Читать книгу The Untamed American Spirit: Historical Novels & Western Adventures - Emerson Hough - Страница 160

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The blue smoke of their last camp fire on the South Fork rose almost straight in the still air of a clear summer day as their party sat around their last breakfast. Although not actually at the end of their journey, they felt that now they were heading away from these interesting scenes, so that a sort of sadness fell upon them.

“Cheer up, fellows!” said Billy Williams. “You are not out of scenery, nor out of sport yet, by any means, if you want to stop for sport. Besides, there is one other thing we haven’t finished yet,” he added turning to Uncle Dick.

“Feel in your right-hand waistcoat pocket, Jesse,” said the latter.

Jesse did so with a smile and produced the black, glassy-looking arrowhead which he had found at the Beaverhead Rock over to the northward, many days before.

“We are a few miles west of the Yellowstone Park here,” said Uncle Dick. “We will have quite a party in our car with all the luggage, but they are used to seeing cars in the Park with bundles tied all over the running boards. Now I move you that we go over to Yellowstone and go into the Park as far as the forks of the Gibbon and the Madison, and leave our stuff there for our camp, with Con to take charge of it and make camp. Then we can go on up the Gibbon and on to the Beaver Meadows, where the great black cliff is that is known through all this country as the Obsidian Cliff. I shall show you there, Jesse, the whole face of a mountain of this same black glass, as you call it. And that mountain, as sure as you live, was known by all the Indians for hundreds of miles around here. It was just like the great Red Pipestone quarries of Minnesota.

“Now you begin to see something about exploring and getting across country. You found that arrowhead on the hunting ground of the Shoshonis and the Bannacks. Those people hunted clear down across the lower end of what is now Montana, down the Red Rock River, the way we came by rail; and over the Raynolds Pass, where you boys were; and over the Targhee Pass, and up the Madison and the Gibbon, to this place where they get the heads for their arrows.

“How did they know? Who found it first? Nobody can answer those questions. But one great truth about white explorations on this Continent you must know — there was not one great pass, not one great river, not one great natural scenic feature, which was not known to one or more Indian tribes centuries before the white men came. So after all, we as explorers are not so much. Frémont was not much of an explorer, much as you reverence him. Even Lewis and Clark had been preceded in all this country by the Indian girl and her people. And those people had been every place that we have been — and even as far as Yellowstone Park and into its interior as far as the Obsidian Cliff. There is no doubt or question about that, although it is quite true that obsidian was found in other volcanic regions of different parts of the West.

“Jesse, your arrowhead has been a long way from home! Are you going to take it back? Has it served its purpose in teaching you something about your own country?”

Jesse sat silent for a time, then, “Uncle Dick,” said he, at last, “I am going to take my arrowhead back. When we get to that rock you tell about, I am going to put it down right at the foot, just the way it is, with other pieces like those the Indians took away.”

“Good!” said Uncle Dick. “The little sentiment won’t hurt you, anyhow. I suppose your arrowhead will remain there undiscovered for a thousand years. The tourists who come there now in their touring cars look at that black-faced rock about half a second and whiz by. They want to make the next lunch station.”

“That’s no lie,” said Billy Williams. “Folks nowadays don’t know how to travel.”

They concluded their packing arrangements, rolling their bed rolls tight and storing them along the hood of the car and on the running boards, where Con had fixed up a little rack to carry the extra baggage. Saying good-by to their hospitable friends, the two parties now separated.

Without incident the journey of that day was completed as outlined by their leader, and that night they spread their tent in a public camping ground on the banks of the Madison River, in sight of twenty other tents besides their own.

“Nothing much here of interest,” said Uncle Dick, “except yonder mountains. The Madison here is a beautiful stream, but fished to death. That mountain is not much changed.”

“What about it?” said Rob, curiously.

“That’s National Park Mountain. We are camping now precisely where the Hayden, Doane, and Langford exploring party camped when they were going out in 1871 after finishing the first exploration of Yellowstone Park. It was right here, at this camping place, that Cornelius Hedges, one of their number, proposed the establishment of the Yellowstone Park, so that all of this wonderland should be preserved forever.”

