The Authentic Story of Hugh Glass
Page 3
They left on February 29, 1824. Having in mind to miss the worst weather and take a shorter route besides, they went south, up the Powder River to its headwaters, and crossed to the Platte River, instead of going northeast to the frozen Missouri and then southeast along the river from there they could follow the river directly east to Fort Atkinson at Council Bluff.
By the time they struck the Platte, spring was on its way and the ice was breaking up. Mountain men never walked where there was a river to carry them, so the five stopped and built a bullboat. The Platte was too shallow to float almost any kind of boat. Bullboats were the exception. They were generally saucer-round, were made from buffalo skin stretched over limbs and caulked with buffalo fat, and had almost no draft.
Glass and his comrades pushed off downstream close to the end of March. It looked like a lark to Hugh. He not only had companions, he was headed into the territory of his brothers, the Pawnees. Fat country to a mountain man, with plenty of buffalo, the sun warming the land with a gentle hand, the cottonwoods beginning to turn green, and Indians who would treat him like a long-lost brother.
Where the Laramie comes into the Platte River, where Fort Laramie was to be later on, the travelers spotted a sizable cluster of Indian lodges. Some braves came down the bank and waved, gave the sign language for peace, and called out for their white brothers to put in. Hugh would have paddled by, except for one thing the Indians couldn’t guess—he recognized their lingo. They were Pawnees. He explained to his friends and put straight into the bank.
Hugh clambered out of the bullboat addressing the Indians in their own language, and identified himself as their brother and son of one of their great chiefs. They put their arms around him, one at a time, and greeted him solemnly and gladly. He told the others to get out of the boat and come into the village. They were going to get a good feed. Besides, Pawnee women were as willing and as much fun as could be, and white men were still a novelty among them. And leave your rifles, he said. You don’t need them, and it’s an insult for a friend to bring weapons into a Pawnee camp.
Glass and three of his companions went to the tipi of the highest ranking Indian and settled down for a smoke and a feed. Dutton stayed near the boat, suspicious. As the women were bustling around to serve their guests, Glass heard something telling: The language of the Pawnees and Rees was almost identical, but the Rees pronounced certain words differently. The woman near him was a Ree. He knew by the way of talking. He looked around quickly and carefully. Impossible the Rees could be three hundred miles from their territory. But he was sure now, and he spoke low: “These are Rees. Let’s cache.”
One of the leaders understood English and replied, “No, we’re Pawnees.” But Glass wasn’t about to listen. The four cleared out and ran for the boat. The Rees came chasing after them, screeching.
Dutton was already in mid-river in the bullboat when they reached the shore. Their rifles were gone, of course. They scattered.
Within five minutes Glass was crouched in a crevice in some rocks, hoping the Rees would miss him in the falling darkness. More was cut down in Glass’s sight; then Chapman was killed close by. Glass huddled further down. While he waited for blackness, hearing nearby the awful cries of glee over the mutilated bodies, he figured out what had happened: The Rees had split up after the Arikara campaign. One band had gone to live with the Mandans. Another band had disappeared westward, no one knew where. Well, they had come a long way to join their near relatives the Pawnees, just where Glass would run into them. And they were mean as ever.
Hell of a thing for a hoss to run in with the same band of Indians three times in nine months in three entirely different places and damn near get rubbed out three times. His luck was running bad.
Glass snuck out of the rocks and made some miles down the river before daylight. Then he cached in some rocks and took stock. Maybe his luck wasn’t so bad after all. “Although I had lost my rifle and all my plunder,” he said later, “I felt quite rich when I found my knife, flint, and steel in my shot pouch. These little fixins make a man feel right peart when he is three or four hundred miles away from anybody or any place.” Especially if the same man was left in the same fix eight months before without any fixens, and without able arms and legs. Wagh! He’d done it before and he could do it again. Besides, he still had Fitzgerald to even up with.
Hugh changed his aim from Fort Atkinson to Fort Kiowa. It was four hundred miles away, which was closer than Atkinson. He had no worry with food this time. The cows had recently dropped, and he could easily catch up with the calves only a few days old. He made meat as often as he felt inclined and hit Fort Kiowa in May.
When he got on down to Fort Atkinson with the letter for Ashley, he got a couple of surprises and he gave a couple. Dutton and Marsh had arrived before him, having joined up and come together down the Platte. They had reported him dead at last, and here he was again. The other surprise was mutual—with John Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald had heard that Glass was alive from Cayewa Brazeau up at Kiowa last December, and had been relieved to find out from Marsh and Dutton, just a couple of weeks before, that the old man had gone down. Yet here he was, not only alive, but murderous.
Hugh was right gratified to find Fitzgerald, until he found out one thing—Fitzgerald was now a member of the U.S. Army, and killing him would get a man executed. Hugh blustered into the office of Captain Riley, demanding fair play. The officer brought Fitzgerald in.
Finally. There Fitzgerald stood, hangdog as Hugh could want. Funny, though, he couldn’t hate the niggur quite as much as he wanted to. Maybe he’d had too much good luck of late to keep all that hating cached up inside.
“You ran out on me dyin’,” he accused Fitzgerald. “You was paid well enough, and you said you’d stay till I was good or gone down. But you got scared and run off. And you stole what I might’ve lived by. Stole it so you could get some money that wasn’t yourn and so nobody’d know what you done. Well, I count you got somethin’ to think on the rest of your string!”
Riley dismissed Fitzgerald and made Glass an offer. If Glass would clear out, Riley would give him back his rifle and other possibles, and stake him what he needed to get started again. Hugh took it.
He decided, though, to try his luck somewhere else. He set out with a band headed for Santa Fe. For four years he trapped the streams of the Southwest. In 1829 he came back to Yellowstone country as a free trapper. In 1833 he tried his luck against the Rees once more. It played out. Rees killed and scalped him and his companion, Edward Rose.
Glass, though, had become a grizzled legend to the men he shared robes, campfires, and fat cow with. He went jauntily at death four times in a row in one year, and came away with the upper hand. He had mountain luck. He showed incredible skill, endurance, and courage. With those he survived in fact, and he has survived in legend.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Win Blevins is an American author of historical fiction, narrative non-fiction, historical fantasy, and non-fiction books, as well as short stories, novellas, articles, reviews, and screenplays. He has written many books about the western mountain trappers, and is known for his "mastery of western lore." His notable works include Stone Song, So Wild a Dream, and Dictionary of the American West. According to WorldCat, the Dictionary of the American West is held in 728 libraries.
Blevins has won numerous awards, including being named winner of the Owen Wister Award for Lifetime Achievement in writing literature of the West, being selected for the Western Writers Hall of Fame, being twice named 'Writer of the Year' by Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers, and winning two Spur Awards for Novel of the West.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winfred_Blevins
Visit Win on his home on the web:
www.meredithandwinblevins.com or
https://www.facebook.com/Mountain-Man-Books-1640372442847626/
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