At last he got close enough to breathe into her nostrils, to breathe his ghost into her. He rubbed her nose. He passed his hand over her eyes as if he meant to close them in death. He stroked her ears, her forehead. He breathed his ghost into her nose again. He hummed to her; sang to her; cajoled her.
She trembled; she shivered her coat. She cried; she lamented the wild she’d lost.
He petted her; soothed her. He breathed his ghost into her again.
She had a lovely wild smell. He loved her.
Then of a sudden he was astride her. She tore away on her sets of two legs; hit the end of the lasso; fell heavily, with Hugh rolling easily to one side.
Again, after a time, he got astride her.
Again, quick as a fox, she bolted and threw both herself and Hugh.
Hugh went back and got his gun and reserve meat and his possible sack. From the sack he selected a bit of salt. He held the salt out to her in the palm of his big hand.
She hated him for offering it. Yet she couldn’t resist it. She was so hungry for good salt she couldn’t help herself. Table salt was ever so much sweeter than wild salt. She nibbled it. And he had her.
Presently after cutting her hobbles, he managed to get astride her again with all his plunder of gun and possibles and meat slung over his back. He leaned over to cut the lasso—and they were off.
She jumped. She bolted. She set herself for what she thought would be the inevitable fall at the end of the braid lasso. She stumbled when it didn’t throw her. Then, regaining her stride, she set off across the wide white plains under the domed blue heavens.
Hugh let her go. She ran and ran and ran. The country was open and he let her run.
“Run, you she-rip you! Run! Every jump is a dozen steps saved for this old hoss. Run, you she-rip you.”
He knew that the quickest way to tame a wild horse was to get it away from its usual haunts, so that as time went on it would rely more and more on its master.
She galloped. She galloped a good ten miles before she gave up exhausted.
That night Hugh staked her out. He knew she feared the braided hide rope, knew she would behave.
She grazed on grass she pawed out from under the snow.
The next morning she was as tame as a pet mouse.
Also the next morning he found her bag full of milk.
That struck him as odd—until he ciphered out that she’d probably just foaled, that the foal had been a male, and that the blue crown prince had killed it as a rival.
Hugh milked her in his tin pot and drank heartily of the sweet white steaming treat. It made Hugh grimace to think he’d taken the place of the dead brother stallion.
Two nights later, January began to live up to its name as the Moon of the Seven Cold Nights. It froze so hard it cracked.
But the meat, the blankets, and the wild skunk-stripe mare pulled Hugh through.
“See?” Hugh said with a waggle of his shaggy old head. “See? Sign again. It is the Lord’s vengeance now. An eye for a tooth and a tooth for an eye.”
4
THIRTY-EIGHT DAYS after he left Ft. Tilton, in February, the Moon of Pairing, he spotted Major Henry’s new post on the Yellowstone and the Big Horn Rivers. The fort stood in a parklike meadow, with here and there a tall umbrella cottonwood, on the first bench of land on the east side of the Yellowstone. It overlooked both rivers, and a sentinel in the gate tower could spot movement for miles up and down either stream. The clean blue waters of the Yellowstone, now frozen over, came in from the west, and the dirty brown waters of the Big Horn, also frozen over, came in from the southwest. Both rivers ran through wide valleys edged with cedarcrested rimrock. Behind the fort, to the southeast, certain rocks resembling a white castle rose out of creek-dissected hills. The hills were tipped with arrowsharp pines. It was all Crow Indian country, and safe. Hugh nodded. Once again Major Henry had shown good judgment in selecting a post site.
It was dusk, the end of the day, when Hugh rode up the trail across the parklike meadow beneath the occasional cottonwoods. Skunk was tired and hungry, and so was Hugh. The snow was belly deep in the drifts. The cold was tight, and the hood of Hugh’s capote was frosted all along its inner edges. The wind was mean, and Hugh turned his shoulder into it and his face away.
There was a sudden smell of roasting. Meat. Barbecued meat. Skunk smelled it about the same time Hugh did. To the pony it meant hay; to Hugh it meant simply meat.
“Hep-a,” Hugh said, giving her a heel in the ribs. “We’re safe now, Ol’ Skunk.” But the kick was hardly necessary. The dun throwback of her own accord quickened her pace along the hoof-pocked trail.
