o
death--well, that was called Wisdom River by Lewis. And I think if he'd
been right wise, he'd have left his boats at the mouth and started right
up there, on foot, and not up the Jefferson. She was shallow, but if
he'd only known it, she'd have led him to the Divide easier than the way
they went, and saved a lot of time. But, of course, they didn't know
that."

"Go on, Billy, go on!" said Rob, eagerly. "You're the first man I ever
knew who'd actually been over this ground in here. All we've done has
been to read about it; and that's different. A country on a map is one
thing, but a country lying out of doors on the ground is different."

"I'll agree to that," said Billy. "If you ever once figure out a country
by yourself, you never get lost in it again. You can easy get lost with
a map and a compass.

"Well now, the miners changed more names, too. It was on Willard's
Creek, named after one of the Lewis and Clark men, that they found the
gold at Bannack camp. They called that Grasshopper Creek and left poor
Willard out. And then they called the Philanthropy River, which comes in
from the south, opposite to the Wisdom--Lewis called them that because
Thomas Jefferson was so wise and so philanthropic, you know--well, they
changed that to the Stinking Water!

"Yet 'Philanthropy' would have been a good name for that. On one of the
side creeks to it they found Alder Gulch in 1863; and Alder Gulch put
Montana on the map and started the bull outfits moving out from Benton,
at the head of navigation. That's where Virginia City is now. Nice
little town, but not wild like she was.

"Now, the old trail--where the road agents used to waylay the
travelers--led from Bannack to the Rattlesnake, down the Rattlesnake to
the Jefferson, down the Jefferson to the Beaverhead Rock, then across
the Jefferson and over the Divide to Philanthropy. And that was one
sweet country to live in, in those days, my dad said! The road agents
had a fine organization, and they knew every man going out with dust. So
they'd lay in wait and kill him. They killed over a hundred men, that
way, till the Vigilantes broke in on them. The best men in early Montana
were among the Vigilantes--all the law-and-order men were. But right
from where we're standing now, on the Lewis Rock, you're looking over
one of the wildest parts of this country, or any other country. You
ought to read Langford's book, _Vigilante Days and Ways_. I've got that
in my library, up at