CHAPTER X

      AT THE PLATTE

       Table of Contents

      On the morning following the storm the sun broke through the clouds with promise of a clear, warm day. Our voyageurs were astir early.

      “Take it easy, fellows,” counseled the leader. “We’ve got to ‘sun our powder,’ as our Journal would say. John, when you set down the day’s doings in your own journal, make it simple as William Clark would. It’s more manly. Well, here we are.”

      Rob looked ruefully at the wet willow thicket in which their camp was pitched. “We can get a few dead limbs,” he said, “but, wet as things are now, we’d only smoke the stuff and not dry it much.”

      “Wait for the sun,” advised John. And this they found it wise to do, not leaving the island until nearly noon.

      “Morale pretty good!” said Uncle Dick. “John, set down, ‘Men in verry high sperrits.’ And off we go!”

      They chugged up directly to the point, as nearly as they could determine, where they had met the disaster of the previous day. “Keep leading a horse up to a newspaper and he’ll quit shying at it,” said Uncle Dick. “Find the very spot where we struck.”

      “There she is!” exclaimed Rob, presently. The boat stuck again and began to swing. But this time the setting pole held her bow firm, and, since there was no wind, a strong shove pushed her free without anyone getting overboard. They went on after that with greater confidence than ever, and Jesse began to sing the old canoe song of the voyagers, “En roulant ma boule, roulant!”

      They paused at none of the cities and towns now, and only set down the rivers and main features, as they continued their steady journey day after day for all of a week. At the end of that time the increasing shallowness of the river, the many sand bars and the nature of the discolored, rolling waters, made them sure they were approaching the mouth of the great Platte River, which, as they knew, rose far to the west in the Rocky Mountains.

      Here they went into a camp and rested for almost a day, bringing up their field notes and maps and getting a good idea of the country by comparing their records with the old journals of the great expedition.

      “Bear in mind that, after all, they were not the first,” said Uncle Dick. “They had picked up old Dorion, their interpreter, from a canoe away down in Missouri, and brought him back up to help them with the Sioux, where he had lived. Their bowman Cruzatte and several other Frenchmen had spent two years up in here, at the mouth of the Loup. There were a lot of cabins, Indian trading camps, one of them fifty years old, along this part of the river.

      “But when they got up this far, they were coming into the Plains. New animals now, before so very long. They really were explorers, for there were no records to help them.”

      “You say they found new animals now,” Rob began. “You mean elk, buffalo?”

      “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 Dick. “He only wrote his name twice — once up in Montana. But now, think how this new sort of country struck them. Patrick Gass 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 Dick 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