AT THE THREE FORKS
Something of the feverish haste which had driven Capt. William Clark,
when, weary and sore-footed, he and his little party has crowded on up
along the great bend of the Missouri and into the vast southerly dip of
the Continental Divide, now animated the members of the little pack
train, which followed as nearly as they could tell the "old Indian road"
which Clark had followed. They felt that they at least must equal his
average daily distance of twenty-one miles.
Keeping back from the towns all they could, though often in sight or
hearing of the railway, they passed above the Gate of the Mountains and
the Bear Tooth Rock, and skirted the flanks of the Belt range, which
forked out on each side of the lower end of that great valley in which
Nature for so long had concealed her secrets of the great and mysterious
river.
A feeling almost of awe came over them all as they endeavored to check
up their own advance with the records of these others who had been the
first white men to enter that marvelous land which ought to be called
the Heart of America, hidden as it is, having countless arteries and
veins, and pulsing as it is even now with mysterious and unfailing
power--the most fascinating spot in all America.
"Here they passed!" Uncle Dick would say. "Sometimes Clark met them, or
hung up a deer on the bank for them. Always in the boats, or on shore
when she was walking, the Indian girl would say that soon they would
come to the Three Rivers, where years ago she had been captured by the
Minnetarees, from the far-off Mandan country. 'Bimeby, my people!' I
suppose she said. But for weeks they did not find her people."
"Was Clark on his 'Indian road' all the time?" asked Rob.
"He must have been a good deal of the time, or rather on two branches of
it. That's natural. You see, this was on the road to the Great Falls,
and the Shoshonis, Flatheads, and Nez Perces all went over there each
summer to get meat. The Flatheads and Nez Perces took the cut-off from
east of Missoula, direct to the Falls--the same way that Lewis went
when they went east. They came from the salmon country west of the
Rockies. So did the Shoshonis, part of the time, but their usual trail
to the buffalo was along the Missouri and this big bend. Their real home
was around the heads of the river, where they had been driven back in.
"But they were bow-and-arrow people, while the Blackfeet had guns that
they got of the traders, far north and east. Two ways the Blackfeet
could get horses--over the Kootenai Trail, where Glacier Park is, or
down in here, where the Shoshonis lived; for the Shoshonis also had
horses--they got them west of the Rockies. So this road was partly war
road and partly hunting road. I don't doubt it was rather plain at that
time.
"When the first fur traders of the Rocky Mountain Company came in here,
right after Lewis and Clark came back and told their beaver stories, the
country was known, you might say. It was at the Three Forks that Colter
and Potts, two of the Lewis and Clark men, were attacked by the
Blackfeet, and Potts killed and Colter forced to run naked, six miles
over the stones and cactus--till at last he killed his nearest pursuer
with his own spear, and hid under a raft of driftwood in the Jefferson
River.
"And when the fur men came up and built their fort, they had the Lewis
and Clark hunter Drewyer to guide them at first. But the Blackfeet made
bitter war on them. They killed Drewyer, as I told you, not far ahead of
us now, at the Forks. And they drove out Andrew Henry, the post trader.
He just naturally quit and fled south, over into the Henry's Lake
country, in Idaho, and kept on down the Snake there, till he built his
famous fort in there, so long known as Fort Henry. Well, he came in this
way; and on ahead is where he started south, on a keen lope.
"Can we get across, south from here, into Henry's Lake, Billy?" he
asked.
"Easy as anything," said Billy, "only the best way is to go by car from
my place. Lots of folks go every day, from Butte, Helena, all these
towns all along the valleys. Perfectly good road, and that's faster than
a pack train."
"That's what I have been promising my party!" said Uncle Dick. "But they
shall not go fishing until they have got a complete notion of how all
this country lies and how Lewis and Clark got through it."
"They hardly ever were together any more, in here," said Rob. "First
one, then the other would scout out ahead. And they both were sick.
Clark was laid up after he met the boat party at the Forks, and Lewis
took his turn on ahead. What good sports they were!"