“Well,” said Rob, drawing a long breath, “we are getting into some history now around here!”

But they talked no more history at the time, for by now all were weary with the journey. As early as the next their camp fire was alight the following morning. Billy took Jesse up to Gibbon and across to the Obsidian Cliff, where he carried out his intention, and hid his obsidian arrowhead at the foot of the great rock. “There!” said he, “I’ll bet, if anybody finds it, he’ll wonder who made it!”

Soon they were on their way back to Yellowstone Station on the Bozeman road. Following it out, under Con O’Brien’s steady driving, and asking a hundred questions of Billy en route, they finally swept down late in the evening into the beautiful valley of the Gallatin. Winding among the farms, they pulled up at last at Billy Williams’s comfortable ranch house and soon were made at home.

“Here we are, fellows, east of the Three Forks of the Missouri,” said Uncle Dick, when they had gotten out their maps for that evening’s study. “At first, neither Lewis nor Clark followed the Gallatin at all. As we know, Clark went but a short distance up the Madison. But when the explorers were going east, as we saw before, Clark came down to the Shoshoni Cove, at the junction where we made our last camp, over west. When he struck in here, on the Gallatin, Clark had with him the Indian girl, Sacágawea. Besides the Indian woman and her child, he had eleven men and fifty horses. Ordway, as we have seen, had taken nine men and started downstream with the boats. No one knew this country except the Indian girl.

“Yes, and she must have been across here before, too,” said Billy. “There are three passes at the head of the East Gallatin — the Bozeman and the Bridger and the Flathead. The Indian girl told them to take the one farthest south, which is Bozeman Pass.

“The books say that on July 13th Clark camped just where the town of Logan is, in the Gallatin Valley. They say he followed southeast from there and crossed Bozeman Creek near this town. The Indian girl knew there was a buffalo road there, and they stuck to that. Good authorities think that they camped, July 14th, near where old Fort Ellis afterward was located. That’s across the East Gallatin. There is an easy pass there, and there is no doubt at all that the Indian girl led Clark through that easiest pass, which the Indians would be sure to find when going between their hunting ranges.

“Of course, old man Bozeman did not come in here until the mining strikes, 1863 or 1864. He was a freighter and knew this country, although he didn’t know it well enough to keep from getting killed by the Indians.

“Up the Gallatin, too,” went on Billy, “is where they say John Colter ran after he got away from the Blackfeet. He didn’t have any clothes on to speak of even then — he sure traveled light. But, anyhow, he lived to discover Yellowstone Park, or part of it, and to tell a lot of stories which everybody said were lies.”

“Can we see much of the trail, if we go over with the pack train?” asked Rob.

“Not so very much,” said Billy. “Even the old road is wiped out, now that the railroad has come. In some places you can find where the trail once ran, or is supposed to have run, but you have to go by the general landmarks now.

“When you come to the central ridge beyond old Ellis, you get the last summit between here and Yellowstone waters. The tunnel runs under that now. The railroad books say that is fifty-five hundred and sixty-five feet — the highest of the three northern transcontinental passes.

“So you can figure now, I reckon,” he concluded, “that you are mighty near at the head of the Gallatin, a day’s march from here. And if you want to, you can take the railroad in town, all the way down the Yellowstone and clean on home to Chicago or St. Louis, without getting off the cars.”

“Well, since we are so near the end of the trail, young gentlemen,” began Uncle Dick, at this point, “what do you say we ought to do?”

“Well, the first thing we ought to do,” said John, “before we go home, is not to leave all those people out in the wilderness. We have got Clark and eleven people here on the Gallatin, and Captain Lewis is away up on the Marias, and Gass and Ordway are scattered every which way between here and the Great Falls.”

“All right, all right!” rejoined Uncle Dick. “Get out your Journal now, and we will see what became of Captain Lewis. We won’t follow him day by day, and we will just take up his trail somewhere near Missoula.

“See here, now. He must have crossed what is called Clark’s Fork — all of that river, part of which is called Hell Gate River, ought to be called after Clark. He went up the Hell Gate River, without any guides, but he must have struck an Indian trail which led him over east. On the fourth day, that is on July 7th, he reached the pass which is called even now Lewis and Clark’s Pass — the only pass named after either of those explorers, although only one of them ever saw it.

