The Young Alaskans on the Missouri Part 35

"They left the river July 16th, and on July 21st they got into country which you and I can identify--the mouth of Two Medicine Creek, where it meets the Cutbank, both of which rise in Glacier Park. I've had fine fishing up in there.

"Now they pushed on up north up the Cutbank, forded where the Great Northern Railroad is now, and went on five miles beyond that. You see, they were now clear up almost to the northern line of Montana; whereas you and I have seen them almost to the southern line of Montana. And look at all the waterways they had covered!

"This was Lewis's farthest north. Drewyer found out that there were Indians in that country. Perhaps that accounted for the scarcity of game they now felt. They concluded to turn back down the river, and on July 26th--which is the day Ga.s.s and Ordway finished their portage at the Great Falls--they headed southeast for the mouth of the Marias, trusting to Providence they would meet their men there and that they would eventually meet Clark at the mouth of the Yellowstone.

"Now when you come to make all these things tally out on the ground, it is quite a proposition, isn't it?"

The boys all looked at him with open eyes, as they followed out on the map the widely separated journeys of the two great chiefs.

"Very well," resumed Uncle d.i.c.k, "they got down a mile below Badger Creek, on the Two Medicine River. Now they had the one and only dangerous encounter with the Indians which any of them met throughout the whole two years' trip. It was at that time hostility of the Blackfeet against the whites began. They ran into a bunch of Indians.

There were eight of them, who turned out to be the Minnetarees of the North, whom they knew to be one of the most dangerous bands of all that neighborhood.

"It seemed best to make friends, so they camped with the Indians that night and slept in their tents. Toward morning the Indians made their break--seized the guns of all four of the men and started out to steal the horses.

"J. Fields and his brother started out after one Indian with the rifles.

The fellow hung on to them, and R. Fields stabbed the Indian, killing him on the spot. This uproar woke up Drewyer and Lewis, who were in the tepee. Drewyer and Lewis got possession of their rifles. Lewis called to the Indians to stop running off his horses. These savages showed fight, and Lewis shot one of them through the body, which accounted for two of the savages in a few moments.

"In a very little time longer the four white men had all their camp outfit and four horses belonging to the Indians, although they had lost one of their own horses. They had met their first Indian fight, and got out of it rather well.

"Now followed what I suppose was one of the fastest rides ever made on the Western prairies. Lewis and his men mounted and started hot-foot for the mouth of the Marias River. To make the story of it, at least, short, they rode about one hundred and twenty miles in a little over twenty-four hours.

"We have seen that Ga.s.s, Ordway, and the other men were coming down from the Falls with the boats. As a matter of fact, they had just rounded the bend, approaching the place where old Fort Benton later was to stand, when Lewis and his men met them. That was what I call good luck, and a whole lot of it! Just look where they had been and what they had been through!

"Well, now, part of our men had got together. Lewis and his companions cut loose their horses on the plains. They all hurried into the canoes and dropped down to the mouth of the Marias. Here they abandoned the rest of their horses. They dug up the _cache_ which they had left here in the previous year. This _cache_ also was pretty badly damaged, but they got some stuff out of it. Indeed, some of the _caches_ were in good condition, although the big red boat they had left was no longer of any use. They stripped her of her iron and set out by canoes, as soon as they could, because by that time they did not know what the Indians would be apt to do to them.

"Now they got down to the mouth of the Milk River on August 4th, and they reached the mouth of the Yellowstone on August 7th. And there what do you suppose they found? Was Clark there ahead of them, or was Lewis to wait for Clark?"

"I know!" said Jesse. "Clark beat them down. He left a letter for them, didn't he?"

"That's just what he did, and this time he didn't leave it on a green stick for a beaver to carry off, either.

"No, just as if he had stepped to a post-office window and asked for a letter, Lewis found this note awaiting him, telling him Clark had been there for several days and would wait for them a few miles down the river, on the right-hand side. They were at this time making ninety miles a day--one hundred miles on the last day of their travels.

"Now it would seem that Clark was taking a good many chances, because all he had done was to write a note which might have been lost, and to scratch a few words in the sand which might have been washed out. But the luck of Lewis held until August 11th. On that day, as you remember, he was accidentally shot through the hips by one of his men while hunting elk, so that when, on August 12th, he finally overtook Captain Clark, Lewis was lying in his boat, crippled. All through the trip Lewis had had many more dangerous situations and narrow escapes than Clark had.

"In this way, traveling many times faster coming east than they had going west, these two young men, and all of their widely scattered parties, met in this singular reunion, at no place in particular, without ever having had any reason in particular for hoping they ever would meet at all!

"But they did hope. And they did meet. And if you put it to me as an engineer, young gentlemen, I shall say that was the most extraordinary instance of going through unknown country on workmanlike basis I ever heard of in all my life! Nor do I think all the world could produce its like."

They sat in wondering silence for a time, marveling at the perfect ability shown by these young army officers in this formerly wild and unknown country. Uncle d.i.c.k closed the pages of his _Journal_, which he had been following through rapidly, and seemed inclined to talk no further.

"You tell it, Billy!" said Jesse, turning to Billy Williams, who had been an attentive listener on the opposite side of the table.

"You mean that I shall bring up the Clark story?"

The boys a.s.sented to this.

Billy went on, his finger now on the map in turn.

