The Young Alaskans on the Missouri Part 31

"All right!" said Jesse, stoutly. "You see." Accordingly, they rode on up, slowly, for a little distance, allowing the horses plenty of time to make their way among rocks and over fallen poles. At last Jesse came to a halt and dismounted, leading his horse for a way, until he brought up at the foot of such a tangle of down timber and piled boulders that he could not get on. He turned, his face red with chagrin. "Well," he said, "I've never been here before. I guess a fellow has to figure it out."

"You go ahead now, John," laughed Uncle d.i.c.k. "Jess, fall to the rear; you're in disgrace."

"All right!" said John. "You watch me."

This time John rode back downstream a little, until clear of the patch of heavy down timber. Then he turned and swung up above the bed of the stream, angling up on the side of the mountain, and finally heading close to the foot of a tall escarpment which barred the horses for a way. Here he hugged the cut face for a few yards and by good fortune found the way pa.s.sable beyond for quite a distance.

"Not bad," said his leader. "Go on. I see you've got the idea of distance for elevation."

"Yes, sir," said John. "But I'm like Jesse--I've never been here before, and I don't know just where I'm going."

"Humph! Isn't that about the way Lewis and Clark were fixed, only all the way across?" scoffed Uncle d.i.c.k. "Go ahead, and if we have to get down and lead, I'll put Rob ahead, or Billy."

John gritted his teeth and spurred up his horse. "You give me time,"

said he, "and I'll take you up there."

He did pursue his edging away from the stream until he could no longer see the exact course. At last he pulled up. "We must have climbed three hundred feet," said he. "Where is it?"

"What do you say, Rob?" asked Uncle d.i.c.k.

"I'll stay behind and see that Mr. Pack Horse comes," replied Rob. "But I should think we might angle down a little now, because we're going up the wrong split. It's two-thirty o'clock, now, and we ought to raise the Hole pretty soon. I'd say off to the right a little now, wouldn't you, Billy, till we raised the Hole for sure?"

Billy nodded, and presently set out ahead. His practiced eye found a way through the hard going until at last they stood, at the left and above the stream's entrance into a roughly circular little depression, surrounded by a broken rim of high peaks.

"Here she is, fellows!" exclaimed Uncle d.i.c.k. "This is what we've been looking for! Yonder's the thread of the water, headed for New Orleans and the last jetty of the Mississippi. What's your pleasure now?"

"Well, sir," said Rob, who had for some time been afoot, leading his own horse and driving the pack horse ahead, "why not throw off here and finish her on foot, to the clean head, where Mrs. Culver left her tin plate? Here's a trickle of water and enough wood for fire, and the horses can get enough feed to last them for one night."

"All right," said Uncle d.i.c.k. "It's all in plain sight and we can't lose our horses, especially if we halter them all tight till we get back."

They now all dismounted and made their animals fast to the trees and stout bushes, first unlashing the pack.

"Good work, Billy!" said Rob, as he helped cast off the lash rope. "She hasn't slipped an inch."

"More'n I can say," rejoined Billy. "I slipped a good many times, coming up, and barked my shins more'n an inch, I'm thinking."

"Lead off, Jess," said Uncle d.i.c.k, as they stood ready for the last march. "No, don't leave your coat; it will soon be cold, and it is always cold in the mountains when you stop walking. And you all have your match boxes?"

"Why, Uncle d.i.c.k," expostulated Jesse, "it's just over there, and we won't need any fire there, for we're coming right back."

"But, Jesse, haven't I told you always in new country to travel with matches and a hatchet, or at least a knife? No man can tell when he may get hurt or lost in mountain work, and then a fire is his first need.

It's all right to know how to make a fire by friction, Indian way, but you can't always do that, and matches are surer and quicker. Never leave them."

They set out, their leader now in advance, Billy bringing up the rear.

