“I will not urge you to,” said Billy Williams. “‘Most anybody else would. But if you have got enough, let’s go back to camp. We have got to feed ourselves, of course, and give plenty to the ranchman if he will take them; he may have friends to whom he would like to send a mess.”
At dusk that evening they all gathered around their little camp fire, which they had built not very far from the hospitable ranchman’s house, in acceptance of his kind invitation. Soon Billy and Con had grayling frying, with enough and to spare for all, since Rob had taken a half dozen fish, Uncle Dick as many, and John had come in with seven—one of them rather small, as he explained it. The two young ranchmen had baskets equally heavy, for, as they explained, they had neighbors who did not like to eat the Henry’s Lake trout, but preferred grayling, so they thought it wise to take some home with them.
“Well I did go a little light on the fishing, fellows,” said Uncle Dick, “because I want you to stay here one more day before we start out for Bozeman. That means two nights in camp, which will bring us into Bozeman just past the middle of the month, with our summer’s job pretty well whipped.”
“Which way are we going from Billy’s, Uncle Dick?” demanded Jesse, with his usual curiosity.
“Not yet decided,” replied the other. “Wait until we get up there. We still have a little work to do in studying out the return trip of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark in the summer of 1806.”
That night they had what John called a map party on the table in the friendly ranchman’s home. He and the two young Westerners joined them all in examining the maps and the great river from St. Louis.
“That’s something of a journey, I should say!” commented the ranchman. “I’ll warrant you have learned a good many things you did not know before. Some things in here I didn’t know before, myself.”
“It’s much pleasanter,” said Rob, “to follow out a country on the ground than it is to do it on the map. Not all maps are correct—except John’s, here! But no matter how good a map is, it never means anything to you until you have followed it out on the ground. Just look here, for instance, at the great crooked sweep of the Continental Divide. Yet here we have crossed three passes over the Continental Divide within the last three days—Red Rock, Raynolds, and Targhee—and the Targhee divides the Madison, which is Atlantic water, from Henry’s Lake, which is Pacific water.”
“Yes,” nodded Uncle Dick. “There are not many more interesting countries, geographically speaking, than this right where we are, at the head of the great river. Lewis and Clark crossed the Rocky Mountain Divide seven times, at six different places—up North there. They crossed the Lemhi Pass, both of them. Then they crossed the Divide twice more into the Bitter Roots, then crossed it again on the Lolo Trail. Then they came back over that when they went East, and Lewis crossed the pass over to the north, alone, and that ought to be called his pass. And Clark came down to the Gallatin and crossed that pass alone to the Yellowstone waters. Yet their names are on almost none of the great passes and great rivers which they found. Soon they will have passed.”