Part 13 (1/2)

John nearly always had precise facts at hand. He now found his copy of the little journal of Patrick Ga.s.s. ”Here's how big one was,” he said.

”Ga.s.s calls it a 'very large brown bear,' and it measured three feet five inches around the head, three feet eleven inches around the neck, five feet ten and one-half inches around the breast. His foreleg was twenty-three inches around, and his talons were four and three-eighths inches. He was eight feet seven and one-half inches long.”

”That was a big grizzly,” Uncle d.i.c.k nodded, ”a very big one, for this lat.i.tude. The biggest silvertip grizzly I ever knew in Montana weighed nine hundred pounds. But they were bigger in California and all up the Pacific coast--trees and bears grew bigger there, for some reason. You boys have killed Kadiaks as big as this Ga.s.s grizzly. But you didn't do it with a flintlock, small-bore, muzzle loader, fair stand-up fight. And your Kadiak bear would run when it saw you--so would a Lewis and Clark grizzly; only it would run toward you! Six men of them went out after one of them and wounded it, and it almost got the lot of them. Another time a grizzly chased a man down a bank into the river--bad actors, those grizzlies, in those times.”

John looked at his watch. ”Getting late, folks,” said he. ”On our way?”

”On our way!” And in a few moments the _Adventurer_ had her load aboard.

”You will now notice the Sioux running along the bank,” said John, ”trailing the boat, shooting ahead of it, threatening to stop it, begging tobacco, asking for a ride--all sorts of a nuisance. But we spread the square sail, set out, and proceeded on!”

In fact, so well had they cast out ahead, as usual, the nature of the country into which they were coming, and so well had they studied its history, that it needs not tell their daily journey among the great bluffs, the wide bars, and the willow-lined sh.o.r.es of the great river.

Gradually, the course of the river being now more nearly to the north, they noted the higher and bleaker aspect of the Plains, which the _Journal_ described as land not so good as that below the Platte. Of the really arid country farther west, and of the uses of irrigation, the _Journal_ knew little, and spoke of it as a desert, though now, on the edge of the river, the clinging towns and the great ranch country back of them, with the green fields of farms and the smokes of not infrequent homes, warned them that the past was gone and that now another day and land lay before them.

After many misadventures among the countless deceiving channels and bars of the river, and after locating the several Indian villages of the past and of to-day--the Rees, the Sioux bands, the Cheyennes--they did at last cross the North Dakota line at the Standing Rock agency, did pa.s.s the mouths of the Cannon Ball and Heart Rivers, and raise the smokes of Bismarck on the right, and Mandan on the left bank, with the great connecting railway bridge. They drove on, and at length chose their stopping place below Mandan, on the west sh.o.r.e.

Now, as always at the river towns they had pa.s.sed, they met many curious and inquisitive persons, eager to know who they were, where they were going, whence they had come, and how long they had been on the way.

”Well, sir,” said Rob to one newspaperman who drove up to their little encampment the next morning, in pursuit of a rumor he had heard that the boat had ascended the river from its mouth, ”since you ask us, we are the perogue _Adventurer_, Company of Volunteers for Northwestern Discovery, under Captains Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. We are in search of winter quarters, and we hope the natives are peaceful. We have been, to this landing, just forty-nine days, five hours and thirty-five minutes, this second day of July.”

”But that's impossible! Why, it's over a thousand miles from here to St.

Louis by water!” remarked the editor, himself a middle-aged man.

”Would you say so, sir?”

”Well, how far is it?”

”You should know, sir; you live here.”

”But I never had any occasion to know or to care,” smiled the visitor.

Rob smiled also. ”Well, sir, according to Patrick Ga.s.s----”

”I never heard of him----”

”----who kept track of it a hundred and seventeen years ago, it's about sixteen hundred and ten miles, though we don't figure it quite sixteen hundred. Call it fourteen hundred and fifty-two, as the river chart does.”

”Jerusalem! And you say you made it in forty-nine days? Why, that's--how many miles a day?”

”Well, we set out to do over forty miles a day, but we couldn't quite make it. We ran against a good many things.”

”And broke all known and existing records at that, I'll bet a hat! How on earth!”

”Well, you see, sir,” Rob went on, politely, ”we've rigged a double outboard, with an extension bed on the stern. They're specially made for us and they're powerful kickers. In fair water and all going good, they'll do six and eight an hour, with auxiliary sail; and we traveled ten hours nearly every day. But then, it wasn't always what you'd call fair water.”

”At least, we got here for the Fourth,” he added. ”We began to think, down by the Cannon Ball, that we wouldn't. We planned to spend the Fourth among the Mandans.”

”If there's ice cream,” interrupted Jesse.