Skirting the edge of the marshlike depression which acted as a holding cup for the upper snows, they at last headed it and caught the ultimate trickle that came in beyond it. This, following the example of their late hostess, they rapidly ascended, until at last, by a clump of dark balsam trees, high up toward the white top of Jefferson, where a light snow had fallen not long before, even in the summertime, they picked out the dark rock from under which a tiny thread of water, icy cold and sufficiently continuous to be called perennial, issued and began its way to a definite and permanent channel.

Without any comment, each one of the party, almost unconsciously, removed his hat. A feeling almost of awe fell upon them as they stood in that wild, remote, silent and sheltered spot, unknown and unnoted of the busy world, which now they knew was the very head spring of the greatest waterway of all the world.

"'Shun!" barked Uncle d.i.c.k. The three boys fell into line, heels together, in the position of the soldier, Billy following suit. Uncle d.i.c.k drew from his pocket a tiny, folded flag, no more than four or five inches in its longest dimension, and pinned it on a twig which he placed upright at the side of the spring.

"Colors!" Sharply Uncle d.i.c.k's hand swept to his eyes, in the army salute. And the hand of every one of the others followed. Then, with swung hat, Rob led them with the Scouts' cheer.

"Let's look for the Culver plate now!" exclaimed Jesse, and scrambled on hands and knees. Indeed, he did unearth the rusted fragments of what might have been the original record plate, but small trace now remained of any inscription. With some pride he next drew out from his shirt front a plate which he himself had concealed thus long, brought for a purpose of like sort to that of the rusted remnant they now had found.

But his Uncle d.i.c.k gently restrained him.

"No, better not, son," said he. "You and I have done very little. We have discovered nothing at all, except one Indian arrowhead a hundred miles north of here. To leave our names here now would only be egotism, and that's not what we want to show. Reverence is what we want to show, for this place that was here before Thomas Jefferson was born, and will be here unchanged after the last President of the United States shall have pa.s.sed on.

"Let old Mount Jefferson have his own secret still for his own--see how he wipes out all traces of human beings, steadily and surely!

"In all their great journey across, Meriwether Lewis did not once write his name on rock or tree. Will Clark wrote his twice--once on Pompey's Pillar, on the Yellowstone, and once on the rock far down in Nebraska, as we noted when we pa.s.sed near that place. But the simplicity, the modesty of those two, sinking everything in their great duty to their country--it's those things, my boys, which make their _Journal_ the model of its kind and cla.s.s, and their journey the greatest of its kind in all the history of the world.

"Now hats off to Captain Meriwether Lewis and Captain William Clark of the army! Had they come where we are now, they would not have reached the Columbia. In courage, good sense, and modesty, the first and best."

They did salute, once more and in silence. But Uncle d.i.c.k put a hand on Jesse's shoulder as he saw tears in his eyes.

"It's all right, son," said he. "Don't mind, but don't forget. Good men come and go; it's good deeds that live. Now, we're by no means first at this spot, and it's of no vast consequence now. We'll even let our little flag flutter here alone, till the snows come, and the slides give it its evening gun."

They turned back down the edge of the depression in the mountain top, and by deep dusk once more were at the horse camp, where Billy quickly went to work to find gra.s.s and wood. All bore a hand. They got up all the dry wood they could find, cut stakes for a back log pile of green logs, spread the half of a quilt back of their slim bed, and so prepared to pa.s.s a night which they found very long and cold. Their supper now was cooked, and before the small but efficient fire they now could complete the labors of their own day--each boy with his notes, and John with the map which he always brought up each day at least in sketch outline.

"I don't know just how many people ever have been in here," said Billy, after a time. "Not so very many, sure, for nearly all try to get up the canon. I heard that a man and his wife once climbed up the canon, but I doubt that. There's Bill Bowers, from the head of Henry's Lake, he's been up to the top, but I don't know just how far--he said you couldn't follow the canon all the way. I don't doubt that prospectors and hunters have been across here, and the Bannacks hunted these mountains for sheep, many a year. Used to be great bighorn country, and of course, if this country never was known by anybody, the bighorns would still be here. There's stories that there's a few in back, but I don't believe it. You can ride up the south slope of Sawtelle Mountain, in the timber, almost to the top, and almost this high. I guess she's been traveled over, all right, by now. Only, they couldn't carry off the old river. If they could, I guess they'd have done that, too."

