“People get all mixed up on the old stuff, because we travel by rail now, so much. For instance, Beaverhead Rock—and that’s been a landmark ever since Lewis and Clark come through—is disputed even now. You can start a fight down at Dillon any time by saying that their Beaverhead Rock is really Rattlesnake Rock—though I’ll have to own it looks a lot more like a beaver than the real rock does. That real one now is mostly called the Point of Rocks.
“That’s the way it goes, you see—everything gets all mixed up. The miners named a lot of the old Lewis and Clark streams all over again. Boulder Creek once was Frazier’s Creek; Philosophy Creek they changed to Willow Creek, just to be original. The Blacktail, away up in, was first named after McNeal, and the North Boulder, this side of there, was first called after Fields. The Pipestone used to be the Panther. You know the Big Hole River, of course, where Butte gets the city water piped from—used to be fine fishing till they spoiled it by fishing it to death—well, that was called Wisdom River by Lewis. And I think if he’d been right wise, he’d have left his boats at the mouth and started right up there, on foot, and not up the Jefferson. She was shallow, but if he’d only known it, she’d have led him to the Divide easier than the way they went, and saved a lot of time. But, of course, they didn’t know that.”
“Go on, Billy, go on!” said Rob, eagerly. “You’re the first man I ever knew who’d actually been over this ground in here. All we’ve done has been to read about it; and that’s different. A country on a map is one thing, but a country lying out of doors on the ground is different.”
“I’ll agree to that,” said Billy. “If you ever once figure out a country by yourself, you never get lost in it again. You can easy get lost with a map and a compass.
“Well now, the miners changed more names, too. It was on Willard’s Creek, named after one of the Lewis and Clark men, that they found the gold at Bannack camp. They called that Grasshopper Creek and left poor Willard out. And then they called the Philanthropy River, which comes in from the south, opposite to the Wisdom—Lewis called them that because Thomas Jefferson was so wise and so philanthropic, you know—well, they changed that to the Stinking Water!
“Yet ‘Philanthropy’ would have been a good name for that. On one of the side creeks to it they found Alder Gulch in 1863; and Alder Gulch put Montana on the map and started the bull outfits moving out from Benton, at the head of navigation. That’s where Virginia City is now. Nice little town, but not wild like she was.
“Now, the old trail—where the road agents used to waylay the travelers—led from Bannack to the Rattlesnake, down the Rattlesnake to the Jefferson, down the Jefferson to the Beaverhead Rock, then across the Jefferson and over the Divide to Philanthropy. And that was one sweet country to live in, in those days, my dad said! The road agents had a fine organization, and they knew every man going out with dust. So they’d lay in wait and kill him. They killed over a hundred men, that way, till the Vigilantes broke in on them. The best men in early Montana were among the Vigilantes—all the law-and-order men were. But right from where we’re standing now, on the Lewis Rock, you’re looking over one of the wildest parts of this country, or any other country. You ought to read Langford’s book, Vigilante Days and Ways. I’ve got that in my library, up at my ranch, too.”
“You know your part of this country mighty well, Billy,” said Uncle Dick, after a time. “I’ve known you did, for a long time.”
“I love it, that’s all!” said the young ranchman.
“Now what shall we do, sir?” he added, after a time; “go on up to my ranch, or go on to the mouth of the Columbia River, or go to the true head of the Missouri River, or go back to Great Falls—or what?”