sn't satisfied with jack rabbits where there
used to be grizzlies and bighorns. I don't blame him.

"Yet to the east of us, to the end of the river at Buford, to the south
along the Yellowstone, and on all the great rivers that the cowmen used
for range--along the Little Missouri and the Musselshell and the Judith
and countless other streams whose names you have heard--lay the greatest
game country the world ever saw, the best outdoor country in the world!

"This was the land of the Wild West Indian and buffalo days, so wild a
country that it never lived down its reputation. Buffalo, antelope, and
elk ranged in common in herds of hundreds of thousands, while in the
rough shores of the river lived countless bighorns, hundreds of
grizzlies, and a like proportion of buffalo and antelope as well, not to
mention the big wolves and other predatories. Yes, a great wilderness it
was!"

"And we jumped it!" said Jesse.

"Yes, because I knew we'd save time, and we have to do that, for we're
not out for two years, you see.

"Now look at your notes and at the _Journal_. It took Lewis and Clark
thirty-five days to get here from the mouth of the Yellowstone, and
we've done it in one, you might say. The railroad calls it three hundred
and sixty-seven miles."

"Well, the _Journal_ calls it more," broke in Rob, "yet it sticks right
to the river."

"And now they began to travel," added John. "They did
twenty--eighteen--twenty-five--seventeen miles a day right along, more'n
they did below Mandan, a lot.

"They make it six hundred and forty-one miles from the Yellowstone to
the Marias, which is below where we are now. That's about eighteen miles
a day. Yet they all say the river current is much stiffer."

"We'd have found it stiff in places," said their leader. "But the
reason they did so well--on paper--was that now they couldn't sail the
canoes very well, and so did a great deal of towing. The shores were
full of sharp rocks and the going was rough, and they had only
moccasins--they complained bitterly of sore feet.

"Their hardships made them overestimate the distances they did--and they
did overestimate them, very much. When we were tracking up on the Rat
Portage, in the ice water, at the Arctic Circle, don't you remember we
figured on double what we had actually done? A man's wife corrected him
on how long they had been married. He said it was twenty years, and she
said it was ten, by the records. 'Well, it seems longer,' h