The Young Alaskans on the Missouri Part 9

"Yes. No antelope yet."

"They made the Loup by July 9th, above the Nodaway," said John, his finger in the _Journal_. "Two days later they got into game all right, for Drewyer killed six deer that day himself, and another killed one, so they had meat in camp.

"They made the Nemaha by July 14th, and I think that was almost the first time they got sight of elk. Clark fired at one that day, but didn't get him. That was where he first wrote his name and date on a rock--he says the rock 'jucted out over the water.' I think that was near the mouth, on the banks of the Nishnabotna River, but I don't suppose a fellow could find it now, do you?"

"No. It never has been reported, like the two Boone signatures in Kentucky," replied Uncle d.i.c.k. "He only wrote his name twice--once up in Montana. But now, think how this new sort of country struck them.

Patrick Ga.s.s says, 'This is the most open country I ever saw, almost one continued prairie.' What are you writing down, Jesse?"

"'Musquitors verry troublesome,'" grinned Jesse, watching a big one on his wrist. "I'll bet they were awful."

"And the men all had 'tumers and boils,' in spite of their 'verry high sperrits,'" broke in John, from the _Journal_. "And they gave Alexander Willard a hundred lashes and expelled him from the enlisted roll, for sleeping on sentinel post--which he had coming to him. But all the same, the _Journal_ says that this party was healthier than any party of like size 'in any other Situation.' His main worry was these pesky 'musquitors.' He killed a deer, but they were so bad he found it 'Painfull to continue a Moment Still'!

"Here's something for you, Jesse!" he added, laughing. "One day in a 'fiew minits Cought 3 verry large Cat fish, one nearly white, a quort of Oile came out of the Surpolous fat of one of those fish.' And all the time they are mentioning turkeys and geese and beaver--isn't it funny that all those creatures then lived in the same place? On August 2d, Drewyer and Colter, two of the hunters, brought in the horses loaded with elk meat. But that was just above the Platte, nearer Council Bluffs."

"One thing don't forget," said Uncle d.i.c.k at this time. "All that hunting was incidental to those men. About the biggest part of their business was to get in touch with the Indian tribes and make friends with them. You'll see, they stuck around the mouth of the Platte quite a while, sending out word, to get the Indians in. The same day Drewyer and Colter got the elk the men brought in a 'Mr. Fairfong,' an interpreter, who had some Otoes and Missouri Indians. Then there were presents and speeches, and they hung some D.S.O. medals on a half dozen of the chiefs and told them to be good, or the Great Father at Washington would get them.

"Well, that's all right. But what I want you to notice is the camp at Council Bluffs. That wasn't where the city of Council Bluffs, Iowa, is, but on the opposite side of the river, about twenty-five miles above Omaha--not far from Fort Calhoun. There was no Omaha then. I can remember my own self when Omaha was young. I used to shoot quail on the Elkhorn and the Papilion Creek, just above Omaha, and grand sport there was for quail and grouse and ducks all through that country then.

"But Lewis and Clark had a wide eye. They knew natural points of advantage, and they must have foreseen what the Platte Valley was going to mean before long. They say that Council Bluffs was 'a verry proper place for a Tradeing Establishment and fortification.' Trust them to know the 'verry proper places'! Only, what I can't understand is the note that it is 'twenty-five days from this to Santafee.' That's a puzzler. The natural place of departure for Santa Fe was where Kansas City is, not Omaha. But, surely, they had heard of it, somehow."

"Well," said Rob, "we're doing pretty well, pretty well. In spite of delays, we're at the mouth of the Platte, sixteen days out, and they didn't get there till July 21st. I figure three hundred and sixty-six miles to Kansas City, and two hundred and sixty-six miles to here, say six hundred and thirty-two miles for sixteen days--the river chart says six hundred and thirty-five miles. That keeps us pretty close to our average we set--over forty miles a day. We've got to boost that, though.

"Are we going to stop at Omaha, sir?" he added, rather anxiously.

"Not on anybody's life!" rejoined Uncle d.i.c.k. "Nice place, but we're a day late. No, sir, we'll skip through without even a salute to the tribes from our bow piece. We've got to get up among the Sioux. Dorion has been talking all the time about the Sioux. So good-by for the present to the Platte tribes, the p.a.w.nees, Missouris, and Otoes."

