“I can see the full boats coming down the Platte!” said Jesse, shading his eyes, “hide canoes, full of beaver bales, that float light! And there are the voyageurs, all with whiskers and long rifles and knives.”
“Yes,” said Uncle Dick, gravely. “And here are our men, tall, in uniform coats and buckskin leggings. See now”—and he reached for John’s volume—“they let off the deserter, Moses Reed, very light. He only had to run the gantlet of the entire party four times—each man with nine switches—and get dropped from the rolls of the Volunteers!
“And here is where Captain Lewis, experimenting with some strange water he had found—with some cobalt and ‘isonglass’ in it—got very ill from it. His friend Clark says ‘Copperas and Alum is verry pisen.’”
“But when did they first find the buffalo?” demanded Jesse, fingering once more the little rifle which always lay near him in the boat. “Gee! now, I’d like to kill a buffalo!”
“All in due time, all in due time, Jess!” his leader replied. “My, but you are bloodthirsty! Wait now till August 23d, above Sioux City. You are Captain William Clark, with your elk-hide notebook inside your shirt front, and you have gone ashore and have killed a fat buck. And when you get back to the boat J. Fields comes in and says he has killed a buffalo, in the plain ahead; and Lewis takes twelve men and has the buffalo brought to the boat at the next bend; so you just make no fuss over that first buffalo, and set it down in your elk-hide book. And that same day two elk swam across the river ahead of the boat. And that same evening R. Field brought in two deer on a horse, and another deer was shot from the boat; and they all saw elk standing on a sand bar, and several prairie wolves. And the very next day, don’t you remember, you saw great herds of buffalo? Oh, now you’re in the Plains! Everybody now is ‘jurking meat.’ What more do you want, son?”
“Aw, now!” said Jesse. “Well, anyway, we’re about in town.”