“And now,” went on Rob, “they were once more against that same old very risky proposition of a divided party, part in boats and part on shore. I tell you, and we ought to know it, from our own experiences up North, that that’s the easiest way to get into trouble that any wilderness travelers could think up. They simply had marvelous luck. For instance, after Clark left them above here, on July 18th, he never saw them oftener than once a day again until July 22d, and that was away up at the head of the big Cañon.
“To the Three Forks was two hundred and fifty-two and one-half miles, as Clark called it, though engineers now say it is only two hundred and ten miles. He walked clean around the big Cañon of the Missouri at the Gate of the Mountains—below Helena, that is—and never saw it at all! Now if you say he walked the whole ten days from the head of the falls to the Forks, and say it was only two hundred and ten miles and not over two hundred and fifty, that’s over twenty miles a day, on foot, in the mountains, under pack and a heavy rifle, in moccasins, and over prickly-pear country that got their feet full of thorns. Clark pulled out seventeen spines, broken off in his feet, one day when he stopped.
“Now that takes good men to do that. Not many sportsmen of to-day could do it, I know that. And yet, after four days’ absence spent in this wild country where they were the first white men, they met again at the head of the Cañon below the Forks, just as easy and as natural as if they had telephoned to each other every day! I call that exploring! I call those chaps great men!”
“Reader will suppose one hundred years to have elapsed,” drawled Jesse, again. “I’d telephone Uncle Dick now, if I knew where he was.”
“Leave him alone,” said John. “I give him till to-morrow. It was only a week ago he got word through to Billy Williams, in the Three Forks Valley, to come on with his horses.”
“Well,” said Jesse, “if I’m not to have half a buffalo to-night, and if Cruzatte, the bow man, isn’t here to play a jig for us, I’ll see what I can do about some fried eggs and marmalade.”
“And I’ll like to get a leg over leather once more,” said John. “I’m looking for horses now, same as Lewis and Clark did along in here for a few weeks.”
The young travelers did not have so long to wait as they had feared. That very night, as they sat about their fire on their bed rolls, talking of their many trips together, they heard in the darkness not far away the tremulous note of a screech owl, repeated again a moment later. Jesse stopped talking, turning his head. Rob laughed: “That’s Uncle Dick now!” he said, in a low tone; and answered with an owl call just like the one they had heard. They heard a laugh in the dark, and from behind the tent stepped Uncle Dick.
“How!” said he.
“How!” said each of the boys gravely. Rob made the Indian sign of “sit down”—his fist struck down on the robe that was spread by the little fire.