OPENING THE WEST WITH
LEWIS AND CLARK

[DID THEY SET THE PRAIRIE AFIRE JUST TO BURN HIM, A BOY?]

OPENING THE WEST
WITH
LEWIS AND CLARK

BY BOAT, HORSE AND FOOT UP THE GREAT RIVER MISSOURI, ACROSS THE STONY MOUNTAINS AND ON TO THE PACIFIC, WHEN IN THE YEARS 1804, 1805, 1806, YOUNG CAPTAIN LEWIS THE LONG KNIFE AND HIS FRIEND CAPTAIN CLARK THE RED HEAD CHIEF, AIDED BY SACAJAWEA THE BIRD-WOMAN, CONDUCTED THEIR LITTLE BAND OF MEN TRIED AND TRUE THROUGH THE UNKNOWN NEW UNITED STATES

BY
EDWIN L. SABIN

AUTHOR OF “THE GOLD SEEKERS OF ’49,”
“WITH SAM HOUSTON IN TEXAS,” ETC.

FRONTISPIECE BY
CHARLES H. STEPHENS

PHILADELPHIA & LONDON

J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY

COPYRIGHT, 1917, BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY

TWELFTH IMPRESSION

PRINTED IN UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

TO THE

WESTERN RED MAN

WHO FIRST OWNED FROM THE RIVER TO THE SEA, BUT WHOM THE WHITE MEN THAT CAME AFTER LEWIS AND CLARK TREATED NEITHER WISELY NOR WELL

“Our Country’s glory is our chief concern;

For this we struggle, and for this we burn;

For this we smile, for this alone we sigh;

For this we live, for this we freely die.”

FOREWORD

As time passes, the famous Lewis and Clark Expedition, fathered by the great President Jefferson, should shine brighter and brighter amidst the other pages of American history.

The purchase of the Province of Louisiana was opposed by many citizens. They were ignorant and short-sighted; they asserted that here was a useless burden of waste land fitted only to the Indian and the fur-trader; that the people of the United States should occupy themselves with the land east of the Mississippi.

But wiser men prevailed. The expedition launched boldly out into the unknown, to carry the flag now into the new country, and perhaps to make possible the ownership of still a farther country, at the Pacific Ocean.

Time proved the wisdom of President Jefferson’s preparations made even before the territory had been bought. Just at the right moment the trail across the continent was opened. Louisiana Territory was valued at its future worth; the people were informed of its merits and possibilities; after the return of the explorers, the American citizens pressed forward, to see for themselves. And in due course the flag floated unchallenged in that Oregon where, also, the Lewis and Clark men had blazed the way.

I should like to have been under Captain Meriwether Lewis, turning thirty, and Captain William Clark, scant thirty-four. They were true leaders: brave, patient, resourceful and determined. And the company that followed them were likewise, brave, patient, resourceful and determined. These qualities are what bound them all together—the American, the Frenchman, the Indian—as one united band, and brought them through, triumphant.

Edwin L. Sabin

Denver, Colorado

CONTENTS

THE EXPEDITION

THE RANK AND FILE

Captain Meriwether Lewis
(The Long Knife)

Born August 18, 1774, of Scotch ancestry, on the Ivy Creek plantation near Charlottesville, Albemarle Co., Virginia, and three miles from Monticello, the estate of Thomas Jefferson.

Father—William Lewis.

Mother—Lucy Meriwether.

Having fought bravely through the Revolution, after the successful siege of Yorktown ending the war, his father dies, in 1782.

In due time his mother marries a friend of the family, Captain John Marks, and removes to Georgia.

Little Meriwether is reared, with his brother Reuben and his sister Jane, younger than he, at Locust Hill, the family home, and also spends much time at “The Farm,” of his uncle Nicholas Lewis, adjoining Monticello.

A lad of bold spirit, at eight years of age he is accustomed to sally forth alone with his dogs, at night, and hunt.

At thirteen, is placed in a Latin school, under Parson Maury, to study.

At eighteen, in 1792, he volunteers to Thomas Jefferson, then President Washington’s Secretary of State, to explore up the Missouri River to the Pacific Coast for the American Philosophical Society. A distinguished scientist, André Michaux, is selected, but the plan is given up.

At twenty, volunteers in the militia, at the call of President Washington for troops to put down the Whiskey Rebellion in Western Pennsylvania. Is soon commissioned a lieutenant in the regular army.

At twenty-three, commissioned captain.

At twenty-seven, in 1801, is appointed by President Jefferson his private secretary.

At twenty-nine, in 1803, is appointed by the president to head the government exploring expedition up the Missouri River and on across to the Pacific Ocean.

Leaves Washington July 5, 1803.

1804—1805—1806 is engaged in the exploration. The Indians name him the Long Knife.

1807, appointed governor of Louisiana Territory, with headquarters in St. Louis.

October 10, 1809, on his way by horse from St. Louis to Washington, while at a settler’s cabin in present Lewis Co., Tennessee, 72 miles southwest of Nashville, he is shot, either by himself or by an assassin, and dies the next day, October 11. He is there buried. A monument has been erected over his grave.

Captain William Clark
(The Red Head)

Born August 1, 1770, in Caroline Co., tide-water Virginia.

Father—John Clark, of old Virginia Cavalier stock.

Mother—Ann Rogers, descendant of John Rogers, the “Martyr of Smithfield” burned at the stake in 1555, in England, for his religious beliefs.

William is the ninth of ten children, two others of whom have red hair. Five of his brothers enlist in the Revolution. One of these was the famous General George Rogers Clark, the “Hannibal of the West,” who saved Kentucky and the Ohio country from the British and Indians.

The Clarks and the Lewises are well acquainted. George Rogers Clark was born at Charlottesville, and members of the Clark family frequently ride over there.

Little William early shows a love for frontier life.

After the close of the Revolution the Clarks remove, by horse and wagon, from Caroline Co., Virginia, to Western Kentucky, and establish themselves in a stockade and blockhouse overlooking the Ohio River, three miles below Louisville, then known as the Falls of the Ohio; Mulberry Hill, the new home is christened.

Young William wears buckskins and moccasins, shoots deer and buffalo, takes many trips with the famous Kentucky frontiersmen, and has for friend and teacher Daniel Boone.

In 1788, at seventeen years of age, he is commissioned ensign in the regular army.

Accompanies his brother, General George Rogers Clark, on the campaign to prevent the Indians from keeping the whites east of the Ohio River, and the Spaniards from closing the Mississippi to American commerce.

1790, acts as captain of militia.

In 1791 is commissioned first lieutenant, Fourth Sub-Legion of the army. Serves under “Mad Anthony” Wayne against the Indians in Ohio. Leads a charge at the battle of Fallen Timbers, August 20, 1794, where the celebrated chief Tecumseh is defeated.

Because of ill health, he retires from military service, in 1796, and lives at Mulberry Hill, to help his brother, the general, in business matters.

In July, 1803, accepts an offer from his friend and fellow officer, Captain Meriwether Lewis, requesting his company and assistance on an exploring trip up the Missouri River, through the Province of Louisiana, for the Government.

Is commissioned by President Jefferson second lieutenant of artillerists.

In October, 1803, he leaves with part of the expedition for St. Louis.

1804—1805—1806 is engaged in exploring to the Pacific Ocean and back. The Indians name him the Red Head.

1806, resigns his commission in the army.

1807, appointed by President Jefferson brigadier-general of the militia of Louisiana Territory and Indian agent for the Territory. Is very popular with the Indians, who revere his justness and honesty.

In 1808 marries Julia Hancock.

In 1813 is appointed governor of the Territory of Missouri.

In 1821 marries Harriet Kennerly-Radford, but is defeated in his candidacy for the governorship of the new State of Missouri.

1822, appointed by President Madison superintendent of Indian Affairs, an office which he holds until he dies.

1824 is appointed surveyor-general of Missouri, Illinois, and Arkansas Territory.

Dies September 1, 1838, at St. Louis, his long-time home, aged 68 years.

Enlisted for the Trip.

At Pittsburg, by Captain Lewis:

At Mulberry Hill, Kentucky, by Captain Clark:

At Kaskaskia Post, Illinois, by Captain Lewis:

At Fort Massac of Illinois, by Captain Clark:

Probably at St. Louis:

John Newman. Did not go through. Was punished and sent back.

Others enrolled in the party:

Chief Hunter George Drouillard (called “Drewyer”) of Kaskaskia and St. Louis. Part French, part Indian. Went through.

Head Boatman Pierre Cruzatte of St. Louis. Went through.

Boatman François Labiche of St. Louis. Went through.

Boatman —— Liberté of St. Louis. Deserted.

Trader Baptiste Lepage of the Mandan Indian town. Enlisted there to take the place of the deserter Liberté. Went through.

Trader Toussaint Chaboneau of the Mandan Indian town, where he was living with the Minnetarees. Enlisted as interpreter. Went through.

Sa-ca-ja-we-a the Bird-woman, his Sho-sho-ne Indian wife, aged sixteen. Went through.

Little Toussaint, their baby. Went through.

Engaged for Part of the Trip

At St. Louis:

Corporal Warfington and six privates, to go as far as the first winter’s camp.

Nine French boatmen, to go as far as the first winter’s camp.

On the way up from St. Louis:

Trader Pierre Dorion, to go as far as the Sioux.

I
MAKING READY

When in 1801 Thomas Jefferson became third President of the United States the nation was young. The War for Independence had been won only twenty years previous. George Washington himself had been gone but a year and four months. The Capitol was being erected on the site that he had chosen. And the western boundary of the nation was the Mississippi River.

Beyond the Mississippi extended onward to the Rocky Mountains the foreign territory of Louisiana Province. New Orleans was the capital of its lower portion, St. Louis was the capital of its upper portion. It all was assumed to be the property of Spain, until, before President Jefferson had held office a year, there spread the rumor that by a secret treaty in 1800 Spain had ceded Louisiana back to France, the first owner.

Almost another year passed. The treaty transferring Louisiana Province from Spain to France seemed to be hanging fire. The Spanish flag still floated over New Orleans and St. Louis. Then, in October, 1802, the Spanish governor at New Orleans informed the American traders and merchants that their flat-boats no longer might use the Mississippi River. New Orleans, the port through which the Mississippi River traffic reached the Gulf of Mexico, was closed to them.

From the west to the east of the United States swelled a vigorous cry of indignation against this decree that closed the Mississippi to American commerce. Hot words issued, threats were loudly spoken, and the people of the Ohio Valley, particularly, were ripe to seize New Orleans and re-open the big river by force of arms.

However, the Spanish governor was not within his rights, anyway. By that secret treaty, the Island of New Orleans (as it was called), through which the currents of the Mississippi flowed to the Gulf, was French property. So instead of disputing further with Spain, President Jefferson, in January, 1803, sent Robert R. Livingston, United States minister to France, the authority to buy the New Orleans gateway for $2,000,000, or, if necessitated, to offer $10,000,000.

President Jefferson was a gaunt, thin-legged, sandy-haired, homely man, careless of his clothes and simple in his customs, but he passionately loved his country, and he had great dreams for it. His dreams he made come true.

He long had been fascinated by the western half of the continent. His keen hazel eyes had pored over the rude maps, largely guesswork, sketched by adventurers and fur-hunters. These eyes had travelled up the water-way of the uncertain Missouri, to the Stony Mountains, as they were called; thence across the Stony Mountains, in search of that mysterious Columbia River, discovered and christened by an American. Twice he had urged the exploration of the Columbia region, and twice explorers had started, but had been turned back. Now, as President, he clung to his dream of gaining new lands and new commerce to the American flag; and scarcely had Minister Livingston been sent the instructions to open the Mississippi, than President Jefferson proceeded with plans for opening another, longer trail, that should reach from the Mississippi to the Pacific.

He had in mind the person who could lead on such a trip: young Captain Meriwether Lewis of the First Infantry, U. S. A.; his private secretary at $500 a year, and to him like an own son. They were together day and night, they loved each other.

A Virginian, of prominent family, was Captain Lewis, and now barely twenty-nine years of age. Slim, erect, sunny-haired, flashing blue-eyed, handsome and brave, he had volunteered before to explore through the farthest Northwest, but had been needed elsewhere. This time President Jefferson wisely granted him his wish, and asked him to make an estimate of the expenses for a Government exploring expedition by officers and men, from St. Louis up the Missouri River and across the mountains to the Pacific Ocean.

Young Captain Lewis figured, and soon handed in his estimate. He was of the opinion that at an expense of $2500, which would cover everything, a party of eighteen men might travel across-country from the Mississippi River, over the mountains, and to the Pacific Ocean and back again! He had figured very closely, had young Captain Lewis—perhaps because he was so anxious to go.

President Jefferson accepted the estimate of $2500, and in his message of January 18, 1803, to Congress, he proposed the expedition. He urged that at this small expense a party of soldiers, well led, could in two summers map a trail clear to the western ocean; bring back valuable information upon climate, soil and peoples, and make Americans better acquainted with their own continent; also encourage the traders and trappers to use the Missouri River as a highway to and from the Indians, thus competing with the British of Canada.

Congress voted to apply the $2500 on the proposed expedition. We may imagine how the tall, homely President Jefferson beamed—he, who so firmly believed in the expansion of American trade, and the onward march of the American flag. And we may imagine how young Captain Lewis glowed with joy, when now he might be definitely named as the leader to carry the flag.

President Jefferson advised him to go at once to Philadelphia, and study botany, geology, astronomy, surveying, and all the other sciences and methods that would enable him to make a complete report upon the new country. At Lancaster, nearby, the celebrated Henry flint-lock rifles were manufactured, and he could attend to equipping his party with these high-grade guns, turned out according to his own directions.

There should be two leaders, to provide against accident to one. Whom would he have, as comrade? He asked for his friend, William Clark, younger brother to the famed General George Rogers Clark, who in the Revolution had won the country west of the Alleghanies from the British and the Indians, afterward had saved the Ohio Valley from the angry redmen, and then had defied the Spaniards who would claim the Mississippi.

As cadet only seventeen years old, and as stripling lieutenant appointed by Washington, William Clark himself had fought to keep this fertile region white. “A youth of solid and promising parts and as brave as Cæsar,” was said of him, in those terrible days when the Shawnees, the Mohawks and all declared: “No white man’s cabin shall smoke beyond the Ohio.”

He, too, was a Virginian born, but raised in Kentucky. Now in this spring of 1803 he was verging on thirty-three years of age. He was russet-haired, gray-eyed, round-faced and large-framed—kindly, firm, and very honest.

He had retired from the army, but by rank in the militia was entitled captain. For the purposes of the expedition President Jefferson commissioned him second lieutenant of artillery.

Captain Clark was at the Clark family home of Mulberry Hill, three miles south of Louisville, Kentucky; Captain Lewis pursued his studies at Philadelphia. Meanwhile, what of Minister Livingston and the purchase from France of New Orleans—the mouth of the Mississippi?

The famous Napoleon Bonaparte was the ruler of France. He, like President Jefferson, had his dreams for the Province of Louisiana. He refused to sell the port of New Orleans. Here he intended to land soldiers and colonists, that they might proceed up-river and make of his Province of Louisiana another France.

Trouble loomed. Congress appointed James Monroe as Envoy Extraordinary and on March 8 he started for France to aid Minister Livingston. He arrived at Paris on April 12; but, lo, on the day before he arrived, a most astonishing new bargain had been offered by Napoleon and Minister Livingston was ready to accept.

The dream of Napoleon had faded. For war with England was again upon him; the British held Canada, their men-of-war were assembling off the Gulf of Mexico, Louisiana Province and New Orleans would be seized before ever France could muster a force there to resist. So rather than let England gain all this territory and wax more powerful, Napoleon, on April 11, directed his ministers to proffer to the United States not only New Orleans, but all Louisiana Province—and the deal must be closed at once!

“Take all, at 80,000,000 francs, or $15,000,000, or take nothing,” was the astounding proposal from Minister Marbois.

“I am authorized to buy New Orleans,” replied Minister Livingston.

There was no time in which to inform President Jefferson and Congress. News crossed the ocean only by slow sailing vessels. Envoy Monroe arrived; he and Minister Livingston consulted together; Napoleon was impatient, they should act quickly——

“We must do it,” they agreed. “Our country shall not lose this opportunity.”

Little minds are afraid of responsibilities; great minds are not afraid. They prefer to act as seems to them they ought to act, rather than merely to play safe. Monroe and Livingston were true patriots. They thought not of themselves, but of their country, and risked rebuke for exceeding their instructions.

On April 30 they signed the papers which engaged the United States to purchase all of Louisiana. The French ministers signed. On May 2 Napoleon signed. The papers were immediately mailed for the approval of Congress.

And Congress did approve, on October 17. Thus, for less than three cents an acre, the United States acquired from the Mississippi River to the summits of the Rocky Mountains. The amount paid over was $11,400,000; $3,750,000 was applied on French debts.

The ship bearing the papers signed by Ministers Livingston and Monroe, and by the government of France, did not reach the United States until July. Down to that time President Jefferson had no knowledge of the fact that his expedition, as planned, was to explore not French territory, but American. But when the news broke, he was all ready for it—he needed only to go ahead. That is one secret of success: to be prepared to step instantly from opportunity to opportunity as fast as they occur. The successful, energetic man is never surprised by the unexpected.

Captain Lewis had been kept very busy: studying science at Philadelphia, inspecting his flint-locks at Lancaster, storing them and gathering supplies at the arsenal of Harper’s Ferry. June 20 he received his written instructions.

He was to ascend the Missouri River from St. Louis to its source, and by crossing the mountains and following down other streams, endeavor to come out at the mouth of the Columbia on the Pacific coast. It was hoped that he would find a way by water clear through. He was to make a complete record of his journey: noting the character of the country, its rivers, climate, soil, animals, products, and peoples; and particularly the Indians, their laws, languages, occupations—was to urge peace upon them, inform them of the greatness of the white United States, encourage them to sell us their goods and to visit us.

When he reached the Pacific Ocean, he was to ship two of his party by vessel, if he found one there, for the United States, by way of Cape Horn, of South America, or the Cape of Good Hope, of Africa, and send a copy of his notes with them. Or he and all his party were at liberty to return that way, themselves. He was given letters to the United States consuls at Java, and the Isles of France off the African coast, and the Cape of Good Hope, and one authorizing him to obtain money, in the name of the United States, at any part of the civilized world.

All this was a large order, placed upon the shoulders of a youth of twenty-nine years; but who knew where the Missouri River trail might lead? No white man yet had followed it to its end.

Captain Lewis was at Washington, receiving those final instructions. On July 5 he should start for the west. On July 3 he wrote a farewell letter to his mother in Virginia, bidding her not to worry, and assuring her that he felt he should return safely in fifteen to eighteen months.

