“‘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 Consirnfor 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.’
“‘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 Consirnfor 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 riverbelow—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—nothingfurther 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 menand 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 forthe 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 Yellowstoneand 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 shipAdventurer.
“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?”
The young Alaskans, who had followed faithfully the travels of Lewis and Clark from the mouth of the Missouri to the Continental Divide, now felt exultation that they had finished their book work so soon. But they felt also a greater interest in the thought that they now might follow out a part of the great waterway which not even Lewis and Clark ever had seen. They were all eagerness to be off. The question was, what would be the best route and what would be the transportation?
“We still can spare a month in the West,” said Uncle Dick, “and get back to St. Louis in time to catch the fall school term. That will give us time for a little sport. How shall we get down south, two hundred miles, and back to the Three Forks? What do you say, Billy?”
“Well, sir,” answered the young ranchman, “we’ve got more help than Lewis and Clark had. We can use the telegraph, the telephone, the railway cars, and the motor car—besidesold Sleepy and Nigger and the riding horses. We can get about anywhere you like, in as much or little time as you like. If you leave it to me, I’d say, get a man at Dillon or Grayling—I’ve friends in both towns—to take the pack train back to my ranch on the Gallatin——”
“But we don’t want to say good-by to Sleepy!” broke in Jesse. “He’s a lot of fun.”
“Well, don’t say good-by to him—we’ll see him when we come north again, and maybe we’ll all go in the mountains together again, some other year.
“But now, to save time and skip over a lot of irrigated farm country, how would it do to take the O.S.L. Railway train, down at the Red Rock, and fly south, say to Monida on the line between Montana and Idaho? That’s right down the valley of the Red Rock River, which is our real Missouri source.
“Now, at Monida we can get a motor car to take us east across the Centennial Valley and the Alaska Basin——”
“That’s good—Alaska!” said Rob.
“Yes? Well, all that country is flat and hard and the motor roads are perfect, so we could get over the country fast—do that two hundred miles by rail and car a lot faster than old Sleepy would.
“Now, we can go by motor car from Monida right to the mouth of Hell Roaring Cañon, at the foot of Mount Jefferson, and up in there, at the head of that cañon, there is a wide hole in the top of the mountains, where the creek heads that everybody now calls Hell Roaring Creek. J. V. Brower went up in there with a rancher named Culver, who lived at the head of Picnic Creek, at the corner of the Alaska Basin, and Brower wrote a book about it.[4]He called that cañon Culver Cañon, but the name does not seem to have stuck. Now, Culver’s widow, the same Lilian Hackett Culver whose picture Brower prints as the first woman to see the utmost source of the Missouri, still lives on her old homestead, where a full-sized river bursts out from a great spring, right at the foot of a rocky ridge. She’s owner of the river a couple of miles, I guess, down to the second dam.
“She stocked that water, years ago, every kind of trout she could get—native cutthroat, rainbow, Dolly Varden, Eastern brook, steelheads, and I don’t know what all, including grayling—and she has made a living by selling the fishing rights there to anglers who stop at her house. I’ve been there many times.
“I’ve fished a lot everywhere, but that is the most wonderful trout water in all the world, in my belief. I’ve seen grayling there up to three pounds, and have taken many a rainbow over eight pounds; one was killed there that went twelve and one-half pounds. I’ve caught lots of steelheads there of six and seven pounds, and ‘Dollies’ as big, and natives up to ten pounds—there is no place in the West where all these species get such weights.
“They call the place now ‘Lil Culver’s ranch.’ She is held in a good deal of affection by the sportsmen who have come there from all over the country. She is now a little bit of an old lady, sprightly as a cricket, and very bright and well educated. She was from New England, once, and came away out here. She’s a fine botanist and she used to have books and a lot of things. Lives there all alone in a little three-room log house right by the big spring. And she’s the first woman to see the head of the Missouri. Her husband was the first man. That looks sort of like headquarters, doesn’t it?”
“It certainly does!” said Rob. “Let’s head in there. What do you say, Uncle Dick?”
“It looks all right to me,” said Uncle Dick. “That’s right on our way, and it’s close, historicallyand topographically, to the utmost source. You surely have a good head, Billy, and you surely do know all this country of the Big Bend.”
“I ought to,” said Billy. “Well, then suppose we call that a go? We can fish on the spring creek, and live at Lil Culver’s place; you can drive right there with a car. Then the mail road runs right on east, past the foot of Jefferson Mountain and over the Red Rock Pass—Centennial Pass, some call it—to Henry’s Lake. All the fishing you want over there—the easiest in the world—but only one kind of trout—natives—and they taste muddy now, at low water. Too easy for fun, you’ll say.
“But at the head of Henry’s Lake is a ranch house, what they call a ‘dude place.’ I know the owner well; he’s right on the motor road from Salt Lake to Helena and Butte, and just above the road that crosses the Targhee Pass, east of Henry’s Lake, to the Yellowstone Park.
“Now, Henry’s Lake was named after Andrew Henry, who was chased south from the Three Forks by the Blackfeet. Just north of there is the low divide called Raynold’s Pass, after Captain Raynolds, a government explorer, about 1872. Suppose we kept our Monida car that far, and then sent it back home?Then I could telegraph my folks to send my own car down there from my ranch, to meet us there at the head of Henry’s Lake, say one week from now; that’ll give us time to run the river up, easy.
“Then we’d have my car to run across Targhee, to the South Fork of the Madison—another source of the Missouri—and try out the grayling. We are now on the only grayling waters left in the West. All the heads of the Missouri used to have them. I thought you all might like to have a go at that. I can promise you good sport. We can have a tent and cook outfit brought down on my car from the ranch.”
