Hugh caught himself; turned to face Jim again. He ganted for breath. The gray beard around the edges of his mouth fluffed in and out on each puff and breath. “So it’s tricks, is it? All right, let’s see if tricks’ll help you this time.” Arms wide, Hugh approached Jim warily. Suddenly he rushed Jim; got his huge arms around Jim’s middle; shoved with all his power; and down both went beside the fur bed, Jim’s fur cap flying off.
Hugh was astraddle Jim in an instant, and automatically, like in the old brawling days back in St. Lou, Hugh’s thumbs sought out Jim’s eyeballs.
Sitting on Jim, however, was not like sitting on a horse, broke in or not. Young Jim was supple, and he had hands, and while with his left hand he tried to defend his eyes, with his big right hand he sought out a hold under Hugh’s thigh. When Jim finally got the hold under Hugh’s thigh, he squeezed with all his might. It was as fair a hold as Hugh’s. An eye for an eye.
Hugh gritted between clamped teeth, “Desert a man who thought of ye as if ye were his own son, would ee? Would ee? Well, we’ll see, now, we’ll see.”
Each held the other in an ever-tightening clutch of final mortal pain. Jim’s blue eyes began to rise up out of their sockets and approach each other across the bridge of his nose; Hugh’s thigh began to burn searingly and a spear of pain shot far up into his belly. Neither would let go; neither could let go. Jim’s mouth stretched open in agony; Hugh’s belly humped up in agony.
Jim finally left off defending his eyeballs with his left hand; instead he began to hit Hugh in the nose again and again with all he had. Jim hit and hit, hit with mashing sodden whacks. And all the while, with his right hand, he tightened up the twist he had on Hugh under his thigh.
Right in the middle of all the clutching and twisting red pain, Hugh abruptly remembered his lads, his sons back in Lancaster, remembered Mabel his she-rip of a wife, remembered how he’d deserted the lads and her, remembered how he’d become a roamer, a buccaneer even, and a killer. Who was he to cast the first stone? Who was he that he should gouge out the eyeballs of a lad who could easily have been his son?
Black regrets and old gray biles churned around and around. There were whirls and whorls of red pain. Hugh’s head buzzed. He felt a faint coming on.
Ae, ae, who was he to cast the first stone? A bigger man would forgive a mere boy.
Hugh gave one final dig with his thumbs, and then heaved a huge sigh, and let his shoulders sag, and let go his hold.
Surprised, Jim let go too.
They stared at each other a moment or two, and then, breathing loudly like maddened bucks who’d been forced to part, they slowly got to their feet, and picked up their caps, and clapped them on.
Major Henry stepped up then. “All right, you two. That’s enough now. Suppose we sit down and talk this over like sensible men. Jim, you sit here, at my right. Hugh, you sit here, on my left. The rest of you down the line on either side.” Major Henry took off his blue cap. He grimaced, showing white teeth. “And take off your caps. At my table you have some manners.”
Grumbling, glaring at each other, the two sat down on opposite sides of the table, Jim rubbing his eyes and knuckles, and Hugh rubbing his thigh and nose.
Major Henry beckoned to one of the guards. “I think this calls for a drink. John, go get us a bottle of brandy.”
After they’d all had a shot from a tin cup, and fresh tobacco had been passed around, tension eased somewhat and tongues loosened.
Watching Hugh scrounge around ill-at-ease on a three-legged teetery chair, hound-faced Silas Hammond said with comical gravity, “What’s the matter, old hoss? You been ham-shot or somethin’?” Silas’s scalping scar gleamed in the red light from the roaring pine fire.
“Yeh, Hugh,” gaunt Allen said smiling, taking up the cue. “Sittin’ there you act as oneasy as a gut-shot coyote.”
Hugh grumbled in his gray whiskers. “I can’t seem to get myself squared to this seat. That ten-prong buck I shot under the Blue Buttes wasn’t done sucking when I last sot on a chair. Why don’t we sit like men afront the fire there, Major? This thing’s wilder’n my throwback mare. And rides harder’n an iron statue.”
Everybody laughed. The major declined the suggestion. And the men relaxed still more.
The bald cottonwood walls glowed red and pink by turns in the firelight. The mountain men’s winter-burnt faces took on a deep scarlet hue.
