Teton river"--near Pierre, South Dakota--on the date ofSeptember 25th; but so faithful had the motive power of the good ship_Adventurer_ proved, that our party pulled into the most suitablecamping spot they could find not too near by, around noon of June 13th. 

"Can't complain, " said Rob, taking off his grease-spattered overalls andwiping his hands on a bit of waste. "We've slipped a day on ourschedule, but from what we now know of this little old river, we aremighty lucky to be here and not down by Council Bluffs, or maybe KansasCity! 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 thisfar, " added John, "say, twelve hundred miles from the mouth of theMissouri--whew! It makes my back ache. Seems to me we've skippedalong. "

"Well, why shouldn't we?" demanded Jesse. "Those fellows had the finestkind of hunting in the world; over a thousand of miles of it, tohere--over four thousand miles of it altogether--not a single day thatdidn'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 andgrouse, yes, but we can't shoot 'em. And I've got so I don't crave tolook a catfish in the face. "

Uncle Dick looked at the boys gravely and saw that the monotony of thelong voyage was beginning to wear on them. 

"Stick her through to the Mandans, fellows, " said he. "We'll see whatwe'll see. But Jesse, how can you complain of being bored when rightnow you are standing where Will Clark come pretty near being killed bythe Teton Sioux?

"Yes, sir, it was right here that they tried to stop him from going backto the big boat. Then, for the first time, the Redhead Chief drew hissword--they always went into uniform when they had a council on--andLewis and the men on the boat trained the swivel gun on the band ofSioux who were detaining Clark. 

"You see, they had the council awning stretched on a sand bar in themouth of the river, and the bateau was seventy yards off, anchored. Theyhad sent out for the Sioux to come in, had smoked with them, given themprovisions, made speeches to them, given them whisky and tobacco. TheSioux were arrogant, wanted more whisky and tobacco, and when Clark cameashore with only five men they tried to hold him up, grabbing the boatpainter and pulling their bows. The second chief, says Clark, was bad, 'his justures were of such a personal nature I felt Myself Compeled toDraw 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. "Atseventy yards they'd 'a' got plenty of 'em. "

"Sure they would. And then maybe the Sioux would never have let themthrough at all and would have shot into every boat of white men thatlater came up the river. No, those young men showed courage and goodjudgment both. They did not know fear, but they did not forget duty, andthey were there to make peace among all the tribes along the Missouri. 

"President Jefferson knew that country would soon be visited by many ofour fur traders, and he didn't want the boats stopped. Lewis and Clarkboth knew this. "

"But the Sioux didn't bluff them, " said Rob, "because Lewis went ashorewith 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 therewere 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 itthey had sprinkled swan's-down, and they all were dressed up to theirlimit. And though they could have been killed any minute, these twowhite men had that lot of Indians feeding from the hand, as the slanggoes, Uncle Dick!"

Uncle Dick nodded, and Rob went on, referring to his _Journal_. "Andthen the big chief said what they had done was O. K. , and asked thewhite men to 'take pity on them'--which I think is an old Indian termof asking for some more gifts. Anyhow, the upshot was they smoked thepeace pipe and ate 'some of the most Delicate parts of the Dog whichwas prepared for the fiest and made a Sacrefise to the flag. ' Thenthey cleared away the floor, built up a fire in the lodge, and 'about10 Musitions began playing on Tambereens'--which made a 'ginglingnoise. ' The women came in and danced, with staffs decorated withscalps, and everybody sang and everybody promised to be good. "

"Some party!" said Jesse, slangily; but Rob, now excited, went on withthe story:

"Poor Clark nearly got sick from lack of sleep. But the next day theSioux held on to the cable again and wanted to stop the boat till theyhad more tobacco. Then Lewis told the chiefs they couldn't bluff himinto giving them anything. Clark did give them a little tobacco and toldthe men not to fire the swivel. Then they ran up a red flag under thewhite, and the next Sioux that came aboard they told that those twoflags meant peace or war, either way they wanted it, and if they wantedpeace, they'd all better go back home and stay there, and not monkeywith the buzz saw too long--well, you know, Uncle Dick, they didn'treally say that, but that was what they meant. 

"The Sioux followed alongshore and begged tobacco for fifty miles, cleanup to the Ree villages, near the mouth of the Cheyenne River. Oh, theyfound the Sioux, all right; and glad enough they were to get throughthem, even paying tribute as they had done. "

"That's a fair statement of the Teton affair, " nodded the leader of theparty. "Many a white life that tribe took, in the seventy-five yearsthat were to follow. For the next hundred miles there were either Siouxor Rees pestering and begging and keeping the party uneasy all thetime. "

"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, ifthey had had a good shotgun or so along, they could have killed allsorts of swans, brant and other geese, and ducks, for they were runninginto the fall migration of the wild fowl. Grouse, too, were mentionedas very numerous. They stuck to big game--it was easy to get meat whenyou could see a 'gang of goats'--antelope--swimming the river, and thehills 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 somenotion 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 Isuppose 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 traderscalled the Chien, or Dog, River--Clark said that nothing was known of ittill a certain Jean Vallé told them that it headed in the Black Hills. 

"Of course, it's all easy now. We know the Black Hills are in thesouthwest corner of South Dakota, and that the Belle Fourche River ofthe old cow country runs into the Cheyenne, which flows almost east, into the Missouri. But if Mr. Vallé 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 moreFrenchmen came to breakfast, 'Mr. Tabo and Mr. Gravolin, ' who werealready in this country. 

"To me, one of the most interesting things is to see the overlapping andblending of all these things--how the turkey once overlapped theantelope and prairie dog; how the Rees, who were only scattered branchesof the Pawnees, properly at home away down in Kansas--overlapped theSioux, who sometimes raided the Pawnees below the Platte. 

"And these French traders said the Spaniards sometimes came to the mouthof the Kaw River, and even on the Platte. So there we were, overlappingSpain to the west. And up above, Great Britain was overlapping ourclaims to the valley of the Columbia and even part of this MissouriValley. You can see how important this journey was. 

"You'll remember the lower Brulé Sioux Reservation, below us and westof the river. The Cheyenne Reservation is in above here, below themouth of the Cheyenne River. From there the river takes a prettystraight shoot up into North Dakota. A great game country, a wild cowcountry, and now a quiet farming country. A bleak, snow-covered, wind-swept waste it then was. And it was winter that first stoppedthat long, slow, steady, tireless advance of the 'Corps ofVollenteers. '"

"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 mutinousexpressions. Seventy-five lashes and expulsion from the Volunteers waswhat the court of nine men gave him. They always were dignified, andthey enforced respect from whites and Indians alike. "

"Well, " grumbled Jesse, "it looks to me like there had been a whole lotof people wandering around across this country long before Lewis andClark got here. "

"Right you are, my boy. The truth is that right across these Plainsthere went west the first American exploring expedition that ever sawthe Rockies. The French nobleman Verendrye, his three sons, and anephew, not to mention quite a band of Indians, started west across fromthe Mandan country in 1742. On January 1, 1743, he records his firstsight of the Rocky Mountains, which he calls the Shining Mountains--afine name it is for them, too. 

"The Verendrye expedition was the first to cross Wyoming or the Dakotasso 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 ArikaraIndians he buried a plate of lead, with the arms and inscription of theking. He did this in March, 1743. It always was supposed that this wasat or near Fort Pierre, South Dakota. That suspicion was absolutelycorrect. 

"In a little railway pamphlet put out by the Northern Pacific Railway itis stated that on Sunday, February 16, 1913--one hundred and seventyyears after Verendrye got back that far east--a school girl playing withsome others at the top of a hill scraped the dirt from the end of aplate, which then was exposed about an inch above the ground. She pulledit out. The story said it looked like a range-stove lining. It was eightand a half inches long by six and a half inches wide and an eighth of aninch in thickness. Well, it was discovered to be the old Verendrye leadplate--that's all!"

"That's a most extraordinary thing!" said Rob. "Well, anyhow, it showsthe value of leaving exploring records. So you couldn't blame WilliamClark for writing his name at least twice on the rocks. "

"No, the story of the Verendrye plate is, I think, one of the mostcurious things I have ever read in regard to early Western history. Younever can tell about such things. Well, in any case Verendrye, the firstwhite man who ever saw the Shining Mountains, died in 1749. That wasfifty-five years before Lewis and Clark started up the river. 

"There is not a hundred miles, or ten miles, or one mile, along allthese shores which has not historical value if you and I only knew thestory. "

"But it's a long, long way up to the Mandans still, " began John oncemore. 

His Uncle Dick gayly chided him. 

"It'll not be so long--only a little over three hundred miles fromhere. "

"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. Goodnight, Jess. Good night, Rob and Frank. "

CHAPTER XIV

IN DAYS OF OLD

The young travelers each night made their beds carefully, for they longsince had learned that unless a man sleeps well he cannot enjoy the nextday's work. It has been noted that they had three buffalo robes for partof their bedding, one each for Uncle Dick and Rob, while John and Jesseshared one between them. In the morning Uncle Dick noted that the lattertwo boys had their robe spread down with the hair side up. 

"I suppose you did that to get more of a mattress?" he said. "Butsuppose 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 therobe. "That'd have the warm fur next to you, so you'd be warmer thatway. "

"No, there's where you are wrong, " said his uncle. "The old-timersalways slept with the hair outside, and the Indians wore their robesthat way. 'Buffalo know how to wear his hide!' is the way an Indian putit. And, you see, a buffalo always did wear his hair outside! Next tothe musk ox, he was the hardiest animal on this continent and couldstand the most cold. No blizzards on these plains ever troubled him. Hecould 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 snowaside 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 andartists and even scientists quite often are wrong. For instance, inpictures 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 bullsusually were at the rear, to defend against wolves. And when a buffaloran, he ran into the wind, not downwind, like the deer. Few rememberthat now. 

"Take the antelope, too. The old hunters always knew that the antelopeshed 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 antelopebuck's horn pull off in my hand, in the month of May, and it left thesoft core exposed, covered with coarse black filaments like black hairs. Naturally, in the fall, at the time Lewis and Clark got their 'goat, ' asthey called the antelope, the horns were on tight, so they supposed theydidn't shed. 

"They sent President Jefferson specimens of the new animals theyfound--the antelope, prairie dog, prairie badger, magpie, bighorn, and a grizzly-hide or so. They got their four bighorn heads at theMandans, none very large, though 'two feet long and four inchesdiameter' seemed big to them. And I shouldn't wonder if those hornscould have been pulled off the pith after they got good and dry. Thehorns of the bighorn will dry out and lose at least ten per cent oftheir measurement, in a few years' hanging on a wall. I have had abighorn's curly horn come off the pith in rough handling three or fouryears after it was killed; but of course the horns never were shed inlife. "

"Did they get them along the Missouri?" asked Jesse, now. 

"Not until they got above the mouth of the Yellowstone. There theykilled a lot of them. "

"They saw one big grizzly track before they got to the Mandans, " saidRob, who was listening. 

"Oh yes--that might have been. Alexander Henry the younger tells us ofgrizzlies in northern Minnesota in early days. In all the range countryalong 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 toNew Mexico and Utah, as I can personally testify. Just how far south heran in here I don't know--some think as far south as upper Iowa, but wecan't tell. He couldn't do much with deer and antelope, and worked moreon elk and buffalo, when it came to big meat. He'd dig out mice and eatcrickets, 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 gotabove the Yellowstone--and then they certainly got among them. Gassrecords sixteen grizzlies met with between the Yellowstone and the GreatFalls of the Missouri. He usually calls them 'brown bears, ' which showsthe great color range of the grizzly. Lewis and the others call them'white bears. ' The typical grizzly had a light-yellowish coat, oftendark underneath. 

"Of course, color has nothing to do with it. I've seen them almostblack. The silvertip is a grizzly. The giant California bear was agrizzly. The great Kadiak bears which you boys saw were grizzlies of adifferent habitat. I've seen a grizzly with a hide almost red. But ofcourse you know that the 'cinnamon bear' is practically always a blackbear; and a black bear mother may have two cubs, one red and one quiteblack. 

"Scientists try to establish a dozen or two 'species' of bears--evenmaking different 'species' of the black bears of the southernMississippi bottoms--Arkansas, Louisiana, etc. --and I don't know howmany sorts of 'blue bears' and 'straw bears, ' 'glacier bears, ' etc. , among the grizzlies. Of course, bears differ, just as men do. But theone thing which remains constant is the length of the claws, or fronttoe nails--what the _Journal_ calls their 'talons. ' In a black bearthese are always short. In a grizzly they are always long--they get themup to four and one-half inches, and I believe some of your Kadiaks haveeven longer claws. Colors grade, but claws don't. I even think the polarbear 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 neededand kept. 

"The long-clawed bears were all predatory; the short-clawed ones neverwere. Not long ago I read a magazine story about a black bear whichkilled a moose with seven-foot horns. There never was a black bear everkilled any moose, and there never was any moose with horns that wide. Such things are nonsense--like a great part of the magazine animalfiction. "

Rob was interested. "Too bad they've trapped off about all thegrizzlies, " he said now. "I've tried a lot of kinds of sport, and ofthem all, I like grizzly hunting, quail shooting, and fly fishing fortrout. "

"Not a bad selection! Well, the first is hard to get now. The grizzly iscloser to extinction than the elk or the buffalo, for the buffalo breedin 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 fromgrizzlies nowadays. Look how they fought? Even Lewis came near beingkilled by them more than once. "

"Yes, they'd fight, in those days, for they were bigger and bolder, andthey had not yet learned fear of the rifle. You must remember thatwhile, in this country up to the Mandans, the early traders had beenahead of Lewis and Clark, above the Yellowstone no white man ever hadgone. Those bears thought a white man was something good to eat, andthey offered to eat him. 

"Their rifles were muzzle loaders--I've often and often tried to findjust the size ball they used, but I can't find such exact mention oftheir 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 thosemen 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 merrytimes in those days, when grizzlies were regular fellows!"

John nearly always had precise facts at hand. He now found his copy ofthe 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 feetfive inches around the head, three feet eleven inches around the neck, five feet ten and one-half inches around the breast. His foreleg wastwenty-three inches around, and his talons were four and three-eighthsinches. He was eight feet seven and one-half inches long. "

"That was a big grizzly, " Uncle Dick nodded, "a very big one, for thislatitude. The biggest silvertip grizzly I ever knew in Montana weighednine hundred pounds. But they were bigger in California and all up thePacific coast--trees and bears grew bigger there, for some reason. Youboys have killed Kadiaks as big as this Gass grizzly. But you didn't doit with a flintlock, small-bore, muzzle loader, fair stand-up fight. Andyour Kadiak bear would run when it saw you--so would a Lewis and Clarkgrizzly; only it would run toward you! Six men of them went out afterone of them and wounded it, and it almost got the lot of them. Anothertime 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 wespread the square sail, set out, and proceeded on!"

In fact, so well had they cast out ahead, as usual, the nature of thecountry into which they were coming, and so well had they studied itshistory, that it needs not tell their daily journey among the greatbluffs, 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 thereally arid country farther west, and of the uses of irrigation, the_Journal_ knew little, and spoke of it as a desert, though now, on theedge of the river, the clinging towns and the great ranch country backof them, with the green fields of farms and the smokes of not infrequenthomes, warned them that the past was gone and that now another day andland lay before them. 

After many misadventures among the countless deceiving channels and barsof the river, and after locating the several Indian villages of the pastand of to-day--the Rees, the Sioux bands, the Cheyennes--they did atlast cross the North Dakota line at the Standing Rock agency, did passthe mouths of the Cannon Ball and Heart Rivers, and raise the smokes ofBismarck on the right, and Mandan on the left bank, with the greatconnecting railway bridge. They drove on, and at length chose theirstopping place below Mandan, on the west shore. 

Now, as always at the river towns they had passed, they met many curiousand inquisitive persons, eager to know who they were, where they weregoing, 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 littleencampment the next morning, in pursuit of a rumor he had heard that theboat had ascended the river from its mouth, "since you ask us, we arethe perogue _Adventurer_, Company of Volunteers for NorthwesternDiscovery, under Captains Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. We are insearch of winter quarters, and we hope the natives are peaceful. We havebeen, to this landing, just forty-nine days, five hours and thirty-fiveminutes, 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 aboutsixteen hundred and ten miles, though we don't figure it quite sixteenhundred. Call it fourteen hundred and fifty-two, as the river chartdoes. "

"Jerusalem! And you say you made it in forty-nine days? Why, that's--howmany miles a day?"

"Well, we set out to do over forty miles a day, but we couldn't quitemake it. We ran against a good many things. "

"And broke all known and existing records at that, I'll bet a hat! Howon earth!"

"Well, you see, sir, " Rob went on, politely, "we've rigged a doubleoutboard, with an extension bed on the stern. They're specially made forus 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 traveledten hours nearly every day. But then, it wasn't always what you'd callfair 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 theFourth among the Mandans. "

"If there's ice cream, " interrupted Jesse. 

"Ice cream?" The visitor turned to Uncle Dick, who sat smiling. "All youwant, and won't cost you a cent! Come on up to my house, won't you, andspend the night? Have you got all the eggs and butter and bread andfruit 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 aregreat for making believe, " said he. "We're crossing on the old Lewis andClark trail, as nearly as we can. We're going to the head of theMissouri River, and my young friends are trying to restore the life ofthe old days as they go along. "

"Fine! I wish more would do so. I'm ignorant, myself, but I'm going tobe 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 muchwatching. You'll be here over the Fourth, at least?"

"Oh, yes, " replied Uncle Dick, now introducing himself, "we're ready totake a little rest and look around a little among the Mandans! Can youshow 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 ofold Fort Clark. Then I'll show you around among the painted savages ofour city!"

They all laughed, and after pulling up the boat, drawing tight the tentflaps, and spreading the tarpaulin over the cargo, they joined their newfriend in his motor car and sped off for the town, where they were madewelcome 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 withhis promise, this new friend had pointed out the place where, the expertinvestigators usually agreed, the explorers built their winter quartersin the year 1804--near the plot called Elm Point, even now heavilytimbered. "I don't see much of a fort left here now. What's become ofit?"

"What becomes of any house built of cottonwood logs in ten or twentyyears?" smiled his uncle. "But the _Journal_ and other books tell usthat here or about here is where the old stockade once stood. It wasopposite to where Fort Clark later was built in 1831. You see, FortClark was on the west side, on a high bluff, and in its time quite apost, for it was one hundred and thirty-two by one hundred andforty-seven feet in size, and well built. Fort Clark was aboutfifty-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 makeroom. He says they had cottonwood and elm and some small ash, butcomplains that the logs were large and heavy and they had to carry themin on hand spikes, by man power. They used no horses in rolling up thelogs. 

"But Patrick Gass tells more about the way they did. They had two rowsof cabins, in two wings, at right angles, and each cabin had four roomsin it. I think the men slept upstairs, for when the walls were up sevenfeet they laid a puncheon floor, covered with grass and clay, which Gasssays made 'a warm loft. ' This projected about a foot, and a puncheonroof was put over that. 

"The outer wall was about eighteen feet high. They had severalfireplaces. They made a couple of storerooms in the angle of the twowings, and then put up their stockade in front, to complete theirsquare. This stockade was made of upright logs, and had a gate, likemost of the frontier posts, so that, what with their swivel gun and alltheir rifles, they could have made quite a fight against any sort of anattack, although they had no trouble of any kind. 

"They were not very far from the Mandan villages. Quite a settlementthis was, in these parts--not mentioning nine deserted villages insideof sixty miles below--two Mandan villages, built with the Mandandirt-covered lodges, like those of the Rees; and besides that, villagesof Sioux and Gros Ventres, and of a band they called the Watasoons, andseventy lodges of Crees and Assiniboines who came in later and thefierce Minnetarees--plenty of savages to warrant the expedition intaking 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 bythe name of McCracken was on the ground at the time. Alexander Henrygot there in 1806, you know. Now, Lewis sent out a note by McCrackento the agent at Fort Assiniboine. Those traders were none too friendly, and tried to stir up trouble. Two more of the Nor'westers, Larocqueand McKenzie, came in, with an interpreter and four men, and theinterpreter, LaFrance, took it on him to speak sneeringly of theAmericans. It did not take Captain Lewis long to call him to account. "

"Well, our fellows were up in there all alone, weren't they?" exclaimedJesse. 

"They certainly were, but they held their fort; and they held all theNorthwestern country for us. As soon as the Northwest Fur Company foundout 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, SimonFraser, to ascend the Saskatchewan and beat the Americans in on theColumbia. But he himself was beaten in that great race by about a coupleof years! So we forged the chain that was to hold the Oregon country tothe United States afterward. Oh yes, our young captains had a big gameto play, and they played it beautifully. 

"They always talked peace among these Mandans and others, because theywanted the Missouri River opened to the American fur trade. They waitedaround, and held talks, and swapped tobacco for corn, and the Americanblacksmiths made for them any number of axes and hatchets and otherthings. By and by the Indians began to figure that they were more apt toget plenty of goods up the Missouri from the Americans than overlandfrom the British traders. Do you see how that began to work out? Oh, ourboys knew what they were about, all right. And the result was that ourfur trade swept up that river like an army with banners as soon as Lewisand Clark got back home. In a few years we had a hundred and forty furtrading posts on the Missouri and its upper tributaries, and from theseour bold traders pushed out by pack train into every corner of the RockyMountains. "

"Gee!" said Jesse, in his frequent and not elegant slang. "Gee! Thosewere the days!"

"Right you are--those were the days! Those were the great days ofadventure and romance and exploration. It was through the fur trade thatwe explored the Rocky Mountains. Can't you see our men of the fur posts, paddling, rowing, sailing, tracking--getting up the Missouri? Greatdays, 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, andlong and cold enough it was. 

"They had to hunt or starve, but soon their buffalo and elk and deerand antelope got very thin, mere skin and bones. It was bitter cold, andthe hunters came in frozen time and again--a hard, bare, bitter fight itwas. From all accounts, it was an old-fashioned winter, for themercury--they spelled it 'merkery'--froze solid in a few minutes one daywhen they set the thermometer out of doors!"

"And it must have been cool inside the houses, too, " ventured John. "Butof 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 riverin 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 tocamp out where they found the trees, and then they carried the canoes byhand over to the river, a mile and a half. 

"They sent the big flatboat, or bateau, down the river, and thirteen menwent with it. The two perogues and the six new cottonwood dugouts theytook on west, up the river, when they started, on March 7, 1805, tofinish their journey across the continent. Of these men, the party whowent through, there were thirty-one; and there was one woman. "

"I know!" said Jesse. "Sacágawea!"

"Right! Sacágawea. Make it two words. 'Wea' means 'woman. ' 'Bird Woman'was her name--Sacága Wea. And of the entire party, that Indian girl--shewas only a girl, though lately married and though she started west witha very young baby--was worth more than any man. If it had not been forher they never would have got across. 

"You see, up to this place, the Mandan towns, they had some idea of thecountry, and so also they had beyond here as far as the mouth of theYellowstone--that's two hundred and eighty-eight miles above here. Butbeyond 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 footof white man never then had passed. There was no map, no report or rumorto 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 Sacágawea. Hehad bought her from the Minnetarees, where she was a captive. 

"Just think how the natives traveled in those days! You know theSioux hunted on the upper Platte, as far as the Rockies. Well, thisMinnetaree war party had been west of the Rockies, or in the big bendof the Rockies, at the very head of the Missouri River, among theShoshonis. They took Sacágawea prisoner when she was a little girl, and brought her east, all the way over to Dakota, here. But she wasIndian--she did not forget what she saw. She knew about theYellowstone, and the Three Forks of the Missouri. 