“Well, that looks like a time saver, sure,” said John. “We finish things faster than Lewis and Clark, don’t we?”
“Sure. Well, when you feel you have to start back east we can jump in the car and run back up north to my ranch, up the Gallatin. You can follow Sleepy over to Bozeman and Livingston, then; or you can go east by rail down the Yellowstone; or you can divide your party and part go by rail down the river to Great Falls, and meet at the Mandan villages, or somewhere. We can plan that out later if you like.
“But in this way you cover all that big sweep of country where the arm of the Continental Divide bends south and holds all these hundreds of streams around the Three Forks and below. We’d be skirting the rim of that great bend in the mountains, a sort of circle of something like two hundred miles across; and we’d be coming back to the old river again at the Forks. Looks to me that’s about the quickest way we can cover our trip and the way to get the fullest idea of the real river.”
“What do you vote, fellows?” asked their leader. “This looks like a very well-laid-out campaign, to me.”
“So say we all of us!” answered Rob.
“That’s right,” added John and Jesse.
“All right, then,” nodded Billy. “On our way! Roll them beds. Keep out your fishing tackle. I’ll stop in town and telephone to Andy Sawyer to come on down to the livery at Red Rock and pick up our stock there, so we won’t lose any time getting the train.”
This well-thought-out plan worked so well that nothing of special interest happened in their steady ride down to the railroad, out of the historic cove, in among the fields and houses of the later land.
And to make quite as brief the story of theiruneventful journey across the wide and treeless region below, it may be said that on the evening of the next day they pulled in at the little log-cabin hotel of Mrs. Culver, the first woman who ever saw the head of the true Missouri.
That lady, quaint and small, came out and made them welcome. “I’ve three beds, in two rooms,” said she, “and you’ll have to double up, but I can feed you all, I guess.”
“Is there any fishing?” asked Jesse. But an instant later he answered himself. “Great Scott!” said he. “Look at that trout jump. He’s big as a whale. Look it—look it, fellows!”
They turned as he pointed down the hill to the wide, clear water of the spring creek. A dozen splashes and rings showed feeding fish, and large ones.
“Oh, yes,” said their hostess, indifferently. “There’s a good many of them in there. They seem to run around more along toward evening.”
The young sportsmen could not wait for supper. Hurriedly getting together their rods and reels, they soon had leaders and flies ready and were running down the slope after what bid fair to be rare sport with the great fish which they saw leaping.
The three young Alaskans were all very fair masters of the art of fishing with the fly, and now surely had excellent opportunity to practice it. The trout and grayling were rising in scores, and for half a mile the surface of the bright water was broken into countless rings and ripples. Now and then some fish sprang entirely above the water. John and Jesse took the nearer shore, while Rob hurried around over the pole bridge at the head of the stream, just below the head spring.
“What have you got on, John?” asked Jesse.
“Jock Scott, No. 4,” replied John. “Try a good big Silver Doctor; these big fellows ought to take it.”
They began to cast, trying to reach the mid-channel, where, over the white sand of the channel, the fish were rising most vigorously. All at once Jesse gave an exclamation.
“Wow! Look at that, hey?”
His fly had been taken by a great fish which had made for it a dozen feet away. The rodwent up into an arch. Again and again the fish sprang high above the water, four, five, six times, one leap after another; and then came a long, steady savage run which carried Jesse down along the bank, following the fish. He had all he could do to master the powerful fish, but, keeping on a steady pressure, he at last got him close inshore, where John netted him.
“That’s a steelhead—that’s why he’s such a jumper!” exclaimed John. “Well done, Jess!” exclaimed John, holding up the splendid fish to view. “Six pounds, if he’s an ounce!”
A sudden shout from Rob, across the water, called their attention. He also was playing a heavy fish, which broke water again and again.
“What you got, Rob?” called John.
“Rainbow!” answered Rob, across the stream. “He’s a buster, too!” And truly it was a fine one, for that night it weighed five and three-quarter pounds.
“Hurry, John—your turn now!” shouted Jess. “They’re the fightingest fish you ever saw.”
John began casting, while Jesse watched, working his fly to where he saw a heavy fish moving. An instant and he struck, the reel screeching as the fish made its run. This time the fish did not jump, but played deep, boringand surging, but at last John conquered it and Jesse slipped the net under it.
“My! It’s just like a big brook trout,” said he. “I’ll bet he’ll go over five pounds.”
“No,” said John, sagely. “That’s a Dolly Varden—looks a lot like a brook trout, but look at the blue ring around the red spots. They fight deep—don’t jump like a rainbow. But the steelhead out jumps them all! Did you ever see such fishing! This beats the Arctic trout on Rat Portage.”
They followed down the pond made by the dam, and literally one or other of the three was all the time playing a fish, and they all ran very large. When at last they answered the supper horn, Rob had five fish, John four, and Jesse two—the last a fine, fat grayling, the first he had ever taken below the Arctic Circle.
Uncle Dick’s eyes opened very wide. “Well, Billy,” said he, “you’ve made good! I never saw so many big trout taken that soon in any water I ever knew!”
“They get a lot of feed in that stream,” said Billy. “The watercress holds a lot of stuff they eat, and there must be minnows in there, too. I’ve heard lots of men say that, for big fish, this beats any water they ever knew.”
