“Tell us about it, Uncle Dick!” Jesse was eager.
“Wait, son. We are still on foot with Clark, you know, and we don’t know where the boats are, and we haven’t found any Shoshonis and we’ve not too much to eat. Wait a day or so. We’ve only done about twenty-five miles, and that’s a big day for the packs—not a much faster rate than Clark was marching. He nearly wore out himself and his men, on that march. I fancy not even York, his cheerful colored man, came in that night as frisky as old Sleepy.”
“That’s right,” said John. “It was just as Mr. Williams said—he freshened up and came in playing, kicked up his heels when his load was off, and bit me on the arm and kicked old Nigger. And there he is now, with another thistle saved up!”
CHAPTER XXII
AT THE THREE FORKS
Something of the feverish haste which had driven Capt. William Clark, when, weary and sore-footed, he and his little party has crowded on up along the great bend of the Missouri and into the vast southerly dip of the Continental Divide, now animated the members of the little pack train, which followed as nearly as they could tell the “old Indian road” which Clark had followed. They felt that they at least must equal his average daily distance of twenty-one miles.
Keeping back from the towns all they could, though often in sight or hearing of the railway, they passed above the Gate of the Mountains and the Bear Tooth Rock, and skirted the flanks of the Belt range, which forked out on each side of the lower end of that great valley in which Nature for so long had concealed her secrets of the great and mysterious river.
A feeling almost of awe came over them all as they endeavored to check up their own advance with the records of these others who had been the first white men to enter that marvelous land which ought to be called the Heart of America, hidden as it is, having countless arteries and veins, and pulsing as it is even now with mysterious and unfailing power—the most fascinating spot in all America.