"I wish we could see it all!" grumbled Jesse, again.

"You can see it all now, Jess," said his uncle, "better than you could if you plugged up its stream without looking at a map or book. And even if you did look at both, you've got to see the many different periods the old Missouri has had in its history, and balance one against the other.

"Dates are not of so much importance, but reasons for great changes are important. If I had to select just one date in Western history, do you know what that would be?"

"Eighteen hundred and four, when our men started up with the flag!" said Rob.

Uncle d.i.c.k shook his head.

"Eighteen hundred and six, when they got back," ventured Jesse.

"No."

"Eighteen hundred and forty-eight, when they found gold in California!"

said John.

"No! Great years, yes, and the discovery of gold was a great event in changing all the country. But to the man who really has studied all the story of the Missouri River, I believe that the year 1836 was about the pivotal date. And it only marks the invention of the silk hat! But that year the plow began to take the place of the steel trap in the way of making a living in the West. That was the year, I might say, when the mystery and romance of the unknown West found their end, and the day began of what we call business and civilization.

"That's all. Go to bed, fellows. Our friend has been most kind to us, and we have to get him a good breakfast in the morning, since he must leave us then."

The Mandan friend rose and put out his hand. "I want to thank you, sir,"

he said. "I'm in your debt. I wish my own boys were along with this party."

The next day they parted and the young Alaskans were speeding west by rail, making the great jump of about six hundred miles, between the mouth of the Yellowstone and the Great Falls of the Missouri.

CHAPTER XVIII

WHERE THE ROAD FORKED

"Well, fellows," began Rob, "this is a place I've always wanted to see.

I've read about old Fort Benton many a time. Now, here we are!"

The little party stood curiously regarding an old and well-nigh ruined square structure of sun-dried brick, not far from which lay yet more dilapidated remnants of what once had been the walls and buildings of an old abode inclosure. They were on their third day out from the mouth of the Yellowstone River, having come by rail, and were spending the day at Fort Benton, between the junction point of Havre and the modern city of Great Falls.

"There's not much of it left," scoffed Jesse. "I don't call this so much of a fort. You could pretty near push over all that's left of it."

"Not so, Jess," replied Rob, the older of the three boys. "Nothing can push over the walls of old Fort Benton! It has foundations in history."

"Oh, history!" said Jesse. "That's all right. But I'm sore we didn't run the river up from Buford. Just when we hit some wild stuff, we take the cars! Besides, we might have seen some white bears or some bighorn sheep."

John smiled at Jesse. "Not a chance, Jess," said he, "though it's true we have jumped over what was the most interesting country we had struck till then--castles and towers and walls and fortresses; and as you say, plenty of game. Tell him about it, Uncle d.i.c.k. He's grouching."

Uncle d.i.c.k smiled and put his hand on Jesse's curly head. "No, he isn't," said he. "He just isn't satisfied with jack rabbits where there used to be grizzlies and bighorns. I don't blame him.

"Yet to the east of us, to the end of the river at Buford, to the south along the Yellowstone, and on all the great rivers that the cowmen used for range--along the Little Missouri and the Musselsh.e.l.l and the Judith and countless other streams whose names you have heard--lay the greatest game country the world ever saw, the best outdoor country in the world!

"This was the land of the Wild West Indian and buffalo days, so wild a country that it never lived down its reputation. Buffalo, antelope, and elk ranged in common in herds of hundreds of thousands, while in the rough sh.o.r.es of the river lived countless bighorns, hundreds of grizzlies, and a like proportion of buffalo and antelope as well, not to mention the big wolves and other predatories. Yes, a great wilderness it was!"

"And we jumped it!" said Jesse.

"Yes, because I knew we'd save time, and we have to do that, for we're not out for two years, you see.

"Now look at your notes and at the _Journal_. It took Lewis and Clark thirty-five days to get here from the mouth of the Yellowstone, and we've done it in one, you might say. The railroad calls it three hundred and sixty-seven miles."

"Well, the _Journal_ calls it more," broke in Rob, "yet it sticks right to the river."

"And now they began to travel," added John. "They did twenty--eighteen--twenty-five--seventeen miles a day right along, more'n they did below Mandan, a lot.

"They make it six hundred and forty-one miles from the Yellowstone to the Marias, which is below where we are now. That's about eighteen miles a day. Yet they all say the river current is much stiffer."

