“Go ahead,” said Uncle Dick.
“Well, you see, I read all about it all, and I get all het up, even now,” said Billy; “me raised right in here, and all.”
“No apologies, Billy. Go on.”
“Well then, by now Clark, he was right nigh all in. His feet was full of thorns and he had a boil on his ankle, and he’d got a fever from drinking cold water when he was hot—or that’s how he figured it. Nothing had stopped him till now. But now he comes in and throws down on a robe, and he says, ‘Partner, I’m all in. I haven’t found a Indian. But I allow that’s the branch to follow.’
“He points up the Jefferson. Maybe the Indian girl said so, too, but I think they’d have taken the Jefferson, anyhow. They all agreed on that.
“Now I’ve heard that the Indian girl kept pointing south and saying that over that divide—that would be over the Raynolds Pass—was water that led to the ocean. I don’t know where they get that. Some say the Indian girl went up the Madison with Clark. She didn’t; she was with Lewis at the boats all the time. Some say that Clark got as far south as the cañon of the Madison, northwest of the Yellowstone Park. He didn’t and couldn’t. Even if he did and was alone, that wouldn’t have led him over Raynolds Pass. That’s a hundred miles, pretty near.
“I wonder what would have happened to them people, now, if they all had picked the wrong branch and gone up the Madison? If they’d got on Henry’s Lake, which is the head of one arm of the Snake, and had got started on the Snake waters—good night! We’d never have heard of them again.
“But I don’t think the Indian girl knew anything much about the Snake, though her people hunted all these branches. Her range was on the Jefferson. She was young, too. Anyhow, that’s what they called the Missouri, till she began to peter out. That was where they named this place where we are now. They concluded, since all the three rivers run so near even, and split so wide, they’d call them after three great men, Jefferson, Madison, and Gallatin. But that wasn’t till two weeks after they’d left the Forks. Most folks thought they’d sprung the names as soon as they seen the Forks, but they didn’t.
“Lots of people right in here, too, even now, they think that Lewis and Clark wintered right here at the Forks or on up near Dillon. I’ve heard them argue that and get hot over it. Some said they wintered on an island, near Dillon. Of course, they allow that Lewis and Clark got across, but they say they was gone three years, not two. That’s about as much as the old Journal is known to-day!
“Me living in here, I know all the creeks from here to the Sawtooth and Bitter Roots, and my dad knew them, and I’ll tell you it’s a fright, even now, to follow out exactly where all they went, or just how they got over. The names on most of their creeks are changed now, so you can’t hardly tell them. About the best book to follow her through on is that railroad man, Wheeler. He took a pack train, most ways, and stayed with it.