"Well, Lewis was fair enough, though it mortified him to lose days and days on his pet boat. They sewed the skins with edged awls, and that cut the holes rather big, so when the hides dried and shrunk, the threads didn't fill the holes any more. He had no tar to pay the seams with, or he'd have been all right. They tried tallow and ashes, but it wouldn't work. For a few minutes she sat high and light; then the filling soaked out. Poor Lewis!--he had to give it up. So they buried her, somewhere opposite the White Bear Islands, I suppose, where they had their camp." "Yes, and then Clark had to go and hustle cottonwood for some more dugouts, and cottonwood was a long, long way off," contributed John. "Oh, they had their troubles. Hah! We complained, coming up Portage Creek, and over the heads of the draws, trying to find their old portage trail. What if we'd been in moccasins? What if we'd been packing a hundred pounds or dragging at a hide wagon rope? And what if the buffalo had cut up the ground in rainy times, so it dried in little pointed lumps like so many nails--how'd that go in moccasins? Well, they had to lie down and rest, it was so awfully hard on them. But they never a one flickered, leader or enlisted men, and they put her through!" "It was a whole month?" queried Jesse. "Yes," John informed him, referring to the _Journal_ once again. "It was June 14th when Shields came back downstream from Lewis, and told Clark's boat party that they had found the falls, and it was July 15th when they got their new canoes done and started off up the river." "And I'll bet they were fussed up about things," said Jesse. "Must have been scared." "No, I don't think they were," said Rob. "Well, anyhow, in one month they had surveyed and staked out their portage trail around the big falls, had _cached_ their heavy stores, had built new boats, had killed all the meat they could use, and had proceeded on. They now knew that they were almost to the western edge of the buffalo. On west, as I expect Sacagawea also told them, they might have to come to horse meat and salmon. That didn't stop our fellows. They proceeded on." "Time they did!" said Jesse. "Yes. They had been away from St. Louis just a year and two months, when they left the Falls, here. Let's have a look at the map." They sat down, here on the bank of the great river, on the edge of the great modern town, in sight of many smelter smokes, and bent over the old maps that William Clark had made with such marvelous exactness more than a hundred years ago. "She seems to go in long sweeps, the old Missouri," said John, pointing with his finger. "First we went almost west, to Kansas City, Missouri. Then almost north, to Sioux City, Iowa. Then northwest to Pierre, South Dakota, and then north to Bismarck, North Dakota. Then she runs strong northwest to the Yellowstone, and then straight west to here. From here she takes one more big angle, and runs almost south to the Three Forks."