April was ushered in by a great thunder-storm of rain mingled with
hail. That speedily cleared the river. The rotted ice went swirling
down, and soon from bank to bank the Missouri was free.
“De trail is open,” said old Cruzatte.
“How far to the Rock Mountains, Pat?” asked Peter.
“Another thousand miles, I hear tell. An’ after that, another thousand
miles to the big ocean.”
“How do we get over the mountains, Pat?”
Pat scratched his carroty thatch, and reflectively rubbed his stubbled
chin.
“Faith, an’ I dunno. Trust to the commandin’ officers, I guiss. That’s
the proper way for soldiers. We’ll find a gate some’ers. There be some
tremenjous falls to get around, fust, say the Injuns.”
“Sa-ca-ja-we-a know,” proudly asserted Chaboneau. “Her peoples lif
dere, in ze mountains, beyond dose falls. She speak ze Snake tongue.”
“I gwine to kill one ob dem white b’ars,” boasted York.
All the fort was in a fever of impatience――the down-river men to be
on their way “back to the United States,” as they expressed it; the
up-river men to be on their way into a new country never explored
by white foot. Long letters were being scrawled, for the “folks at
home,” telling them of the past year’s adventures; Captain Lewis was
busy preparing his report to the President; Captain Clark was laboring
nights, by fire-light, putting final touches on a map of the Missouri,
based upon a ruder map sketched by Little Raven, the Mandan, with
charcoal on a buffalo hide. Baptiste Lepage and Chaboneau helped, for
they, also, had been many days’ travel westward, trading with the
Cheyennes and the Minnetarees.
Only John Newman was sad at heart. Captain Lewis had decreed that he
be returned to St. Louis at the first opportunity. The opportunity
was near. John pleaded to be permitted to go on with his comrades. He
wanted to make good. Already he had showed that he was repentant of his
brief bad conduct. Had he not worked faithfully, and even frozen his
feet?
Captain Clark might have yielded to him, but Captain Lewis was sterner.
“No, John,” he said, again. “I must make an example of you. I cannot
run the risk of any more mutinous talk. We have two thousand miles
before us, and the party must all work together. You will return to
St. Louis on the barge. Later, if your good conduct continues, I will
request the President to overlook your offense and you will be granted
an honorable discharge.”
“Yes, sir,” replied John Newman, saluting. “But it’s pretty tough,
sir. I’d rather take another lickin’, sir.”
However, in time, John did receive honorable discharge, and was granted
the 320 acres of land and the extra pay allowed to the other men.
April 7 was the day for breaking camp. By five o’clock in the afternoon
the boats, loaded and manned――the barge for down-river, the six canoes
and the two pirogues for up-river――were being held at the bank, waiting
only for the captains’ orders.
“Ready, barge?” called Captain Lewis.
John Newman gripped the last of the hands extended to him by his former
comrades, and clambered aboard. He and five of the Corporal Warfington
privates from St. Louis were the guard. The sixth private, Moses B.
Reed, was being returned as a prisoner, for he had attempted to desert,
with his musket and other government equipment. Corporal Warfington was
in command. Trader Gravelines was the pilot. Two French boatmen were
the crew. Chief Brave Raven, and two other Arikaras who had accompanied
Mr. Gravelines up from the Arikara village, also were aboard. They were
going on to Washington to see their great white father.
For President Jefferson were being sent Captain Clark’s journal and
map, and Captain Lewis’s report to this very date. And many hide and
wooden boxes of specimens and trophies: two stuffed antelope, a white
weasel pelt entire, squirrels that had been brought by the Minnetarees
clear from the Rocky Mountains, dried prairie dogs, mountain sheep
and elk and deer horns, a painted buffalo robe picturing a battle of
Mandans and Minnetarees against Sioux and Arikaras, a beautiful shield
made and decorated by Chief Black Cat especially for the great white
father, Peter’s bear head, a yellow bear hide and other furs, Indian
shirts and leggins and moccasins, a Mandan bow and battle-ax, and even
an ear of the red Mandan corn. And three cages containing a live ground
squirrel, a prairie hen, and four magpies.
Not until ten months later did these wonders arrive at Washington.
“All ready, sir,” responded Corporal Warfington, to the captain.
“Give way.”
Out pushed the barge. Captain Lewis drew his sword.
“Present! Ready! Fire!” he shouted. And every rifle, of canoes and
pirogues, cracked in a volley.
“For the United States,” murmured Patrick Gass. “Arrah――but good luck
to ’em.”
Then into the white pirogue sprang Captain Lewis.
“Give way,” he cried, standing beside Captain Clark; and out were
shoved the eight boats together. Captain Lewis nodded at Gunner Willard.
“Boom!” spoke the swivel cannon, in farewell to the shore.
Sha-ha-ka and other Indians had come over in skin canoes to bid the
Long Knife and the Red Head goodby. They stood, and gazed, and made no
sign. They would wait, and take care of the white fathers’ fort.