It was deep dusk when the sentinel hailed him from the log tower over the log gate. The Bull Mountains beyond the rimrock to the north lay white like vast blue snowdrifts. Castle Rock gleamed clean white against the oncoming blueblack night.
“Where from, stranger?”
Hugh drew Skunk to a stop. “Whoa, lass.” From underneath frost-edged capote hood, Hugh glowered up at the weathered log tower. Hugh couldn’t quite make out the blunt face peering down at him from a gun port. But the voice was familiar. It was young and it had a Scotch crust. Hugh set the trigger of his flintlock.
“Where from, stranger?”
“Fort Tilton on the Missouri,” Hugh said in a deep bass monotone.
“You alone?” The young voice sounded uncertain.
Hugh didn’t miss the irony of it. “Not to start with. But I am now.”
“Red devils?”
“‘Tis so. Rees took their hair. After an old she-rip grizzly clubbed them down.”
“Who went under?”
“Jim Bridger and Fitz Fitzgerald. On the forks of the Grand.”
There was a loud gulp above him; then the blunt face came out for a closer look. Even in the deep dusk Hugh could see the face quite plainly. It was the lad Jim Bridger and his young face was chalkwhite.
“Not—Hugh—Glass!”
“Ae, Hugh Glass, my lad, ae,” Hugh said, throwing back the hood of his gray capote and lifting his flintlock menacingly. “And open up afore I give them red curls a your’n a second part, you oily coward.”
Jim Bridger hung out of the gun port as if petrified, mouth open.
“Yes, Jim, my boy. So you thought I was gone under, did ee? Well, lad, I ain’t dead yet, not by a long shot. Open up and hand over Ol’ Blue my hoss and Ol’ Bullthrower my gun.”
Jim gulped again; then jerked his head in. A moment later Hugh heard him running down the steps on the inside. Hugh set himself for the face-to-face encounter, fully expecting Jim to open the gate.
But when the cottonwood log gate didn’t open after a minute or two, Hugh realized that Jim hadn’t run down to let him in after all, but had probably gone to rouse the garrison, maybe to report him to Major Henry in person.
That burned Hugh. And it burned Old Hugh even more to realize that while he’d been talking to Jim there’d been on the tip of his tongue, and certainly in his mind, the impulse to say something kind and friendly to the poor lad.
“This time it wasn’t dummed friend stomach that almost threw this old hoss either. It was just bein’ plain lonesome, it was.”
Hugh cocked his head to one side. “The lad’s still a coward and a bad ‘un, he is, not comin’ down to open up to Ol’ Hugh.”
Hugh slid off the dun throwback mare and, leading her by the reins, strode up to the gate and began banging thunders on it. “Open up, consarn ee, you cowardly dog you.” The little arteries down Hugh’s nose wriggled red with fury. Mean devils gleamed out of his great gray eyes. “Vengeance is mine, the Lord says. And Ol’ Hugh’s come to put it on ee. Open up.”
The thunder on the gate awakened the dogs within the stockade and they began to yip and bark furiously. Men came running. A horse whinnied and Skunk lifted her head and replied with a shrill hinny of her own.
A voice cried out, “Hold on out there. Help’s comin’.”
“About time,” Hugh gro
wled, letting off and checking his trigger.
The log gate opened in the middle and parted, one half to either side, creaking in its wooden slots, and directly before Hugh, with a flaring smoking pineknot overhead, with an armed mountain man on either hand, stood grim-mouth Major Henry. Behind the blue-capped major pressed other faces, faces Hugh remembered like old portraits suddenly come to life: gaunt Allen, proud Yount, hound-faced once-scalped Silas Hammond. But there was no Jim or Fitz.
Major Henry took one look in the flickering light and then exclaimed. “Good Lord! it is Hugh Glass.” The major stepped up, holding the flaming pineknot closer as he peered into Hugh’s face. “Good God, yes. Hugh, two men testified that you were dead! That they’d buried you on the forks of the Grand!”
Hugh laughed a short crazy laugh. “‘Men,’ you say? Cowards, I say. Cowards. Boys asked to do man’s work.”
Major Henry’s lips thinned and his teeth gleamed white. “A miracle if there ever was one.”
Hugh didn’t like the kind of attention he was getting. He had planned it another way. He looked at the bearded faces, at their skin suits so well worn it took a close look to see what they were made of.
