Lord Grizzly, Second Edition (8 page)

At the mention of the Blackfeet, an involuntary sigh rose from the men. Here and there a mouth hung open a second; then snapped shut. Heads rode forward on the neck a little.

“I told ee,” Jack Larrison said, “fightin' them red devils and gettin' out alive is unpossible.”

Major Henry went on, baritone voice clear, slow, emphatic. “We think the British are behind it. They've had it all their own way up to now. They've made many a fortune out of the Blackfoot country, up there high on the Missouri, and of course they don't want us to cut in on it.”

“I've heard enough,” Joseph Monso said, and he got up and stepped quickly to the edge of the Missouri and climbed down out of sight.

All eyes watched Joe go. A few trappers stirred. But the hard eyes of Diah Smith and Jim Clyman and General Ashley and Major Henry stared them down.

“Yes,” Major Henry continued, upper teeth flashing in a neat white row, “yes, the British don't want us to cut in. And I'll tell you why. Bill Gordon said he never saw such beaver in all his life. Around the Big Horns and up the far Missouri. Why! Gordon said the beaver was thicker'n lice on a fat dog. There were so many beaver, Gordon said, it was like in a dream. They were there for the taking. Fat and tame. The fur thick and the tail sweet. A man could catch as many as he could set traps for. A hundred a day if he wanted to. A power of beaver.”

John S. Fitzgerald's eyes half-closed.

“Men, you know the country above the post on the Missouri and Yellowstone. Clean air. So clean meat never spoils. And grass as green as paint. And pines as high as heaven. Wonderful country.”

Young Jim Bridger's eyes gleamed.

“And the Crow and Shoshone squaws the cleanest gentlest God ever made.”

The baritone voice of the major rose a little above the roushing basso of the wild Missouri. “In the wintertime, trapping done, you can bed down in a draw behind the mountains. There'll be plenty of sweet cottonwood bark for the ponies there, and squaw to dress your beaver and keep you warm at night, and target shootin' on the sunny side of the cliffs. And no laws around but your own.”

Again the crew stirred uneasily.

“And talking about law reminds me. Mike Fink is dead.”

Hugh jerked erect. Mike had been an old enemy of Hugh's. They'd once fought to a bloody draw in a no-holds-barred brawl in a St. Louis tavern. Mike had shot the heel of a Negro for the fun of it and Hugh had come to the Negro's defense. “Mike dead?” Hugh exclaimed. “No!”

“Yes, Mike is dead,” Major Henry said, nodding. Major Henry told a little about it. Mike had put in a bad winter at the post and in January had gone to live with a lad named Carpenter in a cave along the Missouri River banks. They stayed off by themselves the rest of the winter, emerging finally when spring was well underway. During their hibernation some bad blood had arisen between Mike and the boy Carpenter. Shortly after they came back to the fort, the boy Carpenter became the bosom chum of a man named Talbot. This hurt Mike grievously, since Mike and Talbot never got along. Two weeks ago, Major Henry said, two weeks ago Mike and Carpenter got drunk together, and to prove there was no hard feeling between them, they agreed to an old stunt of theirs, shoot a can of whisky off each other's head at forty paces. Carpenter had the first shot and knocked the can of whisky off Mike's head well and good, but he also knocked off Mike's beavertail cap and grazed his scalp a little. This threw Mike into a sad fit. It was now Mike's turn to shoot. Carpenter set the can of whisky on his head like Mike had done and shouted for Mike to hurry and take his turn. Carpenter was anxious to get back to the drinking. “I will,” Mike said. “And look ye, Carpenter, my boy. That last shot ye took, that ain't the way I taught ye to shoot. You missed once, but you won't miss again.” And with that, Mike fired; the ball cracking through Carpenter's forehead. Talbot, Carpenter's new comrade, witnessing the act, immediately raised a cry of “Murder!” and a few days later killed Mike with a horse pistol.

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:

4

I
T 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.

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.”

