place as Pat and George—Pennsylvania; Silas Goodrich and Thomas Howard and Hugh Hall, of Massachusetts; Dick Windsor, said to hail also from Massachusetts.
Peter knew them all; fine men; but he liked Pat and George Shannon the best.
Then, there were the Frenchmen: gay old Cruzatte, with his one eye and his lively fiddle; Francois Labiche, the boatman who danced on his head; Baptiste Lepage, who joined at the Mandan villages to take the place of one Liberté who had run away; George Drouillard, the hunter; Chaboneau and Sa-ca-ja-we-a, the Bird-woman, who was to help the party into the mountains and make friends of the Snakes. And little Toussaint, the beady-*eyed baby—a great pet.
And York, black, enormous York, the great medicine, whom all the Indians so highly respected.
Yes, this was a glorious company, from which a boy might learn much.
So, in a line, the eight boats proceeded up the Missouri, through present North Dakota. The wind blew sometimes fair, sometimes adverse; sometimes so strong that it lifted the fine sand in dense clouds above the river and the men's eyes were made sore. Captain Lewis's tightly-cased watch stopped and would not run.
At the end of the first week, when the night's camp was breaking up, for the day's journey, George Shannon espied a black animal slinking through the grass.
"Wolf!" uttered Pat. "An' a black wan, for the
