varying
landscape about them. That night, as Billy had promised them, they had
their first trout for supper, which Billy brought in after a short sneak
among the willows with a stick for a rod and a grasshopper for bait.

"That's nothing," said he. "I'll take you to where's some real fishing,
if you like."

"Where's that?" demanded John, who also was getting very keen set for
sport of some sort.

"Oh, off toward the utmost source of the true Missouri!" said he. "You
just wait. I'll show you something."

CHAPTER XXV

BEAVERHEAD CAMP

"It's quite a bit of country, after all, between the Forks and the head,
isn't it?" remarked Rob, on their fourth day out from the junction of
the river. "I don't blame them for taking a month to it."

"We're beating them on their schedule, at that," said the studious John.
"At the Forks we were exactly even up, July 27th; we'd beat them just
exactly one year at that point, which they called the head of the river.
But they went slow in here, in these big beaver meadows; ten miles daily
was big travel, wading, and not half of that gained in actual straight
distance. It took them ten days to the Beaverhead. How far's that from
here, Billy?"

"Well, what do you think?" said Billy, pulling up and sitting crosswise
in his saddle as he turned. "See anything particular from this side the
hills?"

"I know!" exclaimed Rob. "That's the Rock over yonder--across the
river."

"Check it up on the _Journal_, Rob," said Uncle Dick.

Rob dismounted and opened his saddle pocket, producing his copy of the
cherished work.

"Sure it is!" said he. "Here it says:

"'The Indian woman recognized the point of a high plain to our
right which she informed us was not very distant from the summer
retreat of her nation on a river beyond the mountains which runs to
the west. this hill she says her nation calls the beaver's head
from a conceived re(se)mblance of it's figure to the head of that
animal. she assures us that we shall either find her people on this
river or on the river immediately west of it's source; which from
it's present size cannot be very distant. as it is now all important
with us to meet with those people as soon as possible I determined
to proceed tomorrow with a small party to the source of the
principal stream of this river and pass the mountains to the
Columbia; and down that river untill I found the Indians; in short
it