The Young Alaskans on the Missouri Part 20

CHAPTER XX

READY FOR THE RIVER HEAD

The young explorers, used as they were to outdoor life, had no difficulty in getting their outfit up a long coulee to the level of the prairie, where a small car quickly carried them into and beyond the city to a point where another gradual descent led down to the point usually believed to be that where the "White Bear" camp of Lewis and Clark was pitched above the falls. Here the great river was wide and more quiet, as though making ready for its great plunges below. Not far from the railway tracks they put up their temporary camp, as the pack horses had not yet arrived.

"The reader will suppose one hundred years to have elapsed!" said Jesse, sarcastically. "All right; but I want something besides fried eggs and marmalade."

"Easy now, Jess," rejoined his older friend. "Leave that to Uncle d.i.c.k.

He told me he was going to get us some sport within ten days from here--fishing, I mean--trout, and even grayling. Of course, at this season there'd be nothing to shoot. Lewis and Clark killed all sorts of game at all sorts of seasons, but they had to do that to live. They had thirty-two people in their party, all working hard and eating plenty.

They would eat a whole buffalo every day, or a couple of elk, so somebody had to be busy. It would have taken a lot of fried eggs and marmalade to put them up and over those rapids. But as you say, we've got to suppose a hundred years to have elapsed, so we don't kill a buffalo every day."

"I could eat half of one, any day!" said John. "I get awfully hungry, just from fighting the mosquitoes."

"I'll bet they were bad enough. The old _Journal_ says more about mosquitoes than any other hardship. Even Ga.s.s in his journal tells how bad they were here at the Great Falls--I think they feared them more than they did the white bears or the rattlesnakes; and they had plenty of them all. In one day Lewis was chased into the river by a grizzly, charged by three buffalo bulls, and nearly bitten by a rattler!"

"Must have been a busy day!" said John.

"Well, I expect every day was busy for them. For instance, when they got to this camp for the upper headquarters, they had to build two more canoes, ten miles above here. That made eight in all for the thirty-two people, or four to a canoe. I don't think they ever carried that many with their cargo; and they had quite a lot of cargo, even then. They were eating pork on the Continental Divide--their last pork!"

"No," said Jesse, "they never did all ride at once. First one captain went ahead on foot, then the other. You see, they got into mountain water pretty soon now. They used the tow line a great deal, or poled the boats rather than paddled. Comes to getting a heavily loaded boat up a heavy river, you've got to put on the power, I'm telling you."

"Yes, sir," nodded Rob. "They knew they had to travel now. About all they had to go on was the girl Sacagawea's word that pretty soon they'd come to her people.

"So they set out from here on July 15th, the very day that we will, if we get off to-morrow; only it took them one year more to get here than it did us. And two men were in each canoe--not enough to drive her, they found. And Lewis and the girl walked on this side the river, and after a while Clark walked on the other side--all on foot, of course. He had Fields and Potts and his servant York with him--all alone in the Indian country, of which not one of them knew a foot.

"And now," went on Rob, "they were once more against that same old very risky proposition of a divided party, part in boats and part on sh.o.r.e. I tell you, and we ought to know it, from our own experiences up North, that that's the easiest way to get into trouble that any wilderness travelers could think up. They simply had marvelous luck. For instance, after Clark left them above here, on July 18th, he never saw them oftener than once a day again until July 22d, and that was away up at the head of the big Canon.

"To the Three Forks was two hundred and fifty-two and one-half miles, as Clark called it, though engineers now say it is only two hundred and ten miles. He walked clean around the big Canon of the Missouri at the Gate of the Mountains--below Helena, that is--and never saw it at all! Now if you say he walked the whole ten days from the head of the falls to the Forks, and say it was only two hundred and ten miles and not over two hundred and fifty, that's over twenty miles a day, on foot, in the mountains, under pack and a heavy rifle, in moccasins, and over p.r.i.c.kly-pear country that got their feet full of thorns. Clark pulled out seventeen spines, broken off in his feet, one day when he stopped.

"Now that takes good men to do that. Not many sportsmen of to-day could do it, I know that. And yet, after four days' absence spent in this wild country where they were the first white men, they met again at the head of the Canon below the Forks, just as easy and as natural as if they had telephoned to each other every day! I call that exploring! I call those chaps great men!"

"Reader will suppose one hundred years to have elapsed," drawled Jesse, again. "I'd telephone Uncle d.i.c.k now, if I knew where he was."

"Leave him alone," said John. "I give him till to-morrow. It was only a week ago he got word through to Billy Williams, in the Three Forks Valley, to come on with his horses."

"Well," said Jesse, "if I'm not to have half a buffalo to-night, and if Cruzatte, the bow man, isn't here to play a jig for us, I'll see what I can do about some fried eggs and marmalade."

"And I'll like to get a leg over leather once more," said John. "I'm looking for horses now, same as Lewis and Clark did along in here for a few weeks."

