s. They call them
'bluefish' up there. They're fine."

"So are these fine. I'd rather catch one grayling than a dozen trout.
But they're getting mighty scarce, and I think before long there won't
be any left.

"But look what a beaver country this must have been!" he added, waving a
hand each way. "Fifty by two hundred miles, and then some. No wonder the
trappers came. It wasn't long before they and the Blackfeet mixed it,
all along in here."

"Listen," said Uncle Dick, "and I'll tell you a little beaver story,
right out of the _Journal_."

"Aw--the _Journal_!" said Jesse. "I'd rather catch one!"

"Wait for my story, and you'll see how important a small thing may be
that might make all the difference in the world. Now the hero of my
story is a beaver. I don't know his name.

"Look on your map, just above here--that's the mouth of the Wisdom, or
Big Hole, River, that Lewis and Drewyer explored first, while poor
Clark, with his sore leg, was toiling up with his boat party, after he
was better of his sickness.

"Now the Wisdom was a good-sized river, too, almost as big as the
Jefferson, though broken into channels. Lewis worked it out and came
back to the Jefferson at its mouth, and started on again, up the
Jefferson. As was their custom, he wrote a note and put it in a cleft
stick and stuck it up where Clark could see it when he got up that far.
He put it on a green stick, poplar or willow, and stuck it in the bar.
It told Clark to take the left-hand stream, not the one on the
right--the Wisdom.

"Well, along comes Mr. Beaver that night, and gnaws off the pole and
swims away with it, note and all! I don't know what his family made out
of the note, but if he'd been as wise as some of the magazine-story
beavers, he could have read it, all right.

"Now when Clark came along, tired and worn out, all of them, the note
was gone. They also, therefore, went up the Wisdom and not the
Jefferson. Clark sent Shannon ahead up the Wisdom to hunt. But he turned
back when the river got too shallow. Result, Shannon lost for three
days, and not his fault. He went away up till he found the boats could
not have passed; then he hustled back to the mouth and guessed the party
were above him up the other fork--where he guessed right. They then were
all on the Jefferson. Lost time, hunting for Shannon, and they couldn't
find him. All due to the beaver eating off the message pole. If Shannon
had died, it would have been due to that bea