“Well, anyway,” argued John, “this is the way Billy Williams will have his car come in from Bozeman.”
“No,” smiled the young man, “you are wrong again on that. The Bozeman road cannot come down the Gallatin, and through to here, south of the Three Forks. When we come over to the edge of Yellowstone Park I will show you how the road runs to Bozeman. It angles in north, to the east of the South Fork of the Madison. Then it crosses the main river and swings off to the northeast, and then north up to Bozeman, in the valley of the Gallatin River.”
“Well,” said Rob, turning to his younger associates, “that seems to give us a pretty good look in at this whole proposition of the Missouri River. We have been on the head of the Jefferson Fork; we are going fishing on the South Fork of the Madison and motor to the head of the North Fork, inside of Yellowstone Park, if we wanted to; and then we are going on up to the Gallatin and maybe east on that to its head in the Bozeman Pass. In that way we would be covering all three of the great tributaries.”
“Yes, and be having some pretty good sport besides,” said the young ranchman. “I will promise you, if you don’t like this lake fishing—I don’t much care for it myself—we will make up a party and go over and camp out on the South Fork of the Madison as soon as your car comes in from Bozeman. I will take my car over, too, and we’ll pick up a young chap about your age, Mr. Rob, at one of the ranches below. His name is Chester Ellicott, and he’s descended from the Andrew Ellicott of Pennsylvania, who taught astronomy to Meriwether Lewis.
“Then we can spend a couple of days or so over there on what I think is the finest fishing river in the world. You will still be right on your road to Bozeman and the Gallatin, because you will then be only about six or eight miles from the town of Yellowstone, and near where the Bozeman road comes in.”
“That certainly does sound mighty good to me,” said Jesse. “I haven’t caught a fish now for a couple of days, except those we caught at the lake this afternoon. There were so many of them, it was too easy.”
“Well,” said their new companion, “you won’t find catching grayling on the South Fork quite so easy as all that. I always liked stream fishing myself better than lake fishing.”
“Do we wade over there, in that stream?” asked Rob. “We haven’t got our waders along, ourselves, not even rubber boots.”
“We’ll fix you up somehow at the place,” responded the other. “My friends in here have all got waders. You could fish from the banks, but it is better to have waders, so you can cross once in a while. There are holes in there ten or fifteen feet deep, and I will show you two or three hundred grayling and white fish on the bottom of some of those holes. The water is clear as air, and just about as cold as ice. You couldn’t have come at a better time for fishing, because the grasshoppers are on now and even the whitefish are feeding on the surface.”