CHAPTER VI
WHICH WAY?
"Which way, Will?" asked Meriwether Lewis. "Which is the river? If wemiss many guesses, the British will beat us through. Which is ourriver here?"
They stood at the junction of the Yellowstone with the Missouri, andfaced one of the first of their great problems. It was spring oncemore. The geese were flying northward again; the grass was green.Three weeks ago the ice had run clear, and they had left their winterquarters among the Mandans.
Five months they had spent at the Mandan village; for five months theyhad labored to reach that place; for five months, or more, they hadlain at St. Louis. Time was passing. As Meriwether Lewis said, fewwrong guesses could be afforded.
Early in April the great barge, manned by ten men, had set out downstream, carrying with it the proof of the success of the expedition.It bore many new things, precious things, things unknown tocivilization. Among these were sixty specimens of plants, as many ofminerals and earth, weapons of the Indians, examples of theirclothing, specimens of the corn and other vegetables which theyraised, horns of the bighorn and the antelope--both animals then newto science--antlers of the deer and elk, stuffed specimens, driedskins, herbs, fruits, flowers; and with all these the broken story ofa new geography--the greatest story ever sent out for publication byany man or men; and all done in Homeric simplicity.
As the great barge had started down the river, the two pirogues whichhad come so far, joined by the cottonwood dugouts laboriouslyfabricated during the winter months, had started up the river, mannedby thirty-one men.
With the pick of the original party, there had come but one woman, thegirl Sacajawea, with her little baby, born that winter at the Mandanfortress. Sacajawea now had her place in the camp; she and her infantwere the pets of all. She sat in the sunlight, her baby in her lap, byher side an Indian dog, a waif which Lewis had found abandoned in anIndian encampment, and which had attached itself to him.
Sacajawea smiled as the tall form of the captain came toward her. Shehad already learned some of the words of his tongue, he some of hers.
"Which way, Sacajawea?" asked Meriwether Lewis. "What river is thiswhich goes on to the left?"
"Him Ro'shone," replied the girl. "My man call him that. No good!_Him_--big river"; and she pointed toward the right-hand stream.
"As I thought, Will," said Lewis, nodding; and again, to the Indiangirl: "Do you remember this place?"
She nodded her head vigorously and smiled.
"See!"
With a pointed stick she began to sketch a map on the sand of theriver bar, showing how the Yellowstone flowed from the south--how, faron ahead, its upper course bent toward the Missouri, with a march ofnot more than a day between the two. The maps of this new world thatfirst came back to civilization were copies of Indians' drawings madewith a pointed stick upon the earth, or with a coal on a whitenedhide.
"She knows, Will!" said Lewis. "See, this place she marks near themountain summit, where the two streams are close--some time we mustexplore that crossing!"
"I'm sure I'd rather trust her map than this one, here, of oldJonathan Carver," answered Clark, the map-maker. "His idea of thiscountry is that four great rivers head about where we are now. Hemarks the river Bourbon--which I never heard of--as running north toHudson Bay, but he has the St. Lawrence rising near here, too--and itmust be fifteen hundred or two thousand miles off to the east! TheMississippi, too, he thinks heads about here, at the mouth of theYellowstone, and yonder runs the Oregon River, which I presume is theColumbia. 'Tis all very simple, on Carver's maps, but perhaps notquite so easy, if we follow that of Sacajawea. This country is widerthan any of us ever dreamed."
"And greater, and more beautiful in every way," assented hiscompanion.
They stood and gazed about them at the scene of wild beauty. The riverran in long curves between bold and sculptured bluffs, among groves ofnative trees, now softly green. Above, on the prairies, lay a carpetof the shy wild rose, most beautiful of the prairie blossoms. Allabout were shrubs and flowers, now putting forth their claims in therenewed life of spring.
On the plains fed the buffalo, far as the eye could reach. Antelope,deer, the shy bighorn, all these might be seen, and the footprints ofthe giant bears along the beaches. It was the wilderness, and it wastheirs--they owned it all!
Thus far they had seen no sign of any human occupancy. They did notmeet a single human being, red or white, all that summer. A vast,silent, unclaimed land, beautiful and abounding, lay waiting foroccupancy. There was no map of it--none save that written on the soilnow and then by an Indian girl sixteen years of age.
They plodded on now, taking the right-hand stream, with fullconfidence in their guidance, forging onward a little every day,between the high banks of the swift river that came down from thegreat mountains. April passed, and May.
"Soon we see the mountains!" insisted Sacajawea.
And at last, two months out from the Mandans, Lewis looked westwardfrom a little eminence and saw a low, broken line, white in spots, notto be confused with the lesser eminences of the near by landscape.
