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THE
YOUNG ALASKANS
ON THE MISSOURI
By
EMERSON HOUGH
_Author of_
"YOUNG ALASKANS IN THE ROCKIES"
"YOUNG ALASKANS IN THE FAR NORTH"
ETC.
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
YOUNG ALASKANS ON THE MISSOURI
Copyright, 1922
By Harper & Brothers
Printed in the U. S. A.
_First Edition_
BOOKS BY
EMERSON HOUGH
THE YOUNG ALASKANS
YOUNG ALASKANS ON THE TRAIL
YOUNG ALASKANS IN THE ROCKIES
YOUNG ALASKANS IN THE FAR NORTH
YOUNG ALASKANS ON THE MISSOURI
Harper & Brothers Publishers
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I. FOLLOWING LEWIS AND CLARK 1
II. READY FOR THE RIVER 9
III. "ADVENTURER, OF AMERICA" 17
IV. THE EARLY ADVENTURERS 23
V. OFF UP THE RIVER 36
VI. THE LOG OF THE "ADVENTURER" 41
VII. THE GATE OF THE WEST 49
VIII. HO! FOR THE PLATTE! 59
IX. SHIPWRECK 67
X. AT THE PLATTE 73
XI. AMONG THE SIOUX 83
XII. THE LOST HUNTER 89
XIII. GETTING NORTH 100
XIV. IN DAYS OF OLD 115
XV. AMONG THE MANDANS 128
XVI. OLD DAYS ON THE RIVER 144
XVII. AT THE YELLOWSTONE 155
XVIII. WHERE THE ROAD FORKED 168
XIX. AT THE GREAT FALLS 187
XX. READY FOR THE RIVER HEAD 201
XXI. THE PACK TRAIN 210
XXII. AT THE THREE FORKS 226
XXIII. SUNSET ON THE OLD RANGE 235
XXIV. NEARING THE SOURCE 246
XXV. BEAVERHEAD CAMP 262
XXVI. THE JUMP-OFF CAMP 276
XXVII. THE UTMOST SOURCE 294
XXVIII. SPORT WITH ROD AND REEL 302
XXIX. THE HEAD OF THE GREAT RIVER 310
XXX. SPORTING PLANS 327
XXXI. AMONG THE GRAYLING 340
XXXII. AT BILLY'S RANCH 349
XXXIII. HOMEWARD BOUND 371
ILLUSTRATIONS
THEY TURNED AWAY FROM THE GREAT FALLS OF
THE ANCIENT RIVER WITH A FEELING OF
SADNESS _Frontispiece_
THEY SAW HIM SCRAMBLE UP THE BANK, LIE
FOR AN INSTANT HALF EXHAUSTED, AND
THEN COME RUNNING DOWN THE SHORE TO
THEM _Facing p._ 70
BEFORE ANYONE COULD HELP HIM HE WAS
FLUNG FULL LENGTH, AND LAY MOTIONLESS " 216
JESSE SUDDENLY STOOPED, THEN ROSE WITH AN
EXCLAMATION " 264
THE YOUNG ALASKANS ON THE MISSOURI
CHAPTER I
FOLLOWING LEWIS AND CLARK
"Well, sister," said Uncle Dick, addressing that lady as she sat busy
with her needlework at the window of a comfortable hotel in the city of
St. Louis, "I'm getting restless, now that the war is over. Time to be
starting out. Looks like I'd have to borrow those boys again and hit
the trail. Time to be on our way!"
"Richard!" The lady tapped her foot impatiently, a little frown
gathering on her forehead.
"Well, then?"
"Well, you're always just starting out! You've been hitting the trail
all your life. Wasn't the war enough?"
"Oh, well!" Uncle Dick smiled humorously as he glanced at his leg,
which extended before him rather stiffly as he sat.
"I should think it was enough!" said his sister, laying down her work.
"But it didn't last!" said Uncle Dick.
"How can you speak so!"
"Well, it didn't. Of course, Rob got in, even if he had to run away
and smouch a little about how old he was. But he wasn't through his
training. And as for the other boys, Frank was solemn as an owl
because the desk sergeant laughed at him and told him to go back to
the Boy Scouts; and Jesse was almost in tears over it."
"All our boys!"
"Yes! All our boys. The whole country'd have been in it if it had gone
on. America doesn't play any game to lose it."
"Yes, and look at you!"
Uncle Dick moved his leg. "Cheap!" said he. "Cheap! But we don't talk
of that. What I was talking about, or was going to talk about, was
something by way of teaching these boys what a country this America is
and always has been; how it never has played any game to lose it, and
never is going to."
"Well, Richard, what is it this time?" His sister began to fold up her
work, sighing, and to smooth it out over her knee. "We've just got
settled down here in our own country, and I was looking for a little
rest and peace."
"You need it, after your Red Cross work, and you shall have it. You
shall rest. While you do, I'll take the boys on the trail, the Peace
Trail--the greatest trail of progress and peace all the world ever
knew."
