HOMEWARD BOUND
They met at the breakfast table where Billy, who kept a bachelor home,
had busied himself preparing a final good meal for them. They had
abundance of nicely browned trout with fresh eggs, milk, and good bread.
The young travelers ate in silence, with the presentiment that this was
their last breakfast on the trail. At length Rob turned to the leader of
their party with an inquiring look.
"Well, I'll tell you how I feel, after thinking it over," said Uncle
Dick. "I know you hate to say good-by to Sleepy and Nigger, not to
mention our friend Billy Williams here, who is as good a mountain man as
you are apt to find and who surely has been fine to us.
"But now we are right on a wagon road. There is no excitement in taking
a pack train for a couple of days from here over to Livingston. There is
not much excitement in taking a train at Bozeman and going over to
Livingston and stopping off.
"Of course, we can go back to the junction and take a train to Great
Falls, if you want to do that. We have left our two outboard motors over
there, not knowing what we might want to do going back. Now we could
have those motors shipped over to us here, and we could go down to the
Yellowstone in a skiff, no doubt. Or we could go up to Great Falls and
buy a boat, and run down the Missouri. We'd make mighty good time either
way, by river.
"But I somehow feel that we have brought our men out of the expedition
and we have in a way worn the edge off our trip. So what I think we had
better do is to call this our last morning in camp with Billy here,
hoping we may meet him some other time. We can take our train here,
straight through to St. Paul, and transfer there for St. Louis--all by
rail. That will put us home about August 20th, or, say, a week longer
than three months out from the mouth of the Missouri.
"As you know, Lewis and Clark came down the Missouri in jig time. They
left the Mandan villages on August 17th. Here Colter had left them and
gone back up the Yellowstone with the two white traders, later to become
famous as the first discoverer of the Yellowstone. Here they left
Chaboneau, and the game little Indian woman, his wife Sacagawea.
"I somehow can't fancy that they ever did enough for that Indian girl.
Without her they never would have got across and never would have got
back the way they did. She was worth any ten men of the entire party.
Well, Lewis and Clark were brief men. Perhaps they did more for her,
perhaps they thanked her more, than they have set down in their
journals. Knowing them as we ought to, I rather think they did, but they
were too shy to say much about it. So there at the Mandans we are
obliged to leave some of our party. The others all reached St. Louis
about noon on September 23d.
"What they must have left, how they were received is something which we
do not need to take up now. At least, they were kept busy by their
friends in St. Louis, be sure of that.
"And so closed that story of the two great travelers in whose footsteps
we have been traveling this summer, my young friends. They did not claim
ever to be heroes. They did their work simply and quietly, with no bluff
and no pretense. I don't believe anyone in all the world to-day can
realize what those men actually did.
"Perhaps we, who have followed after them, doing in three months as much
as we have, can get a little notion of a part of what their journey
meant, even skipping as we have. But that they have been sufficiently
honored, or that enough of our Americans really understand what they
did, I myself never have believed."
Uncle Dick turned away from the table and walked out into the open air,
where he was silent for quite a time.
"Give your bed rolls to Billy," said he, at length, to his young
friends. "He will take care of those buffalo robes forever. We may need
them again, some time, all together. I will telegraph to have the
outboard motors sent down to be fitted on our boat, the _Adventurer_, at
Mandan. Of course, we could run down the Missouri a hundred or maybe one
hundred and fifty miles a day; but as I said to you, that country is
getting old now and the edge of our trip is wearing off. We have been
dodging towns and farms long enough. Let's get on the train and go
straight home!"
And so now, after most reluctant farewells to Billy Williams and Con
O'Brien, the young explorers, light of luggage, and, indeed, not heavy
of heart, after all, changed their transportation that very day to the
"medicine wagons," as the Indians formerly called railway trains, and
soon were speeding eastward out of the Rocky Mountains and across the
great Plains and Prairies.
At St. Paul they changed for the train to St. Louis. En route they made
no further reference to their own journals, and even John had ceased his
interminable work on his handmade maps. The _Journal_, however--that
great record of the Lewis and Clark expedition up the Missouri--remained
always easily accessible; and just before the termination of their
journey Uncle Dick picked it up once more and called his young friends
around him.
