The Young Alaskans on the Missouri Part 11

CHAPTER XIII

GETTING NORTH

"But we haven't found George Shannon yet," again insisted Jesse, at their breakfast.

"And you haven't run your set line yet, Mr. Jess," reminded Rob; which was enough to cause Jesse to run down to the bank with his mouth full of bacon. He had forgotten all about his fishing at the time. At once they heard him shout in excitement, and joined him on the bank.

"Geewhillikens!" called Jesse. "I got a whale on here now!"

He was playing a fish on his hand line, taking in and giving line as he could, for the fish was strong. It was some time before they could get to see it, and when Jesse at last landed it on the bank he called for his .22 rifle and shot it through the head.

"There!" he said. "I knew I'd find some big game to shoot. Isn't he a whale? I'll bet he'll go twelve pounds. He's a whiter cat, and a racier, than the big yellows, down below. He looks gamier and better to eat."

"He goes in the gunny sack for supper," said Rob. "Do you suppose he'll keep for three days, a hundred and fifty miles? I shouldn't wonder if Shannon would enjoy a bite, for he'll be hungry by that time."

"It's a long, long way, up to the Mandans!" John began to sing again.

"Six hundred miles. And we'll have to have gas pretty soon."

They finished their breakfast, and, with the skill they had gained in many camps together, soon were packed and on their way above the old council camp of the Sioux.

"Buffalo and elk, every way you can look!" exclaimed John. "Elk swimming across the river. Herds of game feeding on the bluff sides! Grouse, foxes, prairie dogs, jack rabbits, pelicans, squirrels, deer, wolves--the boats full of meat all the time, and two or three beaver every night! Now there's cottonwoods. By and by the river'll begin to take a straighter shoot north. It's a long, long way up to the Mandans!"

"And right through the country of those roaming, murdering Sioux!" added Rob.

"Right you are, Rob," said Uncle d.i.c.k. "The Sioux used to hunt and rob as far as Fort Laramie, six hundred miles up the Platte, and on the head of the Jim River in Dakota, and all between. Their homes were where their hats were--and they hadn't any hats."

For some days now they threaded their way among the countless islands and sand bars of the great river, until at last they made camp early on the evening of June 9th, near the point which, as closely as they could figure it, was about where the Lewis and Clark bateau lay at the time George Shannon was found wandering on the Plains, alone and ready to despair. This was about thirty miles below the mouth of the White River.

"Well, we've got him," said Jesse, solemnly, "and told him never to leave camp without matches and ammunition and an ax. And that's that!"

"Time for another catfish, Jesse," said their leader. "John, you take the .22 and wander along the edge of the bluff. You might see a young jack rabbit. I don't believe I'd bother the ducks, for that's against the law and we don't break laws even when we are not watched. Rob, you and I will make camp--we'll not need anything but the mosquito bars."

Inside the hour a shout from Jesse informed them that he had another catfish on his throw line, and soon he had it flopping on the sand. He killed it stone dead by thrusting a stiff straw back into the brain through the "little hole in its face," as he called the sinus which leads into the head cavity.

"I throw out my line," said he, "with a piece of meat or minnow on the hook. Then I stick a stick down in the bank, two or three feet long, and take a half hitch around the top. It acts as a sort of rod and gives when the fish bites. He pulls down and swallows the bait, and the spring of the stick holds him safer than a straight pull would. To skin him, I cut around back of his front side fins and take hold of the skin with my pliers--just slit the hide a little down the sides, and it comes off.

These channel cats aren't bad to eat."

John joined them before dark, with two half-grown jack rabbits which he had found on the bluffs below. He spoke of the fine view and of the splendid sunset he had seen. Rob was examining the rabbits, each of which had been shot squarely through the eye. "Dead-shot John, the old trapper!" said he. "That's the way!"

"You didn't think I'd shoot 'em anywhere but through the head, did you?"

John inquired. "No sir, not yet!"

So, with meat in camp, they sat down, still in "verry good sperits," as John quoted from the _Journal_.

Now day after day, hurrying hard as they could, they still drove on northward, along the great bends of what began to seem an interminable waterway. One bend, they fancied, they surely identified with the one mentioned in the _Journal_, which then was thirty miles around and not much over a half a mile across the neck. They reflected that in more than a hundred years the great river in all likelihood had cut through what Clark called the "Narost part," the necks of dozens of such bends.

On the map they identified the Rosebud Indian Reservation to the west.

The great Plains country into which they now were advancing seemed wild, lonely, and at times forbidding, and the settlements farther and farther apart. They were in cattle country rather than farming country much of the time.

The _Journal_ brought up the second great Sioux council of Lewis and Clark, on the "Teton river"--near Pierre, South Dakota--on the date of September 25th; but so faithful had the motive power of the good ship _Adventurer_ proved, that our party pulled into the most suitable camping spot they could find not too near by, around noon of June 13th.

"Can't complain," said Rob, taking off his grease-spattered overalls and wiping his hands on a bit of waste. "We've slipped a day on our schedule, but from what we now know of this little old river, we are mighty lucky to be here and not down by Council Bluffs, or maybe Kansas City! It's only a little over three hundred miles now to the Mandans.

That's as far ahead as I can think."

"And as to rowing and paddling and poling and tracking her this far," added John, "say, twelve hundred miles from the mouth of the Missouri--whew! It makes my back ache. Seems to me we've skipped along."

