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 of
the 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 just
exactly 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 daily
was big travel, wading, and not half of that gained in actual straight
distance. It took them ten days to the Beaverhead. How far's that from
here, Billy?"
"Well, what do you think?" said Billy, pulling up and sitting crosswise
in his saddle as he turned. "See anything particular from this side the
hills?"
"I know!" exclaimed Rob. "That's the Rock over yonder--across the
river."
"Check it up on the _Journal_, Rob," said Uncle Dick.
Rob dismounted and opened his saddle pocket, producing his copy of the
cherished 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 canyon, and below
the Wisdom, and below the Philanthropy, and below the end of the
railroad, and in the third valley. Besides, look at it. Just as sure as
Sacagawea was about it!"
"You're right," said Billy. "That's the Point of Rocks, as it's called
now."
They made down to the edge of the valley and went into camp across from
the great promontory which so long had served as landmark in all that
country. That night all of them forded the river horseback and rode
close to the historic point. Jesse, who was prowling around on foot, as
was his habit, closely examining all he saw, suddenly stooped, then rose
with 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 black
glass at that."
Uncle Dick examined it closely.
"Jesse," said he, "that's one of the most interesting things we've run
across on this whole trip. Did you know that?"
"No. Why?"
"You wouldn't think that arrowhead was going to take you to the true
head of the Missouri, and to good fishing for trout and grayling, would
you?"
"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 Shoshonis
got that black, glassy stuff at one place--the Obsidian Cliff, in
Yellowstone Park! Those old trails that Lewis saw to the south were
trails that crossed the Divide south of here. They put the Indians on
Snake River waters. These tribes hunted down there. They knew the head
of the Red Rock. They knew the head of the Madison. They knew the Gibbon
River, and they knew the Norris Geyser Basin, up in Yellowstone Park.
It's all right to say the Indians were afraid to go into Yellowstone
Park among the geysers, but they did. They knew the Obsidian
Cliff--close by the road, it is, and one of the features of the Park, as
it now is.
"It's a far shot that arrow will carry you, son. It will show you more
of 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 they
knew the latitude and longitude of the mouth of the Columbia River. They
knew that was northwest. They knew any water they got on, once over the
Divide, 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 was
telling them that her people lived along in here. An obsidian arrow
meant nothing to them. But it meant much to later explorers to the south
of here."
"It's a good specimen he's got," said Billy, looking it over. "The
Indians liked to work obsidian; it would cleave so sharp and clean. I
thought they had them all picked up, long ago. Up in the Shoshoni Cove
they found a good many, first and last. All this was their hunting
ground. A little over the Divide it gets awfully rough, and not much
game."
They spent some time around the Rock, examining it, finding the cliff to
be about one hundred and fifty feet in height and giving a good view out
over the valley plains, over which one could see many miles, and from
which the great rock itself could be seen for great distances.
"Here was the old ford of the road agents' trail," said Billy. "They
crossed here and headed out, east and south, for the hills between here
and Virginia City. They were hunting for easier money than beaver then,
though--gold! This was the murderers' highway, right by here. Over a
hundred men were murdered on this hundred miles."
They went back to their encampment and, after their simple preparations
were over for the evening, spread out their books and maps once more,
John endeavoring laboriously to fill in the gaps of his own map; rather
hard to do, since they had not followed the actual stream course on
their way up with the pack train.
"This Wisdom River, now," said he, "must have been a puzzler, sure
enough. That's called the Big Hole to-day. I'll bet she was a beaver
water, too, as well as full of trout. Wonder if she had any grayling in
her. 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," nodded
Billy. "I don't think the _Journal_ mentions them, but they saw
whitefish, and the two often go together, though by no means always. The
Madison is a grayling stream, or was--the South Fork's good now, and so
is Grayling Creek, or was. The headwaters of the Red Rock were full of
grayling once. The trouble is, so many motor cars now, that everybody
gets in, and they soon fish a stream out."
"Shall we get to see a grayling?" asked Rob. "You know, we got the
Arctic 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't
be any left.
"But look what a beaver country this must have been!" he added, waving a
hand each way. "Fifty by two hundred miles, and then some. No wonder the
trappers 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 be
that might make all the difference in the world. Now the hero of my
story is a beaver. I don't know his name.
"Look on your map, just above here--that's the mouth of the Wisdom, or
Big Hole, River, that Lewis and Drewyer explored first, while poor
Clark, with his sore leg, was toiling up with his boat party, after he
was better of his sickness.
"Now the Wisdom was a good-sized river, too, almost as big as the
Jefferson, though broken into channels. Lewis worked it out and came
back to the Jefferson at its mouth, and started on again, up the
Jefferson. As was their custom, he wrote a note and put it in a cleft
stick 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 the
right--the Wisdom.
