READY FOR THE RIVER HEAD
The young explorers, used as they were to outdoor life, had no
difficulty in getting their outfit up a long coulee to the level of the
prairie, where a small car quickly carried them into and beyond the city
to a point where another gradual descent led down to the point usually
believed to be that where the "White Bear" camp of Lewis and Clark was
pitched above the falls. Here the great river was wide and more quiet,
as though making ready for its great plunges below. Not far from the
railway tracks they put up their temporary camp, as the pack horses had
not yet arrived.
"The reader will suppose one hundred years to have elapsed!" said Jesse,
sarcastically. "All right; but I want something besides fried eggs and
marmalade."
"Easy now, Jess," rejoined his older friend. "Leave that to Uncle Dick.
He told me he was going to get us some sport within ten days from
here--fishing, I mean--trout, and even grayling. Of course, at this
season there'd be nothing to shoot. Lewis and Clark killed all sorts of
game at all sorts of seasons, but they had to do that to live. They had
thirty-two people in their party, all working hard and eating plenty.
They would eat a whole buffalo every day, or a couple of elk, so
somebody had to be busy. It would have taken a lot of fried eggs and
marmalade to put them up and over those rapids. But as you say, we've
got to suppose a hundred years to have elapsed, so we don't kill a
buffalo every day."
"I could eat half of one, any day!" said John. "I get awfully hungry,
just from fighting the mosquitoes."
"I'll bet they were bad enough. The old _Journal_ says more about
mosquitoes than any other hardship. Even Gass in his journal tells how
bad they were here at the Great Falls--I think they feared them more
than they did the white bears or the rattlesnakes; and they had plenty
of them all. In one day Lewis was chased into the river by a grizzly,
charged by three buffalo bulls, and nearly bitten by a rattler!"
"Must have been a busy day!" said John.
"Well, I expect every day was busy for them. For instance, when they got
to this camp for the upper headquarters, they had to build two more
canoes, ten miles above here. That made eight in all for the thirty-two
people, or four to a canoe. I don't think they ever carried that many
with their cargo; and they had quite a lot of cargo, even then. They
were eating pork on the Continental Divide--their last pork!"
"No," said Jesse, "they never did all ride at once. First one captain
went ahead on foot, then the other. You see, they got into mountain
water pretty soon now. They used the tow line a great deal, or poled the
boats rather than paddled. Comes to getting a heavily loaded boat up a
heavy river, you've got to put on the power, I'm telling you."
"Yes, sir," nodded Rob. "They knew they had to travel now. About all
they had to go on was the girl Sacagawea's word that pretty soon they'd
come to her people.
"So they set out from here on July 15th, the very day that we will, if
we get off to-morrow; only it took them one year more to get here than
it did us. And two men were in each canoe--not enough to drive her, they
found. And Lewis and the girl walked on this side the river, and after a
while Clark walked on the other side--all on foot, of course. He had
Fields and Potts and his servant York with him--all alone in the Indian
country, of which not one of them knew a foot.
"And now," went on Rob, "they were once more against that same old very
risky proposition of a divided party, part in boats and part on shore. I
tell you, and we ought to know it, from our own experiences up North,
that that's the easiest way to get into trouble that any wilderness
travelers could think up. They simply had marvelous luck. For instance,
after Clark left them above here, on July 18th, he never saw them
oftener than once a day again until July 22d, and that was away up at
the head of the big Canyon.
"To the Three Forks was two hundred and fifty-two and one-half miles, as
Clark called it, though engineers now say it is only two hundred and ten
miles. He walked clean around the big Canyon of the Missouri at the Gate
of the Mountains--below Helena, that is--and never saw it at all! Now if
you say he walked the whole ten days from the head of the falls to the
Forks, and say it was only two hundred and ten miles and not over two
hundred and fifty, that's over twenty miles a day, on foot, in the
mountains, under pack and a heavy rifle, in moccasins, and over
prickly-pear country that got their feet full of thorns. Clark pulled
out seventeen spines, broken off in his feet, one day when he stopped.