“Now, you see, they were opposite the headwaters of the Dearborn River — the same stream where Clark left the boats and went up the river on foot when they were going west the preceding year. They knew where they were when they got here, and felt pretty fairly safe.

“But Lewis wanted to see about that country north of the Great Falls. They were now among the buffalo once more and glad enough to find them. They hunted down the Sun River to their old camp above the Great Falls. Here they made a couple of bull boats, and on July 12th they crossed to the old camp and found the cache which they had made there. A good many of the things were spoiled in the cache, which they had built too low, so that the high water had flooded it.

“Now they reached their old friends, the white bears, which were just as ferocious as ever. So were the mosquitoes. Lewis dreads these mosquitoes more than anything else.

“Now the Journal says that Lewis determined to go up the Marias River. He left McNeal, Thompson and Goodrich, Gass, Frazier and Werner, here at the Falls. He took with him six horses and had along Drewyer and the two Fields boys — about his best hunters. They left Sergeant Gass four horses, so that he could get the boats around the portage as soon as Ordway and the boats came down the Missouri.

“Now I want you to stop and think how these people were making connections, scattered all through this country as they were. On July 19th, here came Ordway and his nine men with the canoes! Then they doubled party again, to portage, and in four days, with the aid of the horses, they got the stuff all below the Falls. Gass and one man swam the horses across the river; Ordway and the others took the canoes. They all reached the mouth of the Marias River July 28th. By that time, of course, Clark was over on the Yellowstone, having crossed the Gallatin Pass from here.

“Now Lewis was on the north side of the river with three men. He knew he was going up into the Blackfeet country, and he must have known something of the reputation of that tribe. But those men would go almost anywhere. Now they were among the buffalo, so they felt safe for food.

“They left the river July 16th, and on July 21st they got into country which you and I can identify — the mouth of Two Medicine Creek, where it meets the Cutbank, both of which rise in Glacier Park. I’ve had fine fishing up in there.

“Now they pushed on up north up the Cutbank, forded where the Great Northern Railroad is now, and went on five miles beyond that. You see, they were now clear up almost to the northern line of Montana; whereas you and I have seen them almost to the southern line of Montana. And look at all the waterways they had covered!

“This was Lewis’s farthest north. Drewyer found out that there were Indians in that country. Perhaps that accounted for the scarcity of game they now felt. They concluded to turn back down the river, and on July 26th — which is the day Gass and Ordway finished their portage at the Great Falls — they headed southeast for the mouth of the Marias, trusting to Providence they would meet their men there and that they would eventually meet Clark at the mouth of the Yellowstone.

“Now when you come to make all these things tally out on the ground, it is quite a proposition, isn’t it?”

The boys all looked at him with open eyes, as they followed out on the map the widely separated journeys of the two great chiefs.

“Very well,” resumed Uncle Dick, “they got down a mile below Badger Creek, on the Two Medicine River. Now they had the one and only dangerous encounter with the Indians which any of them met throughout the whole two years’ trip. It was at that time hostility of the Blackfeet against the whites began. They ran into a bunch of Indians. There were eight of them, who turned out to be the Minnetarees of the North, whom they knew to be one of the most dangerous bands of all that neighborhood.

“It seemed best to make friends, so they camped with the Indians that night and slept in their tents. Toward morning the Indians made their break — seized the guns of all four of the men and started out to steal the horses.

“J. Fields and his brother started out after one Indian with the rifles. The fellow hung on to them, and R. Fields stabbed the Indian, killing him on the spot. This uproar woke up Drewyer and Lewis, who were in the tepee. Drewyer and Lewis got possession of their rifles. Lewis called to the Indians to stop running off his horses. These savages showed fight, and Lewis shot one of them through the body, which accounted for two of the savages in a few moments.

“In a very little time longer the four white men had all their camp outfit and four horses belonging to the Indians, although they had lost one of their own horses. They had met their first Indian fight, and got out of it rather well.

