When William Clark returned from his three days’ scouting trip, his forehead was furrowed with anxiety. His men were silent as they filed into camp and cast down their knapsacks.

“It’s no use, Merne,” said Clark, “we are in a pocket here. The other two forks, which we called the Madison and the Gallatin, both come from the southeast, entirely out of our course. The divide seems to face around south of us and bend up again on the west. Who knows the way across? Our river valley is gone. The only sure way seems back—downstream.”

“What do you mean?” demanded Meriwether Lewis quietly.

“I scarce know. I am worn out, Merne. My men have been driven hard.”

“And why not?”

His companion remained silent under the apparent rebuke.

“You don’t mean that we should return?” Lewis went on.

“Why not, Merne?” said William Clark, sighing.

“Our men are exhausted. There are other years than this.”

Meriwether Lewis turned upon his friend with the one flash of wrath which ever was known between them.

“Good Heavens, Captain Clark,” said he, “there is not any other year than this! There is not any other month, or week, or day but this! It is not for you or me to hesitate—within the hour I shall go on. We’ll cross over, or we’ll leave the bones of every man of the expedition here—this year—now!”

Clark’s florid face flushed under the sting of his comrade’s words; but his response was manful and just.

“You are right,” said he at length. “Forgive me if for a moment—just a moment—I seemed to question the possibility of going forward. Give me a night to sleep. As I said, I am worn out. If I ever see Mr. Jefferson again, I shall tell him that all the credit for this expedition rests with you. I shall say that once I wavered, and that I had no cause. You do not waver—yet I know what excuse you would have for it.”

“You are only weary, Will. It is my turn now,” said Meriwether Lewis; and he never told his friend of this last letter.

A moment later he had called one of his men.

“McNeal,” said he, “get Reuben Fields, Whitehouse, and Goodrich. Make light packs. We are going into the mountains!”

The four men shortly appeared, but they were silent, morose, moody. Those who were to remain in the camp shared their silence. Sacajawea alone smiled as they departed.

“That way!” said she, pointing; and she knew that her chief would find the path.

May we not wonder, in these later days, if any of us, who reap so carelessly and so selfishly where others have plowed and sown, reflect as we should upon the first cost of what we call our own? The fifteen million dollars paid for the vast empire which these men were exploring—that was little—that was naught. But ah, the cost in blood and toil and weariness, in love and loyalty and faith, in daring and suffering and heartbreak of those who went ahead! It was a few brave leaders who furnished the stark, unflinching courage for us all.

Sergeant Ordway, with Pryor and Gass, met in one of the many little ominous groups that now began to form among the men in camp. Captain Clark was sleeping, exhausted.

“It stands to reason,” said Ordway, usually so silent, “that the way across the range is up one valley to the divide and down the next creek on the opposite side. That is the way we crossed the Alleghanies.”

Pryor nodded his head.

“Sure,” said he, “and all the game-trails break off to the south and southwest. Follow the elk!”

“Is it so?” exclaimed Patrick Gass. “You think it aisy to find a way across yonder range? And how d’ye know jist how the Alleghanies was crossed first? Did they make it the first toime they thried? Things is aisy enough after they’ve been done wance—but it’s the first toime that counts!”

“There is no other way, Pat,” argued Ordway. “’Tis the rivers that make passes in any mountain range.”

“Which is the roight river, then?” rejoined Gass. “We’re lookin’ for wan that mebbe is nowhere near here. S’pose we go to the top yonder and take a creek down, and s’pose that creek don’t run the roight way at all, but comes out a thousand miles to the southwest—where are you then, I’d like to know? The throuble with us is we’re the first wans to cross here, and not comin’ along after some one else has done the thrick for us.”

Pryor was willing to argue further.

“All the Injuns have said the big river was over there somewhere.”

“‘Somewhere’!” exclaimed Patrick Gass. “‘Somewhere’ is a mighty long ways when we’re lost and hungry!”

