“It suits me,” assented John. “I’d like to take the Adventurer along, but Lewis and Clark didn’t take their boats through all the way, either.”
“And if we had time,” added Jesse, “we could run some river late in the fall, say from Great Falls down to here.”
“All good,” nodded Uncle Dick. Then turning to their new friend, “Suppose we cross our camp to Bismarck the morning of July 5th, tie up our boat there for you, and then go on in the way you suggest—motor and trailer?”
“Agreed,” said the other. “I’ll be there early that day.”
“Which way shall we go?” asked Rob. “If we took the road along the Northern Pacific west, we could see the Bad Lands, and go through Medora, Theodore Roosevelt’s old town.”
The editor shook his head. “Bad, if there’s rain,” he said. “Besides, that takes you below the Missouri. I think we’d best go on the east side the river, north of Bismarck. We could swing out toward the Turtle Lakes, and then make more west, toward the Fort Berthold Reservation. From there we could maybe get through till we struck the Great Northern Railroad; and then we could get west to Buford, on the line, and on the river again. If we got lost we could find ourselves again some time.”
“How long would it take?” inquired Rob.
“If it’s two hundred and eighty-eight miles by the river, it would be maybe two hundred and fifty by trail. We could do it in a day, on a straightaway good road like one of the motor highways, but we’ll have nothing of the sort. I’ll say two days, three, maybe four—we’d know better when we got there.”
“That sounds more adventurish,” said Jesse. And what the youngest of them thought appealed to the others also.
“Very well. All set for the morning after the Fourth,” said Uncle Dick. “And when we go back to Mandan be sure not to eat too much ice cream, for we’re not apt to run across very many doctors on the way. And now we’d better get ready to camp here to-night. We can make Mandan by noon to-morrow—it’s faster, downstream.”