He did not dream—President Jefferson, his friend and backer, did not dream, or, at least, had not voiced that dream—but even while the loving letter was being penned, into the harbor of New York had sailed a ship from France, bringing the dispatches of Ministers Monroe and Livingston. The next day the news was announced at Washington. The Province of Louisiana had been bought by the United States!

This was a Fourth of July celebration with a vengeance.

Captain Lewis scarcely had time to comprehend. To-morrow he was to start, and his mind was filled with the details of preparation. But a glowing joy must have thrilled him as he realized that he was to be the first to carry the flag through that new America now a part of his own United States. Hurrah!

He had no occasion for delaying. His instructions required no change. He was eager to be off. Therefore on July 5, this 1803, he set out, and from the White House President Jefferson wished him good-speed.

II
THE START

By boat up the Potomac River from Washington hastened young Captain Lewis, to pack his arms and supplies at Harper’s Ferry, and forward them by wagon for Pittsburg. He got to Pittsburg ahead of them; and there remained until the last of August, overseeing the building of a barge or flat-boat. He enlisted some men, too—six of them, picked with care, and sworn into the service of the United States Army.

On August 31, with his recruits, on his laden flat-boat he launched out to sail, row, and float, towed by oxen (a “horn breeze,” this was termed), down the Ohio.

At Mulberry Hill, near Louisville, Captain William Clark was impatiently awaiting. He had enlisted nine men, all of Kentucky, the “dark and bloody ground.” If any men could be relied on, they would be Kentuckians, he knew. His negro servant, York, who had been his faithful body-guard since boyhood, was going, too.

Captain Clark took charge of the barge, to proceed with it and the recruits and York down the Ohio into the Mississippi, and thence up the Mississippi to St. Louis. Captain Lewis turned across country, by horse, on a short cut, to pick up more men along the way.

He struck the Mississippi River fifty miles below St. Louis, where the United States Army post of Kaskaskia faced the Province of Louisiana across the river. Here he enlisted four men more, selected from a score that eagerly volunteered. Word of the great expedition had travelled ahead of him, and he could have filled the ranks seven times over. But only the strongest, and those of clean reputation, could qualify for such a trip. These thought themselves fortunate.

Now up along the river, by military road, hastened Captain Lewis, for the old town of Cahokia, and crossed the river to St. Louis at last. He was in a hurry.

“We’ll winter at La Charette, Captain,” he had said to Captain Clark, “where Daniel Boone lives. Boone can give us valuable information, and we’ll be that far on our journey, ready for spring. Charette will be better for our men than St. Louis.”

Glad was Captain Clark to spend the months at La Charette. Daniel Boone had been his boyhood friend in Kentucky—had taught him much wood-craft. But when, in mid-December, Captain Clark, the redhead, anxious to push on to La Charette, seventy miles up the Missouri, before the ice closed, with York and his nine Kentuckians and five other recruits whom he had enlisted from Fort Massac at the mouth of the Ohio tied his keel-boat at the St. Louis levee, he was met by disagreeable information.

“We’ll have to winter here,” informed Captain Lewis. “The Spanish lieutenant-governor won’t pass us on. He claims that he has not been officially notified yet to transfer Upper Louisiana to the United States—or, for that matter, even to France. So all we can do is to make winter camp on United States soil, on the east side of the river, and wait. I’m sorry—I’ve engaged two more boats—but that’s the case.”

“All right,” assented Captain Clark. “Both sides of the river are ours, but I suppose we ought to avoid trouble.”

So the winter camp was placed near the mouth of Wood River, on the east bank of the Mississippi, about twenty miles above St. Louis. Log cabins were erected; and besides, the big keel-boat was decked fore and aft, and had a cabin and men’s quarters. Consequently nobody need suffer from the cold.

Captain Lewis stayed most of the time in St. Louis, arranging for supplies, studying medicine, astronomy, botany and other sciences, and learning much about the Indians up the Missouri. Captain Clark looked after the camp, and drilled the men almost every day.

St. Louis was then forty years old; it contained less than 200 houses, of stone and log, and about 1000 people, almost all French. The lieutenant-governor, who lived here in charge of Upper Louisiana of “the Illinois Country” (as all this section was called), was Don Carlos Dehault Delassus, also of French blood, but appointed by Spain.

Indignant now was Spain, objecting to the new ownership by the United States, and asserting that by the terms of the bargain with France that government had promised not to dispose of the province to any other nation. But this evidently had made no difference to Napoleon.

Not until November 30, of 1803, while Captain Lewis was on his road from Kaskaskia to St. Louis and Captain Clark was toiling with his keel-boat up from the mouth of the Ohio (both captains thinking that they had a clear way ahead), was the Spanish flag in New Orleans hauled down, and the French flag hoisted. On December 20 the representative of the French government there, Monsieur Pierre Clement Laussat, and his men, saluted the hoisting of the Stars and Stripes, formally delivered Lower and Upper Louisiana to the United States.

Nevertheless, Lieutenant-Governor Delassus, of Upper Louisiana, waited for official instruction. Distances were great, he wished to receive orders what to do. In St. Louis Captain Lewis waited; in the camp at Wood River Captain Clark waited; the Missouri froze over and they could not go on anyway.

Christmas was celebrated, and the memorable year 1803 merged into the new year 1804. Finally, by letter, date of January 12, 1804, from Monsieur Laussat at New Orleans, Lieutenant-Governor Delassus was notified that dispatches were on the road to Captain Amos Stoddard, of the United States Artillery, and commanding at Fort Kaskaskia, empowering him to represent France at St. Louis and take over from Spain the district of Upper Louisiana. He was then to turn it over to himself as representative of the United States.

On February 25 Captain Stoddard announced that he was ready to receive Upper Louisiana in the name of France. March 9 was set as the day. Captain Lewis was invited to be present at the ceremony, as an official witness. Captain Clark probably came over; perhaps some of the men, for all the countryside gathered at the great event.

A number of Indians from up the Mississippi and up the Missouri, and out of the plains to the west, had witnessed the ceremony of transfer. They did not understand it all. They said that the United States had captured St. Louis. On March 12 their good friend, Lieutenant-Governor Delassus, issued an address to them, explaining that now they had a new father, and he introduced to them the new United States chiefs who had come—Captain Stoddard and Captain Lewis.

But the Delawares, the Sacs, the Osages, and others—they still were dissatisfied, and especially the Osages. Captain Lewis was particularly anxious to please the Osages, for they were the first of the powerful tribes whom he might encounter, up the Missouri. He tried to talk with the chiefs in St. Louis; by a trader sent a letter on to the Osage village, asking the head chiefs to meet him at the river and exchange peace presents.

Beyond the Osages dwelt the Otoes, the Missouris, the ’Mahas (Omahas), the Sioux, the Arikaras, the Mandans, the Minnetarees; and then, who could say? Few white men, even the French traders, had been farther. How would all these tribes, known and unknown, receive the strange Americans?

Spring had come, the ice was whirling down, in rotted floes, out of the north, the channel of the crooked Missouri was clearing, and every man in the expedition was keen to be away, following the honking geese into this new America over which the flag of the United States waved at last.

Now the expedition had grown to full strength. There were the two captains; the fourteen soldiers enlisted at Pittsburg, Fort Massac and Fort Kaskaskia; the nine Kentuckians, enrolled at Mulberry Hill near Louisville; George Drouillard (or Drewyer, as he was called), the hunter from Kaskaskia who had been recommended by Captain Clark’s brother the general; Labiche and one-eyed old Cruzatte, French voyageurs or boatmen engaged by Captain Lewis at St. Louis; nine other boatmen, and Corporal Warfington and six privates from the Kaskaskia troops in St. Louis, who were to go as far as the next winter camp, and then return with records and trophies; and black York, Captain Clark’s faithful servant, who was going just as far as his master did.

So forty-five there were in all, to start. Except York, those who were going through had been sworn in as privates in the United States Army, to serve during the expedition, or until discharged on the way, if so happened. Charles Floyd, one of the young Kentuckians; Nathaniel Pryor, his cousin, and John Ordway, enrolled at Kaskaskia from among the New Hampshire company, were appointed sergeants.

For outfit they had their flint-lock rifles, especially manufactured; flint-lock pistols, hunting knives, powder contained in lead canisters or pails to be melted into bullets when emptied, tents, tools, provisions of pork, flour, etc., warm extra clothing for winter, old Cruzatte’s fiddle, George Gibson’s fiddle, medicines, including the new kine-pox with which to vaccinate the Indians, the captains’ scientific instruments, a wonderful air-gun that shot forty times without reloading, and a cannon or blunderbuss.

Seven large bales and one emergency box had been packed with their stores; and there were fourteen other bales and one sample box of gifts for the Indians: gay laced coats, flags, knives, iron tomahawks, beads, looking-glasses, handkerchiefs (red and blue), paints (yellow, blue and crimson), not forgetting three kinds of medals—first-class and second-class, of silver, and third-class, of pewter—for chiefs to hang about their necks as token of friendship from their new great white father at Washington. The knives and tomahawks had been made at Harper’s Ferry.

Three boats were ready: the keel-boat built at Pittsburg, and two pirogues bought at St. Louis. The keel-boat or batteau was to be the flag-ship. It was a kind of flat-boat or barge, fifty-five feet long; of heavy planks, with bow overhanging and a little pointed, and square overhanging stern fitted with a keel and with a tiller rudder. It had places for eleven oars on a side, and carried a sail. Along either gunwale was a plank path or walking-board, from which the men might push with poles.

Much ingenuity and care had Captain Lewis spent on this flag-ship. Under a deck at the bows the crew might sleep; and under the deck at the stern was the cabin for the officers; in the middle were lockers, for stowing stuff—and the lids when raised formed a line of breastworks against bullets and arrows! The blunderbuss was mounted in the bows, the flag floated from a staff. The boat drew only three feet of water.

The two pirogues were smaller, open flat-boats or barges; one painted red, the other white; one fitted with six oars, the other with seven. They also had sails.

At Harper’s Ferry Captain Lewis had ordered the steel framework of a canoe. This was “knocked down,” in sections, and stowed in the keel-boat, later to be put together and covered with bark or skins, for use in the shallow waters far up-river.

And there were two horses, which should accompany the boats by land, for scouting and hunting purposes.

April passed; May arrived. The Missouri was reported free of ice, and was rising rapidly. The trees had budded and greened, the grasses were getting high, game would be plentiful, the Indians would be leaving their villages for their spring hunts, and ’twas time that the expedition should start. In their camp at Wood River the men drew on the supply of quill pens, ink horns and paper and wrote farewell letters home. In St. Louis Captain Clark and Captain Lewis were given farewell dinners. By Doctor Saugrain, the learned physician and scientist under whom he was studying, Captain Lewis was presented with a handful of matches—curious little sticks which, when briskly rubbed against something, burst into flame. The Indians would marvel at these.

Shortly before four o’clock in the afternoon of May 14, this 1804, the start was made. The St. Louis people gathered along the river bank on that side, to watch the boats move up. The blunderbuss was discharged, in salute; the cannon of the fort answered. Captain Clark, bidding goodbye from the deck of the keel-boat, was in full dress uniform of red-trimmed blue coat and trousers, and gold epaulets, his sword at his belt, his three-cornered chapeau on his red head. The sails swelled in the breeze, the men at the oars sang in French and shouted in English. Drewyer the hunter rode one horse and led the other. All, save Captain Clark, were dressed for business—Corporal Warfington’s squad from St. Louis in United States uniform, the nine Kentuckians in buckskins, the fourteen soldiers and civilians, enlisted at the posts, in flannel shirts and trousers of buckskin or coarse army cloth, the French boatmen in brightly fringed woollens, with scarlet ’kerchiefs about their heads. Rain was falling, but who cared!

Captain Lewis did not accompany. He was detained to talk more with the Osages who had come down. He hoped yet to make things clear to them. But he would join the boats at the village of St. Charles, twenty miles above.

In the sunshine of May 16 they tied to the bank at St. Charles. At the report of the cannon—boom!—the French villagers, now Americans all, came running down and gave welcome.

Sunday the 20th Captain Lewis arrived by skiff from St. Louis, and with him an escort of the St. Louis people, again to cheer the expedition on its way. Not until Monday afternoon, the 21st, was the expedition enabled to tear itself from the banquets and hand-shakings, and onward fare in earnest, against the wind and rain.

Tawny ran the great Missouri River, flooded with the melted snows of the wild north, bristling with black snags, and treacherous with shifting bars. On either hand the banks crashed in, undermined by the changing currents. But rowing, poling, hauling with ropes, and even jumping overboard to shove, only occasionally aided by favoring breeze, the men, soldiers and voyageurs alike, worked hard and kept going. On leaving St. Charles the two captains doffed their uniforms until the next dress-up event, and donned buckskins and moccasins.

Past La Charette, the settlement where Daniel Boone lived—the very last white settlement on the Missouri, toiled the boats; now, beyond, the country was red. Past the mouth of the Osage River up which lived the Osage Indian; but no Osages were there to treat with them. Past the mouth of the Kansas River, and the Little Platte; and still no Indians appeared, except some Kickapoos bringing deer. Rafts were encountered, descending with the first of the traders bringing down their winter’s furs: a raft from the Osages, shouting that the Osages would not believe that St. Louis had been “captured,” and had burnt the Captain Lewis message; from the Kansas, from the Pawnees up the Big Platte, from the Sioux of the far north.

Off a Sioux raft old Pierre Dorion, one of the traders, was hired by the captains to go with the expedition up to the Sioux, and make them friendly. He had lived among the Yankton Sioux twenty years.

Through June and July, without especial incident, the expedition voyaged ever up-river into the northwest, constantly on the look-out for Indians with whom to talk.

The two captains regularly wrote down what they saw and did and heard; a number of the men also kept diaries. Sergeant Charles Floyd, Sergeant John Ordway, Sergeant Nathaniel Pryor, Private Patrick Gass, Private Joseph Whitehouse, Private Robert Frazier and Private Alexander Willard—they faithfully scrawled with their quill pens, recording each day’s events as they saw them. The journals of Floyd, Gass, and Whitehouse have been published, so that we may read them as well as the journals of the captains.

Not until the first of August, and when almost fifty miles above the mouth of the Platte River, was the first council with the Indians held. Here a few Otoes and Missouris came in, at a camping-place on the Nebraska side of the Missouri, christened by the two captains the Council-bluffs, from which the present Iowa city of Council Bluffs, twenty miles below and opposite, takes its name.

Now in the middle of August the expedition is encamped at the west side of the river, about fifteen miles below present Sioux City, Iowa, waiting to talk with the principal chiefs of the Otoes and the Omahas, and hoping to establish a peace between them. But the Omahas had fled from the small-pox, and the Otoes were slow to come in.

The voyageur Liberté and the soldier Moses Reed were missing from the camp; a party had been sent out to capture them as deserters.

Eight hundred and thirty-six miles had been logged off, from St. Louis, in the three months.

Here the story opens.

OPENING THE WEST WITH LEWIS AND CLARK

I
THE COMING OF THE WHITE CHIEFS

“They are many,” reported Shon-go-ton-go, or Big Horse, sub-chief of the Otoes.

“How many?” asked We-ah-rush-hah, or Little Thief, the head chief.

“As many,” replied Big Horse, “as five times the fingers on two hands.”

“Wah!” gravely grunted the circle, where the chiefs and warriors squatted in their blankets and buffalo robes.

For August, the Ripe Corn month, of 1804, had arrived to the Oto Indians’ country in present Nebraska beyond the Missouri River; but now at their buffalo-hunt camp north of the River Platte the chiefs of the combined Oto and Missouri nations sat in solemn council instead of chasing the buffalo.

Through a long time, or since the month when the buffalo begin to shed, the air had been full of rumors. Five moons back, when the cottonwood buds first swelled, down at the big white village of “San Loui’” there had been a ceremony by which, according to the best word, all this vast land watered by the Missouri River had changed white fathers. The Spanish father’s flag had been hauled down, and a different flag had been raised. Indians had been there and had seen; yes, Shawnees, Saukies, Delawares, Osages—they had been there, and had seen. The Spanish governor, whose name was Delassus, had made a speech, to the white people. He had said:

PROCLAMATION

March 9, 1804.

Inhabitants of Upper Louisiana:

By the King’s command, I am about to deliver up this post and its dependences!

The flag under which you have been protected for a period of nearly thirty-six years is to be withdrawn. From this moment you are released from the oath of fidelity you took to support it.

The speech was hard to understand, but there it was, tacked up on the white man’s talking paper. Moreover, the good governor had made a talk for the Indians also, his red children. He had said:

Your old fathers, the Spaniard and the Frenchman, who grasp by the hand your new father, the head chief of the United States, by an act of their good will, and in virtue of their last treaty, have delivered up to them all these lands. They will keep and defend them, and protect all the white and red skins who live thereon.

For several days we have fired off cannon shots to announce to all the nations that your father, the Spaniard, is going, his heart happy to know that you will be protected and sustained by your new father, and that the smoke of the powder may ascend to the Master of Life, praying him to shower on you all a happy destiny and prosperity in always living in good union with the whites.

Up the great river and into the west, by traders and runners had come the tidings.

Who were these United States? What kind of a man was the new white father? He was sending a party of his warriors, bearing presents and peace talk. They already had ascended the big river, past the mouth of the Platte. They had dispatched messengers to the Otoes and the Missouris, asking them to come in to council. But the Otoes and Missouris had left their village where they lived with their friends the Pawnees, in order to hunt the buffalo before gathering their corn, and only by accident had the invitation reached them.

Then Shon-go-ton-go and We-the-a and Shos-gus-can and others had gone; and had returned safe and satisfied. They had returned laden with gifts—paint and armlets and powder, and medals curiously figured, hung around their necks by the two white chiefs themselves. They had hastened to seek out We-ah-rush-hah, the head chief, in his camp, and report.

The white chiefs were waiting to treat with him, as was proper, and they had sent to him a bright colored flag, and ornaments, and a medal.

“What do the white chiefs want?” queried We-ah-rush-hah.

“They say that the new white father will be generous with the Otoes and Missouris, and wishes us to be at peace with our enemies.”

“Will he protect us from those robbers, the Omahas?”

“He wishes us to make peace with the Omahas. The United States would go with us to the Omahas, but we told them we were afraid. We are poor and weak and the Omahas would kill us.”

“Good,” approved We-ah-rush-hah.

“There are two of the white chiefs,” added We-the-a, or Hospitable One, the Missouri chief. “They wear long knives by their sides. Their hair is of strange color. The hair of one is yellow like ripe corn; the hair of the other is red as pipe-stone. The Red Head is big and pleasant; the yellow-haired one is slim and very straight, and when he speaks he does not smile. Yes, the Red Head is a buffalo, but the other is an elk.”

