The sun was almost directly overhead when he finished. Heat boiled out of the gully in waves. A dead calm radiated over the land. The vultures lay back waiting, wondering at all the movement of him. They turned slow wheels. It puzzled them that a stinking, filthy, hairy skeleton of a creature could show so much life.
Hugh crawled back to the stream and in the shadow of the bullberry bushes let the water run along his back. He splashed water over his face and chest and belly and legs. The water was wondrous cool, wondrous soothing.
He napped.
He dreamt. And in the dream he heard Jim and Fitz talking about him.
But while the dream was very clear and very real, the talk in it was muttery, unclear. He couldn’t make out what they were saying. He could see their mouths going, and could make out it was about him, but he couldn’t make out the sense of what they said.
He dreamt. And in the dream he dreamt he had died alone in a gully, his leathers and meat torn to shreds, his bones picked over by green snakenecked buzzards. He cried out in his sleep; awoke in a buzzing stupor.
Afternoon came on. Water washed him. Minnies lipped him. Afternoon waned. Water soaked him. Minnies tickled him.
Toward evening, the air cooling, he revived again. He dug up a few of the rattler steaks he’d stashed in the sand and roasted them. For greens he ate grass tips. For fruit he had some buffalo berries and chokecherries. Ripe plums hung near; they looked very inviting, but he couldn’t get himself to touch them. He washed his supper down with cool spring water. The meat and the greens and the fruit and the water strengthened him.
Later, when the sun had set and the stars and the mosquitoes came out and the wolves and coyotes began padding around him on the sand, he recalled his nightmare dreams of the afternoon. Though again he couldn’t make out what it was Jim and Fitz had said in the dream.
“Wonder where the lads went to? Can’t understand it. There must be some reason for the lads not bein’ around. ‘Tis a deep puzzle to this old coon.”
He rolled it over in his mind. He couldn’t wait any longer for the lads to show up. He had to begin thinking about himself.
He nodded. Yes, think of himself. He had to get out of that gully and that part of the wild country soon or he was a gone goose.
He rolled it over in his mind some more. The first thing was to get back to the settlements some way. As the crow flies it was at least some two hundred miles north to Henry’s Post on the Yellowstone and Missouri. And Ft. Kiowa was some two hundred miles back the other way. Either way the country was buzzing with Rees as mad as hornets. There were also the rapidly increasing number of Sioux war parties. Even some Mandans.
He thought on it. One thing was certain—he couldn’t follow the Grand River back to the Missouri and then follow that back to the fort. Too many mad Rees that way. They were thicker in that direction than in any other. So if he went back to the fort he’d have to cut across the open country to the south.
He puzzled over his broken leg. He wouldn’t be able to crawl on that for at least a month, let alone walk on it. He either had to lay around until it knitted or somehow drag it after him. The first alternative meant he might starve to death, if he didn’t freeze first; the second meant excruciating pain.
He puzzled over his splinted leg. If he could somehow carry it off the ground he might be able to crawl along on his elbows and one knee.
He puzzled on it. And finally decided to make himself a slape—travois, as the pork-eaters called it—a pair of shafts such as the squaws hooked up to dogs and ponies to dray their possessions. He remembered seeing Bending Reed make one down in Pawnee land along the Platte.
“I feel queersome,” he said, and presently fell asleep.
Mosquitoes hummed over him. A light breeze came up and tousled his gray hair.
4
A COLD NOSE woke him.
He made a grab for the cold nose and the whitegray wolf that went with it.
But he missed. He wasn’t quite quick enough and the wolf had been a trace too stealthy. So it was no fresh meat for breakfast that morning.
He dug up what was left of the rattler and set about roasting it. He topped off the meat with grass tips and buffalo berries again, washing it all down with fine morning-cool water.
It was when he’d had his fill of water that he decided on Bending Reed and Ft. Kiowa two hundred miles away. He had to have the benefit of her cooking, her care, her potent herbs. She’d heal him. She’d put him back on his feet. Good old Reed. What a fine mate she’d made him all these years in the far country.