“Oh, maybe they don’t run as big as theydid,” said Mrs. Culver; “I’ve known several rainbows over ten pounds taken here. One gentleman came for specimens to mount, and he caught a five-pound rainbow, but his friend made him throw it back because it was too little. Then they fished two days and didn’t get any more rainbow at all; they’re so savage, I think they get caught first. But you’ve got some good ones, haven’t you? Well, I like to see a person have some sport when he comes here.”
“How long have you lived here, Mrs. Culver?” asked Billy, that night at the dinner table.
“Oh, all my life, it seems,” she laughed. “I was here early, in the ’nineties, when Mr. Brower came to get to the head of Hell Roaring. That was in 1895. He and my husband, Mr. William N. Culver, and Mr. Isaac Jacques went up there horseback. They called that Hell Roaring Cañon then, and I think most folks do yet, though Mr. Brower as a scientific explorer said he would call it Culver Cañon after that. He did, but his story of the exploration never got to be very widely known. I guess they were the first to get to the head, except Indians. The government surveyors never followed out the river above Upper Red Rock Lake.
“They made two tries at it. The first time was August 5, 1895. They left their horses and waded up the creek, till they came to a perpendicular rock across the cañon. It was hard going, so they turned back that day.
“On August 29th they tried it again. They went up Horse Camp Creek and left their horses at the foot of Hanson Mountain, and took one pack horse and cut across over Hanson Mountain and then went down into the Hell Roaring Creek; but they had to leave their pack horse then. Beyond that they took to the stream bed on foot, and this time they got up on top and followed the creek to its source.
“They came back all excited, saying they were the first ever to follow the Missouri to its head. They named a little lake, up near the summit, in a marshy flat, Lilian Lake, after me. Just a little way beyond that they found a big saucer-like spot in the round little hole up there—peaks all around it, like it had sunk down. Well, out of that circular marsh the creek comes. That’s the head—the utmost source. The snow from the peaks feeds into that cup, or rather saucer, up on top, back of Mount Jefferson.
“I don’t think they went as far toward the actual head as I did myself, for it was lateand they had their horses to find. Now on September 26, 1895, I rode horseback up in there with Mr. Allen, and we rode right on up over Hanson, and down into Hell Roaring, and beyond where they left their pack horse. We rode almost all the way, and got into that Hole in the Mountains, as Mr. Brower calls the depressed valley up on top. But we rode on clear past it, three miles, and found the creek plain that far.
“Almost up to the top of the divide, the creek turns northeast. It comes out from under a big black rock, near a clump of balsam—like my spring here, only not so big. Mr. Brower and Mr. Culver had marked a rock and put down a copper plate for their discovery. I had a tin plate, and I scratched my name and the date on that. There wasn’t any mark of anyone else there, and we were quite beyond the place where Mr. Brower stopped. So maybe I am the first person, certainly the first woman, to see the real upper spring of the Missouri River.
“Now here I am, all alone in the world, as you see. Would you like to see my pressed flowers and my other things?”
The young explorers looked at the tiny, thin little old lady with reverence, and did not sayanything for a long time, before they began to look at the treasured belongings of the faraway cabin home.
“Do you boys want to go up?” she asked, after a time.
“We came for that,” said Rob.
“You couldn’t climb up the cañon all the way, maybe. Do you think you could get up over the mountain, the way we did?”
“You don’t know these boys,” remarked Uncle Dick to her. “They’re old mountain climbers and can go anywhere.”
“They’d want a guide, and I couldn’t go, now. And they’d want horses.”
“Well, we’ll leave out the guide, and we could leave out the horses, like enough, for we can go to the foot of the mountain in the car. But on the whole I can think we’ll ride up, for a change.”
“You can get horses down at the ranch a little way. I have none here now.”
“All right. To-morrow we’ll outfit for the climb.”
“Well, I rode all the way. Now you go on the shoulder of this mountain back of us, above the spring, and work up the best you can, but keep your eye on Jefferson. Get up right high, before you head across to the cañon of theMissouri, so you can be above the high cliff that you can’t get over in the bed of the stream. Then you go down in the cañon and cross, best you can, and then ride up on the far side, and then work off for the top of Jefferson.
“You’ll know the little bowl on top the mountain. That’s the top sponge. But the real head stream is even beyond that. You’ll find my tin plate there, I guess, with my name and date.
“I’m glad you had some good fishing here. We’ll have some of your trout for breakfast. The feather beds are made from wild-goose and duck feathers. It’s been a great country for them.”
Bright and early they were in the saddle and off for the crowning experience of their long quest for the head of the great Missouri. Billy brought up the horses from the ranch below. The chauffeur from Monida said he “had not lost any mountains” and preferred not to make the ascent, so only five were in the party, Billy, of course, insisting on seeing the head of the river, in which he had had such interest all his life.
They took one pack horse, a few cooking implements, and such blankets as their hostess could spare, their own bed rolls and most of their equipment having gone back to Billy’s ranch by his pack train. Their supply of food was only enough for two meals—supper and breakfast—but this gave them two days for the ascent, whereas Mrs. Culver had made it in one; so they felt sure of success.
Well used to mountain work, and guided by a good engineer, their Uncle Dick, who hadspent his life in work among wild countries, they wound easily in and among the shoulders of the hills, taking distance rather than sharp elevation, and so gradually and without strain to the horses working up the mountain that lay at one side of Mount Jefferson. When they were well up, they followed a long hogback that swung a little to the left, and at length turned for their deliberate plunge down into the steep valley of the stream. Here, among heavy tracts of fallen timber and countless tumbled rocks, they came at last to the white water of their river, now grown very small and easily fordable by the horses.