That night the stars came out astonishingly brilliant and large. The silence of the great hills was unbroken even by a coyote's howl. To them all, half dozing by their little fire, it did indeed seem they had found their ultimate wilderness, after all.

The chill of morning still was over all the high country when they got astir and began to care for the horses on their picket ropes and to finish the cooking of their remaining food. Then, each now leading his horse, they began to thread their way downhill. Over country where now they had established the general courses, it was easier for such good mountain travelers to pick out a feasible way down. They crossed the canon at about the same place, but swung off more to the right, and early in the morning were descending a timbered slope which brought them to the edge of the Alaska Basin and the Red Rock road. They now were on perfect footing and not far from the Culver camp, so they took plenty of time.

"The name 'Culver Canon' did not seem to stick," said Billy, as they marked the gorge where the river debouched, far to their right, now. "I don't know what the surveyors call it--they never have done much over in here but guess at things mostly--but the name 'h.e.l.l Roaring Canon' is the one that I've always heard used for it. It's not much known even now. A few people call it the 'real head of the Missouri,' but n.o.body in here seems to know much about its history, or to care much about it.

They all just say it's a mighty rough canon, up in. Somehow, too, the place has a bad name for storms. I've heard a rancher say, over east of the pa.s.s, on Henry's Lake, that in the winter it got black over in here on Jefferson, and he couldn't sleep at night, sometimes, because of the noise of the storms over in these canons. Oh, I reckon she's wild, all right.

"Now, below the mouth, you'll see all the names are off. h.e.l.l Roaring breaks into four channels just at the mouth, over the wash. Fact is, there's seven channels across the valley, in all, but four creeks are permanent, and they wander all out yonder, clean across the valley, but come together below, above the upper lake; and that's the head of the Red Rock, which ought to be called the Missouri by rights.

"And you ought to have seen the grayling once, in all these branches!"

he added. "No finer fishing ever was in the world. The water's as bright as gla.s.s, fast and clean, and not too deep to wade, with bends and willow coves on below--loveliest creeks you ever saw. Then, over across, is a creek where Jim Blair, a rancher, planted regular brook trout, years ago. They get to a half pound, three quarters, and take the fly like gentlemen. But all this country's shot to pieces now--automobiles everywhere, and all sorts of men who kill the last fish they can."

"But have they got them all?" asked Rob. "It would be easy planting and keeping up such waters as these."

"Sure it would. Well, maybe some day folks'll learn that the old times in their country are gone. We act like they wasn't, but that's because we've got no sense--don't know our history.

"Now," he added, as they forded one bright, merry stream that crossed their way, "you all ride down the road to where the bridge is--that's the main stream again, and she's pretty big--regular river, all right.

Wait for me there at the bridge. I'll see if I can pick out a fish or so. I see a dry quaking asp lying here that some fellow has left, and I'll just try it myself. You know, get a quaking-asp pole that's dry and hasn't been dead too long, it's the lightest and springiest natural fishing rod that grows. The tip is strong enough, if it hasn't rotted, and she handles almost as good as a boughten rod. Now Rob, you lead my horse on down, and I'll try it along the willows with a 'hopper.'"

"Oh, let me go along, too!" exclaimed Jesse. "Lead my horse, John?"

"All right," said John. "Good luck."

At the bridge, a half mile below, the three remaining members of the party picketed the horses on a pleasant gra.s.s plat near the road. Rob went exploring for a little way, then, without saying anything, began to get together some dry wood for a fire, and also began cutting some short willow twigs which he sharpened at each end.

"The 'old way,' Rob?" said John, smiling.

"Yes," nodded Uncle d.i.c.k. "Rob has seen what I have seen--there's trout in this water, and grayling, too. Do you see that grayling between the bridge there, over the white bar? I've been watching him rise. So, by the time we get a broiling fire, maybe Rob'll have need for his skewers--to hold a fish flat for broiling before a fire, in the 'old way' we learned in the far North. Eh, Rob?"