Calmly he set to work. He built a slape out of two long willow poles. He bound one to each side of his bad leg, starting at the hip socket and extending well out beyond his toes so that the entire leg rode well above the ground and had the benefit of the springy tips to absorb shock.
He knew there’d be a lot of prickly-pear cactus most of the way back. He had to find some protection for his elbows and arms, for his one good knee and leg. Looking around he hit on it. Cut out patches from the old she-rip. With his crude chisel he jammed off a set of patches, with tie-strings, and bound them on tight. He sloughed off what dried fat and meat was still stuck to the rest of the bear hide and cut armholes in it and drew it on over his back.
He also collected the grizzly’s four claws. Bending Reed had often lamented that while he might have counted coup on many a brave in battle and had scalps to show for it, he still hadn’t counted coup on a grizzly. She wanted to see her brave decked out with a necklace of grizzly claws. Well, he’d at last got his grizzly, and in a hand-to-hand fight at that.
He laughed when he thought of what she’d do with the claws. She’d hold a victory dance around them; then string them on a deer sinew; then drape them around his hoary old neck.
He planned his trip carefully. It would be safest to crawl at night; sleep during the day. Best, too, to take a creek up one gully to the top of a divide; cross on the hogback ridge; take a gully down on the other side, and so on until he crossed the Moreau River and got to the Cheyenne. At the Cheyenne he’d be far enough south and out of range of the Rees to once again head toward the Missouri.
He began the terrible odyssey on the evening of the ninth of September, the ninth day of the Moon of Maize Ripening. The sun had just set and the high bald hills across the Grand River valley glowed like round piles of hot copper slag. Dusk came in out of the east like dark doom.
He followed the South Fork of the Grand. It veered almost directly south. He crept along the sides of the bluffs, halfway up, overlooking the meandering stream. He kept a wary eye on the brush in the draws on either side, on the trees beside the flickering stream, on the horizon rims all around.
He crept along on his elbows and one good knee. His splinted leg slaped behind him in its travois. A pair of whitegray wolves and a lone coyote trailed after him. The green wrinkleneck buzzards had given up.
Silvertip bearskin thrown over his back, bearhide guards on his elbow points and good knee, dried paws dangling from his neck on a deer sinew, he looked more like a wounded grizzly than a wounded human, looked like a bear who’d come off second best with a nest of bear traps.
A herd of antelope spotted him in the evening dusk. Curious, they approached him cautiously. When they finally got a whiff of him, they bolted over a bluff, white tails flagging.
Darkness fell slowly, changed over him like a sea of clear blue water gradually turning to black ink. Stars came out low and sharp.
He crept along cautiously. He felt his way along with his finger tips, foot by foot.
He crawled around boulders. He pushed through clumps of bunch grass. He dragged across barren gravelheads.
He ran into ant mounds, which suddenly became alive with wriggling stings. He ran into beds of prickly-pear cactus, which each time reminded him of a pack of crouching porcupine. He ran into one coiled rattler, which gave him fair warning.
The first quarter mile went fine. But after that it was tough going. His win
d gave out, and his elbows stung, and his one good leg tired. Oddly enough, the tiredness in his good leg set up a cramp in his bad leg.
He rested flat on his belly. He sweat. One ear on the bare ground and one ear up, he listened to the night sounds. He heard the stealthy ghostly prowling of the two wolves and the coyote. He heard the itching movement of armored beetles deep in the earth. He heard grasshoppers chawing spears of grass. He heard angleworms squirming up out of their holes and excreting rich crumbles of dirt on the surface of the earth.
The thought of being completely alone in a wild savage country, miles from any white settlement anywhere, sometimes rose in him like personified terror, like a humpnecked striking creature. He fought it, fought it, and swallowed it down.
Rees could be skulking anywhere. The two trailing wolves could at any moment multiply into a pack of wolves and make a rush for him. Another she-grizzly could be on the prowl.
One thing he was thankful for. Halfway up the bluff sides where he crawled along there were no mosquitoes to bother him. And of course in the night no green flies.
Now and then a puff-soft breeze rose out of the gullies and caressed his brow and soothed his warm itching back.