Presently Major Henry signaled for Hugh to begin his side of the story.
Stubborn Hugh shook his head. “And let the boy Jim here take his picks on what I tell? Not this child.”
Again young Jim Bridger flushed, and after a moment of inner boiling found it in himself to speak up to the older man. “Damme, Hugh, don’t call me boy neither. Or so help me Hannah, I’ll—”
“Here here!” Major Henry said soothingly over his pipe. His blue eyes sparkled ice-gray in the pale-moon candlelight. His Missouri state militia cap on the table took on a deep blueblack shade. “Hugh, suppose you treat Jim here like a full-grown man till you’ve heard his side of it. At least.” Major Henry licked a trace of sweet brandy from his lower lip. “The truth is, Hugh, after what Jim did for us this winter, if there ever was a man, Jim here is it.”
Hugh held back a snort. His old gray eyes opened looking at Jim. “Oh?”
“Yes. Jim here’s spent most of winter looking for beaver all the way to Colter’s Hell. Alone.”
Hugh’s opening mouth made a dark hole in his gray whiskers. “‘Alone’?”
“Exactly. And a man’s work it was, I say.”
Proud Yount agreed emphatically from his end of the table. “That’s right, Hugh. And we’re all going to make our pile on what he found.”
Gaunt Allen said, “What the boy here done alone I know I couldna with an army behind me. That’s a fact, Hugh. You can put your pile on it and feel safe. He’s a reg’lar hivernan now.”
Hugh wriggled his big red nose. It still hurt. “Wal, if he did it alone. . . .” Hugh gave Jim a doubting look. “Tell me, lad, what was the Indian there?” Hugh took a slow puff on his old pipe, narrowed eyes watching Jim.
Jim mumbled a vague answer around the stem of his pipe.
“What? Speak up. And take that dummed pipe out of your mouth when you talk.”
Jim fired up. “Snake. Blackfeet. Some Flathead.”
Hugh’s brows lifted. “You’ve learned to read sign then, I see.”
Jim said, “I learned it from the best, Hugh. From you. You know that.”
“Hrumpp!” Hugh put pipe to mouth again and blew out a cloud of smoke.
Major Henry said, “Well, Hugh, do we hear it yet tonight? or what?”
“Let the lad tell his side of it first,” Hugh said, gesturing with his spuming pipe, still trying to make himself comfortable on his teetery three-legged chair. “This child’s just as curious to hear it as you.” Hugh glowered across at Jim. “Because this child still can’t cipher how come you birds quit a friend. Deserted him.”
Jim burst out. “But Fitz and me didn’t quit you, Hugh. We didn’t.”
“Not?”
“No.”
“Go on. Tell it then. I’m listenin’,” Hugh said grimly, biting the stem of his pipe. “With all three ears.”
. . . Jim’s story took up where Hugh’s memory left off, just after the she-grizzly fell across Hugh’s mangled body.
Allen and Silas were the first there. They saw the bloody, incredibly ripped-up body lying under the dead she-grizzly. At first glance they thought Hugh gone under. The two young grizzly cubs stood near, smelling at their dead mother and growling at Hugh’s body. Allen and Silas shot the cubs. Then Allen and Silas pulled the great she-grizzly off Hugh’s body.
Major Henry and Jim and Fitz and the rest of the party came galloping up. Just as they leaped down off their horses, Old Hugh let out a great agonized groan. Everybody jumped. And shivered. It was the first they knew he was still alive. The major took one look at Hugh and ordered the camp to be made beside the b
ody on the sand in the gully.
Jim said, “Lookin’ at him made me bawl like a big baby, so torn up he was. I couldn’t help it.”
Both the major and Fitz, with Jim helping, washed Hugh’s wounds with fresh water from the nearby stream. The major next assigned Fitz to the job of sewing up Hugh’s wounds, Jim helping again. Fitz was very careful with the awl and deer sinew, and when he had done the major pronounced it a good job.
“All the while he sewed I bawled like a big baby,” Jim said. “Especially the times when Fitz had to punch the awl through the skin. It was like sewin’ up a skin suit again after the hounds had chewed it to pieces playin’ with it.”
Fitz and Jim skinned the grizzly. The cook Pierre butchered the cubs and the grizzly, and the camp had bear steak for the first time on the trip. Hugh had at least done that much for the party. He’d maybe disobeyed orders but at least he’d made meat where Allen and his two men hadn’t.
