Hugh and Jim and Fitz rounded up the ponies and set to work saddling and bridling them, both pack and riding horses. They lined up the pack horses in a chain, tying one horse to the tail of another ahead. The morning was well along by the time Major Henry called out, “Put out!”
Major Henry first chose a northerly course, descending the creek draw into the Grand River valley, and then, once down in the valley, struck a westerly course, following the shore of the wide, almost empty, riverbed.
Small tanbrown herds of buffalo moved grazing over the far tan bluffs. In the draws buffalo berries hung ripe red in fat dark clusters. The chokecherry trees dripped purple flesh. Every once in a while the men grabbed up a handful, stripping off the berries by letting a laden twig run between the fingers, chewing and spitting seeds as they rode along. Ocher dust stived up from the clopping hooves.
It was midmorning before the sun finally broke out. Then the horses began to sweat, sweat sudsing white their coats of hair. The men sweat too, sweat and ocher dust slowly tanning their bronze faces. Both horse and man fought the botflies. Except for an occasional curse, talk fell off completely. Eyes began to ache from the brilliant reflection off the dry ocher ground. Eyes teared over; became red-veined. Sometimes boulders bulked in the way and the leader detoured the party around them.
It was near noon when Hugh looked up to find Major Henry riding along beside him. Major Henry gave Hugh an odd hooded look, lips thinning back over bared teeth. They rode along in silence for a few moments, apart from the other men. The horse hooves hit a steady puck-pock puck-pock on the dry grass and the drought-hardened ground.
“Hugh?”
Hugh knew what was coming; said nothing.
“Hugh, in all the commotion this morning I forgot to check an order I gave last night. Hugh, I’m hoping that same commotion made you forget too.”
Slowly Hugh stiffened in his saddle, and slowly he turned his old grizzly head and looked the major square in the eye. His furry neck humped up a little. Old Blue beneath sensed the change in Hugh; began to step along a little faster.
“Hugh?”
“Oh, I thought of it all right,” Hugh growled.
“You’re not going to obey the order then?”
Hugh exploded. “Dag it, Major, why can’t I wear my face the way I want to? I don’t want to look like a woman.”
“We’re in Indian country, Hugh, where Indians take exception to men who wear beards.”
Hugh kept right on exploding. “I don’t want to look like a plucked rooster, Major. I want to wear my face the way nature intended.”
“Hugh, if you were alone I wouldn’t care. But you’re with others. What you do or what you don’t do affects the rest of us. I have to think of the whole party, Hugh.”
Old Blue began to step along even faster and Hugh had to rein him in a little. “Dang wimmen, slickin’ us up. When we all should still be wearin’ our manes like lions.”
“Hugh.”
“Major, I tell ee. We made a mistake when we let the wimmen talk us inta kissin’ ‘em, smoozlin’ ‘em face to face. The Indian wimmen never did it and was the better for it. And then we made a mistake when we let them talk us into shavin’ so we’d look like nice little boys again. It’s no wonder the country is so full of wet-behind-the-ears greenhorn kids.”
Major Henry couldn’t help but smile a little. “In any case, Hugh, tonight you shave it off or I’ll have to send you back to Fort Kiowa. Alone. Meantime, I’m taking you off the hunting detail. I’ll send Allen ahead with two men this afternoon.”
Hugh’s old gray eyes blazed from under thick ridged gray brows. He trembled. “Major, this child’s never stuck around camp for camp work. You know that. I ain’t made for it. I hain’t put heavy moccasins on these mudhooks”—Hugh lifted a big foot—“to help the cook.”
“I’m sorry, Hugh. But what I said still goes.”
Hugh said, “You said Allen and two men. Does that mean Jim and Fitz?”
“No, it doesn’t. I’m taking them off the hunting detail too.”
Hugh doubled a fist and hit his knee. “But why? What’ve they done?”
Major Henry smiled big white teeth. “Because I wasn’t satisfied with the way they handled watch last night. Nor was I satisfied with your story about your part in it.” Major Henry smiled some more. “Hugh, you surprise me, sticking up for the boy Jim like that. You act like an old mule crazy over a colt.”
Old Hugh’s eyes opened very wide; then half-closed.
