They made an early start, leaving their Uncle Dick and Billy Williams at the ranch to employ themselves as they liked. It was a drive of only a few miles from the northern end of Henry’s Lake, along a very good road, to the crest of the gentle elevation which lay to the northward. The young ranchman pulled up the car at last and pointed to an iron plug driven down into the ground.
“Here’s the Divide,” said he. “You now are on top of the Rocky Mountains, although it doesn’t look like it.”
“Why,” said Jesse, “this looks like almost any sort of prairie country. We have been in lots of places higher than this.”
“Yes,” said his new friend, “you can see lots of places higher than this any way you look. She’s only six thousand nine hundred and eleven feet here. There are snow-topped mountains on every side of you. Where we are right now is the upper line of the state of Idaho. Idaho sticks up in here in a sort of pocket—swings up to the north and then back again. The crest of the Divide is what makes the state line between Montana and Idaho. Four feet that way we are on Idaho ground, but there’s Montana east of us, north of us, and west of us.
“Over southwest, where you came over the Red Rock Pass, is the head of the Missouri. On north of here is the Madison River; it comes in, running northwest out of the upper corner of Yellowstone Park. We could drive down there in a little while to the mouth of the West Fork, but I think we can get better fishing somewhere else.
“If we went on, an hour or so, we would come to the mouth of the Madison Cañon. Up toward the head of that is the big power dam—ninety feet high it is—which cuts off the big Madison, and the South Fork, too. That makes a lake that runs over back into the country. They say it is seventy miles or so around the shore line, I don’t know just how far. That place is full of big fish, and when you catch it just right, there is great sport there. I don’t call it sport to fish for trout under that big dam. They jump and jump there, day after day, until they wear themselves out. There ought to be a ladder in that dam, but there isn’t.”
“I suppose here is where the road comes down from Three Forks, over this Raynold’s Pass,” said John, with pencil in hand, ready to continue his own personal map of the country.
“No, not exactly,” continued the young ranchman. “This road runs up to Virginia City. They tell me that between there and Three Forks the roads are hard to get over.”
“But they come down here from Butte, don’t they?” inquired Rob. “I thought this was right on the Butte road.”
“No, the best road to Butte comes in over Red Rock Pass just exactly where you came in yourselves. Only it runs along to the north side of the Centennial Valley and not on the south side, where you came in. They have to follow up the Red Rock Valley to Dillon, where it comes in from the north. That’s the quickest and easiest way to get between Butte and Henry’s Lake. It is something over a hundred miles.”