“Now what would you do, if you was Lewis?” he added. “And which way would you head if you wanted to find the head of the true Missouri and get on across the Rockies?
“You see, we’re in a big pocket of the Rockies here—the great Continental Divide sweeps away down south in a big curve here—made just so these three rivers and their hundred creeks could fan out in here. She’s plumb handsome even now, and she was plumb wild then. What would you do? Which river would you take?”
“I’d scout her out,” said John.
“They did. You look in your book and you’ll find that, while Lewis was in here Clark was nigh about forty miles above here; he plumb wore his men out, twenty-five miles the first day above the Forks, twelve miles the next. That was up the Jefferson, you see; they picked it for the real Missouri, you see, because it was fuller and quieter.
“They didn’t waste any time, either of them, on the Gallatin. That left the Madison. So Clark comes back down the Jefferson and they forded her, away above the Forks—no horses, on foot, you see—and near drowned that trifling fellow Chaboneau, the Indian girl’s husband.
“Then Clark—he wasn’t never afraid of getting lost or getting drowned, and he never did get lost once—he strikes off across the ridges, southeast, heading straight for the Madison, just him and his men, and I’ll bet they was good and tired by now, for they’d walked all the way from Great Falls, hunting Indians, and hadn’t found one yet, only plenty tracks.
“So he finds the Madison all right, and comes down her to the Forks. And there—July 27th, wasn’t it, the Journal says?—he finds Lewis and all eight of the canoes and all of the folks, in camp a mile above the Forks, just as easy and as natural as if they hadn’t ever known anything except just this country here. Of course, they had met almost every day, but not for two days now.
“By that time they had their camp exactly on the spot where that Indian girl had been captured by the Minnetarees six or eight years earlier. She’d had a long walk, both ways! But she was glad to get back home! Nary Indian, though now it was getting time for all the Divide Indians to head down the river, over the two trails, to the Falls, where the buffalo were.”
“That’s a story, Billy!” said Jesse. Billy stopped, abashed, forgetting how enthusiasm had carried him on.