“Now followed what I suppose was one of the fastest rides ever made on the Western prairies. Lewis and his men mounted and started hot-foot for the mouth of the Marias River. To make the story of it, at least, short, they rode about one hundred and twenty miles in a little over twenty-four hours.

“We have seen that Gass, Ordway, and the other men were coming down from the Falls with the boats. As a matter of fact, they had just rounded the bend, approaching the place where old Fort Benton later was to stand, when Lewis and his men met them. That was what I call good luck, and a whole lot of it! Just look where they had been and what they had been through!

“Well, now, part of our men had got together. Lewis and his companions cut loose their horses on the plains. They all hurried into the canoes and dropped down to the mouth of the Marias. Here they abandoned the rest of their horses. They dug up the cache which they had left here in the previous year. This cache also was pretty badly damaged, but they got some stuff out of it. Indeed, some of the caches were in good condition, although the big red boat they had left was no longer of any use. They stripped her of her iron and set out by canoes, as soon as they could, because by that time they did not know what the Indians would be apt to do to them.

“Now they got down to the mouth of the Milk River on August 4th, and they reached the mouth of the Yellowstone on August 7th. And there what do you suppose they found? Was Clark there ahead of them, or was Lewis to wait for Clark?”

“I know!” said Jesse. “Clark beat them down. He left a letter for them, didn’t he?”

“That’s just what he did, and this time he didn’t leave it on a green stick for a beaver to carry off, either.

“No, just as if he had stepped to a post-office window and asked for a letter, Lewis found this note awaiting him, telling him Clark had been there for several days and would wait for them a few miles down the river, on the right-hand side. They were at this time making ninety miles a day — one hundred miles on the last day of their travels.

“Now it would seem that Clark was taking a good many chances, because all he had done was to write a note which might have been lost, and to scratch a few words in the sand which might have been washed out. But the luck of Lewis held until August 11th. On that day, as you remember, he was accidentally shot through the hips by one of his men while hunting elk, so that when, on August 12th, he finally overtook Captain Clark, Lewis was lying in his boat, crippled. All through the trip Lewis had had many more dangerous situations and narrow escapes than Clark had.

“In this way, traveling many times faster coming east than they had going west, these two young men, and all of their widely scattered parties, met in this singular reunion, at no place in particular, without ever having had any reason in particular for hoping they ever would meet at all!

“But they did hope. And they did meet. And if you put it to me as an engineer, young gentlemen, I shall say that was the most extraordinary instance of going through unknown country on workmanlike basis I ever heard of in all my life! Nor do I think all the world could produce its like.”

They sat in wondering silence for a time, marveling at the perfect ability shown by these young army officers in this formerly wild and unknown country. Uncle Dick closed the pages of his Journal, which he had been following through rapidly, and seemed inclined to talk no further.

“You tell it, Billy!” said Jesse, turning to Billy Williams, who had been an attentive listener on the opposite side of the table.

“You mean that I shall bring up the Clark story?”

The boys assented to this.

Billy went on, his finger now on the map in turn.

“Take Clark along in here on the Gallatin, near this ranch, say July 15th, about one month ahead of our date now. He is going east with his party. He has got the Indian girl and some horses and some good men. All right. On July 15th he starts across the Divide, heading for the Yellowstone Valley.

“Naturally, he found that plumb easy. He struck into one of the creeks that run down into the Yellowstone. It was only nine miles down that to the Yellowstone River itself, and they hit that just a mile below where it comes out of the Rockies from up yonder in Yellowstone Park, where we all were only yesterday.

“Clark had the easiest end of it, in some ways. He said he had to go only forty-eight miles from the Three Forks to hit the Yellowstone. If he had poled a canoe up the Gallatin, he would not have had to portage over eighteen miles.

“Those are the distances that Clark estimates, but for once he underestimates, I don’t know why. Wheeler points out that from Three Forks to Livingston is fifty-four miles, and Clark came down off the Divide at a place just above Livingston. Anyhow, I’ll bet he was glad when he saw the old Yellowstone Valley. He had horses now, you see, and he was hitting the trail hard.

