Back Across the Mountains

Traveler's Rest Creek, at last! But Pat's "ten days" had lengthened into twenty, for this was June 29.

There had been good reason. To be sure, the Kamass Prairie had been found all abloom with the kamass, so that the host of pale petals had made it look like a lake. The wild roses were in flower; the ground squirrels were busy, and supplied tender tidbits. But when the company tried to climb they encountered snow fifteen feet deep, covering the grass and the trail, and the air was that of winter. Game was very scarce.

The captains shook their heads, and called a council of the company.

"We can't go on in this fashion, men," said Captain Lewis. "Already we're short of food, and so are the horses. Even if we knew the trail, and could travel at our best, we've four days yet until we reach grass on the other side. If we lost the trail, in the snow, we'd be lost, too. So Captain Clark and I have decided that we all must return to the Kamass Prairie, kill more meat, and see if the Nez Perces won't furnish us with guides. The snow holds the horses up, and with experienced guides we can make good time. Failing of guides, we'll try again, anyway—sending our best woodsmen ahead to note the marks on the trees and to blaze the trail. But first, Drouillard and Shannon will start back immediately, to the Nez Perce grand council, which is now in session, and offer two guns for some guides. They'll join us on the prairie."

This sounded sensible, although everybody did hate to retrace steps. The going down, amidst snow-hidden rocks and timber, was cruel work.

Drouillard and George Shannon were gone for almost a week. When they reappeared they brought three young Nez Paces warriors as guides. Then a quick trip was made. The first day out the guides set fire to the timber, in order, they said, to "make fair weather." They led rapidly. They never missed the trail. Whenever the snow thinned, in spots, there, underfoot, was the trail, plain to be seen—the great Nez Perce Road-to-the-Buffalo, from the west of the mountains to the east. Even Drouillard and Sa-caja-we-a exclaimed with approval of such accurate guiding.

All the old camps of the fall before were passed. The Hungry Creek camp, where Captain Clark had left the horse hung up, and where Peter and Reuben Fields had supped on the horse's head; the camp of September 17, from which Captain Clark had set out ahead to find the Nez Perces; the camp of September 16, where the spotted colt was killed; the camp of September 14, where the black colt was killed.

"Sure, I'm glad we're goin' the other way," remarked Pat. "I've no pleasant recollections of the first trip, when we were afoot an' starvin'."

And the other men agreed with him.

On the fifth day the mountains had been crossed. On the sixth day the snow had ceased, and the head of Traveler's Rest Creek was reached. On the next day, June 30, they hastened down the creek, and soon were camped again at its mouth—the camping spot of September 11, before!

"Here we are, back in the Missouri country, boys," cheered Captain Clark. "We've been clear through to the Pacific and not lost a man!"

"An' nebber killed an Injun," added York. "But we mighty nigh had to."

"May have a fight yet," quoth George Gibson. "We ought to have met some of the Oo-tla-shoots hereabouts. The guides are afraid to go on. They claim their friends have been wiped out by the Pahkees or Blackfeet."

"Dey much 'fraid," spoke Drouillard. "Dey see de tracks of two Injuns barefoot."

As Peter himself knew, Indians who were barefoot were likely to be Indians in distress.

However, the captains did not appear to be alarmed. The news was spread that the company were to be divided. Captain Clark and party were to travel southward, along this, the east side of the mountains, get the canoes and other stuff where they had been hidden at the first meeting place with Chief Ca-me-ah-wait's Sho-sho-nes. Then half the party, under Sergeant Ordway, were to descend the Jefferson, from there, with the canoes and other stuff, into the main Missouri and on to the White-bear Islands camp at the Great Falls.

The other half of the party, under Captain Clark, were to cross eastward, by land, to the Yellowstone River, and descend that to its mouth in the Missouri.

The Captain Lewis party were to continue eastward from this present camp on Traveler's Rest Creek, and try to follow the Pierced Nose Road-to-the-Buffalo to the Great Falls of the Missouri; there they were to meet Sergeant Ordway, and at the mouth of the Yellowstone they all were to meet Captain Clark.