“They have three boats,” added Shos-gus-can, or White Horse, who was an Oto. “One boat is larger than any boat of any trader. It has a gun that talks in thunder. Of the other boats, one is painted white, one is painted red. The chiefs are dressed in long blue shirts that glitter with shining metal. The party are strong in arms. They have much guns, and powder and lead, and much medicine. They have a gun that shoots with air, and shoots many times. It is great medicine. They have a man all black like a buffalo in fall, with very white teeth and short black hair, curly like a buffalo’s. He is great medicine. They carry a white flag with blue and red borders. Red, white and blue are their medicine colors. The flag is their peace sign. There are French with them, from below, and another, a trader from the Sioux. They received us under a white lodge, and have named the place the Council-bluffs. They must be of a great nation.”

“I will go and see these United States, and talk with them,” announced Little Thief, majestically. “Their presents have been good, their words sound good. It is unwise to refuse gifts laid upon the prairie. If indeed we have a new father for all the Indians, maybe by listening to his chiefs we can get more from him than we did from our Spanish father. I will go and talk, at the burnt Omaha village. Let the four white men who have come with gifts and a message, seeking brothers-who-have-run-away, be well treated, so that we shall be well treated also.”

Then the council broke up.

On the outskirts, a boy, Little White Osage, had listened with all his ears. The affair was very interesting. A hot desire filled his heart to go, himself, and see these United States warriors, with their painted boats and their marvelous guns and their black medicine-man and their two chiefs whose hair was different, like his own hair.

His own hair was brown and fine instead of being black and coarse, and his eyes were blue instead of black, and his skin, even in its tan, was light instead of dark. Sometimes he was puzzled to remember just how he had come among the Otoes. He did not always feel like an Indian. To be sure, he had been bought from the Osages by the Otoes; but away, ’way back there had been a woman, a light-haired, soft-skinned woman, among the Osages, who had kissed him and hugged him and had taught him a language that he well-nigh had forgotten.

Occasionally one of those strange words rose to his lips, but he rarely used it, because the Osages, and now the Otoes, did not wish him to use it.

The Otoes called him Little White Osage, as a kind of slur. Nobody kissed him and hugged him, but in their ill-natured moments the Oto squaws beat him, and the children teased him. The squaws never beat the other boys. Antoine, the French trader, was kinder to him. But Antoine had married an Oto woman, and all his children were dark and Indian.

“At the burnt Omaha village,” had said Chief Little Thief.

Little White Osage knew where this was. The United States chiefs, by their messengers, had invited Little Thief to meet them at the principal Omaha Indian village, so that peace might be made between the Omahas and the Otoes. But the village had been smitten by a sickness—the smallpox, old Antoine had named it, and the frightened Omahas had burned their lodges and had fled, such as were able. Only the site of the village remained, and its graves.

It would be of no use to try to go with the chief’s party. They would not want boys, and especially a boy who was not like other Indian boys, and bore a name of the hated Osages. Therefore, this night, in the dusk, he slipped from under his thin blanket in the skin lodge, where slumbered old Antoine and family, and scuttled, bending low, out into the prairie.

He would have sought the four white men who had come from the United States chiefs’ camp, but they had left, looking for two other men who had strayed. And besides, he didn’t feel certain that they would help him.

The prairie was thick with high grasses, and with bushes whereon berries were ripening; he wore only a cloth about his waist, on his feet moccasins, but he did not mind, for his skin was tough. He carried his bow, of the yellow osage wood, and slung under his left arm his badger-hide quiver containing blunt reed arrows.

The damp night air was heavy with smoke, for the prairies had been fired in order to drive out the game. Now and then he startled some animal. Eyes glowed at him, and disappeared, and a shadowy form loped away. That was a wolf. He was not afraid of any cowardly wolf. Larger forms bolted, with snorts. They were antelope. To a tremendous snort a much larger form bounded from his path. That was an elk. But he hastened on at a trot and fast walk, alert and excited, his nostrils and eyes and ears wide, while he ever kept the North Star before him on his left.

It seemed long ere in the east, whither he was hurrying, the stars were paling. On his swift young legs he had covered many miles. None of the Oto or Missouri boys could have done better, but he simply had to rest. The dawn brightened; he should eat and hide himself and sleep. So he paused, to make plans.

“Wah!” And “Hoorah!” “Hoorah!” was one of those strange words which would rise to his lips. Far before him, although not more than three or four hours’ travel, was a low line of trees marking the course of the big river. He took a step; from a clump of brush leaped a rabbit—and stopped to squat. Instantly Little White Osage had strung bow, fitted arrow, and shot. The arrow thudded, the rabbit scarcely kicked. Picking him up, Little White Osage trotted on, his breakfast in hand.

Now he smelled smoke stronger, and scouting about he cautiously approached a smouldering camp-fire. Omahas? But he espied nobody moving, or lying down. It was an old camp-fire. Around it he discovered in the dust that had been stirred up, the prints of boots. The white men had been here—perhaps the messengers to the camp of Little Thief. Good! He might cook his rabbit; and sitting, he did cook it after he had built the fire into more heat. He ate. Then he curled in the grass, like a brown rabbit himself, and slept.

When he wakened, the sun was high. He stretched; peered, to be safe; drank from a nearby creek, and set forward again. Nearer he drew to the big river, and nearer; and he had to move more carefully lest the Omahas should be lurking at their village, and sight him. The Omahas would be glad to capture anybody from the Otoes. There was no peace between the two peoples.

The ruined village lay lifeless and black, with its graves on the hill above it. He circled the village, and found a spot whence he could gaze down.

The broad big river flowed evenly between its low banks; curving amidst the willows and cottonwoods and sand-bars, it was the highway for the great white village of “San Loui’,” at its mouth many days to the south. It led also up into the country of the Mandans and the fierce Sioux, in the unknown north. And yonder, on a sand sprit above the mouth of the Omaha Creek, was the white chiefs’ camp!

With his sharp eyes Little White Osage eagerly surveyed. Three boats there were, just as said by Shos-gus-can: one painted white, and one painted red, and one very large, fastened in the shallows. On the sand were kettles, over fires, and many men moving about, or lying under a canopy; and a red, white and blue flag flying in the breeze.

A party were leaving the camp, and coming toward him. They could not see him—he was too cleverly hidden in the bushes, above. Wading through the grasses waist high they made for the creek and halted where the beavers had dammed it into a pond. These were white men, surely. They numbered the fingers on two hands, and three more fingers. They carried guns, and a net of branches and twigs; and one, a tall straight man, wore at his side a long knife in a sheath which flashed. He had on his head a queer three-cornered covering. He was the leader, for when he spoke and pointed, the other men jumped to obey.

They walked into the water, to net fish. They hauled and tugged and plashed and laughed and shouted; and when they emerged upon the bank again their net was so heavy that the leader sprang to help them. He tossed aside his head covering. His hair was bright like ripe corn. One of the two chiefs, he!

What a lot of fish they brought out! Hundreds of them sparkled in the sun. This sport continued until near sunset, when the men all went away, to eat and sleep.

At dusk Little White Osage stole down to the creek. Some of the fish were scattered about, but they were stiff and dull; he could not eat them without cooking them and he was afraid to risk a fire. So he gathered mussels and clams, and these were pretty good, raw.

That night the camp-fires of the “’Nited States” warriors blazed on the beach at the river; in the grasses of a hollow above the creek Little White Osage finally slept.

Therefore another morning dawned and found him still here, waiting to see what the new whites would do next. But he must not be caught by Chief Little Thief and old Antoine, or they would punish him.

The United States were eating. Almost could he smell the meat on the fires. After eating, the camp busied itself in many ways. Some of the men again walked up the creek. Others raised a pole, or mast, on the largest boat. Others swam and frolicked in the river. Evidently the camp was staying for the arrival of We-ah-rush-hah.

But that meat! The thought of it made the mouth of Little White Osage to water. Well, he must go and find something and cook it where he would be safe, and then return to those women and children who did not like him. He had seen the “’Nited States,” and their chief with the yellow hair. Maybe he had seen the red-hair chief, too.

He crept on hands and knees, until he might trudge boldly, aiming northward so as not to meet with Little Thief. When after a time he looked back, toward the river, he saw a great smoke rising. The United States had set the prairie afire!

Hah! That they had! [Did they set the prairie afire just to burn him, a boy?] Had they known that he was watching them, and had that made them angry? The smoke increased rapidly—broadened and billowed. The prairie breeze puffed full and strong from the southeast, and the pungent odor of burning grasses swept across his quivering nostrils. The fire was pursuing him. It had cut off any retreat to the big river waters; it was swifter than an antelope, on his trail. Very cunning and cruel were those “’Nited States” men.

Through the tall dry grasses strained Little White Osage, seeking refuge. He sobbed in his husky throat. If he might but reach that line of sand hills, yonder, they would break the wall of fire and save him. It was such a big fire to send after such a small boy. Now the sun was veiled by the scudding smoke, and the wind blew acrid and hot. Before him fled animals—racing antelope and bounding elk, galloping wolves and darting birds. They were fast; but he—alas, he was too slow, and he was weak and tired. Was he to be burned? He threw aside his quiver, and next his bow. They felt so heavy.

The fire was close. He could hear the crackle and the popping as it devoured everything. The sand hills were mocking him; they seemed to sneak backward as he toiled forward. Suddenly, panting and stumbling, he burst into a little clearing, where the grasses were short. In the midst of the clearing lay the carcass of a buffalo bull.

With dimmed staring eyes Little White Osage, casting wildly about for shelter, saw. He saw the carcass, partially cut up; the meat had been piled on the hide, as if the hunters had left, to get it another time; and on the meat was planted a ramrod or wiping-stick, with a coat hung on it, to keep off the wolves. But nobody was here.

Not in vain had Little White Osage been trained to look out for himself. Now he knew what he could do. He staggered for the meat-pile; frantically tore it away, but not to eat it. He barely could lift the great hide, but lift it he did; wriggled underneath, drew it over him, and crouched there, gasping.

Crackle, pop, roar—and the wall of fire charged the clearing, dashed into it, licked hotly across it, and snatched at the robe. He felt the robe shrivel and writhe, and smelled the stench of sizzling flesh and hair. He could scarcely breathe. Over him the buffalo hide was scorching through and through. How the fire roared, how the wind blew; but neither fire nor wind could get at him through that tough, inch-thick canopy. Almost smothered by heat and smoke, Little White Osage cringed, waiting. He was a wee bit afraid.

Soon he knew that the fire had passed. He ventured to raise an edge of the hide and peek from under. Smoke wafted into his face and choked him. Black lay the cindered land around; the fire was surging on to the west, where the sand hills would stop it, but it had mowed a path too hot to walk on, yet. He must stay awhile.

He reached out a hand and dragged to him a piece of the charred bloody buffalo meat, and nibbled at it. Over him the buffalo hide had stiffened, to form a pup-tent; and really he was not so very uncomfortable. He ate, and stretching the best that he might, pillowed his face on his bended arm. Next, he was asleep—tired Little White Osage.

He slept with an ear open, for voices and tread of feet aroused him. People were coming. He craned his neck to peer about—and ducked further inside, like a turtle inside its shell.

Two persons had arrived in the clearing. They were walking straight toward him. They were white men. They were some of those United States warriors!

A moment more, and a heavy foot kicked the hide—thump!—and hands ruthlessly overthrew it. Exposed, Little White Osage sprang erect, gained his feet at a bound, stood bravely facing the two warriors of the “’Nited States.” He would not show them that he feared.

“B’gorry,” exclaimed a voice, “here’s a quare pea in a pod!”

II
PETER GOES ABOARD

Little White Osage did not understand the words, but they were said with a laugh. He could only stare.

Two, were these United States men. The one who had spoken was short and broad and quick, like a bear. He had a lean freckled face and shrewd twinkling grey eyes. He wore a blue shirt, and belted trousers, and boots, and on his head a wide-brimmed black hat. Leaning upon a long-barrelled flint-lock gun, he laughed.

The other man was younger—much younger, almost too young to take the war path. He was smooth-faced and very blue-eyed. He wore a blue shirt, too, and fringed buckskin trousers, and moccasins, and around his black hair a red handkerchief, gaily tied.

But as his hair was black, he could not be one of the chiefs. The short man’s hair was not black, but it was the color of wet sand—and so he could not be one of the chiefs.

Now the young warrior spoke and his voice was sweet.

“Who are you, boy?”

This Little White Osage did understand. The words penetrated through as from a distance. There had been a long time since he had heard such words. His throat swelled to answer.

“Boy,” he stammered.

“I see. What boy? Oto?”

Little White Osage shook his head.

“Missouri?”

Little White Osage shook his head.

“’Maha?”

Little White Osage shook his head more vigorously.

“What tribe, then?”

Little White Osage struggled hard to reply in that language. But his throat closed tight. The young warrior was so handsome and so kind, and the broad warrior was so homely and so alert, and he himself was so small and so full of hopes and fears, that he choked. He could not speak at all.

“See what you can make out of him, Pat,” bade the young warrior. “He seems afraid of me. But he understands English.”

“Faith, now,” drawled the bold warrior, “sure, mebbe he’s wan o’ them Mandan Injuns, from up-river. Haven’t they the eyes an’ complexion same as a white man?” And he addressed Little White Osage. “Mandan?”

Little White Osage again shook his head.

“Well, if you’re not Oto or Missouri or ’Maha or Mandan, who be ye? My name’s Patrick Gass; what’s your name?”

The throat of Little White Osage swelled. He strove—and suddenly out popped the word, long, long unused.

“Kerr.”

“What?”

“Kerr—white boy.”

“Holy saints!” exclaimed Patrick Gass, astonished. “Did you hear that, George, lad? An’ sure he’s white, an’ by the name o’ him Irish! Ye’ll find the Irish, wherever ye go. An’ what might be your first name, me boy? Is it Pat, or Terry, or Mike?”

That was too much talk all at once, for Little White Osage. The man called George helped him out.

“How can he understand your villainous brogue, Pat! Let me talk to him.” And he invited, of Little White Osage: “Kerr, you say?”

Little White Osage nodded.

“You are white?”

“Yes.”

“Where’d you come from?”

“Oto.”

“Where are you going?”

A boldness seized upon Little White Osage.

“You,” he said. “Up big river—with ’Nited States.”

“Oho!” laughed Patrick Gass. “Another recruit, is it? Does your mother say you might?”

Little White Osage shook his head. Somehow, a lump rose in his throat. “Mother?” What was “mother?” That soft white woman, who away back in the Osage village had hugged him and kissed him and taught him these words which thronged inside him, must have been “mother.”

“No mother. No f-f-father.” He carefully felt his way. “Ken—Kentucky. Peter—Peter Kerr. Go up river with ’Nited States.” And he managed another word. “Please.”

“An’ we set the prairie afire to call in the Injuns, an’ here’s what we caught,” ejaculated Patrick Gass. “Peter Kerr, be it? Likely that was his father’s name, an’ he’s young Peter. Well, what’ll we do with him?”

“We can take him back to the boats with us, I suppose,” mused George. “But as for his going on with the expedition, Pat, I don’t know what the captains would say, or the Otoes, either. He’s from the Otoes, he claims.”

“Ah, sure ain’t he an Irishman from Kentucky?” reminded Pat. “An’ ain’t we Irish, too? Mebbe we can buy the young spalpeen, for a trifle o’ paint an’ powder.”

George didn’t think so.

“I doubt if the Otoes would sell him. How long have you been with the Otoes, Peter?”

Little White Osage had been listening as hard as he could, trying to guess what these long speeches were about. That last question, to him, awakened an answer.

“Al-ways,” he uttered, slowly. “First Osage, then Oto.”

“Do you know where Kentucky is?”

Little White Osage shook his head.

“No.” But he pointed to the east. “There.”

“Where are your father and mother?”

“There,” and Little White Osage pointed to the sky.

“Do you know where St. Louis is?”

“There,” and he pointed south.

“Do you know where we’re going?”

“There,” and he pointed north.

“When did you leave the Otoes?”

“Two days.”

“Why?”

“Me—white; you white. I ’Nited States.” And Little White Osage stiffened proudly.

“Bedad, spoken like a good citizen,” approved Patrick Gass. “Faith, George, lad, ’twould be a shame to return him to the Injuns—to them oncivilized rascals. Can’t we smuggle him aboard? An’ then after we’re all under way the two captains can do with him as they plaze.” His gray eyes danced at the thought, and he scanned George questioningly.

George’s blue eyes were twinkling.

“I dare say that on our way up river we’ll meet more traders coming down, and he can be sent to St. Louis that way. But we’re liable to be in a scrape, Pat, if we’re found out.”

“What’s an Irishman without a scrape?” laughed Pat “Listen, now,” he bade, to Little White Osage, who had been attending very keenly. “After dusk ye slip aboard the big boat. Understand?”

Little White Osage nodded. They had planned something good for him, and he was willing to agree to whatever it was.

“Slip aboard the big boat,” and Pat pointed and signed, to make plain, “an’ hide yourself away for’d down among the supplies. Kape quiet till after the council, or the Otoes’ll get ye. I’ll be findin’ ye an’ passin’ ye a bit to ate. An’ when we’re a-sailin’ up the big river wance more, then ye’ll have to face the captains, an’ what they’ll say I dunno, but I’ll bet my hat that Cap’n Clark’ll talk the heart o’ Cap’n Lewis, who’s an officer an’ a gintleman, into lettin’ ye stay if there’s proof ye have no-wheres else to go.” And Patrick Gass chuckled. “Sure, they can’t set ye afoot on the prairie.”

There were too many strange words in this speech, but Little White Osage caught the import.

“I hide,” he said, obediently. “In big boat.”

“Right-o!” encouraged George. “And if you’re found, stand up for yourself.”

“No tell,” blurted Little White Osage. “Talk to ’Nited States chiefs. No tell.”

“B’jabbers, there’s pluck!” approved Patrick Gass. “Now, we be goin’ to take some o’ this meat back wid us, but we’ll lave you enough to chew on. You have plenty fire. ’Twas only for signal to the Injuns to come in to council. We had no thought o’ burnin’ annywan, ’specially a boy. No, or of burnin’ me own coat, nayther, till I see the wind changin’.” He and George rapidly made up a parcel of the meat, blackened and charred though the hunks were. “But we cooked our supper by it. Goodbye to ye. Chance be we’ll see ye later.” With airy wave of hand he trudged away.

“His name is Patrick Gass. My name is George Shannon,” emphasized George, lingering a moment. “Yours is Peter Kerr. All right, Peter. Watch out for the Otoes, that they don’t spy you when you come in after dark.”

“I come,” answered Peter, carefully. “Oto no catch.”

Away they hastened, toward the river. Standing stock-still, Peter watched them go. Good men they were. They were white; he was white. They were ’Nited States; he was to be ’Nited States, too.

He did not pause to eat now. He grabbed a chunk of the buffalo meat left for him, and trotted for the nearest sand-hill. The fire had burned before him, and the earth was still warm, but the sand-hills were untouched.

He drank, at last, from a branch of the Omaha Creek; and among the sand-hills he stayed all day.