“He went down the north side of the Yellowstone, and by July 17th he was down as far as Big Timber and Boulder River. I suppose they would have kept on downstream on horseback, but one of their men, Gibson, got snagged in a fall from his horse, so somewhere near the mouth of the Stillwater they concluded to make some canoes, so that Gibson could ride by boat.

“Now, on July 21st, along comes a nice party of Crows and steals twenty-four of their horses. They hunt a couple of days for the horses, but can’t find them — trust the Crows for that! So the canoes are mighty useful. They built two of them twenty-eight feet long and about two feet in the beam and lashed them together, so they had quite a craft.

“On July 24th, about the time Gass and his men were making the portage at the Great Falls, Clark took to the boats, but he put the rest of the horses in charge of Pryor, Shannon, and Windsor.

“So, you see, they were busted up again, half afloat and half on shore, which is always bad. Pryor had it the hardest. He could hardly keep his horses together. But they joined up somewhere near where Billings is to-day. It was plumb easy getting downstream in the boats, for the Yellowstone is lively water, and plenty of it. They could make fifty, sixty, or seventy miles a day, with no trouble at all; but horses can’t go that fast.

“On July 25th they got down to a place called Pompey’s Pillar, a big rock that sticks up out of the valley floor. Clark cut his name on this rock, which is not so far from the railway station they call Pompey’s Pillar to-day. The first engineers of the railroad that came up the valley of the Yellowstone put a double iron screen over Clark’s inscription on this rock, drilled in the corner posts and anchored them, so no one could get at the old signature. A lot of other names are there, but I reckon you could still see the name of William Clark, July 25, 1806. It has been photographed, so there is no mistake.

“Now the Journal says they got at the mouth of the Big Horn River on July 26th. That, you know, is the place where Manuel Lisa made his trading post in 1807. So now we are beginning to lap over a lot of dates and a lot of things.

“Well, the big Custer fight on June 25, 1876, took place not so far from the mouth of the Big Horn River. From the time that Lewis and Clark came through, up to the time of the railroads and the army posts, the Indians had kept getting worse.

“From now on the Clark parties were in the game country, of course. The boats had all the best of it — except for the mosquitoes, of which Clark continually complained. It was the mosquitoes that drove Clark away from the mouth of the Yellowstone, which he reached August 3d.

“He kept going on down the river below the mouth of the Yellowstone, trying to get away from the mosquitoes. When he dodged the mosquitoes he ran into white bears. There was something doing every minute in those days.

“They seemed to have had a trustful way of hoping everything would come out all right, those fellows. Clark did not know where Lewis was, or Ordway, or Gass, or where Pryor and his men were. Well, the Pryor party didn’t catch up with Clark until August 8th — and they didn’t have a horse to their name!

“You see, three days after they left Clark, near where Billings is, the Indians jumped them once more and stole their last horse. They took a lesson from the Indians and made two bull boats, round ones like the Mandans used. I don’t suppose they liked that kind of traveling, but they had to do it. Anyhow, it worked, and hard as it is to believe, they made their way downstream without any serious accident.

“I don’t know whether you call all of this good traveling as much as it was good luck, but anyhow they were beginning to pick up their friends. Just look on the map and see how far it is from the mouth of the Big Horn River up across to the mouth of Two Medicine Creek — that’s how far Clark and Lewis were apart, and they had been apart for considerable over a month. Lewis might have been killed and no one could have known it had happened, and so might Clark.

“Now they met a couple of white men who were pushing up the river, intending to hunt up the Yellowstone. Colter and his pal go along up the river a little ways, too.

“And now you pick up the Lewis story. Lewis goes down in his boat, crippled. Colter and the other man and the two traders turn back; and pretty soon, on August 12th, they come on Clark’s party landed on the shore of the Missouri; fighting mosquitoes!

“Well, it only took them a couple of days from that time to get to the Mandan villages.”

“That’s where we left our boat, the Adventurer!” exclaimed Jesse. “Now what do you say, boys — hasn’t this been one exciting finish?”

“But you haven’t told us yet, Uncle Dick, what we are going to do,” said Rob.

“I’ll tell you what to do now,” said Uncle Dick. “Go to bed, all of you. In the morning we will make our plans at the breakfast table.”