"Gee! I'd like to shoot something," said Jesse, wistfully. "Just reading about things, now!"

"Forget it for a while, Jess," smiled his uncle. "Just remember that we're under the eaves of two great cities, here at Plattsmouth. Take comfort in the elk and beaver sign you can imagine in the sand, here at the mouth of this river. It still is six hundred yards wide, with its current 'verry rapid roleing over Sands.'

"Two voyagers of the Lewis and Clark expedition had wintered here before that time, trapping--the beaver were so thick. Imagine yourself not far up the river and shooting at an elk four times, as Will Clark did--then not getting him. Imagine yourself along with that summer fishing party along this little old river, and getting upward of eight hundred fish, seventy-nine pike, and four hundred and ninety cats; and again three hundred and eighteen 'silver fish'--I wonder, now, if that really could have been the croppy? Lord! boy--what a time they had, strolling, hunting, fishing, exploring new lands, visiting Indians, having the time of their lives!"

"Let's be off," suggested Rob. And soon they were plugging along up the great river, threading their way among the countless bars and shoals.

"I can see the full boats coming down the Platte!" said Jesse, shading his eyes, "hide canoes, full of beaver bales, that float light! And there are the _voyageurs_, all with whiskers and long rifles and knives."

"Yes," said Uncle d.i.c.k, gravely. "And here are our men, tall, in uniform coats and buckskin leggings. See now"--and he reached for John's volume--"they let off the deserter, Moses Reed, very light. He only had to run the gantlet of the entire party four times--each man with nine switches--and get dropped from the rolls of the Volunteers!

"And here is where Captain Lewis, experimenting with some strange water he had found--with some cobalt and 'isongla.s.s' in it--got very ill from it. His friend Clark says 'Copperas and Alum is verry pisen.'"

"But when did they first find the buffalo?" demanded Jesse, fingering once more the little rifle which always lay near him in the boat. "Gee!

now, I'd like to kill a buffalo!"

"All in due time, all in due time, Jess!" his leader replied. "My, but you are bloodthirsty! Wait now till August 23d, above Sioux City. You are Captain William Clark, with your elk-hide notebook inside your shirt front, and you have gone ash.o.r.e and have killed a fat buck. And when you get back to the boat J. Fields comes in and says he has killed a buffalo, in the plain ahead; and Lewis takes twelve men and has the buffalo brought to the boat at the next bend; so you just make no fuss over that first buffalo, and set it down in your elk-hide book. And that same day two elk swam across the river ahead of the boat. And that same evening R. Field brought in two deer on a horse, and another deer was shot from the boat; and they all saw elk standing on a sand bar, and several prairie wolves. And the very next day, don't you remember, you saw great herds of buffalo? Oh, now you're in the Plains! Everybody now is 'jurking meat.' What more do you want, son?"

"Aw, now!" said Jesse. "Well, anyway, we're about in town."

CHAPTER XI

AMONG THE SIOUX

"Now we are leaving the p.a.w.nees and pa.s.sing into the Sioux country!"

said Rob.

They were pa.s.sing under the great railroad bridge which connected Council Bluffs, Iowa, with Omaha, Nebraska. The older member of the party nodded gravely. "And can't you see the long lines of the white-topped covered wagons going west--a lifetime later than Lewis and Clark, when still there was no bridge here at all? Can't you see the Mormons going west, with their little hand carts, and their cows. .h.i.tched up to wagons with the oxen? Look at the ghosts, Rob! Hit her up. Let's get out of here!"

"She's running fine," Rob went on. "Somehow I think this must be better water, above the Platte. You know, Lewis and Clark only averaged nine miles a day, but along in here for over two hundred miles they were beating that, doing seventeen and one-quarter, twenty and one-quarter, seventeen, twenty-two and one-half, seventeen and one-half, sixteen, seventeen, twenty and one-half, twenty and one-half, fifteen, ten and three-quarters, fifteen, ten--not counting two or three broken days.

They seem to have got the hang of the river, somehow."

"So have we," nodded the other. "I'll give you five days to make Sioux City."