Hugh handed Ol’ Skunk’s reins to the nearest pair of hands. “Hold her ready for me till I get back.” Hugh pushed the major aside. “Make way for vengeance. This child’s the Lord’s chosen and he’s got a dirty job to do.”
Major Henry quickly blocked Hugh’s path. “Whoa, there, old hoss! Where do you think you’re going?”
Hugh looked the major up and down. Devils gleamed in his gray old eyes. “To drag out that coward Jim from wherever he’s hid himself.” Hugh spat to one side on the moccasin-packed snow. “And get that cowardly downer Fitz out from wherever he’s hid too.”
“Where do you think that is?” Major Henry snapped.
Hugh saw gaunt Allen and hound-faced Silas slowly shaking their winter-reddened faces. At a gesture from the major the two tall leather-clad guards raised their rifles at ready.
Hugh let out a snort. “Why, where else but in your quarters, Major? Under your bed where all cowardly dogs go to hide.”
Grim-mouth Major Henry slowly shook his head. The major’s deep eyes took on the blueblack of his state militia cap. “Fitz ain’t here.”
Hugh growled like a frustrated bulldog. “Where is the oily coward?”
“Gone to Fort Atkinson. Took a dispatch.”
Hugh swore and spat in the snow again. “That’s the second time that cautious coward’s got out of it by bein’ a messenger. That dummed lucky dog.” Hugh glanced around at his open-mouthed listeners. “The boy Jim’s under your bed though, hain’t he?”
Major Henry smiled faintly. “All right then . . . my quarters it is. I’m as curious as the rest of the men to hear what happened.” Major Henry gestured curtly at the tall buckskin guards. The long fringes on his skin suit rustled. “Take his guns. And his knife.” Major Henry smiled wide white teeth. “We’ll hear both your stories, yours and Jim’s, before we get to your revenge.”
“It’s not my revenge, Major. It’s His vengeance, it is.”
“‘His’?”
“The Lord’s. I been chosen.” Again Hugh spat in the snow to show his defiance and independence. “And this child ain’t givin’ up his guns.”
“Then you’re not comin’ to my quarters.”
Hugh stepped back, jerking his rifle away from the guard who’d taken hold of the end of it. “But, Major, how do I know but what you’ll lock me up till that cowardly Jim makes his getaway?”
Major Henry grimaced, showing fierce white teeth. “Come now, Hugh. You know I always deal fair and square with my men. You’ll get your chance to accuse Jim all right. Face-to-face.”
Slowly Hugh let his wrath subside. “All right,” he said, “all right. I’ll give up my guns.” Hugh handed over his flintlock, horse pistol, and knife. “But mind ye, Major. This hoss’ll be in a queersome fret if you don’t let the Lord get his vengeance.”
Major Henry gave the others a warning look, and then, pineknot flaring a smoky orange, guards and old mountaineer friends Yount and Allen and Silas following, he led the way across the frozen snow toward his quarters under the far wall of the fort. Stars twinkled almost within reach. In the men’s quarters light from hearth fires and candles glowed irregularly through oil-paper windows. Someone with a monotone voice sang an old mountaineer ditty. A voice growled, “What’s trump an’ whose deal?” Another voice answered, “Don’t crowd me an’ I’ll tell ee.”
As they walked along, moccasins singing at each step in the frozen snow, Major Henry sought to mollify Hugh a little. “You’re a walkin’ miracle if there ever was one, Hugh.”
Hugh said nothing. His old eyes glittered under heavy gray brows. He knew salve when it was being applied.
“How a man could live after the mauling you got, bones sticking out everywhere, head and back and rump ripped open”—Major Henry shook his head and sucked his teeth in sympathy—“how a man could live after that is beyond me.”
“Meat never spoils in the mountains, Major.” A trace of a smile crinkled in the corners of Hugh’s eyes. His leather-red cheeks moved. “You know that.”
Major Henry laughed. “That’s true enough.”
They came to the major’s quarters. Major Henry held the log door open for Hugh and the others. They entered.
A merry pine fire spat and glowed in the stone hearth. The smooth-barked cottonwood walls glistened red. A welcome wave of heat breathed Hugh in the face. Hugh blinked his eyes at all the sudden light and warmth.
Hugh took off his halfmoon fur-lined mittens and his woolen capote. He loosened the thongs at the collar of his deerskin hunting shirt. He stepped over to the fire in the shimmering stone hearth. After briefly warming his hands and face, he turned around and hauled up his hunting shirt to warm his seat and aching back.