“As near as I can tell,” said Uncle Dick, “we’ve got her whipped right now. This must be a good way above the place Brower and Culver left their horse. We’re up seventy-six hundred and forty feet now by the aneroid. The valley is around seven thousand feet, and Brower makes the summit at eight thousand feet; so we’ve not so far to go now. We crossed above the upper Red Rock Lake, and Brower makes the whole distance, along the longest branch, only twenty miles from the head spring to the lake. A mile or two should put us at the edge of the Hole in the Mountains, as he calls his upper valley. What do you say—shallwe leave our horses and walk it, or try on up in the same way?”
“I vote against leaving the horses,” said Rob. “It’s nearly always bad to split an outfit, and bad to get away from your base of supplies. I’d say keep to the horses as high as they can get. A good mountain horse can go almost any place a man can, if you leave him alone. If it gets hard to ride, we can walk and lead, or drive them ahead of us over the down timber.”
“And then, if we get them up to the Hole, we could camp up in there all night,” suggested John. “Like enough, we’d be the first to do that, anyhow.”
“And maybe the last,” laughed Billy. “It’ll sure be cold up in there, with no tent and not much bedding and none too much to eat. We’re above the trout line, up here, and not far to go to timber line, if you ask me.”
“Not so bad as that, Billy,” commented Jesse. “Nine thousand, ninety-five hundred—isn’t that about average timber line? We’re only eight thousand at our upper valley, and we’re not going to climb to the top of the peaks.”
“Well, I’m game if you all are,” said Billy. “We can make it through for one night, allright, for when the firewood runs out we can make camp and finish on foot.”
“Go on ahead, Jesse,” said Uncle Dick. “You’re the youngest. Let’s see how good a mountain man you are.”
“All right!” said Jesse, stoutly. “You see.” Accordingly, they rode on up, slowly, for a little distance, allowing the horses plenty of time to make their way among rocks and over fallen poles. At last Jesse came to a halt and dismounted, leading his horse for a way, until he brought up at the foot of such a tangle of down timber and piled boulders that he could not get on. He turned, his face red with chagrin. “Well,” he said, “I’ve never been here before. I guess a fellow has to figure it out.”
“You go ahead now, John,” laughed Uncle Dick. “Jess, fall to the rear; you’re in disgrace.”
“All right!” said John. “You watch me.”
This time John rode back downstream a little, until clear of the patch of heavy down timber. Then he turned and swung up above the bed of the stream, angling up on the side of the mountain, and finally heading close to the foot of a tall escarpment which barred the horses for a way. Here he hugged the cutface for a few yards and by good fortune found the way passable beyond for quite a distance.
“Not bad,” said his leader. “Go on. I see you’ve got the idea of distance for elevation.”
“Yes, sir,” said John. “But I’m like Jesse—I’ve never been here before, and I don’t know just where I’m going.”
“Humph! Isn’t that about the way Lewis and Clark were fixed, only all the way across?” scoffed Uncle Dick. “Go ahead, and if we have to get down and lead, I’ll put Rob ahead, or Billy.”
John gritted his teeth and spurred up his horse. “You give me time,” said he, “and I’ll take you up there.”
He did pursue his edging away from the stream until he could no longer see the exact course. At last he pulled up. “We must have climbed three hundred feet,” said he. “Where is it?”
“What do you say, Rob?” asked Uncle Dick.
“I’ll stay behind and see that Mr. Pack Horse comes,” replied Rob. “But I should think we might angle down a little now, because we’re going up the wrong split. It’s two-thirty o’clock, now, and we ought to raise the Hole pretty soon. I’d say off to the right a littlenow, wouldn’t you, Billy, till we raised the Hole for sure?”
Billy nodded, and presently set out ahead. His practiced eye found a way through the hard going until at last they stood, at the left and above the stream’s entrance into a roughly circular little depression, surrounded by a broken rim of high peaks.
“Here she is, fellows!” exclaimed Uncle Dick. “This is what we’ve been looking for! Yonder’s the thread of the water, headed for New Orleans and the last jetty of the Mississippi. What’s your pleasure now?”
“Well, sir,” said Rob, who had for some time been afoot, leading his own horse and driving the pack horse ahead, “why not throw off here and finish her on foot, to the clean head, where Mrs. Culver left her tin plate? Here’s a trickle of water and enough wood for fire, and the horses can get enough feed to last them for one night.”
“All right,” said Uncle Dick. “It’s all in plain sight and we can’t lose our horses, especially if we halter them all tight till we get back.”
They now all dismounted and made their animals fast to the trees and stout bushes, first unlashing the pack.
“Good work, Billy!” said Rob, as he helped cast off the lash rope. “She hasn’t slipped an inch.”
“More’n I can say,” rejoined Billy. “I slipped a good many times, coming up, and barked my shins more’n an inch, I’m thinking.”
“Lead off, Jess,” said Uncle Dick, as they stood ready for the last march. “No, don’t leave your coat; it will soon be cold, and it is always cold in the mountains when you stop walking. And you all have your match boxes?”
“Why, Uncle Dick,” expostulated Jesse, “it’s just over there, and we won’t need any fire there, for we’re coming right back.”
“But, Jesse, haven’t I told you always in new country to travel with matches and a hatchet, or at least a knife? No man can tell when he may get hurt or lost in mountain work, and then a fire is his first need. It’s all right to know how to make a fire by friction, Indian way, but you can’t always do that, and matches are surer and quicker. Never leave them.”
