Kentucky. They didn't
know a thing about this new world we'd just bought of Napoleon,
mastodons, mules, and all.

"Well, anyhow, Billy Williams has his camp five or six miles from here,
across, and he has four saddle broncs and two perfectly good mules for
the packs--one plumb black and one plumb white--both ex-army mules and
I suppose fifty years or so old. I think old Sleepy, the white one, is
the wisest animal I ever saw on four legs--I've been out with Sleepy
before, and with Billy, too. Good outfit, boys--small, no frills, all we
need and nothing we don't.

"I've left our outboard motors here in town with a friend. Most wish we
hadn't brought them around. But we'll see how much time we have when we
get done projecting around at the head of the river.

"I can promise you some knotty problems up in there. To me, what's ahead
of us in the next two weeks was the most exciting part of the whole
Lewis and Clark trip across."

"But, Uncle Dick, you promised us some sport--fishing, I mean--trout and
grayling."

"Jesse," said his uncle, "yes, I did. And being a good Indian myself,
I'm going to keep my word to the paleface. We'll take a week off with
Billy's flivver, if Billy's mules connect with the flivver; and I'll
promise you, even now, hard hit as every trout water is all through
here, the finest trout fishing--and the only grayling fishing--there is
left in all America. How does that strike you?"

"Good! Where's it going to be?" demanded Jesse.

"Never you mind. That's a secret just yet. Billy knows."

"And we don't have to suppose a hundred years have elapsed?"

"No! Now turn in, fellows, or Billy'll think we're lazy in the morning."

CHAPTER XXI

THE PACK TRAIN

Before sunup Rob had the camp fire going, while Jesse brought in water
and wood and John bent over his cooking. Uncle Dick walked up the river
to where he had landed his boat the evening previous, and dropped down
closer to the camp. The day still was young when the tent was struck and
everything packed aboard the boat, which presently landed them on the
farther shore, ready for the next lap of their journey and the new
transportation that was now in order.

They were met by their new companion, the young rancher, Billy
Williams, who had struck his own camp and brought the animals down
to meet them. They found him a quiet, pleasant-spoken young man of
perhaps thirty, lean and hardy, dressed much like a farmer except
that he wore a pa