Читать книгу The Untamed American Spirit: Historical Novels & Western Adventures - Emerson Hough - Страница 153

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“It’s quite a bit of country, after all, between the Forks and the head, isn’t it?” remarked Rob, on their fourth day out from the junction of the river. “I don’t blame them for taking a month to it.”

“We’re beating them on their schedule, at that,” said the studious John. “At the Forks we were exactly even up, July 27th; we’d beat them just exactly one year at that point, which they called the head of the river. But they went slow in here, in these big beaver meadows; ten miles daily was big travel, wading, and not half of that gained in actual straight distance. It took them ten days to the Beaverhead. How far’s that from here, Billy?”

“Well, what do you think?” said Billy, pulling up and sitting crosswise in his saddle as he turned. “See anything particular from this side the hills?”

“I know!” exclaimed Rob. “That’s the Rock over yonder — across the river.”

“Check it up on the Journal, Rob,” said Uncle Dick.

Rob dismounted and opened his saddle pocket, producing his copy of the cherished work.

“Sure it is!” said he. “Here it says:

“‘The Indian woman recognized the point of a high plain to our right which she informed us was not very distant from the summer retreat of her nation on a river beyond the mountains which runs to the west. this hill she says her nation calls the beaver’s head from a conceived re(se)mblance of it’s figure to the head of that animal. she assures us that we shall either find her people on this river or on the river immediately west of it’s source; which from it’s present size cannot be very distant. as it is now all important with us to meet with those people as soon as possible I determined to proceed tomorrow with a small party to the source of the principal stream of this river and pass the mountains to the Columbia; and down that river untill I found the Indians; in short it is my resolution to find them or some others who have horses if it should cause me a trip of one month.’

“So that must be the Rock over yonder. We’re below the cañon, and below the Wisdom, and below the Philanthropy, and below the end of the railroad, and in the third valley. Besides, look at it. Just as sure as Sacágawea was about it!”

“You’re right,” said Billy. “That’s the Point of Rocks, as it’s called now.”

They made down to the edge of the valley and went into camp across from the great promontory which so long had served as landmark in all that country. That night all of them forded the river horseback and rode close to the historic point. Jesse, who was prowling around on foot, as was his habit, closely examining all he saw, suddenly stooped, then rose with an exclamation.

“See what I’ve found!” said he.

“What is it — a gold nugget?” asked his uncle.

“No. An arrowhead. Funny one — looks like it was made of glass, and black glass at that.”

Uncle Dick examined it closely.

“Jesse,” said he, “that’s one of the most interesting things we’ve run across on this whole trip. Did you know that?”

“No. Why?”

“You wouldn’t think that arrowhead was going to take you to the true head of the Missouri, and to good fishing for trout and grayling, would you?”

“Why, no! How’s that?”

JESSE SUDDENLY STOOPED, THEN ROSE WITH AN EXCLAMATION

“I’ll tell you. That’s an obsidian arrowhead. The Bannacks and Shoshonis got that black, glassy stuff at one place — the Obsidian Cliff, in Yellowstone Park! Those old trails that Lewis saw to the south were trails that crossed the Divide south of here. They put the Indians on Snake River waters. These tribes hunted down there. They knew the head of the Red Rock. They knew the head of the Madison. They knew the Gibbon River, and they knew the Norris Geyser Basin, up in Yellowstone Park. It’s all right to say the Indians were afraid to go into Yellowstone Park among the geysers, but they did. They knew the Obsidian Cliff — close by the road, it is, and one of the features of the Park, as it now is.

“It’s a far shot that arrow will carry you, son. It will show you more of these Indian trails than even Lewis and Clark ever knew. Of course, they didn’t want to go south; they wanted north and west, because they knew the latitude and longitude of the mouth of the Columbia River. They knew that was northwest. They knew any water they got on, once over the Divide, would run into the Columbia, and they could see the Rockies, just on ahead to the west. As Billy has said, the Indian girl always was telling them that her people lived along in here. An obsidian arrow meant nothing to them. But it meant much to later explorers to the south of here.”

“It’s a good specimen he’s got,” said Billy, looking it over. “The Indians liked to work obsidian; it would cleave so sharp and clean. I thought they had them all picked up, long ago. Up in the Shoshoni Cove they found a good many, first and last. All this was their hunting ground. A little over the Divide it gets awfully rough, and not much game.”