"Well now, whether it was because Chaboneau, the new interpreter, wantedher along, or whether Lewis and Clark figured she might be useful, Sacágawea went along, all the way to the Pacific--and all the way backto 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 theymade a pet of her. They found they could rely on her memory and herjudgment. 

"So the real guide they had in the nameless and unknown country was aShoshoni Indian girl. It looked almost like something providential, theway they found her here, ready and waiting for them--the only possibleguide in all that country. And to-day, such was the chivalry and justiceof those two captains of our Army--and such the chivalry and justice ofthe men of Oregon and the enthusiasm of the women of Oregon--you may seein Portland, near the sea to which she helped lead our flag, the bronzestatue of Sacágawea, the Indian girl. That, at least, is one fine thingwe have done in memory of the Indian. 

"And within the last two or three years a bronze statue of MeriwetherLewis and William Clark has been erected at Charlotteville, Virginia, near the home of Meriwether Lewis--that was at Ivy station, to-day onlya scattered settlement. And away down in Tennessee, in the forest ofLewis County, named after him, I have stood by the monument that stateerected over the little-known and tragic grave of Captain MeriwetherLewis--far enough from the grave of the poor Indian girl who worshipedhim more than she could her worthless husband. 

"No one knows where Sacágawea was buried, though her history was traceda little way after the return to this country. She was buried perhaps inthe air, on a scaffold, and left forgotten, as Indian women were, and weno more can stand by her grave than we can be sure we stand on the exactspot where Will Clark built his winter quarters among the Mandans. 

"Great days, boys--yes, great days, and good people in them, too. So nowI want you to study a little here. 

"Look back down the river, which has seemed so long for you. To-morrowwill be the Fourth of July. It was Christmas that Lewis and Clarkcelebrated with their men in their stockade. "

Their new friend had for the most part been silent as he listened tothis 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 rivernarrower, with fewer islands, so I hear; and I should think it becameswifter, 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 riverand all it meant, but we have only the summer and early fall to use. Idon't doubt we could plug on up with the motors, and get a long wayabove Great Falls, but about the time we got to where we could have somefun fishing or maybe shooting, we'd have to start east by rail. So I'dplanned 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. "Weought to stick as close to the river as we can, and as a matter of factwe 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 tothe river. And until we got here we struck no westbound railroad thatwould advance us on our journey. 

"Here we could get up the Yellowstone by rail, but we are working onthe Missouri. If we run on by motor car up to Buford, there we can getby 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 leavethe 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, ifyou care to sell her. "

"I never knew my boys to sell any of their sporting equipment, " said theother. "But I expect they'd give it to you, right enough. Eh, boys?"

They looked from one to another. "If the gentleman wanted her, " beganRob, 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, becausewe 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 thefun of it--and the value of it to me. I'll get a car at Bismarck. We canpack your outfit in the trailer and the motors, too, easily. You cancheck and express stuff through to Great Falls from Buford--and thereyou are. How'll you go from there--boat?"

"I don't believe so, " replied Uncle Dick. "I believe we'd have morefreedom if we took a pack train above Great Falls, and cut across lotsnow 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, " saidUncle Dick, "so I think we may dare do so. We want all the variety wecan get, and all the fun we can get, too. What do you say, younggentlemen?"

"It sounds good to me, " said Rob. "I'd like to see the mountains prettywell. You see, a great part of our lives has been spent in Alaska andthe northern country, and we're just getting acquainted with our owncountry, you might say. The Rockies this far south must be fine in theearly 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 thefall, 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 upour boat there for you, and then go on in the way you suggest--motor andtrailer?"

"Agreed, " said the other. "I'll be there early that day. "

"Which way shall we go?" asked Rob. "If we took the road along theNorthern Pacific west, we could see the Bad Lands, and go throughMedora, 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 sidethe river, north of Bismarck. We could swing out toward the TurtleLakes, and then make more west, toward the Fort Berthold Reservation. From there we could maybe get through till we struck the Great NorthernRailroad; and then we could get west to Buford, on the line, and on theriver 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 bemaybe two hundred and fifty by trail. We could do it in a day, on astraightaway good road like one of the motor highways, but we'll havenothing of the sort. I'll say two days, three, maybe four--we'd knowbetter when we got there. "

"That sounds more adventurish, " said Jesse. And what the youngest ofthem 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 nowwe'd better get ready to camp here to-night. We can make Mandan by noonto-morrow--it's faster, downstream. "

"On the way, " said their friend, "I want you to go around to the couleebelow town, where there's three or four tepees of Sioux in camp. What dothey do? Oh, make little things to sell in town--and not above begging alittle. There's one squaw we call Mary, who has been coming here a goodmany years. She makes about the finest moccasins we ever get. She mademy wife a pair, out of buckskin white as snow. I don't know where shegot it. "

"The Sioux had parfleche soles to all their moccasins, " said John, wisely. "All the buffalo and Plains Indians did. The forest Indians hadsoft soles. "

"You're right, son, " said the editor. "For modern bedroom moccasins, tosell to white women, Mary makes them all soft, with a shallow ankleflap. Most of the Indian men wear shoes now, but when she makes a pairof men's moccasins she always puts on the raw-hide soles. You can seethe 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 sataround the camp fire on the evening of July 5th. They had spent twopleasant days in town and now were forty miles out into the Plainscountry above the railroad; they had pitched camp at the edge of awillow-lined stream which ran between steep bluffs whose tops rose levelwith the plain. The smoke of their camp fire drifted down the troughlikevalley from their encampment. The boys had found enough clean wood for abroiling fire, and John just now had taken off the thick beefsteak whichthey had brought along with them. 

"You will observe that this is from the tenderloin of the three-year-oldfat buffalo cow that I killed this morning, " said he. "I always did likebuffalo. We will break open some marrow bones about midnight, and I'llgrill 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 inthe breaks of the Missouri. Not so bad!"

Their friend from Mandan looked at them, smiling. "I hope you haven'tshot any tame sheep, " said he. "No, not a bad camp, except that themosquitoes are eating me alive. How do these boys stand it the way theydo?"

"Oh, they're tough, " laughed Uncle Dick. "We've had so many trips upNorth 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 yearsto get over fighting them. For the first year they almost drive a mancrazy, up there in Alaska. "

"I expect, sir, you'd better go inside the tent with our uncleto-night, " said Rob. "We have our buffalo robes and bed rolls and don'tneed any tent, but if you drop the bar to the tent door, and take a wetsock 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 theworst. 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'tfind an antelope--I suppose you'd call it a jack rabbit. I saw threecoveys 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. "Ialways was good on antelopes, " said he. "These were in at the edge of afarmer's clover field. I'm glad we're getting into good game country!"

"Yes, " Uncle Dick said, "between the Mandans and the mouth of theYellowstone, Lewis and Clark began to find the bighorn, which was new tothem. 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 grizzlycountry 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 didnot say much. 

"These boys have done it, " replied their uncle for them. "I'd hate to bethe bear. They shoot straight, and the rifles they have are far morepowerful than the ones the first explorers had. "

"We'll call this exploring, " said Jesse, with sarcasm. "I'll have toget help to hang up my antelopes so they'll cool out. 

"But, anyhow, " he added, "this is as much fun as plugging along amongthe sand bars in the motor boat. We beat the oars, and now this gaswagon beats our boat motors!"

"Uncle Dick, " suddenly interrupted Rob, "we've been talking about thefur trade on the river a hundred years ago. I understand the fur postswere 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 ofsome of the old boats still exist in St. Louis, and while I was there Ilooked up some of them. 

"Now as nearly as I can learn there was no exact way of estimatingdistances 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 steamboatcaptains got at it, but they kept a daily log of distance, and they hadthe different stopping places all logged for distance. We make it alittle less than sixteen hundred miles to Mandan. The _Journal_ makes itsixteen hundred and ten--close enough. The river chart calls itfourteen hundred and fifty-two to the bridge; over fifty miles below theMandan villages. 

"But the _Journal_ makes it eighteen hundred and eighty-eight miles tothe mouth of the Yellowstone. My steamboat records call it seventeenhundred and sixty miles--more than a hundred miles shorter. At least, that was what the traders called it to Fort Union, which was just abovethe mouth of the Yellowstone, as nearly as now is known; you must bearin mind that practically every one of the old fur posts was long agowiped out. How? Well, largely by the steamboats themselves! The captainswere always short of wood. They tore down and burned up first one andthen another of the early posts. Settlers did the rest. 

"At first, as early as 1841, it took eighty days to do that seventeenhundred and sixty miles upstream, and twenty-one days to run backdownstream. 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 theydidn't beat that much, if any. "

"That's an average of about forty-four miles a day, " said Rob, who wasdoing some figuring on his notebook. "Going down, about one hundred andtwenty-three miles. "

"Why, they beat our average!" complained John. "We didn't climb her inmuch 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 usmuch, at that. "

"The _Adventurer's_ a good boat, " nodded Uncle Dick, "and I think on thewhole we've got a pretty good idea of the travel of 1804 and 1805, orwill have before we're done. 

"But now, one thing or two I want you also to bear in mind. Life isn'tall adventure. Commerce follows on the trail of adventure. The furtraders forgot the romance, and hurried in up the Missouri, as soon asthey could. And what fur they did get! No wonder Great Britain was sorryto meet Lewis and Clark up here!

"There were a lot of important fur posts that fed into the Missouri. Themouth 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 theYellowstone. Pierre covered two and a half acres of ground, but Unionwas better built--she had twenty-foot palisades a foot square, and shestood two hundred and forty by two hundred and twenty feet, with stonebastions at two corners, pierced for cannon, and a riflemen's banquetteclear around inside. 

"They were right in the middle of the Sioux and near the Blackfeet, andafter the smallpox came on the river, the Indians got bitter and hatedthe thought of a white man. But they had only fur to trade for riflesand 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 thetrader at that place. It is largely a record of weather and water, buthas 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, downbound, and they put six hundred packs of buffalo robes on her. That boaton the next day had on board one thousand three hundred packs of robesand 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 andother fur, and on another thirty packs of robes, and she was to take onone hundred and twenty to one hundred and thirty packs more at Yanktonpost. 

"On July 11th four bateaux left Fort Pierre for St. Louis, and theycarried three hundred and fifty-five packs of robes and ten thousand twohundred and thirty pounds of beaver. And on July 30th another bateaucame down from Union with six thousand beaver skins on board. 

"From this you can see something of the size of the big bateaux--orMackinaws--of that time, and something of the size of the fur trade aswell. And all the time the big river was outfitting the hardy pack-trainmen who brought out fortunes in beaver from the rivers of the Rockies. Great times, boys--great times! And all of that trade rested on theLewis and Clark expedition. 

"You now have seen how important the mouth of the Yellowstone was--whereFort Union was located in 1828. That was for a time pretty near the endof the road, just as it was for Lewis and Clark a quarter centuryearlier. 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 nowrapidly getting out of record and remembrance. James Kipp lived amongthe Mandans and married there. He had a son, Joe Kipp, whom he once tookhome to Illinois to educate, after he had left the trade and married awhite woman. He loved Joe, but told him he must never let it be knownthat 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, andnever came back. He went back to his mother, a Mandan woman. In laterdays, since the fur trade passed and the Indians all were put onreservations, Joe Kipp was the post trader for years. He was a boldtrader 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 withthe Indians. He was the man who showed the engineers of the GreatNorthern Railroad the pass which they built through. It is the lowestrailroad pass of them all, though the one farthest north of all ourrailroads over the Rockies. 

"Now, I knew Joe Kipp very well and often met him on the BlackfeetReservation. He lived in a big frame house there, had a bathtub and aChinaman cook, and showed his Indians how to 'follow the path of thewhite man. '

"But what I want you to remember is this: Joe Kipp had his Mandan motherwith 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 noone else ever went. In her little cabin she spent her last years as shehad lived in her earlier days among the Mandans, making moccasins forJoe, decorating tobacco pouches and fire bags with beads and porcupinequills. I have a fire bag of hers that Joe gave me, and I prize it verymuch. She no longer had the buffalo, but on the rafters of her lodge shehad her dried meat hanging, and the interior was something no man livingwill see again. 

"Joe Kipp's Mandan mother was the last living soul of the pure-bloodMandan tribe, one of the most curious and puzzling ones of theWest--they were a light-colored people, the children with light eyes; noone knows how they came on the Missouri. But the smallpox got themalmost all. They went crazy, jumped in the river--died--passed. 

"Well, Joe's mother, so he said, was the last, a very old woman, Ipresume nearly a hundred then. Often she would take her blanket and goout on a hilltop and sit there motionless hours at a time, with herblanket over her face--thinking, thinking, I presume, over the daysthat you and I are studying together now. 

"And just a little while ago I heard of Joe Kipp's death, too. Hismother died some years earlier. So that is some Mandan history which Ipresume even our Mandan friend here never has heard before--about thelast of the Mandans, who came down, broken and helpless, even into ourown 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, beingpractically, most of the way, through a farm or range country whereroads of least passable sort led them in the general northwesterlydirection which they desired to take. All three of the young explorerscould drive, so they took turns occasionally, while the editor sat inthe back seat and conversed with Uncle Dick. 

Beyond a few grouse and rabbits, with a half dozen coyotes, they saw nogame except wild fowl on the sloughs. The cabins and tepees on the FortBerthold Indian Reservation afforded them a change of scene, and theywere delighted to find three of the native Mandan earth lodges, onenearly fifty feet in diameter. They learned that the remnants of theMandan tribe, few in number and comprising few, if any, pure blood, werelocated with reservation here, and were clinging to their tribal customsthe best they could. 

"Well, here's what Patrick Gass says about the old Mandan huts and howthey were built--and he was a carpenter and so ought to know. " John wasalways 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 isno wonder they could keep their horses in there with them, too, in thewintertime. And they fed them cottonwood limbs when there wasn't anygrass to eat. "

"Yes, " remarked Uncle Dick, "that's what we call adjusting to anenvironment. I will say these Mandans were rather efficient on thewhole, and not bad engineers and architects. "

They did not tarry long, although they made their second encampmentwithin the lines of the old Fort Berthold Reservation, for they foundall the Indians wearing white men's clothing, and using wagons and farmimplements, and Jesse said they had more Indianish Indians in Alaska. 

Now they bore rather sharply to the north, feeling for the line of therailway, which they struck at a village about midway between the LittleKnife and the White Earth Rivers. The early afternoon of their fourthday brought them back once more to the sight of the Missouri, at thetown of Buford, near the Montana line and opposite the mouth of theYellowstone. 

Following their usual custom, they made camp outside the vicinity of thetown, after purchasing the supplies they needed for the day and for thereturn trip of their obliging friend from Mandan, who now reluctantlydecided that he could accompany them no farther. 

"I'd rather go on with you than do anything I know, " said he, "but it'sgoing to be quite a trip, and I won't have time, even if we could getthrough with a car. "

Uncle Dick nodded. "Really the best way to do this would be to take shipagain here and follow the river up the Great Falls, " he said; "but bythe time we got a boat rigged and had made the run up--best part of sixhundred miles--we'd be almost a month further into the summer--becausethe river is swifter above here. They made good time, but it was mostlycordelle work. And, using gas motors, the boys wouldn't have much chanceof any real sport and exercise, which, of course, I want them to haveevery summer when possible. 

"Get your map, John--the big government map--and let's have a look atthis country in west of here. "

John complied. They all bent over the map, which they spread down on thefloor of the tent. Their gasoline camp lantern shed its brilliant lightover 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 theMissouri River. From here it runs almost west to the Great Falls, andthen almost south. Now our new railroad (the Great Northern Railroad)will take us to the Great Falls of the Missouri, but it by no meansfollows the Missouri. On the contrary, a little over two hundred milesfrom here, I'd guess, it strikes the Milk River--as Lewis and Clarkcalled it--and follows that river half across the state of Montana. Itwould carry us out to the Blackfeet Reservation, and what is now GlacierPark--my own hunting ground among the Blackfeet, where I knew JoeKipp--but that is entirely off the map for us. "

"Why, sure it is!" said Jesse, following the line of the river with hisfinger. "Look it! It runs away south, hundreds of miles, into thesouthwest 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 belowthe Missouri, a hundred, a hundred and fifty miles in places--norailroads and no towns. "

"No, " remarked their leader, "but one of the real wild places of theWest in its day--as cow range or hunting range, that wild and brokencountry in there had no superior, and not many men know all of it evennow. Part of it is wonderfully beautiful. 

"At no part of the journey did Lewis and Clark have more excitingadventures than in precisely this country that we've got to skip, too. The buffalo fairly swarmed, and elk and antelope and bighorn sheep andblacktail deer were all around them all the time. It was a wonderful newworld for them. How many of the great fighting grizzlies they met inthat strip of the river, I wouldn't like to say, but in almost everyinstance it meant a fight, until half the crew would no longer go aftera grizzly, they were so scared of them. One they shot through eighttimes, and it chased the whole party even then. I tell you, those bearswere bad!

"But we'd not see one now--they're all gone, every one. Nor would we seea bighorn--besides, they are protected by a continuous closed season inMontana. Pretty country, yes, wild and bold and risky; but better comingdown 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; andabove there we can stop at the mouth of the Marias River. Between thereand the Falls is Fort Benton, and that is one of the most importantpoints, in a historical way, there was on the whole river, although itsglory departed long ago. From there we'd get to our pack train and beoff 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 getpretty much a repetition of the river work, and not much sport--hardriver, too. 

"Now, it would be fine to go to old Benton by river, to the head ofnavigation; but we know that Fort Benton was not one of the early furposts--indeed, it came in when the last of the buffalo were beingkilled. It was where the traveling traders got their goods, and wherethe bull outfits got their freight in 1863 for the placer mines ofMontana 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 furtraders; then the miners; then the cow men; then the farmers. The end ofthe buffalo came in 1883--a million robes that year; and the next, noneat all--the most terrible wild-life tragedy that ever was known. Afterthat 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 youfollow up the Yellowstone with your finger till you come to the mouth ofthe 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 afterLewis and Clark got back home--a shrewd St. Louis trader by name ofManuel Lisa, of Spanish descent he was, heard all those beaver stories, and he pushed up the Missouri and up the Yellowstone, and built a postcalled Fort Manuel there. He wanted to trade with the Blackfeet andCrows both, but found those tribes were enemies. He couldn't hold thefort. He dropped back to St. Louis and formed the first of the great furcompanies, the Missouri River Company. They were the pioneers of manylater companies. 

"The Missouri River Company had their post at the Three Forks of theMissouri--away up yonder, eight hundred miles from here--as early as1810; that was crowding Lewis and Clark pretty fairly close, eh? Well, then came the Rocky Mountain Company, and the American Fur Company, andthe Pacific Fur Company, and the Columbia Fur Company, and I don't knowhow many other St. Louis partnerships up-river--not mentioning thepack-train outfits under many names--and so all at once, as though bymagic, there were posts strung clear to the head of the river--onehundred and forty of them, as I have told you. And of them all you couldhardly find a trace of one of them to-day. 

"There's dispute even as to the site of Fort Union, which was just abovehere and up the river a little above the Yellowstone. That was built in1828. 

"Long before that, and for twenty years after that, the fur traders kepton building, until the mouth of every good-sized river running into theMissouri had not only one, but sometimes three or four posts, allcompeting all or part of the time! Risky business it was. Some madefortunes; most of them died broke. Well, I reckon they had a good runfor their money, eh?"

"And when did it end?" asked the Mandan friend, who had sat an absorbedlistener to a story, the most of which was new to him. 

"It has not ended yet, " answered Uncle Dick. "St. Louis is to-day thegreatest fur market in the world, though now skunk and coon and rat havetaken the place of beaver and buffalo and wolf. But within the past fouryears a muskrat pelt has sold for five dollars. In 1832 the averageprice for the previous fifteen years had been twenty cents for arat-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; anotter, three dollars. Think of what they bring now! Well, the demandcombs the country, that's all. 

"But in 1836 beaver slumped--because that was the year the silk hat wasinvented. Did you know that? And in 1883 the buffalo robes ended. I'dsay that 1850 really was about the end of the big days of the early furtrade--what we call the upper-river trade. "

Rob put his hand down over the map. "And here it was, " said he, "in thiscountry west of here, up the Yellowstone, up the Missouri, all over andin between!"

"Quite right, yes, " his companion nodded. "Of all the days of romanceand adventure in the Far West, those were the times and this was theplace--from here west, up the great waterway and its branches. 

"No one can estimate the value of the Missouri River to the UnitedStates. It made more history for us than the Mississippi itself. It madeour first maps--the fur trade did that. It led us across and got usOregon. It led us to the placers which settled Montana. It took thefirst horses and wagons and plows into the upper country in its day, aswell as the first rifles and steel traps. It brought us into war withthe Indians, and helped us win the war. It carried our hunters up to thebuffalo, and carried all the buffalo down, off from the face of theearth. And it rolls and boils and tumbles on its way now as it did whenthe 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 couldif you plugged up its stream without looking at a map or book. And evenif you did look at both, you've got to see the many different periodsthe old Missouri has had in its history, and balance one against theother. 

"Dates are not of so much importance, but reasons for great changes areimportant. If I had to select just one date in Western history, do youknow what that would be?"

"Eighteen hundred and four, when our men started up with the flag!" saidRob. 

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 inchanging all the country. But to the man who really has studied all thestory of the Missouri River, I believe that the year 1836 was about thepivotal date. And it only marks the invention of the silk hat! But thatyear the plow began to take the place of the steel trap in the way ofmaking a living in the West. That was the year, I might say, when themystery and romance of the unknown West found their end, and the daybegan 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 mustleave 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 thisparty. "

The next day they parted and the young Alaskans were speeding west byrail, making the great jump of about six hundred miles, between themouth 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 ruinedsquare structure of sun-dried brick, not far from which lay yet moredilapidated remnants of what once had been the walls and buildings of anold abode inclosure. They were on their third day out from the mouth ofthe Yellowstone River, having come by rail, and were spending the day atFort Benton, between the junction point of Havre and the modern city ofGreat Falls. 

"There's not much of it left, " scoffed Jesse. "I don't call this so muchof 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 canpush 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'trun the river up from Buford. Just when we hit some wild stuff, we takethe cars! Besides, we might have seen some white bears or some bighornsheep. "

John smiled at Jesse. "Not a chance, Jess, " said he, "though it's truewe have jumped over what was the most interesting country we had strucktill 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, heisn't, " said he. "He just isn't satisfied with jack rabbits where thereused 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 southalong the Yellowstone, and on all the great rivers that the cowmen usedfor range--along the Little Missouri and the Musselshell and the Judithand countless other streams whose names you have heard--lay the greatestgame 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 acountry that it never lived down its reputation. Buffalo, antelope, andelk ranged in common in herds of hundreds of thousands, while in therough shores of the river lived countless bighorns, hundreds ofgrizzlies, and a like proportion of buffalo and antelope as well, not tomention the big wolves and other predatories. Yes, a great wilderness itwas!"

"And we jumped it!" said Jesse. 

"Yes, because I knew we'd save time, and we have to do that, for we'renot out for two years, you see. 

"Now look at your notes and at the _Journal_. It took Lewis and Clarkthirty-five days to get here from the mouth of the Yellowstone, andwe've done it in one, you might say. The railroad calls it three hundredand sixty-seven miles. "

"Well, the _Journal_ calls it more, " broke in Rob, "yet it sticks rightto the river. "

"And now they began to travel, " added John. "They didtwenty--eighteen--twenty-five--seventeen miles a day right along, more'nthey did below Mandan, a lot. 

"They make it six hundred and forty-one miles from the Yellowstone tothe Marias, which is below where we are now. That's about eighteen milesa day. Yet they all say the river current is much stiffer. "

"We'd have found it stiff in places, " said their leader. "But thereason they did so well--on paper--was that now they couldn't sail thecanoes very well, and so did a great deal of towing. The shores werefull of sharp rocks and the going was rough, and they had onlymoccasins--they complained bitterly of sore feet. 