In the afternoon he heard, from off toward the United States camp at the river, a rumble like thunder. It was the big gun! At dusk he saw a glow redly lighting the eastern horizon over the river. Maybe the United States were having a war-dance. At any rate, the man named Pat had told him to come; this seemed to be the best time; and, guided by the glow, he hurried for the river.

When he had struck the river well above the camp, the boats and the beach were ruddy. People had gathered about a huge fire. They were making music and dancing; and some were white men and others were Indians: Otoes! Chief Little Thief had arrived.

Somewhat fearing, but very determined, Peter cautiously waded out into the water, and from waist-deep slipping into the current silently swam down, down, outside the edge of the firelight, until obliquing in he might use the big boat as a shield. With his hand he felt along it; encountered a rope stretched taut from boat to water. Wah! Or—hoorah, he meant.

As neatly as a cat he swarmed up the rope and hoisted himself over the gunwale. Sprawling in, he dropped flat, to cower in the shadow of the mast. A dark figure, with a gun, had seen him—was making for him, from down the deck.

“Hist, Peter!” huskily spoke a voice. “’Tis Pat. Ye’re all right. Stay where ye are, now!”

Yes, except for Pat, the sentry, all the big boat was deserted. There was a great time ashore. Crouched panting and dripping, Peter witnessed, from behind the mast. The shore was bright, the figures plainly outlined. There were the two white chiefs. Of this he was certain. They had on their heads the queer hats; they wore long tight blue shirts that glittered with ornaments; they carried the long knives, in sheathes at their sides; the one was the chief with the yellow hair, and the other was the chief with the red hair.

The ’Nited States were giving a feast and dance, evidently. Two of them were making music by drawing a stick across a box held to their chins; and the others, and the Indians, sat in a circle, around the fire, watching the dances.

It was now the turn of the Otoes, for they sprang up, and into the centre, to dance. Peter knew them, one by one: Head Chief Little Thief, Big Horse, Crow’s Head, Black Cat, Iron Eyes, Bix Ox, Brave Man, and Big Blue Eyes—all Otoes except Crow’s Head and Black Cat, who were Missouris.

They danced. It was the Oto Buffalo Dance. The ’Nited States warriors cheered—and on a sudden cheered louder and clapped their hands together, for into the centre had leaped a new figure, to dance by himself.

He was the black medicine man!

His eyes rolled white; his teeth were white; but all the rest of him was black—and he was very large. Assuredly, the ’Nited States must be a great and powerful nation, with such medicine men, decided little Peter, watching.

Along the deck Patrick Gass hissed and beckoned.

“Here,” he bade. Peter scurried to him. “Get down in for’d,” and Pat pointed to the open door of the forecastle or wooden house that had been built in the bows, under a higher deck. “Stow yourself away an’ kape quiet. Ye’ll find a place.”

Peter darted in. It was a room lined with beds in tiers from floor to ceiling: the white warriors’ sleeping-room. Clothing was hanging against the far end; down the centre was a narrow table. Like a cat again, Peter sprang upon the table, scrambled into the highest of the bunks on this side, and came to the far-end wall. The wall did not meet the roof; it was a bulkhead partition dividing off the room from the remainder of the bows. Peter thrust his arm in over the top, and could feel, there beyond, a solid bale on a level with the bunk. He wriggled in over, landed cautiously, explored with hands and feet, in the darkness—and stretched out in a space that had been left between the ballast of extra supplies and the deck above. Good!

That warm August night the “’Nited States” men of Captains Lewis and Clark slept on the sand, in the open air, by the river; and in the tent of the captains slept Chief Little Thief. But Patrick Gass, when relieved from guard duty, slept in the forecastle, near Peter—that being, as he yawned, “more convanient.”

III
PETER MEETS THE CHIEFS

The hour was early when Pat stuck his head over the partition, and to Peter said: “Whisht! Are ye awake, Peter?”

“H’lo,” answered Peter.

“I’ll fetch ye a bite to eat, an’ wather to drink,” said Patrick. “An’ ye best lie hid till we start, when the Injuns go. ’Twon’t be long.”

“Aw-right,” answered Peter.

Patrick passed in to him some dried meat and a canteen of water. After that the day seemed to move very slowly. Here on the boat all was quiet, particularly in Peter’s end. However, outside on the shore there was a constant sound of voices, from the ’Nited States camp.

The sun rose high, as betokened by the close warmth where Peter lay hidden. He felt as though he must get out and see what was going on. So he peered over the top of the partition, to find whether the forecastle was empty. It was. He slipped down into it, and stealing through and worming flat across the deck, peeped through a crack in the gunwale.

Little Thief and his Otoes and Missouris had not yet gone. They were holding another council with the ’Nited States. More talk! The ’Nited States chiefs and warriors were sitting, and the Otoes and Missouris were sitting, all forming a great circle.

One after another the Otoes and the Missouris arose and talked, and the white chiefs replied; but of all this talk Peter understood little. After a time he grew tired; the sun was hot, and he went back into his nook. He still had meat and water enough.

It was much later when he awakened, to hear people in the room beyond his partition. There were white men’s voices—one voice sounded like that of his other friend, George Shannon. And there were groans. Soon the white men left—all except the man who groaned. He stayed. Evidently one of the white men was sick, and had been put into a bed.

Dusk was falling, and Peter thought that he might venture out and stretch his legs. The sounds from the sick man had ceased; maybe he slept. Peter peered over. Everything was quiet; and forth he slipped—only to discover that in the open door was sitting, amidst the dusk, a watcher. It was the United States warrior, George Shannon. He saw Peter, poised about to leap down, and smiled and beckoned. Peter lightly went to him.

George Shannon looked worn and anxious.

“Are you all right, Peter?”

“Yes. Aw-right.”

“A soldier—very sick,” said George, and pointed to a bunk.

“What name?” asked Peter.

“Charles Floyd. He danced and got hot. Lay down on the sand all night and got cold. Now very sick.”

“Huh,” grunted Peter. “Mebbe get well?”

“I don’t know,” said George, soberly.

That was too bad. Why didn’t they call in the black medicine-man?

Except for George and the sick Charles Floyd, the boat was deserted; for on the shore another dance and feast were in progress. Chief Little Thief and his Indians were staying, and the ’Nited States appeared to be bent upon giving them a good time.

All that night the sick Charles Floyd moaned at intervals, in the bunk; and George Shannon and Patrick Gass and others kept watch over him; while Peter, on the other side of the partition, listened or slept. Toward morning, when Peter next woke up, he had been aroused by tramp of feet over his head, and splash of water against the boat, and orders shouted, and a movement of the boat itself.

They were starting, and he was starting with them! Hoorah! Now he was not hungry or thirsty or tired; he was excited.

Yes, the boat was moving. He could hear the plashing of oars, and the creak as the sail was raised. And in a few minutes more the boat leaned and swerved and tugged, and the river rippled under its bow.

Peter waited as long as he possibly could stand it to wait. Patrick Gass had said for him to lie hidden until Chief Little Thief had left, and the boat had started. Very well.

All was silent in the room beyond. He peered, and could see nobody. Over the partition he once more squirmed, into the top-most bunk; and feeling with his toes let himself down. The door was shut, but it had a window in it that he might look out of; and if anybody opened, he would dive under the table or under a bunk, until he saw who it was.

The sick man in the bottom bunk opposite suddenly exclaimed. He was awake and watching.

“Who are you?” he challenged weakly.

With his feet on the floor, Peter paused, to stare. He saw a pale, clammy countenance gazing at him from the blanket coverings—and at that instant the door opened, and before Peter might so much as stir, the chief with the red hair entered. Peter was fairly caught. He drew breath sharply, and resolved not to show fear.

The chief with the red hair was all in buckskin, and wore moccasins on his feet, and on his head a round hat with the brim looped up in front. His face was without hair and was very tanned, so that it was reddish brown instead of white, and his two eyes were clear, keen gray. His hair was bound behind in a long bag of thin skin. He had rather a large nose, and a round chin; and was heavy.

“Well!” he uttered. He glanced swiftly from Peter to the sick man’s bunk, and back again to Peter. “What’s this?”

“He stole down from above, Captain,” said the sick man.

“How are you, Sergeant? Any better?”

“No, sir. I’m awful weak, sir.”

“Much pain?”

“Yes, sir. I’ve been suffering terribly.”

“I’m sorry, my man. We’ll do all we can for you.” Now the chief spoke to Peter. “Who are you? How’d you come here?” His voice was stern and quick.

“I hide,” said Peter.

“Where?”

Peter pointed.

“Who brought you here?”

“I come. Night. Swim down river. Hide.” For Peter had no notion of telling on Patrick Gass and George Shannon.

“Humph! You did!” And the chief with the red hair grunted. “Ran away, eh? Who was your chief?”

“We-ah-rush-hah. First Osage, then Oto, but me white.”

“Where’s your mother?”

Peter shook his head.

“Where’s your father?”

Peter shook his head.

“Here’s a pretty pickle,” muttered the chief with the red hair—and Peter wondered what he meant. “Well, you come along with me.” And he added, to the sick man, “I’ll be back directly, Charley; as soon as I’ve turned this stow-away over. Do you want anything?”

“No, sir. I’m sleepy. Maybe I’ll sleep,” and the sick man’s voice trailed off into a murmur.

“Come here,” bade the red-haired chief to Peter, beckoning with his finger. And Peter followed Captain William Clark, of the United States Artillery, and second in command of this Captains Lewis and Clark government exploring expedition up the Missouri River, through the doorway, into the sunshine and the open of the great barge’s deck.

Captain Clark led straight for the stern, but on the way Peter, keeping close behind him, with his quick eyes saw many things. The white warriors, in buckskins or in cloth, were busy here and there, mending clothes and tools and weapons and assorting goods, or viewing the river banks—and all paused to gaze at him. The big sail was pulling lustily, from its mast. At the stern two warriors were steering. In the barge’s wake were sailing the two smaller barges, the red one and the white one. They followed gallantly, the river rippled, the banks were flowing past. Nothing was to be seen moving on the banks, and the site of the Omaha village, and the sand sprit where the council with Little Thief had been held, were gone. Good!

Before the cabin in the stern of the barge were standing the slim, yellow-haired chief and Patrick Gass, and they were watching Peter coming. The slim chief was dressed in his blue clothes and his odd hat, and wore his long knife by his side. His hair hung in a tail. Patrick Gass was dressed as always. His eyes twinkled at Peter, as if to say: “Now, what are you going to do?”

Peter knew what he was going to do. He was going to stay with the ’Nited States.

But the slim chief’s face betrayed no sign. He simply waited. For this Captain Meriwether Lewis, of the First United States Infantry, the leader of the exploring expedition sent out by President Jefferson and Congress, was not much given to smiles, and was strong on discipline. A thorough young soldier, he, who felt the heavy responsibility of taking the expedition safely through, with the help of Captain Clark.

“Here’s what I’ve found, Merne,” announced Captain Clark, with half a laugh.

“Who is he, Will?” Captain Lewis’s query was quick, and his brows knitted a trifle.

“He says he’s white. I found him in the forec’sle when I went in to see about Floyd.”

“How is Floyd?”

“No better.”

“How’d that boy get there?”

“Ran away from the Otoes, he says, and hid himself in the bows beyond the bulkhead. Like as not he’s been there a day or two.”

“What’s your name?” demanded the Long Knife Chief, of Peter.

“Peter.”

“What else?”

“Peter—Kerr.”

“Where did you live?”

“Oto. No like Oto. No like Indian. White boy.”

“Hah! Did the Otoes steal you?”

“Osage. Oto buy me.”

“Where did the Osage get you?”

“Do—not—know,” said Peter, slowly, trying to speak the right words. “Kill—father. Take mother. She die. Long time ago. Me—I white.”

“Sure, Captain, didn’t we hear down St. Louis way of a family by the same name o’ Kerr bein’ wiped out by the Injuns some years back,” spoke Patrick Gass, saluting. “’Twas up country a bit, though I disremember where, sorr.”

“Yes, but there was no boy.”

“There was a bit of a baby, seems to me like, sorr,” alleged Sergeant Gass. “An’ the woman was carried off, sorr.”

Captain Lewis shrugged his shoulders impatiently.

“Very well, Pat. You go forward and you and Shannon see if you can do anything for Floyd. Don’t let him move much. He’s liable to be restless.”

“Yes, sorr.” Patrick Gass saluted but lingered a moment. “If I might be so bold, sorr——”

“What is it?”

“Seein’ as how the boy’s Irish——”

“Irish! He’s as black as an Indian!”

“Yes, sorr. But the eyes an’ hair of him, sorr. An’ sure he has an Irish name. An’ I was thinkin’, beggin’ your pardon, sorr, if you decided to kape him a spell, Shannon an’ me’d look after him for ye, sorr. We Irish are all cousins, ye know, sorr.”

Young Captain Lewis’s mouth twitched; he shot a glance at Captain Clark, who smiled back.

“Does that sound to you like an Irish name, Captain? More like good old English, to me!”

“I was thinkin’ again, sorr,” pursued Pat, “that more like it’s O’Kerr.”

“That will do, Gass. Go forward and find Shannon, and the two of you tend to Floyd.” Patrick saluted and trudged away. Captain Lewis continued, to Captain Clark: “There’s something back of this, Will. Gass is too willing. I’ll wager he and Shannon know more than we do.”

“Oh, it’s the Irish in him, Merne. Do you think they smuggled the lad aboard?”

“If they did——who brought you on this boat?” demanded the Long Knife Chief of Peter.

Peter shrugged his shoulders.

“I come,” he said.

“Why?”

“Go with ’Nited States. Up big river.”

“Who taught you to speak English?”

“My—mother,” stammered Peter. “No English; ’Merican; Ken-tuck-y.”

“Kentuckian!” blurted Captain Clark. “He is white, sure enough. That comes pretty close to home-folks, Merne. I know some Kerrs there, myself.”

“But the question is, what are we to do with him?” reminded Captain Lewis, sharply. “We can’t cumber ourselves with useless baggage, and we can’t start out by stealing children from the Indians.”

“No; and yet it sort of goes against the grain to let the Indians keep any children they’ve stolen,” argued Captain Clark.

“Yes, I agree with you there, Will,” answered Captain Lewis. “But the President instructed us to make friends with all the tribes. We could have shown the Otoes they were wrong, and could have offered to buy the boy or have made them promise to send him to St. Louis if we couldn’t send him ourselves. This looks like bad faith.”

“Shall we stop and put him ashore, Merne?”

“If we put you ashore will you go back to We-ah-rush-hah?” queried the Long Knife Chief, of Peter.

Peter had not comprehended all that had been said, but he had listened anxiously—and now he did understand that they were talking of putting him off.

“No!” he exclaimed. “No go back to We-ah-rush-hah. ’Maha catch me; Sioux catch me; Oto whip me. No Indian; white.” And he added: “I follow boat.”

“If you give the order, Merne, we’ll stop and send him back with an escort,” teased Captain Clark, who knew very well that Captain Lewis would do no such thing. “And we’ll tell the Otoes to forward him on down to St. Louis. You think they’d do it, do you?”

Captain Lewis tapped uneasily with his foot.

“Oh, pshaw, Will,” he said. “We can’t stop and waste this fine breeze, even to send back a boy. When we land for dinner will be the proper time. We may meet some traders, bound down, and he can be started back with them, to St. Louis. Meanwhile Gass and Shannon must take care of him.”

“He can be sent down river with the first party that take back the dispatches,” proffered Captain Clark.

Patrick Gass came clumping up the deck and again saluted.

“Sergeant Floyd wishes might he speak with Cap’n Clark, sorrs.”

“How is he, Pat?”

“Turrible weak, sorr, but the pain be not so bad.”

“Go ahead, Will,” bade Captain Lewis. “You enlisted him. He knows you better. If I can do anything, call me.”

The Red Hair Chief hastened away. The Long Knife Chief spoke to Patrick Gass.

“You’ll take charge of Peter until we send him back, Patrick. Draw on the commissary for such clothes as he needs. We can’t have him running around naked, this way, if he’s white.”

“Yis, sorr,” replied Patrick Gass. “Come, Peter, lad; come with your cousin Pat, an’ we’ll make your outside as white as your inside.”

Peter gladly obeyed. He was rather afraid of the handsome young Long Knife Chief, but he was not afraid of Patrick Gass—no, nor of the Red Hair.

When dressed in the clothes that Patrick found for him, Peter was a funny sight. There was a red flannel shirt—to Peter very beautiful, but twice enough for him, so that the sleeves were rolled to their elbows, and the neck dropped about his shoulders. And there was a pair of blue trousers, also twice enough for him, so that the legs were rolled to their knees, and the waist was drawn up about his chest, and the front doubled across where it was belted in.

“Niver you mind,” quoth Patrick, while the ’Nited States men gazed on Peter and howled with merriment. “Sure, I’m a bit of a tailor an’ if we can’t fit you with cloth we’ll fit you with leather. Let ’em laugh. Laughin’s good for the stomick.”

And Peter did not mind. These were white people’s clothes, and he was proud to wear them, although they did seem queer.

The sun had passed the overhead. At some orders the barge was swung in for shore; the two smaller boats followed. Now would he be sent back, or left; or—what? Landing was made on the right-hand side, which was the country of the Iowas and of the Sioux: not a good place, Peter reflected, for him. But scarcely had the barge tied up, and Peter’s heart was beating with anxiety, when Captain Clark hastily emerged from the forecastle; another soldier trod close behind.

Captain Clark went to Captain Lewis; the soldier proceeded slowly, speaking to comrades. He arrived where Patrick was keeping friendly guard over Peter.

“Charley’s gone,” he said, simply, his face clouded, his voice broken.

“Rest his soul in pace,” answered Patrick. “Sure, I’m sorry, Nat. Did he say anything?”

“He knew. He asked the Captain to write a letter for him, to the folks at home. After that he went to sleep and did not wake again, here.”

“Faith, he gave his life for his country,” asserted Patrick.

So the sick man had died. This much Peter easily guessed. It turned dinner into a very quiet affair. Nothing more was said of leaving Peter ashore, nor of sending him back; but as soon as the dinner was finished the boats all pushed out and headed up river, along a bank surmounted by rolling bluffs.

After about a mile by sail and oars, everybody landed; and the body of Sergeant Charles Floyd, United States Army, the first of the expedition to fall, was buried on the top of a bluff. Captain Clark read some words out of a book, over the grave; and upon the grave was set a cedar post with the name, Sergt. C. Floyd, and the date, Aug. 20, 1804, carved into it. Then three volleys from the rifles were fired.

The boats proceeded on for a camping-place, which was found about a mile up, on the right-hand or north side, near the mouth of a little river. The bluff of the grave was referred to as Floyd’s Bluff, and the little river was called Floyd’s River.

