dans until the next fall, beyond
the Three Forks of the Missouri, they never saw an Indian of any sort!
At the Great Falls, a great hunting place, they found encampments not
more than ten days or so old, but not a soul.

"Thus endeth the lesson for to-day! I'm sorry we haven't a camp to go to
to-night instead of a hotel, but I promise to mend that matter for you
in a day or so, if Billy Williams is up from Bozeman with his pack
train, as I wired him. I said the fifteenth, and this is the thirteenth,
so we've two days for the Falls. I wish we didn't know where they were!
I wish I didn't know the Marias isn't the Missouri. I wish--well, at
least I can wish that old Fort Benton was here and the whistle of the
steamboat was blowing around the bend!"

"Don't, sir!" said Rob. "Please don't!"

"No," said John. "To-day is to-day."

"All the same," said Jesse, "all the same----"

CHAPTER XIX

AT THE GREAT FALLS

"The only thing," said Jesse, as the three young companions later stood
together on the bank of the river, looking out; "the only thing is----"

He did not finish his sentence, but stood, his hands thrust into the
side pockets of his jacket, his face not wholly happy.

"Yes, Jesse; but what is the only thing?" John smiled, and Rob, tall and
neat in his Scout uniform, also smiled as he turned to the youngest of
their party. They were alone, Uncle Dick having gone to town to see
about the pack train. They had walked up from their camp below the
flourishing city of Great Falls.

"Well, it's all right, I suppose," replied Jesse. "I suppose they have
to have cities, of course. I suppose they have to have those big
smelters over there and all those other things. Maybe it's not the same.
The buffalo are not here, nor the elk--though the _Journal_ says
hundreds of buffalo were washed over the falls and drowned, right along.
Then, the bears are not here any more, though it was right here that
they were worst; they had to fight them all the time, and the only
wonder was that no one was killed, for those bears were _bad_, believe
me----"

"Sure, they must have been," assented John. "There were so many dead
buffalo, below the falls, where they washed ashore, that the grizzlies
came in flocks, and didn't want to be disturbed or driven away from
their grub. And these were the first boats that ever had come up that
river, the first white men. So they jumped them. Why, over yonder above
the falls were the White Bea