They spent some time around the Rock, examining it, finding the cliff to be about one hundred and fifty feet in height and giving a good view out over the valley plains, over which one could see many miles, and from which the great rock itself could be seen for great distances.

“Here was the old ford of the road agents’ trail,” said Billy. “They crossed here and headed out, east and south, for the hills between here and Virginia City. They were hunting for easier money than beaver then, though — gold! This was the murderers’ highway, right by here. Over a hundred men were murdered on this hundred miles.”

They went back to their encampment and, after their simple preparations were over for the evening, spread out their books and maps once more, John endeavoring laboriously to fill in the gaps of his own map; rather hard to do, since they had not followed the actual stream course on their way up with the pack train.

“This Wisdom River, now,” said he, “must have been a puzzler, sure enough. That’s called the Big Hole to-day. I’ll bet she was a beaver water, too, as well as full of trout. Wonder if she had any grayling in her. Here’s a town down below here, near the mouth of the Red Rock, called Grayling.”

“Must have been grayling in all these upper Missouri waters,” nodded Billy. “I don’t think the Journal mentions them, but they saw whitefish, and the two often go together, though by no means always. The Madison is a grayling stream, or was — the South Fork’s good now, and so is Grayling Creek, or was. The headwaters of the Red Rock were full of grayling once. The trouble is, so many motor cars now, that everybody gets in, and they soon fish a stream out.”

“Shall we get to see a grayling?” asked Rob. “You know, we got the Arctic grayling on the Bell River, in the Arctic regions. They call them ‘bluefish’ up there. They’re fine.”

“So are these fine. I’d rather catch one grayling than a dozen trout. But they’re getting mighty scarce, and I think before long there won’t be any left.

“But look what a beaver country this must have been!” he added, waving a hand each way. “Fifty by two hundred miles, and then some. No wonder the trappers came. It wasn’t long before they and the Blackfeet mixed it, all along in here.”

“Listen,” said Uncle Dick, “and I’ll tell you a little beaver story, right out of the Journal.”

“Aw — the Journal!” said Jesse. “I’d rather catch one!”

“Wait for my story, and you’ll see how important a small thing may be that might make all the difference in the world. Now the hero of my story is a beaver. I don’t know his name.

“Look on your map, just above here — that’s the mouth of the Wisdom, or Big Hole, River, that Lewis and Drewyer explored first, while poor Clark, with his sore leg, was toiling up with his boat party, after he was better of his sickness.

“Now the Wisdom was a good-sized river, too, almost as big as the Jefferson, though broken into channels. Lewis worked it out and came back to the Jefferson at its mouth, and started on again, up the Jefferson. As was their custom, he wrote a note and put it in a cleft stick and stuck it up where Clark could see it when he got up that far. He put it on a green stick, poplar or willow, and stuck it in the bar. It told Clark to take the left-hand stream, not the one on the right — the Wisdom.

“Well, along comes Mr. Beaver that night, and gnaws off the pole and swims away with it, note and all! I don’t know what his family made out of the note, but if he’d been as wise as some of the magazine-story beavers, he could have read it, all right.

“Now when Clark came along, tired and worn out, all of them, the note was gone. They also, therefore, went up the Wisdom and not the Jefferson. Clark sent Shannon ahead up the Wisdom to hunt. But he turned back when the river got too shallow. Result, Shannon lost for three days, and not his fault. He went away up till he found the boats could not have passed; then he hustled back to the mouth and guessed the party were above him up the other fork — where he guessed right. They then were all on the Jefferson. Lost time, hunting for Shannon, and they couldn’t find him. All due to the beaver eating off the message pole. If Shannon had died, it would have been due to that beaver.

“That’s only part. In the shallow water a canoe swept down out of control. It ran over Whitehouse, another man, on a bar, and nearly broke his leg; it would have killed him sure if the water had been three inches shallower. That would have been another man lost.

“Not all yet. A canoe got upset in the shallow water up there on the Wisdom, and wet everything in it. Result, they lost so much cargo — foodstuffs, etc. — that they just abandoned that canoe right there and lost her cargo, after carrying it three thousand miles, for over a year! All to be charged to the same beaver. Well, you and I have spoken before about the extreme danger of a land party and a boat party trying to travel together.

“The next time Lewis left a note, he used a dry stick, and he felt mortified at not having thought to do that in the first place. Well, that’s my beaver story. It shows how a little thing may have big consequences — just as this arrowhead that Jesse found points out a long trail.”

