Everybody talked up at once. “So Mike Fink is dead! I don’t hardly believe it!”
“Well, Mike had it acomin’ sometime, I guess.”
“Two more gone under. Well, well. Too bad.”
Major Henry raised his hand, the long fringes on his buckskin sleeve swishing a little. “There’s still more, boys.” Major Henry turned to look down at General Ashley seated beside him. “General, before I tell it, I’d like to suggest something.”
“Talk away, man,” General Ashley said, slapping at a fly on his crossed blue knee. “I’m short of ideas as it is. We want to look at all sides of the thing.”
“Well, General.” Major Henry’s lips thinned and his teeth gleamed white. “Well, General, I don’t think it’s a good idea to hang out all the wash until we know for deadsure we’ve nothing but friends present.” Major Henry looked them all in the eye. “Men, some of us are going on. Those who haven’t got the guts to stick can pack up and leave now. And go down as deserters in my book.”
General Ashley jumped up. His face reddened. “Wait, Andy, wait. I wouldn’t—”
Major Henry was firm. He raised his head again. “Just a minute yourself, General. I think I know what I’m doing. I just wanted to see how many men, and I mean men, we have left, is all. Men, not squaws.”
“Well, I still think it’s some risky to put it that way,” General Ashley said again, “risky—”
“General, let me handle this. I think I know my men.” Major Henry stared them all in the eye, one by one. “All right, let them who ain’t of a mind to go, let them get aboard Leavenworth’s keelboat pronto.”
Silence and the wild Missouri roushing.
At last, with a sigh, Jack Larrison got up. He balanced on a trembling leg. “I’m sorry, Major, but I think I’ve had my fill of red-devil fighting. It’s onhuman, that’s what it is.”
“If that’s the way your stick floats, Jack, that’s it.”
Jack Larrison hobbled off and painfully stepped down out of sight.
Then Dufrain stood up. “I’ve had enough too, Major. I’m sorry.”
“You’re welcome, Dufrain. Any more?”
With sad eyes, General Ashley watched some twenty of his lads get up and slide down out of sight below the riverbank.
“Any more?” Major Henry called out. “Now’s the time to speak up.”
Silence again and the wild Missouri rousting.
“All right, men, that’s fine. Now I’ll tell you the rest of the news we just got. As you know, Jones and Immel belonged to the opposition. So that wasn’t exactly a direct loss to us. But”—Major Henry’s grave blue eyes searched through the remaining crew of thirty tired men—“but, we ourselves lost a half-dozen killed just a week ago. By the Blackfeet.”
Again a collective sigh rose from the men.
General Ashley took over then. “Mountain men, friends, I know it’s a terrible gamble. We may not only lose our shirts but our topknots as well. But if we win, we can come back rich men. You can’t get rich being a fifteen-cent millionaire.”
Silence. A cough. Inward looks. Fingers busy in the dry grass.
At last a tall lean man stood up. It was Silas Hammond. During the battle on the Ree sand bar, Silas had been stunned by a flying horsehoof and had been left for dead. While unconscious he had been scalped by the Rees. Yet somehow in the melee, after he came to, Silas, like Jack Larrison, had managed to escape in the night by swimming the river.
Silas removed his cap. It was a tight one made of beaverskin. The moment he took it off, his whole face sagged horribly. All eyes looked to where he’d been scalped. The crusted scar on his skull looked like a chip of black bark. The scar was healing very slowly along the edges. The scalping had cut the nerves of his facial muscles, and the skin under his eyes and off his jowls hung slack like a mournful hound’s.
Silas said, “Gen’ral, I reckon I kin risk my hair again.”
There was a nervous laugh.
Hugh couldn’t get over it. What a man Silas was to offer his life again. Ae, what a man. And if Silas could risk his life once more, Old Hugh could too.
