Thus far they had seen no sign of any human occupancy. They did not meet a single human being, red or white, all that summer. A vast, silent, unclaimed land, beautiful and abounding, lay waiting for occupancy. There was no map of it—none save that written on the soil now and then by an Indian girl sixteen years of age.
They plodded on now, taking the right-hand stream, with full confidence in their guidance, forging onward a little every day, between the high banks of the swift river that came down from the great mountains. April passed, and May.
“Soon we see the mountains!” insisted Sacajawea.
And at last, two months out from the Mandans, Lewis looked westward from a little eminence and saw a low, broken line, white in spots, not to be confused with the lesser eminences of the near by landscape.
“It is the mountains!” he exclaimed. “There lie the Stonies. They do exist! We shall surely reach them! We have won!”
Not yet had they won. These shining mountains lay a long distance to the westward; and yet other questions were to be settled ere they might be reached.
Within a week they came to yet another forking of the stream. A strong river came boiling down from the north, of color and depth much similar to that of the Missouri they had known. On the left ran a less turbulent and clearer stream. Which was the way?
“The north wan, she’ll be the right wan, Capitaine,” said Cruzatte, himself a good voyageur.
Most of the men agreed with him. The leaders recalled that the Mandans had said that the Missouri after a time grew clear in color, and that it would lead to the mountains. Which, now, was the Missouri?