The young Alaskans, who had followed faithfully the travels of Lewis and Clark from the mouth of the Missouri to the Continental Divide, now felt exultation that they had finished their book work so soon. But they felt also a greater interest in the thought that they now might follow out a part of the great waterway which not even Lewis and Clark ever had seen. They were all eagerness to be off. The question was, what would be the best route and what would be the transportation?

“We still can spare a month in the West,” said Uncle Dick, “and get back to St. Louis in time to catch the fall school term. That will give us time for a little sport. How shall we get down south, two hundred miles, and back to the Three Forks? What do you say, Billy?”

“Well, sir,” answered the young ranchman, “we’ve got more help than Lewis and Clark had. We can use the telegraph, the telephone, the railway cars, and the motor car—besides old Sleepy and Nigger and the riding horses. We can get about anywhere you like, in as much or little time as you like. If you leave it to me, I’d say, get a man at Dillon or Grayling—I’ve friends in both towns—to take the pack train back to my ranch on the Gallatin——”

“But we don’t want to say good-by to Sleepy!” broke in Jesse. “He’s a lot of fun.”

“Well, don’t say good-by to him—we’ll see him when we come north again, and maybe we’ll all go in the mountains together again, some other year.

“But now, to save time and skip over a lot of irrigated farm country, how would it do to take the O.S.L. Railway train, down at the Red Rock, and fly south, say to Monida on the line between Montana and Idaho? That’s right down the valley of the Red Rock River, which is our real Missouri source.

“Now, at Monida we can get a motor car to take us east across the Centennial Valley and the Alaska Basin——”

“That’s good—Alaska!” said Rob.

“Yes? Well, all that country is flat and hard and the motor roads are perfect, so we could get over the country fast—do that two hundred miles by rail and car a lot faster than old Sleepy would.

“Now, we can go by motor car from Monida right to the mouth of Hell Roaring CaÑon, at the foot of Mount Jefferson, and up in there, at the head of that caÑon, there is a wide hole in the top of the mountains, where the creek heads that everybody now calls Hell Roaring Creek. J. V. Brower went up in there with a rancher named Culver, who lived at the head of Picnic Creek, at the corner of the Alaska Basin, and Brower wrote a book about it.[4] He called that caÑon Culver CaÑon, but the name does not seem to have stuck. Now, Culver’s widow, the same Lilian Hackett Culver whose picture Brower prints as the first woman to see the utmost source of the Missouri, still lives on her old homestead, where a full-sized river bursts out from a great spring, right at the foot of a rocky ridge. She’s owner of the river a couple of miles, I guess, down to the second dam.

“She stocked that water, years ago, every kind of trout she could get—native cutthroat, rainbow, Dolly Varden, Eastern brook, steelheads, and I don’t know what all, including grayling—and she has made a living by selling the fishing rights there to anglers who stop at her house. I’ve been there many times.

“I’ve fished a lot everywhere, but that is the most wonderful trout water in all the world, in my belief. I’ve seen grayling there up to three pounds, and have taken many a rainbow over eight pounds; one was killed there that went twelve and one-half pounds. I’ve caught lots of steelheads there of six and seven pounds, and ‘Dollies’ as big, and natives up to ten pounds—there is no place in the West where all these species get such weights.

“They call the place now ‘Lil Culver’s ranch.’ She is held in a good deal of affection by the sportsmen who have come there from all over the country. She is now a little bit of an old lady, sprightly as a cricket, and very bright and well educated. She was from New England, once, and came away out here. She’s a fine botanist and she used to have books and a lot of things. Lives there all alone in a little three-room log house right by the big spring. And she’s the first woman to see the head of the Missouri. Her husband was the first man. That looks sort of like headquarters, doesn’t it?”

“It certainly does!” said Rob. “Let’s head in there. What do you say, Uncle Dick?”

“It looks all right to me,” said Uncle Dick. “That’s right on our way, and it’s close, historically and topographically, to the utmost source. You surely have a good head, Billy, and you surely do know all this country of the Big Bend.”

