"Well, since we are so near the end of the trail, young gentlemen," began Uncle Dick, at this point, "what do you say we ought to do?" "Well, the first thing we ought to do," said John, "before we go home, is not to leave all those people out in the wilderness. We have got Clark and eleven people here on the Gallatin, and Captain Lewis is away up on the Marias, and Gass and Ordway are scattered every which way between here and the Great Falls." "All right, all right!" rejoined Uncle Dick. "Get out your _Journal_ now, and we will see what became of Captain Lewis. We won't follow him day by day, and we will just take up his trail somewhere near Missoula. "See here, now. He must have crossed what is called Clark's Fork--all of that river, part of which is called Hell Gate River, ought to be called after Clark. He went up the Hell Gate River, without any guides, but he must have struck an Indian trail which led him over east. On the fourth day, that is on July 7th, he reached the pass which is called even now Lewis and Clark's Pass--the only pass named after either of those explorers, although only one of them ever saw it. "Now, you see, they were opposite the headwaters of the Dearborn River--the same stream where Clark left the boats and went up the river on foot when they were going west the preceding year. They knew where they were when they got here, and felt pretty fairly safe. "But Lewis wanted to see about that country north of the Great Falls. They were now among the buffalo once more and glad enough to find them. They hunted down the Sun River to their old camp above the Great Falls. Here they made a couple of bull boats, and on July 12th they crossed to the old camp and found the _cache_ which they had made there. A good many of the things were spoiled in the _cache_, which they had built too low, so that the high water had flooded it. "Now they reached their old friends, the white bears, which were just as ferocious as ever. So were the mosquitoes. Lewis dreads these mosquitoes more than anything else. "Now the _Journal_ says that Lewis determined to go up the Marias River. He left McNeal, Thompson and Goodrich, Gass, Frazier and Werner, here at the Falls. He took with him six horses and had along Drewyer and the two Fields boys--about his best hunters. They left Sergeant Gass four horses, so that he could get the boats around the portage as soon as Ordway and the boats came down the Missouri.