"'We begin to feel considerable anxiety with rispect to the Snake Indians. if we do not find them or some other nation who have horses I fear the successful issue of our voyage will be very doubtfull or at all events much more difficult in it's accomplishment. we are now several hundred miles within the bosom of this wild and mountanous country, where game may rationally be expected shortly to become scarce and subsistence precarious without any information with rispect to the country not knowing how far these mountains continue, or wher to direct our course to pa.s.s them to advantage or intersept a navigable branch of the Columbia, or even were we on such an one the probability is that we should not find any timber within these mountains large enough for canoes if we judge from the portion of them through which we have pa.s.sed.

however I still hope for the best, and intend taking a tramp myself in a few days to find these yellow gentlemen if possible. my two princ.i.p.al consolations are that from our present position it is impossible that the S.W. fork can head with the waters of any other river but the Columbia, and that if any Indians can subsist in the form of a nation in these mountains with the means they have of acquiring food we can also subsist.'"

"No wonder the men wanted horses now--they knew the river's end was near. And yet they were four hundred miles, right here, from the head of the Missouri!" Billy had his _Journal_ pretty well in mind, so he went on frying bacon.

"Why, what you talking about, Billy? They made the Forks by July 27th, and by the end of August they were over the Divide, headed for the Columbia!"

"Sure. And at the Two Forks, where the Red Rock River turns south, the other creek--Horse Prairie Creek that they took--only ran thirty miles in all. The south branch was the real Missouri, but they kept to the one that went west. That was good exploring, and good luck, both. It took them over, at last."

"But, Billy, everybody knows that Lewis and Clark went to the head of the Missouri."

"Then everybody knows wrong! They didn't. If they had they'd never have got over that year, nor maybe ever in any year. I tell you they had luck--luck and judgment and the Indian girl. Sacagawea kept telling them this was her country; that her people were that way--west; that they'd get horses. For that matter, there were strong Indian trails, regular roads, coming in from the south, north and west; but it wasn't quite late enough for the Indians to be that far east on the fall buffalo hunt at the Great Falls. It took them more than a month to figure out the trail from here to the top. But if they had started south, down the Red Rock----"

"Tell me about that, Billy."

"We're working too hard before breakfast, son! Go get the others up while I fry these eggs. If we don't get off the Fort Rock and on our way, somebody'll think we're crazy, camping up here."

Soon they were all sitting at breakfast around the remnants of the little fire, and after that Billy went after the horses while the others got the packs ready.

Jesse was excitedly going over with Rob and John some of the things which Billy had been saying to him. Uncle d.i.c.k only smiled.

"First cla.s.s in engineering and geography, stand up!" said he, as he seated himself on his lashed bed roll. The three boys with pretended gravity stood and saluted.

"Now put down a few figures in your heads, or at least your notebooks.

How high up are we here?"

"Do you mean alt.i.tude, or distance, sir?" asked Rob.

"I mean both. Well, I'll tell you. Our alt.i.tude here is four thousand and forty-five feet. That's twenty-five hundred and twenty feet higher than the true head of the Mississippi River--and we're not to the head of the Missouri by a long shot, even now.

"And how far have we come, say to the Three Forks, just above here?"

"That's easy," answered John, looking at his book. "It's twenty-five hundred and forty-seven miles, according to the last river measurements; but Lewis and Clark call it twenty-eight hundred and forty-eight miles."

"That's really of no importance," said Uncle d.i.c.k. "The term 'mile'

means nothing in travel such as theirs. The real unit was the day's work of 'hearty, healthy, and robust young men.' One set of figures is good as the other.

"Still, it may be interesting to see how much swifter the Missouri River is than the Father of Waters. From the Gulf of Mexico to the source of the Mississippi is twenty-five hundred and fifty-three miles. Up our river, to where we stand, is just six miles short of that, yet the drop is more than twenty-five hundred feet more. One drops eight and a quarter inches to the mile, and the other nineteen inches to the mile.

"But understand, we're talking now of the upper thread of the Mississippi River, and of the Three Forks of our river--which isn't by any means at its head, even measuring to the head of the shortest of the three big rivers that meet here. Now, add three hundred and ninety-eight miles to twenty-five hundred and forty-seven miles. See what you got?"

"That's twenty-nine hundred and forty-five miles!" exclaimed John. "Is it that far from the head to St. Louis?"

"Yes, it is. And if you took the Lewis and Clark measurements to the Forks it would be thirty-two hundred and forty-seven miles.

"And if we took their distances to the place where they left their canoes--that's what they called Shoshoni Cove, where the river petered out for boats--we'd have three thousand and ninety-six miles; two hundred and forty-seven miles above here, as they figured it, and they weren't at the summit even then. Now if we'd take their probable estimate, if they'd finished the distance to the real head of the Missouri, we'd have to allow them about thirty-two hundred and forty-nine miles plus their overrun, at least fifty miles.

"Yes, if they'd have gone to the real source, they'd have sworn it was over thirty-three hundred miles to St. Louis, and over forty-five hundred miles to the Gulf. The modern measurements make it forty-two hundred and twenty-one miles.

"So, young gentlemen, you can see that you are now coming toward the head of the largest continuous waterway in the world. It is five hundred miles longer than the Amazon in South America, and more than twelve hundred miles longer than the river Nile, in Africa.