"Their hardships made them overestimate the distances they did--and theydid overestimate them, very much. When we were tracking up on the RatPortage, in the ice water, at the Arctic Circle, don't you remember wefigured on double what we had actually done? A man's wife corrected himon how long they had been married. He said it was twenty years, and shesaid it was ten, by the records. 'Well, it seems longer, ' he said. Sameway, when they did ten miles a day stumbling on the tracking line, theycalled 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 theriver to the mouth of the Yellowstone, and not eighteen hundred, as the_Journal_ has it. And from Buford to Benton, by river, is not sixhundred and forty-one miles, as the _Journal_ makes it, but only fivehundred and three. So the first white men through those cañons andpalisades below us yonder were one hundred and thirty-eight miles overin their estimates, or more than one-fourth of the real distance. 

"This tendency to overestimate distances is almost universal amongexplorers who set the first distances, and it ought to be reckoned as afactor of error, like the dip of the magnetic needle. But they did theirbest. And we want to remember that they were the first white men to comeup 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 astanding 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 oldBlackfoot hunting range--the most dreaded of all the tribes the earlytraders met. We're above the breaks of the Missouri right here. Look atthe vast Plains. This was the buffalo pasture of the Blackfeet. TheCrows lay below, on the Yellowstone. 

"Now as they came up through the Bad Lands and the upper breaks of thebig river, the explorers gave names to a lot of creeks and buttes, mostof which did not stick. Two of them did stick--the Judith and theMarias. Clark called the first Judith's river, after Miss Julia Hancock, of Virginia, the lady whom he later married. Her friends all called herJudy, and Clark figured it ought to be Judith. 

"In the same way Lewis called this river, near whose mouth we now arestanding, Maria's River, after his cousin, Miss Maria Wood. Clark'sriver, famous in military days, and now famous as the wheat belt of theJudith Basin, lost the possessive and is now plain Judith. That ofMeriwether Lewis still has all the letters, but is spelled Marias River, without the possessive apostrophe. So these stand even to-day, the namesof two Virginia girls, and no doubt will remain there while the waterruns 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 theoutfitting point for the bull trains that supplied all the country westand south and north of us. No old post is more famous. But that is notall. 

"I have reference now, really, not to Fort Benton, but to the mouth ofthe Marias River, below here. Now, see how nearly, even to-day, theMarias resembles the Missouri River. Suppose you were captain, Jess, andyou had no map and nothing to go by, and you came to these two riversand didn't have any idea on earth which was the one coming closest tothe Columbia, and had no idea where either of them headed--now, whatwould you do?"

"Huh!" answered Jesse, with no hesitation at all. "I know what I'd havedone. "

"Yes? What, then?"

"Why, I'd have asked that Indian girl, Sacágawea, that's what I'd havedone. 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 toask her something they could not! The girl was very sick, from here toabove the Great Falls. They thought she was going to die, and it's awonder she didn't, when you read what all they gave her by way ofmedicines. She was out of her head part of the time. They never askedher a thing on the choice of these rivers!

"Well now, what did they do? They spent more than a week deciding, andit was time well spent. They sent out small parties up each fork alittle way, and the men all thought the Marias, or right-hand fork, wasthe true Missouri. Then Clark was sent up the south fork, which wasclearer than the other. He went thirty-five miles. If he had gone twentymiles farther, he'd have been at the Great Falls; and the MinnetareeIndians had told of those falls, and of an eagle's nest there, thoughthey said nothing about the river to the north. Chaboneau had never beenhere. His wife was nearly dead. No one could help. 

"Lewis took a few men and went up the Marias for about sixty miles. Theycame back down the Marias, and decided on the left-hand fork, againstthe judgment of every man but Clark. 

"His reasoning is good. The men all pointed out that the right-hand forkwas roily, boiling, and rolling, exactly like the Missouri up which theyhad come, whereas the other fork was clear. But Lewis said that thisshowed that the Marias ran through plains country and did not lead closeto the Rockies, from which the water would run clearer; and they didnot want to skirt the mountains northerly, but to cross them, goingwest. 

"Lewis had an old English map, made by a man named Arrowsmith, based onreports of a Hudson's Bay trader named Fidler, who had gone a littlesouth 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. YetLewis--who all this time has been setting down his own latitude andlongitude from his frequent observations--makes the Marias asforty-seven degrees, twenty-four minutes, twelve and eight-tenthsseconds. 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° 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°. 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° W. 59´. '

"Lewis also figured that Fidler in his map showed only small streamscoming in from the west, 'and the presumption is very strong that thoselittle streams do not penetrate the Rocky Mountains to such distance aswould afford rational grounds for a conjecture that they had theirsources near any navigable branch of the Columbia. ' He was right inthat--and he says those little creeks may run into a river the Indianscalled the Medicine River. Now that is the Sun River, which does come inat the Falls, but which Lewis had never seen!

"Again, the Minnetaree Indians had told him, in their long map-makingtalks at the Mandan winter quarters, that the river near the Falls wasclear, as he now saw this stream. The Minnetarees told him the MissouriRiver interlocked with the Columbia. And as he was now straight west ofthe Minnetarees, he figured that when they went hunting to the head ofthe Missouri, as they had, they couldn't have passed a river big as thissouth fork without mentioning it. And the Indians said that the Fallswere a 'little south of the sunset' from the Mandans--and Lewis had hislatitude 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 intothe Rockies--and that was what he wanted. He knew it could not rise indry plains. So, relying on his Minnetarees and his horse sense, and noton Mr. Fidler, Lewis refused to go any farther north, because he couldnot figure out there a big river penetrating into the Rockies. He wasabsolutely right, as well as very shrewd and wise. 

"Now, reasoning at first shot, the _voyageurs_ would have gone up theMarias. Cruzatte especially, their best riverman, was certain the Mariaswas the true Missouri. They would then maybe have met the Blackfeet andwould never have crossed the Rockies; which would have meant failure, ifnot death; whereas this cold-headed, careful young man, MeriwetherLewis, by a chain of exact reasoning on actual data, went against thejudgment of the entire party and chose the left-hand fork, which we knowis the true Missouri; and which we'll find hard enough to follow to itshead, even to-day. 

"Think over that, boys. Do you begin to see what a man must be, to be aleader? We have had plenty of Army men in Western exploration sincethen, plenty of engineers who could spell. But in all the records you'llnot find one example of responsibility handled as quietly anddecisively as that. You must remember the pressure he was under. Itwould 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. Butall the men took the decision of the two leaders without a whimper. Ithink the personnel of that party must have been extraordinary. Andtheir leaders proved their judgment later. 

"Now, with poor Sacágawea expected to die, and with all theresponsibility on their shoulders, our captains acted as though they hadno doubts. If they did have, Lewis solved it all when he ascended theMarias 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 thewillows on an island, at the mouth of the Marias, and dug a _cache_ fora great deal of their outfit--axes, ammunition, casks of provisions, andmuch superfluous stuff. They dug this bottle shaped, as the old furtraders did, lined it with boughs and grass and hides, filled it in andput back the cap sod--all the dirt had been piled on skins, so as not toshow. Stores would keep for years when buried carefully in this way. 

"So now, lighter of load, but still game--with Cruzatte playing thefiddle for the men to dance of evenings--on June 12th they 'set out andproceeded on, ' leaving this great and historical fork of the water roadon the morning of June 12th, with Sacágawea so very sick that thecaptains took tender care of her all the trip, though they speakslightingly of Chaboneau, her husband, who seems to have been a bit of amutt. One of the men has a felon on his hand; another with toothache hastaken cold in his jaw; another has a tumor and another a fever. Threecanoes came near being lost; and it rained. But they 'proceeded on, ' andon that day they first saw the Rockies, full and fair! And three dayslater Lewis found the Great Falls, hearing the noise miles away, andseeing the great cloud of mist arising above the main fall. 

"And then they found the eagle's nest on the cottonwood island, of whichthe Minnetarees had told them. And then Sacágawea got well, and gave theO. K. After her delirium had gone! And then every man, woman, and childin that party agreed that their leaders were safe to follow!

"It took them one month to get over that eighteen miles portage. Thatmade five weeks they had lost here out of direct travel. But they neverdid lose courage, never did reason wrong, and never did go back onefoot. 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 badcase many a time, but they held through. No more floggings now, thisside of Mandan--maybe both men and captains had learned something aboutdiscipline. "

Their leader ceased for the time, and turned, hat in hand, to the ruinedquadrangle of adobe, the remnants of old Fort Benton. The boys also fora moment remained silent. Jesse approached and touched the sleeve of hisUncle Dick. 

"I wouldn't have missed this for anything, " said he. "I can see how theyall must have felt when they got here, where they could see out over thecountry 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 allbegan to prize more and more. 

"Here it is, " said he, "all set down in the finest story book I everread 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, exceptthat 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 betweenthe Teton River, just over there, where it runs close along theMissouri, two or three hundred yards away, but I hardly think that waswhere they stood. 

"But though the works of man have changed many times, and themselvesbeen changed by time, the works of God are here, as they were in June of1805--except that the wild game is gone forever. 

"Lewis or Clark could not dream that in 1812 a steamboat would go downthe Ohio and the Mississippi; nor that some day a steamboat would landhere, close to the Marias River. 

"But after Lewis and Clark the fur traders poured up here. Then came theskin hunters and their Mackinaws, following the bull boats which tooksome _voyageurs_ downstream. Then the river led the trails west, and thebull outfits followed the pack trains. So when the adventurers foundgold 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 ornear this great point, the mouth of the Marias. In 1831 James Kipp, thefather of my friend, Joe Kipp, put up a post here, but he did not try tohold it. The next year D. D. Mitchell built Fort McKenzie, about sixmiles above the Marias, on the left bank--quite a stiff fort, onehundred and twenty by one hundred and forty feet, stockaded--and thisstuck till 1843. Then their continual troubles with the Blackfeet drovethem out. Then there was Fort Lewis, in the neighborhood, somewhere, in1845. 

"Fort Benton was put up in 1850. And as the early stockades ofBooneville and Harrodsburg and Nashville in Kentucky were on 'Dark andbloody ground, ' so ought the place where we now are standing be calledthe dark and bloody ground of the Missouri River, for this indeed was afocus of trouble and danger, even before the river trade made Benton atough town. "

"Well, the glory of old Benton is gone!" said Rob, at last. "Just thesame, 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 asgood a defense and better. Many a time the men of Benton have flockeddown to meet the boat, wherever she was able to land; and many a wildtime was here--for in steamboat days alcohol was a large part of everycargo. 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 werestripped from the last of the innumerable herds of buffalo that Lewisand Clark saw here, at the great fork of the road into the Rockies; andsoon the last pelt was baled from the beaver. If you go to the Blackfeetnow you find them a thinned and broken people, and the highest ambitionof their best men is to dress up in modern beef-hide finery and playcircus Indian around the park hotels. 

"Well, this was their range, young excellencies, and this was the headof the disputed ground between the Crows, Nez Percés, Flatheads, andShoshonis, 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, andthen, from the time they left the Mandans until the next fall, beyondthe Three Forks of the Missouri, they never saw an Indian of any sort!At the Great Falls, a great hunting place, they found encampments notmore 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 toto-night instead of a hotel, but I promise to mend that matter for youin a day or so, if Billy Williams is up from Bozeman with his packtrain, 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, atleast I can wish that old Fort Benton was here and the whistle of thesteamboat 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 stoodtogether on the bank of the river, looking out; "the only thing is----"

He did not finish his sentence, but stood, his hands thrust into theside pockets of his jacket, his face not wholly happy. 

"Yes, Jesse; but what is the only thing?" John smiled, and Rob, tall andneat in his Scout uniform, also smiled as he turned to the youngest oftheir party. They were alone, Uncle Dick having gone to town to seeabout the pack train. They had walked up from their camp below theflourishing city of Great Falls. 

"Well, it's all right, I suppose, " replied Jesse. "I suppose they haveto have cities, of course. I suppose they have to have those bigsmelters over there and all those other things. Maybe it's not the same. The buffalo are not here, nor the elk--though the _Journal_ sayshundreds of buffalo were washed over the falls and drowned, right along. Then, the bears are not here any more, though it was right here thatthey were worst; they had to fight them all the time, and the onlywonder was that no one was killed, for those bears were _bad_, believeme----"

"Sure, they must have been, " assented John. "There were so many deadbuffalo, below the falls, where they washed ashore, that the grizzliescame in flocks, and didn't want to be disturbed or driven away fromtheir grub. And these were the first boats that ever had come up thatriver, the first white men. So they jumped them. Why, over yonder abovethe falls were the White Bear Islands; so many bears on them, they keptthe camp so scared up all the time, they had to make up a boat party andgo over and hunt them off. They used to swim this river like it was apond, those bears! They kept the party on the alert all day and allnight. They had a dozen big fights with them. "

"Humph!" Jesse waved an arm to the broad expanse of flat water above thegreat 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 isthe big portage of the Missouri at all? No islands, no eagle. Yet youknow very well it was the sight of that eagle's nest that made Lewisand Clark know for sure that they were on the right river. The Indiansdidn't say anything about the Marias River being there at all; theynever mentioned that to either Clark or Lewis when they made their mapsin the winter with the Mandans. But they did mention that eagle nest onthe island at the big falls--they thought everybody would noticethat--and when you come to think of it, that did nail the thing to themap--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, theyought not to have spoiled the island and the eagle nest with their olddam. 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 wayup the river from Mandan, and got to the head of the rapids, I guesswe'd think it was the place to portage. "

"Yes; and where'd we get any cottonwood tree around here, to cut offwheels for our boat wagon?" demanded John. "Eighteen miles and more, itwas, that they portaged, after they'd dug their second big _cache_ andhid their stuff and covered up the white perogue at the head of theirperogue navigation (they'd left the big red perogue at the Marias). 

"And it took them a solid month to do that eighteen miles. The littleold portage right here was the solidest jolt they'd had, all the way upthe river to here--two thousand five hundred and ninety-three miles theycalled it, to the mouth of the Medicine River; which means the SunRiver, that comes in just above the falls. Portage? Well, I'll call itsome portage, even for us, if we had to make it!"

"Huh! Dray her out and put her on bicycle wheels and hitch her to aflivver and haul her around--two or three whole hours! Mighty risky andadventurous, isn't it? I want my bears! Especially I want my eagle! I'vebeen counting on that old black eagle, all the way up, cordelling fromthe mouth of the Yellowstone. "

"Well, " resumed Rob, "at least they've named the Black Eagle Falls hereafter him. They've honored him with a dam and a bridge and a power houseand a smelter and a few such things. And if we'd got here a littleearlier--any time up to 1866 or 1872, or even later, maybe, we'd haveseen 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 onthe cottonwood tree on the island in 1866, and he thought it like enoughwas Lewis's eagle. And then in 1872 T. P. Roberts, in his survey, wasjust below those falls, and a big eagle sailed out from its nest in theold broken cottonwood, on the island below the falls, and it tackledhim! 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 inhis 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 notlike to have the thought on my mind that I'd been the man to kill theMeriwether 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, inall, for all I know--because the eagles eat salmon! Well, that didn'tsave 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 thatthis is the Big Portage. Nothing to identify it. "

"Not much, " admitted Rob. "Not very much now. The falls that Robertsnamed the Black Eagle Falls are wiped out by the dam. The island isgone, the cottonwood is gone, the eagle and his mate are gone. That'sthe uppermost fall of the five. It's inside the city limits, where weare now. "

"She was just twenty-six feet five inches of a drop, " said the exactJohn. "Clark measured them all, the whole five of them, with the spiritlevel. They call the little fellow, only six feet seven inches, theColter Falls, after John Colter, one of the expedition--only Lewis andClark didn't name it at all, for Colter hadn't become famous then as thediscoverer of the Yellowstone. 

"Lewis liked the big Rainbow Fall about the best of the lot--it was soclean cut, all the way across the river. He named that one, and itstuck. He named the Crooked Falls, too, and that stuck. It must havebeen natural for somebody to name the Great Falls, because the dropthere is eighty-seven feet and three-fourths of an inch, as Clark madeit 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'swhy he named it. We could go down the stair easily and see it, if wewanted to. If it's the same rainbow, and if it's still there, the onlyreason is they couldn't melt up the rainbow and sell it, somehow. Idon't want to see it. I don't care about all the smelters. I want my oldcottonwood tree and my island and my eagle!

"I wonder who killed the eagle!" he went on. "Probably he threw it inthe river and let it float over the falls. Maybe some section hand stucka feather of that eagle in his hat and called it macaroni! For me, I'mnever 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 BigSpring that Clark found is still doing business at the edge of the riverbelow the smelter above the Colter Fall--cold as it was one hundred andsixteen years ago, and more than a hundred yards across. Naturecertainly does things on a big scale here. What a sight all this musthave 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 generallook and feel of this portage has changed as much as lots of the flatcountry away down the river--Floyd's Bluff, or the Mandan villages, lotsof 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 theside ravines, when we were coming up from camp, wasn't it, even if wedidn't have dugout canoes on cottonwood solid wheels and willowaxles--breaking down all the time?"

"But, Rob, a month--a whole month!" said John. "That must have made themworry a good deal, because now it was the middle of summer, and theydidn'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 musthave had quite a lot of stuff along, all the time. They had whisky, forinstance--they drank the last of it right here at the Great Falls, andUncle Dick says that was the first time Montana went dry! They had agrindstone. And they had an iron boat--or the iron frame of aboat--brought it all the way from Harper's Ferry, in Virginia, whereLewis had it made. 

"That boat was the only bad play they made. She was Lewis's pet. I don'tknow why they never set her up before, but, anyhow, they did, at thehead of the falls here. She had iron rods for gunwales, and they splicedwillows to stiffen her. She was thirty-six feet long, and four andone-half feet beam, a couple of feet deep, and would carry all theircargo, while a few men could carry her. You see, Lewis had the skin-boatcoracle in mind before he left Washington. 

"Well, Lewis wanted elk-hides for his boat, and the elk were scarce; hehad 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 fourbuffalo-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 anddays on his pet boat. They sewed the skins with edged awls, and that cutthe holes rather big, so when the hides dried and shrunk, the threadsdidn't fill the holes any more. He had no tar to pay the seams with, orhe'd have been all right. They tried tallow and ashes, but it wouldn'twork. For a few minutes she sat high and light; then the filling soakedout. Poor Lewis!--he had to give it up. So they buried her, somewhereopposite the White Bear Islands, I suppose, where they had their camp. "

"Yes, and then Clark had to go and hustle cottonwood for some moredugouts, and cottonwood was a long, long way off, " contributed John. "Oh, they had their troubles. Hah! We complained, coming up PortageCreek, and over the heads of the draws, trying to find their old portagetrail. What if we'd been in moccasins? What if we'd been packing ahundred pounds or dragging at a hide wagon rope? And what if the buffalohad cut up the ground in rainy times, so it dried in little pointedlumps like so many nails--how'd that go in moccasins? Well, they had tolie down and rest, it was so awfully hard on them. But they never a oneflickered, 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 wasJune 14th when Shields came back downstream from Lewis, and told Clark'sboat party that they had found the falls, and it was July 15th whenthey got their new canoes done and started off up the river. "

"And I'll bet they were fussed up about things, " said Jesse. "Must havebeen scared. "

"No, I don't think they were, " said Rob. "Well, anyhow, in one monththey had surveyed and staked out their portage trail around the bigfalls, had _cached_ their heavy stores, had built new boats, had killedall the meat they could use, and had proceeded on. They now knew thatthey were almost to the western edge of the buffalo. On west, as Iexpect Sacágawea also told them, they might have to come to horse meatand 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, whenthey 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 thegreat modern town, in sight of many smelter smokes, and bent over theold maps that William Clark had made with such marvelous exactness morethan a hundred years ago. 

"She seems to go in long sweeps, the old Missouri, " said John, pointingwith 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 thennorth to Bismarck, North Dakota. Then she runs strong northwest to theYellowstone, and then straight west to here. From here she takes onemore big angle, and runs almost south to the Three Forks. "

"Look it!" pointed Jesse. "She starts below Forty, at St. Louis, andgoes north almost to Forty-nine, and then she drops down again toForty-five at the Three Forks. And Lewis had observations on latitudeand longitude right along. Wonder what he thought!"

"He did a great deal of thinking, " said Rob. "He had the conviction thatso 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 hehad Sacágawea, worth more than them all for local advice in a tightplace 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 hisbrains and his reason all the way across. Even about his pet portableboat, 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, Isuppose I'll have to admit that this place is the real portage. They sawthe Rockies right along now. They threw those canoes into the high, too!"

"Tracking and poling, pretty soon now, and a fine daily average, " noddedRob. "And now I don't suppose that we need just feel that we've funkedanything by not sticking to our boat all the time, and taking a packtrain here; because Clark or Lewis, or both of them, and a good many ofthe men, walked a lot of the time from here, hunting and scouting andfiguring 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 startedwith two, and picked up one, and one died--that's the record up to theSioux. But beyond the Mandans they hoofed it, or poled and paddled andpulled. They couldn't sail the canoes--they gave that up. And now boththeir perogues were left behind. So when they left the old eagle on hisbroken tree, and the savage white bears all along here, and therattlesnakes and everything else that tried to stop them here, theydrew 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 geta wagon and follow down as close as we could to our camp and get ourstuff all up to a place above the White Bear Islands, and go into campthere until he came in with Billy Williams and the pack horses, from hisranch on the Gallatin, near the Forks. So that's a day's work, even witha flivver--which I think we'll use part way. Time we set out andproceeded on, fellows. "

They turned away from the Great Falls of the ancient river, in part witha 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 nodifficulty in getting their outfit up a long coulee to the level of theprairie, where a small car quickly carried them into and beyond the cityto a point where another gradual descent led down to the point usuallybelieved to be that where the "White Bear" camp of Lewis and Clark waspitched above the falls. Here the great river was wide and more quiet, as though making ready for its great plunges below. Not far from therailway tracks they put up their temporary camp, as the pack horses hadnot yet arrived. 

"The reader will suppose one hundred years to have elapsed!" said Jesse, sarcastically. "All right; but I want something besides fried eggs andmarmalade. "

"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 fromhere--fishing, I mean--trout, and even grayling. Of course, at thisseason there'd be nothing to shoot. Lewis and Clark killed all sorts ofgame at all sorts of seasons, but they had to do that to live. They hadthirty-two people in their party, all working hard and eating plenty. They would eat a whole buffalo every day, or a couple of elk, sosomebody had to be busy. It would have taken a lot of fried eggs andmarmalade to put them up and over those rapids. But as you say, we'vegot to suppose a hundred years to have elapsed, so we don't kill abuffalo 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 aboutmosquitoes than any other hardship. Even Gass in his journal tells howbad they were here at the Great Falls--I think they feared them morethan they did the white bears or the rattlesnakes; and they had plentyof 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 gotto this camp for the upper headquarters, they had to build two morecanoes, ten miles above here. That made eight in all for the thirty-twopeople, or four to a canoe. I don't think they ever carried that manywith their cargo; and they had quite a lot of cargo, even then. Theywere eating pork on the Continental Divide--their last pork!"

"No, " said Jesse, "they never did all ride at once. First one captainwent ahead on foot, then the other. You see, they got into mountainwater pretty soon now. They used the tow line a great deal, or poled theboats rather than paddled. Comes to getting a heavily loaded boat up aheavy 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 allthey had to go on was the girl Sacágawea's word that pretty soon they'dcome to her people. 