“We’ll be back,” declared the buoyant George Shannon, as he bent to an
oar. “Stay where you are, old fort. We’ll be back in the fall and light
your winter fires again.” For the captains thus had figured.
“We locked the gates, but sure the Injuns’ll be climbin’ over the fince
before we’re out o’ sight,” grunted Sergeant Pat.
The wind was almost dead ahead. With oars and paddles the men settled
to their work. Now the party numbered thirty-three, and Peter.
There were the two captains――Captain Meriwether Lewis and Captain
William Clark (to each other “Merne” and “Will”), from Virginia and
Kentucky; and Sergeants John Ordway, of New Hampshire, Nathaniel Pryor
and Patrick Gass; and Privates William Bratton of Captain Lewis’s
state (Virginia); Alexander Willard from John Ordway’s state, and
John Shields, of Kentucky, the three smiths; Reuben Fields and Joseph
Fields, brothers, John Colter, Joseph Whitehouse, William Werner, who
like Pryor and Shields, were from Captain Clark’s state, Kentucky; John
Collins, of Maryland; John Thompson, the surveyor, from Indiana; Robert
Frazier, of Vermont; the handsome, merry George Shannon from Ohio and
Pennsylvania both; George Gibson, the fiddler, Hugh McNeal, John Potts,
Peter Wiser, all from the same place as Pat and George――Pennsylvania;
Silas Goodrich and Thomas Howard and Hugh Hall, of Massachusetts; Dick
Windsor, said to hail also from Massachusetts.
Peter knew them all; fine men; but he liked Pat and George Shannon the
best.
Then, there were the Frenchmen: gay old Cruzatte, with his one eye and
his lively fiddle; Francois Labiche, the boatman who danced on his
head; Baptiste Lepage, who joined at the Mandan villages to take the
place of one Liberté who had run away; George Drouillard, the hunter;
Chaboneau and Sa-ca-ja-we-a, the Bird-woman, who was to help the
party into the mountains and make friends of the Snakes. And little
Toussaint, the beady-eyed baby――a great pet.
And York, black, enormous York, the great medicine, whom all the
Indians so highly respected.
Yes, this was a glorious company, from which a boy might learn much.
So, in a line, the eight boats proceeded up the Missouri, through
present North Dakota. The wind blew sometimes fair, sometimes adverse;
sometimes so strong that it lifted the fine sand in dense clouds
above the river and the men’s eyes were made sore. Captain Lewis’s
tightly-cased watch stopped and would not run.
At the end of the first week, when the night’s camp was breaking up,
for the day’s journey, George Shannon espied a black animal slinking
through the grass.
“Wolf!” uttered Pat. “An’ a black wan, for the captains’ collection.
Wait till I draw a bead on him.”
“No! That’s a dog, Pat!” And George whistled. “Don’t shoot.”
The black animal crept toward George, stomach to earth, tail wagging.
“Assiniboine dog,” pronounced Chaboneau. “He sled dog. Draw ze sled in
winter, an’ ze travois――ze lodge pole, in summer. He from dat ol’ camp
we see yesterday. Mus’ be los’, poor leetle dog.”
“He’s only a puppy, and nigh starved,” said George, patting him.
So the black shaggy little dog was taken along.
That night at camp Lepage and Chaboneau consulted together.
“I never been up-river furder dan dees,” announced Baptiste. “I t’ink
once I stop right at dees spot, an’ turn back. Chaboneau, he stop once
’bout t’ree mile below.”
“Then it’s our own trail from here on,” spoke John Shields.
Where North Dakota and Montana meet, George Drouillard was sent out to
explore south up the Yellowstone River. He returned with report of many
sand-bars and much coal.
Beyond the mouth of the Yellowstone, in the morning of October 26,
while the boats were slowly sailing on up the Missouri, Captain Lewis
suddenly appeared, at a clear spot on the bank, and signaled with a
rifle-shot.
“Faith, the cap’n’s been in a hurry,” observed Patrick Gass, as the
boats turned in.
And so he evidently had. He was still out of breath.
“We’ve killed a large white bear,” he panted. “Some of you men come and
help Drouillard bring him down.”
“Good work, Merne,” called Captain Clark. And enough men tumbled ashore
to carry half a dozen bears.
Cruzatte ran, Peter ran, the Fields brothers ran; all ran. Back a few
hundred yards they found Drouillard working with his knife on the
carcass of a bear.
“No! Let’s fetch him down entire, for the whole crowd to see,” cried
Reuben Fields. “He’s a sockdologer. Look at him, Joe!”
“He not so ver’ beeg――but he beeg plenty,” averred Cruzatte.
“Who shot him, Drouillard?”
“De cap’n an’ me, both,” answered Drouillard. “Dere was two. De one we
woun’, he get away. Dis odder we woun’, an’ my gracious, he chase de
cap’n. He chase him seventy, eighty yard, but he bad hurt, could no run
quite so fas’ as de cap’n. De cap’n load hees gun while he run, an’
shoot again――bang! Bear no fall. I come, aim queeck――bang! Dis time
bear fall. But my gracious, he ver’ tough to keel.”