"Take Clark along in here on the Gallatin, near this ranch, say July 15th, about one month ahead of our date now. He is going east with his party. He has got the Indian girl and some horses and some good men. All right. On July 15th he starts across the Divide, heading for the Yellowstone Valley.

"Naturally, he found that plumb easy. He struck into one of the creeks that run down into the Yellowstone. It was only nine miles down that to the Yellowstone River itself, and they hit that just a mile below where it comes out of the Rockies from up yonder in Yellowstone Park, where we all were only yesterday.

"Clark had the easiest end of it, in some ways. He said he had to go only forty-eight miles from the Three Forks to hit the Yellowstone. If he had poled a canoe up the Gallatin, he would not have had to portage over eighteen miles.

"Those are the distances that Clark estimates, but for once he underestimates, I don't know why. Wheeler points out that from Three Forks to Livingston is fifty-four miles, and Clark came down off the Divide at a place just above Livingston. Anyhow, I'll bet he was glad when he saw the old Yellowstone Valley. He had horses now, you see, and he was. .h.i.tting the trail hard.

"He went down the north side of the Yellowstone, and by July 17th he was down as far as Big Timber and Boulder River. I suppose they would have kept on downstream on horseback, but one of their men, Gibson, got snagged in a fall from his horse, so somewhere near the mouth of the Stillwater they concluded to make some canoes, so that Gibson could ride by boat.

"Now, on July 21st, along comes a nice party of Crows and steals twenty-four of their horses. They hunt a couple of days for the horses, but can't find them--trust the Crows for that! So the canoes are mighty useful. They built two of them twenty-eight feet long and about two feet in the beam and lashed them together, so they had quite a craft.

"On July 24th, about the time Ga.s.s and his men were making the portage at the Great Falls, Clark took to the boats, but he put the rest of the horses in charge of Pryor, Shannon, and Windsor.

"So, you see, they were busted up again, half afloat and half on sh.o.r.e, which is always bad. Pryor had it the hardest. He could hardly keep his horses together. But they joined up somewhere near where Billings is to-day. It was plumb easy getting downstream in the boats, for the Yellowstone is lively water, and plenty of it. They could make fifty, sixty, or seventy miles a day, with no trouble at all; but horses can't go that fast.

"On July 25th they got down to a place called Pompey's Pillar, a big rock that sticks up out of the valley floor. Clark cut his name on this rock, which is not so far from the railway station they call Pompey's Pillar to-day. The first engineers of the railroad that came up the valley of the Yellowstone put a double iron screen over Clark's inscription on this rock, drilled in the corner posts and anch.o.r.ed them, so no one could get at the old signature. A lot of other names are there, but I reckon you could still see the name of William Clark, July 25, 1806. It has been photographed, so there is no mistake.

"Now the _Journal_ says they got at the mouth of the Big Horn River on July 26th. That, you know, is the place where Manuel Lisa made his trading post in 1807. So now we are beginning to lap over a lot of dates and a lot of things.

"Well, the big Custer fight on June 25, 1876, took place not so far from the mouth of the Big Horn River. From the time that Lewis and Clark came through, up to the time of the railroads and the army posts, the Indians had kept getting worse.

"From now on the Clark parties were in the game country, of course. The boats had all the best of it--except for the mosquitoes, of which Clark continually complained. It was the mosquitoes that drove Clark away from the mouth of the Yellowstone, which he reached August 3d.

"He kept going on down the river below the mouth of the Yellowstone, trying to get away from the mosquitoes. When he dodged the mosquitoes he ran into white bears. There was something doing every minute in those days.

"They seemed to have had a trustful way of hoping everything would come out all right, those fellows. Clark did not know where Lewis was, or Ordway, or Ga.s.s, or where Pryor and his men were. Well, the Pryor party didn't catch up with Clark until August 8th--and they didn't have a horse to their name!

"You see, three days after they left Clark, near where Billings is, the Indians jumped them once more and stole their last horse. They took a lesson from the Indians and made two bull boats, round ones like the Mandans used. I don't suppose they liked that kind of traveling, but they had to do it. Anyhow, it worked, and hard as it is to believe, they made their way downstream without any serious accident.

"I don't know whether you call all of this good traveling as much as it was good luck, but anyhow they were beginning to pick up their friends.

Just look on the map and see how far it is from the mouth of the Big Horn River up across to the mouth of Two Medicine Creek--that's how far Clark and Lewis were apart, and they had been apart for considerable over a month. Lewis might have been killed and no one could have known it had happened, and so might Clark.

"Now they met a couple of white men who were pushing up the river, intending to hunt up the Yellowstone. Colter and his pal go along up the river a little ways, too.

"And now you pick up the Lewis story. Lewis goes down in his boat, crippled. Colter and the other man and the two traders turn back; and pretty soon, on August 12th, they come on Clark's party landed on the sh.o.r.e of the Missouri; fighting mosquitoes!

"Well, it only took them a couple of days from that time to get to the Mandan villages."

"That's where we left our boat, the _Adventurer_!" exclaimed Jesse. "Now what do you say, boys--hasn't this been one exciting finish?"

"But you haven't told us yet, Uncle d.i.c.k, what we are going to do," said Rob.

"I'll tell you what to do now," said Uncle d.i.c.k. "Go to bed, all of you.

In the morning we will make our plans at the breakfast table."

CHAPTER x.x.xIII