“Which is just what we are now,” rejoined Pryor. “The sooner we start back the quicker we’ll be out of this.”

“Pryor!” The square face of the Irishman hardened at once. “Listen to me. Ye’re my bunkmate and friend, but I warn ye not to say that agin! If ye said it where he could hear ye—that man ahead—do you know what he would do to you?”

“I ain’t particular. ’Tis time we took this thing into our own hands.”

“It’s where we’re takin’ it now, Pryor!” said Gass ominously. “A coort martial has set for less than that ye’ve said!”

“Mebbe you couldn’t call one—I don’t know.”

“Mebbe we couldn’t, eh? I mind me of a little settlement I had with that man wance—no coort martial at all—me not enlisted at the toime, and not responsible under the arthicles of war. I said to his face I was of the belief I could lick him. I said it kindly, and meant no harm, because at the time it seemed to me I could, and ’twould be a pleasure to me. But boys, he hit me wan time, and when I came to I was careless whether it was the arthicles of war or not had hit me. Listen to me now, Pryor—and you, too, Ordway—a man like that is liable to have judgment in his head as well as a punch in his arm. We’re safer to folly him than to folly ourselves. Moreover, I want you to say to your men that we will not have thim foregatherin’ around and talkin’ any disrespect to their shuperiors. If we’re in a bad place, let us fight our ways out. Let’s not turn back until we are forced. I never did loike any rooster in the ring that would either squawk or run away. That man yonder, on ahead, naded mighty little persuadin’ to fight. I’m with him!”

“Well, maybe you are right, Pat,” said Ordway after a time. And so the mutiny once more halted.

The tide changed quickly when it began to set the other way. Lewis led an advance party across the range. One day, deep in the mountains, he was sweeping the country with his spyglass, as was his custom. He gave a sudden exclamation.

“What is it, Captain?” asked Hugh McNeal. “Some game?”

“No, a man—an Indian! Riding a good horse, too—that means he has more horses somewhere. Come, we will call to him!”

The wild rider, however, had nothing but suspicion for the newcomers. Staring at them, he wheeled at length and was away at top speed. Once more they were alone, and none the better off.

“His people are that way,” said Lewis. “Come!”

But all that day passed, and that night, and still they found none of the natives. But they began to see signs of Indians now, fresh tracks, hoofprints of many horses. And thus finally they came upon two Indian women and a child, whom the white men surprised before they were able to escape. Lewis took up the child, and showed the mother that he was a friend.

“These are Shoshones,” said he to his men. “I can speak with them—I have learned some of their tongue from Sacajawea. These are her people. We are safe!”

Sixty warriors met them, all mounted, all gorgeously clad. Again the great peace pipe, again the spread blanket inviting the council. The Shoshones showed no signs of hostility—the few words of their tongue which Lewis was able to speak gave them assurance.

“McNeal,” said Lewis, “go back now across the range, and tell Captain Clark to bring up the men.”

William Clark, given one night’s sleep, was his energetic self again, and not in mind to lie in camp. He had already ordered camp broken, more of the heavier articles cached, the canoes concealed here and there along the stream and had pushed on after Lewis. He met McNeal coming down, bearing the tidings. Sacajawea ran on ahead in glee.

“My people! My people!” she cried.

They were indeed safe now. Sacajawea found her brother, the chief of this band of Shoshones, and was made welcome. She found many friends of her girlhood, who had long mourned her as dead. The girls and younger women laughed and wept in turn as they welcomed her and her baby. She was a great person. Never had such news as this come among the Shoshones.[5]

All were now content to lie for a few days at the Shoshone village. A brisk trade in Indian horses now sprang up—they would be footmen no more.

“Which way, Sacajawea?” Meriwether Lewis once more asked the Indian girl.

But now she only shook her head.

“Not know,” said she. “These my people. They say big river that way. Not know which way.”

