He had to drop back, fortify, and call for volunteers to take word to Major Henry that nothing could be done this season until the way had been opened. Jedediah Smith, aged twenty-five, stepped forward. He was of New York State, and had been in the West only two years; had never been farther from St. Louis than this, into the Indian country. But his voice rang true; he wished to learn. General Ashley gave him a French-Canadian of St. Louis as a scout companion, and together they crossed the six hundred miles of vast lonely plains infested by the Arikaras and Sioux and Assiniboines, to Major Henry at the mouth of the Yellowstone. Major Henry's party returned with them, to General Ashley at the mouth of the Cheyenne River in South Dakota. From the United States post at the Lewis and Clark's Council Bluffs, western Iowa of to-day, Lieutenant-Colonel Henry Leavenworth (Fort Leavenworth of Kansas is named for him) of the Sixth United States Infantry, hastened up with six companies of regulars, several cannon and three keel-boats. Joshua Pilcher, president of the Missouri Fur Company, joined him; General Ashley and Major Henry met him with other men; four or five hundred Sioux enlisted--the Sioux hated the Arikaras. And all together (except that the Sioux soon quit, disgusted with the way the white soldiers fought) they battered at the Arikara village from a distance until the enemy announced that it was time to make peace. Now Major Henry took eighty men and once again set out, with horses and packs, for the Yellowstone, to finish the season. He had a fine company--the pick of the rank and file: Jedediah Smith, Jim Bridger, William ("Billy") Sublette whom the Indians were to name "Cut Face" and "Left Hand," Davy Jackson, old "Cut Nose" Edward Rose who was half white, one quarter Cherokee and one quarter negro and had been a chief of the Crows, "old" Hugh Glass, and others. Major Henry, of the dark hair, blue eyes, and fondness for the violin, had only fair luck on this trip. Trapper Hugh Glass had much worse, at the beginning, although he ended well. He was from Pennsylvania, but was no greenhorn on the beaver trail, or else they would not have called him "old." The title "old" announced that a man was "beaver wise" and "Injun wise." So "old" Hugh Glass was a leather-faced, leather-clad, whiskered veteran of probably not over forty years but of the right experience as a "_hivernan_" or "winterer." The route taken left the Missouri River, to cut across country more to the westward, for the Yellowstone direct. Near evening of the fifth day out they all had turned up the Grand River, still in present South Dakota, and the hunters were riding widely or trudging through the river thickets, looking for meat.