As a matter of fact, the stout little ship _Adventurer_ now began to pick up on her own when they had pa.s.sed that Iowa city, going into camp on the evening of June 4th well above the town. They purchased bread, poultry, eggs, and b.u.t.ter of a near-by farmer, and opened a jar of marmalade for Jesse, to console him for the lack of buffalo.

"It's my birthday, too, to-day," said Jesse. "I was born on the fourth day of June, fourteen years ago. My! it seems an awful long time."

"Well, Captain Meriwether Lewis was not born on this day," said his uncle, "but his birthday was celebrated on this spot by his party, on August 18, 1805, and they celebrated it with a dance, and an 'extra gill of whiskey.'"

"We'll issue an extra gill of marmalade to the men to-night, and conclude our day of hard travel with a 'Descharge of the Bow piece,'

just because it's the Fourth of June. We're hitting things off in great style now, and I'm beginning to have more confidence in gasoline."

"What made you want to get to this place, Uncle d.i.c.k?" asked John, his own mouth rather full of fried chicken.

"Because of the location--the mouth of the Sioux River, and at the lower edge of the great Sioux nation.

"Lewis and Clark tried to get peace among all these river tribes. They held a big council here, decorating a few more Otoes and Missouris, and telling them to make peace with the Omahas and the p.a.w.nee Loups. The Sioux had not yet been found, though their hunting fires were seen all through here, and Lewis was very anxious to have his interpreter, Dorion, find some Sioux and bring them into council.

"It was at Captain Lewis's birthday party that the first and only casualty of the trip ensued. You remember Sergeant Floyd--he spelled worse than Clark, and Ordway worse than either--and his journal of some twenty thousand words, which he had kept till now? Well, he danced hard at the birthday party or at the Indian council, and got overheated, after which he lay down on the damp sand and got chilled. It gave him what the _Journal_ calls a 'Biliose Chorlick,' and on the second day he died. He was buried on the bluffs below the town, at what still is called Floyd's Bluff, on the river they named after him, with military honors, and his grave long was known. His river still is known by his name, and it runs right into the town of Sioux City. The river washed the bank away under his grave, and in 1857 the remains were reburied, back from the river. That spot was marked by a slab in 1895, and a monument was put over it in May, 1901. I was a guest at the dedication of that obelisk. It was erected under the supervision of General Hiram Chittenden, the great engineer and great historian. It has a city park all of its own, and a marvelous landscape it commands.

"Well, poor Floyd had no memorial in those rude days, beyond a 'seeder post.' They did what they could and then they 'set out under a gentle Breeze and proceeded on.'"

"Well, but Dorion knew this country, then?" John began again, after a time.

"Yes," Rob was first to answer, "and that's what puzzles me--how they got such exact knowledge of a wild region. I suppose it was because they had no railroads and so had to know geography. _The Journal_ says that the Sioux River heads with the St. Peter's (Minnesota) River, pa.s.sing the head of the Des Moines; all of which is true. And it tells of the Red Pipestone quarry, on a creek coming into the Sioux. Clark puts down all those things and does not forget the local stuff. He says the 'Countrey above the Platte has a great Similarity'--which means the Plains as they saw them. And look, in John's book--here he says 'I found a verry excellent froot resembling the read Current,' What was it--the Sarvice berry? He says it is 'about the Common hight of a wild Plumb.'

Nothing escaped these chaps--geography, natural history, game, Indians, or anything else! They must have worked every minute of the day."

"I think his new berry was what we used to call the buffalo berry, in our railway surveys out West," said Uncle d.i.c.k. "It was bigger than a currant and made very fair pies.

"But now we've just begun to catch up with our story, for we were talking some time back where they first got a buffalo. That was about thirty or forty miles above here. By to-morrow night we'll camp in our fifth state since we left home--Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, South Dakota."

"On our way!" sung out Rob. "We haven't got any antelope yet, nor found a prairie dog, nor seen a single Sioux."

"Softly, softly!" smiled the older companion. "At least we're in the Sioux and antelope range."

Their little tent was pitched within a short distance of the river, and their fire made shadows along the wall of willows. At times they all fell silent, bringing to mind the wild scenes of this same country in a time which now began to seem not so long ago.