"Now I want you to stop and think how these people were making connections, scattered all through this country as they were. On July 19th, here came Ordway and his nine men with the canoes! Then they doubled party again, to portage, and in four days, with the aid of the horses, they got the stuff all below the Falls. Gass and one man swam the horses across the river; Ordway and the others took the canoes. They all reached the mouth of the Marias River July 28th. By that time, of course, Clark was over on the Yellowstone, having crossed the Gallatin Pass from here. "Now Lewis was on the north side of the river with three men. He knew he was going up into the Blackfeet country, and he must have known something of the reputation of that tribe. But those men would go almost anywhere. Now they were among the buffalo, so they felt safe for food. "They left the river July 16th, and on July 21st they got into country which you and I can identify--the mouth of Two Medicine Creek, where it meets the Cutbank, both of which rise in Glacier Park. I've had fine fishing up in there. "Now they pushed on up north up the Cutbank, forded where the Great Northern Railroad is now, and went on five miles beyond that. You see, they were now clear up almost to the northern line of Montana; whereas you and I have seen them almost to the southern line of Montana. And look at all the waterways they had covered! "This was Lewis's farthest north. Drewyer found out that there were Indians in that country. Perhaps that accounted for the scarcity of game they now felt. They concluded to turn back down the river, and on July 26th--which is the day Gass and Ordway finished their portage at the Great Falls--they headed southeast for the mouth of the Marias, trusting to Providence they would meet their men there and that they would eventually meet Clark at the mouth of the Yellowstone. "Now when you come to make all these things tally out on the ground, it is quite a proposition, isn't it?" The boys all looked at him with open eyes, as they followed out on the map the widely separated journeys of the two great chiefs. "Very well," resumed Uncle Dick, "they got down a mile below Badger Creek, on the Two Medicine River. Now they had the one and only dangerous encounter with the Indians which any of them met throughout the whole two years' trip. It was at that time hostility of the Blackfeet against the whites began. They ran into a bunch of Indians. There were eight of them, who turned out to be the Minnetarees of the North, whom they knew to be one of the most dangerous bands of all that neighborhood. "It seemed best to make friends, so they camped with the Indians that night and slept in their tents. Toward morning the Indians made their break--seized the guns of all four of the men and started out to steal the horses.