"It is the mountains!" he exclaimed. "There lie the Stonies. They doexist! We shall surely reach them! We have won!"
Not yet had they won. These shining mountains lay a long distance tothe westward; and yet other questions were to be settled ere theymight be reached.
Within a week they came to yet another forking of the stream. A strongriver came boiling down from the north, of color and depth muchsimilar to that of the Missouri they had known. On the left ran a lessturbulent and clearer stream. Which was the way?
"The north wan, she'll be the right wan, _Capitaine_," said Cruzatte,himself a good voyageur.
Most of the men agreed with him. The leaders recalled that the Mandanshad said that the Missouri after a time grew clear in color, and thatit would lead to the mountains. Which, now, was the Missouri?
They found the moccasin of an Indian not far from here.
"Blackfoot!" said Sacajawea, and pointed to the north, shaking herhead.
She insisted that the left-hand river was the right one; but,unwilling as yet to rely on her fully, the leaders called a council ofthe men, and listened to their arguments.
They knew well enough that a wrong choice here might mean the failureof their expedition. Cruzatte had many adherents. The men began tomutter.
"If we go up that left-hand stream we shall be lost among themountains," one said. "We shall perish when the winter comes!"
"We will go both ways," said Meriwether Lewis at length. "CaptainClark will explore the lower fork, while I go up the right-handstream. We will meet here when we know the truth."
So Lewis traveled two days' journey up the right-hand fork before heturned back, thoughtful.
"I have decided," said he to the men who accompanied him. "This streamwill lead us far to the north, into the British country. It cannot bethe true Missouri. I shall call this Maria's River, after my cousin inVirginia, Maria Woods. I shall not call it the Missouri."
He met Clark at the fork of the river, and again they held a council.The men were still dissatisfied. Clark had advanced some distance upthe left-hand stream.
"We must prove it yet further," said Meriwether Lewis. "Captain Clark,do you remain here, while I go on ahead far enough to know absolutelywhether we are right or wrong. If we are not right in our choice, itis as the men say--we shall fail! But where is Sacajawea?" he added."I will ask her once more."
Sacajawea was ill; she was in a fever. She could not talk to herhusband; but to Lewis she talked, and always she said, "That way! Byand by, big falls--um-m-m, um-m-m!"
"Guard her well," said Lewis anxiously. "Much depends on her. I mustgo on ahead."
He took the French interpreter, Drouillard, and three of theKentuckians, and started on up the left-hand stream with one boat. Thecurrent of the river seemed to stiffen. It cost continually increasingtoil to get the boat upstream. They were gone for several days, and noword came back from th
em.
Meantime, at the river forks, William Clark was busy. It was obviousthat the explorers must lighten the loads of their boats. They beganto cache all the heavy goods with which they could dispense--theirtools, the extra lead and powder-tins, some of the flour, all theheavy stuff which would encumber them most seriously. Here, too, wasthe end of the journey of the red pirogue from St. Louis--they hid itin the willows of an island near the mouth of Maria's River.
Lewis himself, weak from toil, fell ill on the way, but still he wouldnot stop. He came to a point from which he could see the mountainsplainly on ahead. The river was narrow, flowing through a canon.
The next day they came to the foot of the Great Falls of the Missouri,alone, majestic here in the wilderness, soundless save for their owndashing--those wonderful cascades, now so well known in industry, sonearly forgotten in history.
"The girl was right--this is the river!" said Lewis to his men. "Itcomes from the mountains. We are right!"
Cascade after cascade, rapid after rapid, he pushed on to the head ofthe great drop of the Missouri, where it plunges down from its uppervalley for its long journey through the vast plains.
Now word went down to the mouth of Maria's River; but the messengermet Clark already toiling upward with his boats, for he had guessedthe cause of delay, and at last believed Sacajawea.
"Make some boat-trucks, Will," said Lewis, when at last they were allencamped at the foot of the falls. "We shall have to portage twentymiles of falls and rapids."
And William Clark, the ever-ready engineer, who always had a solutionfor any problem in mechanics or in geography, went to work upon thehardest task in transportation they yet had had.
"We must leave more plunder here, Merne," said he. "We can't get intothe mountains with all this."
So again they cached some of their stores. They buried here the greatswivel piece which had "made the thunder" among so many savage tribes.Also there were stored here the spring's collection of animals andminerals, certain books and maps not needed, and the great grindstonewhich had come all the way from Harper's Ferry. They were strippingfor their race.
It took the party a full month to make the portage. They were worn tothe bone by the hard labor, scorched by the sun, and frozen by thenight winds.
"We must go on!" was always the cry.
All felt that the summer was going; none knew what might be on ahead.
