hammered links of Drouillard's trap into awls to exchange for bread.
The tireless hunters scoured the country. Farther and farther had scattered the game. Even the bears had departed. Thirty-three people ate a deer and an elk, or four deer a day. There was no commissariat for this little army but its own rifles. And yet, supplies must be laid in for crossing the mountains.
Every day Captain Lewis looked at the rising river and the melting snows of the Idaho Alps.
"That icy barrier, which separates me from my friends and my country, from all which makes life estimable—patience—patience—"
"The snow is yet deep on the mountains. You will not be able to pass them until the next full moon, or about the first of June," said the Indians.
"Unwelcome intelligence to men confined to a diet of horse meat and roots!" exclaimed Captain Lewis.
Finally even horse-flesh failed. Suspecting the situation, Chief Red Wolf came and said, "The horses on these hills are ours. Take what you need."
He wore a tippet of human scalps, but, says Lewis, "we have, indeed, on more than one occasion, had to admire the generosity of this Indian, whose conduct presents a model of what is due to strangers in distress."
Gradually the snows melted, and the high water subsided.
"The doves are cooing. The salmon will come," said the Indians. Blue flowers of the blooming camas covered the prairies like a lake of silver. With sixty-five horses and all the dried horse meat they could carry, on June 16, 1806, Lewis and Clark started back over the Bitter Root Range on the Lolo trail by which they had entered.