The young travelers did not have so long to wait as they had feared.

That very night, as they sat about their fire on their bed rolls, talking of their many trips together, they heard in the darkness not far away the tremulous note of a screech owl, repeated again a moment later.

Jesse stopped talking, turning his head. Rob laughed: "That's Uncle d.i.c.k now!" he said, in a low tone; and answered with an owl call just like the one they had heard. They heard a laugh in the dark, and from behind the tent stepped Uncle d.i.c.k.

"How!" said he.

"How!" said each of the boys gravely. Rob made the Indian sign of "sit down"--his fist struck down on the robe that was spread by the little fire.

Their companion sat down, not saying a word. Pretty soon he began to talk in "sign talk," the boys all watching closely.

_"Me. Gone. Two sleeps. I come here, now, me. Sun comes up. We go. We.

Cross water. Horse--four. Ah! Two----"_

Uncle d.i.c.k broke out laughing. John shook his fingers, loosely, to say, "What's that?"

"That's what I don't know!" Uncle d.i.c.k said, laughing again. "I don't know what the sign is for 'mule.' It isn't elk, or deer, or wolf, or buffalo. Oh, of course, split fingers over another finger--that means 'Ride horse.' But that does not mean 'mule'! And if I put on ears, how'd you know I didn't mean 'deer with-big-ears,' or 'mule deer,' and not 'mule'? The Indians had mule deer, but they didn't have mules!"

"Yes, they did!" said Jesse. "The _Journal_ says they bought one mule of the Shoshonis, away west of here!"

"Does it? I'd forgotten. Well, I'd like to know where those people got that mule out here, in 1805! I'd have been no more surprised to see a mastodon really walking around out here. Of course, you know that President Jefferson wrote Lewis not to be surprised if he did see the mastodon still living in this unknown country. You see, all of them knew about the mastodon bones found in the Big Lick, Kentucky. They didn't know a thing about this new world we'd just bought of Napoleon, mastodons, mules, and all.

"Well, anyhow, Billy Williams has his camp five or six miles from here, across, and he has four saddle broncs and two perfectly good mules for the packs--one plumb black and one plumb white--both ex-army mules and I suppose fifty years or so old. I think old Sleepy, the white one, is the wisest animal I ever saw on four legs--I've been out with Sleepy before, and with Billy, too. Good outfit, boys--small, no frills, all we need and nothing we don't.

"I've left our outboard motors here in town with a friend. Most wish we hadn't brought them around. But we'll see how much time we have when we get done projecting around at the head of the river.

"I can promise you some knotty problems up in there. To me, what's ahead of us in the next two weeks was the most exciting part of the whole Lewis and Clark trip across."

"But, Uncle d.i.c.k, you promised us some sport--fishing, I mean--trout and grayling."

"Jesse," said his uncle, "yes, I did. And being a good Indian myself, I'm going to keep my word to the paleface. We'll take a week off with Billy's flivver, if Billy's mules connect with the flivver; and I'll promise you, even now, hard hit as every trout water is all through here, the finest trout fishing--and the only grayling fishing--there is left in all America. How does that strike you?"

"Good! Where's it going to be?" demanded Jesse.

"Never you mind. That's a secret just yet. Billy knows."

"And we don't have to suppose a hundred years have elapsed?"

"No! Now turn in, fellows, or Billy'll think we're lazy in the morning."

CHAPTER XXI

THE PACK TRAIN

Before sunup Rob had the camp fire going, while Jesse brought in water and wood and John bent over his cooking. Uncle d.i.c.k walked up the river to where he had landed his boat the evening previous, and dropped down closer to the camp. The day still was young when the tent was struck and everything packed aboard the boat, which presently landed them on the farther sh.o.r.e, ready for the next lap of their journey and the new transportation that was now in order.

They were met by their new companion, the young rancher, Billy Williams, who had struck his own camp and brought the animals down to meet them. They found him a quiet, pleasant-spoken young man of perhaps thirty, lean and hardy, dressed much like a farmer except that he wore a pair of well-worn, plain, calfskin chaps to protect his legs in riding--something in which the boys could not imitate him, for they were cut down to their Scout uniforms; which, however, did very well.

They shook hands all around, the young rancher quietly estimating his young charges, and they in turn making up their opinions regarding him, which, needless to say, were not unfavorable, for none were quicker than they to know a good outdoor man when they saw him.

"So this is old Sleepy?" said Jesse, going up to the sleek big white mule that stood with drooping head, the stalk of a thistle hanging out of a corner of his mouth. "He's fat and strong, isn't he? What makes him look so sad? And aren't you afraid he'll run away? He hasn't even a halter on him."

"No, he won't run away," replied Billy. "You couldn't drive him away from the packs. He always comes up every morning to be packed, and he always stands around like he was going to die--but he isn't. Sleepy'll live another hundred years, anyhow.