At the cost of greater and greater toil they pushed on up their riverabove the falls, until presently its course bent off to the southagain. They passed through a country of such wealth as none of themhad ever dreamed of, but they did not suspect the hidden treasures ofgold and silver which lay so close to them on the floor of themountain valleys. What interested them more was the excitement ofSacajawea, who from time to time pointed out traces of humanoccupancy.
"My people here!" said she, and pointed to camp-fires. "Plenty peoplecome here. Heap hunt buffalo!" She pointed out the trails made by thelodge-poles.
"She knows, Will!" said Lewis, once more. "We have a guide even here.We are the luckiest of men!"
"Soon we come where three rivers," said Sacajawea one day. Theyhad passed to the south and west through the first range ofmountains--through that Gate of the Mountains near to the rich goldfields of the future State of Montana. "By and by, three rivers--Iknow!"
And it was as she had said. The men, wearied to the limit by the toilof getting the boats upstream by line and setting pole, at last foundtheir mountain river broken into three separate streams.
"We will camp here," said the leader. "We are tired, we have workedlong and hard!"
"My people come here," said Sacajawea, "plenty time. Here theMinnetarees struck my people--five snows ago that was. They caught meand took me with them, so I find Charbonneau among the Mandans. Heremy people live!"
Without hesitation she pointed out that one of the three forks of theMissouri which led off to the westward--the one that Meriwether Lewiscalled the Jefferson.
And now every man in the party felt that they were on the right pathas they turned into that stream; but at the Beaver Head Rock--wellknown to all the Indians--they went into camp once more.
"Captains make medicine now," said Sacajawea to Charbonneau, herhusband.
For once more the captains hesitated. There were many passes, manyvalleys, many trails. Which was the way? The men grew sullen again.
They lay in camp for days, sending out parties, feeling out the way;but the explorers always came back uncertain. It was Clark who ledthese scouting parties now, for Lewis was well-nigh broken down inhealth.
One night, alone, the leader sat by his little fire, thinking,thinking, as so often he did now. The stars, unspeakably brilliant,lit up the wild scene about him. This was the wilderness! He hadsought it all his life. All his life it had called to him aloud. Whathad it done for him, after all? Had it taught him to forget?
Two years now had passed, and still he saw a face which would not goaway. Still there arose before him the same questions whose debate hadtorn his soul, worn out his body, through these weary months.
"You will be cold, sir," said one of the men solicitously, as hepassed on his way to guard mount. "Shall I fetch your coat?"
Lewis thanked him, and the man brought from his tent the captain'suniform coat, which he had forgotten. Absently he sought to put it on,and felt something crinkling in the sleeve. It was a bit of paper.
He halted, the old presentiment coming to his mind.
"Is Shannon here?" he asked of the man who had handed him the coat."He was to get my moccasins mended for me."
"No, captain, he is out with Captain Clark," replied Fields, theKentuckian.
"Very well--that will do, Fields."
Meriwether Lewis sat down again by his little fire, his last letter inhis hand. Gently he ran a finger along the seal--stooped over, kickedtogether the embers of the fire, and saw scratched in the wax anumber. This was Number Three!
He did not open it for a time. He looked at it--no longer in dread,but in eagerness. It seemed to him, indeed, as if the letter had comein response to the outcry of his soul--that it really had dropped fromthe sky, manna for a hungry heart. It was the absence of this whichhad worn him thin, left him the shadow of the man he should have been.
Here, as he knew well, was one more summons to what seemed to him tobe a duty. And off to the west, shining cold in the night under thestars, stood the mountains, beckoning. Which was the way?
He broke the seal slowly, with no haste, knowing that whatever theletter said it could mean only more unhappiness to him. Yet he washungry for it as one who longs for a soothing drug.
He pushed together yet more closely the burning sticks of his littlefire and bent over to read. It was very little that he saw written,but it spoke to him like a voice in the night:
Come back to me--ah, come back! I need you. I implore you to return!
There was no address, no date, no signature. There was no means oftelling whence or how this letter had come to him, more than any ofthe others.
Go back to her--how could he, now? It was more than a year since thesewords had been written! What avail now, if he did return? No, he haddelayed, he had gone on, and he had cost her--what? Perhaps herhappiness as well as his own, perhaps the success of herself and ofmany others, perhaps his own success in life. Against that, what couldhe measure?
The white mountains on ahead made no reply to him. The stars glowedcold and white above him, but they seemed like a thousand facets ofpitiless light turned upon his soul.
The quavering howl of a wolf on a near by eminence sounded like avoice to him, mocking, taunting, fiendish. Never, it seemed to him,had any man been thus unhappy. Even the wilderness had failed him! Ina land of desolation he sat, a desolate soul.