They set out, their leader now in advance, Billy bringing up the rear. Skirting the edge of the marshlike depression which acted as a holding cup for the upper snows, they at last headed it and caught the ultimate trickle that came in beyond it. This, following the exampleof their late hostess, they rapidly ascended, until at last, by a clump of dark balsam trees, high up toward the white top of Jefferson, where a light snow had fallen not long before, even in the summertime, they picked out the dark rock from under which a tiny thread of water, icy cold and sufficiently continuous to be called perennial, issued and began its way to a definite and permanent channel.
Without any comment, each one of the party, almost unconsciously, removed his hat. A feeling almost of awe fell upon them as they stood in that wild, remote, silent and sheltered spot, unknown and unnoted of the busy world, which now they knew was the very head spring of the greatest waterway of all the world.
“’Shun!” barked Uncle Dick. The three boys fell into line, heels together, in the position of the soldier, Billy following suit. Uncle Dick drew from his pocket a tiny, folded flag, no more than four or five inches in its longest dimension, and pinned it on a twig which he placed upright at the side of the spring.
“Colors!” Sharply Uncle Dick’s hand swept to his eyes, in the army salute. And the hand of every one of the others followed. Then, with swung hat, Rob led them with the Scouts’ cheer.
“Let’s look for the Culver plate now!” exclaimed Jesse, and scrambled on hands and knees. Indeed, he did unearth the rusted fragments of what might have been the original record plate, but small trace now remained of any inscription. With some pride he next drew out from his shirt front a plate which he himself had concealed thus long, brought for a purpose of like sort to that of the rusted remnant they now had found. But his Uncle Dick gently restrained him.
“No, better not, son,” said he. “You and I have done very little. We have discovered nothing at all, except one Indian arrowhead a hundred miles north of here. To leave our names here now would only be egotism, and that’s not what we want to show. Reverence is what we want to show, for this place that was here before Thomas Jefferson was born, and will be here unchanged after the last President of the United States shall have passed on.
“Let old Mount Jefferson have his own secret still for his own—see how he wipes out all traces of human beings, steadily and surely!
“In all their great journey across, Meriwether Lewis did not once write his name on rock or tree. Will Clark wrote his twice—once on Pompey’s Pillar, on the Yellowstone,and once on the rock far down in Nebraska, as we noted when we passed near that place. But the simplicity, the modesty of those two, sinking everything in their great duty to their country—it’s those things, my boys, which make theirJournalthe model of its kind and class, and their journey the greatest of its kind in all the history of the world.
“Now hats off to Captain Meriwether Lewis and Captain William Clark of the army! Had they come where we are now, they would not have reached the Columbia. In courage, good sense, and modesty, the first and best.”
They did salute, once more and in silence. But Uncle Dick put a hand on Jesse’s shoulder as he saw tears in his eyes.
“It’s all right, son,” said he. “Don’t mind, but don’t forget. Good men come and go; it’s good deeds that live. Now, we’re by no means first at this spot, and it’s of no vast consequence now. We’ll even let our little flag flutter here alone, till the snows come, and the slides give it its evening gun.”
They turned back down the edge of the depression in the mountain top, and by deep dusk once more were at the horse camp, where Billy quickly went to work to find grass and wood. All bore a hand. They got up all the dry woodthey could find, cut stakes for a back log pile of green logs, spread the half of a quilt back of their slim bed, and so prepared to pass a night which they found very long and cold. Their supper now was cooked, and before the small but efficient fire they now could complete the labors of their own day—each boy with his notes, and John with the map which he always brought up each day at least in sketch outline.
“I don’t know just how many people ever have been in here,” said Billy, after a time. “Not so very many, sure, for nearly all try to get up the cañon. I heard that a man and his wife once climbed up the cañon, but I doubt that. There’s Bill Bowers, from the head of Henry’s Lake, he’s been up to the top, but I don’t know just how far—he said you couldn’t follow the cañon all the way. I don’t doubt that prospectors and hunters have been across here, and the Bannacks hunted these mountains for sheep, many a year. Used to be great bighorn country, and of course, if this country never was known by anybody, the bighorns would still be here. There’s stories that there’s a few in back, but I don’t believe it. You can ride up the south slope of Sawtelle Mountain, in the timber, almostto the top, and almost this high. I guess she’s been traveled over, all right, by now. Only, they couldn’t carry off the old river. If they could, I guess they’d have done that, too.”
That night the stars came out astonishingly brilliant and large. The silence of the great hills was unbroken even by a coyote’s howl. To them all, half dozing by their little fire, it did indeed seem they had found their ultimate wilderness, after all.
The chill of morning still was over all the high country when they got astir and began to care for the horses on their picket ropes and to finish the cooking of their remaining food. Then, each now leading his horse, they began to thread their way downhill. Over country where now they had established the general courses, it was easier for such good mountain travelers to pick out a feasible way down. They crossed the cañon at about the same place, but swung off more to the right, and early in the morning were descending a timbered slope which brought them to the edge of the Alaska Basin and the Red Rock road. They now were on perfect footing and not far from the Culver camp, so they took plenty of time.
“The name ‘Culver Cañon’ did not seem to stick,” said Billy, as they marked the gorgewhere the river debouched, far to their right, now. “I don’t know what the surveyors call it—they never have done much over in here but guess at things mostly—but the name ‘Hell Roaring Cañon’ is the one that I’ve always heard used for it. It’s not much known even now. A few people call it the ‘real head of the Missouri,’ but nobody in here seems to know much about its history, or to care much about it. They all just say it’s a mighty rough cañon, up in. Somehow, too, the place has a bad name for storms. I’ve heard a rancher say, over east of the pass, on Henry’s Lake, that in the winter it got black over in here on Jefferson, and he couldn’t sleep at night, sometimes, because of the noise of the storms over in these cañons. Oh, I reckon she’s wild, all right.