Major Henry let his horse drift away from Hugh. Presently Hugh jogged along alone again.
Hugh smoldered. He was at last really burned up. He rode along cursing under his breath.
The river valley narrowed a little. The stream switched back and forth on the sands in the wide riverbed. The wide riverbed turned from side to side too, sometimes cutting along the base of the southern hills, sometimes the northern hills. Sometimes a tight band of willows and cottonwoods bordered the stream; sometimes the mud cutbanks were barren. Occasionally smaller streams came trickling in from the hills. Most such streams came out of heavily wooded brushy draws.
Huge brownblack bluffs towered over the near hills. Thunder Butte was at last out of sight, but another butte, whitegray in color and resembling a crouching wolf, which Major Henry named Wolf Butte, rose above the bluff-line in the northwest.
Magpies screamed out of low gray-leaved bullberry bushes, flying away with long black tails dragging like broken rudders. Hawks floated overhead. Above an angling brushy draw on the left, black buzzards circled over a down buffalo calf. Occasionally the men started up a herd of goatlike antelope, heads first cocked a second, then white tails flagging and scudding over the knolls and away. The thin stream of the Grand twinkled in the burning sun; reflected the deep blue sky above.
The party stopped for a rest at high noon. Hugh and Jim and Fitz unloaded the pack horses; watered them; staked them out to graze in some sweetgrass in a low turn in the river. The men had themselves some dry biscuits, jerked meat, fatback, and coffee. Then came a smoke and a catnap.
A wind came up. It moved in cool from the west and freshened the grazing horses and resting men. It also chased the mosquitoes and lighter flies to cover. Only the swift heavy botflies remained to torment the horses.
Far away, behind a bald hill, a mourning dove called three lonesome, clear, haunting notes: oowhee—oooo—ooo.
But Hugh still seethed inside. He was mad at Major Henry for what he thought was a womanish order. He was mad at the boys Jim and Fitz for having gotten him in the soup by sleeping on their watch. He was mad at himself for good-naturedly having stuck his neck out to save their skin.
By midafternoon, right after Major Henry had sent gaunt Allen and two men ahead to make meat for supper, Old Hugh was fit to be tied. The little paired arteries down his big bronze nose ran dark with rage. His gray eyes glittered.
The party defiled through a brushy draw coming down from the left. The party leader for the day, George Yount, had to break a way through the plum and bullberry bushes with a double ax.
In the commotion Old Hugh saw his chance to go hunting off by himself. He was last in line and could slip away unnoticed. With a sulphureous curse, and a low growled, “I don’t take orders from a tyrant,” Hugh turned Old Blue aside and climbed the rise to the east.
He skirted the brush at the head of the draw until he was well out of sight. Below and ahead, on his right, across the Grand River, he saw Allen and his men dodging along through a grove of cottonwood and willow. Hugh was careful to keep an equal distance between the three hunters ahead and the party behind.
It was sport to be out on one’s own again, alone. The new, the old new, just around the turn ahead, was the only remedy for hot blood. Ahead was always either gold or the grave. The gamble of it freshened the blood at the same time that it cleared the eye. What could beat galloping up alone over the brow of a new bluff for that first look beyond?
The wind from the west be
gan to push a little. It dried his damp buckskins, dried Old Blue too.
The valley slowly widened. Shelving slopes on the right mounted into noble skin-smooth tan bluffs, rose toward Wolf Butte. The country on the left, however, suddenly humped up into abrupt enormous bluffs, three of them almost mountains.
After a time Hugh understood why the valley widened. The Grand River forked up ahead, with one branch angling off to the northwest under Wolf Butte, with the other branch wriggling sharply off to the southwest under the three mountainlike tan bluffs.
There was no game. He didn’t see a bird. It was siesta time. The eyes and ears of Old Earth were closed in sleep.
A wide gully swept down out of the hollow between the last two bluffs. A spring drained it and its sides were shaggy with brush. Most of the growth was chokecherry, with here and there a prickly plum tree.
Hugh felt hungry. Looking down into the draw he thought he spotted some plums, ripe red ones at that, hanging in the green leaves. Ripe black fruit also peppered the chokecherry trees. Chokecherries, he decided, chokecherries would only raise the thirst and hardly still the hunger. Plums were better. They were filling.