"We will soon be in St. Louis now," said he. "Here is where our
explorers started out, and here is where they returned. Here is where
William Clark did his great work as the first Indian Commissioner. Here
is where poor Meriwether Lewis started east, three years after he had
finished his great journey, and met his tragic death in the forests of
Tennessee. No one will know what that man thought. Perhaps even then he
was pondering on the ingratitude of republics.
"But here is one thing which I wish every admirer of Lewis and Clark
would read and remember--you can remember it, young friends, if you
please. It is what Meriwether Lewis wrote, out there in the mountains
near the Continental Divide, when he made up his _Journal_ on the
evening of his birthday. Write it down, boys, just as he wrote it, ill
spelling and all, so that you may see what he was doing and what he was
thinking part of the time at least:
"'To-day I had the raw-hides put in the water in order to cut them
in throngs proper for lashing the packages and forming the
necessary geer for pack horses, a business which I fortunately had
not to learn on this occasion. Drewyer Killed one deer this
evening. a beaver was also caught on by one of the party. I had the
net arranged and set this evening to catch some trout which we
could see in great abundance at the bottom of the river.
"'This day I completed my thirty first year, and conceived that I
had in all human probability now existed about half the period
which I am to remain in this Sublunary world. I reflected that I
had as yet done but little, very little, indeed, to further the
hapiness of the human race, or to advance the information of the
succeeding generation. I viewed with regret the many hours I have
spent in indolence, and now soarly feel the want of that
information which those hours would have given me had they been
judiciously expended. but since they are past and cannot be
recalled, I dash from me the gloomy thought, and resolved in
future, to redouble my exertions and at least indeavour to promote
those two primary objects of human existence, by giving them the
aid of that portion of talents which nature and fortune have
bestoed on me; or in future, to live for mankind, as I have
heretofore lived for myself.'
"So there you are, young men," concluded Uncle Dick, rising and reaching
for his hat as the train began to near the environs of the busy city.
"If you must think of something striking, something worth remembering,
out of all the pleasant memories you hold from our little journey this
year--you Young Alaskans, now beginning to explore the history of your
own wonderful country--set down this picture of Captain Meriwether
Lewis, thirty-one years old, with more responsibilities, more of
consequences, more future, on his shoulders right then than any other
officer of our army ever had, sitting there by his little fire writing
in his notebook the same as you, Rob, and you, Jesse, and you, John,
have written in yours--and after that, remember what he wrote. Not so
very conceited, was he?
"There were two men who were not thinking of politics nor of personal
profit in any way. They did not hunt for advancement, they let that hunt
them. They were not working for money; they never had much money, either
one of them. They were not working for glory; they never had much glory,
either of them; they always lacked the recognition they ought to have
had, and they are almost forgotten to-day, as they ought not to be. They
did their work because it was there to do, out of a sense of duty; they
were content with that.
"So now out of all our travels up to this date, I don't know that there
is any experience we've had that will bring us a much bigger lesson than
this one. Write it in your notebooks--what Meriwether Lewis wrote in his
notebook, that day in the mountains. When you are thirty-one, check back
in your notebooks and see if you can write what he could.
"Yes, I hope that you may resolve in future to 'redouble your
exertions.' I hope you may give a 'portion of the talents which nature
and fortune have bestowed on you,' for the sake of mankind--for the sake
of your country, young gentlemen, and not wholly for the sake of
yourselves."
The train rolled into the great railway station. Wondering onlookers
stopped for a moment and turned as they saw three lean, sunbrowned boys
stand at attention and give the Scout salute to the older man who turned
to them and, smiling, snapped his hand into the regulation salute of the
Army.
And so, as Jesse smilingly said, the Company of Volunteers for
Northwestern Discovery disbanded for that year.
THE END
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES:
1. Words with one or more letters enclosed in {} indicate that the
original word, in the book, had those characters in superscript.
2. No changes have been made in the spelling, punctuation or
capitalization in the sections quoted from Meriwether Lewis's Journal.
3. Minor changes have been made to correct typesetters errors;
otherwise, every effort has been made to remain faithful to the author's
words and intent.