"So they set out from here on July 15th, the very day that we will, ifwe get off to-morrow; only it took them one year more to get here thanit did us. And two men were in each canoe--not enough to drive her, theyfound. And Lewis and the girl walked on this side the river, and after awhile Clark walked on the other side--all on foot, of course. He hadFields and Potts and his servant York with him--all alone in the Indiancountry, of which not one of them knew a foot. 

"And now, " went on Rob, "they were once more against that same old veryrisky proposition of a divided party, part in boats and part on shore. Itell 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 wildernesstravelers could think up. They simply had marvelous luck. For instance, after Clark left them above here, on July 18th, he never saw themoftener than once a day again until July 22d, and that was away up atthe head of the big Cañon. 

"To the Three Forks was two hundred and fifty-two and one-half miles, asClark called it, though engineers now say it is only two hundred and tenmiles. He walked clean around the big Cañon of the Missouri at the Gateof the Mountains--below Helena, that is--and never saw it at all! Now ifyou say he walked the whole ten days from the head of the falls to theForks, and say it was only two hundred and ten miles and not over twohundred and fifty, that's over twenty miles a day, on foot, in themountains, under pack and a heavy rifle, in moccasins, and overprickly-pear country that got their feet full of thorns. Clark pulledout 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 coulddo it, I know that. And yet, after four days' absence spent in this wildcountry where they were the first white men, they met again at the headof the Cañon below the Forks, just as easy and as natural as if they hadtelephoned to each other every day! I call that exploring! I call thosechaps 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 aweek ago he got word through to Billy Williams, in the Three ForksValley, to come on with his horses. "

"Well, " said Jesse, "if I'm not to have half a buffalo to-night, and ifCruzatte, the bow man, isn't here to play a jig for us, I'll see what Ican do about some fried eggs and marmalade. "

"And I'll like to get a leg over leather once more, " said John. "I'mlooking for horses now, same as Lewis and Clark did along in here for afew 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 faraway the tremulous note of a screech owl, repeated again a moment later. Jesse stopped talking, turning his head. Rob laughed: "That's Uncle Dicknow!" he said, in a low tone; and answered with an owl call just likethe one they had heard. They heard a laugh in the dark, and from behindthe tent stepped Uncle Dick. 

"How!" said he. 

"How!" said each of the boys gravely. Rob made the Indian sign of "sitdown"--his fist struck down on the robe that was spread by the littlefire. 

Their companion sat down, not saying a word. Pretty soon he began totalk 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'tknow what the sign is for 'mule. ' It isn't elk, or deer, or wolf, orbuffalo. 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'dyou 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 ofthe Shoshonis, away west of here!"

"Does it? I'd forgotten. Well, I'd like to know where those people gotthat mule out here, in 1805! I'd have been no more surprised to see amastodon really walking around out here. Of course, you know thatPresident Jefferson wrote Lewis not to be surprised if he did see themastodon still living in this unknown country. You see, all of them knewabout the mastodon bones found in the Big Lick, Kentucky. They didn'tknow 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 forthe packs--one plumb black and one plumb white--both ex-army mules andI suppose fifty years or so old. I think old Sleepy, the white one, isthe wisest animal I ever saw on four legs--I've been out with Sleepybefore, and with Billy, too. Good outfit, boys--small, no frills, all weneed and nothing we don't. 

"I've left our outboard motors here in town with a friend. Most wish wehadn't brought them around. But we'll see how much time we have when weget done projecting around at the head of the river. 

"I can promise you some knotty problems up in there. To me, what's aheadof us in the next two weeks was the most exciting part of the wholeLewis and Clark trip across. "

"But, Uncle Dick, you promised us some sport--fishing, I mean--trout andgrayling. "

"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 withBilly's flivver, if Billy's mules connect with the flivver; and I'llpromise you, even now, hard hit as every trout water is all throughhere, the finest trout fishing--and the only grayling fishing--there isleft 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 waterand wood and John bent over his cooking. Uncle Dick walked up the riverto where he had landed his boat the evening previous, and dropped downcloser to the camp. The day still was young when the tent was struck andeverything packed aboard the boat, which presently landed them on thefarther shore, ready for the next lap of their journey and the newtransportation that was now in order. 

They were met by their new companion, the young rancher, BillyWilliams, who had struck his own camp and brought the animals downto meet them. They found him a quiet, pleasant-spoken young man ofperhaps thirty, lean and hardy, dressed much like a farmer exceptthat he wore a pair of well-worn, plain, calfskin chaps to protect hislegs in riding--something in which the boys could not imitate him, forthey were cut down to their Scout uniforms; which, however, did verywell. 

They shook hands all around, the young rancher quietly estimating hisyoung charges, and they in turn making up their opinions regarding him, which, needless to say, were not unfavorable, for none were quicker thanthey to know a good outdoor man when they saw him. 

"So this is old Sleepy?" said Jesse, going up to the sleek big whitemule that stood with drooping head, the stalk of a thistle hanging outof a corner of his mouth. "He's fat and strong, isn't he? What makes himlook so sad? And aren't you afraid he'll run away? He hasn't even ahalter on him. "

"No, he won't run away, " replied Billy. "You couldn't drive him awayfrom the packs. He always comes up every morning to be packed, and healways stands around like he was going to die--but he isn't. Sleepy'lllive another hundred years, anyhow. 

"I never hobble or tie or picket Sleepy at night; he sticks close to oldFox. 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, theysay; but all at once he reformed and since then he's led a Christianlife, same as Sleepy. 

"About that thistle. Sleepy is very fond of thistles--he'll stop thewhole 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 betyou, 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'tmanage to ride ahead of Sleepy on the trail. He never will take the lastplace 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 hisfoot, or if his pack slips, a man is his best friend. So he just goesahead where folks can see that he's comfortable. You can't ride ahead ofhim; 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 himmoving. I usually carry a little rubber sling shot in my pocket, andwhen Nigger gets too lazy and begins to straggle off I turn around andpeck him one with a pebble. Then you ought to see him get into his placeand promise to be good!

"I've got quite a pack train, at home on the Gallatin, but your unclesaid 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 andcompact. "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 fewold-time mosquitoes in the valley; but in a week or two now they'll allbe 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 'lonepacker' hitch, " said he. 

"Oh, they'll help you, " said Uncle Dick. "They can throw almost anydiamond, 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, " hesaid; "the mules are more used to me for near side. I never blindfoldthem. "

They began with Sleepy, and soon had two packs in the sling ropes, athird on top, with all ready to lash. Rob asked no questions, but wenton, 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 ajiffy the ropes flew into the tight diamond and Billy tied off. "She's agood 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, faras I know, but----"

"I think we can get by, " said Rob. "We're not fancy, but we can ride allday. "

"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 thepanniers on Nigger--I brought along one pair of kyacks, for it's easierto carry the cooking stuff and the loose grub that way than it is tomake up packs in the mantas every day. "

John, who was cook for that week, now began to open and rearrange hiskitchen pack; and Rob was standing off side, ready to handle the lashrope, 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 thehorses, 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 helphim he was flung full length, and lay, his arms out, motionless. It allhappened 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 theboy's spine. He saw that no bones were broken, and was using somerevival 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?" Thenthey all laughed, very gladly, seeing he had only been stunned by thefall. 

"All right, son?" asked Billy, coming to him anxiously. "I'm sorry! Ididn't know----"

"My fault, sir, " said Jesse, stoutly. "I admit it. I ought to have knownmore than to mount any Western horse from the right side and not theleft. My fault. But, you see, I had the laces loose on the stirrup, soI 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 cayuseto act bad before. Are you afraid of him now?"

"Naw!" said Jesse, scoffing. "Bring him over--only fasten that legleather. 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 hisfright, but he mounted his own horse first and rode alongside, after hehad the stirrup fixed. To the surprise of all, the horse now was gentleas 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'treason any. Now look at Sleepy!"

That animal did not even turn his head, but stood under his pack witheyes 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 timeUncle Dick returned. He rebuked Jesse for a "tenderfoot play" whenthey told him what had happened, much annoyed. "I'm responsible foryou, " said he, "and while I'm willing you each should take all fairchances like a man, I'll not have any needless risks. Learn to do thingsright, in the field, and then do them that way always. You know betterthan to mount a horse on the off side. That's an Indian trick, butyou'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; thenUncle Dick, Jesse, John, and Rob, Nigger coming last, poking alongbehind, his ears lopping. In a few moments they all were shaken intoplace 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 feelit's worth while. "

"I'm sorry, sir, " said Jesse, presently, who was rather feelingdisgraced 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 mencame in here, on foot, they found an old Indian road, marked plain bythe lodge poles. They went up Little Prickly Pear Creek, over the ridgeand down the Big Pear Creek. 

"You see, Clark was hunting Indians. He wanted horses; because he couldsee, even if the Indian girl had not told him, that before long theymust 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 towardMarysville 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 allsettled now. They been running a steamer up and down the Cañon above theGate of the Mountains. You folks going to take that trip? Want to seethe big dam at the head, at the old ferry?"

Uncle Dick turned in his saddle, to see what the boys would say. Johnmade bold to answer. 

"Well, I don't know how the other fellows feel, " said he. "Of course, weknow the Gate is a wonderful spot, where the two ranges pinch in; andthe five miles above, they all say, is one of the greatest cañons inAmerica--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 cañons and things, prettymuch, first. Now, way it seems to me is, anybody can go, if it's asteamboat trip. And if there's dams, she isn't so wild any more. We'drather put in our time wilder, I believe. "

The others thought so, too. "Besides, we're following Clark now, " saidRob, "and he never saw the Gate at all, famous as it got to be afterLewis described it. Lewis went wild over it. "

"Let's sidestep everything and get up to the Forks, " voted John. "Ididn't know this river was so long. We've got to hustle. "

"I've got another book, " said Uncle Dick, slapping his coat pocket. "Itcovers the trail later on--1904. To-night in camp, I'll show yousomething that it says about this country in here at the head of theMissouri River. 

"You maybe didn't know that Helena, on below us, used to be Last ChanceGulch, where they panned $40, 000, 000 of gold--and had a Hangman's Treeuntil not so very long ago, where they used to hang desperadoes. 

"And off to Clark's right, when he topped the Ordway Creek divide, waswhere 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 readsomething about the great gold mines and other mines in this book. [3] Itold you the Missouri River leads you into the heart of the wildest andmost romantic history of America, though much of it is slipping out ofmind 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 thelight of a candle stuck in a little heap of sand on top a box, he didread to an audience who sat with starting eyes, listening to the talksof gold which were new to them. 

"Listen here, boys, " he said, after they had traced out the course ofthe day and made the field notes which served them as their dailyjournals. "Here's what it says about the very country we're in rightnow:

 "'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 ofit. He was in on the Confederate Creek strike. He helped sluice fivethousand dollars in one day, and they didn't half work. He said it wasjust laying there plumb yellow. They thought it would last always; butit didn't. 

"You see, I was born out here. My dad was rich in the 'sixties, then hewent broke, like everybody. When he got old he married and settled. Hetook to ranching and hunting, and I've taken to ranching. Times arequieter 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 liketo pan some gold!"

"I expect you could, " said Billy. "Might get the color, even now, on theJefferson bars, I don't know. Of course, they've learned how to work thelow-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'lllocate a few more spots that got to be famous for reasons that Lewis andClark never dreamed. From the head of the Cañon up the beaver swarmed;this was the best beaver water in America, and known as such. That wasthe wealth those boatmen understood. No wonder Lewis thought it would bea good place for a fort. And the traders did build a fur post at theForks, in 1808. And the Blackfeet came. And they killed poor oldDrewyer and a lot of others of the fur traders. Oh, this was the darkand 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 knowwhere the boats are, and we haven't found any Shoshonis and we've nottoo much to eat. Wait a day or so. We've only done about twenty-fivemiles, and that's a big day for the packs--not a much faster rate thanClark was marching. He nearly wore out himself and his men, on thatmarch. I fancy not even York, his cheerful colored man, came in thatnight as frisky as old Sleepy. "

"That's right, " said John. "It was just as Mr. Williams said--hefreshened up and came in playing, kicked up his heels when his load wasoff, 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 upalong the great bend of the Missouri and into the vast southerly dip ofthe Continental Divide, now animated the members of the little packtrain, which followed as nearly as they could tell the "old Indian road"which Clark had followed. They felt that they at least must equal hisaverage daily distance of twenty-one miles. 

Keeping back from the towns all they could, though often in sight orhearing of the railway, they passed above the Gate of the Mountains andthe Bear Tooth Rock, and skirted the flanks of the Belt range, whichforked out on each side of the lower end of that great valley in whichNature for so long had concealed her secrets of the great and mysteriousriver. 

A feeling almost of awe came over them all as they endeavored to checkup their own advance with the records of these others who had been thefirst white men to enter that marvelous land which ought to be calledthe Heart of America, hidden as it is, having countless arteries andveins, and pulsing as it is even now with mysterious and unfailingpower--the most fascinating spot in all America. 

"Here they passed!" Uncle Dick would say. "Sometimes Clark met them, orhung up a deer on the bank for them. Always in the boats, or on shorewhen she was walking, the Indian girl would say that soon they wouldcome to the Three Rivers, where years ago she had been captured by theMinnetarees, from the far-off Mandan country. 'Bimeby, my people!' Isuppose 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 ofit. That's natural. You see, this was on the road to the Great Falls, and the Shoshonis, Flatheads, and Nez Percés all went over there eachsummer to get meat. The Flatheads and Nez Percés took the cut-off fromeast of Missoula, direct to the Falls--the same way that Lewis wentwhen they went east. They came from the salmon country west of theRockies. So did the Shoshonis, part of the time, but their usual trailto the buffalo was along the Missouri and this big bend. Their real homewas 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 thatthey got of the traders, far north and east. Two ways the Blackfeetcould get horses--over the Kootenai Trail, where Glacier Park is, ordown in here, where the Shoshonis lived; for the Shoshonis also hadhorses--they got them west of the Rockies. So this road was partly warroad and partly hunting road. I don't doubt it was rather plain at thattime. 

"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, thecountry was known, you might say. It was at the Three Forks that Colterand Potts, two of the Lewis and Clark men, were attacked by theBlackfeet, and Potts killed and Colter forced to run naked, six milesover the stones and cactus--till at last he killed his nearest pursuerwith his own spear, and hid under a raft of driftwood in the JeffersonRiver. 

"And when the fur men came up and built their fort, they had the Lewisand Clark hunter Drewyer to guide them at first. But the Blackfeet madebitter war on them. They killed Drewyer, as I told you, not far ahead ofus 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 Lakecountry, in Idaho, and kept on down the Snake there, till he built hisfamous fort in there, so long known as Fort Henry. Well, he came in thisway; and on ahead is where he started south, on a keen lope. 

"Can we get across, south from here, into Henry's Lake, Billy?" heasked. 

"Easy as anything, " said Billy, "only the best way is to go by car frommy place. Lots of folks go every day, from Butte, Helena, all thesetowns all along the valleys. Perfectly good road, and that's faster thana pack train. "

"That's what I have been promising my party!" said Uncle Dick. "But theyshall not go fishing until they have got a complete notion of how allthis country lies and how Lewis and Clark got through it. "

"They hardly ever were together any more, in here, " said Rob. "Firstone, 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 Lewistook his turn on ahead. What good sports they were!"

"Yes, " said John, "and what good sports the men were! They'd had totrack and pole up here, all the way from the Falls, and at night theywere worn out. Grub was getting scarce and they hadn't always enough tokeep strong on. And above the Forks they had to wade waist deep in icewater, for hours, slipping on the stones, in their moccasins, and theirteeth chattering. I'll bet they hated the sight of a beaver, for it wasthe beaver dams that kept all the shores full of willows and bayous, sothey couldn't walk and track the boat, but had to take to the streambed. Why, the beaver were so bad that Lewis got lost in the dams and hadto 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 UncleDick--"the beaver. Then after they had got the beaver about all trappedout, say fifty years, in came the placer mines. Then came the deep lodemines--silver and copper. And then the farmers. Eh, Billy?"

"Sure, " said Billy. "And then the tourists! Lots of folks that run duderanches make more than they could raising hay. The Gallatin Valley, above me, is settled solid. It's the finest black-land farm country inall 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 themines in the wintertime--eight or ten thousand men in mines there allthe 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 whereLewis and Clark went. I tell it to you, they just naturally hot-footedit 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 ofit, and knew more about it every day, than any party of men since thenhave done in five times the time they took. "

"And didn't know where they were, or what would be next, " assentedJohn. "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 explorersunder their active leaders exceeded the daily average of William Clarkto the point where, above the present power dam, the valley of theMissouri opens out above the Cañon into that marvelous landscape whichnot even a century of occupancy has changed much, and which lay beforethem, wildly but pleasingly beautiful, now as it had for the firstadventurers. 

"And it's ours!" said Rob, jealously. He took off his hat as he stoodgazing down over the splendid landscape from the eminence which at thattime they had surmounted. 

"Down near the power dam, somewhere, " said Billy, "is where Clark musthave struck into the river again from the trail he'd followed. He wasabout all in, and his feet in bad shape, but he would not give up. Thenhe 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 byheart. 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 theplacers and the road agents--yes, and of the Vigilantes, too, thatcleaned out the road agents and made it safe in here, to travel orlive. "

"Was your father a Vigilante, sir?" asked Jesse. 

"Well now, son, " grinned Billy, "since you ask me, I more'n half believehe 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. Ofcourse, when the courts got in, they disbanded. But they'd busted up theold Henry Plummer's gang and hung about twenty of the road agents, bythat time. They was some active--both sides. "

At last the party, after a week of steady horse work, pitched theirlittle camp about mid-afternoon at the crest of a little promontory fromwhich they commanded a marvelous view of the great valley of the ThreeForks. 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, inlooking at this valley. After we've taken care of the horses and madecamp, 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 campequipment, so they needed not seek a more convenient spot; nor wouldthey have exchanged this for any other. 

"We've seen many a view, fellows, " said John, as the three stood nearthe edge of the little promontory almost in the village, "but of themall, in any country, all up this river, and all the way north to KadiakIsland, or to the Arctic Circle--nothing that touches this. "

They had hurriedly finished their evening meal. Their robes were spreadon the ground, their guns and rod cases lay at the saddles or againstthe panniers. Their maps, journals, and books lay on the robes beforethem. But they all turned to take in the beauties of the summer sunsetnow unfolding its vast screen of vivid coloring in the West. Thence theylooked, first up one valley and then another, not so much changed, inspite of the occasional fields. 

"Of course, " said John, after a time, "we know this spot, and know whyyou and Mr. Billy brought us here. It's the Fort Rock of MeriwetherLewis--it couldn't be anything else!"

Uncle Dick smiled and nodded. 

"That's what she is, " nodded Billy. "Right here's where Cap'n Lewisstood 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 firstfur 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 isup in ten miles. Yonder used to be quite a little town like, right downbelow us. Yon's the railroad, heading for the divide, where we came overfrom Prickly Pear. Other way, upstream, is the railroad to Butte. Yonway lies the Madison; she heads off southeast, for Yellowstone Park. Andyon's the main Jefferson; and the Madison joins her just a little wayup. 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 waywould you head if you wanted to find the head of the true Missouri andget on across the Rockies?

"You see, we're in a big pocket of the Rockies here--the greatContinental Divide sweeps away down south in a big curve here--made justso 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 wouldyou 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 wasin here Clark was nigh about forty miles above here; he plumb wore hismen out, twenty-five miles the first day above the Forks, twelve milesthe next. That was up the Jefferson, you see; they picked it for thereal Missouri, you see, because it was fuller and quieter. 

"They didn't waste any time, either of them, on the Gallatin. That leftthe 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 thattrifling 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, andI'll bet they was good and tired by now, for they'd walked all the wayfrom Great Falls, hunting Indians, and hadn't found one yet, only plentytracks. 

"So he finds the Madison all right, and comes down her to the Forks. Andthere--July 27th, wasn't it, the _Journal_ says?--he finds Lewis and alleight of the canoes and all of the folks, in camp a mile above theForks, just as easy and as natural as if they hadn't ever known anythingexcept 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 Indiangirl 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 Indiansto head down the river, over the two trails, to the Falls, where thebuffalo were. "

"That's a story, Billy!" said Jesse. Billy stopped, abashed, forgettinghow 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, evennow, " 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 ofthorns and he had a boil on his ankle, and he'd got a fever fromdrinking 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 ona robe, and he says, 'Partner, I'm all in. I haven't found a Indian. ButI allow that's the branch to follow. '

"He points up the Jefferson. Maybe the Indian girl said so, too, but Ithink 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 thatover that divide--that would be over the Raynolds Pass--was water thatled to the ocean. I don't know where they get that. Some say the Indiangirl went up the Madison with Clark. She didn't; she was with Lewis atthe boats all the time. Some say that Clark got as far south as thecañon of the Madison, northwest of the Yellowstone Park. He didn't andcouldn't. Even if he did and was alone, that wouldn't have led him overRaynolds Pass. That's a hundred miles, pretty near. 

"I wonder what would have happened to them people, now, if they all hadpicked the wrong branch and gone up the Madison? If they'd got onHenry's Lake, which is the head of one arm of the Snake, and had gotstarted on the Snake waters--good night! We'd never have heard of themagain. 

"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 theJefferson. She was young, too. Anyhow, that's what they called theMissouri, till she began to peter out. That was where they named thisplace where we are now. They concluded, since all the three rivers runso 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 afterthey'd left the Forks. Most folks thought they'd sprung the names assoon as they seen the Forks, but they didn't. 

"Lots of people right in here, too, even now, they think that Lewis andClark wintered right here at the Forks or on up near Dillon. I've heardthem argue that and get hot over it. Some said they wintered on anisland, near Dillon. Of course, they allow that Lewis and Clark gotacross, but they say they was gone three years, not two. That's about asmuch as the old _Journal_ is known to-day!

"Me living in here, I know all the creeks from here to the Sawtooth andBitter 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 theygot over. The names on most of their creeks are changed now, so youcan't hardly tell them. About the best book to follow her through on isthat railroad man, Wheeler. He took a pack train, most ways, and stayedwith it. 

"People get all mixed up on the old stuff, because we travel by railnow, so much. For instance, Beaverhead Rock--and that's been a landmarkever since Lewis and Clark come through--is disputed even now. You canstart a fight down at Dillon any time by saying that their BeaverheadRock is really Rattlesnake Rock--though I'll have to own it looks a lotmore like a beaver than the real rock does. That real one now is mostlycalled the Point of Rocks. 

"That's the way it goes, you see--everything gets all mixed up. Theminers named a lot of the old Lewis and Clark streams all over again. Boulder Creek once was Frazier's Creek; Philosophy Creek they changed toWillow Creek, just to be original. The Blacktail, away up in, was firstnamed after McNeal, and the North Boulder, this side of there, was firstcalled after Fields. The Pipestone used to be the Panther. You know theBig Hole River, of course, where Butte gets the city water pipedfrom--used to be fine fishing till they spoiled it by fishing it todeath--well, that was called Wisdom River by Lewis. And I think if he'dbeen right wise, he'd have left his boats at the mouth and started rightup there, on foot, and not up the Jefferson. She was shallow, but ifhe'd only known it, she'd have led him to the Divide easier than the waythey went, and saved a lot of time. But, of course, they didn't knowthat. "

"Go on, Billy, go on!" said Rob, eagerly. "You're the first man I everknew who'd actually been over this ground in here. All we've done hasbeen to read about it; and that's different. A country on a map is onething, 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 countryby yourself, you never get lost in it again. You can easy get lost witha map and a compass. 