Hugh got to his feet. Staggering a little on his game leg and waving Old Bullthrower overhead, Hugh said, “Gen’ral, this child hates an American what ain’t seen Indians skulped or don’t know a Pawnee moccasin from a Comanche. I admit I’ve sometimes thought of makin’ tracks back to white diggin’s again, where the beds is soft and the wimmen white and the red niggers only a dream in the night. Ae, many a time I’ve sighed for the bread and beer of the old days. But then I remember fresh fleece from a buffler’s hump, young cow at that, and sweet boudins just barely crimped with fire, and still sweeter beavertail. And I remember places where a child can do just as he pleases to, as far as he can see, good or bad. Where a child can sing if he wants to, or shut up if he wants to. Where meat never spoils. Gen’ral, seein’ them cowards pull out for white diggin’s while our Silas here is still willin’ to risk his topknot”—the single arteries down each side Hugh’s nose began to wriggle like lively red angleworms—“Gen’ral, I know what’s good for this old hoss. If I have to, I’d rather be skulped by a red devil than skun by a nabob. Give me a little ‘bacca, a plew a plug, and plenty of duPont powder and Galena balls for Ol’ Bullthrower, and a new Green River knife, and I’m off with ee. Whoopee! This hoss can’t wait to shine with fresh buffler meat. Free mountains, here I come.”
General Ashley couldn’t help but laugh. His red face beamed. “Hurrah for Hugh! That’s what I like to hear.” General Ashley laughed some more. “Though I want to warn you, Hugh, you’ve got to follow orders. You’re not going to play balky horse again like you did up by the Rees. Each man has to do his part when the order is given.”
Right behind Hugh came Prayin’ Diah Smith, and then Jim Clyman, and after them the boy Jim Bridger, and quiet book-learned John S. Fitzgerald, and proud George Yount, and Augie Neill and Jim Anderson, and durable Tom Fitzpatrick, and gaunt Allen and horseface Rose the interpreter—all the lads who’d come to parley under the cottonwood.
That same night General Ashley assigned thirteen of the men to Major Henry’s brigade. They would return with the major to the post on the Yellowstone and the Missouri. Among the thirteen were Hugh Glass, the boy Jim Bridger, John S. “Fitz” Fitzgerald, Augie Neill, and Jim Anderson. The other seventeen mountain men were assigned to Captain Diah Smith’s party, which would leave for the Black Hills as soon as he could get supplies together.
Also that same night Hugh Glass had Clerk Bonner write a letter for him. Hugh gave the letter, along with a bundle of personals, to the captain of Leavenworth’s keelboat and asked that both be mailed in St. Louis.
The letter was for Johnnie Gardner’s father and it read:
Dr Sir:
My painful duty it is to tell you of the deth of yr son wh befell at the hands of the indians 2n June in the early morning. He lived a little while after he was shot and asked me to inform you of his sad fate. We brought him to the ship where he soon died. Mr. Smith a young man of our company made a powerful prayer wh moved us all greatly and I am persuaded John died in peace. His body we buried with others near this camp and marked the grave with a log. His things we will send to you. The savages are greatly treacherous. We traded with them as friends but after a great storm of rain and thunder they came at us before light and many were hurt. I myself was shot in the leg. Master Ashley is bound to stay in these parts till the traitors are rightly punished.
yr obt svt
Hugh Glass
4
IT WAS late August, the Moon of Plums Ripening.
On the afternoon of the twenty-eighth, on the fourth day out from Ft. Kiowa, going northwest across country and well away from the Missouri and the Rees, Major Henry sent Old Hugh ahead to make meat for the evening meal. The boy Jim Bridger and book-learned Fitz Fitzgerald were assigned to go along with Hugh. Major Henry made it a rule never to send out a hunting or scouting party of less than three men.
&
nbsp; The three of them were mounted on good-looking ponies, Hugh on a grayblue stallion he called Old Blue, the boy Jim on a dashing sorrel he called Maggie, and quiet Fitz on a spotted red-and-white mare he called Pepper. Fitz’s mare had a habit of every now and then lowering its head and snorting wildly. She had once been hit by a rattler and she was still shy of the ground. She was also extremely sensitive to Indian smells, and twice she had suddenly taken her head and galloped furiously across the prairie a mile or more before Fitz could get her under control again.
