The Young Alaskans on the Missouri Part 13

John nearly always had precise facts at hand. He now found his copy of the little journal of Patrick Ga.s.s. "Here's how big one was," he said.

"Ga.s.s calls it a 'very large brown bear,' and it measured three feet five inches around the head, three feet eleven inches around the neck, five feet ten and one-half inches around the breast. His foreleg was twenty-three inches around, and his talons were four and three-eighths inches. He was eight feet seven and one-half inches long."

"That was a big grizzly," Uncle d.i.c.k nodded, "a very big one, for this lat.i.tude. The biggest silvertip grizzly I ever knew in Montana weighed nine hundred pounds. But they were bigger in California and all up the Pacific coast--trees and bears grew bigger there, for some reason. You boys have killed Kadiaks as big as this Ga.s.s grizzly. But you didn't do it with a flintlock, small-bore, muzzle loader, fair stand-up fight. And your Kadiak bear would run when it saw you--so would a Lewis and Clark grizzly; only it would run toward you! Six men of them went out after one of them and wounded it, and it almost got the lot of them. Another time a grizzly chased a man down a bank into the river--bad actors, those grizzlies, in those times."

John looked at his watch. "Getting late, folks," said he. "On our way?"

"On our way!" And in a few moments the _Adventurer_ had her load aboard.

"You will now notice the Sioux running along the bank," said John, "trailing the boat, shooting ahead of it, threatening to stop it, begging tobacco, asking for a ride--all sorts of a nuisance. But we spread the square sail, set out, and proceeded on!"

In fact, so well had they cast out ahead, as usual, the nature of the country into which they were coming, and so well had they studied its history, that it needs not tell their daily journey among the great bluffs, the wide bars, and the willow-lined sh.o.r.es of the great river.

Gradually, the course of the river being now more nearly to the north, they noted the higher and bleaker aspect of the Plains, which the _Journal_ described as land not so good as that below the Platte. Of the really arid country farther west, and of the uses of irrigation, the _Journal_ knew little, and spoke of it as a desert, though now, on the edge of the river, the clinging towns and the great ranch country back of them, with the green fields of farms and the smokes of not infrequent homes, warned them that the past was gone and that now another day and land lay before them.

After many misadventures among the countless deceiving channels and bars of the river, and after locating the several Indian villages of the past and of to-day--the Rees, the Sioux bands, the Cheyennes--they did at last cross the North Dakota line at the Standing Rock agency, did pa.s.s the mouths of the Cannon Ball and Heart Rivers, and raise the smokes of Bismarck on the right, and Mandan on the left bank, with the great connecting railway bridge. They drove on, and at length chose their stopping place below Mandan, on the west sh.o.r.e.

Now, as always at the river towns they had pa.s.sed, they met many curious and inquisitive persons, eager to know who they were, where they were going, whence they had come, and how long they had been on the way.

"Well, sir," said Rob to one newspaperman who drove up to their little encampment the next morning, in pursuit of a rumor he had heard that the boat had ascended the river from its mouth, "since you ask us, we are the perogue _Adventurer_, Company of Volunteers for Northwestern Discovery, under Captains Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. We are in search of winter quarters, and we hope the natives are peaceful. We have been, to this landing, just forty-nine days, five hours and thirty-five minutes, this second day of July."

"But that's impossible! Why, it's over a thousand miles from here to St.

Louis by water!" remarked the editor, himself a middle-aged man.

"Would you say so, sir?"

"Well, how far is it?"

"You should know, sir; you live here."

"But I never had any occasion to know or to care," smiled the visitor.

Rob smiled also. "Well, sir, according to Patrick Ga.s.s----"

"I never heard of him----"

"----who kept track of it a hundred and seventeen years ago, it's about sixteen hundred and ten miles, though we don't figure it quite sixteen hundred. Call it fourteen hundred and fifty-two, as the river chart does."

"Jerusalem! And you say you made it in forty-nine days? Why, that's--how many miles a day?"

"Well, we set out to do over forty miles a day, but we couldn't quite make it. We ran against a good many things."

"And broke all known and existing records at that, I'll bet a hat! How on earth!"

"Well, you see, sir," Rob went on, politely, "we've rigged a double outboard, with an extension bed on the stern. They're specially made for us and they're powerful kickers. In fair water and all going good, they'll do six and eight an hour, with auxiliary sail; and we traveled ten hours nearly every day. But then, it wasn't always what you'd call fair water."

"At least, we got here for the Fourth," he added. "We began to think, down by the Cannon Ball, that we wouldn't. We planned to spend the Fourth among the Mandans."

"If there's ice cream," interrupted Jesse.

"Ice cream?" The visitor turned to Uncle d.i.c.k, who sat smiling. "All you want, and won't cost you a cent! Come on up to my house, won't you, and spend the night? Have you got all the eggs and b.u.t.ter and bread and fruit you want--oranges, lemons, melons?"

"Of melons we got quite a lot at the upper Arikaree village," said Rob, solemnly. "But oranges--and ice cream--they didn't have those!"

Uncle d.i.c.k joined their visitor in a hearty laugh. "These chaps are great for making believe," said he. "We're crossing on the old Lewis and Clark trail, as nearly as we can. We're going to the head of the Missouri River, and my young friends are trying to restore the life of the old days as they go along."