"Now, Meriwether Lewis did not know as much about all these things as we do now, yet see how he felt about it, at his camp fire, not so far from here:

"'The mountains do not appear very high in any direction tho' the tops of some of them are partially covered with snow, this convinces me that we have ascended to a great hight since we have entered the rocky Mountains, yet the ascent has been so gradual along the vallies that it was scarcely perceptable by land. I do not believe that the world can furnish an example of a river runing to the extent which the Missouri and Jefferson's rivers do through such a mountainous country and at the same time so navigable as they are. if the Columbia furnishes us such another example, a communication across the continent by water will be practicable and safe.'

"Cla.s.s dismissed. I see Billy has got the horses." The boys put away their maps and rolled their beds.

All of the party being good packers, it was not long before they had left their camp ground on the knoll and were off upstream once more, edging the willow flats and swinging to the ford of the Madison, which they made with no great danger at that stage of the water. Thence they headed back for the Jefferson fork, having by now got a good look at the great valleys of the Three Forks.

"Which way, sir?" asked Billy now of their leader. "Shall we stop at the real headquarters camp of the Three Forks, just about a mile up--where the Indian girl told them she had been taken prisoner when she was a child?"

"Too near town!" sung out Jesse, who overheard the question. "Let's shake the railroad."

"She's right hard to shake, up in here," rejoined Billy. "Off to the right is the N.P., heading for b.u.t.te, up the Pipestone. We couldn't shake the left-hand branch of her this side of Twin Bridges, and that's above the Beaverhead Rock. From there upstream to Dillon, along the Beaverhead River, there isn't any railroad. We can swing wide, except where she canons up on us, and may be get away from the whistles. Only, if we go as far as Dillon, we hit the O.S.L. She runs south, down the Red Rock, which is the real Missouri River. And she runs up the Big Hole, which the _Journal_ calls the Wisdom River. And there's a railroad up Philosophy Creek, too----"

"And up all the cardinal virtues!" exclaimed Uncle d.i.c.k. "I don't blame the boys for getting peeved. Now, we don't care for canon scenery so much, nor for willow flats with no beaver in them. I would like the boys to see the Beaverhead Rock and get a general notion of how many of these confusing little creeks there were that had to be worked out.

"I'd like them, too, to get a general idea of the old gold fields. We're right in the heart of those tremendous placers that Lewis and Clark never dreamed about. I'd like them to know, on the ground, not on the map, how the old road agents' trail ran, between Bannack and Virginia City. I'd like them to get a true idea of how Lewis and Clark worked out their way, over the Divide. Lastly, I'd like them to see where the true Missouri heads south and leaves the real Lewis and Clark trail.

"Now, what's the best point to head for, Billy, for a sort of central camp? I don't think we can do more than go to the summit, this trip.

What do you say?"

"Well, sir, I'd say the Shoshoni Cove, where they left their canoes and took horses, would be about the most central point for that. That'll bring us to the last forks--what they call the Two Forks."

"But how about the Beaverhead Rock?"

"We ought to see that," said Rob, at the time. "That's as famous as a landmark as almost anything on the whole river."

"We can get in there easy enough and get out," said Billy. "It's just a question of time on the trail. Taking it easy, give us a week, ten days, on the way to the Cove, taking in the Rock for one camp. It's not half as far by land as it is by water."

"What do you say, boys? Shall we travel by rail or pack train now?"

With one shout they all voted for the pack train. "We couldn't get along without Billy now, anyhow," said Jesse, "because he knows the _Journal_ as well as we do, and he knows the country better."

"Thank you, son. Well, I guess old Sleepy won't die before we get there, though he pretends he can hardly go. Say we get back into the side creeks a little and pick up a mess of fish now and then, and make the Beaverhead a couple of camps later? How'd that be?"

"That's all right, I think," said Rob. "I'd like to get a look at the main river, to see why the names change on it so. First it's the main Missouri; then they conclude to call it the Jefferson--only because the other two forks spread so wide there. Then it runs along all right, and all at once they call it the Beaverhead. And before it gets used to that name they change it to Red River for no reason at all, or because it heads south and runs near a painted b.u.t.te. Yet it is one continuous river all the way."

"The real way to name a river," said Billy, sagely, "is after you know all about it. You got to remember that Lewis and Clark saw this for the first time. By the time we make the Beaverhead Rock, we'll be willing to say they had a hard job. People could get lost in these hills even now, if they stepped off the road."

"All set for the Beaverhead Rock!" said Uncle d.i.c.k, decisively.

Soon they had settled to their steady jog, n.i.g.g.e.r sometimes getting lost in the willows, and Sleepy straying off in his hunt for thistles when the country opened out more. They did not hurry, but moved along among the meadows and fields, talking, laughing, studying the wide and varying landscape about them. That night, as Billy had promised them, they had their first trout for supper, which Billy brought in after a short sneak among the willows with a stick for a rod and a gra.s.shopper for bait.

"That's nothing," said he. "I'll take you to where's some real fishing, if you like."

"Where's that?" demanded John, who also was getting very keen set for sport of some sort.

"Oh, off toward the utmost source of the true Missouri!" said he. "You just wait. I'll show you something."