All the men, including Peter, felt sorry for Sergeant Nathaniel Pryor. Floyd had been his cousin. They felt sorry for those other relatives and friends, back at the Floyd home in Kentucky.

Fifty years later, or in 1857, the grave of the sergeant was moved a few hundred feet, by the Sioux City, Iowa, people, so that it should not crumble into the Missouri River; and in 1895 a monument was placed over it. To-day Floyd’s Bluff is part of a Sioux City park.

The camp this evening was only thirteen miles above the Omaha village and the place where Chief Little Thief had come in to council, so that Peter very easily might have been sent back. But the death of Sergeant Charles Floyd seemed to be occupying the thoughts of the two captains; it made the whole camp sober. To-night there was no dancing or music, and Peter slept aboard the barge with nobody paying especial attention to him. Of this he was glad, because he feared that, once ashore, he would be left behind—the ’Nited States would try to sail on without him.

IV
TO THE LAND OF THE SIOUX

“Fust we have to pass the Sioux Injuns,” explained Patrick Gass, to Peter. “Ye know the Sioux?”

“They bad,” nodded Peter. “Fight other Injuns.”

“Yis,” said Patrick. “But we aim to make everybody paceful with everybody else. An’ after the Sioux, we talk with the ’Rikaras.”

“’Rees bad, too,” nodded Peter. For the Otoes were afraid of the northern tribes.

“Yis,” said Patrick. “An’ after the ’Rikaras we come, I’m thinkin’, to the Mandans, an’ by that time ’twill be winter, an’ with the Mandans we’ll stay. I hear tell they have white skins an’ blue eyes an’ their hair trails on the ground.”

Sometimes sailing, sometimes rowed, and sometimes towed by heavy ropes on which the men hauled, from the banks, the three boats had been steadily advancing up-river. Peter was feeling quite at home. Everybody was kind to him—especially Pat, who had been elected sergeant in place of Charles Floyd, and young George Shannon, who was only seventeen.

Two horses followed the boats, by land, for the use of the hunters. George Drouillard, a Frenchman, who had lived with the Omahas, was chief hunter. At the evening camps Pierre Cruzatte, a merry Frenchman with only one eye, and a soldier by the name of George Gibson, played lively music on stringed boxes called violins. Each night the two captains, and Pat and other soldiers, wrote on paper the story of the trip. York, the black man, was Captain Clark’s servant. Early in the morning a horn was blown to arouse the camp. During the days the captains frequently went ashore, to explore.

It was well, thought Peter, that Pierre Dorion, a trader who lived with the Sioux, was aboard the boats, for the fierce Sioux Indians did not like strangers. Still, who could whip the United States?

In the afternoon of the eighth day after leaving Chief Little Thief, old Pierre, from where he was standing with the two captains on the barge and gazing right and left and before, cried aloud and pointed.

“Dere she is!”

“What, Dorion?”

“De Jacques, w’at is also call de Yankton River; my people de Yankton Sioux lif on her. Mebbe soon now we see some.”

The barge, flying its white peace flag, bordered with red and blue, ploughed on. All eyes aboard were directed intently before. The mouth of the river gradually opened, amidst the trees.

“We’ll halt there for dinner,” ordered Captain Lewis. “That looks like a good landing-place just above the mouth, Will.”

Captain Clark nodded, and the barge began to veer in; the two pirogues or smaller boats imitated.

“I see one Injun,” said Peter. “You see him, Pat?”

“Where, now?” invited Patrick Gass.

“He is standing still; watch us, this side of Yankton River.”

“Faith, you’ve sharp eyes,” praised Pat, squinting. “Yis, sure I see him, by the big tree just above the mouth.”

Others saw him. And as the barge hove to, and led by Captain Clark the men leaped for the shore, to cook dinner, the Indian plunged into the water and swam across.

“’Maha!” quoth Peter, quickly, when, dripping, the Indian had plashed out and was boldly entering the camp.

“Oh, is he, now?” murmured Patrick Gass.

Pierre Dorion translated for him, to the captains. He said that he was an Omaha boy, living with the Sioux. While he was talking, two other Indians came in. They indeed were Sioux—straight, dark, and dignified, as befitted members of a great and powerful nation.

“Dey say de Yanktons, many of dem, are camp’ to de west, one short travel,” interpreted Dorion. “Dey haf hear of our comin’, an’ will be please’ to meet de white chiefs.”

“All right, Dorion. You go to the camp with these fellows, and tell the chiefs that we’ll hold council at the river. I’ll send Sergeant Pryor and another man along with you,” instructed Captain Lewis. “You’ll find us again about opposite where their camp is.”

“Good,” approved Pierre Dorion. “Now mebbe I get my wife an’ fam’ly one time more. My son, he dere, too, say dese young men.” For Pierre had married a Sioux woman.

The two Sioux, and Pierre, and Sergeant Nathaniel Pryor and Private John Potts left on foot for the camp of the Yanktons; but the Omaha boy stayed. Peter preferred to keep away from him. The Omahas, to him, were not to be trusted.

From the mouth of the Yankton River, which is to-day called the James River of South Dakota, the boats continued on up the Missouri, to the council ground. The red pirogue ran upon a snag, so that it almost sank before it could be beached. Then all the goods had to be transferred to the white pirogue. This took time, and it was not until nearly sunset that Captain Lewis ordered landing to be made and camp pitched.

The camp of the Sioux was supposed to be somewhere across the river. In the morning no Sioux had yet appeared for council, and Captain Lewis anxiously swept the country to the north with his spy-glass. However, Indians could not be hurried, as Peter well knew. But about four o’clock there spread a murmur.

“Here they come!”

“De Sioux! Dey come. Now for beeg talk an’ beeg dance! Hoo-zah!”

“Oui!” added George Drouillard, the hunter. “Mebbe fat dog feast, too!”

“Oh, murther!” gasped Pat. And, to Peter: “Did ye ever eat dog, Peter?”

Peter shook his head, disgusted. Not he; nor the Otoes, either. Only the northern Indians ate dog.

“There’s a t’arin’ lot of ’em, anyhow,” mused Patrick Gass. “I’m after wishin’ George was here. Sure, he’s like to get into trouble, wanderin’ about the country where all those fellows are.”

For two days back George Shannon had been sent out to find the horses that had strayed from camp, and he had not returned.

The Sioux made a brave sight indeed. They looked to be almost a hundred—ahorse and afoot, with gay streamers and blankets flying. Pierre Dorion and Sergeant Pryor and Private Potts were to be seen, mounted and riding with the principal chiefs in the advance. So evidently everything was all right.

They halted on the bank opposite the United States camp. Sergeant Pryor waved his hat, and the captains sent the red pirogue across for him. He and Pierre and Private Potts returned in it. They brought with them young Pierre, who was old Pierre’s son. He was half Sioux, and traded among the Tetons; but just now he was visiting among the Yanktons.

“They are friendly, are they, Sergeant?” inquired Captain Lewis.

“Yes, sir. They treated us very handsomely, and the head chief is yonder, waiting to talk with you,” informed Sergeant Pryor.

“Very good. You and young Dorion go back to them—we’d better send along some presents, hadn’t we, Will?—and tell the chiefs that we’ll speak with them in the morning. ’Twon’t do to let them think we’re in any more of a hurry than they are.”

“Yes, sir,” answered Sergeant Pryor.

He took over presents of corn and tobacco and iron kettles, with young Pierre to do the translating for him, and returned. Both camps settled down for the night.

“Did yez have a rale good time with the Sioux, Nat?” queried Patrick Gass, that night around the fire, after a hearty supper on cat-fish. During the day a number of huge cat-fish had been caught, some of them weighing sixty pounds. Now all the men were curious to hear more from Nat Pryor and John Potts.

“Tremendous,” declared Nat. “They wanted to carry us into camp in a blanket, but we told ’em we were not chiefs. They could wait and carry the captains. They gave us a fat dog, though, boiled in a pot—and I swear he was good eating.”

“None for me, thank ye,” retorted Sergeant Pat. “An’ how far is their camp, an’ what kind is it?”

“It’s about nine miles back, near the Jacques. All fine buffalo hide lodges—some elk hide, too—painted different colors. Fact is, they’re about the best Indians we’ve met yet.”

“Ye didn’t learn anything of Shannon or the horses, then?”

“Not a word. But I think he’ll be safe if only the Sioux find him.”

The next day dawned so foggy that nobody could see across the river. The captains made preparations for the grand council. A pole was set up, near to a large oak tree, and a new flag hoisted to the top of it. The flag was striped red and white; in a corner was a blue square, like the sky, studded with stars. ’Twas the great flag of the United States nation—and Peter thought it beautiful.

The two captains dressed in their best. Captain Lewis wore a long coat of dark blue trimmed with light blue, down its front bright brass buttons, and on its shoulders bright gold-fringed epaulets. Captain Clark’s coat was dark blue faced with red; it, too, had the brass buttons and the bright epaulets. Both wore their cocked hats, and their long knives, or swords.

The men also were ordered to put on their best, and to clean up even if they had no “best.” Presents were laid out. By the time the fog lifted, at eight o’clock, the camp was ready.

Now it could be seen that over in the Sioux camp, also, the chiefs and warriors were preparing.

“They’re painting and polishing, Merne,” remarked Captain Clark, who had levelled the spy-glass, to peer.

That was so. Peter needed no spy-glass. He could make out figures of the chiefs and warriors sitting and plaiting their hair and painting their faces and chests and arms.

The two captains waited until nearly noon. Then the red pirogue was dispatched, under Sergeant Pryor, accompanied by old Pierre, to bring the chiefs and warriors. The white pirogue was loaded with goods, but the red pirogue had been emptied for repairs. Even then the Sioux so crowded it that it scarcely could be rowed. A number of the young Sioux waded into the river and swam across.

Now there were more Sioux than white men in the United States camp. But they were armed mainly with bows and arrows, while the United States were armed with rifles; and Peter’s sharp eyes observed that the cannon in the bow of the barge was pointed right at the camp, ready for business.

Broad-chested and sinewy were these Yankton Sioux, and evidently great warriors. What struck Peter and the soldiers, especially, were the necklaces of claws stitched in bands of buckskin or red flannel, and hanging low on those broad chests. Many warriors wore them.

“D’you mean to say those are b’ar claws!” exclaimed John Shields, one of the Kentuckians.

“Oui, my frien’,” assured Drouillard, the hunter. “Dey claw of great white bear—so we call heem. Beeg! More beeg dan one ox. An’ ’fraid? He not ’fraid of notting. To keel one white bear make Injun beeg warrior.”

“And where do those critters live, then?” queried John.

“Up river. We meet ’em pret’ queeck, now. Sometime w’en we land—woof! Dere coom one beast—beeg as one ox—mouth he open; an’ mebbe eat us, if brush so t’ick we not see heem soon ’nough.”

The listening Kentuckians and other soldiers scratched their heads, as if a little doubtful.

“Faith,” said Patrick Gass, “some o’ them claws are six inches long, boys. ’Tis a country o’ monsters that we’re goin’ into.”

A group of the Sioux had been staring at black York, who, larger than any of them, was gaping back. Suddenly one stepped to him, wet his finger and swiftly drew it down York’s cheek; then looked to see if the black had come off.

“Hey, you man!” growled York. “Wha’ foh you done do dat?”

Another Sioux deftly snatched off York’s hat, and clutched the black curly wool underneath; but it would not come off, either. Much impressed, the circle widened respectfully, and Sioux murmured gutturally to Sioux.

“That’s all right, York,” warned Captain Clark, who had noted; for his own red hair had been attracting much attention. “They say you’re great medicine.”

“Oui; he black buffalo,” affirmed young Dorion.

After that York strutted importantly, alarmed the Indians by making fierce faces, and was followed about by a constant admiring procession.

The council was held at noon, under the great oak tree beside which floated the United States flag. The chiefs and the leading warriors sat in a half circle; the two captains sat facing them, Pierre Dorion stood before them as interpreter; and the soldiers and French boatmen sat behind in another half circle.

Captain Lewis made a welcoming speech—and a fine figure he was, standing straight and slim, in his tight-fitting, decorated coat, his cocked hat with black feather, his sword at his side.

“The land has changed white fathers,” he said. “The great nation of the Sioux, and all the other Indians, have a new white father, at Washington. That is his flag, the flag of the United States nation, which has bought this country. The new father has sent us, who are his children, to tell his red children that he wants them to be at peace with one another. I have given flags and peace gifts to the Otoes and the Missouris, and have sent word to the Osages and the Omahas and the Pawnees and the Kickapoos and other Indians, that there must be no more wars among the red children. I will give you a flag and gifts, too, so that you will remember what I say.”

Then the gifts were distributed. To the head chief, Weucha, or Shake Hand, a flag, and a first-grade silver medal, and a paper that certified the United States recognized him as the head chief, and a string of beads and shells, and a “chief’s coat,” which was a red-trimmed artillery dress-coat like Captain Clark’s, and a cocked hat with red feather in it. Weucha was immensely pleased; he put on the coat and hat at once.

The four other chiefs also were given gifts. Chief Weucha produced a long peace-pipe of red stone, with reed stem; it was lighted, he puffed, Captain Lewis and Captain Clark puffed; the four lesser chiefs puffed. After that the chiefs solemnly shook hands with the captains, and withdrew into a lean-to of branches, to consult on what they should reply to-morrow.

The Sioux stayed at the camp during the afternoon. The captains gave them a dressed deer-hide and an empty keg, for a dance drum. The deer-hide was stretched taut over the head of the keg; and that night, by the light of the fires, the Sioux thumped on the drum and shook their rattles, and danced. One-eyed Cruzatte and George Gibson played on their violins, and the United States warriors danced. But the Sioux kept it up almost all night, and nobody got much sleep.

In the morning after breakfast Weucha and his three sub-chiefs sat before the oak tree; each held a peace pipe in front of him, with the stem pointing at the spot where the captains were to sit. The names of the other chiefs were White Crane, Struck-by-the-Pawnee, and Half Man.

“He ver’ modes’,” explained One-eyed Cruzatte. “He say ‘I am no warrior, I only half a man.’”

Weucha spoke first, standing clad in his artillery coat and cocked hat. He said that the Yanktons were willing to be at peace, but were very poor.

White Crane, and Struck-by-the-Pawnee and Half Man likewise spoke. They agreed with what Shake Hand had said. They wanted powder and ball, and, their great father’s “milk”—which was whisky.

That evening the Sioux went back, across the river, well satisfied. Pierre Dorion and young Pierre went with them. Old Pierre promised that in the spring he would take some of the chiefs to Washington, that they might meet their new father.

Just as the Yanktons were leaving, Captain Lewis beckoned Peter to him.

“You had better go with Pierre. He will take you down river in the spring, if not before.”

“No, please,” objected Peter. “I rather stay.”

“But we’re going clear to the Pacific Ocean, my boy,” spoke Captain Clark. “It will be a hard trip.”

“I will go, too,” declared Peter. “Do not want to stay with Sioux. I am white.”

“What will you do, along with us, Peter?”

“I work. I can talk sign language,” answered Peter, proudly.

“There’s something in that, Merne,” laughed Captain Clark. “Now with Dorion gone we’ll need an interpreter to help Drouillard. I fancy Peter knows almost as much as he does.”

“You’ve got a kind heart, Will,” replied Captain Lewis, his eyes softening. “But game’s plenty; we’ll have meat enough—and that’s the main question. All right, Peter. You can come as far as the Mandan village, anyway. And in the spring we’ll see.”

Whereupon Peter resolved that he would make himself useful, so that they would take him clear to the Pacific Ocean, which lay, according to Patrick Gass and the other men, many, many days’ travel, far beyond the western mountains.

V
BAD HEARTS

Work, work, work! Through this the month of September, 1804, the boats had been toiling on up the sluggish Missouri River, in the present State of South Dakota. With the rains, the winds, and the shallows, everybody, even the captains, was wet all the day, from hauling on the tow-ropes, in and out of the water.

The weather turned cold and raw. Shelters of deer hides were stretched over the two pirogues, and in the camps the men made themselves hide coats and leggins and moccasins. Patrick and old Cruzatte together fitted Peter with a buckskin suit that felt much better to him than his other, clumsy garments.

After having been gone over two weeks, George Shannon appeared at last, riding through the rain, with only one horse. He had been lost, and had almost starved, and the other horse had broken down. All were glad to see George again.

But where, now, were the Teton Sioux? George reported that he had seen none.

The last week in September a great smoke was sighted in the distance; and that night three Indian boys swam the river, to enter the camp. They were Tetons, from two villages a few miles above.

“Give them some tobacco,” directed Captain Lewis. “Tell them to say to their chiefs that we will hold a council to-morrow morning, near the villages.”

On the way up, Reuben Fields, who had been hunting, horseback, returned afoot and signalled to be taken aboard. He said that some Indians had stolen his horse while he was dressing an elk.

“Oui,” chirped Drouillard. “Dose Tetons haf bad hearts. We best look sharp or dey take scalps, too.”

“We mustn’t let them have the idea they can plunder us,” spoke Captain Lewis, reddening. “This leaves us without horses.”

“Aren’t those several Indians, on the bank ahead?” presently queried Captain Clark.

Captain Lewis peered through his spy-glass.

“Five of them. We’ll stop and hail them, and hear what they have to say.”

“Do you think they’re the fellows who stole your horse, Fields?” asked Captain Clark.

“I can’t tell, sir,” answered Reuben. “I had only a glimpse of the thieves, and these Injuns mainly look alike, sir, till you get to know ’em.”

The five Indians on the bank stolidly waited, while the barge hove to, opposite.

“Are they Tetons, Drouillard?” inquired Captain Lewis.

“Oui,” nodded Drouillard. “Dey Tetons. Eh, Cruzatte?”

“Mais, oui,” confirmed One-eyed Cruzatte. “Beeg rascals.”

“All right. Tell them that some of their young men have stolen a horse from their great father at Washington, and we want it returned or we will hold no council. We’re willing to be friends, but we aren’t afraid of them.”

“I do not know much of dees Sioux tongue, but I will try,” engaged Drouillard. And by signs and a few words he delivered the message.

The Indians consulted a moment together; then one of them replied.

“I t’ink dey say dey haf not seen a hoss,” translated Drouillard. “But if it is found it will be return’.”

“I t’ink so, too,” added the funny Cruzatte—although everybody was aware that he did not understand a word of Sioux.

However, by the signs that were made, Peter would have interpreted the same as Drouillard. He and the Oto boys had practiced for hours, talking sign language.

The boats stopped for the night off the mouth of a river on the left or the south. This night only a few men were allowed ashore, to guard the cook fires; the remainder slept aboard the boats, with their guns ready. The captains named the river Teton River, but it was soon renamed Bad River, for very good reason.

In the morning everybody, except the boat guards, landed. The captains ordered the United States flag hoisted, again, on a pole, and the awning was stretched, as at the camp where the Otoes had been entertained. All the soldiers ashore were formed in rank, under arms, facing the flag-pole and the canopy; and soon the Tetons came in to council, from their village two miles up-river.