“And by that time,” said John, bending again over his map, “they were needing every pound of food and every minute of their time and every bit of every man’s strength. The poor fellows were almost worn out. Now they began to complain for the first time. We don’t hear any more now about dances at night around the camp fire.”

“Yes,” said Uncle Dick. “Now they all were having their proving. It would have been easy for them to turn back; most men would have done so. But they never thought of that. All the men wanted was to get away from the boats and get on horseback.”

“But they didn’t yet know where to go!”

“No, not yet. And now comes the most agonizing and most dramatic time in the whole trip, when it needed the last ounce and the last inch of nerve. Read us what Lewis said in his Journal, Rob. He was on ahead, and every man now was hustling, because there were the mountains ‘right at them,’ as they say down South.”

Rob complied, turning the pages of their precious book until he reached the last march of Lewis beyond the last forks of the river:

“‘Near this place we fell in with a large and plain Indian road which came into the cove from the N.E. and led along the foot of the mountains to the S.W. o(b)liquely approaching the main stream which we had left yesterday. this road we now pursued to the S.W. at 5 miles it passed a stout stream which is a principal fork of the ma(i)n stream and falls into it just above the narrow pass between the two clifts before mentioned and which we now saw before us. here we halted and breakfasted on the last of our venison, having yet a small piece of pork in reserve. after eating we continued our rout through the low bottom of the main stream along the foot of the mountains on our right the valley for 5 M^ls. further in a S.W. direction was from 2 to 3 miles wide the main stream now after discarding two stream(s) on the left in this valley turns abruptly to the West through a narrow bottom betwe(e)n the mountains. the road was still plain, I therefore did not not dispair of shortly finding a passage over the mountains and of taisting the waters of the great Columbia this evening.’”

“Well, what do you think? Clean nerve, eh? I think so, and so do you. If he had not had, he never would have gotten across. And Simon Fraser then would have beaten us to the mouth of the Columbia, and altered the whole history of the West and Northwest. Well, at least our beaver, that carried off Lewis’s note, did not work that ruin, but it might have been responsible, even for that; for now a missed meeting with the Shoshonis would have meant the failure of the whole expedition.

“A great deal more Lewis did than he ever was to know he had done. He died too soon even to know much about the swift rush of the fur traders into this bonanza. And few of the fur traders ever lived to guess the rush of the placer miners of 1862 and 1863 into this same bonanza — right where we are camping now, on the old Robbers’ Trail. And not many of the placer miners and other early adventurers of that day dreamed of anything but gold. The copper mines of this country have built up towns and cities, not merely camps.

“Even had Lewis and his man Fields, whose name he gave to Boulder Creek, and who killed the panther which gave Panther Creek its name — pushed on up Panther Creek, which now is known as Pipestone Creek, and stepped over the crest to where the city of Butte is to-day, they hardly would have suspected copper. Lewis set down the most minute details in botany, even now. He studied and described his last new bird, the sage hen, with much detail. Yet for more than a month and a half he and his men had been wearing out their moccasins on gold pebbles, and they never panned a color or dreamed a dream of it. It was lucky for America they did not.

“They found copper at Butte in 1876, the year of the Custer massacre. I wouldn’t like to say how much Butte, just over yonder hills, has earned to date, but in her first twenty years she turned out over five hundred million dollars. And twenty years ago she paid in one year fourteen million dollars in dividends, and carried a pay roll of two million dollars a month, for over eight thousand miners, and gave the world over fifty million dollars in metals in that one year! In ten years she paid in dividends alone over forty-three million dollars. In one year she sold more copper, gold, and silver from her deep mines than would have paid three times the whole price we paid for all the Louisiana that Lewis and Clark and you and I have been exploring! And that doesn’t touch the fur and the placer gold and the other mines and the cattle and wool and the farm products and the lumber. No man can measure what wealth has gone out from this country right under our noses here. And all because Lewis and his friend and their men wouldn’t quit. And their expense allowance was twenty-five hundred dollars!

“This was on our road to Mandalay, young gentlemen, right here through these gray foothills and green willow flats! Beyond the hills was still all the wealth of the Columbia, of the Pacific Northwest also. This trail brought us to the end of all our roads — face to face with Asia. Was it enough, all this, as the result of one young man’s wish to do something for the world? Did he do it? Did he have his wish?”

His answer was in the silence with which his words were received. Our young adventurers, though they had been used to stirring scenes all their lives, had never yet been in any country which gave them the thrill they got here, under the Beaverhead Rock.