“Now, below the mouth, you’ll see all the names are off. Hell Roaring breaks into four channels just at the mouth, over the wash. Fact is, there’s seven channels across the valley, in all, but four creeks are permanent, and they wander all out yonder, clean across the valley, but come together below, above the upper lake; and that’s the head of the Red Rock, which ought to be called the Missouri by rights.
“And you ought to have seen the grayling once, in all these branches!” he added. “Nofiner fishing ever was in the world. The water’s as bright as glass, fast and clean, and not too deep to wade, with bends and willow coves on below—loveliest creeks you ever saw. Then, over across, is a creek where Jim Blair, a rancher, planted regular brook trout, years ago. They get to a half pound, three quarters, and take the fly like gentlemen. But all this country’s shot to pieces now—automobiles everywhere, and all sorts of men who kill the last fish they can.”
“But have they got them all?” asked Rob. “It would be easy planting and keeping up such waters as these.”
“Sure it would. Well, maybe some day folks’ll learn that the old times in their country are gone. We act like they wasn’t, but that’s because we’ve got no sense—don’t know our history.
“Now,” he added, as they forded one bright, merry stream that crossed their way, “you all ride down the road to where the bridge is—that’s the main stream again, and she’s pretty big—regular river, all right. Wait for me there at the bridge. I’ll see if I can pick out a fish or so. I see a dry quaking asp lying here that some fellow has left, and I’ll just try it myself. You know, get a quaking-asp polethat’s dry and hasn’t been dead too long, it’s the lightest and springiest natural fishing rod that grows. The tip is strong enough, if it hasn’t rotted, and she handles almost as good as a boughten rod. Now Rob, you lead my horse on down, and I’ll try it along the willows with a ‘hopper.’”
“Oh, let me go along, too!” exclaimed Jesse. “Lead my horse, John?”
“All right,” said John. “Good luck.”
At the bridge, a half mile below, the three remaining members of the party picketed the horses on a pleasant grass plat near the road. Rob went exploring for a little way, then, without saying anything, began to get together some dry wood for a fire, and also began cutting some short willow twigs which he sharpened at each end.
“The ‘old way,’ Rob?” said John, smiling.
“Yes,” nodded Uncle Dick. “Rob has seen what I have seen—there’s trout in this water, and grayling, too. Do you see that grayling between the bridge there, over the white bar? I’ve been watching him rise. So, by the time we get a broiling fire, maybe Rob’ll have need for his skewers—to hold a fish flat for broiling before a fire, in the ‘old way’ we learned in the far North. Eh, Rob?”
“That’s the way I figured it, sir,” replied Rob, smiling. “Billy’ll get something on hoppers, at this season, for that’s what the trout and grayling are feeding on, right now.”
Sure enough, in not much over a half hour, Billy and Jesse met them at the bridge, with five fine fish—two grayling and three trout—Jesse very much excited.
“All you have to do is just to sneak up and drop a hopper right in the deep water at the bends, and they nail it!” said he. “Billy showed me. He always carries a few hooks and a line in his vest pocket, he told me. Fish all through this country!”
It took the boys but a few minutes to split the fish down the back and skewer them flat, without scaling them at all. Then they hung them before the fire, flesh side to the flame, and soon they were sizzling in their own fat.
“Now, you can’t put them on a plate, Billy!” said Jesse, as Billy began searching in the pack. “Just some salt—that’s all. You have to eat it right off the skin, you know.”
“Well, that ain’t no way to eat,” grumbled Billy. “It’s awful mussy-looking, to my way of thinking.”
“Try it,” said Uncle Dick, whittling himself a little fork out of a willow branch. And verysoon Billy also was a believer that the ‘old way’ of the Arctic Indians is about the best way to cook a fish.
Now, having appeased their hunger, they saddled again and made their way slowly to the ranch of Mrs. Culver at the Picnic Spring, as the place was called—in time for Jesse and John each to catch a brace of great trout before dusk had come.
They now were all willing to vote their experience of the past two days to be about the pleasantest and most satisfying of any of the trip, which now they felt had drawn to a natural close. That evening they all, including their sprightly hostess, bent late over the table, covered with maps and books.
“I surely will be sorry to see you leave,” said the quaint little woman of the high country. “It’s not often I see many who know any history of the big river, or who care for it. But now I can see that you all surely do. You know it, and you love it, too.”
“If you know it well, you can’t well help loving it, I reckon,” said Billy Williams.
“
Let’s see, Rob—what day of the month is this?” began John, the following morning, when, their bills for the horses and themselves all discharged and their motor car purring at the gate, they bade farewell to their interesting friend and prepared to head eastward once more.
“Well,” said Rob, “we were at the Three Forks on July 27th, and we spent a week getting to the Shoshoni Cove—that’s August 4th; and we left on August 5th, and got to Monida August 6th, and came here that day; and day before yesterday was the 7th, and we came down the mountain yesterday, the 8th; this must be about August 9th, I suppose.”
“That’s right,” said Uncle Dick; “giving us a full week or even more if we want it, to explore the Madison Fork, which is another head of the big river. Then we’ll wind up on the Gallatin head, at Billy’s place, and figure there what we want to do next. We might well stop at the head of Henry’s Lake, and in a dayor so we’ll pick up Billy’s car there and be on our way, with a camp outfit of our own again.”