"Whatever can you mean?"
"And made by two young chaps, officers of our Army, not much more
than boys they were, neither over thirty. They found America for us,
or a big part of it. I call them the two absolutely splendidest and
perfectly bulliest boys in history."
"Oh, I know! You mean Lewis and Clark! You're always talking of them to
the boys. Ever since we came to St. Louis----"
"Yes, ever since we came to this old city, where those two boys started
out West, before anybody knew what the West was or even where it was.
I've been talking to our boys about those boys! Rather I should say,
those two young gentlemen of our Army, over a hundred years ago--Captain
Meriwether Lewis and Captain William Clark."
His sister nodded gravely, "I know."
"What water has run by here, since 1804, in these two rivers, the
Mississippi and the Missouri! How the country has grown! How the world
has changed! And how we have forgotten!
"That's why I want to take them, even now, my dear sister, these young
Americans, over that very same old trail--not so long and hard and full
of danger now. Why? Lest we forget! Lest our young Americans forget! And
we all are forgetting. Not right.
"You see? Because this old town of St. Louis was then only a village,
and we just had bought our unknown country of France, and this town was
on the eastern edge of it, the gate of it--the gate to the West, it used
to be, before steam came, while everything went by keel boat; oar or
paddle and pole and sail and cordelle. Ah, Sis, those were the days!"
"Think of the time it must have taken!"
"Think of the times they must have been!"
"But now one never hears of Lewis and Clark. We go by rail, so much
faster. As for going up-river by steamboat, I never heard of such a
thing!"
"But the boys have. I caught Jesse, even, pondering over my Catlin,
looking at the buffalo and Indian pictures."
"I never heard of Catlin."
"Of course not. Well, he came much later than my captains, and was an
artist. But my captains had found the way. Rob and Frank know. They've
read the worked-over _Journals_ of Lewis and Clark. Me, I've even seen
the originals. I swear those curious pages make my heart jump to this
very day, even after our travels on the soil of France just now--France,
the country that practically gave us our country, or almost all of it
west of the Missouri, more than a hundred years ago. She didn't know,
and we didn't know. Well, we helped pay the rest of the price, if there
was anything left back, at Chateau Thierry and in the Argonne."
His sister was looking at the stiffened leg, and Uncle Dick frowned at
that. "It's nothing," said he. "Think of the others."
"And all for what?" he mused, later. "All for what, if it wasn't for
America, and for what America was meant to be, and for what America was
and is? So, about my boys--what d'ye think, my dear, if they wandered
with me, hobbling back from the soil of old France, over the soil of the
New France that once lay up the Big Muddy, yon--that New France which
Napoleon gave to make New America? Any harm about that, what?... Lest
we forget! Lest all this America of ours to-day forget! Eh, what?"
By this time his sister had quite finished smoothing out the work on her
knee. "Of course, I knew all along you'd go somewhere," she said. "You'd
find a war, or anything like that, too tame! Will you never settle down,
Richard!"
"I hope not."
"But you'll take the boys out of school."
"Not at all. To the contrary, I'll put them in school, and a good one.
Besides, we'll not start till after school is anyhow almost out for the
spring term. We'll just be about as early as Lewis and Clark up the
Missouri in the spring."
"You'll be going by rail?"
"Certainly not! We'll be going by boat, small boat, little boat, maybe
not all boat."
"A year! Two years!"
Uncle Dick smiled. "Well, no. We've only got this summer to go up the
Missouri and back, so, maybe as Rob did when he enlisted for eighteen,
we'll have to smouch a little!"
"I'll warrant you've talked it all over with those boys already."
Uncle Dick smiled guiltily. "I shouldn't wonder!" he admitted.
"And, naturally, they're keen to go!"
"Naturally. What boy wouldn't be, if he were a real boy and a real
American? Our own old, strange, splendid America! What boy wouldn't?"
"Besides," he added, "I'd like to trace that old trail myself, some day.
I've always been crazy to."
"Yes, crazy! Always poring over old maps. Why do we need study the old
passes over the Rockies, Richard? There's not an earthly bit of use in
it. All we need know is when the train starts, and you can look on the
time card for all the rest. We don't need geography of that sort now.
What we need now is a geography of Europe, so we can see where the
battles were fought, and that sort of thing."
"Yes? Well, that's what I'm getting at. I've just a notion that we're
studying the map of Europe--and Asia--to-day and to-morrow, when we
study the old mountain passes of the Rockies, my dear.
"And," he added, firmly, "my boys shall know them! Because I know that
in that way they'll be studying not only the geography, but the history
of all the world! When they come back, maybe they--maybe you--will know
why so many boys now are asleep in the Argonne hills and woods in
France. Maybe they'll see the old Lewis and Clark trail extending on out
across the Pacific, even."
"You're so funny, Richard!"
"Oh, I reckon so, I reckon so! The old Crusaders were funny people,
too--marching all the way from England and France, just to take
Jerusalem. But look what a walk they had!"