The Boy Scouts of Bob's Hill Part 28

"With a sungla.s.s," I told him.

"Well, that didn't seem very astonishing to us because we were used to it, but the Indians had never seen a sungla.s.s. They started their fires by rubbing two sticks together. Even the whites had to use a flint and steel, for the art of making matches hadn't been discovered. Captain Clark carried a sungla.s.s in his pocket. One day he went to an Indian village, intending to smoke a peace pipe with the chief. As he was entering the village, he saw some wild geese flying over and shot one.

The Indians heard what seemed to be thunder and saw the goose fall, and it scared them. They ran into their wigwams and closed the skin doors.

Soon after Captain Clark came up to the wigwam of the chief, without thinking he was doing anything out of the ordinary, he pulled out his sungla.s.s and lighted his pipe with it.

"The frightened Indians were peeking out of their wigwams, and when they saw the white man start a blaze in his pipe by holding up one hand, they felt sure that he was a spirit. The Redskins gave one yell and ran into the woods. It was a long time before they could be made to understand.

"Spring came at last and the impatient party started up the river again.

The way grew more and more difficult. They were now a long distance from the mouth of the river, and the water was shallow in places and filled with dangerous rocks. Often they had to get out and wade, pulling the boats along by the cables.

"May 26 they pa.s.sed the mouth of the Yellowstone River and for the first time saw the Rocky Mountains in the distance, covered with snow and looking very grand. They were then in Montana, or what we now call Montana.

"In June they heard the roaring of a cataract, and Lewis started out afoot to find it. After he had traveled for hours he climbed a cliff and at last looked down upon the cataract. So far as we know he was the first white man who had ever seen it, although thousands see it every year now. The cascades of the Missouri stretch for thirteen miles, with foaming rapids between. It is a great sight."

"Gee, Peck's Falls ain't in it," said Skinny. "Did he find a cave?"

"History fails to mention a cave. Lewis went back and ordered the boats to proceed up the river as far as the first rapids. The question was, how to get around those cascades. They couldn't go up the river, so they had to get the boats around in some way. Their horses had died during the winter. There was nothing to do but drag the boats around eighteen miles. The men went to work and made rough carts, felled trees, cleared away bushes, dug out rocks, leveled off the ground, and pulled, pushed, and struggled on, until at last the work was accomplished and the boats were launched again in the river above the rapids.

"But soon the river became too shallow for the large boat and they had to stop again. Then they cut down trees and made 'dugouts.' They paddled on until finally they came to a most wonderful place. We think that the ravine below Peck's Falls and that at the Basin are grand and beautiful, and so they are, but they found a great canyon, whose walls in places were a thousand feet high.

"Beyond this canyon they could not go in their boats, for they were at the foot of the first range of the Rockies. They had to leave their boats there and climb. But, first, Lewis started out alone to find some Indians for guides.

"The brave man made his way to the top of the ridge and looked down into the valley beyond. In that valley flowed a river, and far up the stream he could see an Indian village. It was the home of the Shoshones. He managed to reach the village, and by offering presents induced some of the Indians to go back with him, bringing horses, and to guide his men across the mountains.

"The trip was a very perilous one, even with guides, and it took them a whole month to cross. Up, up they climbed, so high that they could not find any game to shoot. One by one, the horses died from exhaustion, and the starving men ate the flesh to keep themselves alive.

"After terrible hardships, they finally left the mountains behind and came upon streams which flowed toward the west. Here they rested, secured a new supply of food, built new boats, and then, when all was ready, paddled down the Lewis and Clark rivers into the broad Columbia, which, as you know, pours its waters into the Pacific Ocean. They had crossed the entire country from Pittsburgh to the Pacific, and made the whole trip by water except that terrible journey across the Rocky Mountains.

"It was now November and they were forced to go into camp once more to spend the winter months. In the spring they started on the long journey home again and at last reached Washington, where they told the President about the vast Northwest and what a great country he had purchased from France."

"I'll tell you what let's do," said Benny, after Mr. Norton had finished. "When we start on our trip let's play we are Lewis and Clark 'sploring the country."

CHAPTER XVI

CLOUDBURST ON GREYLOCK

SKINNY says that if they would let him run the weather he wouldn't have it rain daytimes during vacation. All of us Boy Scouts feel that way, too, because, what's the use? The days are made for boys to have fun in and the nights are made to sleep. So, why not have it rain nights when folks are sleeping?