Their journey over the clean, hard road around the rim of the wide Alaska Basin was one of delight. They sped down the farther slope of the Red Rock Pass, along the bright waters of Duck Creek, until early in the afternoon they raised the wide and pleasing view of Henry’s Lake, one of the most beautiful valleys of the Rockies. Around this the road led them comfortably enough to the cluster of log cabins and tents which was now to make their next stopping place. Here they sent back the Monida car, whose driver said he could make the Picnic Creek camp by nightfall if he drove hard. Soon they all were made comfortable in the cabins of this “dude ranch,” as the Western people call any place where tourists are taken in for pay.
The proprietor of this place was an old-time settler who could remember the days of buffalo and beaver in this country, and who told them marvelous tales of the enormous number of trout in the lake.
“Go down to the landing, below the tamarack swamp,” said he, “and get a boat and just push out over the moss a little way. Off to the right you’ll see a stake sticking up in the water. Dropyour anchor a little way from it and cast that way; it marks a spring, or cold hole, and they lie in there.”
The three boys did as advised, and to their great surprise began to catch trout after trout as they cast their flies toward the indicated spot. They all were about the same size, just under two pounds, all native or cutthroat trout. They soon tired of it, and returned nearly all of their catch to the water as soon as taken. Sometimes a fish, tired with the struggle, would lie at the bottom, on its side, as though dead, but if touched with the end of the landing-net handle would recover and swiftly dart away.
“From all I learn,” said Rob, “this fishing is too easy to be called sport—they lie in all the spring holes and creek mouths. This is the head of the Henry’s Fork of the Snake River, and a great spawning ground. Now, you want to remember you’re not on Missouri waters, but Pacific waters. If Lewis and Clark had come over that shallow gap yonder—the Raynolds Pass, which cuts off the Madison Valley—they’d have been on one of the true heads of the Columbia. But they probably never would have got through, that year, at least.”
The young anglers found that their catch of trout created no enthusiasm at the camp. Thecook told them that he didn’t care for these trout very much, because you had to soak them overnight in salt and water to make them fit to eat, they tasted so muddy in the summertime. So they said they would not fish any more at that place.
That evening as they sat about their table engaged with their maps and notebooks, they were joined by Jim, the son of the rancher, a young man still in the half uniform of the returned soldier, with whom they all rapidly made friends, the more so since he proved very well posted in the geography of that part of the country. He readily agreed to take the young explorers on a trip over the Raynolds Pass on the following morning, so that they might get a better idea of the exact situation of the Madison River.
They made an early start, leaving their Uncle Dick and Billy Williams at the ranch to employ themselves as they liked. It was a drive of only a few miles from the northern end of Henry’s Lake, along a very good road, to the crest of the gentle elevation which lay to the northward. The young ranchman pulled up the car at last and pointed to an iron plug driven down into the ground.
“Here’s the Divide,” said he. “You now areon top of the Rocky Mountains, although it doesn’t look like it.”
“Why,” said Jesse, “this looks like almost any sort of prairie country. We have been in lots of places higher than this.”
“Yes,” said his new friend, “you can see lots of places higher than this any way you look. She’s only six thousand nine hundred and eleven feet here. There are snow-topped mountains on every side of you. Where we are right now is the upper line of the state of Idaho. Idaho sticks up in here in a sort of pocket—swings up to the north and then back again. The crest of the Divide is what makes the state line between Montana and Idaho. Four feet that way we are on Idaho ground, but there’s Montana east of us, north of us, and west of us.
“Over southwest, where you came over the Red Rock Pass, is the head of the Missouri. On north of here is the Madison River; it comes in, running northwest out of the upper corner of Yellowstone Park. We could drive down there in a little while to the mouth of the West Fork, but I think we can get better fishing somewhere else.
“If we went on, an hour or so, we would come to the mouth of the Madison Cañon. Up toward the head of that is the big power dam—ninetyfeet high it is—which cuts off the big Madison, and the South Fork, too. That makes a lake that runs over back into the country. They say it is seventy miles or so around the shore line, I don’t know just how far. That place is full of big fish, and when you catch it just right, there is great sport there. I don’t call it sport to fish for trout under that big dam. They jump and jump there, day after day, until they wear themselves out. There ought to be a ladder in that dam, but there isn’t.”
“I suppose here is where the road comes down from Three Forks, over this Raynold’s Pass,” said John, with pencil in hand, ready to continue his own personal map of the country.
“No, not exactly,” continued the young ranchman. “This road runs up to Virginia City. They tell me that between there and Three Forks the roads are hard to get over.”
“But they come down here from Butte, don’t they?” inquired Rob. “I thought this was right on the Butte road.”
“No, the best road to Butte comes in over Red Rock Pass just exactly where you came in yourselves. Only it runs along to the north side of the Centennial Valley and not on the south side, where you came in. They have tofollow up the Red Rock Valley to Dillon, where it comes in from the north. That’s the quickest and easiest way to get between Butte and Henry’s Lake. It is something over a hundred miles.”
“Well, anyway,” argued John, “this is the way Billy Williams will have his car come in from Bozeman.”
“No,” smiled the young man, “you are wrong again on that. The Bozeman road cannot come down the Gallatin, and through to here, south of the Three Forks. When we come over to the edge of Yellowstone Park I will show you how the road runs to Bozeman. It angles in north, to the east of the South Fork of the Madison. Then it crosses the main river and swings off to the northeast, and then north up to Bozeman, in the valley of the Gallatin River.”
