Tom Halpern had been wrong.
Actually, Hugh had Old Knife and a medicine man named Yellow Fox to thank for that. For nearly a year after coming to live with the Pawnees, Hugh continued to suffer from nightmares. One evening, just before supper, Old Knife and Yellow Fox came to him, asking Hugh to accompany them to Yellow Fox's medicine lodge. Hugh did as they asked.
Hugh stayed in the medicine lodge for three days. Before he left, he saw and experienced things that few white men would ever have believed. Yellow Fox told Hugh that two spirits followed him. One was the spirit of a man who had placed a curse upon Hugh at the moment of his death. The other spirit was the spirit of a bear that followed Hugh from another life. Although Hugh would doubt it all later, at the time it was happening Yellow Fox's words rang true to him.
In any event, when he left the medicine lodge, Hugh felt lighter of spirit than he had for a very long time, and he hadn't suffered from nightmares--either of Tom Halpern or of being attacked--since that time. Interestingly enough, after Hugh had tracked the bear, and he and Big Axe shot it, Big Axe gave him a new Pawnee name, "Ta'-Ka Kur'uks", which meant "White Bear", or grizzly.
This seemed to override the name that Big Soldier had already given him "Shoots-In-Darkness", and became his permanent Pawnee name. Although Big Soldier was the Soldier Chief, Big Axe actually outranked him in the tribe and was second only to Old Knife.
Far down the hill from him, and onto the flat of the meadow, Hugh could see Little Feather pulling down their teepee. That was something that was considered to be woman's work. Hugh decided to go and help her with it anyway.
Little Feather was troubled by something, Hugh could see it as he came down the hill. The look on her face when she saw him was one of relief, more than gladness.
"Hello wife," he said to her. He began to help dismantle their portable lodge. "Hello, my husband," she said absently, and kept working.
Hugh wondered what was wrong. In the three years he had known her, Little I rather had always been either joyful and happy, or calm and serene. There was a steadiness about her that Hugh admired. It was something he had seen in few men and fewer women. She reminded him of a ship, deep-drafted and stable, built to hold up under any kind of wind or sea.
Hugh watched her as the two of them began to roll and fold the hides that covered their lodge. Little Feather's face was shadowed with concern. Suddenly, Hugh turned and sat down on the hide as she tried to roll it up. Little Feather shot him an angry look and tried to roll the hide with him on it.
"What are you doing?" she demanded. "We have to make ready to leave! The others will leave without us!"
"Let them," he told her. "We'll catch up."
"But we need to make ready-!"
"Little Feather," Hugh said quietly, "what is wrong?"
She sat back on her knees and sighed, looking down at the hide in front of her. "It is nothing," she told him without looking up, "a bad sign..."
"Tell me," he insisted.
She took a deep breath, then exhaled. "This morning, as you were leaving, I watched you go away, up the hill. When I turned back, there was an owl, over there in the tree, watching me. When our eyes met, he turned and flew away."
"That was it? An owl?"
"It was an omen," she told him. "A bad sign."
They were silent for a moment. Hugh wanted to say something, to tease her for heing silly, but he could see that she was clearly troubled.
"There's more," she said suddenly. "More?"
"Yes. I had a dream. You were in a great canoe, out on the big waters you have spoken of. There was another man there. This man hated you very much."
Hugh thought for a minute.
"What did this man look like?" he asked finally.
"He was a white man. He was tall, like you, but his hair was dark, except for here-" she touched her hairline, at the top of her forehead. "Here, his hair was white."
Hugh nodded. He knew he had often spoken to her about the sea. He may have told her about Tom Halpern, but he was certain he had never described him to her. This was eerie.
Abruptly, he reached down and picked up a stick. Using the stick, he drew four small crosses in the dirt. Then he drew a circle around them.
"There!" he said. "I have made a good sign, to counter the bad ones. Ti-war Uks-ti! Big Magic!"
Little Feather smiled weakly and nodded. The two of them finished their preparations for the trip.
Later, as they were leaving, the travois that they made to carry their things brushed over Hugh's drawing in the dirt, destroying it, but neither Hugh nor Little Feather noticed.
***
Traveling as a whole, the Pawnees were rarely on the move for more than six hours a day, covering at best, fifteen miles.
It was late in the afternoon, nearing the time when the tribe would stop and make camp for the night. During the day, as they traveled, the sky had grown dark with clouds. It might only be a spring rain, or it could be a heavy storm that was headed for them. Wherever they stopped, the indians would have to be prepared to stay for several days. Although the tribe had been through this area many times in the past, Big Soldier had gone ahead to choose the best spot to camp. When he came back, it was already past the time when they would normally have stopped.
"River up ahead," Big Soldier told Hugh. "About half-mile. We cross, then make camp."
They continued onward. When they reached the river Hugh could see why Big Soldier wanted them to get across. The riverbed was a small gorge that ran about twenty feet deep. Directly in the middle of this, the river flowed at a depth of three feet. At this time of year it should have been deeper, and if the storm that threatened was as bad as it looked, it soon would be. Even after crossing, if it stormed, the movements of the tribe could be halted for several days.