"We'd have found it stiff in places," said their leader. "But the reason they did so well--on paper--was that now they couldn't sail the canoes very well, and so did a great deal of towing. The sh.o.r.es were full of sharp rocks and the going was rough, and they had only moccasins--they complained bitterly of sore feet.

"Their hardships made them overestimate the distances they did--and they did overestimate them, very much. When we were tracking up on the Rat Portage, in the ice water, at the Arctic Circle, don't you remember we figured on double what we had actually done? A man's wife corrected him on how long they had been married. He said it was twenty years, and she said it was ten, by the records. 'Well, it seems longer,' he said. Same way, when they did ten miles a day stumbling on the tracking line, they called it twenty. It seemed longer.

"Now, when the river commission measured these distances accurately, they called it seventeen hundred and sixty miles from the mouth of the river to the mouth of the Yellowstone, and not eighteen hundred, as the _Journal_ has it. And from Buford to Benton, by river, is not six hundred and forty-one miles, as the _Journal_ makes it, but only five hundred and three. So the first white men through those canons and palisades below us yonder were one hundred and thirty-eight miles over in their estimates, or more than one-fourth of the real distance.

"This tendency to overestimate distances is almost universal among explorers who set the first distances, and it ought to be reckoned as a factor of error, like the dip of the magnetic needle. But they did their best. And we want to remember that they were the first white men to come up this river, whereas we are the last!"

"Anyhow," resumed Rob, "we are at old Benton now."

"Yes, and I think even Jesse will agree, when we stop to sum up here, that this is a central point in every way, and more worth while as a standing place that any we would have pa.s.sed in the river had we run it.

"This is the heart of the buffalo country, and the heart of the old Blackfoot hunting range--the most dreaded of all the tribes the early traders met. We're above the breaks of the Missouri right here. Look at the vast Plains. This was the buffalo pasture of the Blackfeet. The Crows lay below, on the Yellowstone.

"Now as they came up through the Bad Lands and the upper breaks of the big river, the explorers gave names to a lot of creeks and b.u.t.tes, most of which did not stick. Two of them did stick--the Judith and the Marias. Clark called the first Judith's river, after Miss Julia Hanc.o.c.k, of Virginia, the lady whom he later married. Her friends all called her Judy, and Clark figured it ought to be Judith.

"In the same way Lewis called this river, near whose mouth we now are standing, Maria's River, after his cousin, Miss Maria Wood. Clark's river, famous in military days, and now famous as the wheat belt of the Judith Basin, lost the possessive and is now plain Judith. That of Meriwether Lewis still has all the letters, but is spelled Marias River, without the possessive apostrophe. So these stand even to-day, the names of two Virginia girls, and no doubt will remain there while the water runs or the gra.s.s grows, as the Indians say."

"But even now you've forgotten something, Uncle d.i.c.k," interrupted John.

"You said this was the Forks of the Road. How do you mean?"

"Yes. This later proved one of the great strategic points of the West.

As you know, this was the head of steamboat navigation, and the outfitting point for the bull trains that supplied all the country west and south and north of us. No old post is more famous. But that is not all.

"I have reference now, really, not to Fort Benton, but to the mouth of the Marias River, below here. Now, see how nearly, even to-day, the Marias resembles the Missouri River. Suppose you were captain, Jess, and you had no map and nothing to go by, and you came to these two rivers and didn't have any idea on earth which was the one coming closest to the Columbia, and had no idea where either of them headed--now, what would you do?"

"Huh!" answered Jesse, with no hesitation at all. "I know what I'd have done."

"Yes? What, then?"

"Why, I'd have asked that Indian girl, Sacagawea, that's what I'd have done. She knew all this country, you say."

"By Jove! Not a bit bad, Jess, come to think of it. But look at your _Journal_. You'll find that at precisely the first time they needed to ask her something they could not! The girl was very sick, from here to above the Great Falls. They thought she was going to die, and it's a wonder she didn't, when you read what all they gave her by way of medicines. She was out of her head part of the time. They never asked her a thing on the choice of these rivers!

"Well now, what did they do? They spent more than a week deciding, and it was time well spent. They sent out small parties up each fork a little way, and the men all thought the Marias, or right-hand fork, was the true Missouri. Then Clark was sent up the south fork, which was clearer than the other. He went thirty-five miles. If he had gone twenty miles farther, he'd have been at the Great Falls; and the Minnetaree Indians had told of those falls, and of an eagle's nest there, though they said nothing about the river to the north. Chaboneau had never been here. His wife was nearly dead. No one could help.