“She’s one wonderful river!” said Billy Williams, after a time. “And those two scouts were two wonderful men!”

“‘August 20th Tuesday 1805 ‘So-So-ne’ the Snake Indians Set out at half past 6 oClock and proceeded on (met many parties of Indians) thro’ a hilley Countrey to the Camp of the Indians on a branch of the Columbia River, before we entered this Camp a Serimonious hault was requested by the Chief and I smoked with all that Came around, for Several pipes, we then proceeded on to the Camp & I was introduced into the only Lodge they had which was pitched in the Center for my party all the other Lodges made of bushes, after a fiew Indian Seremonies I informed the Indians (of) the object of our journey our good intentions toward them my Consirn for their distressed Situation, what we had done for them in makeing a piece with the Minitarras Mandans Rickara &c. for them. and requested them all to take over their horses & assist Capt Lewis across &c. also informing them the o(b)ject of my journey down the river, and requested a guide to accompany me, all of which was repeited by the Chief to the whole village.

“‘Those pore people Could only raise a Sammon & a little dried Choke Cherries for us half the men of the tribe with the Chief turned out to hunt the antilopes, at 3 oClock after giveing a fiew Small articles as presents I set out accompanied by an old man as a Guide I endevered to procure as much information from thos people as possible without much Suckcess they being but little acquainted or effecting to be So. I left one man to purchase a horse and overtake me and proceeded on thro a wide rich bottom on a beaten Roade 8 miles Crossed the river and encamped on a Small run, this evening passed a number of old lodges, and met a number of men women children & horses, met a man who appeared of Some Consideration who turned back with us, we halted a woman & gave us 3 Small Sammon, this man continued with me all night and partook of what I had which was a little Pork verry Salt. Those Indians are verry attentive to Strangers &c. I left our interpreter & his woman to accompany the Indians to Capt Lewis to-morrow the Day they informed me they would Set out I killed a Pheasent at the Indian Camp larger than a dungal (dunghill) fowl with f(l)eshey protubrances about the head like a turkey. Frost last night.’

“Clark got more and more discouraging news about getting down the Lemhi River, on which they were camped, and the big river below — the Salmon River. But with the old man for guide, he went about seventy miles, into the gorge of the Salmon River, before he would quit. But he found that no man could get down that torrent, with either boat or pack train. He gave it up. They were nearly starved when they got back at the Indian camp, where Lewis and the other men were trading. Sacágawea had kept all her people from going on east to the buffalo country, though now they none of them had anything to eat but a few berries and choke cherries. If the Indians had left, or if they had been missed by the party, the expedition would have ended there. The Indian girl once more had saved the Northwest for America, very likely.

“Now the old Indian guide said he knew a way across, away to the north. They hired him as guide. They traded for twenty-nine horses, and at last packed them and set out for the hardest part of their journey and the riskiest, though they did not know that then. On August 30th they set out. At the same time Cameahwait and his band set off east, after their fall hunt.

“That was the last that Sacágawea ever saw of her brother or her girl friend. She went on with her white husband, into strange tribes — nothing further for her to look forward to now, for she was leaving home for another thousand miles, in the opposite direction.

“And that ended the long, hard, risky time the company of Volunteers for Discovery of the Northwest had in crossing the Continental Divide. We lie at the foot of their pass. Yonder they headed out for the setting sun!”

“Let’s go on after them, Uncle Dick!” exclaimed Jesse. “We’ve got a good outfit, and we’re not afraid!”

“I’ve been expecting that,” rejoined their leader. “I was afraid you’d want to go through! But we can’t do it, fellows, not this year at least. There’s the school term we’ve got to think of. We’re nearly three thousand miles from St. Louis. That means we’ll have to choose between two or three weeks of the hardest kind of mountain work and back out when we’ve got nowhere, and taking a fast and simple trip to the true head of the Missouri. Which would you rather do?”

“We don’t like to turn back,” said Rob.

“Well, it wouldn’t be turning back, really. It would be going to the real head of the Missouri — and neither Lewis nor Clark ever did that, or very many other men.” Billy spoke quietly.

“But don’t think,” he added, “that I’m not game to go on into the Bitter Roots, if you say so. I’m promising you she’s rough, up in there. The trail they took was a fright, and I don’t see how they made it. It ran to where this range angles into the corner of the Bitter Roots, and crossed there. They crossed another pass, too, and that makes three passes, from here. They got here July 10th, and three days later at last they hit the Lolo Creek trail, over the Lolo Pass — the way old Chief Joseph came east when he went on the war trail; he fought Gibbon in the battle of the Big Hole, above here.”