"Well now, the miners changed more names, too. It was on Willard'sCreek, named after one of the Lewis and Clark men, that they found thegold at Bannack camp. They called that Grasshopper Creek and left poorWillard out. And then they called the Philanthropy River, which comes infrom the south, opposite to the Wisdom--Lewis called them that becauseThomas Jefferson was so wise and so philanthropic, you know--well, theychanged that to the Stinking Water!

"Yet 'Philanthropy' would have been a good name for that. On one of theside creeks to it they found Alder Gulch in 1863; and Alder Gulch putMontana on the map and started the bull outfits moving out from Benton, at the head of navigation. That's where Virginia City is now. Nicelittle town, but not wild like she was. 

"Now, the old trail--where the road agents used to waylay thetravelers--led from Bannack to the Rattlesnake, down the Rattlesnake tothe Jefferson, down the Jefferson to the Beaverhead Rock, then acrossthe Jefferson and over the Divide to Philanthropy. And that was onesweet country to live in, in those days, my dad said! The road agentshad a fine organization, and they knew every man going out with dust. Sothey'd lay in wait and kill him. They killed over a hundred men, thatway, till the Vigilantes broke in on them. The best men in early Montanawere among the Vigilantes--all the law-and-order men were. But rightfrom where we're standing now, on the Lewis Rock, you're looking overone of the wildest parts of this country, or any other country. Youought to read Langford's book, _Vigilante Days and Ways_. I've got thatin my library, up at my ranch, too. "

"You know your part of this country mighty well, Billy, " said UncleDick, 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 myranch, or go on to the mouth of the Columbia River, or go to the truehead 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 withSleepy and Nigger, and almost anywhere on earth with my flivver. Iwouldn't stay here for a camp, because it's not convenient. Themosquitoes 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 moremedicine 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 thebest we've ever had. In our own country--and finding out for ourselveshow they found our country for us! That's what I call fine!"

"Roll up the plunder for to-night, " said Uncle Dick. "The sunset'sover. "

CHAPTER XXIV

NEARING THE SOURCE

"Well, Jesse, how'd you sleep last night?" inquired Billy in themorning, as he pushed the coffee pot back from the edge of the littlefire and turned to Jesse when he emerged from his blankets. 

"Not too well, " answered Jesse, rubbing his eyes. "Fact is, it's toonoisy 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 allover--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 upat the Forks there'll be another squatting down waiting for you. Allright for gasoline, Billy, but we're supposed to be using the trackingline 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 beglad about. "

"What's that?"

"Why, that you don't have to walk down into that ice water and pole aboat or drag it for two or three hours before breakfast. Yet that's whatthose poor men had to do. And three times they mention, between theForks and the mountains, the whole party had to wait breakfast tillsomebody killed some meat. Anyhow, we've got some eggs and marmalade. "

"Well, they got meat, " demurred Jesse, seating himself as he laced hisshoes. 

"Thanks to Drewyer, they usually did. He got five deer, one day, andabout every time he went out he hung up something. I think he'd got tothe front in the party now, next to Lewis and Clark. Chaboneau theydon't speak well of. 

"Shields was a good man, and the two Fields boys. But, though Clark wasmighty sick, and Lewis got down, too, for a day or so, in here, theywere 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'thave had much wool clothing left by now--they were in buckskin, andbuckskin is about as good as brown paper when it's wet. They had nohobnails, and their broken, wet moccasins slipped all over those slickround 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 youcan stand it quite a while. When it gets along your thighs you begin toget cold. When it's waist deep, you chill mighty soon and can't stand itlong--though Lewis stripped and dived in eight feet of water to get anotter he had shot. And slipping on wet rocks----"

"Don't we know about that! We waded up the Rat River, on the ArcticCircle. "

"You did! You've traveled like that? Well, then you can tell what themen were standing here. They hadn't half clothes, a lot of them weresick with boils and 'tumers, ' as Clark calls them. Some were nearlycrippled. But in this water, ice water, waist deep, they had to geteight boats up that big creek yonder--beaver meadows all along, so theycouldn'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, theygot on up. 

"They now began to get short rations, too. At first they couldn't getany trout, or the whitefish--those fish with the 'long mouths' thatLewis tells about. I'll bet they never tried grasshoppers. But alongabove here they began to get fish, as the game got scarcer. Lewis tellsof 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 Isee how practical those men were. Now, those men were all fine rifleshots, and they'd go against anything, though along here there wasn'tmany grizzlies, and all of them shy, not bold like the buffalo grizzliesat 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, andtrout. 

"The ducks and geese and cranes were all through here--breeding groundsall along. That was molting time and they caught them in their hands. They killed beaver with the setting poles, and one day the men killedseveral otter with their tomahawks, though I doubt if they could eatotter. 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 beaverand otter would get scared and swim out to the main stream, and theresome 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 anymore. 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 reckonthe men relied on him more. Then, he'd be poking around shooting at thesun and stars with his astronomy machines, and that sort of made themrespect him. Clark was a good sport. Lewis, I reckon, was harder to getalong with. But they both must have been pretty white with the men. Theytell of the hardships of the men, and how game and patient they are--nota whimper about quitting. "

"I know, " said Jesse, hauling out his worn copy of the _Journal_ fromhis bed roll and turning the leaves; "they speak of the way the menfelt:

 "'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 everonce 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 wasnear. And yet they were four hundred miles, right here, from the head ofthe Missouri!" Billy had his _Journal_ pretty well in mind, so he wenton 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 theColumbia!"

"Sure. And at the Two Forks, where the Red Rock River turns south, theother creek--Horse Prairie Creek that they took--only ran thirty milesin all. The south branch was the real Missouri, but they kept to the onethat went west. That was good exploring, and good luck, both. It tookthem over, at last. "

"But, Billy, everybody knows that Lewis and Clark went to the head ofthe Missouri. "

"Then everybody knows wrong! They didn't. If they had they'd never havegot over that year, nor maybe ever in any year. I tell you they hadluck--luck and judgment and the Indian girl. Sacágawea kept telling themthis was her country; that her people were that way--west; that they'dget horses. For that matter, there were strong Indian trails, regularroads, coming in from the south, north and west; but it wasn't quitelate enough for the Indians to be that far east on the fall buffalo huntat the Great Falls. It took them more than a month to figure out thetrail from here to the top. But if they had started south, down the RedRock----"

"Tell me about that, Billy. "

"We're working too hard before breakfast, son! Go get the others upwhile I fry these eggs. If we don't get off the Fort Rock and on ourway, somebody'll think we're crazy, camping up here. "

Soon they were all sitting at breakfast around the remnants of thelittle fire, and after that Billy went after the horses while the othersgot the packs ready. 

Jesse was excitedly going over with Rob and John some of the thingswhich Billy had been saying to him. Uncle Dick only smiled. 

"First class in engineering and geography, stand up!" said he, as heseated himself on his lashed bed roll. The three boys with pretendedgravity 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 thousandand forty-five feet. That's twenty-five hundred and twenty feet higherthan the true head of the Mississippi River--and we're not to the headof 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-fivehundred 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 workof 'hearty, healthy, and robust young men. ' One set of figures is goodas the other. 

"Still, it may be interesting to see how much swifter the Missouri Riveris than the Father of Waters. From the Gulf of Mexico to the source ofthe Mississippi is twenty-five hundred and fifty-three miles. Up ourriver, to where we stand, is just six miles short of that, yet the dropis more than twenty-five hundred feet more. One drops eight and aquarter inches to the mile, and the other nineteen inches to the mile. 

"But understand, we're talking now of the upper thread of theMississippi River, and of the Three Forks of our river--which isn't byany means at its head, even measuring to the head of the shortest of thethree big rivers that meet here. Now, add three hundred and ninety-eightmiles to twenty-five hundred and forty-seven miles. See what you got?"

"That's twenty-nine hundred and forty-five miles!" exclaimed John. "Isit that far from the head to St. Louis?"

"Yes, it is. And if you took the Lewis and Clark measurements to theForks it would be thirty-two hundred and forty-seven miles. 

"And if we took their distances to the place where they left theircanoes--that's what they called Shoshoni Cove, where the river peteredout for boats--we'd have three thousand and ninety-six miles; twohundred and forty-seven miles above here, as they figured it, and theyweren't at the summit even then. Now if we'd take their probableestimate, if they'd finished the distance to the real head of theMissouri, we'd have to allow them about thirty-two hundred andforty-nine miles plus their overrun, at least fifty miles. 

"Yes, if they'd have gone to the real source, they'd have sworn it wasover thirty-three hundred miles to St. Louis, and over forty-fivehundred miles to the Gulf. The modern measurements make it forty-twohundred and twenty-one miles. 

"So, young gentlemen, you can see that you are now coming toward thehead of the largest continuous waterway in the world. It is five hundredmiles longer than the Amazon in South America, and more than twelvehundred miles longer than the river Nile, in Africa. 

"Now, Meriwether Lewis did not know as much about all these things as wedo now, yet see how he felt about it, at his camp fire, not so far fromhere:

 "'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 awaytheir maps and rolled their beds. 

All of the party being good packers, it was not long before they hadleft their camp ground on the knoll and were off upstream once more, edging the willow flats and swinging to the ford of the Madison, whichthey made with no great danger at that stage of the water. Thence theyheaded back for the Jefferson fork, having by now got a good look at thegreat valleys of the Three Forks. 

"Which way, sir?" asked Billy now of their leader. "Shall we stop at thereal headquarters camp of the Three Forks, just about a mile up--wherethe Indian girl told them she had been taken prisoner when she was achild?"

"Too near town!" sung out Jesse, who overheard the question. "Let'sshake the railroad. "

"She's right hard to shake, up in here, " rejoined Billy. "Off to theright is the N. P. , heading for Butte, up the Pipestone. We couldn'tshake the left-hand branch of her this side of Twin Bridges, and that'sabove the Beaverhead Rock. From there upstream to Dillon, along theBeaverhead River, there isn't any railroad. We can swing wide, exceptwhere she cañons 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 theRed Rock, which is the real Missouri River. And she runs up the BigHole, which the _Journal_ calls the Wisdom River. And there's a railroadup Philosophy Creek, too----"

"And up all the cardinal virtues!" exclaimed Uncle Dick. "I don't blamethe boys for getting peeved. Now, we don't care for cañon scenery somuch, nor for willow flats with no beaver in them. I would like the boysto see the Beaverhead Rock and get a general notion of how many of theseconfusing 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'reright in the heart of those tremendous placers that Lewis and Clarknever dreamed about. I'd like them to know, on the ground, not on themap, how the old road agents' trail ran, between Bannack and VirginiaCity. I'd like them to get a true idea of how Lewis and Clark worked outtheir way, over the Divide. Lastly, I'd like them to see where the trueMissouri heads south and leaves the real Lewis and Clark trail. 

"Now, what's the best point to head for, Billy, for a sort of centralcamp? 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 andtook horses, would be about the most central point for that. That'llbring 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 alandmark as almost anything on the whole river. "

"We can get in there easy enough and get out, " said Billy. "It's just aquestion 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 halfas 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 alongwithout 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 sidecreeks a little and pick up a mess of fish now and then, and make theBeaverhead 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 themain river, to see why the names change on it so. First it's the mainMissouri; then they conclude to call it the Jefferson--only because theother two forks spread so wide there. Then it runs along all right, andall at once they call it the Beaverhead. And before it gets used to thatname they change it to Red River for no reason at all, or because itheads south and runs near a painted butte. Yet it is one continuousriver all the way. "

"The real way to name a river, " said Billy, sagely, "is after you knowall about it. You got to remember that Lewis and Clark saw this for thefirst time. By the time we make the Beaverhead Rock, we'll be willing tosay 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 lostin the willows, and Sleepy straying off in his hunt for thistles whenthe country opened out more. They did not hurry, but moved along amongthe meadows and fields, talking, laughing, studying the wide and varyinglandscape about them. That night, as Billy had promised them, they hadtheir first trout for supper, which Billy brought in after a short sneakamong 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 forsport of some sort. 

"Oh, off toward the utmost source of the true Missouri!" said he. "Youjust 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 ofthe 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 justexactly 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 dailywas big travel, wading, and not half of that gained in actual straightdistance. It took them ten days to the Beaverhead. How far's that fromhere, Billy?"

"Well, what do you think?" said Billy, pulling up and sitting crosswisein his saddle as he turned. "See anything particular from this side thehills?"

"I know!" exclaimed Rob. "That's the Rock over yonder--across theriver. "

"Check it up on the _Journal_, Rob, " said Uncle Dick. 

Rob dismounted and opened his saddle pocket, producing his copy of thecherished 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 cañon, and belowthe Wisdom, and below the Philanthropy, and below the end of therailroad, and in the third valley. Besides, look at it. Just as sure asSacágawea was about it!"

"You're right, " said Billy. "That's the Point of Rocks, as it's callednow. "

They made down to the edge of the valley and went into camp across fromthe great promontory which so long had served as landmark in all thatcountry. That night all of them forded the river horseback and rodeclose to the historic point. Jesse, who was prowling around on foot, aswas his habit, closely examining all he saw, suddenly stooped, then rosewith 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 blackglass at that. "

Uncle Dick examined it closely. 

"Jesse, " said he, "that's one of the most interesting things we've runacross on this whole trip. Did you know that?"

"No. Why?"

"You wouldn't think that arrowhead was going to take you to the truehead of the Missouri, and to good fishing for trout and grayling, wouldyou?"

"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 Shoshonisgot that black, glassy stuff at one place--the Obsidian Cliff, inYellowstone Park! Those old trails that Lewis saw to the south weretrails that crossed the Divide south of here. They put the Indians onSnake River waters. These tribes hunted down there. They knew the headof the Red Rock. They knew the head of the Madison. They knew the GibbonRiver, and they knew the Norris Geyser Basin, up in Yellowstone Park. It's all right to say the Indians were afraid to go into YellowstonePark among the geysers, but they did. They knew the ObsidianCliff--close by the road, it is, and one of the features of the Park, asit now is. 

"It's a far shot that arrow will carry you, son. It will show you moreof 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 theyknew the latitude and longitude of the mouth of the Columbia River. Theyknew that was northwest. They knew any water they got on, once over theDivide, 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 wastelling them that her people lived along in here. An obsidian arrowmeant nothing to them. But it meant much to later explorers to the southof here. "

"It's a good specimen he's got, " said Billy, looking it over. "TheIndians liked to work obsidian; it would cleave so sharp and clean. Ithought they had them all picked up, long ago. Up in the Shoshoni Covethey found a good many, first and last. All this was their huntingground. A little over the Divide it gets awfully rough, and not muchgame. "

They spent some time around the Rock, examining it, finding the cliff tobe about one hundred and fifty feet in height and giving a good view outover the valley plains, over which one could see many miles, and fromwhich the great rock itself could be seen for great distances. 

"Here was the old ford of the road agents' trail, " said Billy. "Theycrossed here and headed out, east and south, for the hills between hereand Virginia City. They were hunting for easier money than beaver then, though--gold! This was the murderers' highway, right by here. Over ahundred men were murdered on this hundred miles. "

They went back to their encampment and, after their simple preparationswere over for the evening, spread out their books and maps once more, John endeavoring laboriously to fill in the gaps of his own map; ratherhard to do, since they had not followed the actual stream course ontheir way up with the pack train. 

"This Wisdom River, now, " said he, "must have been a puzzler, sureenough. That's called the Big Hole to-day. I'll bet she was a beaverwater, too, as well as full of trout. Wonder if she had any grayling inher. 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, " noddedBilly. "I don't think the _Journal_ mentions them, but they sawwhitefish, and the two often go together, though by no means always. TheMadison is a grayling stream, or was--the South Fork's good now, and sois Grayling Creek, or was. The headwaters of the Red Rock were full ofgrayling once. The trouble is, so many motor cars now, that everybodygets in, and they soon fish a stream out. "

"Shall we get to see a grayling?" asked Rob. "You know, we got theArctic 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'tbe any left. 

"But look what a beaver country this must have been!" he added, waving ahand each way. "Fifty by two hundred miles, and then some. No wonder thetrappers 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 bethat might make all the difference in the world. Now the hero of mystory is a beaver. I don't know his name. 

"Look on your map, just above here--that's the mouth of the Wisdom, orBig Hole, River, that Lewis and Drewyer explored first, while poorClark, with his sore leg, was toiling up with his boat party, after hewas better of his sickness. 

"Now the Wisdom was a good-sized river, too, almost as big as theJefferson, though broken into channels. Lewis worked it out and cameback to the Jefferson at its mouth, and started on again, up theJefferson. As was their custom, he wrote a note and put it in a cleftstick 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 theright--the Wisdom. 

"Well, along comes Mr. Beaver that night, and gnaws off the pole andswims away with it, note and all! I don't know what his family made outof the note, but if he'd been as wise as some of the magazine-storybeavers, he could have read it, all right. 

"Now when Clark came along, tired and worn out, all of them, the notewas gone. They also, therefore, went up the Wisdom and not theJefferson. Clark sent Shannon ahead up the Wisdom to hunt. But he turnedback when the river got too shallow. Result, Shannon lost for threedays, and not his fault. He went away up till he found the boats couldnot have passed; then he hustled back to the mouth and guessed the partywere above him up the other fork--where he guessed right. They then wereall on the Jefferson. Lost time, hunting for Shannon, and they couldn'tfind him. All due to the beaver eating off the message pole. If Shannonhad died, it would have been due to that beaver. 

"That's only part. In the shallow water a canoe swept down out ofcontrol. It ran over Whitehouse, another man, on a bar, and nearly brokehis leg; it would have killed him sure if the water had been threeinches shallower. That would have been another man lost. 

"Not all yet. A canoe got upset in the shallow water up there onthe Wisdom, and wet everything in it. Result, they lost so muchcargo--foodstuffs, etc. --that they just abandoned that canoe right thereand lost her cargo, after carrying it three thousand miles, for over ayear! All to be charged to the same beaver. Well, you and I have spokenbefore about the extreme danger of a land party and a boat party tryingto travel together. 

"The next time Lewis left a note, he used a dry stick, and he feltmortified 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 bigconsequences--just as this arrowhead that Jesse found points out a longtrail. "

"And by that time, " said John, bending again over his map, "they wereneeding every pound of food and every minute of their time and every bitof every man's strength. The poor fellows were almost worn out. Now theybegan to complain for the first time. We don't hear any more now aboutdances at night around the camp fire. "

"Yes, " said Uncle Dick. "Now they all were having their proving. Itwould 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 fromthe 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 inthe whole trip, when it needed the last ounce and the last inch ofnerve. Read us what Lewis said in his _Journal_, Rob. He was on ahead, and every man now was hustling, because there were the mountains 'rightat them, ' as they say down South. "

Rob complied, turning the pages of their precious book until he reachedthe 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. Ifhe had not had, he never would have gotten across. And Simon Fraser thenwould have beaten us to the mouth of the Columbia, and altered the wholehistory of the West and Northwest. Well, at least our beaver, thatcarried off Lewis's note, did not work that ruin, but it might have beenresponsible, even for that; for now a missed meeting with the Shoshoniswould have meant the failure of the whole expedition. 

"A great deal more Lewis did than he ever was to know he had done. Hedied too soon even to know much about the swift rush of the fur tradersinto this bonanza. And few of the fur traders ever lived to guess therush of the placer miners of 1862 and 1863 into this same bonanza--rightwhere we are camping now, on the old Robbers' Trail. And not many ofthe placer miners and other early adventurers of that day dreamed ofanything but gold. The copper mines of this country have built up townsand 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 onup Panther Creek, which now is known as Pipestone Creek, and steppedover the crest to where the city of Butte is to-day, they hardly wouldhave suspected copper. Lewis set down the most minute details in botany, even now. He studied and described his last new bird, the sage hen, withmuch detail. Yet for more than a month and a half he and his men hadbeen wearing out their moccasins on gold pebbles, and they never panneda 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. Iwouldn't like to say how much Butte, just over yonder hills, has earnedto date, but in her first twenty years she turned out over five hundredmillion dollars. And twenty years ago she paid in one year fourteenmillion dollars in dividends, and carried a pay roll of two milliondollars a month, for over eight thousand miners, and gave the worldover fifty million dollars in metals in that one year! In ten years shepaid in dividends alone over forty-three million dollars. In one yearshe sold more copper, gold, and silver from her deep mines than wouldhave paid three times the whole price we paid for all the Louisiana thatLewis and Clark and you and I have been exploring! And that doesn'ttouch the fur and the placer gold and the other mines and the cattle andwool and the farm products and the lumber. No man can measure whatwealth has gone out from this country right under our noses here. Andall because Lewis and his friend and their men wouldn't quit. And theirexpense allowance was twenty-five hundred dollars!

"This was on our road to Mandalay, young gentlemen, right here throughthese gray foothills and green willow flats! Beyond the hills was stillall the wealth of the Columbia, of the Pacific Northwest also. Thistrail 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 dosomething for the world? Did he do it? Did he have his wish?"

His answer was in the silence with which his words were received. Ouryoung adventurers, though they had been used to stirring scenes alltheir lives, had never yet been in any country which gave them thethrill they got here, under the Beaverhead Rock. 

"She's one wonderful river!" said Billy Williams, after a time. "Andthose 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 valleyof the Missouri, to what was known as the Two Forks, between the townsof Grayling and Red Rock. They pitched their last camp, as nearly asthey could determine, precisely where the Lewis and Clark party madetheir last encampment east of the Rockies, at what they called theShoshoni Cove. This the boys called the Jump-off Camp, because this waswhere the expedition left its boats, and, ill fed and worn out, startedon across the Divide for the beginning of their great journey into thePacific Northwest. 

Now they were under the very shoulders of the Rockies, and, so closelyhad they followed the narrative of the first exploration of the greatriver, and so closely had their own journey been identified with it, that now they were almost as eager and excited over the last stages ofthe journey to the summit as though it lay before them personally, new, unknown and untried. They hardly could wait to resume their followingout of the last entangled skein of the great narrative. 

"We've caught them at last, Uncle Dick!" exclaimed Jesse, spreading outhis map on top of one of the kyacks in which Nigger had carried his loadof kitchen stuff. "We've got almost a week the start of them here. Thisis August 4th, and it was August 10th when Lewis got here. "

"And by that time he'd been everywhere else!" said Rob. "Let's figurehim out--tying him up with that note the beaver carried off. That beavercertainly made a lot of trouble. 

"Lewis left the note at the mouth of the Wisdom on August 4th. On August5th Clark got there and went up the Wisdom. On August 6th, 7th, 8th and9th, Shannon was lost up the Wisdom. On August 6th, Drewyer met Clarkcoming up the Wisdom River and turned him back; and Clark sent Field upthe Wisdom after Shannon. Meantime Lewis had gone down to the junctionat 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 tothe mouth of the Wisdom and camped--that's about a day's march belowwhere we camped, at the Beaverhead Rock. 

"Then Lewis saw something had to be done. He told Clark to bringon the boats as fast as he could. He then made up a fast-marchingparty--himself, Drewyer, Shields, and McNeal--with packs of food andIndian trading stuff; he didn't forget that part--and they four hit thetrail in the high places only, still hunting for those Indians they'dbeen trying to find ever since they left the Great Falls. They werewalkers, that bunch, for they left the Wisdom early August 9th, and theygot here late on August 10th. That was going some!"

"Yes, but poor Clark didn't get up here to where we are now until August17th, a whole week later than Lewis. And by that time Lewis had comeback down to this place where we are right now, and he was mighty gladto meet Clark. If he hadn't, he'd have lost his Indians. You tell itnow, Billy!" concluded Jesse, breathless. 

"You mean, after Captain Lewis started west from here to cross thesummit?"