“Now, Merne,” said William Clark, “it’s my turn again. We have got to learn the best way out from these mountains. If there is a big river below, some of these valleys must run down to it. Their waters probably flow to the Columbia. The Indians talk of salmon and of white men—they have heard of goods which must have been made by white men. We are in touch with the Pacific here. I’ll get a guide and explore off to the southwest. It looks better there.”

“No good—no good!” insisted Sacajawea. “That way no good. My brother say go that way.”

She pointed to the north, and insisted that the party should go in that direction.

For a hundred miles Clark scouted down the headwaters of the Salmon River, and at last turned back, to report that neither horse nor boat ever could get through. At the Shoshone village, uneasy, the men were waiting for him.

“That way!” said Sacajawea, still pointing north.

The Indian guide, who had served Clark unwillingly, at length admitted that there was a trail leading across the mountains far up to the northward.

“We will go north,” said Lewis.

They cached under the ashes of their camp fire such remaining articles as they could leave behind them. They had now a band of fifty horses. Partly mounted, mostly on foot, their half wild horses burdened, they set out once more under the guidance of an old Shoshone, who said he knew the way.

Charbonneau wanted to remain with the Shoshones, and to keep with him Sacajawea, his wife, so recently reunited to her people.

“No!” said Sacajawea. “I no go back—I go with the white chief to the water that tastes salt!” And it was so ordered.

Their course lay along the eastern side of the lofty Bitter Root Mountains. The going was rude enough, since no trail had ever been here; but mile after mile, day after day, they stumbled through to some point on ahead which none knew except the guide. They came on a new tribe of Indians—Flatheads, who were as amazed and curious as the Shoshones had been at the coming of these white men. They received the explorers as friends—asked them to tarry, told them how dangerous it was to go into the mountains.

But haste was the order of the day, and they left the Flatheads, rejoicing that these also told of streams to the westward up which the salmon came. They had heard of white men, too, to the west, many years before.

Down the beautiful valley of the Bitter Root River, with splendid mountains on either side, they pressed on, and on the ninth of September, 1805, they stopped at the mouth of a stream coming down from the heights to the west. Their old guide pointed up this valley.

“There is a trail,” said he, “which comes across here. The Indians come to reach the buffalo. On the farther side the water runs toward the sunset.”

They were at the eastern extremity of that ancient trail, later called the Lolo Trail, known immemorially to the tribes on both sides of the mountains. Laboriously, always pressing forward, they ascended the eastern slopes of the great range, crossed the summit, found the clear waters on the west side, and so came to the Kooskooskie or Clearwater River, leading to the Snake. And always the natives marveled at these white men, the first they ever had seen.

The old Indians still made maps on the sand for them, showing them how they would come to the great river where the salmon came. They were now among yet another people—the Nez PercÉs. With these also they smoked and counciled, and learned that it would be easy for boats to go all the way down to the great river which ran to the sea.

“We will leave our horses here,” said Lewis. “We will take to the boats once more.”

So Gass and Bratton and Shields and all the other artisans fell to fashioning dugouts from the tall pines and cedars, hewing and burning and shaping, until at length they had transports for their scanty store of goods. By the first week of October they were at the junction of their river with the Snake. An old medicine man of the Nez PercÉs, Twisted Hair, a man who also could make maps, had drawn them charts on a white skin with a bit of charcoal. And on ahead, mounted runners of the Indians rushed down to inform the tribes of the coming of these strange people.

It was no longer an exploration, but a reception for them now. Bands of red men, who welcomed them, had heard of white men coming up from the sea. White men had once lived by the Tim-Tim water, on the great river of the salmon—so they had been told; but never had any living Indian heard of white men coming across the great mountains from the sunrise.

“Will,” said Lewis, “it is done—we are safe now! We shall be first across to the Columbia. This—” he shook the Nez PercÉs’ scrawled hide—“is the map of a new world!”