The wife of a chief had an abscess. Clark lanced it, and she slept for the first time in days. The grateful chief brought him a horse that was immediately slaughtered for supper. A father gave a horse in exchange for remedies for his little crippled daughter.
With exposure to winds, alkali sand, and the smoke of chimneyless fires, few Indians survived to old age without blindness.
"Eye-water! Eye-water!" They reached for it as for a gift from the gods. Clark understood such eyes, for the smoke of the pioneer cabin had made affections of the eye a curse of the frontier.
But affairs were now at their lowest. Even the medicines were exhausted, and the last awl, needle, and skein of thread had gone. Off their shabby old United States uniforms the soldiers cut the last buttons to trade for bread. But instead of trinkets the sensible Nez Percés desired knives, buttons, awls for making moccasins, blankets, kettles. Shields the gunsmith ingeniously hammered links of Drouillard's trap into awls to exchange for bread.
The tireless hunters scoured the country. Farther and farther had scattered the game. Even the bears had departed. Thirty-three people ate a deer and an elk, or four deer a day. There was no commissariat for this little army but its own rifles. And yet, supplies must be laid in for crossing the mountains.
Every day Captain Lewis looked at the rising river and the melting snows of the Idaho Alps.
"That icy barrier, which separates me from my friends and my country, from all which makes life estimable—patience—patience—"
"The snow is yet deep on the mountains. You will not be able to pass them until the next full moon, or about the first of June," said the Indians.
"Unwelcome intelligence to men confined to a diet of horse meat and roots!" exclaimed Captain Lewis.
Finally even horse-flesh failed. Suspecting the situation, Chief Red Wolf came and said, "The horses on these hills are ours. Take what you need."