"Yes. "

"All right. You can see why he went up this upper creek--it was the onethat led straight to the top. The Red Rock River, as they now call thestream below what they call the Beaverhead River--it's all onestream--bends off sharp south. The Horse Prairie Creek takes youstraight up to Lemhi Pass, which ought to be called the Lewis Pass, butisn't, though he was the first across it. Lewis was glad when he got towhat they called the source, the next day after that. 

"Now, he didn't find any Indians right away. I allow he'd followed anIndian road toward that pass, but the tracks faded out. He knew he wasdue to hit Columbia waters now, beyond yon range, but what he wanted wasIndians, so he kept on. 

"Now all at once--I think it was August 11th, the same day he left camphere--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 leftthe Mandans the spring before. But Mr. Indian pulled his freight. Thatwas when Lewis was 'soarly chagrined' with Shields, who had not stayedback till Lewis got his Indian gentled down some; he had him inside ofone 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 theytrailed this one, but they couldn't catch him, and Lewis was scaredhe'd run all the other Indians back West. But on the next morning he raninto a big Indian road, that ran up toward the pass. There was a lowishmountain, running back about a half mile. The creek came out of the footof 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 actuallycrossing the Divide at Lemhi Pass! Tell us where they found thevillage. "

"Well, sir, that was beyond the Lemhi Pass, up in there, thirty milesfrom here, about. They'd been traveling, all right. Now that was August12th, 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 thewhile, back of us, poor old Clark and his men were dragging the boats upthe chaste and icy waters of the Jefferson. 

"Now that day they got into rough country, other side; but they didn'tcare, 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 threemore--one an old woman, one a young woman, and one a kid. The youngwoman runs off. Now you ought to seen Cap. Lewis make friends with thempeople. 

"He gives them some beads and awls and some paint. Drewyer don't knowtheir language, but he talks sign talk. He gets the old girl to call theyoung woman back. She comes back. Lewis gives her some things, too. Hepaints up their cheeks with the vermilion paint. From that time he hadthose womenfolks, young and old, feeding from the hand. 

"So now they all start out for the village, which Lewis knew was not faraway. Sure enough, they meet about sixty braves riding down the trail;and I reckon if Meriwether Lewis ever felt like stealing horses, it wasthen. 

"Now the women showed their paint and awls and things. Lewis pulls uphis shirt sleeve and shows his white skin. The chief gets down and hugshim, 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 tothe Indian camp, four miles. Then Lewis allows something to eat would gofine, but old Cameahwait, the head man, hands him a few berries andchoke cherries, which was all they had to eat. You see, this band wasworking east now, in the fall, to better hunting range--they had onlybows and arrows. 

"Lewis sends Drewyer and Shields out to kill some meat. The old chiefmakes a sand map for Lewis, but says he can't get through, thatway--meaning down the Salmon River, west of the Divide. Anyhow, they'dhave no boats, for the timber was no good. So horses begin to look stillbetter to Lewis. 

"They had a good party, but nothing to eat, and the Indians were scaredwhen he got them to know there were more white men back of him, on theeast side the hill. He couldn't talk, so he told it in beads, andjockeyed along till he got a half dozen to start back with him. So onAugust 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 nothingto feed them. 

"But he waited to find Clark, and he didn't know how far downstreamClark was, and he was afraid he'd lose his Indians any minute. So hewrites a note to Clark, and gives it to his best man, Drewyer, to carrydownstream fast as he can go. Lewis had promised to trade goods forhorses, but the Shoshonis didn't see any boats, and so they gotsuspicious. 

"Well, it was night. Lewis had the head man and about a couple of dozenothers in camp. He was plumb anxious. But next day, the 17th, he tellsDrewyer to hot-foot down the river, with an Indian or two along withhim. About two hours, an Indian came back and said that Lewis had toldthe truth, for he had seen boats on the river. 

"Now between seven and eight o'clock that morning, Clark and Chaboneauand the Indian girl, Sacágawea, 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 Sacágawea?"

"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 outof the crowd and threw her arms around Sacágawea. It was the girl whohad been captured with her at the Three Forks, six years or more ago, bythe Minnetarees! They had been slaves together. This other girl hadescaped and got back home, by what miracle none of us ever will know. 

"But now, when Sacágawea had told her people how good the white menwere, there was no longer any question of the friendship all around. AsBilly expresses it, there was nothing to it, after that. 

"You'd think that was asking us to believe enough? But no. The girlrushes 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 entrée into the best Shoshonicircles. Beyond this it was a question of details. Lewis stayed heretill 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 theycould spare or could not take, hid their canoes, and on August 24thbade the old Missouri good-by--for that year at least. 

"They now went over west of the Divide, to the main village, to tradefor more horses. They cut up their oars and broke up their remainingboxes and made pack saddles to carry their goods. 

"Meantime, Clark and eleven men, all the good carpenters, had started onAugust 18th to cross the Divide and explore down for a route on thestream which we now know took them to the Salmon River. They traveledtwo 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 boatdown 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 LemhiRiver, on which they were camped, and the big river below--the SalmonRiver. But with the old man for guide, he went about seventy miles, intothe gorge of the Salmon River, before he would quit. But he found thatno man could get down that torrent, with either boat or pack train. Hegave it up. They were nearly starved when they got back at the Indiancamp, where Lewis and the other men were trading. Sacágawea had kept allher people from going on east to the buffalo country, though now theynone 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, theexpedition would have ended there. The Indian girl once more had savedthe 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 lastpacked them and set out for the hardest part of their journey and theriskiest, though they did not know that then. On August 30th they setout. At the same time Cameahwait and his band set off east, after theirfall hunt. 

"That was the last that Sacágawea ever saw of her brother or her girlfriend. She went on with her white husband, into strange tribes--nothingfurther for her to look forward to now, for she was leaving home foranother thousand miles, in the opposite direction. 

"And that ended the long, hard, risky time the company of Volunteers forDiscovery of the Northwest had in crossing the Continental Divide. Welie at the foot of their pass. Yonder they headed out for the settingsun!"

"Let's go on after them, Uncle Dick!" exclaimed Jesse. "We've got a goodoutfit, and we're not afraid!"

"I've been expecting that, " rejoined their leader. "I was afraid you'dwant 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 threethousand miles from St. Louis. That means we'll have to choose betweentwo or three weeks of the hardest kind of mountain work and back outwhen we've got nowhere, and taking a fast and simple trip to the truehead 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 thereal head of the Missouri--and neither Lewis nor Clark ever did that, orvery many other men. " Billy spoke quietly. 

"But don't think, " he added, "that I'm not game to go on into the BitterRoots, if you say so. I'm promising you she's rough, up in there. Thetrail they took was a fright, and I don't see how they made it. It ranto where this range angles into the corner of the Bitter Roots, andcrossed there. They crossed another pass, too, and that makes threepasses, from here. They got here July 10th, and three days later at lastthey hit the Lolo Creek trail, over the Lolo Pass--the way old ChiefJoseph came east when he went on the war trail; he fought Gibbon in thebattle of the Big Hole, above here. "

Rob sighed. "Well, it only took Lewis and Clark a couple of months toget 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?" UncleDick 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 leftanywhere. "

"It's a vote, Uncle Dick!" said Rob. "This is our head camp on this legof 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 thismountain range, forty miles east of the other trail. They came over theGibbon Pass--which ought to be called Clark's Pass and isn't--and headedsoutheast, the Indian girl being of use again now. They came downGrasshopper Creek, walking over millions of dollars of gold gravel, andfound their canoes, not over a few hundred yards from where we sit, likeenough. 

"Then Clark and his men got in the boats and headed home. Sacágaweashowed them the trail up the Gallatin, over the Bozeman Pass, to theYellowstone. 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 calledClark's Fork, after Clark, just as Clark named his Salmon Rivertributary after Lewis--Lewis took ten men and headed across lots forthe Great Falls and then for the head of the Marias River!

"Surely, they began to scatter. Clark had left twenty men, the Indiangirl and her baby, and they had fifty horses. At this place here, wherewe are in camp, Clark split his party again, some going down in theboats, some on horseback, but all traveling free and happy. They gothere July 10th, and three days later were at the Three Forks, bothparties, only one hour apart! They certainly had good luck in gettingtogether. 

"On that same day, Sergeant Ordway took six boats and nine men andstarted down the Missouri to meet Lewis at the Great Falls, or the mouthof 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 hadscattered, in that wild, unknown country, part in boats, part onshore--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 onhis way down the river from the Three Forks to the Falls. Clark is withthe horses now, headed east for the Yellowstone--which not a soul inthat party knew a thing about, except the Indian girl, who insisted theywould come out on the Yellowstone. And on that river the Clark partydivided 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 neverseen before. Yet they plan to meet at the mouth of the Yellowstone, overtwelve 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 andmodest as though children had done it. There's nothing like it in allthe world. "

He ceased to speak. The little circle fell silent. 

"Go on, go on, Uncle Dick!" urged Jess. "You've not allowed us to readahead 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 ourlast camp on the greatest trail a river ever laid. 

"We're going fishing now, fellows--to-morrow we start east, gaining twoyears on Lewis and Clark. When we get down near the Yellowstone andGreat Falls country again, going east ourselves, we'll just finish upthe story of the map till we reach the Mandans--which is where we leftour own good ship _Adventurer_. 

"To-morrow we head south, the other way. 'This story is to be continuedin our next, ' as the story papers say. 

"Good night. Keep all this in your heads. It is a great story of greatmen in a great valley, doing the first exploring of the greatest countryin 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 ofthe circle of light, waving his hand to the Divide above them. He stoodlooking toward the west. 

"Whom are you speaking to, Uncle Dick?" asked John, as he heard noanswer. 

"I was just speaking to my friends, Captain Meriwether Lewis and CaptainWilliam 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 andClark from the mouth of the Missouri to the Continental Divide, now feltexultation that they had finished their book work so soon. But they feltalso a greater interest in the thought that they now might follow out apart 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 thebest route and what would be the transportation?

"We still can spare a month in the West, " said Uncle Dick, "and get backto St. Louis in time to catch the fall school term. That will give ustime 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 thanLewis and Clark had. We can use the telegraph, the telephone, therailway cars, and the motor car--besides old Sleepy and Nigger and theriding horses. We can get about anywhere you like, in as much or littletime as you like. If you leave it to me, I'd say, get a man at Dillon orGrayling--I've friends in both towns--to take the pack train back to myranch on the Gallatin----"

"But we don't want to say good-by to Sleepy!" broke in Jesse. "He's alot 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 realMissouri source. 

"Now, at Monida we can get a motor car to take us east across theCentennial Valley and the Alaska Basin----"

"That's good--Alaska!" said Rob. 

"Yes? Well, all that country is flat and hard and the motor roads areperfect, so we could get over the country fast--do that two hundredmiles 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 HellRoaring Cañon, at the foot of Mount Jefferson, and up in there, at thehead of that cañon, 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 thehead of Picnic Creek, at the corner of the Alaska Basin, and Browerwrote a book about it. [4] He called that cañon Culver Cañon, but thename does not seem to have stuck. Now, Culver's widow, the same LilianHackett Culver whose picture Brower prints as the first woman to see theutmost source of the Missouri, still lives on her old homestead, where afull-sized river bursts out from a great spring, right at the foot of arocky ridge. She's owner of the river a couple of miles, I guess, downto 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 couldget--native cutthroat, rainbow, Dolly Varden, Eastern brook, steelheads, and I don't know what all, including grayling--and she has made a livingby 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 troutwater in all the world, in my belief. I've seen grayling there up tothree pounds, and have taken many a rainbow over eight pounds; one waskilled there that went twelve and one-half pounds. I've caught lots ofsteelheads there of six and seven pounds, and 'Dollies' as big, andnatives up to ten pounds--there is no place in the West where all thesespecies get such weights. 

"They call the place now 'Lil Culver's ranch. ' She is held in a gooddeal of affection by the sportsmen who have come there from all over thecountry. 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, andcame away out here. She's a fine botanist and she used to have books anda lot of things. Lives there all alone in a little three-room log houseright by the big spring. And she's the first woman to see the head ofthe Missouri. Her husband was the first man. That looks sort of likeheadquarters, 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 thiscountry of the Big Bend. "

"I ought to, " said Billy. "Well, then suppose we call that a go? We canfish on the spring creek, and live at Lil Culver's place; you can driveright there with a car. Then the mail road runs right on east, past thefoot 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--theeasiest in the world--but only one kind of trout--natives--and theytaste 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 fromSalt Lake to Helena and Butte, and just above the road that crosses theTarghee Pass, east of Henry's Lake, to the Yellowstone Park. 

"Now, Henry's Lake was named after Andrew Henry, who was chased southfrom the Three Forks by the Blackfeet. Just north of there is the lowdivide called Raynold's Pass, after Captain Raynolds, a governmentexplorer, about 1872. Suppose we kept our Monida car that far, and thensent it back home? Then I could telegraph my folks to send my own cardown 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 theMadison--another source of the Missouri--and try out the grayling. Weare now on the only grayling waters left in the West. All the heads ofthe Missouri used to have them. I thought you all might like to have ago at that. I can promise you good sport. We can have a tent and cookoutfit brought down on my car from the ranch. "

"Well, that looks like a time saver, sure, " said John. "We finish thingsfaster than Lewis and Clark, don't we?"

"Sure. Well, when you feel you have to start back east we can jump inthe car and run back up north to my ranch, up the Gallatin. You canfollow Sleepy over to Bozeman and Livingston, then; or you can go eastby rail down the Yellowstone; or you can divide your party and part goby 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 armof the Continental Divide bends south and holds all these hundreds ofstreams around the Three Forks and below. We'd be skirting the rim ofthat great bend in the mountains, a sort of circle of something like twohundred miles across; and we'd be coming back to the old river again atthe Forks. Looks to me that's about the quickest way we can cover ourtrip and the way to get the fullest idea of the real river. "

"What do you vote, fellows?" asked their leader. "This looks like a verywell-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 outyour fishing tackle. I'll stop in town and telephone to Andy Sawyer tocome on down to the livery at Red Rock and pick up our stock there, sowe won't lose any time getting the train. "

This well-thought-out plan worked so well that nothing of specialinterest happened in their steady ride down to the railroad, out of thehistoric cove, in among the fields and houses of the later land. 

And to make quite as brief the story of their uneventful journey acrossthe wide and treeless region below, it may be said that on the eveningof 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 threebeds, in two rooms, " said she, "and you'll have to double up, but I canfeed you all, I guess. "

"Is there any fishing?" asked Jesse. But an instant later he answeredhimself. "Great Scott!" said he. "Look at that trout jump. He's big as awhale. Look it--look it, fellows!"

They turned as he pointed down the hill to the wide, clear water of thespring creek. A dozen splashes and rings showed feeding fish, and largeones. 

"Oh, yes, " said their hostess, indifferently. "There's a good many ofthem in there. They seem to run around more along toward evening. "

The young sportsmen could not wait for supper. Hurriedly gettingtogether their rods and reels, they soon had leaders and flies ready andwere running down the slope after what bid fair to be rare sport withthe 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 offishing with the fly, and now surely had excellent opportunity topractice it. The trout and grayling were rising in scores, and for halfa mile the surface of the bright water was broken into countless ringsand ripples. Now and then some fish sprang entirely above the water. John and Jesse took the nearer shore, while Rob hurried around over thepole 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; thesebig fellows ought to take it. "

They began to cast, trying to reach the mid-channel, where, over thewhite sand of the channel, the fish were rising most vigorously. All atonce Jesse gave an exclamation. 

"Wow! Look at that, hey?"

His fly had been taken by a great fish which had made for it a dozenfeet away. The rod went up into an arch. Again and again the fishsprang high above the water, four, five, six times, one leap afteranother; and then came a long, steady savage run which carried Jessedown along the bank, following the fish. He had all he could do tomaster the powerful fish, but, keeping on a steady pressure, he at lastgot 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. Healso 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!" Andtruly it was a fine one, for that night it weighed five andthree-quarter pounds. 

"Hurry, John--your turn now!" shouted Jess. "They're the fightingestfish you ever saw. "

John began casting, while Jesse watched, working his fly to where he sawa heavy fish moving. An instant and he struck, the reel screeching asthe 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 thenet under it. 

"My! It's just like a big brook trout, " said he. "I'll bet he'll go overfive pounds. "

"No, " said John, sagely. "That's a Dolly Varden--looks a lot like abrook trout, but look at the blue ring around the red spots. They fightdeep--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 RatPortage. "

They followed down the pond made by the dam, and literally one or otherof the three was all the time playing a fish, and they all ran verylarge. 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 hehad ever taken below the Arctic Circle. 

Uncle Dick's eyes opened very wide. "Well, Billy, " said he, "you've madegood! I never saw so many big trout taken that soon in any water I everknew!"

"They get a lot of feed in that stream, " said Billy. "The watercressholds 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 theyever knew. "

"Oh, maybe they don't run as big as they did, " said Mrs. Culver; "I'veknown several rainbows over ten pounds taken here. One gentleman camefor specimens to mount, and he caught a five-pound rainbow, but hisfriend made him throw it back because it was too little. Then theyfished two days and didn't get any more rainbow at all; they're sosavage, 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 comeshere. "

"How long have you lived here, Mrs. Culver?" asked Billy, that night atthe 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. Thatwas in 1895. He and my husband, Mr. William N. Culver, and Mr. IsaacJacques went up there horseback. They called that Hell Roaring Cañonthen, and I think most folks do yet, though Mr. Brower as a scientificexplorer said he would call it Culver Cañon after that. He did, but hisstory of the exploration never got to be very widely known. I guess theywere the first to get to the head, except Indians. The governmentsurveyors never followed out the river above Upper Red Rock Lake. 

"They made two tries at it. The first time was August 5, 1895. They lefttheir horses and waded up the creek, till they came to a perpendicularrock across the cañon. It was hard going, so they turned back that day. 

"On August 29th they tried it again. They went up Horse Camp Creek andleft their horses at the foot of Hanson Mountain, and took one packhorse and cut across over Hanson Mountain and then went down into theHell Roaring Creek; but they had to leave their pack horse then. Beyondthat they took to the stream bed on foot, and this time they got up ontop and followed the creek to its source. 

"They came back all excited, saying they were the first ever to followthe 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 thatthey found a big saucer-like spot in the round little hole upthere--peaks all around it, like it had sunk down. Well, out of thatcircular marsh the creek comes. That's the head--the utmost source. Thesnow 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 onup over Hanson, and down into Hell Roaring, and beyond where they lefttheir pack horse. We rode almost all the way, and got into that Hole inthe Mountains, as Mr. Brower calls the depressed valley up on top. Butwe rode on clear past it, three miles, and found the creek plain thatfar. 

"Almost up to the top of the divide, the creek turns northeast. It comesout from under a big black rock, near a clump of balsam--like my springhere, only not so big. Mr. Brower and Mr. Culver had marked a rock andput down a copper plate for their discovery. I had a tin plate, and Iscratched my name and the date on that. There wasn't any mark of anyoneelse 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 thereal upper spring of the Missouri River. 

"Now here I am, all alone in the world, as you see. Would you like tosee my pressed flowers and my other things?"

The young explorers looked at the tiny, thin little old lady withreverence, and did not say anything for a long time, before they beganto 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 cañon all the way, maybe. Do you think youcould get up over the mountain, the way we did?"

"You don't know these boys, " remarked Uncle Dick to her. "They're oldmountain 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. Buton 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 herenow. "

"All right. To-morrow we'll outfit for the climb. "

"Well, I rode all the way. Now you go on the shoulder of this mountainback of us, above the spring, and work up the best you can, but keepyour eye on Jefferson. Get up right high, before you head across to thecañon of the Missouri, so you can be above the high cliff that youcan't get over in the bed of the stream. Then you go down in the cañonand cross, best you can, and then ride up on the far side, and then workoff 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 platethere, I guess, with my name and date. 

"I'm glad you had some good fishing here. We'll have some of your troutfor breakfast. The feather beds are made from wild-goose and duckfeathers. 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 crowningexperience of their long quest for the head of the great Missouri. Billybrought up the horses from the ranch below. The chauffeur from Monidasaid he "had not lost any mountains" and preferred not to make theascent, so only five were in the party, Billy, of course, insisting onseeing the head of the river, in which he had had such interest all hislife. 

They took one pack horse, a few cooking implements, and such blankets astheir hostess could spare, their own bed rolls and most of theirequipment having gone back to Billy's ranch by his pack train. Theirsupply of food was only enough for two meals--supper and breakfast--butthis gave them two days for the ascent, whereas Mrs. Culver had made itin one; so they felt sure of success. 

Well used to mountain work, and guided by a good engineer, their UncleDick, who had spent his life in work among wild countries, they woundeasily in and among the shoulders of the hills, taking distance ratherthan sharp elevation, and so gradually and without strain to the horsesworking up the mountain that lay at one side of Mount Jefferson. Whenthey were well up, they followed a long hogback that swung a little tothe left, and at length turned for their deliberate plunge down into thesteep valley of the stream. Here, among heavy tracts of fallen timberand countless tumbled rocks, they came at last to the white water oftheir 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 rightnow. This must be a good way above the place Brower and Culver lefttheir horse. We're up seventy-six hundred and forty feet now by theaneroid. The valley is around seven thousand feet, and Brower makes thesummit at eight thousand feet; so we've not so far to go now. We crossedabove the upper Red Rock Lake, and Brower makes the whole distance, along the longest branch, only twenty miles from the head spring to thelake. A mile or two should put us at the edge of the Hole in theMountains, as he calls his upper valley. What do you say--shall weleave 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 badto split an outfit, and bad to get away from your base of supplies. I'dsay keep to the horses as high as they can get. A good mountain horsecan go almost any place a man can, if you leave him alone. If it getshard to ride, we can walk and lead, or drive them ahead of us over thedown timber. "

"And then, if we get them up to the Hole, we could camp up in there allnight, " 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 abovethe trout line, up here, and not far to go to timber line, if you askme. "

"Not so bad as that, Billy, " commented Jesse. "Nine thousand, ninety-five hundred--isn't that about average timber line? We're onlyeight thousand at our upper valley, and we're not going to climb to thetop of the peaks. "

"Well, I'm game if you all are, " said Billy. "We can make it through forone night, all right, for when the firewood runs out we can make campand finish on foot. "

"Go on ahead, Jesse, " said Uncle Dick. "You're the youngest. Let's seehow good a mountain man you are. "

"All right!" said Jesse, stoutly. "You see. " Accordingly, they rode onup, slowly, for a little distance, allowing the horses plenty of time tomake their way among rocks and over fallen poles. At last Jesse came toa halt and dismounted, leading his horse for a way, until he brought upat the foot of such a tangle of down timber and piled boulders that hecould 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 patchof heavy down timber. Then he turned and swung up above the bed of thestream, angling up on the side of the mountain, and finally headingclose to the foot of a tall escarpment which barred the horses for away. Here he hugged the cut face for a few yards and by good fortunefound the way passable beyond for quite a distance. 

"Not bad, " said his leader. "Go on. I see you've got the idea ofdistance 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 allthe way across?" scoffed Uncle Dick. "Go ahead, and if we have to getdown 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 longersee the exact course. At last he pulled up. "We must have climbed threehundred 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. "ButI should think we might angle down a little now, because we're going upthe wrong split. It's two-thirty o'clock, now, and we ought to raise theHole 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 waythrough the hard going until at last they stood, at the left and abovethe 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 beenlooking for! Yonder's the thread of the water, headed for New Orleansand the last jetty of the Mississippi. What's your pleasure now?"

"Well, sir, " said Rob, who had for some time been afoot, leading his ownhorse and driving the pack horse ahead, "why not throw off here andfinish her on foot, to the clean head, where Mrs. Culver left her tinplate? Here's a trickle of water and enough wood for fire, and thehorses 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 loseour horses, especially if we halter them all tight till we get back. "

They now all dismounted and made their animals fast to the trees andstout bushes, first unlashing the pack. 