“I ought to,” said Billy. “Well, then suppose we call that a go? We can fish on the spring creek, and live at Lil Culver’s place; you can drive right there with a car. Then the mail road runs right on east, past the foot of Jefferson Mountain and over the Red Rock Pass—Centennial Pass, some call it—to Henry’s Lake. All the fishing you want over there—the easiest in the world—but only one kind of trout—natives—and they taste muddy now, at low water. Too easy for fun, you’ll say.

“But at the head of Henry’s Lake is a ranch house, what they call a ‘dude place.’ I know the owner well; he’s right on the motor road from Salt Lake to Helena and Butte, and just above the road that crosses the Targhee Pass, east of Henry’s Lake, to the Yellowstone Park.

“Now, Henry’s Lake was named after Andrew Henry, who was chased south from the Three Forks by the Blackfeet. Just north of there is the low divide called Raynold’s Pass, after Captain Raynolds, a government explorer, about 1872. Suppose we kept our Monida car that far, and then sent it back home? Then I could telegraph my folks to send my own car down there from my ranch, to meet us there at the head of Henry’s Lake, say one week from now; that’ll give us time to run the river up, easy.

“Then we’d have my car to run across Targhee, to the South Fork of the Madison—another source of the Missouri—and try out the grayling. We are now on the only grayling waters left in the West. All the heads of the Missouri used to have them. I thought you all might like to have a go at that. I can promise you good sport. We can have a tent and cook outfit brought down on my car from the ranch.”

“Well, that looks like a time saver, sure,” said John. “We finish things faster than Lewis and Clark, don’t we?”

“Sure. Well, when you feel you have to start back east we can jump in the car and run back up north to my ranch, up the Gallatin. You can follow Sleepy over to Bozeman and Livingston, then; or you can go east by rail down the Yellowstone; or you can divide your party and part go by rail down the river to Great Falls, and meet at the Mandan villages, or somewhere. We can plan that out later if you like.

“But in this way you cover all that big sweep of country where the arm of the Continental Divide bends south and holds all these hundreds of streams around the Three Forks and below. We’d be skirting the rim of that great bend in the mountains, a sort of circle of something like two hundred miles across; and we’d be coming back to the old river again at the Forks. Looks to me that’s about the quickest way we can cover our trip and the way to get the fullest idea of the real river.”

“What do you vote, fellows?” asked their leader. “This looks like a very well-laid-out campaign, to me.”

“So say we all of us!” answered Rob.

“That’s right,” added John and Jesse.

“All right, then,” nodded Billy. “On our way! Roll them beds. Keep out your fishing tackle. I’ll stop in town and telephone to Andy Sawyer to come on down to the livery at Red Rock and pick up our stock there, so we won’t lose any time getting the train.”

This well-thought-out plan worked so well that nothing of special interest happened in their steady ride down to the railroad, out of the historic cove, in among the fields and houses of the later land.

And to make quite as brief the story of their uneventful journey across the wide and treeless region below, it may be said that on the evening of the next day they pulled in at the little log-cabin hotel of Mrs. Culver, the first woman who ever saw the head of the true Missouri.

That lady, quaint and small, came out and made them welcome. “I’ve three beds, in two rooms,” said she, “and you’ll have to double up, but I can feed you all, I guess.”

“Is there any fishing?” asked Jesse. But an instant later he answered himself. “Great Scott!” said he. “Look at that trout jump. He’s big as a whale. Look it—look it, fellows!”

They turned as he pointed down the hill to the wide, clear water of the spring creek. A dozen splashes and rings showed feeding fish, and large ones.

“Oh, yes,” said their hostess, indifferently. “There’s a good many of them in there. They seem to run around more along toward evening.”

The young sportsmen could not wait for supper. Hurriedly getting together their rods and reels, they soon had leaders and flies ready and were running down the slope after what bid fair to be rare sport with the great fish which they saw leaping.