He rested flat on his belly. He thought of silent Fitz and the boy Jim.
Where were the lads? He recalled all their good points. They were fine laddies, they were, and deserved better. Gone under like the other Jim and the lad Augie.
Himself? He’d make it all right. He would play it close to the belt; cipher cautious all the way; save his breath whenever and wherever he could; sail carefully; man the rudder with a steady hand all the way into port, Ft. Kiowa, and come in loaded for bear and killing. Oh, he would all right. Old Hugh had rawhide muscles and a buckskin belly and the stretchingest a-double-s in captivity.
He crawled; rested; crawled.
Once he slept. And woke with a start. How long? How much of the cool black night had he wasted? He couldn’t guess. Perhaps an hour. Maybe four. In any case he felt refreshed and rested.
He crawled along briskly again for a quarter mile.
He kept to the sides of the bluffs, in one side gully and out the other, on, on, always quartering south toward Ft. Kiowa, to Bending Reed who’d heal him with her nursing and her herbs and her soups, to the fort where the clerk would re-outfit him with a gun and possibles for the time when he’d be whole again, up on two legs, and ready to join Major Henry and the other lads up in the far sweetgrass country.
When dawn broke pink in the east at last, he was exhausted, gaunt with thirst, gray with fatigue. His fever had come back some. The red monsters had returned in his back and in his leg again.
Looking back along the bluff sides, along the highland, he guessed he’d crawled some four miles, perhaps five. A short way, yes, but for a broken man a great way. Only one hundred ninety-five miles left. Ae, he’d done better than he’d expected. There was still plenty of life left in the old gray mare. Looking back he saw, too, that by sticking to the highland he had saved himself many a weary turn alongside the wriggling meandering stream of the South Fork.
The sun was just up when he scurried down a draw toward the stream of the South Fork. He had a last look around. No sign of red devils that he could see. Good. Somehow during the night the two whitegray wolves and the lone coyote had drifted off. Also good. And overhead the buzzards hadn’t come back. Ae, it looked better all the time.
The South Fork was a lively stream, some ten feet wide, a good foot deep, with a swift flow over white stones and gold gravel. He drank deep of its water, washed his face and hands and arms and as much of his torn seamed back and torn splinted leg as he could reach. For breakfast he had some grass tips, some thick wild onions he’d run across in the night and grubbed out, and a cluster of buffalo berries. He lacked meat but hoped to catch some later in the day after he’d had himself a good long sleep.
He made another careful survey around. He saw nothing.
Then he slid off under a thick cover of chokecherry trees. He spread out some dry, rusty bunch grass on the hard ground and covered it with the grizzly skin. He nuzzled in the soft bed.
He dozed fitfully for a time, at last fell into a sound and dreamless sleep.
A good day’s work.
At nightfall he woke as stiff as a board.
His first thought was: “Down at last like an old bull buffler shot through the lights.” His next thought was: “Maybe I should’ve looked more in that gully afore I left. The boys might’ve been further downstream. Dead or dyin’.”
He didn’t dare stir at first. He lay still on his bed of grizzly skin and bunch grass. The least twitch was an agony, especially in his back and down through his rump and swollen thigh. The redgray monsters still were with him.
At last, seeing how fast night was coming on, he gathered himself up into a ball of resolve and forced himself to roll over on his back.
He lay awhile, panting, very short of breath. The pain was terrible.
“Ham-bit by a bear,” Hugh muttered in his dirty blood-clotted beard. “Well, at least it’s no worse than bein’ ham-shot.”
He looked up, saw how the leaves of a plum thicket flittered in a rising evening breeze, saw how dusk was coming out of the east like a brown dust storm, saw how a pink glow from the sunset gave the oncoming brown sky an odd lilac hue.
He heard a magpie scolding down the river a ways. He heard field mice scampering over the leaves under the chokecherry trees.
He stretched carefully, starting the stretch at his toes and letting it creep up through both the good thigh and the bad thigh, and on up through his belly and chest and on out to his finger tips.
The brownblack dusk raced overhead.