"Now that takes good men to do that. Not many sportsmen of to-day could
do it, I know that. And yet, after four days' absence spent in this wild
country where they were the first white men, they met again at the head
of the Canyon below the Forks, just as easy and as natural as if they had
telephoned to each other every day! I call that exploring! I call those
chaps great men!"
"Reader will suppose one hundred years to have elapsed," drawled Jesse,
again. "I'd telephone Uncle Dick now, if I knew where he was."
"Leave him alone," said John. "I give him till to-morrow. It was only a
week ago he got word through to Billy Williams, in the Three Forks
Valley, to come on with his horses."
"Well," said Jesse, "if I'm not to have half a buffalo to-night, and if
Cruzatte, the bow man, isn't here to play a jig for us, I'll see what I
can do about some fried eggs and marmalade."
"And I'll like to get a leg over leather once more," said John. "I'm
looking for horses now, same as Lewis and Clark did along in here for a
few weeks."
The young travelers did not have so long to wait as they had feared.
That very night, as they sat about their fire on their bed rolls,
talking of their many trips together, they heard in the darkness not far
away the tremulous note of a screech owl, repeated again a moment later.
Jesse stopped talking, turning his head. Rob laughed: "That's Uncle Dick
now!" he said, in a low tone; and answered with an owl call just like
the one they had heard. They heard a laugh in the dark, and from behind
the tent stepped Uncle Dick.
"How!" said he.
"How!" said each of the boys gravely. Rob made the Indian sign of "sit
down"--his fist struck down on the robe that was spread by the little
fire.
Their companion sat down, not saying a word. Pretty soon he began to
talk in "sign talk," the boys all watching closely.
_"Me. Gone. Two sleeps. I come here, now, me. Sun comes up. We go. We.
Cross water. Horse--four. Ah! Two----"_
Uncle Dick broke out laughing. John shook his fingers, loosely, to say,
"What's that?"
"That's what I don't know!" Uncle Dick said, laughing again. "I don't
know what the sign is for 'mule.' It isn't elk, or deer, or wolf, or
buffalo. Oh, of course, split fingers over another finger--that means
'Ride horse.' But that does not mean 'mule'! And if I put on ears, how'd
you know I didn't mean 'deer with-big-ears,' or 'mule deer,' and not
'mule'? The Indians had mule deer, but they didn't have mules!"
"Yes, they did!" said Jesse. "The _Journal_ says they bought one mule of
the Shoshonis, away west of here!"
"Does it? I'd forgotten. Well, I'd like to know where those people got
that mule out here, in 1805! I'd have been no more surprised to see a
mastodon really walking around out here. Of course, you know that
President Jefferson wrote Lewis not to be surprised if he did see the
mastodon still living in this unknown country. You see, all of them knew
about the mastodon bones found in the Big Lick, Kentucky. They didn't
know a thing about this new world we'd just bought of Napoleon,
mastodons, mules, and all.
"Well, anyhow, Billy Williams has his camp five or six miles from here,
across, and he has four saddle broncs and two perfectly good mules for
the packs--one plumb black and one plumb white--both ex-army mules and
I suppose fifty years or so old. I think old Sleepy, the white one, is
the wisest animal I ever saw on four legs--I've been out with Sleepy
before, and with Billy, too. Good outfit, boys--small, no frills, all we
need and nothing we don't.
"I've left our outboard motors here in town with a friend. Most wish we
hadn't brought them around. But we'll see how much time we have when we
get done projecting around at the head of the river.
"I can promise you some knotty problems up in there. To me, what's ahead
of us in the next two weeks was the most exciting part of the whole
Lewis and Clark trip across."
"But, Uncle Dick, you promised us some sport--fishing, I mean--trout and
grayling."
"Jesse," said his uncle, "yes, I did. And being a good Indian myself,
I'm going to keep my word to the paleface. We'll take a week off with
Billy's flivver, if Billy's mules connect with the flivver; and I'll
promise you, even now, hard hit as every trout water is all through
here, the finest trout fishing--and the only grayling fishing--there is
left in all America. How does that strike you?"
"Good! Where's it going to be?" demanded Jesse.
"Never you mind. That's a secret just yet. Billy knows."
"And we don't have to suppose a hundred years have elapsed?"
"No! Now turn in, fellows, or Billy'll think we're lazy in the morning."