Now, with which party did Peter wish to go? The Captain Clark trip sounded very interesting—down that Yellowstone River, where no white men had been. Sa-ca-ja-we-a was to guide him, too, across country. But the Captain Lewis trip also sounded interesting—all by land, through another unknown country, to the wonderful falls again. On this trip there would be good hunting—and possibly the Black feet Indians.

The Sergeant Ordway trip sounded the least interesting, for it meant merely floating down the same rivers that they had toiled up.

However, Peter was a soldier and had no choice. So he waited anxiously while the captains made their selections. It was like choosing sides in the game of prisoner's base.

For Captain Clark: Sergeant Ordway, Sergeant Nat Pryor, John Shields, George Shannon, William Bratton, Dick Windsor, George Gibson, Hugh Hall, Francois Labiche, John Colter, the fast runner, John Collins, Tom Howard, John Potts, Baptiste Lepage, Alex Willard, Joe Whitehouse, Peter Wiser, Old Cruzatte, York, Chaboneau, and the Bird-woman.

For Captain Lewis: Sergeant Pat, Joe Fields and Reuben Fields, Drouillard, the hunter, William Werner, Rob Frazier, Hugh McNeal, John Thompson and Si Goodrich.

Then where was Peter? Nobody seemed to want him. But Sergeant Pat made a scrape and a salute.

"Beg your pardon, sorr," to Captain Lewis; "but are we to lave Peter here till we come ag'in?"

"'Pon my word!" exclaimed the captain. "No! He's to come along with us, of course. He's in your charge, Pat, remember."

'Yis, sorr. Thank ye, sorr," answered Pat. And Peter was glad.

So the parties separated, Captain Clark to the south, and the place where the canoes and goods had been left last August; Captain Lewis to the east and the Great Falls.

"Good luck, boys," was the final word. "We'll all meet at the Missouri. Then down we'll go, for home."

The Pierced Noses who had guided across the mountains went with Captain Lewis a short distance still, to show him the shortest route along the Road-to-the-Buffalo. Before they quit, in order to look for their friends the Oo-tla-shoots or Flat-heads, the captain gave them presents of meat, and exchanged names with the leader, who was a young chief.

The young chief was henceforth to be known as the Long Knife, and Captain Lewis was to be known as Yo-me-kol-lick, or White Bear-skin Unfolded.

It proved to be only nine days' travel to the White-bear Islands camp at the head of the Falls of the Missouri, and during all the way not an Indian was sighted, although fresh sign was discovered—." Blackfeet!" asserted Drouillard. "De Grosventres of de Prairie."

"Those Big-bellies must be bad Injuns, I'm thinkin', by the way everywan's afraid of 'em," said Pat.

"Very bad," asserted Peter. For even the Otoes of the south feared the northern "Grosventres" as much as they did the Sioux.

There had been plenty of buffalo, bellowing all the nights; but there had been a tremendous amount of mosquitoes, too, which bit so that even the little black dog howled with pain.

Now, here at the old camp were the "white bears," as pugnacious as before. One treed Hugh McNeal and kept him treed near half a day, after Hugh had broken his gun over the bear's head.

Nobody had disturbed the articles that had been left here last summer. Some things had spoiled from dampness; but the frame of the iron canoe was all right, and so were the cottonwood wagon-wheels.

"Gass, I'm going to leave you in charge, here," said the captain. "You will wait till the Ordway party come with the canoes; then you will move the canoes and baggage, by the portage trail, to the foot of the falls, and proceed on down the river. I shall take Drouillard and the two Fields, scout northward and strike the Maria's River, which I wish to follow down to the Missouri. I will meet you at the mouth of the Maria's River on the fifth day of August—if all goes well."

"Sure, Cap'n, do ye think three men '11 be enough for ye?" blurted Pat. "Ye're goin' up where the bloody Big Bellies live. Give me Peter alone, an' take the rist. Peter an' I are plenty for this camp, till Ordway comes."

