The Greatest Works of Emerson Hough – 19 Books in One Volume (Illustrated Edition). Emerson Hough
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“Well, Jesse, how’d you sleep last night?” inquired Billy in the morning, as he pushed the coffee pot back from the edge of the little fire and turned to Jesse when he emerged from his blankets.
“Not too well,” answered Jesse, rubbing his eyes. “Fact is, it’s too noisy in this country. Up North where we used to live, it was quiet, unless the dogs howled; but in here there’s towns and railroads all over — more than a dozen towns we passed, coming up from the Great Falls, and if you don’t hear the railroad whistles all night, you think you do. Down right below us, you can throw a rock into the town, almost, and up at the Forks there’ll be another squatting down waiting for you. All right for gasoline, Billy, but we’re supposed to be using the tracking line and setting pole.”
“Sure we are — until we meet the Shoshonis and get some horses.”
“Well, I don’t want to camp by a railroad or a wire fence any more.”
“No? Well, we’ll see what we can do. Anyhow, one thing you ought to be glad about.”
“What’s that?”
“Why, that you don’t have to walk down into that ice water and pole a boat or drag it for two or three hours before breakfast. Yet that’s what those poor men had to do. And three times they mention, between the Forks and the mountains, the whole party had to wait breakfast till somebody killed some meat. Anyhow, we’ve got some eggs and marmalade.”
“Well, they got meat,” demurred Jesse, seating himself as he laced his shoes.
“Thanks to Drewyer, they usually did. He got five deer, one day, and about every time he went out he hung up something. I think he’d got to the front in the party now, next to Lewis and Clark. Chaboneau they don’t speak well of.
“Shields was a good man, and the two Fields boys. But, though Clark was mighty sick, and Lewis got down, too, for a day or so, in here, they were about the best men left. The others were wearing out by now.
“You see” — here Billy flipped a cake over in the pan — “they couldn’t have had much wool clothing left by now — they were in buckskin, and buckskin is about as good as brown paper when it’s wet. They had no hobnails, and their broken, wet moccasins slipped all over those slick round stones. You ever wade a trout stream, you boys?”
“I should say so!”
“Well, then you know how it is. While the water is below your knees you can stand it quite a while. When it gets along your thighs you begin to get cold. When it’s waist deep, you chill mighty soon and can’t stand it long — though Lewis stripped and dived in eight feet of water to get an otter he had shot. And slipping on wet rocks — — ”
“Don’t we know about that! We waded up the Rat River, on the Arctic Circle.”
“You did! You’ve traveled like that? Well, then you can tell what the men were standing here. They hadn’t half clothes, a lot of them were sick with boils and ‘tumers,’ as Clark calls them. Some were nearly crippled. But in this water, ice water, waist deep, they had to get eight boats up that big creek yonder — beaver meadows all along, so they couldn’t track. Sockets broke off their setting poles, so Captain Lewis, he ties on some fish gigs he’d brought along. One way or another, they got on up.
“They now began to get short rations, too. At first they couldn’t get any trout, or the whitefish — those fish with the ‘long mouths’ that Lewis tells about. I’ll bet they never tried grasshoppers. But along above here they began to get fish, as the game got scarcer. Lewis tells of setting their net for them.”
“You certainly have been reading that little old Journal, Billy!”
“Why shouldn’t I? It’s one great book, son. More I read it, the more I see how practical those men were. Now, those men were all fine rifle shots, and they’d go against anything, though along here there wasn’t many grizzlies, and all of them shy, not bold like the buffalo grizzlies at the Falls. But they didn’t hunt for sport — it was meat they wanted. Once in a while a snag of venison; antelope hard to get; no buffalo now, and very few elk; by now, even ducks and geese began to look good, and trout.
“The ducks and geese and cranes were all through here — breeding grounds all along. That was molting time and they caught them in their hands. They killed beaver with the setting poles, and one day the men killed several otter with their tomahawks, though I doubt if they could eat otter. You see, as Clark’s notes say, the beaver were here in thousands. I suppose when so big a party went splashing up the creek the beaver and otter would get scared and swim out to the main stream, and there some one would hit them over the head as they swam by.”
“One thing,” said Jesse, “I don’t think they flogged any of the men any more. I don’t remember any since they left the Mandans.”
“Maybe they didn’t need it, and maybe their leaders had learned more. Ever since Lewis picked the right river at the Marias forks, I reckon the men relied on him more. Then, he’d be poking around shooting at the sun and stars with his astronomy machines, and that sort of made them respect him. Clark was a good sport. Lewis, I reckon, was harder to get along with. But they both must have been pretty white with the men. They tell of the hardships of the men, and how game and patient they are — not a whimper about quitting.”
“I know,” said Jesse, hauling out his worn copy of the Journal from his bed roll and turning the leaves; “they speak of the way the men felt:
“‘We Set out early (Wind N.E.) proceeded on passed Several large Islands and three Small ones, the river much more Sholey than below which obliges us to haul the Canoes over those Sholes which Suckceed each other at Short intervales emencely laborious; men much fatigued and weakened by being continually in the water drawing the Canoes over the Sholes, encamped on the Lard Side men complain verry much of the emence labour they are obliged to undergo & wish much to leave the river. I passify them, the weather Cool, and nothing to eate but venison, the hunters killed three Deer to day.’
“Anxious times about now, eh? But still, I don’t think the leaders ever once lost their nerve. Here’s what Lewis wrote about it:
“‘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 pass 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 passed. 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 principal 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,