The Americans were surprised that Sacajawea showed no desire to remain with her own people, but her loyalty and devotion to the explorers were unfailing. Once she learned of threatened treachery on the part of her tribe, that they planned to break camp and go down the Missouri River to the buffalo country on the east, taking with them the horses which had been promised to the white men. This would leave the newcomers stranded in the mountains, the lack of horses preventing their going westward. Immediately she told Lewis and Clark, who called the chiefs together, and after some discussion the plan was changed. By the end of August, with a replenished larder and fresh horses, the explorers were ready to start once more on their journey westward. The road, Sacajawea told the white captains, was over steep and rocky mountains, in whose fastnesses they would come to the narrow divide marking the source of the Missouri River. An hour later they would find a stream running west, that would grow into a large river and flow on till it came to the great waters far away. But there was no food along its course, no paths along its rocky banks, no canoes could swim on its rough current. If they went on they must follow rude Indian trails where there was no game. For ten days they must cross a sandy desert. In many places travel would be slow. Slow progress indeed it was, on this toilsome, dangerous journey. Some days five miles was the best they could make; other days they went forward scarcely at all. Food became scarce, and among the men, as winter weather came on, there was much sickness. Once they had a six-day storm that drenched everything they had on. And by this time their supply of dried meat and fish was exhausted. They followed obscure windings of Indian trails, known only to the savages. Sometimes they made their way through wild cañons strewn with stones; sometimes they climbed painfully up a rough slippery height, or skirted the edge of a precipice. Almost a month was spent in getting through the mountains. Cold, half-starved, fatigued, ragged, footsore, they came out on the other side, more like fugitives than conquerors.