THEY TURNED AWAY FROM THE GREAT FALLS OF THE ANCIENT RIVER WITH A FEELING OF SADNESS _Frontispiece_ THEY SAW HIM SCRAMBLE UP THE BANK, LIE FOR AN INSTANT HALF EXHAUSTED, AND THEN COME RUNNING DOWN THE SHORE TO THEM _Facing p._ 70 BEFORE ANYONE COULD HELP HIM HE WAS FLUNG FULL LENGTH, AND LAY MOTIONLESS " 216 JESSE SUDDENLY STOOPED, THEN ROSE WITH AN EXCLAMATION " 264 THE YOUNG ALASKANS ON THE MISSOURI CHAPTER I FOLLOWING LEWIS AND CLARK "Well, sister," said Uncle Dick, addressing that lady as she sat busy with her needlework at the window of a comfortable hotel in the city of St. Louis, "I'm getting restless, now that the war is over. Time to be starting out. Looks like I'd have to borrow those boys again and hit the trail. Time to be on our way!" "Richard!" The lady tapped her foot impatiently, a little frown gathering on her forehead. "Well, then?" "Well, you're always just starting out! You've been hitting the trail all your life. Wasn't the war enough?" "Oh, well!" Uncle Dick smiled humorously as he glanced at his leg, which extended before him rather stiffly as he sat. "I should think it was enough!" said his sister, laying down her work. "But it didn't last!" said Uncle Dick. "How can you speak so!" "Well, it didn't. Of course, Rob got in, even if he had to run away and smouch a little about how old he was. But he wasn't through his training. And as for the other boys, Frank was solemn as an owl because the desk sergeant laughed at him and told him to go back to the Boy Scouts; and Jesse was almost in tears over it." "All our boys!" "Yes! All our boys. The whole country'd have been in it if it had gone on. America doesn't play any game to lose it." "Yes, and look at you!" Uncle Dick moved his leg. "Cheap!" said he. "Cheap! But we don't talk of that. What I was talking about, or was going to talk about, was something by way of teaching these boys what a country this America is and always has been; how it never has played any game to lose it, and never is going to." "Well, Richard, what is it this time?" His sister began to fold up her work, sighing, and to smooth it out over her knee. "We've just got settled down here in our own country, and I was looking for a little rest and peace." "You need it, after your Red Cross work, and you shall have it. You shall rest. While you do, I'll take the boys on the trail, the Peace Trail--the greatest trail of progress and peace all the world ever knew." "Whatever can you mean?" "And made by two young chaps, officers of our Army, not much more than boys they were, neither over thirty. They found America for us, or a big part of it. I call them the two absolutely splendidest and perfectly bulliest boys in history."