The boy Jim was tall, well over six feet, heavy-limbed, with blunt knuckles and blunt cheekbones and blunt forehead. He had the heavy elbows and large knees of a colt. He walked with a rolling, clumsy, pigeon-toed lift of foot. His hair was auburn and he wore it long, gathered up in a knot in back, with a round beaverskin capping it. He was seventeen, and for all his being a centershot and a handy blacksmith he still had the air of a greenhorn about him. Only occasionally did the beginnings of a canny Scot shine through his innocence. When excited, his blue eyes turned a very light blue, as if a moon might be coming up behind them.
Fitz Fitzgerald was a much different kind of man. Fitz was of medium height and had the slender frame of the city-bred man. He walked stylish, toes out—a manner Hugh despised and which he attributed to Fitz’s having been exposed to a little schooling. For all his small size, Fitz was well-put-together, quick, fluid in motion, and was surprisingly tough. He had brown hair and the alert hazel eyes and pink cheeks of the Irishman. He was a downer and had turndown lips; was at all times quietly practical. He rarely laughed, and when he did, he roared all out of proportion to the humor involved. Hugh often noted that even when Fitz sat silent he looked restless, like a kettle about to tremble with boiling water.
The three rode well ahead of the main party, some four miles, traversing a crest of long swollen slopes overlooking Worthless Creek to the west with Glad Valley coming up ahead on the north. Far to the west reared a mesa of dull red rock called Thunder Butte. The men had been using Thunder Butte as a landmark for some twenty miles and now, at last, were directly east of it. The sun was setting upon it and gold light limned all its silhouette, while red and then rust deepened the shadow on its near side. The Butte looked like a huge mammary sliced off at the top exactly at the nipple. The Sioux claimed every passing thunderstorm struck it with lightning; that the thunder which followed always knocked down some of the dull red rock from its edges and sent it crashing to its foot. The Sioux spoke of it as the pulpit of the Great Spirit Wakantanka. The Butte was also used as an aerie by golden eagles. Around it on all sides—east, west, north, south—the long tan sloping bluffs and hills lay stretched out like languorous mountain lions.
Old Hugh had sailed all the blue oceans, from Hammerfest to the Furneaux Islands, and had seen calm seas and mad seas, and looking out from under his deep gray brows, Old Hugh saw the somber farspread oceanlike plains as another vast sea, except that it was tan not blue. The mounding waves and the hollowing troughs were hauntingly familiar. Even the occasional brush in the ravines he recognized—it was flotsam washing in the wave troughs. He also recognized Thunder Butte—it was an island volcano rising out of the black-green deeps of the Pacific. It wouldn’t have been too much of a surprise to Hugh to see the Butte suddenly blow its cap and spout red lava and gray mud over the rolling expanse.
The far prairie horizons resembled sea horizons too. They undulated mistily, and mistily joined earth and sky together. Far hilltop and lowering cumulus cloud blurred off together. The earth was an immane brown dish and the sky an immense blue bowl, and where they met they blended off into each other.
Old Hugh peered out at it, gray eyes narrowed, sparkling. His lips thinned under his beard and the gray fur under his nose and over his cheeks moved.
Ae, far from kith and kin it was, with nothing but the strange new all around and ahead. And for that, perhaps, all the better. The far country was never too far. Over the next hill might be the Seven Cities of Cibola at last.
The boy Jim on his frolicsome sorrel mare galloped toward a small knoll. For one who had worked in a smithy most of his young life, the boy rode his horse well, rode it as if he’d grown to the animal. The longshanked lad had some give-and-take in the lower six inches of his backbone. Bending Reed had made a new yellow buckskin suit for Jim, and every time the horse rose and fell in its gallop, the fringes, still long, rose and snapped with it in rustling throws. The mare’s hooves beat on the hard ground in a steady rhythmic clopping gallop.
The boy Jim had barely crested the knoll when he reined in his horse sharply, ducked his head, quickly backed the horse down the knoll again. He waved his flintlock for Hugh and Fitz to come on cautiously.
“What is it, lad, varmint or red devil?” Hugh asked when they drew abreast.
“Varmint!” Jim said. Jim’s young blue eyes were jumping. “Buffler.”
All three swung to the ground and tied their ponies to a bullberry bush in a little draw. Crouched over, rifles ready, with Hugh limping along and Jim ambling pigeon-toed and Fitz toeing out, they crept up the knoll. The knoll was crested over with patches of prickly-pear cactus and sandy ant mounds.
