tides—let's look about, then," answered Captain Clark. "The Indians say that skins and meat are abundant a little way south."
Captain Lewis found it—a good site, on the south side of the bay formed by the mouth of the Columbia, and three miles up a little river called to-day the Lewis and Clark River. It was back ten miles from the ocean, and in the midst of tall pines, with great shaking bogs near, on which elk fed.
The first fair morning, which was December 7, camp was moved to the new grounds.
The walls of the seven cabins rose fast; and when it came time to put on the roofs, Pat, the boss carpenter, was delighted to find a species of pine that split into boards ten feet long, and two feet wide, with never a knot or crack.
"The finest puncheons I iver have seen," he asserted, "for floors an' roofs both. We'll be snug an' dry in a jiffy, an' all ready for Christmas."
"It's a far cry back to last Christmas, Pat," spoke George. "We've come through a lot of country."
"An' here we are," reminded Pat.
Yes; Christmas—Peter's first Christmas—was indeed a long way behind. That Christmas of 1804 had been celebrated in new Fort Mandan among the Mandans and Minnetarees beside the snowy Missouri River. What were Chiefs Big White and Black Cat doing now? Was Fort Mandan being kept ready for the return of the Long Knife and the Red Head?
