"Let us drown one out."
Forthwith, every man came puffing up with big brass kettles full of water.
"Five barrels," says Clark in his journal, "were poured into the holes but not a dog came out," and Patrick Gass adds, "Though they worked at the business until night they only caught one of them."
More and more the hills were thronged with buffalo. Even York, Captain Clark's black servant, went out and killed two at one ride.
On the top of a high bluff the men had found the skeleton of a huge fish, forty-five feet long and petrified.
"Blow, ye winds of morning,
Blow, blow, blow—"
George Shannon, the boy of the expedition, had enlivened many a sunrise with his jolly, rollicking Irish songs. But Shannon was lost! On the 28th of August he had gone out to look for the strayed horses. It was now September. Captain Lewis was wild, for at his request George had joined the expedition and at his order he had gone after the horses. Hunters had sought in every direction, guns had been fired and the blunderbuss, and smokes had been kindled from point to point.
"Shannon!" A great shout went up as the forlorn boy, emaciated and weary, came dragging into camp on the 11th of September.
It was a short story, soon told. He found the horses and followed by mistake the trail of recent Indians, which he mistook for footprints of the party. For days he followed the trail, exhausted his bullets, and lived on wild grapes and a rabbit he killed with a stick. But he heard no guns, saw no smoke.