There were about sixty of them. They were not nearly so good-looking as the Yanktons, being smaller, with slim crooked legs and lean arms, and eyes set over high cheek-bones.

The council did not pass off very satisfactorily, because Drouillard knew little Teton talk, and scarcely could make himself understood when he talked for Captain Lewis. Still, the head chief, Black Buffalo, was given a medal, and a United States flag, and a red coat decorated with white lace, and a cocked hat with red feather. The second chief, Tor-to-hon-ga or Partisan, and the third chief, Buffalo Medicine, were given medals and beads and tobacco. Two warriors, Wah-zing-go, and Mat-o-co-que-pa or Second Bear, also were rewarded.

“What do you suppose those raven scalps signify?” asked George Shannon. For the two warriors wore each two or three raven skins fastened to their waists behind, with the tails sticking out, and on their heads was another raven skin, flattened with the beak to the fore.

“Dey special soldier,” explained old Cruzatte. “W’at you call—marshal. Oui. Dey boss. Obey nobody but chief.”

Then the captains took them all aboard the barge to show them the cannon and the air-gun that shot forty times, and other wonders. Captain Clark brought them ashore again in the red pirogue.

No sooner had the cable been carried on shore, to be held by Patrick Gass and Reuben Fields and George Shannon while the load was landed, and Captain Clark had stepped out, than three of the Indians grabbed it, and Wah-zing-go, the warrior, put his arms about the mast, as if to keep the boat there. Tor-to-hon-ga began to talk in a loud and angry voice. Captain Clark flushed.

“What does he say, Peter?” he appealed. For Drouillard was on the barge, and only Peter was near. When the five men had started to row the pirogue ashore, with the chiefs and Captain Clark, he had slipped in, too.

“The chief say you cannot go away till you give them more presents,” translated Peter, boldly; for he had picked up some Sioux words and he could read the gestures, also.

“What!” And Captain Clark was angry indeed. He had only five men, two in the boat and three ashore, but he was not afraid. “You tell him we will go on, and he can’t stop us. We are not squaws, but warriors. Our great father has medicine on those boats that will wipe out twenty Sioux nations.”

“The chief says he has plenty warriors, too,” interpreted Peter.

And at that moment the chief sprang for Captain Clark; the warriors spread right and left, jerked arrows from quivers and fitted them to strung bows. Out whipped Captain Clark’s bright sword—the long knife; and Chief Tor-to-hon-ga dodged. Captain Clark’s face was redder than his hair. He acted like a great chief.

“Watch out, Sergeant!” he cried, to Patrick Gass. “Rally on the boat; never mind the rope. Face them and stand together, men!”

Captain Lewis’s voice rang high and stern, from the barge. Out of the white pirogue a dozen men plashed into the shallows and wading and plunging, hastened to reinforce the red pirogue. Corporal Warfington and the six St. Louis soldiers who had been sent along to help as far as the Mandans were with them.

“Steady!” warned Captain Lewis. “Look sharp, Will.” And now the black muzzle of the cannon in the bows of the barge swung full at the shore. Behind it stood Gunner Alexander Willard, with lighted match.

This was enough. Head Chief Black Buffalo shouted an order, and his men left the cable and the pirogue and fell back. The “medicine” of the great father at Washington was, they realized, strong medicine.

To show that he was not afraid, and that he wished to be friendly, Captain Clark offered to shake hands with Black Buffalo and Partisan; but they surlily refused. So the captain laughed, and ordered the red pirogue to return to the barge. Then Black Buffalo and Partisan, and the warriors Wah-zing-go and Second Bear ran after, through the water, and climbed aboard, to go on the barge also.

“Rather a close shave, Will,” remarked Captain Lewis. “An instant more and I’d have helped you out with a round of grape.”

“They wished to try our metal,” smiled Captain Clark.

“We were afraid the white chiefs would go on and not stop at our village to show our squaws and boys the great father’s boats,” alleged Chief Black Buffalo.

“Tell him we are willing to be friends, and will stop,” directed Captain Lewis. “The soldiers of the great father do not fear the Sioux.”

“If head chief he not tell dat raven soldier to let go mast, he hang on till cut in leetle pieces,” was saying Cruzatte.

In the morning the boats were moved up to the village, and Captain Lewis went ashore. Truly, the Red Head and the slim Captain Lewis were brave men. Peter was proud to have been by Captain Clark’s side, in the fracas. It was fine to be a United States.

When Captain Lewis returned on board, he told Captain Clark that everything was all right, and that the Tetons were waiting for the Red Head.

“You’re a bigger man than I am, Will, after the stand you made yesterday,” he laughed.

And it seemed to be that way, for when Captain Clark landed he was met by ten young warriors, with a gaily decorated buffalo robe. They carried him upon it, and then bore him, sitting in it, to the council house. This was great honor.

“You’re nixt, Cap’n,” ventured Patrick Gass. “There they are, back for ye, sorr.”

“Be alert, Sergeant,” bade the captain, as he vaulted from the barge into the pirogue. “They may appear friendly, but we mustn’t take any chances. Don’t let the men lay aside their arms for a minute, and keep them together.”

“Yis, sorr. I will, sorr,” promised Patrick Gass. He was the oldest soldier in the company, and the captains relied upon him.

Captain Lewis likewise was borne to the council house; and the men of the expedition, except the boat guards, marched after.

The council lasted a long time, and was concluded with a feast of the dog-meat from a pot, and of buffalo meat and hominy and ground-potato. Buffalo meat was given to the white chiefs as a present. The Tetons claimed to be poor, but they weren’t. This was a powerful and rich village, as anybody might see. Before the dance that had been planned for the evening, the men were permitted to roam about a little. Peter and Patrick Gass and their party discovered a string of scalps hanging from a pole, and a number of Omaha squaws and children who appeared very miserable.

Peter talked with them a little. They were prisoners. The Tetons had attacked their village down the river, and had burned forty lodges and killed seventy-five warriors.

When dusk fell the dance was started, by the light of a fire, in the middle of the council house. The Sioux warriors danced, and the Sioux women danced; but at midnight the captains told the chief that everybody was tired and it was time to go to bed.

“The chief he say: ‘Ver’ well. Now sleep. To-morrow more Sioux come, to talk with de great father.’ He want you to stay,” interpreted Drouillard.

“We will stay and see these other Sioux,” answered Captain Lewis. “What do you think, Will?”

“If you say so, Merne,” replied Captain Clark. “But there’s some trick in this. We mustn’t be caught off guard—and of course we mustn’t show that we’re afraid, either.”

But no visiting Sioux turned up, although the boats waited all day. At night another dance was given.

“We in bad feex,” asserted One-eyed Cruzatte. “Dose Teton, dey keep us. I t’ink dey plan mischief. I wish we go on.”

Everybody was nervous.

“Now I wonder if we’re in for a fight,” spoke Corporal Warfington.

“Sure,” said Patrick Gass, “we can lick ’em.”

Amidst the dusk ashore, while Peter, tired of the noise and dancing, was wandering a few steps, a low voice hailed him, in Oto.

“Hist! You Oto?” It was one of the Omaha squaws. How could she have guessed that he had been an Oto?

“No. White,” responded Peter.

“Tell your chiefs the Sioux are bad. They will not let the big boats go. They play you a trick.”

“I will tell,” responded Peter. “You speak Oto well.”

“I am Omaha, but I was in Oto village once. I saw you.” And the squaw vanished.

VI
THE CAPTAINS SHOW THEIR SPUNK

Peter believed that the Omaha woman spoke the truth. The captains ought to be told at once. But the dancing was still in progress in the lodge of Chief Black Buffalo, where sat the two captains and the chiefs, watching. A boy would not be admitted. So Peter sought out Sergeant John Ordway, who was in charge of the shore guard. John Ordway was not from Kentucky; he was from a place called New Hampshire, in the northeast of the United States.

“You don’t say!” replied John Ordway, when Peter had told him of the warning from the Omaha woman. “Well, anybody might suspect as much. I’ll get word to the captains, first chance.”

The dancing continued until late, again. Peter curled in the bows of the waiting pirogue, and went to sleep. He had done his duty and could trust to John Ordway. By the stars it was midnight when he awakened at the approach of the captains. They and two Indian guests and the guard clambered in, and the pirogue was rowed for the barge.

The shore was silent and dark—but how alert were those Sioux! The pirogue ran against the anchor cable of the barge, in the darkness, and broke it. The barge was adrift. The captains cried loudly, ordering the oars to be manned and the barge held until a cable could be passed ashore—and instantly the two Indians in the pirogue shouted excitedly, in the Sioux tongue, summoning the village.

“Here! Quick!” they called. “To the boats! Come!”

The whole village burst into an uproar; the warriors poured forth to the water’s edge. It was very plain that they feared the white men were leaving. The captains could pay little attention until a cable had been carried from the barge and fastened to a tree on the bank, and the barge pulled in out of the current. Then——

“Ask Tor-to-hon-ga what’s the meaning of all this alarm,” bade Captain Lewis, tersely, of Drouillard. Tor-to-hon-ga was one of the two guests.

“He say de Tetons ’fraid de ’Maha warriors haf come up an’ attack de boats of de great white father,” interpreted Drouillard.

“Nonsense!” muttered Captain Lewis.

And anybody might see how foolish was this excuse of the Tetons: that the Omahas would attack boats defended by guns, when the Sioux were the real enemies. After the village was quiet again, at least sixty Teton warriors remained there on the bank, all night, ready for action.

“I t’ink,” commented Drouillard, “mebbe we have leetle trouble, in mornin’.”

“We’re in a bad box,” quoth Sergeant Ordway. “Now we’re tied up close to the bank, under direct fire. We may have a hard time casting off.”

Strong guards were kept under arms, on all the boats. There was little sleep. Both captains were constantly about, peering through the darkness, and listening. Early in the morning the Tetons were assembled; and while Patrick Gass and a detail were dragging from a pirogue, trying to find the barge’s anchor, several chiefs and warriors waded out to the barge and climbed aboard.

The anchor could not be found.

“Never mind,” said Captain Lewis. “We’ll go on without it. Send those fellows ashore, Will. Sergeant Pryor, take a squad with you and cast off that rope.”

The Indian visitors did not wish to go ashore, but Captain Clark ordered them pushed into the pirogue which was to bear Sergeant Pryor and squad. Chief Black Buffalo still refused to go. Sergeant Pryor released the rope from the tree on the bank and returned. The sail on the barge was being hoisted—and at the instant laughter and shouts mingled, both ashore and from the boats.

A number of the Sioux had sat upon the rope, holding it!

Captain Lewis flared into hot rage.

“Take charge of the pirogues, Will,” he ordered. “Down behind the gunwale, men. Advance your rifles. See that the priming’s fresh, Ordway and Gass. Stand to your swivel, Willard!” And, to Chief Black Buffalo: “My young men are ready for battle. If your young men do not release the rope we will fire.”

“He say de young men want leetle more tobac’,” translated Drouillard.

“Tell him we have given all the presents that we’re going to give,” crisply answered Captain Lewis. “No—wait. Here!” And snatching a roll of tobacco, Captain Lewis threw it at Black Buffalo’s feet. “Tell him there is his tobacco, on the prairie. He says he is a great chief. Among the white men great chiefs are obeyed. If he is a great chief let him order his young men to release that rope and they will obey him. But we do not believe he is a great chief. He is a squaw, and the young men laugh at him.”

“Wah!” grunted Chief Black Buffalo, when he heard. He seized the tobacco and leaped from the boat, to surge for the shore. There he tumbled his young men right and left, snatched the rope and hurled it out into the water.

“Go,” he bawled. Thus he proved himself to be the great chief.

The soldiers cheered. The barge’s sail caught the breeze, the barge moved. Just in time Captain Clark leaped from the pirogue, into which he had transferred, and gained the gunwale, and the deck.

“Well done, Merne,” he panted.

“Golly!” babbled York. “Dat chief mighty brash when he get started.”

The barge and the pirogues gained the middle of the river. Rapidly the Teton village was left behind. Patrick Gass waved his hat derisively.

“Bad luck to yez,” he said. “Sure, an’ if we’d stayed a minute longer we’d ha’ put your town into mournin’. We’re not so paceful as we look.” And he added: “The ’Rikaras nixt. We’ll hope they be gintlemen. Annyhow, we’ve no horses left for ’em to stale.”

Just what was to be expected from the Arikaras nobody might say, but although they were warlike they were thought to be not so mean as the Teton Sioux. The boats forged on, and the month changed to that of October.

“How far to the ’Rikara villages, sir?” asked Captain Lewis, of a trader named Valle who came aboard the barge for a talk.

“By river about 100 miles, captain.”

From an excursion ashore with Captain Clark and squad, York returned tremendously excited.

“We done found one o’ dem white b’ars,” proclaimed York. “Yessuh, me an’ Marse Will. Oof!”

“Where’bouts, York?”

“Whar’s his scalp?”

“Did you get a shot at him?”

Questions were volleyed thick and fast. York wagged his woolly head and rolled his eyes.

“Nossuh. Didn’t get no shot at him. We des seen his track, in dem bushes yonduh near de mout’ ob de ribber. Oof! Marse Will he set his moccasin cl’ar inside, an’ dat track it stuck out all ’round. ’Spec’ dis chile ain’t got bus’ness wif dem critters. Oof!”

“Yes,” agreed George Shannon. “According to Drouillard even the Indians won’t tackle one of those white bears, except in a crowd of six or eight. And if they don’t shoot him through the head or heart he’s liable to out-fight them all. Before they go after him they make big medicine, same as if they were going to war with a whole nation.”

“He’s ’special fond of black meat, too, I hear tell,” slyly remarked John Thompson.

York rolled his eyes, and muttered. But the Kentuckians, some of whom had hunted with Daniel Boone, fingered their rifles eagerly and surveyed the low country at the mouth of the river, as if hoping to see York’s monster stirring.

The next day the first Arikara Indians came aboard, from their lower village. Captain Lewis went with some of them to return the visit. He was accompanied back by Mr. Tabeau and Mr. Gravelines, two French traders who lived with the Arikaras. Mr. Gravelines spoke the Arikara language.

There were three Arikara villages, so that the captains ordered camp made on the north side of the river, across from the villages.

The Arikaras were tall, handsome people—much superior, thought Patrick Gass and the rest of the men, to the Sioux. Chiefs Ka-ka-wis-sas-sa or Lighting Crow, Fo-cas-se or Hay, and Pi-a-he-to or Eagle’s Feather, were introduced by Mr. Gravelines, and the camp soon filled with the Arikara warriors, and even squaws who rowed across in little skin boats of a single buffalo hide stretched over basket-work.

York held a regular reception, for he appeared to astonish the Arikaras as much as he had astonished the Sioux.

“Hey, Marse Tabeau,” he called, to the French trader. “Des tell dese people I’se bohn wil’, an’ my young marster done ketched me when I was runnin’ in de timber an’ tamed me. Tell ’em I used to eat peoples bones an’ all. I’se a sorter g’riller.” And thereupon York seized a thick stick, and snapped it in his two hands, and howled and gritted his teeth. He was very strong, was York.

“Huh!” grunted the Arikaras, respectfully falling back from him.

“That will do, York,” cautioned Captain Clark, trying not to laugh.

But York, of much importance, thoroughly enjoyed himself.

The Arikaras were splendid entertainers and exceedingly hospitable—“’Mos’ like white folks,” asserted York. They did not beg, as the Sioux had begged; they gave lavishly out of their store of corn and beans and dried squashes, and accepted thankfully the gifts from the great father; they would not drink any whisky—“We are surprised that the great father should send us liquor to make fools of us,” said Chief Lighting Crow. Their houses were built close together, of a willow frame plastered with mud, and were entered through a covered passage-way that kept out the wind. Around each village was a fence of close upright pickets, for defense. They were well armed, too, with guns.

When it came time, after the councils had been held, to leave the friendly Arikaras, all the men of the expedition hated to go. John Newman, who had enlisted at St. Louis, was the most out-spoken.

“Look here,” he uttered, boldly, among his comrades at the last camp fire. “Why should we go on, up to those Mandans? Why can’t we spend the winter where we are? The Mandan village is nigh on 200 miles yet, and I’m tired of working my hands raw in this cold weather, hauling the boats over sand-bars.”

“Orders be orders,” reminded Patrick Gass. “An’ up to the Mandans we go, I’m thinkin’.”

“Not if we show a little spunk and say we want to stay,” retorted John.

“Whisht, now!” cautioned Patrick. “Would ye spoil a good record? Faith,” he added, “if the captain heard ye he’ll have ye on the carpet for mutiny, b’gorry.” Captain Clark had strode hastily by, wrapped in his cloak. “It’s mutiny ye’re talkin’,” scolded Patrick Gass. “An’ I want no more of it.”

Captain Clark had heard, for at breaking camp in the morning, John was placed under arrest and confined in the forecastle aboard the barge.

That night, at camp, twenty-five miles above the Arikara villages, a court-martial was held on the case of John Newman. He was found guilty of mutinous speech and sentenced to received seventy-five lashes, and be suspended from the company. The next noon the boats stopped in the rain, at a sand-bar in the middle of the river, everybody was ordered out, and John was roundly whipped on the naked back with ramrods and switches.

Chief Ah-ke-tah-na-sha of the Arikaras, who was going with the expedition up to the Mandans, to make peace between the Mandans and the Arikaras, squatted on the sand-bar, to watch. Evidently he did not understand, for he began to weep.

“Why does Ah-ke-tah-na-sha cry?” asked Captain Clark.

Ah-ke-tah-na-sha, who could speak some Sioux, explained to Drouillard, and Drouillard explained to the captains.

“He say de ’Rikara dey punish by death, but dey never whip even de children. He weep for Newman.”

“Tell him what the matter is, and that this is the white man’s way of punishing disobedience,” directed Captain Clark, to Drouillard.

Drouillard did; and reported.

“He say mebbe so, but ’mong Injuns to whip men make women of dem. If dees is white man way, all right. Men ought to obey deir chiefs.”

“Now aren’t ye ’shamed o’ yourself, when even an Injun cries over ye?” reproved Patrick Gass, of John Newman, who was painfully donning his shirt and coat.

“Well, I am,” admitted John. “I guess I deserved what I got. I don’t harbor any grudge, and I’ll do my duty.”

VII
SNUG IN WINTER QUARTERS

The weather had grown much colder, with squalls of snow and sleet and high winds; the wild geese were flying high, headed into the south; and the river, falling rapidly, was split with bars and narrow channels, when, two weeks after the punishment of John Newman, the barge and the two pirogues anchored off the first of the Mandan villages, in the centre of present North Dakota.

“Five long months we’ve been travelin’, an’ for sixteen hundred crooked miles,” quoth Patrick Gass. “Sure we desarve a bit o’ rist. Now what will the Mandans say, I wonder?”