"Well, why shouldn't we?" demanded Jesse. "Those fellows had the finest kind of hunting in the world; over a thousand of miles of it, to here--over four thousand miles of it altogether--not a single day that didn't have some sport in it, and they killed tons and tons of game.

But all that is left for us is water and sand and willows. Ducks and grouse, yes, but we can't shoot 'em. And I've got so I don't crave to look a catfish in the face."

Uncle d.i.c.k looked at the boys gravely and saw that the monotony of the long voyage was beginning to wear on them.

"Stick her through to the Mandans, fellows," said he. "We'll see what we'll see. But Jesse, how can you complain of being bored when right now you are standing where Will Clark come pretty near being killed by the Teton Sioux?

"Yes, sir, it was right here that they tried to stop him from going back to the big boat. Then, for the first time, the Redhead Chief drew his sword--they always went into uniform when they had a council on--and Lewis and the men on the boat trained the swivel gun on the band of Sioux who were detaining Clark.

"You see, they had the council awning stretched on a sand bar in the mouth of the river, and the bateau was seventy yards off, anch.o.r.ed. They had sent out for the Sioux to come in, had smoked with them, given them provisions, made speeches to them, given them whisky and tobacco. The Sioux were arrogant, wanted more whisky and tobacco, and when Clark came ash.o.r.e with only five men they tried to hold him up, grabbing the boat painter and pulling their bows. The second chief, says Clark, was bad, 'his justures were of such a personal nature I felt Myself Compeled to Draw my Sword.... I felt Myself Warm and Spoke in verry positive terms.'

Which is all he says of a very dangerous sc.r.a.pe."

"Whyn't they bust into 'em with the swivel gun?" demanded Jesse. "At seventy yards they'd 'a' got plenty of 'em."

"Sure they would. And then maybe the Sioux would never have let them through at all and would have shot into every boat of white men that later came up the river. No, those young men showed courage and good judgment both. They did not know fear, but they did not forget duty, and they were there to make peace among all the tribes along the Missouri.

"President Jefferson knew that country would soon be visited by many of our fur traders, and he didn't want the boats stopped. Lewis and Clark both knew this."

"But the Sioux didn't bluff them," said Rob, "because Lewis went ash.o.r.e with only five men, in his turn, and then they all pulled off a dance, and a big talk in a big council tent--it must have been big, for there were seventy Sioux in it, and just those two young American officers.

The big pipe was on forked sticks in front of the chief, and under it they had sprinkled swan's-down, and they all were dressed up to their limit. And though they could have been killed any minute, these two white men had that lot of Indians feeding from the hand, as the slang goes, Uncle d.i.c.k!"

Uncle d.i.c.k nodded, and Rob went on, referring to his _Journal_. "And then the big chief said what they had done was O.K., and asked the white men to 'take pity on them'--which I think is an old Indian term of asking for some more gifts. Anyhow, the upshot was they smoked the peace pipe and ate 'some of the most Delicate parts of the Dog which was prepared for the fiest and made a Sacrefise to the flag.' Then they cleared away the floor, built up a fire in the lodge, and 'about 10 Musitions began playing on Tambereens'--which made a 'gingling noise.' The women came in and danced, with staffs decorated with scalps, and everybody sang and everybody promised to be good."

"Some party!" said Jesse, slangily; but Rob, now excited, went on with the story:

"Poor Clark nearly got sick from lack of sleep. But the next day the Sioux held on to the cable again and wanted to stop the boat till they had more tobacco. Then Lewis told the chiefs they couldn't bluff him into giving them anything. Clark did give them a little tobacco and told the men not to fire the swivel. Then they ran up a red flag under the white, and the next Sioux that came aboard they told that those two flags meant peace or war, either way they wanted it, and if they wanted peace, they'd all better go back home and stay there, and not monkey with the buzz saw too long--well, you know, Uncle d.i.c.k, they didn't really say that, but that was what they meant.

"The Sioux followed alongsh.o.r.e and begged tobacco for fifty miles, clean up to the Ree villages, near the mouth of the Cheyenne River. Oh, they found the Sioux, all right; and glad enough they were to get through them, even paying tribute as they had done."

"That's a fair statement of the Teton affair," nodded the leader of the party. "Many a white life that tribe took, in the seventy-five years that were to follow. For the next hundred miles there were either Sioux or Rees pestering and begging and keeping the party uneasy all the time."

"And I'll bet they were glad to get to the Rees, too," commented John.

"Those half-p.a.w.nees raised squashes, corn, and beans. But by now, if they had had a good shotgun or so along, they could have killed all sorts of swans, brant and other geese, and ducks, for they were running into the fall migration of the wild fowl. Grouse, too, were mentioned as very numerous. They stuck to big game--it was easy to get meat when you could see a 'gang of goats'--antelope--swimming the river, and the hills covered with game."

"Uncle d.i.c.k," resumed Rob, as they again gathered around the map and _Journal_ spread down on the tent floor, "those men must have had some notion of the country, even had some map of it."

"Yes, they had a map--made by one Evans, the best then to be had, and I suppose made up from the fur traders' stories. But it was incomplete.

Even to-day few maps are anywhere near exactly accurate. For instance, when they came to the Cheyenne River--which, of course, the traders called the Chien, or Dog, River--Clark said that nothing was known of it till a certain Jean Valle told them that it headed in the Black Hills.