Fitz and Jim offered to hold the deathwatch through the night. It was the least they could do for Old Hugh now.
Hugh groaned and talked out of his head most of the night. Fitz and Jim took turns wetting his lips with brandy. They expected him to die hourly.
Just before the major went to sleep, he ordered Fitz and Jim to dig a grave for him and have it ready by sunrise. Both the Rees and the Mandans might be down on them again at dawn, the major said, and the party had to be ready to fly at a moment’s notice. This Fitz and Jim did, dug the grave down some three feet before they hit rock and hardpan.
Sometime during the night, Hugh’s horse, Old Blue, came back to the party. An inquiring nicker announced his presence.
When dawn opened pink over them at last, Hugh was still miraculously alive and the party hadn’t been attacked by red devils.
They had breakfast, mostly bearmeat, a few biscuits, with coffee and a pipe of tobacco. Not a word was said.
After breakfast, Major Henry squatted beside Hugh and studied him.
Hugh was still unconscious. Sometimes he moaned pitifully. His big chest heaved unsteadily. He tossed restlessly on the grizzly skin. Each breath looked like it might be his last. His mauled black-and-blue face was hot and his big body raged with fever. Every now and then he groaned. Once he mumbled incomprehensibly. His wounds had stopped bleeding.
“Still alive,” Major Henry said.
Fitz nodded dully. “It’s his heart. He always had a young heart.”
“Well, we’ll give him a couple hours more. To either come to or go under.”
Fitz said, “If he comes to?”
“Well . . . I don’t know then. We can’t carry him the condition he’s in.”
Proud Yount came over and stood looking down at Hugh and listening to the talk. He spoke up finally. “‘Twere best for everybody all around if he died.”
Major Henry and Fitz said nothing.
“I bawled like a big baby seein’ him fightin’ it without knowin’ it,” Jim said.
At noon Major Henry finally made up his mind. “Mountain men, we can’t wait any longer. We’re dead ducks sitting here like this. We’ve got to move on.”
Silence beside the murmuring creek.
“Since we can’t move Old Hugh, we’ll have to leave him here. Who’ll volunteer to stay with him till he either dies or comes to?”
Silence on the heat-seething sand.
“I know it’s asking a lot of you men. But we’ve got to do something.”
Yount said, “It was the dummed fool’s own fault he got mauled. He disobeyed orders.”
Silence in the midst of the flittering plum leaves.
“We can’t go into that now,” Major Henry said at last. “That’s water over the dam and gone.”
Silence under the high blue dome of heaven.
“Who’ll volunteer?”
Finally Jim raised a hand.
“You know the hazards?”
Jim nodded. If the red devils caught him it was torture and sure death.
Yount said, “But what for, Major? He’s just a dead man who’s sure to die.”
“Well, Jim?”
“I’m stayin’,” Jim said, trembling. Jim didn’t have it in him to leave the old man to his fate. He liked the old man and the old man had been kind to him. The old man had taught him a lot about how to survive in wild red-devil country. And the old man had also covered up for him when he and Fitz had slept on guard duty the night before.
“You sure you want to stay, Jim?”
“Yes.”
The major smiled a little. Then he looked scornfully at the others sitting around the dying body of the old grizzled man.
“Looks like I don’t have any other men about to do what turns out to be a boy’s job,” Major Henry said sarcastically. Major Henry got out pen and gray ledger to make a few entries.
“I guess it falls to my lot too, Major,” Fitz said then. “The three of us were together most times on this trip.”
The major relented a little. “I suppose at that I am asking too much.” The major brooded over his gray ledger. “Tell you what. We’ll take up a collection. As a reward.”
“I don’t need no reward,” Jim said.
“Nor do I,” Fitz said. “I’d never take it.”
“Yount,” the major said, “take up a collection anyway. And Fitz, since you’re the oldest, and you’ve had the most experience in these parts, I’m putting you in charge. You’re to stay until Old Hugh dies, and then you’re to bury him decent. Or, if he lives, until he’s well enough to be moved.”