"Fine! I wish more would do so. I'm ignorant, myself, but I'm going to be less so. An idea, sir!

"Well," he continued, "you'll have to come up to town and stop with me.

I'll get a man to watch your boat--not that I think it would need much watching. You'll be here over the Fourth, at least?"

"Oh, yes," replied Uncle d.i.c.k, now introducing himself, "we're ready to take a little rest and look around a little among the Mandans! Can you show us where the old Lewis and Clark winter quarters were?"

"Sure! To-morrow we can steam on up to that place, and also the site of old Fort Clark. Then I'll show you around among the painted savages of our city!"

They all laughed, and after pulling up the boat, drawing tight the tent flaps, and spreading the tarpaulin over the cargo, they joined their new friend in his motor car and sped off for the town, where they were made welcome and obliged to tell in detail the story of their long journey.

CHAPTER XV

AMONG THE MANDANS

"Well," said Jesse, late the next afternoon, when, in accordance with his promise, this new friend had pointed out the place where, the expert investigators usually agreed, the explorers built their winter quarters in the year 1804--near the plot called Elm Point, even now heavily timbered. "I don't see much of a fort left here now. What's become of it?"

"What becomes of any house built of cottonwood logs in ten or twenty years?" smiled his uncle. "But the _Journal_ and other books tell us that here or about here is where the old stockade once stood. It was opposite to where Fort Clark later was built in 1831. You see, Fort Clark was on the west side, on a high bluff, and in its time quite a post, for it was one hundred and thirty-two by one hundred and forty-seven feet in size, and well built. Fort Clark was about fifty-five miles above the Northern Pacific Railroad bridge at Bismarck, North Dakota. We've had a good day's run of it.

"All Clark tells us about Fort Mandan is that it was on the north bank, that the ground was sandy, and that they cleared the timber to make room. He says they had cottonwood and elm and some small ash, but complains that the logs were large and heavy and they had to carry them in on hand spikes, by man power. They used no horses in rolling up the logs.

"But Patrick Ga.s.s tells more about the way they did. They had two rows of cabins, in two wings, at right angles, and each cabin had four rooms in it. I think the men slept upstairs, for when the walls were up seven feet they laid a puncheon floor, covered with gra.s.s and clay, which Ga.s.s says made 'a warm loft.' This projected about a foot, and a puncheon roof was put over that.

"The outer wall was about eighteen feet high. They had several fireplaces. They made a couple of storerooms in the angle of the two wings, and then put up their stockade in front, to complete their square. This stockade was made of upright logs, and had a gate, like most of the frontier posts, so that, what with their swivel gun and all their rifles, they could have made quite a fight against any sort of an attack, although they had no trouble of any kind.

"They were not very far from the Mandan villages. Quite a settlement this was, in these parts--not mentioning nine deserted villages inside of sixty miles below--two Mandan villages, built with the Mandan dirt-covered lodges, like those of the Rees; and besides that, villages of Sioux and Gros Ventres, and of a band they called the Watasoons, and seventy lodges of Crees and a.s.siniboines who came in later and the fierce Minnetarees--plenty of savages to warrant the expedition in taking no chances."

"I've read that the Indians at first were not so friendly," said Rob.

"There were British traders among them, weren't there?"

"Oh yes, the Northwest Fur Company was in there, and an Irishman by the name of McCracken was on the ground at the time. Alexander Henry got there in 1806, you know. Now, Lewis sent out a note by McCracken to the agent at Fort a.s.siniboine. Those traders were none too friendly, and tried to stir up trouble. Two more of the Nor'westers, Larocque and McKenzie, came in, with an interpreter and four men, and the interpreter, LaFrance, took it on him to speak sneeringly of the Americans. It did not take Captain Lewis long to call him to account."

"Well, our fellows were up in there all alone, weren't they?" exclaimed Jesse.

"They certainly were, but they held their fort; and they held all the Northwestern country for us. As soon as the Northwest Fur Company found out that Lewis and Clark intended to cross the Rockies to the Columbia, they sent word East, and that company sent one of their best men, Simon Fraser, to ascend the Saskatchewan and beat the Americans in on the Columbia. But he himself was beaten in that great race by about a couple of years! So we forged the chain that was to hold the Oregon country to the United States afterward. Oh yes, our young captains had a big game to play, and they played it beautifully.

"They always talked peace among these Mandans and others, because they wanted the Missouri River opened to the American fur trade. They waited around, and held talks, and swapped tobacco for corn, and the American blacksmiths made for them any number of axes and hatchets and other things. By and by the Indians began to figure that they were more apt to get plenty of goods up the Missouri from the Americans than overland from the British traders. Do you see how that began to work out? Oh, our boys knew what they were about, all right. And the result was that our fur trade swept up that river like an army with banners as soon as Lewis and Clark got back home. In a few years we had a hundred and forty fur trading posts on the Missouri and its upper tributaries, and from these our bold traders pushed out by pack train into every corner of the Rocky Mountains."

"Gee!" said Jesse, in his frequent and not elegant slang. "Gee! Those were the days!"