Part 18 (2/2)

”Fort Benton was put up in 1850. And as the early stockades of Booneville and Harrodsburg and Nashville in Kentucky were on 'Dark and b.l.o.o.d.y ground,' so ought the place where we now are standing be called the dark and b.l.o.o.d.y ground of the Missouri River, for this indeed was a focus of trouble and danger, even before the river trade made Benton a tough town.”

”Well, the glory of old Benton is gone!” said Rob, at last. ”Just the same, I am glad we came here. So this is all there is left of it!”

”Yes, all there is left of the one remaining bastion, or corner tower.

It was not built of timber, but of adobe, which lasted better and was as good a defense and better. Many a time the men of Benton have flocked down to meet the boat, wherever she was able to land; and many a wild time was here--for in steamboat days alcohol was a large part of every cargo. The last of the robes were traded for in alcohol, very largely.

And by 1883, after the rails had come below, the last of the hides were stripped from the last of the innumerable herds of buffalo that Lewis and Clark saw here, at the great fork of the road into the Rockies; and soon the last pelt was baled from the beaver. If you go to the Blackfeet now you find them a thinned and broken people, and the highest ambition of their best men is to dress up in modern beef-hide finery and play circus Indian around the park hotels.

”Well, this was their range, young excellencies, and this was the head of the disputed ground between the Crows, Nez Perces, Flatheads, and Shoshonis, all of whom knew good buffalo country when they saw it.

”And yet, what luck our first explorers had! They surely did have luck, for they had good guidance of the Minnetarees among the Mandans, and then, from the time they left the Mandans until the next fall, beyond the Three Forks of the Missouri, they never saw an Indian of any sort!

At the Great Falls, a great hunting place, they found encampments not more than ten days or so old, but not a soul.

”Thus endeth the lesson for to-day! I'm sorry we haven't a camp to go to to-night instead of a hotel, but I promise to mend that matter for you in a day or so, if Billy Williams is up from Bozeman with his pack train, as I wired him. I said the fifteenth, and this is the thirteenth, so we've two days for the Falls. I wish we didn't know where they were!

I wish I didn't know the Marias isn't the Missouri. I wish--well, at least I can wish that old Fort Benton was here and the whistle of the steamboat was blowing around the bend!”

”Don't, sir!” said Rob. ”Please don't!”

”No,” said John. ”To-day is to-day.”

”All the same,” said Jesse, ”all the same----”

CHAPTER XIX

AT THE GREAT FALLS

”The only thing,” said Jesse, as the three young companions later stood together on the bank of the river, looking out; ”the only thing is----”

He did not finish his sentence, but stood, his hands thrust into the side pockets of his jacket, his face not wholly happy.

”Yes, Jesse; but what is the only thing?” John smiled, and Rob, tall and neat in his Scout uniform, also smiled as he turned to the youngest of their party. They were alone, Uncle d.i.c.k having gone to town to see about the pack train. They had walked up from their camp below the flouris.h.i.+ng city of Great Falls.

”Well, it's all right, I suppose,” replied Jesse. ”I suppose they have to have cities, of course. I suppose they have to have those big smelters over there and all those other things. Maybe it's not the same.

The buffalo are not here, nor the elk--though the _Journal_ says hundreds of buffalo were washed over the falls and drowned, right along.

Then, the bears are not here any more, though it was right here that they were worst; they had to fight them all the time, and the only wonder was that no one was killed, for those bears were _bad_, believe me----”

”Sure, they must have been,” a.s.sented John. ”There were so many dead buffalo, below the falls, where they washed ash.o.r.e, that the grizzlies came in flocks, and didn't want to be disturbed or driven away from their grub. And these were the first boats that ever had come up that river, the first white men. So they jumped them. Why, over yonder above the falls were the White Bear Islands; so many bears on them, they kept the camp so scared up all the time, they had to make up a boat party and go over and hunt them off. They used to swim this river like it was a pond, those bears! They kept the party on the alert all day and all night. They had a dozen big fights with them.”

”Humph!” Jesse waved an arm to the broad expanse of flat water above the great dam of the power company. ”Is that so? Well, that's what I mean.

Where's the big tree with the black eagle's nest? How do we know this is the big portage of the Missouri at all? No islands, no eagle. Yet you know very well it was the sight of that eagle's nest that made Lewis and Clark know for sure that they were on the right river. The Indians didn't say anything about the Marias River being there at all; they never mentioned that to either Clark or Lewis when they made their maps in the winter with the Mandans. But they did mention that eagle nest on the island at the big falls--they thought everybody would notice that--and when you come to think of it, that did nail the thing to the map--no getting around the nest on the island at the falls.

”Oh, I suppose this town's all right, way towns go. Only thing is, they ought not to have spoiled the island and the eagle nest with their old dam. How do we know this is the place?”

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