"Good work, Billy!" said Rob, as he helped cast off the lash rope. "Shehasn't slipped an inch. "

"More'n I can say, " rejoined Billy. "I slipped a good many times, comingup, and barked my shins more'n an inch, I'm thinking. "

"Lead off, Jess, " said Uncle Dick, as they stood ready for the lastmarch. "No, don't leave your coat; it will soon be cold, and it isalways cold in the mountains when you stop walking. And you all haveyour match boxes?"

"Why, Uncle Dick, " expostulated Jesse, "it's just over there, and wewon't need any fire there, for we're coming right back. "

"But, Jesse, haven't I told you always in new country to travel withmatches and a hatchet, or at least a knife? No man can tell when he mayget 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, butyou can't always do that, and matches are surer and quicker. Never leavethem. "

They set out, their leader now in advance, Billy bringing up the rear. Skirting the edge of the marshlike depression which acted as a holdingcup for the upper snows, they at last headed it and caught the ultimatetrickle that came in beyond it. This, following the example of theirlate hostess, they rapidly ascended, until at last, by a clump of darkbalsam trees, high up toward the white top of Jefferson, where a lightsnow had fallen not long before, even in the summertime, they picked outthe dark rock from under which a tiny thread of water, icy cold andsufficiently continuous to be called perennial, issued and began its wayto 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 inthat wild, remote, silent and sheltered spot, unknown and unnoted of thebusy world, which now they knew was the very head spring of the greatestwaterway of all the world. 

"'Shun!" barked Uncle Dick. The three boys fell into line, heelstogether, in the position of the soldier, Billy following suit. UncleDick drew from his pocket a tiny, folded flag, no more than four or fiveinches in its longest dimension, and pinned it on a twig which he placedupright at the side of the spring. 

"Colors!" Sharply Uncle Dick's hand swept to his eyes, in the armysalute. And the hand of every one of the others followed. Then, withswung hat, Rob led them with the Scouts' cheer. 

"Let's look for the Culver plate now!" exclaimed Jesse, and scrambled onhands and knees. Indeed, he did unearth the rusted fragments of whatmight have been the original record plate, but small trace now remainedof any inscription. With some pride he next drew out from his shirtfront a plate which he himself had concealed thus long, brought for apurpose 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. Wehave discovered nothing at all, except one Indian arrowhead a hundredmiles 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 willbe here unchanged after the last President of the United States shallhave passed on. 

"Let old Mount Jefferson have his own secret still for his own--see howhe wipes out all traces of human beings, steadily and surely!

"In all their great journey across, Meriwether Lewis did not once writehis name on rock or tree. Will Clark wrote his twice--once on Pompey'sPillar, on the Yellowstone, and once on the rock far down in Nebraska, as we noted when we passed near that place. But the simplicity, themodesty of those two, sinking everything in their great duty to theircountry--it's those things, my boys, which make their _Journal_ themodel of its kind and class, and their journey the greatest of its kindin all the history of the world. 

"Now hats off to Captain Meriwether Lewis and Captain William Clark ofthe army! Had they come where we are now, they would not have reachedthe 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 onJesse's shoulder as he saw tears in his eyes. 

"It's all right, son, " said he. "Don't mind, but don't forget. Good mencome and go; it's good deeds that live. Now, we're by no means first atthis spot, and it's of no vast consequence now. We'll even let ourlittle flag flutter here alone, till the snows come, and the slides giveit 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 quicklywent to work to find grass and wood. All bore a hand. They got up allthe dry wood they could find, cut stakes for a back log pile of greenlogs, spread the half of a quilt back of their slim bed, and so preparedto pass a night which they found very long and cold. Their supper nowwas cooked, and before the small but efficient fire they now couldcomplete the labors of their own day--each boy with his notes, and Johnwith the map which he always brought up each day at least in sketchoutline. 

"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 thecañon. I heard that a man and his wife once climbed up the cañon, but Idoubt that. There's Bill Bowers, from the head of Henry's Lake, he'sbeen up to the top, but I don't know just how far--he said you couldn'tfollow the cañon all the way. I don't doubt that prospectors and huntershave been across here, and the Bannacks hunted these mountains forsheep, many a year. Used to be great bighorn country, and of course, ifthis country never was known by anybody, the bighorns would still behere. There's stories that there's a few in back, but I don't believeit. 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 traveledover, all right, by now. Only, they couldn't carry off the old river. Ifthey could, I guess they'd have done that, too. "

That night the stars came out astonishingly brilliant and large. Thesilence of the great hills was unbroken even by a coyote's howl. To themall, half dozing by their little fire, it did indeed seem they had foundtheir ultimate wilderness, after all. 

The chill of morning still was over all the high country when they gotastir and began to care for the horses on their picket ropes and tofinish the cooking of their remaining food. Then, each now leading hishorse, they began to thread their way downhill. Over country where nowthey had established the general courses, it was easier for such goodmountain travelers to pick out a feasible way down. They crossed thecañon at about the same place, but swung off more to the right, andearly in the morning were descending a timbered slope which brought themto the edge of the Alaska Basin and the Red Rock road. They now were onperfect footing and not far from the Culver camp, so they took plenty oftime. 

"The name 'Culver Cañon' did not seem to stick, " said Billy, as theymarked the gorge where the river debouched, far to their right, now. "Idon't know what the surveyors call it--they never have done much over inhere but guess at things mostly--but the name 'Hell Roaring Cañon' isthe one that I've always heard used for it. It's not much known evennow. A few people call it the 'real head of the Missouri, ' but nobody inhere seems to know much about its history, or to care much about it. They all just say it's a mighty rough cañon, up in. Somehow, too, theplace has a bad name for storms. I've heard a rancher say, over east ofthe pass, on Henry's Lake, that in the winter it got black over in hereon Jefferson, and he couldn't sleep at night, sometimes, because of thenoise of the storms over in these cañons. Oh, I reckon she's wild, allright. 

"Now, below the mouth, you'll see all the names are off. Hell Roaringbreaks into four channels just at the mouth, over the wash. Fact is, there's seven channels across the valley, in all, but four creeks arepermanent, and they wander all out yonder, clean across the valley, butcome together below, above the upper lake; and that's the head of theRed 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 asbright as glass, fast and clean, and not too deep to wade, with bendsand willow coves on below--loveliest creeks you ever saw. Then, overacross, is a creek where Jim Blair, a rancher, planted regular brooktrout, years ago. They get to a half pound, three quarters, and takethe fly like gentlemen. But all this country's shot to piecesnow--automobiles everywhere, and all sorts of men who kill the last fishthey can. "

"But have they got them all?" asked Rob. "It would be easy planting andkeeping up such waters as these. "

"Sure it would. Well, maybe some day folks'll learn that the old timesin their country are gone. We act like they wasn't, but that's becausewe've got no sense--don't know our history. 

"Now, " he added, as they forded one bright, merry stream that crossedtheir way, "you all ride down the road to where the bridge is--that'sthe 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 orso. I see a dry quaking asp lying here that some fellow has left, andI'll just try it myself. You know, get a quaking-asp pole that's dryand hasn't been dead too long, it's the lightest and springiest naturalfishing 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 myhorse 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 theparty picketed the horses on a pleasant grass plat near the road. Robwent exploring for a little way, then, without saying anything, began toget together some dry wood for a fire, and also began cutting some shortwillow 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 troutin this water, and grayling, too. Do you see that grayling between thebridge there, over the white bar? I've been watching him rise. So, bythe time we get a broiling fire, maybe Rob'll have need for hisskewers--to hold a fish flat for broiling before a fire, in the 'oldway' we learned in the far North. Eh, Rob?"

"That's the way I figured it, sir, " replied Rob, smiling. "Billy'll getsomething on hoppers, at this season, for that's what the trout andgrayling are feeding on, right now. "

Sure enough, in not much over a half hour, Billy and Jesse met them atthe bridge, with five fine fish--two grayling and three trout--Jessevery much excited. 

"All you have to do is just to sneak up and drop a hopper right in thedeep 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 andskewer them flat, without scaling them at all. Then they hung thembefore the fire, flesh side to the flame, and soon they were sizzling intheir own fat. 

"Now, you can't put them on a plate, Billy!" said Jesse, as Billy begansearching in the pack. "Just some salt--that's all. You have to eat itright off the skin, you know. "

"Well, that ain't no way to eat, " grumbled Billy. "It's awfulmussy-looking, to my way of thinking. "

"Try it, " said Uncle Dick, whittling himself a little fork out of awillow branch. And very soon Billy also was a believer that the 'oldway' of the Arctic Indians is about the best way to cook a fish. 

Now, having appeased their hunger, they saddled again and made their wayslowly to the ranch of Mrs. Culver at the Picnic Spring, as the placewas called--in time for Jesse and John each to catch a brace of greattrout before dusk had come. 

They now were all willing to vote their experience of the past two daysto 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, coveredwith maps and books. 

"I surely will be sorry to see you leave, " said the quaint little womanof the high country. "It's not often I see many who know any history ofthe big river, or who care for it. But now I can see that you all surelydo. You know it, and you love it, too. "

"If you know it well, you can't well help loving it, I reckon, " saidBilly Williams. 

CHAPTER XXX

SPORTING PLANS

"Let's see, Rob--what day of the month is this?" began John, thefollowing morning, when, their bills for the horses and themselves alldischarged and their motor car purring at the gate, they bade farewellto their interesting friend and prepared to head eastward once more. 

"Well, " said Rob, "we were at the Three Forks on July 27th, and we spenta week getting to the Shoshoni Cove--that's August 4th; and we left onAugust 5th, and got to Monida August 6th, and came here that day; andday before yesterday was the 7th, and we came down the mountainyesterday, the 8th; this must be about August 9th, I suppose. "

"That's right, " said Uncle Dick; "giving us a full week or even more ifwe want it, to explore the Madison Fork, which is another head of thebig 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 headof Henry's Lake, and in a day or so we'll pick up Billy's car there andbe on our way, with a camp outfit of our own again. "

Their journey over the clean, hard road around the rim of the wideAlaska Basin was one of delight. They sped down the farther slope of theRed Rock Pass, along the bright waters of Duck Creek, until early in theafternoon they raised the wide and pleasing view of Henry's Lake, one ofthe most beautiful valleys of the Rockies. Around this the road led themcomfortably enough to the cluster of log cabins and tents which was nowto 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 hedrove hard. Soon they all were made comfortable in the cabins of this"dude ranch, " as the Western people call any place where tourists aretaken in for pay. 

The proprietor of this place was an old-time settler who could rememberthe days of buffalo and beaver in this country, and who told themmarvelous tales of the enormous number of trout in the lake. 

"Go down to the landing, below the tamarack swamp, " said he, "and get aboat and just push out over the moss a little way. Off to the rightyou'll see a stake sticking up in the water. Drop your anchor a littleway from it and cast that way; it marks a spring, or cold hole, and theylie in there. "

The three boys did as advised, and to their great surprise began tocatch trout after trout as they cast their flies toward the indicatedspot. They all were about the same size, just under two pounds, allnative or cutthroat trout. They soon tired of it, and returned nearlyall 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 thoughdead, but if touched with the end of the landing-net handle wouldrecover and swiftly dart away. 

"From all I learn, " said Rob, "this fishing is too easy to be calledsport--they lie in all the spring holes and creek mouths. This is thehead of the Henry's Fork of the Snake River, and a great spawningground. Now, you want to remember you're not on Missouri waters, butPacific waters. If Lewis and Clark had come over that shallow gapyonder--the Raynolds Pass, which cuts off the Madison Valley--they'dhave been on one of the true heads of the Columbia. But they probablynever would have got through, that year, at least. "

The young anglers found that their catch of trout created no enthusiasmat the camp. The cook told them that he didn't care for these troutvery much, because you had to soak them overnight in salt and water tomake them fit to eat, they tasted so muddy in the summertime. So theysaid they would not fish any more at that place. 

That evening as they sat about their table engaged with their maps andnotebooks, they were joined by Jim, the son of the rancher, a young manstill in the half uniform of the returned soldier, with whom they allrapidly made friends, the more so since he proved very well posted inthe geography of that part of the country. He readily agreed to take theyoung explorers on a trip over the Raynolds Pass on the followingmorning, so that they might get a better idea of the exact situation ofthe Madison River. 

They made an early start, leaving their Uncle Dick and Billy Williams atthe ranch to employ themselves as they liked. It was a drive of only afew 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. Theyoung ranchman pulled up the car at last and pointed to an iron plugdriven down into the ground. 

"Here's the Divide, " said he. "You now are on top of the RockyMountains, 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 thisany way you look. She's only six thousand nine hundred and eleven feethere. There are snow-topped mountains on every side of you. Where we areright now is the upper line of the state of Idaho. Idaho sticks up inhere 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 andIdaho. Four feet that way we are on Idaho ground, but there's Montanaeast of us, north of us, and west of us. 

"Over southwest, where you came over the Red Rock Pass, is the head ofthe Missouri. On north of here is the Madison River; it comes in, running northwest out of the upper corner of Yellowstone Park. We coulddrive down there in a little while to the mouth of the West Fork, but Ithink we can get better fishing somewhere else. 

"If we went on, an hour or so, we would come to the mouth of the MadisonCañon. Up toward the head of that is the big power dam--ninety feethigh 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 isseventy 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, thereis great sport there. I don't call it sport to fish for trout under thatbig dam. They jump and jump there, day after day, until they wearthemselves out. There ought to be a ladder in that dam, but thereisn't. "

"I suppose here is where the road comes down from Three Forks, over thisRaynold's Pass, " said John, with pencil in hand, ready to continue hisown personal map of the country. 

"No, not exactly, " continued the young ranchman. "This road runs up toVirginia City. They tell me that between there and Three Forks the roadsare hard to get over. "

"But they come down here from Butte, don't they?" inquired Rob. "Ithought this was right on the Butte road. "

"No, the best road to Butte comes in over Red Rock Pass just exactlywhere you came in yourselves. Only it runs along to the north side ofthe Centennial Valley and not on the south side, where you came in. Theyhave to follow up the Red Rock Valley to Dillon, where it comes in fromthe north. That's the quickest and easiest way to get between Butte andHenry's Lake. It is something over a hundred miles. "

"Well, anyway, " argued John, "this is the way Billy Williams will havehis car come in from Bozeman. "

"No, " smiled the young man, "you are wrong again on that. The Bozemanroad cannot come down the Gallatin, and through to here, south of theThree Forks. When we come over to the edge of Yellowstone Park I willshow you how the road runs to Bozeman. It angles in north, to the eastof the South Fork of the Madison. Then it crosses the main river andswings off to the northeast, and then north up to Bozeman, in the valleyof the Gallatin River. "

"Well, " said Rob, turning to his younger associates, "that seems to giveus a pretty good look in at this whole proposition of the MissouriRiver. We have been on the head of the Jefferson Fork; we are goingfishing on the South Fork of the Madison and motor to the head of theNorth Fork, inside of Yellowstone Park, if we wanted to; and then we aregoing on up to the Gallatin and maybe east on that to its head in theBozeman Pass. In that way we would be covering all three of the greattributaries. "

"Yes, and be having some pretty good sport besides, " said the youngranchman. "I will promise you, if you don't like this lake fishing--Idon't much care for it myself--we will make up a party and go over andcamp out on the South Fork of the Madison as soon as your car comes infrom Bozeman. I will take my car over, too, and we'll pick up a youngchap about your age, Mr. Rob, at one of the ranches below. His name isChester Ellicott, and he's descended from the Andrew Ellicott ofPennsylvania, who taught astronomy to Meriwether Lewis. 

"Then we can spend a couple of days or so over there on what I think isthe finest fishing river in the world. You will still be right on yourroad to Bozeman and the Gallatin, because you will then be only aboutsix or eight miles from the town of Yellowstone, and near where theBozeman road comes in. "

"That certainly does sound mighty good to me, " said Jesse. "I haven'tcaught a fish now for a couple of days, except those we caught at thelake this afternoon. There were so many of them, it was too easy. "

"Well, " said their new companion, "you won't find catching grayling onthe South Fork quite so easy as all that. I always liked stream fishingmyself better than lake fishing. "

"Do we wade over there, in that stream?" asked Rob. "We haven't got ourwaders along, ourselves, not even rubber boots. "

"We'll fix you up somehow at the place, " responded the other. "Myfriends in here have all got waders. You could fish from the banks, butit is better to have waders, so you can cross once in a while. There areholes in there ten or fifteen feet deep, and I will show you two orthree hundred grayling and white fish on the bottom of some of thoseholes. The water is clear as air, and just about as cold as ice. Youcouldn't have come at a better time for fishing, because thegrasshoppers are on now and even the whitefish are feeding on thesurface. "

"I wish Billy's man would hurry up with the car, " complained Jesse. "Hesaid to be down here in about a week. We might have to wait an extraday. "

"Well, out here, " smiled his new-found friend, "we don't mind waiting aday or so, but I suppose you folks from back in the East get in more ofa 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 cañon, where the young rancher thought the fishing would not be so much worthwhile. To their great surprise, they found yet another car waiting forthem at the camp--none less than Billy Williams's car, with all theircamp outfit. This had been brought down from Bozeman by Con O'Brien, oneof Billy's neighbors in the Gallatin, as they learned when they had hadtime to make inquiries. 

"Well, that's what I call fast work!" said John, after they had shakenhands all round. "Here's our bed rolls and everything, all waiting forus! Yet we have been two hundred miles from them on one side of thecircle, and they've been around two or three hundred miles on the otherside. "

"Well, the pack train came in from Dillon early yesterday morning, " saidCon, "and I already had Billy's message. So I just unpacked old Sleepyand 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 gooddeal 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 figureit. Anyhow, here we are and ready for any sort of frolic you want toname. If I had started a little earlier, I would have been in here lastnight. But I was fixing up a tire at Yellowstone, so I just thought Iwould sleep there last night and come out in the morning early. "

"What shall we do, young gentlemen, " asked Uncle Dick. "The day is stillyoung. "

"Well, " said Rob, "I am for heading right back to the South Fork of theMadison 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 theirluncheon, they said good-by to the obliging ranchman, whose son, as hehad promised, now accompanied them in his own car. In the course of anhour they had picked up the latter's friend from his ranch at the footof the Lake and soon were speeding rapidly eastward over the TargheePass--once more leaving Idaho and going into the state of Montana; aproposition which they now from their maps could easily understand. Theytraced out carefully the great southward swing of the ContinentalDivide which comes through the Yellowstone Park, bends around over tothe south, thence swings north and west, making the great mountainpocket which holds all the headwaters of the Missouri River. 

Both cars halted at the summit of a hill before they swung down into thevalley of the South Fork. The view which lay before them was one ofextreme beauty. The sky was very clear and blue, with countless cleanwhite clouds. Over to the left rose great ragged mountain peaks, on someof which snow still was to be seen. On ahead stretched the road leadinginto Yellowstone Park. On the further side of the valley, where thewinding willow growth showed the course of the stream, rose a blackforest ridge stretching indefinitely eastward toward the waters of themain Madison. 

Not even Uncle Dick, experienced traveler that he was, could suppress anexclamation of surprise at the beauty of the scene. 

"I never get tired of it. Do you, Chet?" said young Bowers to his ranchfriend. 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 asthere used to be. The big fall migration that came down the Madison andGrayling Creek used to come out the northwest corner of the Park morethan it does now. I have seen lots of grouse all through here, and ifyou could wait until the season opened we would have some fun, for Ihave a fine old dog. But since game is getting scarcer now, maybe we hadbetter just content ourselves with the fishing. I promise you goodsport--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 roadforked off for the Yellowstone Park, the two cars passed on to thenorthward, through two or three gates of wire fences inclosing a ranchthat lay in the valley. They found the ranchman himself at home, andmost courteous and obliging. He insisted they should camp near his houseand 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 soonwould ruin all the fishing here as they have almost everywhere else, butI have no desire to keep off decent fishermen like yourselves; and Iknow the young men who are with you now. 

"You are just in time for the evening rise. I was over and picked out acouple for breakfast just now. If I were in your place I would gostraight across and then work up the stream a little way, to some bigholes 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 streampretty much all the time, but you can fish from the bank if you arepatient. Toward dusk there will be fish enough rising from almost anyone hole to give you all the fishing you will like. 

"I think you will find a very small gray hackle will be good. Sometimesthey take the Professor. Just the other day a man came down here with alittle Silver Doctor fly, and they couldn't keep away from it. Sometimesthey take Queen of the Waters--dressed long, like a grasshopper--in thebright time of the day. If they take little flies in the evening, thenyou use little flies, too. There are certainly plenty of the graylingthere. "

On any stream but this the number of rods now present would have spoiledthe sport for some one, but so extensive was the good fishing water thatthere was room enough for all six of those who intended to fish--Billysaid he would go along and carry the basket for Jesse, and Con O'Brienlaughed at the idea of fishing, as he had already had so much thatsummer; so he went with Uncle Dick. They broke into three parties, oneeach of the men going along with one of the young anglers, althoughChet and his friend were so used to the stream that they needed noadvice. These two for a time did not fish at all, but showed thenewcomers how and where the sport would be found. 

The prediction of the rancher was more than verified. The day had beenwarm, and now, as the cool of the evening came, the grayling began torise. At the heads of the bluffs where the current swept in they couldbe seen breaking almost continually, taking in some small floatinginsects. Inside of a few minutes each of the anglers was fast to a finefish; and after that one strike after another followed fast and furious. 

"You will have to be careful, son, " said Billy Williams to Jesse, whohad raised three fine grayling and lost them all. "The mouth of agrayling 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 streamhe pulls like a ton. After a while he will begin to go deep; then youwant to lift him gently all the time, until in a few minutes you can getthe net under him. I would rather fish grayling than trout, althoughsome think trout fishing is more fun. 

"Now look at that fellow jumping over there under the bushes. He'srising right in the same place. You walk around there at that littlesand 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 flyjust short of the bushes, so that it floated down directly over therising fish. 

There came a sudden splash and an excited shout from Jesse. "I've gothim!" exclaimed he. 

"Maybe so, " said Billy. "You had them other three, too, but you didn'tget them in the basket. Now you go easy, young man, and put this onewhere I can get my hands on him. "

Thus warned, Jesse played the fish gently and carefully, allowing it torun down into the deep water, but keeping his rod tip up all the timeand giving line when the fish surged too hard with the current. Afterseveral minutes of careful work Billy waded in knee deep and slipped thelanding 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. Ofcourse, I have caught them up North on the Bell River, on the ArcticCircle, 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 onlygrayling stream left in the West. You are on it at the right time of theyear 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 morethan half a dozen, Uncle Dick would give us a good calling down. "

"Well, that's right enough, too, " said Billy. "The state limit is twentypounds a day, but that's too high. If everybody got twenty pounds theywould soon all be gone. Yet on the spawning run above, on the stream uphere, I have seen fellows stand on the bank and snake out strings ofthem as long as a long willow would hold. I have known one man to sayhe had caught ninety grayling out of one hole. Well, that's where theygo. "

They wandered along slowly in the late afternoon, passing around onewillow plant to the next, usually fishing at some place where the grassymeadow 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 elsewould. But if you have got enough, let's go back to camp. We have got tofeed ourselves, of course, and give plenty to the ranchman if he willtake 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 graylingfrying, with enough and to spare for all, since Rob had taken a halfdozen fish, Uncle Dick as many, and John had come in with seven--one ofthem rather small, as he explained it. The two young ranchmen hadbaskets equally heavy, for, as they explained, they had neighbors whodid not like to eat the Henry's Lake trout, but preferred grayling, sothey 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 forBozeman. That means two nights in camp, which will bring us into Bozemanjust past the middle of the month, with our summer's job pretty wellwhipped. "

"Which way are we going from Billy's, Uncle Dick?" demanded Jesse, withhis usual curiosity. 

