“Fust we have to pass the Sioux Injuns,” explained Patrick Gass, to Peter. “Ye know the Sioux?”
“They bad,” nodded Peter. “Fight other Injuns.”
“Yis,” said Patrick. “But we aim to make everybody paceful with everybody else. An’ after the Sioux, we talk with the ’Rikaras.”
“’Rees bad, too,” nodded Peter. For the Otoes were afraid of the northern tribes.
“Yis,” said Patrick. “An’ after the ’Rikaras we come, I’m thinkin’, to the Mandans, an’ by that time ’twill be winter, an’ with the Mandans we’ll stay. I hear tell they have white skins an’ blue eyes an’ their hair trails on the ground.”
Sometimes sailing, sometimes rowed, and sometimes towed by heavy ropes on which the men hauled, from the banks, the three boats had been steadily advancing up-river. Peter was feeling quite at home. Everybody was kind to him—especially Pat, who had been elected sergeant in place of Charles Floyd, and young George Shannon, who was only seventeen.
Two horses followed the boats, by land, for the use of the hunters. George Drouillard, a Frenchman, who had lived with the Omahas, was chief hunter. At the evening camps Pierre Cruzatte, a merry Frenchman with only one eye, and a soldier by the name of George Gibson, played lively music on stringed boxes called violins. Each night the two captains, and Pat and other soldiers, wrote on paper the story of the trip. York, the black man, was Captain Clark’s servant. Early in the morning a horn was blown to arouse the camp. During the days the captains frequently went ashore, to explore.
It was well, thought Peter, that Pierre Dorion, a trader who lived with the Sioux, was aboard the boats, for the fierce Sioux Indians did not like strangers. Still, who could whip the United States?
In the afternoon of the eighth day after leaving Chief Little Thief, old Pierre, from where he was standing with the two captains on the barge and gazing right and left and before, cried aloud and pointed.
“Dere she is!”