Anyhow, it rained that August as we never had seen it rain before and never want to see it again. It began in the night, all right, just like rain ought to do, but it didn't stop. When day came it seemed to take a fresh start and kept going. It rained all day long and we couldn't have any fun at all. When it came time to go to bed it quit for a spell, but it started up again before morning. It wasn't any drizzle, either. It came down in bucketfuls, until I thought the village would be washed away and that even Bob's Hill would float off.

Along about ten o'clock in the morning it let up, and pretty soon, who should come along but Skinny and Bill, barefooted and with old clothes on. They were worried about the cave, and so was I. While it was raining so hard I thought about it a lot.

You see, our cave is a little below Peck's Falls, on the bank of the brook. There are two entrances. One goes in from the top on the upper side. You first go down into a hole and then wriggle through an opening, until you come out into the real cave. We don't use that one except when we want to escape from the enemy, or something like that.

The one we use is below, right at the edge of the water, and leads straight into the real cave. The floor of the cave is even with the water at the entrance and then slopes back a little out of the wet.

Once a flood filled the cave and nearly drowned us. We should have been drowned, if Tom Chapin hadn't been with us. He dove down through the hole into the upper cave and then pulled us through after him. After that we built a dam so that it would not happen again. I told all about that once in the doings of the Band. What we were worrying about was the dam's giving way.

Almost always in summer the brook is fine. It pours a clear stream down over the rocks and kind of talks to us and sings, so that we like to be in the cave and listen to it. But sometimes in the spring of the year, when the snow on the mountain is melting and old winter is running away into the valley, and sometimes after very hard rains, the water roars over the falls and then dashes down through the gulch and over the rocks below, like some wild beast. At those times, it is a good place to keep away from, unless you have a dam or a cave that needs looking after.

"Get your hat, Pedro, and come on," said Skinny. "We want to see about the dam. If it washes out the water will fill our cave."

"And bring a shovel," added Bill. "We'd brought one, only your house is so much nearer."

"All right," I told them. "Whistle for Benny, while I'm getting it."

The four of us went up through the orchard and took the road around the hill to the top because the rain had made it too slippery to climb straight up. We knew by the roaring of the water, long before we came in sight, that Peck's Falls were going it for all they were worth.

When we finally, one after another, crept out on the ledge of Pulpit Rock, in front of the falls, the sight almost scared us. It was great, the way the water came down, fairly jumping from rock to rock, until with a final leap and roar, it plunged, all white and foaming, into an angry pool below; then dashed off, with a snarl, through the ravine.

"Gee-whillikens!" said Skinny. "Those are some falls, all right. How'd you like to go in swimming?"

"It would just about use a fellow up to go through there," I told him.

"Boost me up so that I can look down at the cave."

"We'll boost Benny," he said. "He isn't so heavy."

The pulpit part reaches up several feet above the narrow ledge like a wall, and back of it there is a straight drop, a hundred feet or more down.

"The cave is all right, I guess," Benny told us, when we had held him up so that he could see over without getting dizzy. "I can see where the upper entrance is, but, say, the brook is fierce."

We crept off from the rock and made our way carefully down the side of the ravine to the cave.

It was as Benny had said. The dam had held and was keeping the water from flooding the cave. The upper entrance was all right, although it was too muddy to use. The water had backed up around the lower entrance and part way into the cave, but beyond it was dry.

The little mountain brook had turned into a torrent, raging along like some wild beast, and foaming over the rocks below, almost like Peck's Falls. Just above these smaller falls, a tree, which had been carried down into the ravine, stretched across the stream from rock to rock, with its slippery trunk about two feet above the water.

"I guess everything is all right," said Skinny, "but maybe we'd better fix the dam a little. Gee, but it's getting dark in here."

We worked a few minutes, throwing rocks and dirt against the dam. I had just stood off to say that I thought it would hold now, when Skinny gave an awful yell and slipped off from a rock, on which he had been standing, into the flood.

I made a grab for him and missed, and in a second he was whirled down the stream.

It is queer how much thinking one can do in a second. I thought of the rocks and of the falls below and of how n.o.body could go through without being pounded against the stones.

I was afraid to look, until I heard another yell. Then we yelled, too, for there was Skinny clinging to the tree which stretched across the stream, just above the lower falls, and yelling to beat the band.

The water pulled and tore at his legs, dragging them under the tree and to the very edge of the rock which formed the falls. On his face was such a look, when we came near, that I knew he could not hang on much longer.

"Hold on tight, Skinny," I called. "We are coming."

It did not take us long to get there, but when we came opposite to where he was hanging we could not reach him, and the log was too slippery to walk on.

"Can't you work yourself along the tree?" I asked. "We can't reach, and even if we could walk out I don't see how we'd ever get back."