Big Soldier had picked the best place for them to cross. Without hesitating, the column of indians began to move down into the river.
Hugh was riding a spirited, rust-colored mare--one of the original three that Old Knife had given him three years earlier--which he had affectionately named Annie. By his best estimate he was now forty-two years old, older than most men in the tribe ever expected to be. By any man's standards, he had led an interesting life. He had been a sailor, a pirate, and now he was an indian. He had expected to live and die on the open sea, and now he was as far away from that as he could ever hope to be, and happier than he had ever been. For all their warlike ways, the Pawnees were essentially a merry, light-hearted people, always ready for a joke, with a love for both the ridiculous and the absurd. Except for rare occasions, Hugh found it hard to be too serious around them.
The river hardly slowed the Pawnees down at all. Big Soldier had found a good spot to cross. The only difficult part of it was climbing the opposite bank, which rose several feet above the side that they approached from, which was a shallow, flat area that probably flooded whenever the river was high. Riding ahead of Little Feather, Hugh crossed the river, barely getting his feet wet. He rode up the opposite bank easily, turning when he reached the other side to wave at Little Feather.
Lucky Hawk was already there. He rode over to where Hugh was.
"Ta'Ka Kur'uks!" Lucky Hawk said, addressing Hugh. "Let us go and hunt! Big Soldier told me that there is a herd of antelope only a short distance from here, to the east. Let us go and get some fresh meat for tonight's meal!"
"That sounds good. Wait a few moment, though. I want to help Little Feather cross the river first-"
There was a rumble, which seemed to come from deep within the earth. Both men thought it was thunder, an advance notice from the approaching storm, but it rontinued on, growing louder until Hugh thought it must be an earthquake.
When he saw what was behind the noise, Hugh's heart shrank.
"Oh, sweet Jesus!" he said under his breath.
From around the bend in the river rushed a wall of water, easily ten feet high and crashing along at an unbelievable speed, pushing whole trees and brush and
debris of all sorts along in its path. Hugh realized immediately that this was why the river had been so shallow. The trees and brush had formed a dam somewhere upstream, slowing the flow to a fraction of what it should have been. Now that dam had burst.
Hugh kicked his horse in the ribs and started back toward the river. Lucky Hawk cut him off, crashing his horse into Hugh's. Even as he did the wall of water went thundering by, washing the half-dozen or so Pawnees who were in the river away as if they had never been there.
"You cannot help her!" Lucky Hawk shouted. "You will only die! Little Feather may be all right! Look!"
In the shallow area where Little Feather and the others were, the water was as yet only knee-deep, but it was deepening quickly. Little Feather and the others had turned and were making their way back toward the opposite side of the river. Suddenly a second wall of water, four feet deep, came rushing around from that side, trapping them and washing them into the center of the raging stream. Spurring their horses, Hugh and Lucky Hawk raced along the river's edge, trying their best to keep sight of Little Feather and the others who had been caught in the flood. The horses were unable to match the speed of the rushing water, and the amount of debris was so great that it was impossible to keep sight of those who had been washed away in the deluge.
At length, the two men were forced to stop and let their horses rest. Before they started up again, rain began to fall in heavy, pelting drops.
Hugh and Lucky Hawk searched along the river, through the storm, for five days. Then the rain stopped. The two men continued looking for six more days. Finally, they turned back, hoping for some sign that they had missed before.
Others, on both sides of the river, joined them in the search. Despite their efforts, no trace of Little Feather, or of eleven others, was ever found.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
IT WAS LATE August before the Ashley-Henry trappers finally stopped traveling and built what the men were calling "The New Fort Henry". The "Old" Fort Henry had been built and abandoned eleven years earlier, in 1811, on the other side of the Rocky Mountains. Andrew Henry had gone that way to escape a disastrous encounter with the Blackfeet. Unfortunately, that fort had been built in the middle of Shoshone territory. The Shoshones were no happier to see the white men that the Blackfeet had been.
When the spring of 1811 arrived, only Henry and a few of his men were left alive. They managed to make it back to civilization, barely. Now, eleven years later, Andrew Henry was trying again. This time, he was hoping for better luck.
If nothing else, they were at least better outfitted for the second expedition. In partnership with Henry was Missouri's first Lieutenant Governor, William Henry Ashley. Ashley was known as a man of wealth and authority. If anyone could get the west opened up, it was he.
The second Fort Henry was located a little over four-hundred yards past the mouth of the Yellowstone River. By their best estimation, the trappers were now about eighteen-hundred miles from St. Louis.
For Jim Bridger, that wasn't nearly far enough.
Jim wanted to be in the mountains. He'd seen enough prairie to last him the rest of his life. And while there were trees along the river, everything beyond was an unchanging as it had been for the last one-thousand miles, which had been nothing but open plains.
The trip had not been entirely uneventful. A month earlier they had met, for first time, the Arikaras. The Arikaras had a reputation for hating whites, but when the trappers stopped at their village, the indians received them warmly. Jim was surprised at how beautiful some of the women were. Henry traded with the Arikaras for forty horses, and the company continued on its way.
