"Well done, Will Clark!" said Meriwether Lewis, when, at length, one cold winter morning, they stood within the walls of the completed fortress. "Now we can have our own fireplace and go on with our work in comfort. The collection is growing splendidly!"
"Yes, Mr. Jefferson will find that we have been busy," rejoined Clark. "The barge will go down well loaded in the spring. They'll have the best of it--downhill, and over country they have crossed."
"True," mused Lewis. "We are at a blank wall here. We lack a guide now, that is sure. Two interpreters we have, who may or may not be of use, but no one knows the country. But now--you know our other new interpreter, the sullen chap, Charbonneau--that polygamous scamp with two or three Indian wives?"
"Yes, and a surly brute he is!"
"Well, it seems that last summer Charbonneau married still another wife, a girl not over sixteen years of age, I should judge. He bought her--she was a slave, a captive brought down from somewhere up the river by a war-party. She is a pleasant girl, and always smiles. She seems friendly to us--see the moccasins she made for me but now. And I only had to knock her husband down once for beating her!"
"Lucky man!" grinned William Clark. "I have knocked him down half a dozen times, and she has made me no moccasins at all. But what then?"
"So far as I can learn, that Indian girl is the only human being here who has ever seen the Stony Mountains. The girl says that she was taken captive years ago somewhere near the summit of the Stony Mountains. Above here a great river comes in, which they call the Yellow Rock River--the 'Ro'jaune,' Jussaume calls it. Very well. Many days' or weeks' journey toward the west, this river comes again within a half-day's march of the Missouri. That is near the summit of the mountains; and this girl's people live there."
"By the Lord, Merne, you're a genius for getting over new country!"
"Wait. I find the child very bright--very clear of mind. And listen, Will--the mind of a woman is better for small things than that of a man. They pick up trifles and hang on to them. I'd as soon trust that girl for a guide out yonder as any horse-stealing warrior in a hurry to get into a country and in a hurry to get out of it again. Raiding parties cling to the river-courses, which they know; but she and her people must have been far to the west of any place these adventurers of the Minnetarees ever saw. Sacajawea she calls herself--the 'Bird Woman.' I swear I look upon that name itself as a good omen! She has come back like a dove to the ark, this Bird Woman. William Clark, we shall reach the sea--or, at least, you will do so, Will," he concluded.