The Greatest Works of Emerson Hough – 19 Books in One Volume (Illustrated Edition). Emerson Hough
Читать онлайн книгу.
as Indian women were, and we no more can stand by her grave than we can be sure we stand on the exact spot where Will Clark built his winter quarters among the Mandans.
“Great days, boys — yes, great days, and good people in them, too. So now I want you to study a little here.
“Look back down the river, which has seemed so long for you. To-morrow will be the Fourth of July. It was Christmas that Lewis and Clark celebrated with their men in their stockade.”
Their new friend had for the most part been silent as he listened to this counselor of the party. He now spoke.
“Then I take it that you are going on up the river soon, sir?” said he. “I wish you good journey through the cow country. You’ll find the river narrower, with fewer islands, so I hear; and I should think it became swifter, but — I don’t know.”
“I was going to come to that,” said Uncle Dick, turning to Rob, John, and Jesse. “What do you think? I’d like you to get an idea of the river and all it meant, but we have only the summer and early fall to use. I don’t doubt we could plug on up with the motors, and get a long way above Great Falls, but about the time we got to where we could have some fun fishing or maybe shooting, we’d have to start east by rail. So I’d planned that we might make a big jump here.”
“How do you mean, sir?” Rob asked.
“Change our transportation.”
“Oh — because Lewis and Clark changed here?”
“Natural place for us to change, if we do at all,” said Uncle Dick. “We ought to stick as close to the river as we can, and as a matter of fact we have covered the most monotonous part of it. But we had to do that, for there was no other way to get here and still hang anywhere near to the river. And until we got here we struck no westbound railroad that would advance us on our journey.
“Here we could get up the Yellowstone by rail, but we are working on the Missouri. If we run on by motor car up to Buford, there we can get by rail over to the Great Falls, and still hang closer to the river; although, of course, we’ll not be following it.”
“But what’ll we do with our boat?” began Jesse, ruefully. “Hate to leave the little old Adventurer.”
“Well, now,” answered his uncle. “We couldn’t so well take her along, could we?”
“I’d like mighty well to buy her,” interrupted the editor. “That is, if you care to sell her.”
“I never knew my boys to sell any of their sporting equipment,” said the other. “But I expect they’d give it to you, right enough. Eh, boys?”
They looked from one to another. “If the gentleman wanted her,” began Rob, at last, “and if we’ve done with her, I don’t see why we couldn’t. But I think we ought to take the motors along as far as we can, because we might need them.”
“Good idea,” Uncle Dick nodded. “We can get a trailer here, can’t we?” he asked of their friend.
“Sure; and a good car; too. I’ll drive you up to Buford, myself, for the fun of it — and the value of it to me. I’ll get a car at Bismarck. We can pack your outfit in the trailer and the motors, too, easily. You can check and express stuff through to Great Falls from Buford — and there you are. How’ll you go from there — boat?”
“I don’t believe so,” replied Uncle Dick. “I believe we’d have more freedom if we took a pack train above Great Falls, and cut across lots now and then, checking up in our Journal all the way.”
“That’s the stuff!” exclaimed John. “Horses!”
“Lewis and Clark used horses for some distance, at the crossing,” said Uncle Dick, “so I think we may dare do so. We want all the variety we can get, and all the fun we can get, too. What do you say, young gentlemen?”
“It sounds good to me,” said Rob. “I’d like to see the mountains pretty well. You see, a great part of our lives has been spent in Alaska and the northern country, and we’re just getting acquainted with our own country, you might say. The Rockies this far south must be fine in the early fall.”
“It suits me,” assented John. “I’d like to take the Adventurer along, but Lewis and Clark didn’t take their boats through all the way, either.”
“And if we had time,” added Jesse, “we could run some river late in the fall, say from Great Falls down to here.”
“All good,” nodded Uncle Dick. Then turning to their new friend, “Suppose we cross our camp to Bismarck the morning of July 5th, tie up our boat there for you, and then go on in the way you suggest — motor and trailer?”
“Agreed,” said the other. “I’ll be there early that day.”
“Which way shall we go?” asked Rob. “If we took the road along the Northern Pacific west, we could see the Bad Lands, and go through Medora, Theodore Roosevelt’s old town.”
The editor shook his head. “Bad, if there’s rain,” he said. “Besides, that takes you below the Missouri. I think we’d best go on the east side the river, north of Bismarck. We could swing out toward the Turtle Lakes, and then make more west, toward the Fort Berthold Reservation. From there we could maybe get through till we struck the Great Northern Railroad; and then we could get west to Buford, on the line, and on the river again. If we got lost we could find ourselves again some time.”
“How long would it take?” inquired Rob.
“If it’s two hundred and eighty-eight miles by the river, it would be maybe two hundred and fifty by trail. We could do it in a day, on a straightaway good road like one of the motor highways, but we’ll have nothing of the sort. I’ll say two days, three, maybe four — we’d know better when we got there.”
“That sounds more adventurish,” said Jesse. And what the youngest of them thought appealed to the others also.
“Very well. All set for the morning after the Fourth,” said Uncle Dick. “And when we go back to Mandan be sure not to eat too much ice cream, for we’re not apt to run across very many doctors on the way. And now we’d better get ready to camp here to-night. We can make Mandan by noon to-morrow — it’s faster, downstream.”
“On the way,” said their friend, “I want you to go around to the coulee below town, where there’s three or four tepees of Sioux in camp. What do they do? Oh, make little things to sell in town — and not above begging a little. There’s one squaw we call Mary, who has been coming here a good many years. She makes about the finest moccasins we ever get. She made my wife a pair, out of buckskin white as snow. I don’t know where she got it.”
“The Sioux had parfleche soles to all their moccasins,” said John, wisely. “All the buffalo and Plains Indians did. The forest Indians had soft soles.”
“You’re right, son,” said the editor. “For modern bedroom moccasins, to sell to white women, Mary makes them all soft, with a shallow ankle flap. Most of the Indian men wear shoes now, but when she makes a pair of men’s moccasins she always puts on the raw-hide soles. You can see the hair on the bottoms, sometimes.”
“Buffalo hair?” smiled Jesse.
“Well, no. The Indians use beef-hide now. But they don’t like it.”
“Neither do I,” said Jesse.
CHAPTER XVI
OLD DAYS ON THE RIVER
“Not so bad, not so bad at all,” was John’s comment as they all sat around the camp fire on the evening of July 5th. They had spent two pleasant days in town and now were forty miles out into the Plains country above the