From that time on, the company split into two contingents--one on land and one on the water. Tired of sitting in a boat, Jim Bridger was more than happy to be traveling with those who drove the horses.
A week after leaving the Arikara village, they encountered a group of Assiniboines. These indians made a great show of friendship. At the first opportunity they disappeared, taking with them thirty-five of the horses the trappers had purchased from the Arikaras.
There had also been a good many missed meals on the trip. Quite the opposite of what everyone had thought, a lot of the country they traveled through had been amazingly sparse. When you added to that the fact that at least fifteen days had been lost to heavy rains, it meant that a lot of rations had to be consumed that were never meant to be touched before winter.
In early June, the troop had stopped at Cedar Fort. Nine men, under the leadership of a man named Daniel T. Potts, had deserted there, blaming the shortage of food.
Now at least, things were different. They were able to find enough game along the river to feed themselves, and the building of the fort was going well. But Jim Bridger still yearned to see those shining, Rocky Mountains.
***
The second Fort Henry consisted of four small, log houses that were built in a square and connected by a palisade. It would provide shelter for the men and protection against potential attacks by indians, but there were some who thought it was way too small.
Mike Fink was a big man. He was raw-bone and powerfully built. At seventeen, his skill with a rifle was so great that literally no one would compete against him. He had been a riverman his whole life. Legend had it that Mike was halfhorse, half-alligator. He'd been in innumerable scrapes, some of them quite well known. One story had it that he and Davy Crockett had fought for three days, neither getting the better of the other. According to Mike, he had never been bested.
That was about to change.
Now in his fifties, Mike's legend had begun to decline. Like many men who had done much but amassed little, Mike Fink took it upon himself to keep his legnd alive. Not content with having the reputation of being the best keelboatman on the Missouri, Mike talked about himself constantly. Loud by nature, he was gregarious, but not above bullying those around him if he felt the need for it. One man that he bullied once too often was his adopted son, Carpenter.
Mike Fink and Carpenter had been together for years, since Carpenter was a boy. Mike had taught Carpenter to shoot, and for quite a few years the two of them intertained crowds in shooting exhibitions, their favorite trick being to shoot tin cups off of each other's head. Dangerous, but it was a real crowd pleaser. As far as Mike was concerned, Carpenter was his boy.
But the boy had grown into a man. Carpenter was every inch as big as Mike was, and had become an expert riverman in his own right. He chafed at being ordered about by Mike, and by Mike's treatment of him in general.
This was old business between these two, but it was made new again by the unending days of close confinement. One afternoon, Mike pushed Carpenter a little too far, and Carpenter rebelled.
Right or wrong, Mike Fink was not a man to back down from anybody. A bitter fight ensued. When it was over, Mike lay on the ground, with Carpenter standing over him.
Another man might have let it go and realized that he had made a mistake in pushing Carpenter too far. All Mike saw was that he had taken his first real beating, and from a man he considered to be his lesser, a man who, as far as Mike Fink was concerned, owed him everything.
He was not about to forget it.
***
The days passed quickly while the fort was being built. Henry's men watched the river eagerly, expecting the second keelboat to arrive any day, under the command of Jedidiah Smith. The second keelboat would bring them fresh supplies and men, as well as news of anything that might have happened in St. Louis after the first boat had left.
Although he was the youngest man in the company, Jim Bridger was stronger than a good many of the others. Four years as a blacksmith's apprentice had given him strength that would have been, otherwise, almost impossible to earn.
Jim enjoyed the building of the fort. He was able to learn some things about construction that he hadn't known before. It was good to use his muscles again after months of sitting on the keelboat. He was down next to the river with some of the others, cuttin
g timbers, when he saw the boat. A quick thrill of excitement ran through him. This turned to curiosity when he realized that the boat wasn't theirs.
This boat was smaller than the two that Ashley-Henry owned, and it carried about one third of the men that the trappers were expecting. Jim was surprised to see another group of men this far west. His surprise turned to concern when he realized who they were and why they were there.
Like the Ashley-Henry group, these men were trappers. They worked for a man named Joshua Pilcher, of the Missouri Fur Company. The two men in charge were Micheal E. Immel and Robert Jones. Their plans were simple--get ahead of the Ashley-Henry party and stake out the best trapping areas for themselves. The way they planned to do that was almost an insult.
In 1807, a man named Manuel Lisa had gone up the Missouri with a crew of forty men. Ahead of his time, Lisa built a fort at the mouth of the Bighorn River. He returned a year later with a rich load of furs.
In 1810, Andrew Henry had stopped at Fort Manuel before going on to what turned out to be a disastrous encounter with the Blackfeet at Three Forks Basin, in which thirty of his party were slain, and resulted in his going over the Rockies to establish the first Fort Henry.
Immel and Jones were planning to repeat that move. They were heading upriver, past the Ashley-Henry party, and on up to Fort Manuel, at the mouth of the Bighorn. They would spend the winter there, spreading westward toward Three Forks with the spring thaw. This would put them way ahead of the Ashley-Henry men, and would give them the rights to the rich load of furs that waited there.
Hugh Glass - Bruce Bradley Page 14