Major Henry and the rest of the party rode off for Henry’s Post on the Yellowstone and Missouri, heading almost straight north to bypass Black Butte and the Little Missouri Badlands. The major gave Fitz and Jim a last wave of the hand from the top of the brown bluffs across the north fork of the Grand. And then Fitz and Jim were left behind with sad Old Hugh Glass and their sad thoughts and their wondering horses, Fitz’s, Jim’s, and Hugh’s Old Blue.
They waited.
By turns they wetted Hugh’s lips with brandy, with water, with bearmeat soup. They took turns standing guard on a nearby brush-cropped high point. This time neither came close to falling asleep while on watch.
Twice the first day they were sure red devils had spotted them. Each time, they had mounted their horses and set off after the major, when they discovered it was only buffalo and not a war party. Each time they got down off their ponies ashamed.
Hugh’s old body hung on stubborn.
The second day Hugh seemed to sink a little. They made ready to go. Jim even worked up a prayer to say over Hugh, a prayer such as Diah Smith might have said.
But Hugh’s old torn carcass hung on.
The third day Hugh looked better, and Jim began to hope that maybe they could move him after all, take him along to Henry’s Post up north. Toward evening, however, after a terrible hot day, Hugh turned pale purple and began to sink again.
Still Hugh’s old ripped-up hulk clung to life.
The fourth day Hugh began to stink, and white wolves and gray coyotes padded in silently from the hills. This was the worst day because Jim couldn’t stand the thought of the old man being torn up and eaten by the wolves and coyotes, which was what surely would happen to him no matter how deep he and Fitz might bury him.
And yet Old Hugh’s body hung on stubborn.
The fifth day, in the evening, around a campfire, small flames jumping in the rusty dusk, Fitz and Jim broke out into a violent argument. Jim was a young lad and Fitz was a realist.
Fitz said, “We’ve been waitin’ five days now for him to die. We’ve done more than our duty. I say we move on.”
Jim said, “But we can’t leave him like this! He’s still alive, man!”
Fitz said, “There’s sign all around, Jim. We’re wolfmeat tomorrow for sure if we don’t pull out now. And you know yourself we still can’t carry him.”
Jim said, “But we can’t desert a live man, Fitz! He’s still alive.”
Fitz said, “Bett
er that two get out alive and him what’s gonna die anyway left behind, than all three of us die. Every day we wait the major’s gettin’ farther and farther away and it’ll be that much the harder for us to catch up.”
Jim said, “But we can’t desert Old Hugh! We can’t! Not as long as he’s still alive.”
And then, for the first time, though he was still unconscious, Old Hugh spoke up clearly. “Lads, don’t lose your topknots over this child. I’m dead, I am. Or as good as dead. Which is the same thing. Run for your lives. Every day the major and his party’re gettin’ farther and farther away. Run, lads.”
Both men turned pale at the sound of his voice.
“By that time this child was past bawlin’,” Jim said. “Lookin’ at him torn there, and groanin’ and him not knowin’, just couldn’t make me cry no more. But I felt worse.”
When it came time for one of them to turn in, Fitz and Jim had another wrangle.
Fitz said, “Jim, I tell ee, he ain’t got the chance of a whistle in a whirlwind of livin’. He’s a gone goose. There’s nothin’ more we can do for him except bury him. C’mon, lad, grab holt his toes there and let’s lower him away.”
Jim said, “But, Fitz, he just talked to us less’n an hour ago.”
Fitz said, “Jim, lad, that was the death rattle. I know that anywhere. I’ve heard it a hundred times if I heard it once. He’s gone under. He ain’t breathed for at least a half-hour. Hurry, grab holt his toes or it’ll be too late. The Rees are breathin’ down our neck.”
Jim said, “I’m sorry, Fitz, but I can’t. You bury him then. Old Hugh was good to me. I ain’t sure he’s dead, and until I am, I can’t.”
Fitz said, “Well then, be damned to you and your sentimental hide, I’m leavin’. Ye can bury him by yourself.”
Jim said, “But, Fitz—”
Fitz said, “Jim, I know this: if we stay another five minutes, the three of us are gone under. If we go now, right now, two of us’ve got a chance to get out of this alive.”
And once again Hugh spoke up. It was as if he’d heard all their wrangling, though of course he was still out of his head. “No, lads, no! Don’t leave me here to die alone in this gully! Don’t let me die the hard way!”
Lord Grizzly, Second Edition Page 26
