“
The only thing,” said Jesse, as the three young companions later stood together on the bank of the river, looking out; “the only thing is——”
He did not finish his sentence, but stood, his hands thrust into the side pockets of his jacket, his face not wholly happy.
“Yes, Jesse; but what is the only thing?” John smiled, and Rob, tall and neat in his Scout uniform, also smiled as he turned to the youngest of their party. They were alone, Uncle Dick having gone to town to see about the pack train. They had walked up from their camp below the flourishing city of Great Falls.
“Well, it’s all right, I suppose,” replied Jesse. “I suppose they have to have cities, of course. I suppose they have to have those big smelters over there and all those other things. Maybe it’s not the same. The buffalo are not here, nor the elk—though the Journal says hundreds of buffalo were washed over the falls and drowned, right along. Then, the bears are not here any more, though it was right here that they were worst; they had to fight them all the time, and the only wonder was that no one was killed, for those bears were bad, believe me——”
“Sure, they must have been,” assented John. “There were so many dead buffalo, below the falls, where they washed ashore, that the grizzlies came in flocks, and didn’t want to be disturbed or driven away from their grub. And these were the first boats that ever had come up that river, the first white men. So they jumped them. Why, over yonder above the falls were the White Bear Islands; so many bears on them, they kept the camp so scared up all the time, they had to make up a boat party and go over and hunt them off. They used to swim this river like it was a pond, those bears! They kept the party on the alert all day and all night. They had a dozen big fights with them.”
“Humph!” Jesse waved an arm to the broad expanse of flat water above the great dam of the power company. “Is that so? Well, that’s what I mean. Where’s the big tree with the black eagle’s nest? How do we know this is the big portage of the Missouri at all? No islands, no eagle. Yet you know very well it was the sight of that eagle’s nest that made Lewis and Clark know for sure that they were on the right river. The Indians didn’t say anything about the Marias River being there at all; they never mentioned that to either Clark or Lewis when they made their maps in the winter with the Mandans. But they did mention that eagle nest on the island at the big falls—they thought everybody would notice that—and when you come to think of it, that did nail the thing to the map—no getting around the nest on the island at the falls.
“Oh, I suppose this town’s all right, way towns go. Only thing is, they ought not to have spoiled the island and the eagle nest with their old dam. How do we know this is the place?”
“Well, we’ll have to chance that, Jess,” said Rob. “Quite a drop here, anyhow, all these cascades. If we’d brought the Adventurer all the way up the river from Mandan, and got to the head of the rapids, I guess we’d think it was the place to portage.”
“Yes; and where’d we get any cottonwood tree around here, to cut off wheels for our boat wagon?” demanded John. “Eighteen miles and more, it was, that they portaged, after they’d dug their second big cache and hid their stuff and covered up the white perogue at the head of their perogue navigation (they’d left the big red perogue at the Marias).