The boys wanted Tatanka to tell them what the Indians knew and believed about the stars and the moon, but the trapper urged them all to go to bed.
“Tatanka,” he said, “can tell you about the moon and stars some other time. We must make an early start to-morrow. If we keep on loafing among the hills, as we have been doing, we shall not get to Vicksburg all summer.
“How far do you think it is to Vicksburg?” he asked the boys.
They did not know.
“I talked to Ryerson at the store,” Barker continued. “He is an old river man. He told me it was five hundred miles from Lake Pepin to St. Louis and a thousand miles from St. Louis to Vicksburg. It will take us two months to get there, if we average twenty-five miles a day.”
“We can go faster than that, Mr. Barker,” the boys protested; “we can make fifty miles a day.”
“You boys do big talking,” the trapper laughed at them. “We want to rest on Sundays. It is going to rain some days, and on some days the wind is going to be strong against us. Then we shall sometimes make only short trips in order to stop at good camping-places, and sometimes we shall stop to fish.”
All four were soon fast asleep.
About midnight the boys woke up. A glaring flash of lightning followed by a loud crashing and echoing thunder made them sit up startled.
“There,” Barker remarked with a friendly laugh, “what did Tatanka and I tell you? Bill, crawl out and put some more sticks and green billets on the fire or the rain will put it out.”