ses could not travel. For weeks they lay in camp on the
Kooskooskie, eating horse meat as the Indians then were doing,
waiting, fretting.

It was the middle of June before they made the effort to pass the
Bitter Roots. Sixty horses they had now, with abundance of jerked
horse meat, and a half-dozen Nez Perces guides. By the third of
July--just three years from the date of the Louisiana Purchase as it
was made known at Mr. Jefferson's simplicity dinner--they were across
the Bitter Roots once more, in the pleasant valleys of the eastern
slope.

"That way," said Sacajawea, pointing, "big falls!"

She meant the short cut across the string of the bow, which would lead
over the Continental Divide direct to the Great Falls of the Missouri.
Both the leaders had pondered over this short cut, which the Nez
Perces knew well.

"We must part, Will," said Meriwether Lewis. "It is our duty to learn
all we can of this wonderful country. I will take the Indian trail
straight across. Do you go on down the way we came. Pick up our caches
above the three forks of the Missouri, and then cross over the
mountains to the Yellowstone. Make boats there, and come on down to
the mouth of that river. You should precede me there, perhaps, by some
days. Wait then until I come."

With little more ado these self-reliant men parted in the middle of
the vast mountain wilderness. They planned a later junction of their
two parties at the mouth of a river which then was less known than the
Columbia had been, through a pass which none of them had ever seen.

Lewis had with him nine men, among them Sergeant Gass, the two Fields
boys, Drouillard and Cruzatte, the voyageurs. Sacajawea, in spite of
her protest, remained with the Clark party, where her wonderful
knowledge of the country again proved invaluable. This band advanced
directly to the southward by easy and pleasant daily stages.

"That way short path over mountains," said Sacajawea at length, at one
point of their journey.

She pointed out the Big Hole Trail and what was later known as Clark's
Pass over the Continental Divide. They came to a new country, a
beautiful valley where the grass was good; but Sacajawea still pointed
onward.

"That way," said she, "find boat, find cache!"

She showed them another gap in the hills, as yet unknown; and so led
them out by a short cut directly to the caches on the Jefferson!

But they could not tarry long. Boots and saddles again, pole and
paddle al