“Well,” said McLellan, “I—for one—am all ready for a brush with the redskins, whom I hate as much as I do old Lisa: the dastardly Spanish trickster. So, my fine fellows, look to your rifles and we’ll have a little picnic.”
“Not so fast,” Stuart interrupted. “I believe that these fellows are peaceably disposed towards us.” And—so saying—he stepped forth from the door, rifle in one hand, the other extended towards the Indians. Several of them came forward, shook his hand with heartiness, and intimated that they wished to have peace and not warfare. One of the chiefs could speak good English.
“We are on the war-path,” said he. “We are Cheyennes and our enemies are the Crows, who have raided one of our villages, have stolen many ponies and much dried meat. They shall be punished.”
This was cheerful news.
“Well,” murmured Stuart, “here we are between two fires. On one side are the Cheyennes, on the other are the Crows. As they are both upon the war-path, we are in continual danger from each of them. If a war party is defeated, it will doubtless wreak vengeance upon us when returning from the fray. The only thing for us to do is to take our chances and move towards the East.”
The situation was presented to the rest of the trappers, all of whom were of the opinion that they should decamp. Winter was upon them and snow was deep upon the ground, but, if they would save their lives, they must leave at once. The raw-boned old horse was loaded up, their packs were slung on their own shoulders, and, upon the thirteenth day of December, the band of adventurers set off down the Platte. Snow-storms and bitter winds assailed them, but on they struggled until well beyond the range of the war-like savages. Here they built another hut, passed the winter in peace, and in March, 1813, started down the river in canoes which they had made from hollowed stumps of trees. After an uneventful trip, they finally reached the Missouri and were soon on their way to the frontier trading-post of St. Louis. Astor then learned what had happened to the adventurous souls who had attempted to reach his trading-post by sea.
The hazardous trip was over at last. “Old Bob” McLellan and his companions had crossed the wildest portion of an unexplored continent; had endured terrific hardship and exposure; but had brought home an accurate description of the virgin West to the hearing of many adventurous souls, who—thronging upon the border—were anxious and eager to press into the unknown prairie and mountain land. Two or three times the trappers had just escaped death by starvation. Twice they had barely missed a massacre by the redskins. Yet their courage and fortitude had carried them through every peril, and at last they were among their own kind, where appreciation of their nerve and valor was freely shown.
What of “Old Bob” McLellan, as he was affectionately called? Alas! The sinewy plainsman had been much broken by the hardships of this arduous journey to Astoria. Exposure and starvation had done its work upon the frame of the hardy man of the frontier, and now he was unable to again venture into the unknown. Purchasing a stock of goods suitable for a trader, he opened a country store at Cape Girardeau, near St. Louis, but the angel of death even then hovered over the soul of the stalwart man of the plains. In a few months he quietly passed into the great beyond.
Thus peacefully ended the career of one of the last of the valorous scouts and pioneers who had forced back the savage hordes from the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, and who, even as old age advanced, had plunged into an unexplored and unpeopled country, to risk both life and limb among savage men and beasts. Red ran the blood in the veins of this vigorous Kentuckian, and he is to be remembered as a good type of the venturesome pioneers who explored and opened to white civilization the vast and unknown regions of western America. The hazardous journey to Astoria quite equalled in danger that eventful pilgrimage of Lewis and Clark, the first white adventurers to cross the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific. Hats off to “Old Bob” McLellan.