Page:The Conquest.djvu/363

 front, perhaps, tried to stop but stumbled an' fell and broke his spear. I ran back, snatched the point, and pinned him to the earth.

"The rest set up a hidjus yell. While they stopped beside ther fallen comrade, almost faintin' I ran inter the cottonwoods on the borders uv the shore an' plunged ento the river.

"Diving under a raft of drift-timber agin the upper point of a little island, I held my head up in a little opening amongst the trunks of trees covered with limbs and brushwood.

"Screechin', yellin' like so many divils, they come onto the island. Thro' the chinks I seed 'em huntin', huntin', huntin', all day long. I only feared they might set the raft on fire.

"But at night they gave it up; the voices grew faint and fer away; I swam cautiously daown an' acrost, an' landin' travelled all night.

"But I wuz naked. The broilin' sun scorched my skin, my feet were filled with prickly-pears, an' I wuz hungry. Game, game plenty on the hills, but I hed no gun. It was seven days to Lisa's fort on the Bighorn.

"I remembered the Injun turnip that Sacajawea found in there, an' lived on it an' sheep sorrel until I reached Lisa's fort, blistered from head to heel."

As in a vision the General saw it all. Judy's eyes were filled with tears. Through the Gallatin, the Indian Valley of Flowers, where Bozeman stands to-day, the lonely trapper had toiled in the July sun and over the Bozeman Pass, whither Clark's cavalcade had ridden two summers before.

Six years now had Coalter been gone from civilisation, but he had discovered the Yellowstone Park. No one in St. Louis would believe his stories of hot water spouting in fountains, "Coalter's Hell," but William Clark traced his route on the map that he sent for publication.

John Coalter now received his delayed reward for the expedition,—double pay and three hundred acres of land,—and went up to find Boone at Charette.

"What! Pierre Menard!" Another boat