The Greatest Works of Emerson Hough – 19 Books in One Volume (Illustrated Edition). Emerson Hough
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in mind before he left Washington.
“Well, Lewis wanted elk-hides for his boat, and the elk were scarce; he had his men out everywhere after elk-hides. He got twenty-eight hides, and took off the hair, and that wasn’t enough; so he took four buffalo-hides to piece her out. And then she wouldn’t do! No. Failure; the first and only failure of a Lewis and Clark outdoor idea.
“Well, Lewis was fair enough, though it mortified him to lose days and days on his pet boat. They sewed the skins with edged awls, and that cut the holes rather big, so when the hides dried and shrunk, the threads didn’t fill the holes any more. He had no tar to pay the seams with, or he’d have been all right. They tried tallow and ashes, but it wouldn’t work. For a few minutes she sat high and light; then the filling soaked out. Poor Lewis! — he had to give it up. So they buried her, somewhere opposite the White Bear Islands, I suppose, where they had their camp.”
“Yes, and then Clark had to go and hustle cottonwood for some more dugouts, and cottonwood was a long, long way off,” contributed John. “Oh, they had their troubles. Hah! We complained, coming up Portage Creek, and over the heads of the draws, trying to find their old portage trail. What if we’d been in moccasins? What if we’d been packing a hundred pounds or dragging at a hide wagon rope? And what if the buffalo had cut up the ground in rainy times, so it dried in little pointed lumps like so many nails — how’d that go in moccasins? Well, they had to lie down and rest, it was so awfully hard on them. But they never a one flickered, leader or enlisted men, and they put her through!”
“It was a whole month?” queried Jesse.
“Yes,” John informed him, referring to the Journal once again. “It was June 14th when Shields came back downstream from Lewis, and told Clark’s boat party that they had found the falls, and it was July 15th when they got their new canoes done and started off up the river.”
“And I’ll bet they were fussed up about things,” said Jesse. “Must have been scared.”
“No, I don’t think they were,” said Rob. “Well, anyhow, in one month they had surveyed and staked out their portage trail around the big falls, had cached their heavy stores, had built new boats, had killed all the meat they could use, and had proceeded on. They now knew that they were almost to the western edge of the buffalo. On west, as I expect Sacágawea also told them, they might have to come to horse meat and salmon. That didn’t stop our fellows. They proceeded on.”
“Time they did!” said Jesse.
“Yes. They had been away from St. Louis just a year and two months, when they left the Falls, here. Let’s have a look at the map.”
They sat down, here on the bank of the great river, on the edge of the great modern town, in sight of many smelter smokes, and bent over the old maps that William Clark had made with such marvelous exactness more than a hundred years ago.
“She seems to go in long sweeps, the old Missouri,” said John, pointing with his finger.
“First we went almost west, to Kansas City, Missouri. Then almost north, to Sioux City, Iowa. Then northwest to Pierre, South Dakota, and then north to Bismarck, North Dakota. Then she runs strong northwest to the Yellowstone, and then straight west to here. From here she takes one more big angle, and runs almost south to the Three Forks.”
“Look it!” pointed Jesse. “She starts below Forty, at St. Louis, and goes north almost to Forty-nine, and then she drops down again to Forty-five at the Three Forks. And Lewis had observations on latitude and longitude right along. Wonder what he thought!”
“He did a great deal of thinking,” said Rob. “He had the conviction that so great a river must run deep into the Rockies — he insisted on that. Then he had the Indians at Mandan to give him some local maps. And he had Sacágawea, worth more than them all for local advice in a tight place where no one else had been ahead. It’s wonderful, if you study it, to see how he made all those things work together, and how he used his brains and his reason all the way across. Even about his pet portable boat, he didn’t sit down and cry. He did the next thing.”
“And proceeded on!”
“And proceeded on, yes.”
“Well,” concluded Jesse, “even if my eagle and my island are gone, I suppose I’ll have to admit that this place is the real portage. They saw the Rockies right along now. They threw those canoes into the high, too!”
“Tracking and poling, pretty soon now, and a fine daily average,” nodded Rob. “And now I don’t suppose that we need just feel that we’ve funked anything by not sticking to our boat all the time, and taking a pack train here; because Clark or Lewis, or both of them, and a good many of the men, walked a lot of the time from here, hunting and scouting and figuring on ahead.”
“That’s so!” said Jesse. “Where were their horses all the time?”
“None above the Mandans,” said Rob; “maybe not that far. They started with two, and picked up one, and one died — that’s the record up to the Sioux. But beyond the Mandans they hoofed it, or poled and paddled and pulled. They couldn’t sail the canoes — they gave that up. And now both their perogues were left behind. So when they left the old eagle on his broken tree, and the savage white bears all along here, and the rattlesnakes and everything else that tried to stop them here, they drew their belts in and threw her in the high — that’s right, Jess.”
“And speaking of the portage,” he continued, “Uncle Dick told me to get a wagon and follow down as close as we could to our camp and get our stuff all up to a place above the White Bear Islands, and go into camp there until he came in with Billy Williams and the pack horses, from his ranch on the Gallatin, near the Forks. So that’s a day’s work, even with a flivver — which I think we’ll use part way. Time we set out and proceeded on, fellows.”
They turned away from the Great Falls of the ancient river, in part with a feeling of sadness. Jesse waved his hand toward the Black Eagle Falls.
“The only thing is —— ” said he.
The others knew Jesse was wishing for the wild days back again.
CHAPTER XX
READY FOR THE RIVER HEAD
The young explorers, used as they were to outdoor life, had no difficulty in getting their outfit up a long coulee to the level of the prairie, where a small car quickly carried them into and beyond the city to a point where another gradual descent led down to the point usually believed to be that where the “White Bear” camp of Lewis and Clark was pitched above the falls. Here the great river was wide and more quiet, as though making ready for its great plunges below. Not far from the railway tracks they put up their temporary camp, as the pack horses had not yet arrived.
“The reader will suppose one hundred years to have elapsed!” said Jesse, sarcastically. “All right; but I want something besides fried eggs and marmalade.”
“Easy now, Jess,” rejoined his older friend. “Leave that to Uncle Dick. He told me he was going to get us some sport within ten days from here — fishing, I mean — trout, and even grayling. Of course, at this season there’d be nothing to shoot. Lewis and Clark killed all sorts of game at all sorts of seasons, but they had to do that to live. They had thirty-two people in their party, all working hard and eating plenty. They would eat a whole buffalo every day, or a couple of elk, so somebody had to be busy. It would have taken a lot of fried eggs and marmalade to put them up and over those rapids. But as you say, we’ve got to suppose a hundred years to have elapsed, so we don’t kill a buffalo every day.”
“I could eat half of one, any day!” said John. “I get awfully hungry, just from fighting the mosquitoes.”
“I’ll bet they were bad enough. The old Journal says more about mosquitoes than any other hardship.