was so awfully hard on them. But they never a one
flickered, leader or enlisted men, and they put her through!"

"It was a whole month?" queried Jesse.

"Yes," John informed him, referring to the _Journal_ once again. "It was
June 14th when Shields came back downstream from Lewis, and told Clark's
boat party that they had found the falls, and it was July 15th when
they got their new canoes done and started off up the river."

"And I'll bet they were fussed up about things," said Jesse. "Must have
been scared."

"No, I don't think they were," said Rob. "Well, anyhow, in one month
they had surveyed and staked out their portage trail around the big
falls, had _cached_ their heavy stores, had built new boats, had killed
all the meat they could use, and had proceeded on. They now knew that
they were almost to the western edge of the buffalo. On west, as I
expect Sacagawea also told them, they might have to come to horse meat
and salmon. That didn't stop our fellows. They proceeded on."

"Time they did!" said Jesse.

"Yes. They had been away from St. Louis just a year and two months, when
they left the Falls, here. Let's have a look at the map."

They sat down, here on the bank of the great river, on the edge of the
great modern town, in sight of many smelter smokes, and bent over the
old maps that William Clark had made with such marvelous exactness more
than a hundred years ago.

"She seems to go in long sweeps, the old Missouri," said John, pointing
with his finger.

"First we went almost west, to Kansas City, Missouri. Then almost north,
to Sioux City, Iowa. Then northwest to Pierre, South Dakota, and then
north to Bismarck, North Dakota. Then she runs strong northwest to the
Yellowstone, and then straight west to here. From here she takes one
more big angle, and runs almost south to the Three Forks."

"Look it!" pointed Jesse. "She starts below Forty, at St. Louis, and
goes north almost to Forty-nine, and then she drops down again to
Forty-five at the Three Forks. And Lewis had observations on latitude
and longitude right along. Wonder what he thought!"

"He did a great deal of thinking," said Rob. "He had the conviction that
so great a river must run deep into the Rockies--he insisted on that.
Then he had the Indians at Mandan to give him some local maps. And he
had Sacagawea, worth more than them all for local advice in a tight
place where no one else had been ahead. It's wonderful, if you study it,
to see