The Young Alaskans on the Missouri Part 32

"That's the way I figured it, sir," replied Rob, smiling. "Billy'll get something on hoppers, at this season, for that's what the trout and grayling are feeding on, right now."

Sure enough, in not much over a half hour, Billy and Jesse met them at the bridge, with five fine fish--two grayling and three trout--Jesse very much excited.

"All you have to do is just to sneak up and drop a hopper right in the deep water at the bends, and they nail it!" said he. "Billy showed me.

He always carries a few hooks and a line in his vest pocket, he told me.

Fish all through this country!"

It took the boys but a few minutes to split the fish down the back and skewer them flat, without scaling them at all. Then they hung them before the fire, flesh side to the flame, and soon they were sizzling in their own fat.

"Now, you can't put them on a plate, Billy!" said Jesse, as Billy began searching in the pack. "Just some salt--that's all. You have to eat it right off the skin, you know."

"Well, that ain't no way to eat," grumbled Billy. "It's awful mussy-looking, to my way of thinking."

"Try it," said Uncle d.i.c.k, whittling himself a little fork out of a willow branch. And very soon Billy also was a believer that the 'old way' of the Arctic Indians is about the best way to cook a fish.

Now, having appeased their hunger, they saddled again and made their way slowly to the ranch of Mrs. Culver at the Picnic Spring, as the place was called--in time for Jesse and John each to catch a brace of great trout before dusk had come.

They now were all willing to vote their experience of the past two days to be about the pleasantest and most satisfying of any of the trip, which now they felt had drawn to a natural close. That evening they all, including their sprightly hostess, bent late over the table, covered with maps and books.

"I surely will be sorry to see you leave," said the quaint little woman of the high country. "It's not often I see many who know any history of the big river, or who care for it. But now I can see that you all surely do. You know it, and you love it, too."

"If you know it well, you can't well help loving it, I reckon," said Billy Williams.

CHAPTER x.x.x

SPORTING PLANS

"Let's see, Rob--what day of the month is this?" began John, the following morning, when, their bills for the horses and themselves all discharged and their motor car purring at the gate, they bade farewell to their interesting friend and prepared to head eastward once more.

"Well," said Rob, "we were at the Three Forks on July 27th, and we spent a week getting to the Shoshoni Cove--that's August 4th; and we left on August 5th, and got to Monida August 6th, and came here that day; and day before yesterday was the 7th, and we came down the mountain yesterday, the 8th; this must be about August 9th, I suppose."

"That's right," said Uncle d.i.c.k; "giving us a full week or even more if we want it, to explore the Madison Fork, which is another head of the big river. Then we'll wind up on the Gallatin head, at Billy's place, and figure there what we want to do next. We might well stop at the head of Henry's Lake, and in a day or so we'll pick up Billy's car there and be on our way, with a camp outfit of our own again."

Their journey over the clean, hard road around the rim of the wide Alaska Basin was one of delight. They sped down the farther slope of the Red Rock Pa.s.s, along the bright waters of Duck Creek, until early in the afternoon they raised the wide and pleasing view of Henry's Lake, one of the most beautiful valleys of the Rockies. Around this the road led them comfortably enough to the cl.u.s.ter of log cabins and tents which was now to make their next stopping place. Here they sent back the Monida car, whose driver said he could make the Picnic Creek camp by nightfall if he drove hard. Soon they all were made comfortable in the cabins of this "dude ranch," as the Western people call any place where tourists are taken in for pay.

The proprietor of this place was an old-time settler who could remember the days of buffalo and beaver in this country, and who told them marvelous tales of the enormous number of trout in the lake.

"Go down to the landing, below the tamarack swamp," said he, "and get a boat and just push out over the moss a little way. Off to the right you'll see a stake sticking up in the water. Drop your anchor a little way from it and cast that way; it marks a spring, or cold hole, and they lie in there."

The three boys did as advised, and to their great surprise began to catch trout after trout as they cast their flies toward the indicated spot. They all were about the same size, just under two pounds, all native or cutthroat trout. They soon tired of it, and returned nearly all of their catch to the water as soon as taken. Sometimes a fish, tired with the struggle, would lie at the bottom, on its side, as though dead, but if touched with the end of the landing-net handle would recover and swiftly dart away.

"From all I learn," said Rob, "this fis.h.i.+ng is too easy to be called sport--they lie in all the spring holes and creek mouths. This is the head of the Henry's Fork of the Snake River, and a great sp.a.w.ning ground. Now, you want to remember you're not on Missouri waters, but Pacific waters. If Lewis and Clark had come over that shallow gap yonder--the Raynolds Pa.s.s, which cuts off the Madison Valley--they'd have been on one of the true heads of the Columbia. But they probably never would have got through, that year, at least."

The young anglers found that their catch of trout created no enthusiasm at the camp. The cook told them that he didn't care for these trout very much, because you had to soak them overnight in salt and water to make them fit to eat, they tasted so muddy in the summertime. So they said they would not fish any more at that place.

That evening as they sat about their table engaged with their maps and notebooks, they were joined by Jim, the son of the rancher, a young man still in the half uniform of the returned soldier, with whom they all rapidly made friends, the more so since he proved very well posted in the geography of that part of the country. He readily agreed to take the young explorers on a trip over the Raynolds Pa.s.s on the following morning, so that they might get a better idea of the exact situation of the Madison River.

They made an early start, leaving their Uncle d.i.c.k and Billy Williams at the ranch to employ themselves as they liked. It was a drive of only a few miles from the northern end of Henry's Lake, along a very good road, to the crest of the gentle elevation which lay to the northward. The young ranchman pulled up the car at last and pointed to an iron plug driven down into the ground.

