Part 15 (1/2)

”On the way,” said their friend, ”I want you to go around to the coulee below town, where there's three or four tepees of Sioux in camp. What do they do? Oh, make little things to sell in town--and not above begging a little. There's one squaw we call Mary, who has been coming here a good many years. She makes about the finest moccasins we ever get. She made my wife a pair, out of buckskin white as snow. I don't know where she got it.”

”The Sioux had parfleche soles to all their moccasins,” said John, wisely. ”All the buffalo and Plains Indians did. The forest Indians had soft soles.”

”You're right, son,” said the editor. ”For modern bedroom moccasins, to sell to white women, Mary makes them all soft, with a shallow ankle flap. Most of the Indian men wear shoes now, but when she makes a pair of men's moccasins she always puts on the raw-hide soles. You can see the hair on the bottoms, sometimes.”

”Buffalo hair?” smiled Jesse.

”Well, no. The Indians use beef-hide now. But they don't like it.”

”Neither do I,” said Jesse.

CHAPTER XVI

OLD DAYS ON THE RIVER

”Not so bad, not so bad at all,” was John's comment as they all sat around the camp fire on the evening of July 5th. They had spent two pleasant days in town and now were forty miles out into the Plains country above the railroad; they had pitched camp at the edge of a willow-lined stream which ran between steep bluffs whose tops rose level with the plain. The smoke of their camp fire drifted down the troughlike valley from their encampment. The boys had found enough clean wood for a broiling fire, and John just now had taken off the thick beefsteak which they had brought along with them.

”You will observe that this is from the tenderloin of the three-year-old fat buffalo cow that I killed this morning,” said he. ”I always did like buffalo. We will break open some marrow bones about midnight, and I'll grill some boss ribs for breakfast.”

”And for luncheon,” added Jesse, joining readily in the make-believe, ”we'll try some of the cold roast of the last bighorn I killed, over in the breaks of the Missouri. Not so bad!”

Their friend from Mandan looked at them, smiling. ”I hope you haven't shot any tame sheep,” said he. ”No, not a bad camp, except that the mosquitoes are eating me alive. How do these boys stand it the way they do?”

”Oh, they're tough,” laughed Uncle d.i.c.k. ”We've had so many trips up North together, where the mosquitoes really are bad, we've got immune, so we don't mind a little thing like this. It takes two or three years to get over fighting them. For the first year they almost drive a man crazy, up there in Alaska.”

”I expect, sir, you'd better go inside the tent with our uncle to-night,” said Rob. ”We have our buffalo robes and bed rolls and don't need any tent, but if you drop the bar to the tent door, and take a wet sock to the mosquitoes that get in, I think you'll not be bothered.”

”But how will you sleep, outside?”

”Oh, we pull a corner of the blanket over our faces if they get too bad.

By nine or ten o'clock they'll be gone--until sunup; then they're the worst. If we had camped up on the rim it would have been better.”

”I'm going up on the rim after supper,” said Jesse, ”to see if I can't find an antelope--I suppose you'd call it a jack rabbit. I saw three coveys of prairie chickens cross the road to-day. If it was legal, now!”

Indeed, an hour later the youngest of the party came in at dark, carrying a pair of long-legged jacks, one of them young and fat. ”I always was good on antelopes,” said he. ”These were in at the edge of a farmer's clover field. I'm glad we're getting into good game country!”

”Yes,” Uncle d.i.c.k said, ”between the Mandans and the mouth of the Yellowstone, Lewis and Clark began to find the bighorn, which was new to them. And as we've said, they now were meeting the first 'white bears'

or grizzlies. All along, from here to Great Falls, was the best grizzly country they found in all the way across.”

”If only they were in there now!” said John.

”Why, would you dare tackle a grizzly?” smiled their friend. John did not say much.

”These boys have done it,” replied their uncle for them. ”I'd hate to be the bear. They shoot straight, and the rifles they have are far more powerful than the ones the first explorers had.”

”We'll call this exploring,” said Jesse, with sarcasm. ”I'll have to get help to hang up my antelopes so they'll cool out.

”But, anyhow,” he added, ”this is as much fun as plugging along among the sand bars in the motor boat. We beat the oars, and now this gas wagon beats our boat motors!”

”Uncle d.i.c.k,” suddenly interrupted Rob, ”we've been talking about the fur trade on the river a hundred years ago. I understand the fur posts were supplied by steamboats, at the height of the fur trade, anyhow.