Before dropping down into the draw, Hugh had a last look around. A man alone always had to make sure no red devils were skulking about, behind some cliff or down in the brush. From under old gray brows, eyes narrowed against the pushing wind, Old Hugh studied the rims of the horizon all around. He inspected the riverbed from one end to the other, including each of the forks. He examined all the brushy draws running down from the bald hills on both sides.
He gave Old Blue the eye too. Horses often spotted danger before humans did.
But if there was danger Old Blue was blissfully unaware of it. Old Blue made a few passes at the dry rusty bunch grass underfoot. Old Blue blew out his nostrils at a patch of prickly-pear cactus. Old Blue snorted lightly at a mound of dirt crumbles heaved up by big red ants.
No sign of alarm in Old Blue. It looked safe all right.
Vaguely behind him, a quarter of a mile back, Hugh could hear the party coming along the river, breaking through brush. Allen and his two men were nowhere in sight ahead.
A turtledove mourned nearby: ooah—koooo—kooo—koo.
With a prodding toe and a soft, “Hep-ah,” Hugh started Old Blue down the incline into the brush. Grayblue back arched, legs set like stilts, Old Blue worked his way down slowly. The saddle cinches creaked. Stones rattled down ahead of them. Dust rose. Old Blue lashed his blue tail back and forth.
The first few plum trees proved disappointing. The fruit was small; it puckered the mouth and made a ball of Hugh’s tongue. Sirupy rosin drops showed where worms had punctured through.
Holding prickly branches away, sometimes ducking, waving at mosquitoes, Hugh preyed through the thicket slowly, testing, spitting. They were all sour. Bah!
The draw leveled. They broke through the shadowy prickly thicket out onto an open creekbed. Spring water ran cool and swift over clean knobs of pink and brown rock.
Old Blue had the same thought Hugh had. A drink. Hugh got off even as Old Blue began sipping.
Holding onto a rein, laying Old Bullthrower on a big dry pink stone, Hugh got down on his knees. He put a hand out to either side on wet cool sand; leaned down until his grizzled beard dipped into the water; began drinking.
Suddenly Old Blue snorted; started up; jerked the rein free and was off in a gallop lickety-split down the creek, heading for the forks of the Grand.
Hugh humped up; grabbed up Old Bullthrower; started running after Old Blue. But Hugh couldn’t run much on his wounded game leg, and Old Blue rapidly outdistanced him and disappeared around a turn.
Hugh gave up, cursing. “By the bull barley, what got into him?” Puffing, Hugh took off his wolfskin cap. “Now that does put me in a curious fix. With the major already riled enough to hamshoot me.” Hugh waggled his old hoar head. “Wonder what did skeer him off, the old cuss.”
Hugh cocked an ear; listened awhile; couldn’t make out a thing.
There was an odd smell in the air, a smell of mashed chokecherries mixed in with musky dog. But after sniffing the air a few times, nostrils twitching, he decided it was probably only some coyote he’d flushed.
Hugh stood pondering, scratching his head. “Wal, one thing, Ol’ Blue won’t run far. In strange country, a horse always comes back to a party. Gets lonesome like the rest of us humans.”
Hugh put Old Bullthrower to one side; got down on his knees for another drink. The shadow of a hawk flitted over swiftly, touching the trickling water, touching him. Finished drinking, Hugh picked up Old Bullthrower; automatically checked the priming; cocked an eye at the brush.
Hugh worked down toward the Grand River to meet the line of march of the party.
Halfway down toward the Grand River another creek came angling out of a second draw, the water joining with the first creek and tumbling on toward the river. Hugh looked up the second draw; saw another cluster of plum trees. Ho-ah. Good plums at last. Smaller but blood ripe. Hugh couldn’t resist them. He’d give himself a quick treat and then go on to meet the party along the river.
The tiny trickling stream curved away from him, to his left. He broke through low whipping willow branches; came upon a sandy opening.
