CHAPTER XVIII

      WHERE THE ROAD FORKED

       Table of Contents

      “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 Dick. He’s grouching.”

      Uncle Dick 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 Musselshell 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 shores 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 shores 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 cañons 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 passed 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 buttes, most of which did not stick. Two of them did stick — the Judith and the Marias. Clark called the first Judith’s