“Did you see that young fellow who’d lost the halves of two fingers?” queried George Shannon. “Well, he’d cut ’em off, on purpose, because some of his relatives had died! That’s the Mandan way of going into mourning.”

“’Twould be better to cut the hair, I’m thinkin’,” said Pat. “They most of ’em nade it—an’ hair’ll grow again.”

The Mandans had swarmed aboard, and were examining every object with much curiosity. They were an odd people, wrinkled and of low stature—many of the women with brown hair, but others with gray hair which flared almost to the ground. However, their voices were gentle, and they brought gifts of corn and vegetables, in earthen jars.

Mr. Jessaume, a French trader among them, also came aboard; so did a Scotchman named Hugh McCracken, from a British fur company post far north.

“They’re frindly, be they, Pierre?” asked Pat, of One-eyed Cruzatte, who was hobbling past after a lively conversation with Mr. Jessaume.

“Oui,” answered Cruzatte, with a grimace of pain. “I t’ink we stay an’ spen’ one winter. Dey glad. We protect’ dem ’gainst de Sioux. My poor leg, he carry me not furder, anyway.”

For Cruzatte had the rheumatism in both knees. Reuben Fields was laid up with the rheumatism in his neck; and Captain Clark had been so bothered with a stiff neck that he could not move around until Captain Lewis had applied a hot stone wrapped in red flannel.

“Hi!” cackled big York, strutting as usual. “Dese heah Mandans done gif me name Great Medicine, Mistuh McCracken say. Dey wants me foh a chief.”

“There’s coal in the banks, yonder,” spoke George Shannon. “See it, Peter?”

“What is coal?” ventured Peter.

“Black stuff, like a rock, that will burn.”

“It’ll make fine fuel for my forge,” put in John Shields, who was clever at fashioning things out of metal. “Expect I’ll be busy all winter, smithing, while you other fellows are hunting and dancing.”

The Mandan villages were three in number. There was a village of Minnetarees, also; and a village of Ar-wa-cah-was and Ah-na-ha-ways—Indians whom neither Drouillard nor Cruzatte knew.

“Ah, well, now, belike there be plenty Injuns on ahead, too, that ye never heard of,” declared Pat. “Yis, an’ lots of other cur’osities before we get to the Paycific Ocean.”

The head chief of all the Mandans was Pos-cap-sa-he, or Black Cat. The chief of the lowest village was Sha-ha-ka, or Big White. The chief of the second village was Raven Man. The chief of the Ar-wa-cah-was was White Buffalo Robe. The chief of the Ah-na-ha-ways was Cherry-on-a-Bush, or Little Cherry, but he was very old. The chief of the Minnetaree village was Black Moccasin. And the chief of the upper Mandan village, across from the Minnetaree village, was Red Shield.

The two captains met in council with all the villages together, and smoked the pipe of peace and distributed gifts. During the speeches old Cherry-on-a-Bush, the Ah-na-ha-way chief, rose to go, because, he said, his son was on the war-trail against the Sho-sho-nes, or Snakes, and his village was liable to be attacked.

“Shame on you, for an impolite old man,” rebuked Sha-ha-ka, Big White. “Do you not know better than to show such bad manners before the chiefs from the great white father?”

And poor Cherry-on-a-Bush sat down mumbling.

The Arikara chief who had come up on the barge was well received. The Mandans promised to observe peace between the two nations.

“We did not begin the war,” they said. “We have been killing those ’Rees like we kill birds, until we are tired of killing. Now we will send a chief to them, with this chief of theirs, and they can smoke peace.”

Camp was made at a spot picked out by Captain Clark, across the river, below the first Mandan village, and everybody not on guard duty was set at work erecting winter quarters. Captain Clark had charge of the camp, but Patrick Gass “bossed” the work. He was a carpenter. Axes rang, trees were felled and under Patrick’s direction were trimmed and notched, to form the walls and roofs of the cabins.

There were to be two rows of cabins, joined so as to make four rooms, below, on each side, and four rooms above, entered by ladders. The walls were of hewn logs tightly chinked with clay; and the ceilings, seven feet high, were of planks trimmed with adzes—and covered with grass and clay to make a warm floor for the lofts. The roofs slanted inward, which made the outside of the rows eighteen feet high, so that nobody could climb over. Every down-stairs room had a fire-place, and a plank floor. The two rows met, at one end, and were open at the other; and across this opening was to be stretched a high fence of close, thick pickets, entered by a stout gate.

The Mandans and their Indian friends marveled much at the skill of the white men, and at the strength of York, the Great Medicine. They admitted that these white men’s houses were better even than the Mandan lodges—although the Mandan lodges were also of heavy timbers, plastered with earth, and banked with earth at the bottoms; had doors of buffalo hide, and fireplaces in the middle.

Mr. Jessaume, the French trader, moved to the camp, with his Mandan wife and child; and so did another French trader named Toussaint Chaboneau. He had two wives: one was very old and ugly, but the other was young and handsome. She was a Sho-sho-ne girl, from far-off. The Minnetaree Indians had attacked her people and taken her captive, and Chaboneau had bought her as his wife. She and the old wife did not get along together very well.

Mr. Jessaume and Chaboneau could speak the languages, and were hired by the captains to be interpreters for the camp.

“My young wife come from ze Rock mountains,” said Chaboneau—who was a dark little man, his wrinkled face like smoked leather. “One time I was dere. I trade with Minnetaree.”

“You never were over the mountains, Toussaint, were you?” asked Sergeant Pryor.

“Me, Monsieur Sergeant?” And Toussaint shuddered. “Ma foi (my word), no! It is not ze possible. Up dere, no meat, no grass, no trail, notting but rock, ice, cold, an’ ze terrible savages out for ze scalp.”

The cabins were erected rapidly, for the cottonwood logs were soft and easily split. The first trees were felled on November 3, and on November 20 the walls were all in place. The men moved in before the roofs were put on, but buffalo hides were stretched over.

The two captains occupied one cabin, at the head of the angle. And six or seven men were assigned to each of the other cabins. Sergeant Patrick Gass, Privates George Shannon, Reuben Fields and Joseph Fields, who were great hunters, George Gibson, who played the violin, John Newman, who now was no longer mutinous, but worked with a will, and Peter formed one mess; Corporal Warfington and his six soldiers from St. Louis formed another; Drouillard, the hunter, and five of the French boatmen another; One-eyed Cruzatte and five other boatmen another; and so forth. Jessaume and Chaboneau had erected their own lodges.

It was high time that the cabins were completed. The weather turned very cold and windy, and ice floated in the river. The roofs were hastened, and the picket fence ought to be erected soon, for the Mandans were not yet satisfied with the presence of the white men.

Black Cat and Big White were frequent visitors. One day after Black Cat had spent the whole morning talking with the captains, Chaboneau reported the bad news.

“Mebbe now dere is troubles,” he uttered, as he sat toasting his shins at the fire in the Patrick Gass cabin. He had entered with a gay “Bon soir (good evening), messieurs,” and had brought a draft of icy air with him. “Mebbe now dere is troubles.”

“What’s the matter, Toussaint?”

“I interpret for ze Black Cat an’ ze captains. Ze Black Cat say ze Sioux dey much enrage’, ’cause ze ’Rees make ze peace with ze Mandan. Dey sen’ ze word dat someday dey come up an’ take ze scalp of all ze ’Ree an’ ze Mandan an’ ze white soldier. Dey sorry dey did not kill ze white soldier down-river, for ze white soldier carry bad talk. Black Cat fear. He fear mebbe ze ’Ree get scare’ an’ help ze Sioux, an’ he been tol’, too, dat ze white soldiers build strong fort, to stay an’ try to make slaves of ze Mandan, an’ soon ze whole country he be Sioux.”

“That sounds like the British,” remarked George Shannon. “They naturally don’t want the United States in here, taking away their trade. They’d like to have us driven out.”

“An’ what did the captains say?” inquired Patrick Gass.

“Dey say Black Cat must not open hees ears to such talk,” answered Toussaint. “Ze United States speak only truth, an’ if ze Mandan listen ze white soldiers will protec’ dem ’gainst all deir enemies. Black Cat say dere been a council held, on ze matter, an’ ze Mandan will wait an’ see.”

Much was yet to be done before the fort was secure. The barge ought to be unloaded and its goods stored in the two store-cabins. The men in the Gass cabin spent their time evenings braiding a large rope of elk-skin, by which the barge might be hauled up on the bank, farther out of the ice. Big White and Little Raven and other chiefs and warriors brought meat, on the backs of their squaws. Big White’s village was across the river, and he and his wife came over in their buffalo-hide boat. She followed him to the fort, with 100 pounds of meat at a time on her back. She was delighted with the gift of a hand-ax, with which to cut wood for the lodge fire. The captains presented the Mandan nation with an iron mill for grinding corn. This pleased the women.

The weather turned warm, and Captain Lewis took a squad of men, to pay a visit to the villages. Only one chief was unfriendly. He, named Mah-pah-pa-pa-ra-pas-sa-too, or Horned Weasel, refused to see the captain at all.

“And we know the reason why,” asserted Sergeant Pryor, who had been along. “Seven traders of the British Northwest Company have just come down with dog-sleds from the north country, and are giving out British flags and medals and telling the chiefs we aren’t true men.”

When Mr. Francois Larocque, the captain of the traders, paid a visit to the fort, Captain Lewis informed him very strongly that the United States would not tolerate any flags and medals except those authorized by the President. This was now United States territory.

This day Sergeant Pryor dislocated his shoulder while helping to take down the mast of the barge.

Now cold weather set in again, and the river was closed by ice. The snow fell for a day and a night, and lay thirteen inches deep. But fortunately the roofs were on the cabins, the stone chimneys drew well, and there was plenty of meat and dried corn.

VIII
EXCITEMENT AT FORT MANDAN

“Ho! Hi! Hi-o!”

It was the morning after Sergeant Pryor had hurt his shoulder, and the Northwest Company traders had been talked to by Captain Lewis; a bitterly cold morning, too, with a stinging north wind blowing across the snow and ice. The shrill call drifted flatly.

“Hi! Hi-o!”

“Sergeant of the guard,” summoned William Bratton, who in beaver-fur cap, buffalo-fur coat and overshoes and mittens was walking sentry outside the opening of the two lines of cabins.

Sergeant John Ordway came running. All the men stopped their after-breakfast tasks at the barge and in the street and in the timber, to gaze and listen. On the opposite bank of the river an Indian stood, wrapped in his buffalo-robe, with his hands to his mouth, calling. The river, frozen from shore to shore, was only 400 yards wide, and the voice carried clearly.

“I dunno what he wants, but he wants something,” informed Sentry Bratton.

“Hi! Hi-o!” And then signs and a jangle of Indian words.

“He wants to talk with us,” explained Peter, who read the signs, to George Shannon.

“Where’s Chaboneau?” demanded Sergeant Ordway. “Here, Toussaint! What’s he saying?”

“Hi!” called back Chaboneau, with lifted hand. And listened to the answer. “He say he have somet’ing ver’ important to tell to ze Long Knife an’ ze Red Head. He want to come over.”

The Indian crossed on the ice. The sergeant and Chaboneau accompanied him to the headquarters cabin at the head of the street. The Indian was not closeted there very long. Out from the cabin bustled Sergeant Ordway again, and hastened down to the barge.

“Oh, Gass! Here—you’re to take twenty men, Pat, and go with Captain Clark. See that they’re well armed, and in marching order. The captain means business.”

“That I will,” replied Pat, dropping his armful of supplies. “B’gorry, I hope it’s a bit of a fight.”

“What’s up, John?” queried half a dozen voices.

“The Sioux have tried to wipe out a party of Mandans, down to the southwest, and Big White’s afraid the village is going to be attacked. So now’s the time for us to help Big White and show these Mandans our hearts are good.”

“Hooray!” cheered Pat. “All right.”

Out from the headquarters cabin strode Captain Clark, in his furs, and buckling his sword about his waist outside of his buffalo overcoat. Usually he did not wear his sword. He was known as the Red Head. Captain Lewis was known as the Long Knife, because he was rarely without his sword.

Behind Captain Clark came Chaboneau, and York, agrin, carrying his rifle, and looking indeed like a black buffalo.

Peter thrilled. He was wild to go, himself. He ran after Pat, and clutched him by his skirt.

“I go, Pat.”

“By no orders o’ mine, bedad,” rebuked Pat. “Ah, now,” he added. “Sure, it’s the Irish blood in ye—an’ if ye snake after an’ the cap’n doesn’t see ye, I’ll not send ye back. But ye can’t go furder’n the village. Mind that.”

“York can go. I can go,” asserted Peter, for York was no soldier, either, although sometimes he pretended to be. So Peter ran to York.

“You get out, boy,” rebuked York, strutting about while the men were being formed at Sergeant Pat’s sharp orders. “Dis am wah! Dis am berry seryus bus’ness when Cap’n Will done buckle on his sword. Yessuh. ’Tain’t no place foh chillun.”

“Did Captain Clark say you could go?” challenged Peter.

“’Twa’n’t necessitous, chile,” retorted York. “Marse Will gwine to take keer ob his soldiers; I go to take keer ob Marse Will. He cain’t get along wiffout Yawk. I raise him from a baby.”

But when the little column pressed forward, Captain Clark and Chaboneau, the interpreter, in the lead, Sergeant Pat conducting the double file of men, and York toiling behind, Peter trotted at the heels of York.

York glanced over his shoulder, and grunted.

“Huh! ’Spec’ you think you gwine to help carry Marse Will’s scalps.”

The ice was firm and snow-covered. Captain Clark led straight across. No sounds except the barking of dogs issued from the site of the Big White village, above. The Sioux had not yet attacked. Not an Indian was to be seen; in the distance before, the smoke from the lodges streamed in the wind. The captain made a half circuit of the village, and entered it on a sudden, from the land side. At the approach of the little company the Mandan dogs barked furiously—women screamed—the village seemed to be alarmed; but Chief Big White, and Chief O-hee-naw, a captive Cheyenne, and Chief Sho-ta-haw-ro-ra or Coal, issued to see what was the matter.

“We have come to protect our friends the Mandans,” announced Captain Clark.

“The Red Head chief is welcome,” bade Big White, breathless—for he was rather fat. His hair, pure white, bushed out all around his head. “Let my brothers come to the council lodge.”

Peter had done well to stick by York; for York was Great Medicine, and of course was gladly admitted into a council. Peter sidled in beside him. If he had tried to get in alone, the chiefs would have ordered him out. Councils were no places for boys.

Captain Clark made a speech.

“We have heard that the Sioux have not kept our peace talk in their hearts,” he said, “but have attacked our friends, the Mandans, and have stained the prairie with blood. So we armed at once and are here to lead the Mandan warriors against the Sioux and punish them for their treachery.”

“Wah!” grunted the chiefs and warriors, approving. They spoke together, in their half circle, a few minutes; and O-hee-naw, or Big Man, the Cheyenne, arose and dropped his robe, to answer.

“We see now,” said Big Man, “that what you have told us before is true. When our enemies attack us, you are ready to protect us. But, father, the snow is deep, the weather is very cold, and our horses cannot travel far. The murderers have gone off. In the spring, when the snow has disappeared, if you will conduct us we will follow you to the Sioux and the ’Ricaras with all our warriors.”

When the council dispersed, the Mandans were in a very good humor. Chief Big White accompanied Captain Clark back to the river, and hugged him, at parting.

“We love our white fathers,” he declared. “My village has been weeping night and day for the young man slain by the Sioux; but now my people will wipe their eyes.”

Across the ice Captain Clark marched his men, to the fort again.

“Huh!” grumbled York. “Dose Mandans, dey ain’t gwine to fight when ’tain’t comf’table to fight.”

“Sure, I’m thinkin’ that was jest a Mandan trick, to try our mettle,” asserted Patrick Gass.

“De Mandans now our heap frien’s,” assured Drouillard.

Colder grew the weather, until at the close of the first week in December the mercury of the thermometer stood at 10 above zero. The earth was freezing so rapidly that the men had hard work to set the pickets of the fence which was to enclose the open end of the fort.

Now on the morning of December 7, Patrick Gass paused in his work of aligning the fence stringers to which the pickets were being spiked, and swung his arms and puffed. His breath floated white in the biting wind. He had peeled his overcoat, and was working in his flannel shirt. Sha-ha-ka the Mandan chief shuffled business-like through the opening left for the gate. He was muffled from chin to ankles in a buffalo robe; and above it protruded his bushy white hair framing his solemn but good-humored wrinkled face.

“Top o’ the mornin’ to ye, Big White,” hailed Pat. “What’s the good news, this fine day?”

“Ooh!” grunted Big White, scarcely checking his stride. “Where Red Head? Long Knife? Heap buffs.” And he passed on.

“Hooray!” cheered Patrick Gass. “Buff’lo, does he say?”

Suddenly, through the thin air drifted a distant medley of shrill shouts, across the river.

“Listen!” bade Cruzatte. “Dey hunt boof’lo! De boof’lo haf come out on de prairie!”

The uproar increased. Sha-ha-ka had disappeared in headquarters; but out burst York, and Chaboneau, and Jessaume, armed and running for horses. Out issued Captain Clark and Sha-ha-ka, followed by Captain Lewis. Baptiste Lepage, a new interpreter, yelled in French to Jessaume, and Jessaume excitedly answered.

“Gran’ boof’lo hunt,” proclaimed Baptiste, running also. “Ever’body hunt ze boof’lo.”

Tools were dropped, but Captain Clark’s voice rang clearly.

“Pryor!”

“Yes, sir.”

“Take a dozen men who aren’t otherwise engaged and join the Indians across the river in that buffalo hunt. Get all the meat you can. Use what horses you need, but don’t wait for me.”

“Yes, sir. I will, sir.” And rejoiced, Sergeant Pryor, whose arm had healed, called off the names as he bustled hither-thither.

“Arrah!” mourned Patrick Gass. “That laves us out, fellows. ‘Not otherwise engaged,’ said the captain. An’ here we are with our fince not finished.”

Captain Clark and Chief Big White were hurrying for the river, and the village beyond.

“Don’t you want your rifle, Will?” called Captain Lewis, after.

“No, Merne. I’ll hunt as the Indians do. We’ll beat them at their own game.”

Already the Sergeant Pryor detachment were mounting. There were scarcely horses enough to go around, for only enough had been hired from the Mandans to supply the regular hunters.

“There are more at the village, lads,” called Captain Lewis.

The men without mounts went running, plodding, laughing, across the snowy ice, for the village. York was pressing after the captain and the chief. He carried a rifle and had a large knife belted around his soldier’s overcoat. Peter delayed not, but scurried, too.

“I stay by Marse Will,” was declaring York. “We show dem Injuns.”

