ing to eate but venison, the hunters killed three
Deer to day.'

"Anxious times about now, eh? But still, I don't think the leaders ever
once lost their nerve. Here's what Lewis wrote about it:

"'We begin to feel considerable anxiety with rispect to the Snake
Indians. if we do not find them or some other nation who have
horses I fear the successful issue of our voyage will be very
doubtfull or at all events much more difficult in it's
accomplishment. we are now several hundred miles within the bosom
of this wild and mountanous country, where game may rationally be
expected shortly to become scarce and subsistence precarious
without any information with rispect to the country not knowing how
far these mountains continue, or wher to direct our course to pass
them to advantage or intersept a navigable branch of the Columbia,
or even were we on such an one the probability is that we should
not find any timber within these mountains large enough for canoes
if we judge from the portion of them through which we have passed.
however I still hope for the best, and intend taking a tramp myself
in a few days to find these yellow gentlemen if possible. my two
principal consolations are that from our present position it is
impossible that the S.W. fork can head with the waters of any other
river but the Columbia, and that if any Indians can subsist in the
form of a nation in these mountains with the means they have of
acquiring food we can also subsist.'"

"No wonder the men wanted horses now--they knew the river's end was
near. And yet they were four hundred miles, right here, from the head of
the Missouri!" Billy had his _Journal_ pretty well in mind, so he went
on frying bacon.

"Why, what you talking about, Billy? They made the Forks by July 27th,
and by the end of August they were over the Divide, headed for the
Columbia!"

"Sure. And at the Two Forks, where the Red Rock River turns south, the
other creek--Horse Prairie Creek that they took--only ran thirty miles
in all. The south branch was the real Missouri, but they kept to the one
that went west. That was good exploring, and good luck, both. It took
them over, at last."

"But, Billy, everybody knows that Lewis and Clark went to the head of
the Missouri."

"Then everybody knows wrong! They didn't. If they had they'd never have
got over that year, nor maybe ever in any year. I tell y