Without incident the journey of that day was completed as outlined by their leader, and that night they spread their tent in a public camping ground on the banks of the Madison River, in sight of twenty other tents besides their own.
“Nothing much here of interest,” said Uncle Dick, “except yonder mountains. The Madison here is a beautiful stream, but fished to death. That mountain is not much changed.”
“What about it?” said Rob, curiously.
“That’s National Park Mountain. We are camping now precisely where the Hayden, Doane, and Langford exploring party camped when they were going out in 1871 after finishing the first exploration of Yellowstone Park. It was right here, at this camping place, that Cornelius Hedges, one of their number, proposed the establishment of the Yellowstone Park, so that all of this wonderland should be preserved forever.”
“Well,” said Rob, drawing a long breath, “we are getting into some history now around here!”
But they talked no more history at the time, for by now all were weary with the journey. As early as the next their camp fire was alight the following morning. Billy took Jesse up to Gibbon and across to the Obsidian Cliff, where he carried out his intention, and hid his obsidian arrowhead at the foot of the great rock. “There!” said he, “I’ll bet, if anybody finds it, he’ll wonder who made it!”
Soon they were on their way back to Yellowstone Station on the Bozeman road. Following it out, under Con O’Brien’s steady driving, and asking a hundred questions of Billy en route, they finally swept down late in the evening into the beautiful valley of the Gallatin. Winding among the farms, they pulled up at last at Billy Williams’s comfortable ranch house and soon were made at home.
“Here we are, fellows, east of the Three Forks of the Missouri,” said Uncle Dick, when they had gotten out their maps for that evening’s study. “At first, neither Lewis nor Clark followed the Gallatin at all. As we know, Clark went but a short distance up the Madison. But when the explorers were going east, as we saw before, Clark came down to the Shoshoni Cove, at the junction where we made our last camp, over west. When he struck in here, on the Gallatin, Clark had with him the Indian girl, Sacágawea. Besides the Indian woman and her child, he had eleven men and fifty horses. Ordway, as we have seen, had taken nine men and started downstream with the boats. No one knew this country except the Indian girl.
“Yes, and she must have been across here before, too,” said Billy. “There are three passes at the head of the East Gallatin—the Bozeman and the Bridger and the Flathead. The Indian girl told them to take the one farthest south, which is Bozeman Pass.