In mid-river the sounds from the hunt were plainer. To thud of hoofs the squad under Sergeant Pryor raced past with a cheer and flourish of weapons. At the village the squad afoot were met by squaws, holding ponies. A young squaw who had frequently smiled on York tendered him the hide rope of a splendid black.

“Great Medicine heap kill ’um,” she urged.

“Huh! Dey all like Yawk,” chuckled York, scrambling aboard.

The other men were grabbing ropes and mounting. A very old and ugly squaw with a spotted pony yelped at Peter (who knew better than to push forward) and signed. She thrust the pony’s thong at him.

“Boy go,” she cackled, grinning toothless. She signed “Wait,” and shuffled away, fast.

All the men except Peter and York left, hammering their ponies with their overshoes, in haste to join the fray. Yonder, about a mile, a snow dust hung in the wind, and under it black figures plunged and darted. Reports of fire-arms boomed dully.

Captain Clark and Chief Sha-ha-ka had disappeared in the chief’s lodge, before which stood a squaw holding two horses. Peter’s squaw came trotting back, with a bow and quiver of arrows. Grinning, she extended them to Peter, and signed: “Go! Shoot!” Peter thankfully accepted—slung the quiver at his waist, strung the bow. He never had killed a buffalo, but he had shot rabbits; now he would kill a buffalo. The bow was a strong little bow, but after these weeks of work he had a strong little arm.

“Golly!” chuckled York. “Cap’n Clark done got a bow, too.”

For the captain and Sha-ha-ka had emerged from the chief’s lodge. Sha-ha-ka was muffled in a buffalo robe; so was the captain. He had shed his overcoat, and his cap, had bound about his brow a scarlet handkerchief, Indian fashion, and his red hair flowed loose to his shoulders. He carried a bow; doubtless underneath his robe was the quiver.

As quick as the chief he snatched the hide rope from the squaw’s willing fingers, and vaulted upon the pony’s back, and he and Big White pounded off together.

“Come on, boy,” bade York; and he and Peter launched in pursuit.

“Never mind me, York,” yelled the captain, over his shoulder. “I’ll take care of myself. This gray is the best buffalo horse in the village.”

“Marse Will done been brung up by Dan’l Boone,” explained York, to Peter. “Yessuh; done shot wif bow’n arrer, too, back in ol’ Kaintuck. Reg’lar Injun, Marse Will is.”

The Indian ponies were saddled only with a buffalo-hide pad, from which hung thong loops into which the rider might thrust his feet, if he wished. Peter could not reach the loops. And the ponies were bridled only with a single thong which looped around the lower jaw. But Peter had ridden in this fashion many a time before.

York clung like a huge ape. To ride bareback was nothing new to him. Before, the captain sat as if glued fast. Sha-ha-ka could sit no firmer than the Red Head.

The breeze was keen, whistling past one’s ears and stinging one’s cheeks. But see! The buffalo! There were hundreds, in a writhing, surging, scampering, bewildered mass. They had come out of the sheltered bottoms to feed in the open, and the Indians had espied them. Now around and around them sped the Indians, yelling, volleying arrows, stabbing with lances, working at the mass, cutting out animals and pursuing them to the death. The hunters from the fort were at work, also. Guns puffed little clouds, which mingled with the greater cloud of snow.

Here and there were lying buffalo carcasses, reddening the snow. The captain and Sha-ha-ka, and then Peter and York, began to pass some, and the blood-stains were frequent. Before, other buffalo were staggering, or whirling and charging. Indians on their ponies dodged, and plied their arrows. Peter glimpsed One-eyed Cruzatte, and Chaboneau—they could hardly be told from the Indians, so cleverly they managed their ponies. Sergeant Pryor had been thrown, and was running afoot, a great bull after him. Ah!

Chief Sha-ha-ka whooped shrilly, and dropped his buffalo-robe about his thighs. Captain Clark dropped his, and laid arrow on bow. Their ponies quickened, as if understanding.

“Gwan, you hoss! Gwan!” implored York, hammering his black mount. The spotted pony also leaped eagerly.

With a loud shout Captain Clark charged straight at Sergeant Pryor’s bull. The gray horse bore him close alongside, on the right—the proper place. When even with the bull the captain drew bow, clear from hand to shoulder, loosed string—and the arrow, swifter than sight, buried to the feathers just back of the bull’s foreleg. The stung bull jumped and whirled; on raced the gray horse, and wheeled; the bull, his head down, lunged for him—and the gray horse sprang aside—the bull forged past, the captain was ready with another arrow—twang! thud!—the gray horse leaped again, to follow up—but the great bull halted, faltered, drooped his head, his tail twitched and lashed, still his head slowly drooped, he straddled, and began to sink.

“Catch your horse, Pryor. Quick!” ordered the captain. “You can’t hunt afoot.” And before the bull’s body had touched the snow he was away again, in the wake of the frantic herd, his red hair flaming on the wind.

“Fust kill foh Marse Will,” jubilated York. He and Peter scarcely had had time to check their horses. “He done beat Big White. Come on, boy!”

In a twinkling all was confusion, of buffalo bellowing, fleeing, charging; of horsemen shouting, pursuing, dodging, shooting; of flying snow and blood and steaming breaths and reek of perspiring bodies. Peter speedily lost York; he lost Sha-ha-ka and Captain Clark—but occasionally he sighted them, now separated, now near together, as if they were rivals. He lost everything but himself and pony and the buffalo. He shot, too; he saw his arrows land, he left wounded buffalo behind and chased others; and ever and again he saw the red hair of the captain.

The captain was in his buckskin shirt; Sha-ha-ka was in buckskin; many of the Indians rode half naked—excitement kept them warm. Peter felt no cold, through his buckskin and his flannel shirt. He had been more thinly clad in the Oto village and was used to weather. But bitter was the wind, nevertheless, and the wounds of the prone buffalo almost instantly froze.

The chase had proceeded for a mile—and on a sudden Chief Big White, from a little rise in a clear space, shouted high and waved his robe. It was the signal for the hunt to cease. The turmoil died, the frightened herd rushed on, and the horsemen dropped behind, to turn back. The squaws from the village already had been at work with their knives, cutting up the dead buffalo. They must work fast, on account of the cold. They carefully pulled out the arrows and laid them aside, so that it might be told to whom that buffalo belonged. The arrows of each hunter bore his mark, in paint on the shaft or the feathers.

Captain Clark rode in, panting and laughing, with Sha-ha-ka. His quiver was empty, his buffalo-horse frost-covered from eye-brows to tail. Sha-ha-ka treated him with great respect; and so did the other Indians.

“Dey say de Red Head one great chief. He ride an’ shoot like Injun,” explained Chaboneau, as the company from the fore assembled.

“Marse Will kill more buff’los dan all the rest ob dem put togedder,” prated York. “Only he done run out ob arrers. Den he try to choke ’em wif his hands!”

Five buffalo were credited to the captain—his arrows were in them. Five more were credited to the soldiers, who had been hampered by their unsaddled horses and by the big overcoats. York claimed three of the five—but nobody could believe York. The interpreters—Chaboneau and Lepage and Jessaume—had made their own kills, for their families.

“How many do you claim, Peter?” inquired the captain, with a smile.

“The old squaw who gave me the horse and bow, she owns what I kill,” answered Peter, carefully.

For there she was, cutting up a fat cow, from which one of Peter’s arrows protruded. Peter rode over to her.

“Mine,” he signed, proudly.

But she only grinned and shook her head, and pointed to his pony and his bow. Then she handed one of his arrows to him.

“Keep,” she said. “Keep bow. Make big hunter.”

Understanding, Peter rode away. There seemed to be plenty of meat, but a good bow and quiver was a prize. So he was willing to trade.

IX
PETER WINS HIS SPURS

To twenty-one, and then to thirty-eight below zero dropped the thermometer. The captains forbade the men to venture far from the fort, and the sentinels were relieved every half hour. The air was so filled with ice haze that two suns seemed to be shining.

Of course not much work could be done out of doors, in such weather. However, with the first warm spell, at twenty above, Pat, the boss carpenter, hustled his squad to complete the fence. Lustily chopping with broad-axes they rapidly turned out pickets that were two feet wide, four inches thick, twelve feet long and sharpened at both ends. These were set upright in a shallow ditch and spiked, edge against edge, to the stringers.

Finally Pat swung the heavy gate to and fro on its leathern hinges; it closed perfectly, and the bar that fastened it dropped easily into place. That was the last touch, and Pat heaved a sigh of relief.

“’Tis a good job well done, lads,” he complimented. “An’ jest in time. To-morrow we cilibrate.”

“Why, Pat?” queried Peter.

“Sure, ain’t to-morrow Christmas?” rebuked Pat. “That’s a new wan to ye, mebbe?” And Peter needs must have “Christmas” explained to him.

Yes, the captains had decided to celebrate. They instructed Chaboneau to tell the Mandans that on the morrow the white men were to have a great medicine day, and that no Indians should come near. That night, in the mess cabin, Patrick Gass passed another word.

“It’s all o’ yez up ’arly in the mornin’, boys,” he said. “We’ll wake the captains with thray rounds, so they’ll know we’ve not forgot.” And he winked.

In his bunk Peter was roused with a jump, amidst the grayness, by a thunderous noise. He sprawled to the floor—he heard a voice giving sharp orders, and before he could reach the door there was another thunder. Had the Sioux come? No! It was Christmas, and the celebration had begun. He opened the door—powder smoke wafted into his nostrils, the men had formed two lines down the middle of the street, their rifles were leveled, and “Whang!” they all spoke together.

“Hooray!” now the men cheered.

“Christmas Day in the mornin’!” shouted Pat, waving his cap. The door of the captains’ cabin opened and the captains stood gazing out; York’s black face peering over their shoulders. “Merry Christmas to yez, sorrs,” welcomed Pat, with a bow and a scrape. “It’s only welcomin’ the day, we are, an’ christenin’ the flag with a bit o’ powder.” For from the flag-staff in the street floated the United States flag.

“Very good,” approved Captain Lewis. “Merry Christmas to each of you. You may dismiss the men for the day, Sergeant.”

What a jolly day this day of Christmas proved to be. Nobody worked, everybody was merry. After breakfast in the mess hall, which was a cabin with a table down the centre seating twenty on a side, and a huge fireplace at one end, and a loft for the cooks and their supplies, the table was moved, One-eyed Cruzatte and George Gibson tuned their fiddles, and the men danced and capered.

There was a big dinner, of juicy meats, stewed corn, stewed dried pumpkin, with plum pudding at the close. The captains were present, in uniform. There was more dancing, and story-telling; not until late at night was the fort quiet. All the Indians had kept away.

Thus was passed Christmas Day, 1804, at this first United States fort west of St. Louis, 1600 miles up the River Missouri, in the centre of a North Dakota yet to be named.

“When do we have another Christmas, George?” asked Peter, eagerly.

“Not for a long time, Peter,” laughed George. “Christmas comes only once a year.”

For, you see, Peter had a great deal to learn.

Now Fort Mandan settled down to a winter routine. The United States flag floated. The swivel cannon from the barge had been planted in the street, its muzzle commanding the entrance. Just outside the gate a sentry constantly paced, by day; another sentry walked a beat on the top of a mound of earth that half circled the rear of the fort and banked the store-rooms against the cold. John Shields, the blacksmith, established his forge—and that, also, was great medicine. The Indians crowded about to watch the bellows fan the charcoal into ruddy heat. Even the interpreters were astonished, when John set to work.

“Ma foi!” exclaimed Toussaint Chaboneau. “I go get my squaw’s kettle. She haf one hole in him.”

Away he ran, and returned with Sa-ca-ja-we-a, bringing her kettle. A gentle little woman was the girlish Sa-ca-ja-we-a, or Bird-woman, of the far distant Snake nation; everybody was fond of her. John Shields willingly took the kettle, and patched the hole in it; and beaming with smiles the Bird-woman hastened to put it on her fire again.

But the wife of Jessaume had a kettle which could not be mended; and very indignant and jealous she left the fort, with her kettle and her children, and went across the river to her own people.

“Huh!” said Jessaume, shrugging his shoulders. “She be so bad, guess I get ’nodder wife.”

John Shields not only mended kettles for the women, but he mended the battle-axes and tomahawks of the men. From scraps of sheet-iron and tin he manufactured a marvelous variety of articles—hide-scrapers, punches, arrow points, and occasionally a whole battle-ax. For these, the Indians from the villages traded corn and beans and dried pumpkins, so that John proved to be a valuable workman.

William Bratton and Alexander Willard sometimes helped him; and as they were gun-smiths too, they repaired the rifles of the expedition and the few fusils of the Indians.

The weather blew warm, and cold again. There were hunting excursions; and on January 1, 1805, which, Peter learned, was called New Year’s, there was another celebration, like that of Christmas.

“Ze Mandan, dey reques’ we pay visit to deir village an’ show ze squaw an’ boys how ze white mans dance,” informed Chaboneau, in the morning, after a call from Big White.

So the captains gave permission for Cruzatte and George Gibson to take their violins, and for York and Patrick Gass and a dozen others to go, and entertain the village of Big White.

They trapsed gaily across the river, and in the lodge of Chief Black Cat, who lived at this village, Francois Labiche, one of the boat-men from Cahokia, opposite St. Louis, danced on his head to the music of the two fiddles, and thereby greatly astonished the Indians.

The village rewarded the dancers with buffalo robes and corn; and that evening Head Chief Black Cat brought to the fort another quantity of meat packed on his wife’s back.

“Let the white medicine dancers visit my other villages, or there will be jealousy,” he urged.

“I will haf no more hair,” complained Francois Labiche.

Forty below zero sank the thermometer. John Newman froze his feet so badly that he was unable to walk in, and a rescue party with horses were sent to get him.

Captain Clark, with Chaboneau as guide, led a hunting party down-river, with the thermometer eighteen below. Chaboneau returned alone, to say that Captain Clark had obtained some meat, but that the horses could not carry it on the slippery ice.

“Your wife is ill, Chaboneau,” informed Captain Lewis. And Chaboneau rushed for his lodge.

Forth he darted again.

“My wife she ver’ seeck,” he cried, wringing his hands. “W’at s’all I do? I fear she die, ma pauvre Sa-ca-ja-we-a (my poor Sa-ca-ja-we-a).”

“I’ll try to tend to her, Toussaint,” said Captain Lewis; and got out the medicine chest.

But all that night, and part of the next day the groans of the little Bird-woman could be heard.

“Dere is one remedy I hear of,” spoke Jessaume. “I sorry my wife lef’. But sometime de Injun gif de rattle of de rattlesnake.”

“Let’s try that, then,” bade Captain Lewis.

So the captain broke open the specimen bales in the store-room and found a dried rattlesnake skin. With Chaboneau jumping about imploringly, he crumbled two of the rattles into water, and this the suffering Bird-woman drank. Everybody at the fort was interested.

Soon from the lodge of Chaboneau issued a new sound—a feeble, shrill, piping wail. But the groans of Sa-ca-ja-we-a had ceased. Out again darted Chaboneau, his leather face beaming.

“One fine boy,” he shouted, capering. “It is all right. One fine boy. I t’ink he look like me.”

The next day, which was February 12, the hunting party returned, having left their meat in a pen to protect it from the wolves.

“I have the honor to announce a new recruit, Captain,” reported Captain Lewis, saluting Captain Clark, a twinkle in his eyes.

“What’s his name, Merne? Chaboneau?” demanded Captain Clark, smiling broadly, with cold-reddened face.

“He is leetle Toussaint,” proclaimed Chaboneau. “One fine boy who look so han’some as me.”

“B’gorry,” uttered Sergeant Pat, “an addition to our number, is it? Faith, he has good lungs, but I thought it was a weasel chasin’ a rabbit.”

The next morning four men and three horses to haul sleds were sent down to get the meat; but at evening they came back empty-handed. A hundred Sioux had robbed them. Captain Lewis set out at sunrise, to punish the robbers. Only three or four Mandans went. Chief Black Cat said that his young men were out hunting, and the villages had few guns, so his people could not help the white soldiers.

Captain Lewis was gone six days. He did not overtake the Sioux, but he brought up the meat—part of it on a sled drawn by fifteen men.

Mr. Gravelines, the trader, arrived from the Arikara nation. The Sioux sent word by the Arikaras that they would hereafter kill the white soldiers whenever they caught them.

But nobody at the fort minded these threats. February slipped into March, and all thoughts were turned upon the onward journey as soon as the river opened.

The thermometer rose to forty above zero. A flock of ducks were seen, flying up stream.

“The first sign,” quoth Sergeant Gass.

The weather was “open an’ shet,” as said Pat, with wind, sunshine, and snow flurries. But the ice in the river began to move, a little; another sign of spring. The captains decided that the barge was to be sent back to St. Louis, with the specimens, and the Corporal Warfington squad and other extra men. Under the direction of Captain Clark and Patrick Gass, the carpenter, boat timber was cut, and small pirogues, or canoes, were built, to take the place of the barge. John Shields was busy all the days long, making battle-axes to trade for a fresh supply of corn.

The store-room was ransacked and the clothing and such damp stuff was hung out to dry. Great strings of geese and swans and ducks passed, northward bound. The rising river burst into a channel; down it floated ice cakes, carrying buffalo, elk and deer. The Indians, running out across the firmer ice, killed them with spears. The canoes were finished and brought out of the timber, and to the bank at the fort. All hands were put at work loading.

This was an anxious time for Peter. Was he to be sent down with the barge, or was he to be taken on, with the captains and Pat and all?

“I go,” announced Chaboneau. “I engage’ as one interpreter, for ze journey to ze Rock Mountains an’ ze salt ocean. I take my young wife, an’ my baby, but I leave my ol’ wife.”

“Do I go, Pat?” queried Peter.

“Well, now, I dunno,” drawled Pat, pausing to wink at Toussaint. “An’ what would we do with a boy, yonder up amongst the white bear an’ the two-headed Injuns? For I hear there be giants, wearin’ two heads on their shoulders. Sure, they’d ate a boy with only one o’ their mouths.”

“I hunt,” asserted Peter.

“Would ye kill bear an’ buff’lo with the bow an’ arrer?” teased Pat. “Ain’t we got Drouillard an’ Fields an’ the captains an’ meself, all handy with the gun?”

“I show you, Pat,” exclaimed Peter.

Two steps he made, and grabbed his bow and quiver, where they were lying on the gunwale of the barge. The quiver was full of iron-pointed arrows, which John Shields had equipped for him. Out he ran, upon the ice of the river. His quick eye had noted a black object floating down the channel aboard a floe. No Indian was after it, yet. He would show that he was as good a hunter as any Indian.

Buffalo? Elk? Deer? Wah! It was crouching, and he could not yet tell. But fast he ran, in the slush, dodging air-holes, and with the ice weaving and bending beneath him. Suddenly, as he approached, heading off the floe, the creature stood. It was no buffalo, or elk, or deer; it was a bear.