t with a piece of stick
instead of a bullet. He held on to one horse, and lucky he did. Here's
what the _Journal_ says about Shannon--whom Lewis himself found:

"'He became weak and feable deturmined to lay by and wait for a
tradeing boat, which is expected. Keeping one horse as a last
resorse, yet a man had like to have starved to death in a land of
Plenty for the want of Bullits or something to kill his meat.'"

"Where was he when they found him?" John had his map ready.

"Well, let's see. They found him on September 11th, and they had
traveled thirteen days, not counting stops, and made one hundred and
sixty miles by the river. They must by then have been at least thirty
miles above what is now Fort Randall, South Dakota--I should say,
somewhere near Wheeler, South Dakota. Well, something of a walk for
George, eh?"

"Rather!" was Jesse's comment. "Oh, I suppose it's easy to call him a
dub, but the commanding officers didn't."

"But now," went on their leader, "a lot of things have been happening
since Shannon left, and here are a lot of interesting things to keep in
mind. One thing is, they expected a trading boat up. That must have been
from St. Louis, for Trudeau's post. That was long before the days of the
regular fur forts, and that accounts for all this country having its
French names on it.

"Another thing or two: By this time, in lower South Dakota, everybody
was killing buffalo and elk, great quantities of splendid meat. By now,
also, in early September, they had got on the antelope range for the
first time, and their first 'goat,' as they called it, was skinned and
described. They got another new animal, which they called a 'barkeing
squirel,' or 'ground rat'--on September 7th. That was the first prairie
dog, a great curiosity to them--the same day they saw their first
'goat.' They managed to drown out one prairie dog, which I never heard
of anyone else being able to do. They dug down six feet, and did not get
halfway to the 'lodge,' as they called the den.

"Also, they saw the western magpie, which seemed a 'verry butifull' bird
to them. Also again, on September 5th, they had seen their first
blacktail deer, which now, until they got into the Mandan and
Yellowstone country, was to outnumber the whitetail, which they called
the 'common deer,' because they never had seen any other sort. On one
day, September 17th, Lewis and his men killed two blacktail, eight
'fallow' deer, and five 'c