"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 beaver. "That's only part. In the shallow water a canoe swept down out of control. It ran over Whitehouse, another man, on a bar, and nearly broke his leg; it would have killed him sure if the water had been three inches shallower. That would have been another man lost. "Not all yet. A canoe got upset in the shallow water up there on the Wisdom, and wet everything in it. Result, they lost so much cargo--foodstuffs, etc.--that they just abandoned that canoe right there and lost her cargo, after carrying it three thousand miles, for over a year! All to be charged to the same beaver. Well, you and I have spoken before about the extreme danger of a land party and a boat party trying to travel together. "The next time Lewis left a note, he used a dry stick, and he felt mortified at not having thought to do that in the first place. Well, that's my beaver story. It shows how a little thing may have big consequences--just as this arrowhead that Jesse found points out a long trail." "And by that time," said John, bending again over his map, "they were needing every pound of food and every minute of their time and every bit of every man's strength. The poor fellows were almost worn out. Now they began to complain for the first time. We don't hear any more now about dances at night around the camp fire." "Yes," said Uncle Dick. "Now they all were having their proving. It would have been easy for them to turn back; most men would have done so. But they never thought of that. All the men wanted was to get away from the boats and get on horseback."