the beaver. Then after they had got the beaver about all trapped
out, say fifty years, in came the placer mines. Then came the deep lode
mines--silver and copper. And then the farmers. Eh, Billy?"

"Sure," said Billy. "And then the tourists! Lots of folks that run dude
ranches make more than they could raising hay. The Gallatin Valley,
above me, is settled solid. It's the finest black-land farm country in
all the Rockies, and pretty as a picture. So's the Beaverhead Valley,
and all these others, pretty, too. Irrigation now, instead of sluices;
and lots of the dry farmers from below go up to Butte and work in the
mines in the wintertime--eight or ten thousand men in mines there all
the time."

"And all because we'd bought this country from Napoleon!" said John.

"I'm reading about that," said Billy. "I've got lots of books and maps,
and, living right in here, I've spent a lot of time studying out where
Lewis and Clark went. I tell it to you, they just naturally hot-footed
it plumb all through here, one week after another. They did more travel,
not knowing a thing about one foot of this country, and got over more of
it, and knew more about it every day, than any party of men since then
have done in five times the time they took."

"And didn't know where they were, or what would be next," assented
John. "Those chaps were the real, really real thing!"

In this way, passing through or near one town after another, traveling,
talking, hurrying, too busy in camp to loaf an hour, our young explorers
under their active leaders exceeded the daily average of William Clark
to the point where, above the present power dam, the valley of the
Missouri opens out above the Canyon into that marvelous landscape which
not even a century of occupancy has changed much, and which lay before
them, wildly but pleasingly beautiful, now as it had for the first
adventurers.

"And it's ours!" said Rob, jealously. He took off his hat as he stood
gazing down over the splendid landscape from the eminence which at that
time they had surmounted.

"Down near the power dam, somewhere," said Billy, "is where Clark must
have struck into the river again from the trail he'd followed. He was
about all in, and his feet in bad shape, but he would not give up. Then
he lit on out ahead again, and was first at the Forks."

"Why, you've read the _Journal_, too!" said John, and Billy nodded,
pleasantly.

"Why, yes, I think every man who lives in Montana ought