the shy wild rose, most beautiful of the prairie blossoms. All
about were shrubs and flowers, now putting forth their claims in the
renewed 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 of
the giant bears along the beaches. It was the wilderness, and it was
theirs--they owned it all!

Thus far they had seen no sign of any human occupancy. They did not
meet a single human being, red or white, all that summer. A vast,
silent, unclaimed land, beautiful and abounding, lay waiting for
occupancy. There was no map of it--none save that written on the soil
now and then by an Indian girl sixteen years of age.

They plodded on now, taking the right-hand stream, with full
confidence in their guidance, forging onward a little every day,
between the high banks of the swift river that came down from the
great mountains. April passed, and May.

"Soon we see the mountains!" insisted Sacajawea.

And at last, two months out from the Mandans, Lewis looked westward
from a little eminence and saw a low, broken line, white in spots, not
to be confused with the lesser eminences of the near by landscape.

"It is the mountains!" he exclaimed. "There lie the Stonies. They do
exist! We shall surely reach them! We have won!"

Not yet had they won. These shining mountains lay a long distance to
the westward; and yet other questions were to be settled ere they
might be reached.

Within a week they came to yet another forking of the stream. A strong
river came boiling down from the north, of color and depth much
similar to that of the Missouri they had known. On the left ran a less
turbulent 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 Mandans
had said that the Missouri after a time grew clear in color, and that
it 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 her
head.

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 of
the men, and listened to their arguments.

They knew well enough that a wrong choice here might mean the failure
of their expedition. Cruzatte ha