“Well, Hugh, old hoss, time to turn out. There’s grub to be got and sightin’s to make.”
With a rumbling groan he rolled over on his belly and rose to his elbows and one good knee. “Eeee! This child’s sure got the miseries now. Eeee!” He gave his hoary old head a shake. “It looks like I’m gonna pay for last night’s good run.”
He scratched his head. Gingerly he touched his fingers along the edge of the itching healing sinewed welt running through his beard and scalp. And in scratching, for the first time missed his old wolfskin cap. Ho-ah. Coyotes probably. Coyotes’d probably fought over the smell of him in it while he’d lain unconscious after the lads’d disappeared. Probably torn to shreds.
Hugh crawled to a gray boulder and painfully lifted himself part way up, resting for a minute on his one good leg. The bad leg lay splayed behind him, dragging like the wing of a wounded quail.
He found the evening star, and then the North Star. He sighted along the bluffs to the left. Ah. The fork still angled south. Good. With squinting eyes he worked out a trail halfway up the bluff sides. In the descending darkness he made out a large sidestream gully he’d have to cross. For the rest, it was clear sailing over barren humpy ground. The bluffs seemed to be fairly clean of cactus too.
He crawled through a few bushes, picking buffalo berries as he went, and grass tips, and chokecherries. He still couldn’t get himself to eat plums, rich and ripe though they might hang all around him. Something about their pudging clotted red insides was still a little too much for him.
It was almost dark when he got to the river’s edge. He had himself a long cool drink. The cool water and the fruit and the grass tips made him blowy. Like a dog tilted on three legs, he urinated in the fresh green sweetgrass.
Refreshed, relieved, sore muscles slowly loosening up, he started out on the second leg of his odyssey.
He crawled along cautiously, finger tips alert for cactus and sharp stones, ears alert for night prowlers and rattlesnakes, eyes alert for the ghosts of night. One elbow forward, then the other, then the good knee, with a hunching hopscotch motion, the bad leg trailing, he lurched on through the darkness, slowly, slowly.
What in tarnation had happened to the lads?
A night wind came up and began to push. It blustered aro
und him; whipped his hoary hair; buffeted his bad leg; filled the air with stinging dust and sand.
He talked to himself. “That’s it, old hoss, hold your noddle steady. South by west. South. South by east.”
The wind parched his lips. His lips dried; became cracked; hurt.
The wind tugged at the bearskin over his back; stung his wounds with sand. It rattled the bearpaws dangling from the deer sinew around his neck.
The wind whipped up varying streaming veils of dust. The wind was cold. Sand bit his skin like a million pushing cold needles. He shivered and snuggled under the bearskin.
He lay down to rest, flat on his belly. He gasped for breath through a dry throat. His tongue lay in his mouth like a dry thumb.
“Wadder,” he whispered, “wadder. Got to have wadder soon or this child’s gone under after all.”
He came across a bed of prickly-pear cactus. He broke off an ear; removed the needle-long pricks one by one; nibbled carefully, spitting out fuzz pricks; chewing slowly, making the meat and moisture in it last as long as possible. The prickly pear tasted a little like a geranium smelled.
He crawled on. He found a bed of dwarf wild roses in a dry swale. Finger tips wary of pricks, he fumbled out a handful of seeded fruits. He chewed each carefully, crunching the soft orange peel and the seeds into a fine thick paste. It was strong but it was food.
The wind blew cold, numbing his skin, fluttering the tatters and fringes of his buckskin.
He came across a trickle of water in a side gully. He took a sip. Bah! Bitter with wild salt and alkali. He spat. Ptt. Wild salt and alkali gave a man the bad skitters.
He napped. And dreaming, dreamt of dying in a lonely gully, dreamt of Jim and Fitz sitting around a jumping fire, dreamt they were talking about him.
“Jim? Fitz? Where be ye? Ye didn’t desert me, did ee?”
He woke with a start. His head buzzed with a sudden terrific headache.
It was the dream. It seemed to have burnt flesh in his head. It had exhausted him. He lay resting.
Lord Grizzly, Second Edition Page 15