The major’s quarters were small, some fifteen by eighteen feet. The floor was of halved cottonwood logs and the sloped ceiling of ash and pine branches and wide flats of cottonwood bark. Opposite the fire hung a tattered much-fingered map. A huge rough table dominated the room. Two candles in a tin plate flickered pale moons to the hearth fire’s fierce sunlike luminescence. Rough ax-hewn three-legged chairs circled the table, except at the head where the Major had a four-legged armchair, also rough-cut.
Yount and Allen and Silas stood waiting for the major to seat them. The two guards flanked the door.
Hugh’s eyes gradually adjusted to the light from the red fire and the low pale-moon candles. And gradually, too, something drew his attention to a shadow behind a low fur-robe bed in the far corner. Hugh leaned forward to see better. And when he saw clearly what the shadow really was, he let go another snort.
“Just like I said. The cowardly dog’s under your bed.”
Hugh strode over and looked down at the boy Jim Bridger sitting in the shadow of the bed, knees drawn up under his chin and arms around his legs. The lad Jim was dressed in fringed leathers and wolfskin cap like all the other mountain men.
At a gesture from the major the two tall guards quickly stepped forward.
Hugh let go still another snort. Then, with a moccasined toe, he kicked the boy Jim lightly in the ribs. “C’mon, Jim, lad, get up and wag your tail. I wouldn’t kill a pup. You know that.”
Jim’s blue eyes rolled up at Hugh. He quailed, ashen, at the touch of Hugh’s toe. Then Jim flushed red and hid his eyes. He trembled as if about to burst out of the seams of his leathers.
“Get up,” Hugh said. “Get up, and be a man for once.”
Jim got redder in the face; looked down; trembled.
The silence in the log-walled room suddenly hummed. Hugh felt it but ignored it. “C’mon, get up, you cowardly dog. ‘Tisn’t every day you get a chance to repent black treachery.”
When Jim still kept his blunt face hid, Hugh gave him another kick in the ribs. “C’mon, you cow—”
Jim suddenly leaped up, red boy’s
face in a rage, huge hands balling and unballing. “Damme, Hugh, but I can’t let you kick me like that.” Jim loomed over Hugh.
Hugh backed a step. It amazed Hugh to see how the lad towered over him. The lad had grown since he’d last seen him. He no longer looked up to anyone.
Jim caught the amazed look in Hugh’s eyes. It gave him courage. And suddenly, before Hugh could get up his guard, Jim let Hugh have it in the face. The blow was a haymaker, picked up off the hip, and it caught Hugh flush on his big Scotch nose and jutting chin. There was a sickening crack and Hugh’s wolfskin cap flew off.
Hugh staggered back; fell against the table beside the major. Hugh would have fallen to the floor if the major hadn’t grabbed him and held him up.
Jim came forward a long lunging pigeon-toed step and clutched up the front of Hugh’s leather shirt and twisted it tight across his chest. “And, Hugh, I can’t let you go around callin’ me a pup either. Because if you do, so help me God, I’ll give you such a beatin’ it’ll make what the she-grizzly gave you look like mouse nibbles.”
Old Hugh lay stunned, half against the major and half against the ax-hewn table. The lad’s wild swing had been more than a mere man’s punch. It’d been a regular giant’s, it had. The Lord’s vengeance wasn’t prospering very well.
Then Hugh remembered all the days of his vengeance and of how he’d crawled through hell itself for this chance at a showdown with the lads, Fitz and Jim. The memory of the crawl rallied his long-nourished hate, and with an oath, and a violent twist of his body, Hugh tore free from Jim’s grip.
Hugh roared, “So ye’d hit a companyero, would ee? Hit a companyero ye’d already deserted and left for dead, would ee? A companyero who’d always thought of ee as his own kin, would ee?” And before Major Henry could prevent it, Hugh, head lowered, arms flailing, charged Jim. Hugh decided a buck in the belly’d knock the wind out of the lad and so maybe give Old Hugh the upper hand again.
But Jim was too quick, too young, for Hugh. Jim sidestepped the rush; whacked Hugh over the back of the head with a heavy blacksmith fist; hit Hugh so hard Hugh saw the old dark come rising up all around him once more.
Lord Grizzly, Second Edition Page 25
