“This was Lewis’s farthest north. Drewyer found out that there were Indians in that country. Perhaps that accounted for the scarcity of game they now felt. They concluded to turn back down the river, and on July 26th—which is the day Gass and Ordway finished their portage at the Great Falls—they headed southeast for the mouth of the Marias, trusting to Providence they would meet their men there and that they would eventually meet Clark at the mouth of the Yellowstone.
“Now when you come to make all these things tally out on the ground, it is quite a proposition, isn’t it?”
The boys all looked at him with open eyes, as they followed out on the map the widely separated journeys of the two great chiefs.
“Very well,” resumed Uncle Dick, “they got down a mile below Badger Creek, on the Two Medicine River. Now they had the one and only dangerous encounter with the Indians which any of them met throughout the whole two years’ trip. It was at that time hostility of the Blackfeet against the whites began. They ran into a bunch of Indians. There were eight of them, who turned out to be the Minnetarees of the North, whom they knew to be one of the most dangerous bands of all that neighborhood.
“It seemed best to make friends, so they camped with the Indians that night and slept in their tents. Toward morning the Indians made their break—seized the guns of all four of the men and started out to steal the horses.
“J. Fields and his brother started out after one Indian with the rifles. The fellow hung on to them, and R. Fields stabbed the Indian, killing him on the spot. This uproar woke up Drewyer and Lewis, who were in the tepee. Drewyer and Lewis got possession of their rifles. Lewis called to the Indians to stop running off his horses. These savages showed fight, and Lewis shot one of them through the body, which accounted for two of the savages in a few moments.
“In a very little time longer the four white men had all their camp outfit and four horses belonging to the Indians, although they had lost one of their own horses. They had met their first Indian fight, and got out of it rather well.
“Now followed what I suppose was one of the fastest rides ever made on the Western prairies. Lewis and his men mounted and started hot-foot for the mouth of the Marias River. To make the story of it, at least, short, they rode about one hundred and twenty miles in a little over twenty-four hours.
“We have seen that Gass, Ordway, and the other men were coming down from the Falls with the boats. As a matter of fact, they had just rounded the bend, approaching the place where old Fort Benton later was to stand, when Lewis and his men met them. That was what I call good luck, and a whole lot of it! Just look where they had been and what they had been through!
“Well, now, part of our men had got together. Lewis and his companions cut loose their horses on the plains. They all hurried into the canoes and dropped down to the mouth of the Marias. Here they abandoned the rest of their horses. They dug up the cache which they had left here in the previous year. This cache also was pretty badly damaged, but they got some stuff out of it. Indeed, some of the caches were in good condition, although the big red boat they had left was no longer of any use. They stripped her of her iron and set out by canoes, as soon as they could, because by that time they did not know what the Indians would be apt to do to them.