"Here's the Divide," said he. "You now are on top of the Rocky Mountains, although it doesn't look like it."

"Why," said Jesse, "this looks like almost any sort of prairie country.

We have been in lots of places higher than this."

"Yes," said his new friend, "you can see lots of places higher than this any way you look. She's only six thousand nine hundred and eleven feet here. There are snow-topped mountains on every side of you. Where we are right now is the upper line of the state of Idaho. Idaho sticks up in here in a sort of pocket--swings up to the north and then back again.

The crest of the Divide is what makes the state line between Montana and Idaho. Four feet that way we are on Idaho ground, but there's Montana east of us, north of us, and west of us.

"Over southwest, where you came over the Red Rock Pa.s.s, is the head of the Missouri. On north of here is the Madison River; it comes in, running northwest out of the upper corner of Yellowstone Park. We could drive down there in a little while to the mouth of the West Fork, but I think we can get better fis.h.i.+ng somewhere else.

"If we went on, an hour or so, we would come to the mouth of the Madison Canon. Up toward the head of that is the big power dam--ninety feet high it is--which cuts off the big Madison, and the South Fork, too.

That makes a lake that runs over back into the country. They say it is seventy miles or so around the sh.o.r.e line, I don't know just how far.

That place is full of big fish, and when you catch it just right, there is great sport there. I don't call it sport to fish for trout under that big dam. They jump and jump there, day after day, until they wear themselves out. There ought to be a ladder in that dam, but there isn't."

"I suppose here is where the road comes down from Three Forks, over this Raynold's Pa.s.s," said John, with pencil in hand, ready to continue his own personal map of the country.

"No, not exactly," continued the young ranchman. "This road runs up to Virginia City. They tell me that between there and Three Forks the roads are hard to get over."

"But they come down here from b.u.t.te, don't they?" inquired Rob. "I thought this was right on the b.u.t.te road."

"No, the best road to b.u.t.te comes in over Red Rock Pa.s.s just exactly where you came in yourselves. Only it runs along to the north side of the Centennial Valley and not on the south side, where you came in. They have to follow up the Red Rock Valley to Dillon, where it comes in from the north. That's the quickest and easiest way to get between b.u.t.te and Henry's Lake. It is something over a hundred miles."

"Well, anyway," argued John, "this is the way Billy Williams will have his car come in from Bozeman."

"No," smiled the young man, "you are wrong again on that. The Bozeman road cannot come down the Gallatin, and through to here, south of the Three Forks. When we come over to the edge of Yellowstone Park I will show you how the road runs to Bozeman. It angles in north, to the east of the South Fork of the Madison. Then it crosses the main river and swings off to the northeast, and then north up to Bozeman, in the valley of the Gallatin River."

"Well," said Rob, turning to his younger a.s.sociates, "that seems to give us a pretty good look in at this whole proposition of the Missouri River. We have been on the head of the Jefferson Fork; we are going fis.h.i.+ng on the South Fork of the Madison and motor to the head of the North Fork, inside of Yellowstone Park, if we wanted to; and then we are going on up to the Gallatin and maybe east on that to its head in the Bozeman Pa.s.s. In that way we would be covering all three of the great tributaries."

"Yes, and be having some pretty good sport besides," said the young ranchman. "I will promise you, if you don't like this lake fis.h.i.+ng--I don't much care for it myself--we will make up a party and go over and camp out on the South Fork of the Madison as soon as your car comes in from Bozeman. I will take my car over, too, and we'll pick up a young chap about your age, Mr. Rob, at one of the ranches below. His name is Chester Ellicott, and he's descended from the Andrew Ellicott of Pennsylvania, who taught astronomy to Meriwether Lewis.

"Then we can spend a couple of days or so over there on what I think is the finest fis.h.i.+ng river in the world. You will still be right on your road to Bozeman and the Gallatin, because you will then be only about six or eight miles from the town of Yellowstone, and near where the Bozeman road comes in."

"That certainly does sound mighty good to me," said Jesse. "I haven't caught a fish now for a couple of days, except those we caught at the lake this afternoon. There were so many of them, it was too easy."

"Well," said their new companion, "you won't find catching grayling on the South Fork quite so easy as all that. I always liked stream fis.h.i.+ng myself better than lake fis.h.i.+ng."

"Do we wade over there, in that stream?" asked Rob. "We haven't got our waders along, ourselves, not even rubber boots."

"We'll fix you up somehow at the place," responded the other. "My friends in here have all got waders. You could fish from the banks, but it is better to have waders, so you can cross once in a while. There are holes in there ten or fifteen feet deep, and I will show you two or three hundred grayling and white fish on the bottom of some of those holes. The water is clear as air, and just about as cold as ice. You couldn't have come at a better time for fis.h.i.+ng, because the gra.s.shoppers are on now and even the whitefish are feeding on the surface."

"I wish Billy's man would hurry up with the car," complained Jesse. "He said to be down here in about a week. We might have to wait an extra day."

"Well, out here," smiled his new-found friend, "we don't mind waiting a day or so, but I suppose you folks from back in the East get in more of a hurry. Anyhow, we will promise you a good time."

They now returned to the ranch house at the head of Henry's Lake, without going on to the Madison River below the mouth of the canon, where the young rancher thought the fis.h.i.+ng would not be so much worth while. To their great surprise, they found yet another car waiting for them at the camp--none less than Billy Williams's car, with all their camp outfit. This had been brought down from Bozeman by Con O'Brien, one of Billy's neighbors in the Gallatin, as they learned when they had had time to make inquiries.