Hugh hadn't more than got the words out of his mouth when mounted Rees appeared out of the hollows, a half-dozen on both sides of them, and came galloping like mad fiends up the slope toward them. The Rees yowled. “Howgh-owgh-owgh-owgh-h!” They waved rifles and bows. Skin pennants and animal brushtails fluttered from lifted spears. All the warriors wore red warpaint; their ponies were decked with it too.

Despite all he could do, Fitz's horse Pepper suddenly bolted.

“Hold her, Fitz! Hold her!” Hugh shouted, still reining in Old Blue.

Fitz gave Hugh an odd look over his shoulder as Pepper rapidly carried him away.

“Consarn that rum devil of a horse. Fitz'd better get rid of it.”

Jim quirted his Maggie and came on with a rush. His mare beat toward Hugh in a wild whirl of hooves, around and around, like two irregular wheels hitched together. Jim's face was salt white; his blue eyes square with fear.

Hugh fired a horse pistol at the nearest Ree on his left; continued to hold Old Blue to a prancing trot until Jim caught up; then gave Old Blue the quirt too. Together Hugh and Jim beat after Fitz, down the long slope toward a far hollow in the direction of the rest of Major Henry's party. They took the smoothest route across the rolling shortgrass plains.

The three Ree parties bore toward them, a half-dozen on the right, another half-dozen on the left, and four behind.

Horse heart and human heart beat furiously. Eyesight joggled; horizons wavered. Elbows clapped hard on ribcase. It was horse against horse with cunning human brain thrown in to tip the race one way or the other. The rolling clopping beat of horse hooves was loud on the hard dry ground. Pale yellow puffs of dust exploded out of the dry grass. Prairie-dog mounds came up, and the horses instinctively veered to the right or left around them.

The flying V of the Rees closed in. Arrows sailed around Hugh and Jim like quick sleet. One ticked Hugh's wolfskin cap, went end-over-end out of sight beneath his galloping grayblue stallion. Another arrow, almost spent, hit the mane of Jim's mare, stuck a moment, fell off. The mare gave a great leap; shrilled a whinny of fear; gave Jim the jump on Hugh. Shots followed; balls whistled around them. The Rees were now close enough for Hugh to see their old war wounds gauded with red clay paint. Quick cupping hands valving their mouths, the Rees howled long warwhoops. “Ohohohohohohoh! ohohohohoh!”

“Jim, lad, freeze into it!”

Imperceptibly, gradually, Hugh and Jim began to gain on the Rees. The three of them had run down from a highland to a lowland while the Rees'd had to climb part way before they could swing in behind them. The difference was just enough to give the three mountain men the edge. By the time they pounded through the softer giving ground in the valley ahead, they were well out of rifle range. And the moment they ascended the other side, the rest of Major Henry's party appeared on the south horizon, horse heads and rifle barrels and hats pricking out over the grassy edge. The Ree warriors took one look at the armed party heaving into sight, and gave up.

“Whoa!” Hugh gasped, pulling up. “Whoa, Ol' Blue.”

Jim looked back over his shoulder, saw he was safe at last, and hauled up too. He rode back easily to where Hugh sat puffing on heaving foam-flecked Old Blue.

Up ahead Fitz had finally got his horse Pepper under control again, and he slowly rode back to where Hugh and Jim sat on their heaving horses.

Hugh said, “Let's blow a minute, lads. Whaugh! that was some, that was. For a minute there I felt pretty streaked, lads. Cold sweat was all broke out over me.”

Jim sat breathing heavy. He didn't have much to say.

Hugh gave the boy Jim a long narrowed look. Between puffs, Hugh grunted, “So I didn't see sign, eh?”

Jim bit pink lip; flushed.

The gray beard over Hugh's cheeks worked and his pink tongue appeared and disappeared in the opening and closing mouth hole within his beard as he said, “Sonny, after this, don't run too far ahead. Always keep your eyes skinned and your ears picked for sign. Because there's always red devils about, hidin' under wolfskin or, like today, under buffler hides. Or hidin' behind cliffs or brush. They see ee every day, and it's when ye don't see any sign of ‘em about that it's time to look out for devilment.”