The Pierced Noses who had guided across the mountains went with Captain Lewis a short distance still, to show him the shortest route along the Road-to-the-Buffalo. Before they quit, in order to look for their friends the Oo-tla-shoots or Flat-heads, the captain gave them presents of meat, and exchanged names with the leader, who was a young chief.
The young chief was henceforth to be known as the Long Knife, and Captain Lewis was to be known as Yo-me-kol-lick, or White Bear-skin Unfolded.
It proved to be only nine days’ travel to the White-bear Islands camp at the head of the Falls of the Missouri, and during all the way not an Indian was sighted, although fresh sign was discovered――“Blackfeet!” asserted Drouillard. “De Gros-ventres of de Prairie.”
“Those Big-bellies must be bad Injuns, I’m thinkin’, by the way everywan’s afraid of ’em,” said Pat.
“Very bad,” asserted Peter. For even the Otoes of the south feared the northern “Gros-ventres” as much as they did the Sioux.
There had been plenty of buffalo, bellowing all the nights; but there had been a tremendous amount of mosquitoes, too, which bit so that even the little black dog howled with pain.
Now, here at the old camp were the “white bears,” as pugnacious as before. One treed Hugh McNeal and kept him treed near half a day, after Hugh had broken his gun over the bear’s head.
Nobody had disturbed the articles that had been left here last summer. Some things had spoiled from dampness; but the frame of the iron canoe was all right, and so were the cottonwood wagon-wheels.
“Gass, I’m going to leave you in charge, here,” said the captain. “You will wait till the Ordway party come with the canoes; then you will move the canoes and baggage, by the portage trail, to the foot of the falls, and proceed on down the river. I shall take Drouillard and the two Fields, scout northward and strike the Maria’s River, which I wish to follow down to the Missouri. I will meet you at the mouth of the Maria’s River on the fifth day of August――if all goes well.”
“Sure, Cap’n, do ye think three men’ll be enough for ye?” blurted Pat. “Ye’re goin’ up where the bloody Big Bellies live. Give me Peter alone, an’ take the rist. Peter an’ I are plenty for this camp, till Ordway comes.”