"With Drouillard and the two Fields I'll stand off the Blackfeet," laughed Captain Lewis. "Eh, lads?" And he sobered. "If my life is spared, Pat, I'll meet you on August 5. But if you don't hear from us, you wait till the first day of September. Then if there's no word, you will proceed on to Captain Clark at the mouth of the Yellowstone. Tell him that my directions as commanding officer are for him to carry out our program and return to the United States, for I and my party have been destroyed. He already knows that I have planned this side trip to the Maria's."

Pat saluted.

"Yis, sorr. An', sorr (his voice was husky), I hope to meet ye safe an' sound at the mouth o' the Maria's."

The next morning, which was July 16, the captain took Drouillard, and the two Fields, and six horses, and rode away, for the upper Maria's River in the country of the Grosventres of the Prairie.

"Well, boys," spoke Pat; "we're now siven men an' four bosses, an' we'd better be busy fixin' the carts an' trainin' the hosses to drag 'em, ferninst the day when Ordway arrives with the canoes. I've no fancy for playin' hoss myself, when we've got the Tale animals."

Nothing especial happened, except the mosquitoes, until the arrival of Sergeant Ordway and party. One trip was made to the lower end of the portage, to examine the white pirogue, and the caches; they all were safe. Harness was manufactured, out of elk hide, for attaching the horses to the wagons.

Sergeant Ordway appeared at three o'clock in the afternoon of July 19. He had with him Colter, Cruzatte, Collins, Potts, Lepage, Howard, Willard, Whitehouse, and Peter Wiser; the six canoes that had been sunk in the Jefferson River, and most of the goods that had been buried in the cache, when last August the company under Captain Lewis had set out to follow Chief Ca-me-ah-wait to the Sho-sho-ne camp on the other side of the pass. Nothing had been stolen or injured.

The Sergeant Ordway party had separated from Captain Clark and party at the Three Forks, and had come on down without adventure. The captain probably was now on his way down the Yellowstone.

"An' how were Sa-ca-ja-we-a an' the little spalpeen?" asked Pat.

"Fine and hearty. The Bird-woman said she knew the way to the Yellowstone. She'd been all through that country, when the Sho-sho-nes hunted the buffalo."

When the canoes were loaded upon the carts, the horses pulled very well, for buffalo-horses; but, just as a year ago, the rain and the mud interfered, the carts broke; besides, Pat was taken ill; so that five days were required for carrying canoes and baggage around the series of falls, to the old Portage Creek camp at the lower end.

One canoe was worthless, but the others were placed in the water; so was the white pirogue; the blunder-buss or swivel cannon was unearthed and mounted in its bows, as before.

"Faith, we're gettin' all our plunder together, wance ag'in," congratulated Pat. "An' there's more of it, an' the red pirogue, remember, at the mouth o' the Maria's, where we're to meet Cap'n Lewis. Do you be takin' the canoes down, Ordway, an' Peter an' I'll ride by land with the horses."

The mouth of the Maria's was not far—fifty miles by river, according to Pat's journal, written on the way up, but less by land. The Maria's, as Peter recalled, was the fork of The Missouri where camp had been made while the captains debated which route led to the Columbia. Captain Lewis had explored up the Maria's and he and Captain Clark had decided that the other fork was the right channel.—the "true "Missouri.

Peter and Pat covered thirty miles this first day. They saw thousands of buffalo, and a pack of wolves chasing an antelope. Pat shot an antelope, with his rifle, and Peter killed a buffalo with his arrows; the next morning they killed, together, six antelope and seven buffalo—which was all the meat that they could pack, although, as declared Pat, they might have killed a hundred.

Shortly after noon they came in sight of the mouth of the Maria's. Sergeant Ordway's party with the canoes already were there, and ashore.

"An' ain't that Brouillard, too?" exclaimed Pat. "Yis! An' the cap'n, b' gorry! An' the two Fieldses! Somethin' must have fetched 'em back in a hurry. 'Tis only July 28; they're a week ahead o' time."

He quickened his horse into a trot, and leading each a horse packed high with meat and hides, he and Peter hastened forward to learn the news.