“Where?” Hugh asked.
Jim pointed, fringes on his buckskin sleeve swishing.
Straight ahead of them, across Glad Valley, just at the edge of a brushy ravine, four heavy tanbrown objects moved slowly out into the open.
“‘Tis buffler at that,” Fitz said. Fitz wore an old gray wool hat, and his eyes were in shadow as he looked out from under the brim. “Buffler.”
“Them’s my thoughts,” Jim said.
Behind them Fitz’s horse snorted nervously.
Hugh stood stock-still. The gray whiskers under his ears moved. Hugh looked at the four tanbrown critters and then looked around at Fitz’s jumpy horse.
Jim danced pigeon-toed in the dry tan grass. “Shall we ride for ‘em head on, Hugh? The wind’s against us.”
“Wait,” Hugh said. “Wait.” Hugh stared at the dark objects awhile. He watched them move across the glade. Hugh said finally, “Lads, somehow I don’t like it.”
“What? Hugh, old coon, you must be blind!” Jim said.
“Blind or no, I’ve seen sign the last mile or so.”
“Sign?”
“What made them whitetail goats we saw awhile back go streaking over the hills, if humans warn’t behind them? And who’s in these diggin’s but red devils, and the worst kind, Rees? We better wait for the rest of the party to come up, I’m thinkin’, if we mean to save our skins.”
Young joy fled Jim’s face. Brow furrowed, hand shading his eyes, Jim looked across toward the grazing tanbrown creatures again. “But, Hugh, them critter there hain’t been roused by them humans of your’n. Maybe them whitetail antelope ran because they heard us through the ground. And not red devils.”
Hugh said, “Fitz, ye’ve growed some. What do you say?”
The down curve in Fitz’s mouth deepened. “They do look a little on the big side, I’ll say that.” Fitz looked back at his horse Pepper; frowned. “And she smells somethin’.”
“That’s it,” Hugh said, waggling his old gray head. “Lads, I say they’re—”
Jim was still jumping. “Hugh, old hoss, ye must be blind! I say there’s our meat for the major. I’m all for chargin’ them.” And with that, Jim clumsed back to his sorrel mare; forked her; gave her a whack with the butt of his rifle; shouted, “Hep-ah! Let’s make tracks, Maggie!” and was off for the brown critters in the glade.
Hugh looked blankly at Fitz a moment and Fitz looked at Hugh.
“Now if that don’t put us in a curious fix,” Hugh growled. “Well, Fitz, it’s kill or cure now, if them ain’t buffler. C’mon, we’d better chase after the lad to see what he’s got himself into. And us.”
Quickly Hugh and Fitz ran back to their mounts; hopped up; rode after Jim.
The four creatures seemingly didn’t hear or see Jim come at first. They grazed peacefully
out into the open away from the dense bushes in the ravine.
But when Jim was almost halfway there, the tanbrown buffalo skins on the humps of all four critters suddenly slid off and the humps lifted up and all four critters became two-legged naked Indians riding four-legged tanbrown ponies.
“Whoa!” Hugh shouted. Hugh rose in his stirrups; roared with all his great voice, “Jim, back! Back, lad, back!”
“Rees!” Fitz exclaimed, seeing the hawkbone headdress. The hawkbones stood out on each side of the head like paired horse ears. “Decoys! Ambush! Holy son of a dog.” Fitz’s horse began to prance frenziedly. “Pepper was right after all.”
“A war party,” Hugh yelled. “And look at ‘em lick it across the prairie for Jim.” Hugh roared out again with all his voice. “Run for it, Jim, lad! Or you’re wolfmeat sartain!”
Without breaking the stride of his pony, Jim pulled around sharply to the left and came galloping toward Hugh and Fitz again, heavy elbows working like wings, buckskin fringes fluttering.
Hugh hauled back on Old Blue; then let the grayblue stallion out a little again as he turned him about. “We’d best let Jim catch up and then make a run for it. There’ll be more Rees around, you can bet your sweet life on that.”
Lord Grizzly, Second Edition Page 8
