"'He became weak and feable deturmined to lay by and wait for a tradeing boat, which is expected. Keeping one horse as a last resorse, yet a man had like to have starved to death in a land of Plenty for the want of Bullits or something to kill his meat.'" "Where was he when they found him?" John had his map ready. "Well, let's see. They found him on September 11th, and they had traveled thirteen days, not counting stops, and made one hundred and sixty miles by the river. They must by then have been at least thirty miles above what is now Fort Randall, South Dakota--I should say, somewhere near Wheeler, South Dakota. Well, something of a walk for George, eh?" "Rather!" was Jesse's comment. "Oh, I suppose it's easy to call him a dub, but the commanding officers didn't." "But now," went on their leader, "a lot of things have been happening since Shannon left, and here are a lot of interesting things to keep in mind. One thing is, they expected a trading boat up. That must have been from St. Louis, for Trudeau's post. That was long before the days of the regular fur forts, and that accounts for all this country having its French names on it. "Another thing or two: By this time, in lower South Dakota, everybody was killing buffalo and elk, great quantities of splendid meat. By now, also, in early September, they had got on the antelope range for the first time, and their first 'goat,' as they called it, was skinned and described. They got another new animal, which they called a 'barkeing squirel,' or 'ground rat'--on September 7th. That was the first prairie dog, a great curiosity to them--the same day they saw their first 'goat.' They managed to drown out one prairie dog, which I never heard of anyone else being able to do. They dug down six feet, and did not get halfway to the 'lodge,' as they called the den. "Also, they saw the western magpie, which seemed a 'verry butifull' bird to them. Also again, on September 5th, they had seen their first blacktail deer, which now, until they got into the Mandan and Yellowstone country, was to outnumber the whitetail, which they called the 'common deer,' because they never had seen any other sort. On one day, September 17th, Lewis and his men killed two blacktail, eight 'fallow' deer, and five 'common' deer. Gass--who by now has been elected sergeant to take poor Floyd's place--in his _Journal_ says they killed thirteen common deer, two blacktailed, three buffalo, and a 'goat' that day--not a half bad day, that, eh? Don't you wish we'd been along?