HOMEWARD BOUND
They met at the breakfast table where Billy, who kept a bachelor home, had busied himself preparing a final good meal for them. They had abundance of nicely browned trout with fresh eggs, milk, and good bread.
The young travelers ate in silence, with the presentiment that this was their last breakfast on the trail. At length Rob turned to the leader of their party with an inquiring look.
"Well, I"ll tell you how I feel, after thinking it over," said Uncle d.i.c.k. "I know you hate to say good-by to Sleepy and n.i.g.g.e.r, not to mention our friend Billy Williams here, who is as good a mountain man as you are apt to find and who surely has been fine to us.
"But now we are right on a wagon road. There is no excitement in taking a pack train for a couple of days from here over to Livingston. There is not much excitement in taking a train at Bozeman and going over to Livingston and stopping off.
"Of course, we can go back to the junction and take a train to Great Falls, if you want to do that. We have left our two outboard motors over there, not knowing what we might want to do going back. Now we could have those motors shipped over to us here, and we could go down to the Yellowstone in a skiff, no doubt. Or we could go up to Great Falls and buy a boat, and run down the Missouri. We"d make mighty good time either way, by river.
"But I somehow feel that we have brought our men out of the expedition and we have in a way worn the edge off our trip. So what I think we had better do is to call this our last morning in camp with Billy here, hoping we may meet him some other time. We can take our train here, straight through to St. Paul, and transfer there for St. Louis--all by rail. That will put us home about August 20th, or, say, a week longer than three months out from the mouth of the Missouri.
"As you know, Lewis and Clark came down the Missouri in jig time. They left the Mandan villages on August 17th. Here Colter had left them and gone back up the Yellowstone with the two white traders, later to become famous as the first discoverer of the Yellowstone. Here they left Chaboneau, and the game little Indian woman, his wife Sacagawea.
"I somehow can"t fancy that they ever did enough for that Indian girl.
Without her they never would have got across and never would have got back the way they did. She was worth any ten men of the entire party.
Well, Lewis and Clark were brief men. Perhaps they did more for her, perhaps they thanked her more, than they have set down in their journals. Knowing them as we ought to, I rather think they did, but they were too shy to say much about it. So there at the Mandans we are obliged to leave some of our party. The others all reached St. Louis about noon on September 23d.
"What they must have left, how they were received is something which we do not need to take up now. At least, they were kept busy by their friends in St. Louis, be sure of that.
"And so closed that story of the two great travelers in whose footsteps we have been traveling this summer, my young friends. They did not claim ever to be heroes. They did their work simply and quietly, with no bluff and no pretense. I don"t believe anyone in all the world to-day can realize what those men actually did.
"Perhaps we, who have followed after them, doing in three months as much as we have, can get a little notion of a part of what their journey meant, even skipping as we have. But that they have been sufficiently honored, or that enough of our Americans really understand what they did, I myself never have believed."
Uncle d.i.c.k turned away from the table and walked out into the open air, where he was silent for quite a time.
"Give your bed rolls to Billy," said he, at length, to his young friends. "He will take care of those buffalo robes forever. We may need them again, some time, all together. I will telegraph to have the outboard motors sent down to be fitted on our boat, the _Adventurer_, at Mandan. Of course, we could run down the Missouri a hundred or maybe one hundred and fifty miles a day; but as I said to you, that country is getting old now and the edge of our trip is wearing off. We have been dodging towns and farms long enough. Let"s get on the train and go straight home!"
And so now, after most reluctant farewells to Billy Williams and Con O"Brien, the young explorers, light of luggage, and, indeed, not heavy of heart, after all, changed their transportation that very day to the "medicine wagons," as the Indians formerly called railway trains, and soon were speeding eastward out of the Rocky Mountains and across the great Plains and Prairies.
At St. Paul they changed for the train to St. Louis. En route they made no further reference to their own journals, and even John had ceased his interminable work on his handmade maps. The _Journal_, however--that great record of the Lewis and Clark expedition up the Missouri--remained always easily accessible; and just before the termination of their journey Uncle d.i.c.k picked it up once more and called his young friends around him.
"We will soon be in St. Louis now," said he. "Here is where our explorers started out, and here is where they returned. Here is where William Clark did his great work as the first Indian Commissioner. Here is where poor Meriwether Lewis started east, three years after he had finished his great journey, and met his tragic death in the forests of Tennessee. No one will know what that man thought. Perhaps even then he was pondering on the ingrat.i.tude of republics.
"But here is one thing which I wish every admirer of Lewis and Clark would read and remember--you can remember it, young friends, if you please. It is what Meriwether Lewis wrote, out there in the mountains near the Continental Divide, when he made up his _Journal_ on the evening of his birthday. Write it down, boys, just as he wrote it, ill spelling and all, so that you may see what he was doing and what he was thinking part of the time at least:
""To-day I had the raw-hides put in the water in order to cut them in throngs proper for lashing the packages and forming the necessary geer for pack horses, a business which I fortunately had not to learn on this occasion. Drewyer Killed one deer this evening. a beaver was also caught on by one of the party. I had the net arranged and set this evening to catch some trout which we could see in great abundance at the bottom of the river.
""This day I completed my thirty first year, and conceived that I had in all human probability now existed about half the period which I am to remain in this Sublunary world. I reflected that I had as yet done but little, very little, indeed, to further the hapiness of the human race, or to advance the information of the succeeding generation. I viewed with regret the many hours I have spent in indolence, and now soarly feel the want of that information which those hours would have given me had they been judiciously expended. but since they are past and cannot be recalled, I dash from me the gloomy thought, and resolved in future, to redouble my exertions and at least indeavour to promote those two primary objects of human existence, by giving them the aid of that portion of talents which nature and fortune have bestoed on me; or in future, to live for mankind, as I have heretofore lived for myself."
"So there you are, young men," concluded Uncle d.i.c.k, rising and reaching for his hat as the train began to near the environs of the busy city.
"If you must think of something striking, something worth remembering, out of all the pleasant memories you hold from our little journey this year--you Young Alaskans, now beginning to explore the history of your own wonderful country--set down this picture of Captain Meriwether Lewis, thirty-one years old, with more responsibilities, more of consequences, more future, on his shoulders right then than any other officer of our army ever had, sitting there by his little fire writing in his notebook the same as you, Rob, and you, Jesse, and you, John, have written in yours--and after that, remember what he wrote. Not so very conceited, was he?
"There were two men who were not thinking of politics nor of personal profit in any way. They did not hunt for advancement, they let that hunt them. They were not working for money; they never had much money, either one of them. They were not working for glory; they never had much glory, either of them; they always lacked the recognition they ought to have had, and they are almost forgotten to-day, as they ought not to be. They did their work because it was there to do, out of a sense of duty; they were content with that.
"So now out of all our travels up to this date, I don"t know that there is any experience we"ve had that will bring us a much bigger lesson than this one. Write it in your notebooks--what Meriwether Lewis wrote in his notebook, that day in the mountains. When you are thirty-one, check back in your notebooks and see if you can write what he could.
"Yes, I hope that you may resolve in future to "redouble your exertions." I hope you may give a "portion of the talents which nature and fortune have bestowed on you," for the sake of mankind--for the sake of your country, young gentlemen, and not wholly for the sake of yourselves."
The train rolled into the great railway station. Wondering onlookers stopped for a moment and turned as they saw three lean, sunbrowned boys stand at attention and give the Scout salute to the older man who turned to them and, smiling, snapped his hand into the regulation salute of the Army.
And so, as Jesse smilingly said, the Company of Volunteers for Northwestern Discovery disbanded for that year.
THE END