Rob sighed. “Well, it only took Lewis and Clark a couple of months to get through. But still, we’ve only got a couple of weeks.”

“What do you say, John? Shall we go south to the head with Billy?” Uncle Dick did not decide it alone.

“Vote yes, in the circumstances,” said John. “Hate to quit her, though!”

“You, Jess?”

“Oh, all right, I’ll haul off if the rest do. We’ll get to fish some, won’t we?”

“All you want. The best trout and grayling fishing there is left anywhere.”

“It’s a vote, Uncle Dick!” said Rob. “This is our head camp on this leg of the trip.”

“I think that’s wise,” said Uncle Dick.

“But before we leave here I want you to have a last look at the map.”

They spread it open in the firelight.

“This point is where Clark came and got the canoes the next year, 1806. They came back over the Lolo, but took a short cut, east of this mountain range, forty miles east of the other trail. They came over the Gibbon Pass — which ought to be called Clark’s Pass and isn’t — and headed southeast, the Indian girl being of use again now. They came down Grasshopper Creek, walking over millions of dollars of gold gravel, and found their canoes, not over a few hundred yards from where we sit, like enough.

“Then Clark and his men got in the boats and headed home. Sacágawea showed them the trail up the Gallatin, over the Bozeman Pass, to the Yellowstone. And they went down that to its mouth.

“And now, one last touch to show what nerve those captains really had. Either could cut loose.

“Near what is now Missoula, on the Bitter Root — which Lewis called Clark’s Fork, after Clark, just as Clark named his Salmon River tributary after Lewis — Lewis took ten men and headed across lots for the Great Falls and then for the head of the Marias River!

“Surely, they began to scatter. Clark had left twenty men, the Indian girl and her baby, and they had fifty horses. At this place here, where we are in camp, Clark split his party again, some going down in the boats, some on horseback, but all traveling free and happy. They got here July 10th, and three days later were at the Three Forks, both parties, only one hour apart! They certainly had good luck in getting together.

“On that same day, Sergeant Ordway took six boats and nine men and started down the Missouri to meet Lewis at the Great Falls, or the mouth of the Marias. They made it down all right, and that is all we can say, for no record exists of that run downstream.

“Now, get all this straight in your heads and see how they had scattered, in that wild, unknown country, part in boats, part on shore — the riskiest way to travel. All the sergeants are captains now. We have four different companies.

“Gass is at the Great Falls, where Lewis split his party. Ordway is on his way down the river from the Three Forks to the Falls. Clark is with the horses now, headed east for the Yellowstone — which not a soul in that party knew a thing about, except the Indian girl, who insisted they would come out on the Yellowstone. And on that river the Clark party divided once more, part going in boats and part on horseback!

“Now figure five parties out of thirty-one men. Look at your map, remembering that the two land parties were in country they had never seen before. Yet they plan to meet at the mouth of the Yellowstone, over twelve hundred miles from where we are sitting here! That’s traveling! That’s exploring! And their story of it all is as plain and simple and modest as though children had done it. There’s nothing like it in all the world.”

He ceased to speak. The little circle fell silent.

“Go on, go on, Uncle Dick!” urged Jess. “You’ve not allowed us to read ahead that far. You said you’d rather we wouldn’t. Tell us, now.”

“No. Fold up your maps and close your journals for a while, here at our last camp on the greatest trail a river ever laid.

“We’re going fishing now, fellows — to-morrow we start east, gaining two years on Lewis and Clark. When we get down near the Yellowstone and Great Falls country again, going east ourselves, we’ll just finish up the story of the map till we reach the Mandans — which is where we left our own good ship Adventurer.

“To-morrow we head south, the other way. ‘This story is to be continued in our next,’ as the story papers say.

“Good night. Keep all this in your heads. It is a great story of great men in a great valley, doing the first exploring of the greatest country in the world — the land that is drained by the Missouri and its streams!

“Good luck, old tops!” he added, as he rose and stepped to the edge of the circle of light, waving his hand to the Divide above them. He stood looking toward the west.

“Whom are you speaking to, Uncle Dick?” asked John, as he heard no answer.

“I was just speaking to my friends, Captain Meriwether Lewis and Captain William Clark. Didn’t you see them pass our camp just now?”