"Not yet decided, " replied the other. "Wait until we get up there. Westill have a little work to do in studying out the return trip ofMeriwether Lewis and William Clark in the summer of 1806. "

That night they had what John called a map party on the table in thefriendly ranchman's home. He and the two young Westerners joined themall 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 knowbefore. Some things in here I didn't know before, myself. "

"It's much pleasanter, " said Rob, "to follow out a country on the groundthan 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 youuntil you have followed it out on the ground. Just look here, forinstance, at the great crooked sweep of the Continental Divide. Yet herewe have crossed three passes over the Continental Divide within the lastthree days--Red Rock, Raynolds, and Targhee--and the Targhee divides theMadison, which is Atlantic water, from Henry's Lake, which is Pacificwater. "

"Yes, " nodded Uncle Dick. "There are not many more interestingcountries, geographically speaking, than this right where we are, at thehead of the great river. Lewis and Clark crossed the Rocky MountainDivide seven times, at six different places--up North there. Theycrossed the Lemhi Pass, both of them. Then they crossed the Divide twicemore 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 thepass over to the north, alone, and that ought to be called his pass. AndClark came down to the Gallatin and crossed that pass alone to theYellowstone waters. Yet their names are on almost none of the greatpasses and great rivers which they found. Soon they will have passed. "

One more day of beautiful sport on the crystal stream that ran throughthe beautiful valley, and the pleasant party of new-made friends metaround the camp fire for the last time. 

"I have got to get back for my haying, " said Chet, who had provedhimself a fine angler as well as a good companion. 

"The same for me, " added the young rancher from the head of the lake. Soit 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 almoststraight in the still air of a clear summer day as their party sataround their last breakfast. Although not actually at the end of theirjourney, they felt that now they were heading away from theseinteresting 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 addedturning 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-lookingarrowhead which he had found at the Beaverhead Rock over to thenorthward, 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 theyare used to seeing cars in the Park with bundles tied all over therunning boards. Now I move you that we go over to Yellowstone and gointo the Park as far as the forks of the Gibbon and the Madison, andleave our stuff there for our camp, with Con to take charge of it andmake 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 asthe Obsidian Cliff. I shall show you there, Jesse, the whole face of amountain of this same black glass, as you call it. And that mountain, assure as you live, was known by all the Indians for hundreds of milesaround here. It was just like the great Red Pipestone quarries ofMinnesota. 

"Now you begin to see something about exploring and getting acrosscountry. You found that arrowhead on the hunting ground of the Shoshonisand the Bannacks. Those people hunted clear down across the lower end ofwhat 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 TargheePass, and up the Madison and the Gibbon, to this place where they getthe heads for their arrows. 

"How did they know? Who found it first? Nobody can answer thosequestions. But one great truth about white explorations on thisContinent you must know--there was not one great pass, not one greatriver, not one great natural scenic feature, which was not known to oneor more Indian tribes centuries before the white men came. So after all, we as explorers are not so much. Frémont was not much of an explorer, much as you reverence him. Even Lewis and Clark had been preceded in allthis country by the Indian girl and her people. And those people hadbeen every place that we have been--and even as far as Yellowstone Parkand into its interior as far as the Obsidian Cliff. There is no doubt orquestion about that, although it is quite true that obsidian was foundin other volcanic regions of different parts of the West. 

"Jesse, your arrowhead has been a long way from home! Are you going totake it back? Has it served its purpose in teaching you something aboutyour own country?"

Jesse sat silent for a time, then, "Uncle Dick, " said he, at last, "I amgoing to take my arrowhead back. When we get to that rock you tellabout, 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. Isuppose your arrowhead will remain there undiscovered for a thousandyears. The tourists who come there now in their touring cars look atthat black-faced rock about half a second and whiz by. They want to makethe next lunch station. "

"That's no lie, " said Billy Williams. "Folks nowadays don't know how totravel. "

They concluded their packing arrangements, rolling their bed rolls tightand 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. Sayinggood-by to their hospitable friends, the two parties now separated. 

Without incident the journey of that day was completed as outlined bytheir leader, and that night they spread their tent in a public campingground on the banks of the Madison River, in sight of twenty other tentsbesides their own. 

"Nothing much here of interest, " said Uncle Dick, "except yondermountains. 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 theHayden, Doane, and Langford exploring party camped when they were goingout in 1871 after finishing the first exploration of Yellowstone Park. It was right here, at this camping place, that Cornelius Hedges, one oftheir number, proposed the establishment of the Yellowstone Park, sothat all of this wonderland should be preserved forever. "

"Well, " said Rob, drawing a long breath, "we are getting into somehistory now around here!"

But they talked no more history at the time, for by now all were wearywith the journey. As early as the next their camp fire was alight thefollowing morning. Billy took Jesse up to Gibbon and across to theObsidian Cliff, where he carried out his intention, and hid his obsidianarrowhead at the foot of the great rock. "There!" said he, "I'll bet, ifanybody finds it, he'll wonder who made it!"

Soon they were on their way back to Yellowstone Station on the Bozemanroad. Following it out, under Con O'Brien's steady driving, and asking ahundred questions of Billy en route, they finally swept down late in theevening into the beautiful valley of the Gallatin. Winding among thefarms, they pulled up at last at Billy Williams's comfortable ranchhouse and soon were made at home. 

"Here we are, fellows, east of the Three Forks of the Missouri, " saidUncle Dick, when they had gotten out their maps for that evening'sstudy. "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 theexplorers were going east, as we saw before, Clark came down to theShoshoni 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 Indiangirl, Sacágawea. Besides the Indian woman and her child, he had elevenmen and fifty horses. Ordway, as we have seen, had taken nine men andstarted downstream with the boats. No one knew this country except theIndian 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 Bozemanand the Bridger and the Flathead. The Indian girl told them to take theone farthest south, which is Bozeman Pass. 

"The books say that on July 13th Clark camped just where the town ofLogan is, in the Gallatin Valley. They say he followed southeast fromthere and crossed Bozeman Creek near this town. The Indian girl knewthere was a buffalo road there, and they stuck to that. Good authoritiesthink that they camped, July 14th, near where old Fort Ellis afterwardwas located. That's across the East Gallatin. There is an easy passthere, and there is no doubt at all that the Indian girl led Clarkthrough that easiest pass, which the Indians would be sure to find whengoing between their hunting ranges. 

"Of course, old man Bozeman did not come in here until the miningstrikes, 1863 or 1864. He was a freighter and knew this country, although he didn't know it well enough to keep from getting killed bythe Indians. 

"Up the Gallatin, too, " went on Billy, "is where they say John Colterran after he got away from the Blackfeet. He didn't have any clothes onto speak of even then--he sure traveled light. But, anyhow, he lived todiscover Yellowstone Park, or part of it, and to tell a lot of storieswhich everybody said were lies. "

"Can we see much of the trail, if we go over with the pack train?" askedRob. 

"Not so very much, " said Billy. "Even the old road is wiped out, nowthat the railroad has come. In some places you can find where the trailonce ran, or is supposed to have run, but you have to go by the generallandmarks now. 

"When you come to the central ridge beyond old Ellis, you get the lastsummit between here and Yellowstone waters. The tunnel runs under thatnow. The railroad books say that is fifty-five hundred and sixty-fivefeet--the highest of the three northern transcontinental passes. 

"So you can figure now, I reckon, " he concluded, "that you are mightynear at the head of the Gallatin, a day's march from here. And if youwant to, you can take the railroad in town, all the way down theYellowstone and clean on home to Chicago or St. Louis, without gettingoff 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 gotClark and eleven people here on the Gallatin, and Captain Lewis is awayup on the Marias, and Gass and Ordway are scattered every which waybetween 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 himday 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 ofthat river, part of which is called Hell Gate River, ought to be calledafter Clark. He went up the Hell Gate River, without any guides, but hemust have struck an Indian trail which led him over east. On the fourthday, that is on July 7th, he reached the pass which is called even nowLewis and Clark's Pass--the only pass named after either of thoseexplorers, although only one of them ever saw it. 

"Now, you see, they were opposite the headwaters of the DearbornRiver--the same stream where Clark left the boats and went up the riveron foot when they were going west the preceding year. They knew wherethey 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 tothe old camp and found the _cache_ which they had made there. A goodmany of the things were spoiled in the _cache_, which they had built toolow, so that the high water had flooded it. 

"Now they reached their old friends, the white bears, which were just asferocious as ever. So were the mosquitoes. Lewis dreads these mosquitoesmore 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 atthe Falls. He took with him six horses and had along Drewyer and the twoFields boys--about his best hunters. They left Sergeant Gass fourhorses, so that he could get the boats around the portage as soon asOrdway and the boats came down the Missouri. 

"Now I want you to stop and think how these people were makingconnections, scattered all through this country as they were. On July19th, here came Ordway and his nine men with the canoes! Then theydoubled party again, to portage, and in four days, with the aid of thehorses, they got the stuff all below the Falls. Gass and one man swamthe horses across the river; Ordway and the others took the canoes. Theyall reached the mouth of the Marias River July 28th. By that time, ofcourse, Clark was over on the Yellowstone, having crossed the GallatinPass from here. 

"Now Lewis was on the north side of the river with three men. He knew hewas going up into the Blackfeet country, and he must have knownsomething of the reputation of that tribe. But those men would go almostanywhere. 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 countrywhich you and I can identify--the mouth of Two Medicine Creek, where itmeets the Cutbank, both of which rise in Glacier Park. I've had finefishing up in there. 

"Now they pushed on up north up the Cutbank, forded where the GreatNorthern Railroad is now, and went on five miles beyond that. You see, they were now clear up almost to the northern line of Montana; whereasyou and I have seen them almost to the southern line of Montana. Andlook at all the waterways they had covered!

"This was Lewis's farthest north. Drewyer found out that there wereIndians in that country. Perhaps that accounted for the scarcity of gamethey now felt. They concluded to turn back down the river, and on July26th--which is the day Gass and Ordway finished their portage at theGreat Falls--they headed southeast for the mouth of the Marias, trustingto Providence they would meet their men there and that they wouldeventually meet Clark at the mouth of the Yellowstone. 

"Now when you come to make all these things tally out on the ground, itis quite a proposition, isn't it?"

The boys all looked at him with open eyes, as they followed out on themap the widely separated journeys of the two great chiefs. 

"Very well, " resumed Uncle Dick, "they got down a mile below BadgerCreek, on the Two Medicine River. Now they had the one and onlydangerous encounter with the Indians which any of them met throughoutthe whole two years' trip. It was at that time hostility of theBlackfeet against the whites began. They ran into a bunch of Indians. There were eight of them, who turned out to be the Minnetarees of theNorth, whom they knew to be one of the most dangerous bands of all thatneighborhood. 

"It seemed best to make friends, so they camped with the Indians thatnight and slept in their tents. Toward morning the Indians made theirbreak--seized the guns of all four of the men and started out to stealthe 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, killinghim on the spot. This uproar woke up Drewyer and Lewis, who were in thetepee. Drewyer and Lewis got possession of their rifles. Lewis called tothe Indians to stop running off his horses. These savages showed fight, and Lewis shot one of them through the body, which accounted for two ofthe savages in a few moments. 

"In a very little time longer the four white men had all their campoutfit and four horses belonging to the Indians, although they had lostone of their own horses. They had met their first Indian fight, and gotout of it rather well. 

"Now followed what I suppose was one of the fastest rides ever made onthe Western prairies. Lewis and his men mounted and started hot-foot forthe 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 overtwenty-four hours. 

"We have seen that Gass, Ordway, and the other men were coming down fromthe Falls with the boats. As a matter of fact, they had just rounded thebend, 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 awhole lot of it! Just look where they had been and what they had beenthrough!

"Well, now, part of our men had got together. Lewis and his companionscut loose their horses on the plains. They all hurried into the canoesand dropped down to the mouth of the Marias. Here they abandoned therest of their horses. They dug up the _cache_ which they had left herein the previous year. This _cache_ also was pretty badly damaged, butthey got some stuff out of it. Indeed, some of the _caches_ were in goodcondition, although the big red boat they had left was no longer of anyuse. They stripped her of her iron and set out by canoes, as soon asthey could, because by that time they did not know what the Indianswould be apt to do to them. 

"Now they got down to the mouth of the Milk River on August 4th, andthey reached the mouth of the Yellowstone on August 7th. And there whatdo you suppose they found? Was Clark there ahead of them, or was Lewisto 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 greenstick for a beaver to carry off, either. 

"No, just as if he had stepped to a post-office window and asked for aletter, Lewis found this note awaiting him, telling him Clark had beenthere for several days and would wait for them a few miles down theriver, on the right-hand side. They were at this time making ninetymiles a day--one hundred miles on the last day of their travels. 

"Now it would seem that Clark was taking a good many chances, becauseall he had done was to write a note which might have been lost, and toscratch a few words in the sand which might have been washed out. Butthe 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 whilehunting elk, so that when, on August 12th, he finally overtook CaptainClark, Lewis was lying in his boat, crippled. All through the trip Lewishad had many more dangerous situations and narrow escapes than Clarkhad. 

"In this way, traveling many times faster coming east than they hadgoing west, these two young men, and all of their widely scatteredparties, met in this singular reunion, at no place in particular, without ever having had any reason in particular for hoping they everwould meet at all!

"But they did hope. And they did meet. And if you put it to me as anengineer, young gentlemen, I shall say that was the most extraordinaryinstance of going through unknown country on workmanlike basis I everheard of in all my life! Nor do I think all the world could produce itslike. "

They sat in wondering silence for a time, marveling at the perfectability shown by these young army officers in this formerly wild andunknown country. Uncle Dick closed the pages of his _Journal_, which hehad been following through rapidly, and seemed inclined to talk nofurther. 

"You tell it, Billy!" said Jesse, turning to Billy Williams, who hadbeen 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 July15th, about one month ahead of our date now. He is going east with hisparty. He has got the Indian girl and some horses and some good men. Allright. On July 15th he starts across the Divide, heading for theYellowstone Valley. 

"Naturally, he found that plumb easy. He struck into one of the creeksthat run down into the Yellowstone. It was only nine miles down that tothe Yellowstone River itself, and they hit that just a mile below whereit comes out of the Rockies from up yonder in Yellowstone Park, where weall were only yesterday. 

"Clark had the easiest end of it, in some ways. He said he had to goonly forty-eight miles from the Three Forks to hit the Yellowstone. Ifhe had poled a canoe up the Gallatin, he would not have had to portageover eighteen miles. 

"Those are the distances that Clark estimates, but for once heunderestimates, I don't know why. Wheeler points out that from ThreeForks to Livingston is fifty-four miles, and Clark came down off theDivide at a place just above Livingston. Anyhow, I'll bet he was gladwhen he saw the old Yellowstone Valley. He had horses now, you see, andhe was hitting the trail hard. 

"He went down the north side of the Yellowstone, and by July 17th he wasdown as far as Big Timber and Boulder River. I suppose they would havekept on downstream on horseback, but one of their men, Gibson, gotsnagged in a fall from his horse, so somewhere near the mouth of theStillwater they concluded to make some canoes, so that Gibson could rideby boat. 

"Now, on July 21st, along comes a nice party of Crows and stealstwenty-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 mightyuseful. They built two of them twenty-eight feet long and about two feetin 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 portageat the Great Falls, Clark took to the boats, but he put the rest of thehorses 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 hishorses together. But they joined up somewhere near where Billings isto-day. It was plumb easy getting downstream in the boats, for theYellowstone 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'tgo that fast. 

"On July 25th they got down to a place called Pompey's Pillar, a bigrock that sticks up out of the valley floor. Clark cut his name on thisrock, which is not so far from the railway station they call Pompey'sPillar to-day. The first engineers of the railroad that came up thevalley of the Yellowstone put a double iron screen over Clark'sinscription 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 arethere, but I reckon you could still see the name of William Clark, July25, 1806. It has been photographed, so there is no mistake. 

"Now the _Journal_ says they got at the mouth of the Big Horn River onJuly 26th. That, you know, is the place where Manuel Lisa made histrading post in 1807. So now we are beginning to lap over a lot of datesand a lot of things. 

"Well, the big Custer fight on June 25, 1876, took place not so far fromthe mouth of the Big Horn River. From the time that Lewis and Clark camethrough, up to the time of the railroads and the army posts, the Indianshad kept getting worse. 

"From now on the Clark parties were in the game country, of course. Theboats had all the best of it--except for the mosquitoes, of which Clarkcontinually complained. It was the mosquitoes that drove Clark away fromthe 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 heran into white bears. There was something doing every minute in thosedays. 

"They seemed to have had a trustful way of hoping everything would comeout all right, those fellows. Clark did not know where Lewis was, orOrdway, or Gass, or where Pryor and his men were. Well, the Pryor partydidn't catch up with Clark until August 8th--and they didn't have ahorse to their name!

"You see, three days after they left Clark, near where Billings is, theIndians jumped them once more and stole their last horse. They took alesson from the Indians and made two bull boats, round ones like theMandans used. I don't suppose they liked that kind of traveling, butthey had to do it. Anyhow, it worked, and hard as it is to believe, theymade their way downstream without any serious accident. 

"I don't know whether you call all of this good traveling as much as itwas 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 BigHorn River up across to the mouth of Two Medicine Creek--that's how farClark and Lewis were apart, and they had been apart for considerableover a month. Lewis might have been killed and no one could have knownit 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 theriver 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; andpretty soon, on August 12th, they come on Clark's party landed on theshore of the Missouri; fighting mosquitoes!

"Well, it only took them a couple of days from that time to get to theMandan villages. "

"That's where we left our boat, the _Adventurer_!" exclaimed Jesse. "Nowwhat 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, " saidRob. 

"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 hadabundance of nicely browned trout with fresh eggs, milk, and good bread. 

The young travelers ate in silence, with the presentiment that this wastheir last breakfast on the trail. At length Rob turned to the leader oftheir party with an inquiring look. 

"Well, I'll tell you how I feel, after thinking it over, " said UncleDick. "I know you hate to say good-by to Sleepy and Nigger, not tomention our friend Billy Williams here, who is as good a mountain man asyou 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 takinga pack train for a couple of days from here over to Livingston. There isnot much excitement in taking a train at Bozeman and going over toLivingston and stopping off. 

"Of course, we can go back to the junction and take a train to GreatFalls, if you want to do that. We have left our two outboard motors overthere, not knowing what we might want to do going back. Now we couldhave those motors shipped over to us here, and we could go down to theYellowstone in a skiff, no doubt. Or we could go up to Great Falls andbuy a boat, and run down the Missouri. We'd make mighty good time eitherway, by river. 

"But I somehow feel that we have brought our men out of the expeditionand we have in a way worn the edge off our trip. So what I think we hadbetter 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 byrail. That will put us home about August 20th, or, say, a week longerthan three months out from the mouth of the Missouri. 

"As you know, Lewis and Clark came down the Missouri in jig time. Theyleft the Mandan villages on August 17th. Here Colter had left them andgone back up the Yellowstone with the two white traders, later to becomefamous as the first discoverer of the Yellowstone. Here they leftChaboneau, and the game little Indian woman, his wife Sacágawea. 

"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 gotback 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 theirjournals. Knowing them as we ought to, I rather think they did, but theywere too shy to say much about it. So there at the Mandans we areobliged to leave some of our party. The others all reached St. Louisabout noon on September 23d. 

"What they must have left, how they were received is something which wedo not need to take up now. At least, they were kept busy by theirfriends in St. Louis, be sure of that. 

"And so closed that story of the two great travelers in whose footstepswe have been traveling this summer, my young friends. They did not claimever to be heroes. They did their work simply and quietly, with no bluffand no pretense. I don't believe anyone in all the world to-day canrealize what those men actually did. 

"Perhaps we, who have followed after them, doing in three months as muchas we have, can get a little notion of a part of what their journeymeant, even skipping as we have. But that they have been sufficientlyhonored, or that enough of our Americans really understand what theydid, 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 youngfriends. "He will take care of those buffalo robes forever. We may needthem again, some time, all together. I will telegraph to have theoutboard motors sent down to be fitted on our boat, the _Adventurer_, atMandan. Of course, we could run down the Missouri a hundred or maybe onehundred and fifty miles a day; but as I said to you, that country isgetting old now and the edge of our trip is wearing off. We have beendodging towns and farms long enough. Let's get on the train and gostraight home!"

And so now, after most reluctant farewells to Billy Williams and ConO'Brien, the young explorers, light of luggage, and, indeed, not heavyof heart, after all, changed their transportation that very day to the"medicine wagons, " as the Indians formerly called railway trains, andsoon were speeding eastward out of the Rocky Mountains and across thegreat Plains and Prairies. 

At St. Paul they changed for the train to St. Louis. En route they madeno further reference to their own journals, and even John had ceased hisinterminable work on his handmade maps. The _Journal_, however--thatgreat record of the Lewis and Clark expedition up the Missouri--remainedalways easily accessible; and just before the termination of theirjourney Uncle Dick picked it up once more and called his young friendsaround him. 

"We will soon be in St. Louis now, " said he. "Here is where ourexplorers started out, and here is where they returned. Here is whereWilliam Clark did his great work as the first Indian Commissioner. Hereis where poor Meriwether Lewis started east, three years after he hadfinished his great journey, and met his tragic death in the forests ofTennessee. No one will know what that man thought. Perhaps even then hewas pondering on the ingratitude of republics. 

"But here is one thing which I wish every admirer of Lewis and Clarkwould read and remember--you can remember it, young friends, if youplease. It is what Meriwether Lewis wrote, out there in the mountainsnear the Continental Divide, when he made up his _Journal_ on theevening of his birthday. Write it down, boys, just as he wrote it, illspelling and all, so that you may see what he was doing and what he wasthinking 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 reachingfor 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 thisyear--you Young Alaskans, now beginning to explore the history of yourown wonderful country--set down this picture of Captain MeriwetherLewis, thirty-one years old, with more responsibilities, more ofconsequences, more future, on his shoulders right then than any otherofficer of our army ever had, sitting there by his little fire writingin 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 sovery conceited, was he?

"There were two men who were not thinking of politics nor of personalprofit in any way. They did not hunt for advancement, they let that huntthem. They were not working for money; they never had much money, eitherone of them. They were not working for glory; they never had much glory, either of them; they always lacked the recognition they ought to havehad, and they are almost forgotten to-day, as they ought not to be. Theydid their work because it was there to do, out of a sense of duty; theywere content with that. 

"So now out of all our travels up to this date, I don't know that thereis any experience we've had that will bring us a much bigger lesson thanthis one. Write it in your notebooks--what Meriwether Lewis wrote in hisnotebook, that day in the mountains. When you are thirty-one, check backin your notebooks and see if you can write what he could. 

"Yes, I hope that you may resolve in future to 'redouble yourexertions. ' I hope you may give a 'portion of the talents which natureand fortune have bestowed on you, ' for the sake of mankind--for the sakeof your country, young gentlemen, and not wholly for the sake ofyourselves. "

The train rolled into the great railway station. Wondering onlookersstopped for a moment and turned as they saw three lean, sunbrowned boysstand at attention and give the Scout salute to the older man who turnedto them and, smiling, snapped his hand into the regulation salute of theArmy. 

And so, as Jesse smilingly said, the Company of Volunteers forNorthwestern Discovery disbanded for that year. 

 THE END

TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES:

1. Words with one or more letters enclosed in {} indicate that theoriginal word, in the book, had those characters in superscript. 

2. No changes have been made in the spelling, punctuation orcapitalization 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'swords and intent.