"Well, along comes Mr. Beaver that night, and gnaws off the pole and
swims away with it, note and all! I don't know what his family made out
of the note, but if he'd been as wise as some of the magazine-story
beavers, he could have read it, all right.
"Now when Clark came along, tired and worn out, all of them, the note
was gone. They also, therefore, went up the Wisdom and not the
Jefferson. Clark sent Shannon ahead up the Wisdom to hunt. But he turned
back when the river got too shallow. Result, Shannon lost for three
days, and not his fault. He went away up till he found the boats could
not have passed; then he hustled back to the mouth and guessed the party
were above him up the other fork--where he guessed right. They then were
all on the Jefferson. Lost time, hunting for Shannon, and they couldn't
find him. All due to the beaver eating off the message pole. If Shannon
had died, it would have been due to that beaver.
"That's only part. In the shallow water a canoe swept down out of
control. It ran over Whitehouse, another man, on a bar, and nearly broke
his leg; it would have killed him sure if the water had been three
inches shallower. That would have been another man lost.
"Not all yet. A canoe got upset in the shallow water up there on
the Wisdom, and wet everything in it. Result, they lost so much
cargo--foodstuffs, etc.--that they just abandoned that canoe right there
and lost her cargo, after carrying it three thousand miles, for over a
year! All to be charged to the same beaver. Well, you and I have spoken
before about the extreme danger of a land party and a boat party trying
to travel together.
"The next time Lewis left a note, he used a dry stick, and he felt
mortified 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 big
consequences--just as this arrowhead that Jesse found points out a long
trail."
"And by that time," said John, bending again over his map, "they were
needing every pound of food and every minute of their time and every bit
of every man's strength. The poor fellows were almost worn out. Now they
began to complain for the first time. We don't hear any more now about
dances at night around the camp fire."
"Yes," said Uncle Dick. "Now they all were having their proving. It
would 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 from
the 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 in
the whole trip, when it needed the last ounce and the last inch of
nerve. Read us what Lewis said in his _Journal_, Rob. He was on ahead,
and every man now was hustling, because there were the mountains 'right
at them,' as they say down South."
Rob complied, turning the pages of their precious book until he reached
the 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. If
he had not had, he never would have gotten across. And Simon Fraser then
would have beaten us to the mouth of the Columbia, and altered the whole
history of the West and Northwest. Well, at least our beaver, that
carried off Lewis's note, did not work that ruin, but it might have been
responsible, even for that; for now a missed meeting with the Shoshonis
would have meant the failure of the whole expedition.
"A great deal more Lewis did than he ever was to know he had done. He
died too soon even to know much about the swift rush of the fur traders
into this bonanza. And few of the fur traders ever lived to guess the
rush of the placer miners of 1862 and 1863 into this same bonanza--right
where we are camping now, on the old Robbers' Trail. And not many of
the placer miners and other early adventurers of that day dreamed of
anything but gold. The copper mines of this country have built up towns
and 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 on
up Panther Creek, which now is known as Pipestone Creek, and stepped
over the crest to where the city of Butte is to-day, they hardly would
have suspected copper. Lewis set down the most minute details in botany,
even now. He studied and described his last new bird, the sage hen, with
much detail. Yet for more than a month and a half he and his men had
been wearing out their moccasins on gold pebbles, and they never panned
a 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. I
wouldn't like to say how much Butte, just over yonder hills, has earned
to date, but in her first twenty years she turned out over five hundred
million dollars. And twenty years ago she paid in one year fourteen
million dollars in dividends, and carried a pay roll of two million
dollars a month, for over eight thousand miners, and gave the world
over fifty million dollars in metals in that one year! In ten years she
paid in dividends alone over forty-three million dollars. In one year
she sold more copper, gold, and silver from her deep mines than would
have paid three times the whole price we paid for all the Louisiana that
Lewis and Clark and you and I have been exploring! And that doesn't
touch the fur and the placer gold and the other mines and the cattle and
wool and the farm products and the lumber. No man can measure what
wealth has gone out from this country right under our noses here. And
all because Lewis and his friend and their men wouldn't quit. And their
expense allowance was twenty-five hundred dollars!
"This was on our road to Mandalay, young gentlemen, right here through
these gray foothills and green willow flats! Beyond the hills was still
all the wealth of the Columbia, of the Pacific Northwest also. This
trail 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 do
something for the world? Did he do it? Did he have his wish?"
His answer was in the silence with which his words were received. Our
young adventurers, though they had been used to stirring scenes all
their lives, had never yet been in any country which gave them the
thrill they got here, under the Beaverhead Rock.
"She's one wonderful river!" said Billy Williams, after a time. "And
those two scouts were two wonderful men!"