“Whaugh!” A great belly grunt burped up from the white sands directly in front of him. And with a tremendous tumbler’s heave of body, a silvertipped gray she-grizzly, Ursus horribilis, rose up before him on two legs. “Whaugh!” Two little brown grizzly cubs ducked cowering and whimpering behind the old lady.
The massive silvertipped beast came toward him, straddling, huge head dipped down at him from a humped neck, humped to strike him. Her big doglike mouth and piglike snout were bloody with chokecherry juice. Her long gray claws were bloody with fruit juice too. Her musky smell filled the air. And smelling the musk, Hugh knew then why Old Blue had bolted and run.
Hugh backed in terror, his heart suddenly burning hot and bounding around in his chest. The little arteries down his big Scotch nose wriggled red. His breath caught. The sense of things suddenly unraveling, of the end coming on, of being no longer in control of either things or his life, possessed him.
She was as big as a great bull standing on two legs. She was so huge on her two legs that her incredible speed coming toward him actually seemed slow. Time stiffened, poured like cold molasses.
She roared. She straddled toward him on her two rear legs. She loomed over him, silver neck ruffed and humped, silver head pointed down at him. Her pink dugs stuck out at him. She stunk of dogmusk.
She hung over him, huge furry arms ready to cuff and strike. Her red-stained ivorygray claws, each a lickfinger long, each curved a little like a cripple’s iron hook, closed and unclosed.
Hugh’s eyes set; stiffened; yet he saw it all clearly. Time poured slow—yet was fast.
Hugh jerked up his rifle.
But the Old Lady’s mammoth slowness was faster. She was upon him before he got his gun halfway up. She poured slow—yet was fast. “Whaugh!” She cuffed at the gun in his hands as if she knew what it was for. The gun sprang from his hands. As it whirled into the bushes, it went off in the air, the ball whacking harmlessly into the white sand at their feet.
Hugh next clawed for his horse pistol.
Again she seemed to know what it was for. She cuffed the pistol out of his hand too.
Hugh stumbled over a rock; fell back on his hands and rump; like a tumbler bounded up again.
The cubs whimpered behind her.
The whimpering finally set her off. She struck. “Whaugh!” Her right paw cuffed him on the side of the head, across the ear and along the jaw, sending his wolfskin cap sailing, the claws ripping open his scalp. The blow knocked him completely off his feet, half-somersaulted him in the air before he hit ground.
Again, like a tumbler, Hugh bounded to his feet, ready for more. He felt very puny. The silvertip became a silver blur in his eyes. She became twice, thrice, magnified.
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It couldn’t be true, he thought. He, Old Hugh Glass, he about to be killed by a monster varmint? Never.
Hugh crouched over. He backed and filled downstream as best he could.
The she-grizzly, still on two legs, both paws ready to cuff, came after him, closed once more. She roared.
Hugh scratched for his skinning knife. There was nothing for it but to close with her. Even as her great claw swiped at him, stiff but swift, he leaped and got inside her reach. Her clubbing paw swung around him instead of catching him. He hugged her for dear life. He pushed his nose deep into her thick dogmusky whitegray fur. He pressed into her so hard one of her dugs squirted milk over his leathers.
She roared above him. She cuffed around him like a heavyweight trying to give a lightweight a going-over in a clinch. She poured slow—yet was fast. She snarled; roared. His ear was tight on the huge barrel of her chest, and the roars reverberated inside her chest like mountain avalanches. He hugged her tight and stayed inside her reach. She clawed at him clumsily. Her ivorygray claws brought up scraps of buckskin shirt and strips of skin from his back.
He hugged her. And hugging her, at last got his knife around and set. He punched. His knife punged through the tough hide and slipped into her belly just below the ribs with an easy slishing motion. He stabbed again. Again and again. The knife punged through the tough furred hide each time and then slid in easy.
Blood spurted over his hands, over his belly, over his legs and her legs both, came in gouts of sparkling scarlet.
He wrestled her; stabbed her.
The great furred she-grizzly roared in an agony of pain and rage. He was still inside her reach and she couldn’t get a good swipe at him. She clawed clumsily up and down his back. She brought up strips of leather and skin and red muscle. She pawed and clawed, until at last Hugh’s ribs began to show white and clean.
Lord Grizzly, Second Edition Page 12