“Well,” said Rob, turning to his younger associates, “that seems to give us a pretty good look in at this whole proposition of the Missouri River. We have been on the head of the Jefferson Fork; we are going fishing on the South Fork of the Madison and motor to the head of the North Fork, inside of Yellowstone Park, if we wanted to; and then we are going on up to the Gallatin and maybe east on thatto its head in the Bozeman Pass. In that way we would be covering all three of the great tributaries.”
“Yes, and be having some pretty good sport besides,” said the young ranchman. “I will promise you, if you don’t like this lake fishing—I don’t much care for it myself—we will make up a party and go over and camp out on the South Fork of the Madison as soon as your car comes in from Bozeman. I will take my car over, too, and we’ll pick up a young chap about your age, Mr. Rob, at one of the ranches below. His name is Chester Ellicott, and he’s descended from the Andrew Ellicott of Pennsylvania, who taught astronomy to Meriwether Lewis.
“Then we can spend a couple of days or so over there on what I think is the finest fishing river in the world. You will still be right on your road to Bozeman and the Gallatin, because you will then be only about six or eight miles from the town of Yellowstone, and near where the Bozeman road comes in.”
“That certainly does sound mighty good to me,” said Jesse. “I haven’t caught a fish now for a couple of days, except those we caught at the lake this afternoon. There were so many of them, it was too easy.”
“Well,” said their new companion, “you won’t find catching grayling on the South Fork quite so easy as all that. I always liked stream fishing myself better than lake fishing.”
“Do we wade over there, in that stream?” asked Rob. “We haven’t got our waders along, ourselves, not even rubber boots.”
“We’ll fix you up somehow at the place,” responded the other. “My friends in here have all got waders. You could fish from the banks, but it is better to have waders, so you can cross once in a while. There are holes in there ten or fifteen feet deep, and I will show you two or three hundred grayling and white fish on the bottom of some of those holes. The water is clear as air, and just about as cold as ice. You couldn’t have come at a better time for fishing, because the grasshoppers are on now and even the whitefish are feeding on the surface.”
“I wish Billy’s man would hurry up with the car,” complained Jesse. “He said to be down here in about a week. We might have to wait an extra day.”
“Well, out here,” smiled his new-found friend, “we don’t mind waiting a day or so, but I suppose you folks from back in the East get in more of a hurry. Anyhow, we will promise you a good time.”
They now returned to the ranch house at the head of Henry’s Lake, without going on to the Madison River below the mouth of the cañon, where the young rancher thought the fishing would not be so much worth while. To their great surprise, they found yet another car waiting for them at the camp—none less than Billy Williams’s car, with all their camp outfit. This had been brought down from Bozeman by Con O’Brien, one of Billy’s neighbors in the Gallatin, as they learned when they had had time to make inquiries.
“Well, that’s what I call fast work!” said John, after they had shaken hands all round. “Here’s our bed rolls and everything, all waiting for us! Yet we have been two hundred miles from them on one side of the circle, and they’ve been around two or three hundred miles on the other side.”
“Well, the pack train came in from Dillon early yesterday morning,” said Con, “and I already had Billy’s message. So I just unpacked old Sleepy and Nigger, threw the stuff in the car, and hit the trail south.”
“But how did you get here so soon?” demanded Rob. “It must be a good deal over a hundred miles.”
“You don’t know our mountain roads in thiscountry,” smiled Con. “Besides, it is only about ninety miles from Bozeman, the way we figure it. Anyhow, here we are and ready for any sort of frolic you want to name. If I had started a little earlier, I would have been in here last night. But I was fixing up a tire at Yellowstone, so I just thought I would sleep there last night and come out in the morning early.”
“What shall we do, young gentlemen,” asked Uncle Dick. “The day is still young.”
“Well,” said Rob, “I am for heading right back to the South Fork of the Madison and going into camp there for the rest of the trip—that is, until we have to start up to Billy’s ranch.”
They all agreed to this, and accordingly after they had finished their luncheon, they said good-by to the obliging ranchman, whose son, as he had promised, now accompanied them in his own car. In the course of an hour they had picked up the latter’s friend from his ranch at the foot of the Lake and soon were speeding rapidly eastward over the Targhee Pass—once more leaving Idaho and going into the state of Montana; a proposition which they now from their maps could easily understand. They traced out carefully the great southwardswing of the Continental Divide which comes through the Yellowstone Park, bends around over to the south, thence swings north and west, making the great mountain pocket which holds all the headwaters of the Missouri River.
Both cars halted at the summit of a hill before they swung down into the valley of the South Fork. The view which lay before them was one of extreme beauty. The sky was very clear and blue, with countless clean white clouds. Over to the left rose great ragged mountain peaks, on some of which snow still was to be seen. On ahead stretched the road leading into Yellowstone Park. On the further side of the valley, where the winding willow growth showed the course of the stream, rose a black forest ridge stretching indefinitely eastward toward the waters of the main Madison.
Not even Uncle Dick, experienced traveler that he was, could suppress an exclamation of surprise at the beauty of the scene.
“I never get tired of it. Do you, Chet?” said young Bowers to his ranch friend. The latter only smiled.
“It used to be a great beaver country, of course,” went on the former. “All through here the elk come down even yet, though notso many as there used to be. The big fall migration that came down the Madison and Grayling Creek used to come out the northwest corner of the Park more than it does now. I have seen lots of grouse all through here, and if you could wait until the season opened we would have some fun, for I have a fine old dog. But since game is getting scarcer now, maybe we had better just content ourselves with the fishing. I promise you good sport—if you know how to cast a fly.”
“And I’ll promise you they do,” said Uncle Dick, smiling.
The two young local anglers looked at them politely, but said nothing.