"Yes," said John, "and what good sports the men were! They'd had to
track and pole up here, all the way from the Falls, and at night they
were worn out. Grub was getting scarce and they hadn't always enough to
keep strong on. And above the Forks they had to wade waist deep in ice
water, for hours, slipping on the stones, in their moccasins, and their
teeth chattering. I'll bet they hated the sight of a beaver, for it was
the beaver dams that kept all the shores full of willows and bayous, so
they couldn't walk and track the boat, but had to take to the stream
bed. Why, the beaver were so bad that Lewis got lost in the dams and had
to lie out, one night! And he didn't know where his boats were, either."
"Well, that's what brought in the first wave of whites," said Uncle
Dick--"the beaver. Then after they had got the beaver about all trapped
out, say fifty years, in came the placer mines. Then came the deep lode
mines--silver and copper. And then the farmers. Eh, Billy?"
"Sure," said Billy. "And then the tourists! Lots of folks that run dude
ranches make more than they could raising hay. The Gallatin Valley,
above me, is settled solid. It's the finest black-land farm country in
all the Rockies, and pretty as a picture. So's the Beaverhead Valley,
and all these others, pretty, too. Irrigation now, instead of sluices;
and lots of the dry farmers from below go up to Butte and work in the
mines in the wintertime--eight or ten thousand men in mines there all
the time."
"And all because we'd bought this country from Napoleon!" said John.
"I'm reading about that," said Billy. "I've got lots of books and maps,
and, living right in here, I've spent a lot of time studying out where
Lewis and Clark went. I tell it to you, they just naturally hot-footed
it plumb all through here, one week after another. They did more travel,
not knowing a thing about one foot of this country, and got over more of
it, and knew more about it every day, than any party of men since then
have done in five times the time they took."
"And didn't know where they were, or what would be next," assented
John. "Those chaps were the real, really real thing!"
In this way, passing through or near one town after another, traveling,
talking, hurrying, too busy in camp to loaf an hour, our young explorers
under their active leaders exceeded the daily average of William Clark
to the point where, above the present power dam, the valley of the
Missouri opens out above the Canyon into that marvelous landscape which
not even a century of occupancy has changed much, and which lay before
them, wildly but pleasingly beautiful, now as it had for the first
adventurers.
"And it's ours!" said Rob, jealously. He took off his hat as he stood
gazing down over the splendid landscape from the eminence which at that
time they had surmounted.
"Down near the power dam, somewhere," said Billy, "is where Clark must
have struck into the river again from the trail he'd followed. He was
about all in, and his feet in bad shape, but he would not give up. Then
he lit on out ahead again, and was first at the Forks."
"Why, you've read the _Journal_, too!" said John, and Billy nodded,
pleasantly.
"Why, yes, I think every man who lives in Montana ought to know it by
heart. Yes, or in America. I'd rather puzzle it all out, up in here,
than read anything else that we get in by mail.
"My dad was all over here in early days. Many a tale he told of the
placers and the road agents--yes, and of the Vigilantes, too, that
cleaned out the road agents and made it safe in here, to travel or
live."
"Was your father a Vigilante, sir?" asked Jesse.
"Well now, son," grinned Billy, "since you ask me, I more'n half believe
he was! But you couldn't get any of those old-time law-and-order men to
_admit_ they'd ever been Vigilantes. They kept it mighty secret. Of
course, when the courts got in, they disbanded. But they'd busted up the
old Henry Plummer's gang and hung about twenty of the road agents, by
that time. They was some active--both sides."
At last the party, after a week of steady horse work, pitched their
little camp about mid-afternoon at the crest of a little promontory from
which they commanded a marvelous view of the great valley of the Three
Forks. On either hand lay a beautiful river, the Gallatin at their feet,
a little town not far, the Jefferson but a little way.
"I know where this is!" exclaimed John. "I know----"
"Not a word, John!" commanded Uncle Dick. "Enjoy yourselves now, in
looking at this valley. After we've taken care of the horses and made
camp, I'll see how much you know."