They dragged the huge carcass to the shore. It weighed 300 pounds.
“Young bear,” declared Drouillard. Everybody crowded about, to examine
its fur (which was not white at all, but was yellowish), its long claws
and tusks, its little, deep-set black eyes.
“Dis chile dunno,” stammered York, his own eyes popping. “Mebbe he
ain’t gwine to look foh dis kind ob b’ar. If he jes’ a young b’ar, what
mought his daddy be? Hoo!”
“Don’t you or the men take any chances with these animals, Will,”
cautioned Captain Lewis, to Captain Clark. “There are lots of signs of
them now.”
Captain Clark and Reuben Fields did take a chance, a few days later. In
the dusk they met a monster brown bear (which was a better name for it
than white bear, although grizzly bear is better still) not far from
the evening camp. When they shot together, he roared so loudly that the
very air shook, but fortunately he tried to escape. They followed him
and shot him eight times more; and even then he swam clear into the
middle of the river, and died on a sand-bar.
It was quite a job to get him into camp. He weighed about 600 pounds.
The captains measured him. From his hind feet to his nose was eight
feet, seven and a half inches; he was five feet, seven and a half
inches around the chest, three feet, eleven inches around the neck, and
one foot, eleven inches around the fore-legs! His heart was as large as
an ox-heart, and his claws four and one-half inches in length.
But William Bratton “caught” the worst bear, to date. About five
o’clock the boats were just being landed, for night camp, when a great
crashing and shouting were heard; out from the brush burst William, and
bolted, staggering and gesturing, for the nearest boat. He had lost his
hat, his buckskin suit was torn, he could scarcely speak.
“Another man in a hurry,” quoth Patrick Gass, as everybody reached for
a gun. “Injuns, mebbe?”
“He-he-help!” panted William, lunging into the shallows and fairly
falling across the gunwale of the white pirogue.
“Speak, man! What’s the matter?” demanded Captain Lewis.
William heaved and gasped.
“Bear! White bear! Chasing me――close behind.” Puff. Puff. “Shot
him――chased me――mile and a half――almost caught me. Look out!”
“Whereabouts? Which direction?”
“Down river――back in brush, sir.”
“Hah!” exclaimed the captain. “I’ll go after him. Drouillard, the two
Fields, Willard, Potts, Shields, Pryor, come with me. Bratton’s found
another bear. Want to go, York?”
“Nossuh, nossuh!” asserted York, with decisive emphasis. “I’d like to
go mighty well, Marse Merne, but I got to stay right hyah an’ take keer
ob Marse Will.”
Away hastened Captain Lewis and the seven men. All eyes scanned the
shore, and many tongues plied the exhausted hunter with questions.
He said that after shooting the bear he had run a mile and a half,
with the bear roaring and floundering behind him, but unable quite to
overtake him because of its wound.
In about an hour back came the hunting party, into camp――Alec Willard
and John Shields, who were the two largest members, weighted down with
an enormous hide and a great quantity of fat.
They all said that after following Bratton’s trail back, for a mile,
they had come upon the bloody trail of the bear. He had turned aside
and had gone another mile, until he had stopped, to dig a hole or bed
two feet deep and five feet long. There they had killed him.
“An’ he ought to’ve been dead long before,” declared John Shields.
“Bratton had shot him straight through the chest. He was a tough one.”
“Faith, as the cap’n says, it’s safer to fight two Injuns together than
wan white b’ar by hisself,” proclaimed Pat.
The fat of this bear yielded eight gallons of oil, for greasing the
guns and keeping the men’s hair slick.
On the third day after, six of the men had a pitched battle with
another bear. He put them all to flight――almost caught several of them;
and did not fall until he had been shot eight times. And while this was
going on at the shore, Cruzatte’s canoe, out in the stream, narrowly
escaped a fatal upset.
A gust of wind struck the sail, while Chaboneau was steering.
Chaboneau lost his head, dropped the oar, began to cry aloud with
fright. The canoe tilted, tilted, water flowed in――and over on its side
turned the boat. The sail’s rope had been jerked out of Cruzatte’s hand.
“Seize de rudder, Toussaint! Ketch de rope――queeck! Pull on de sail!
We all drown! Do de right t’ing or I shoot you!” ordered Cruzatte,
scrambling along the gunwale.
Only young Sa-ca-ja-we-a was calm. Holding her baby, she reached right
and left and gathered the articles that were floating off. In a moment
more the canoe righted, but was full of water. Baling and rowing, the
men got her beached just in time.
“Dat stupid Chaboneau! Hees wife is better man dan heem,” scolded
Drouillard. “He near los’ all de fine instruments an’ de papers of the
captains. Mebbe drown ever’body, too.”
As it was, a great deal of medicine had been spoiled by the soaking.
The six victors over the one bear brought him in at last. Because of
the battle, this place was known as Brown-bear-defeated Creek.