“Let’s look for the Culver plate now!” exclaimed Jesse, and scrambled on hands and knees. Indeed, he did unearth the rusted fragments of what might have been the original record plate, but small trace now remained of any inscription. With some pride he next drew out from his shirt front a plate which he himself had concealed thus long, brought for a purpose of like sort to that of the rusted remnant they now had found. But his Uncle Dick gently restrained him.
“No, better not, son,” said he. “You and I have done very little. We have discovered nothing at all, except one Indian arrowhead a hundred miles north of here. To leave our names here now would only be egotism, and that’s not what we want to show. Reverence is what we want to show, for this place that was here before Thomas Jefferson was born, and will be here unchanged after the last President of the United States shall have passed on.
“Let old Mount Jefferson have his own secret still for his own—see how he wipes out all traces of human beings, steadily and surely!
“In all their great journey across, Meriwether Lewis did not once write his name on rock or tree. Will Clark wrote his twice—once on Pompey’s Pillar, on the Yellowstone, and once on the rock far down in Nebraska, as we noted when we passed near that place. But the simplicity, the modesty of those two, sinking everything in their great duty to their country—it’s those things, my boys, which make their Journal the model of its kind and class, and their journey the greatest of its kind in all the history of the world.
“Now hats off to Captain Meriwether Lewis and Captain William Clark of the army! Had they come where we are now, they would not have reached the Columbia. In courage, good sense, and modesty, the first and best.”
They did salute, once more and in silence. But Uncle Dick put a hand on Jesse’s shoulder as he saw tears in his eyes.
“It’s all right, son,” said he. “Don’t mind, but don’t forget. Good men come and go; it’s good deeds that live. Now, we’re by no means first at this spot, and it’s of no vast consequence now. We’ll even let our little flag flutter here alone, till the snows come, and the slides give it its evening gun.”
They turned back down the edge of the depression in the mountain top, and by deep dusk once more were at the horse camp, where Billy quickly went to work to find grass and wood. All bore a hand. They got up all the dry wood they could find, cut stakes for a back log pile of green logs, spread the half of a quilt back of their slim bed, and so prepared to pass a night which they found very long and cold. Their supper now was cooked, and before the small but efficient fire they now could complete the labors of their own day—each boy with his notes, and John with the map which he always brought up each day at least in sketch outline.
“I don’t know just how many people ever have been in here,” said Billy, after a time. “Not so very many, sure, for nearly all try to get up the cañon. I heard that a man and his wife once climbed up the cañon, but I doubt that. There’s Bill Bowers, from the head of Henry’s Lake, he’s been up to the top, but I don’t know just how far—he said you couldn’t follow the cañon all the way. I don’t doubt that prospectors and hunters have been across here, and the Bannacks hunted these mountains for sheep, many a year. Used to be great bighorn country, and of course, if this country never was known by anybody, the bighorns would still be here. There’s stories that there’s a few in back, but I don’t believe it. You can ride up the south slope of Sawtelle Mountain, in the timber, almost to the top, and almost this high. I guess she’s been traveled over, all right, by now. Only, they couldn’t carry off the old river. If they could, I guess they’d have done that, too.”