The Revenant

by Michael Punke

  Though they were off the main river, Fitzgerald had little confidence in their position on the creek. The little stream led straight to the clearing. The charred remains of campfires made it clear that others had availed themselves of the sheltered spring. In fact, Fitzgerald feared that the clearing was a well-known campsite. Even if it were not, the tracks of the brigade and the mule led clearly from the river. A hunting or war party couldn’t help but find them if they came up the near bank of the Grand.

  Fitzgerald looked bitterly at Glass. Out of morbid curiosity, he had examined Glass’s wounds on the day the rest of the troop left. The sutures in the wounded man’s throat had held since the litter spilled, but the entire area was red with infection. The puncture wounds on his leg and arm seemed to be healing, but the deep slashes on his back were inflamed. Luckily for him, Glass spent most of his time unconscious. When will the bastard die?

  It was a twisted path that brought John Fitzgerald to the frontier, a path that began with his flight from New Orleans in 1815, the day after he stabbed a prostitute to death in a drunken rage.

  Fitzgerald grew up in New Orleans, the son of a Scottish sailor and a Cajun merchant’s daughter. His father put in port once a year during the ten years of marriage before his ship went down in the Caribbean. On each call to New Orleans he left his fertile wife with the seed of a new addition to the family. Three months after learning of her husband’s death, Fitzgerald’s mother married the elderly owner of a sundry shop, an action she viewed as essential to support her family. Her pragmatic decision served most of her children well. Eight survived to adulthood. The two eldest sons took over the sundry shop when the old man died. Most of the other boys found honest work and the girls married respectably. John got lost somewhere in the middle.

  From an early age, Fitzgerald demonstrated both a reflex toward and a skill for engaging in violence. He was quick to resolve disputes with a punch or a kick, and was thrown out of school at the age of ten for stabbing a classmate in the leg with a pencil. Fitzgerald had no interest in the hard labor of following his father to sea, but he mixed eagerly in the seedy chaos of a port town. His fighting skills were tested and honed on the docks where he spent his teenage days. At seventeen, a boatman slashed his face in a barroom brawl. The incident left him with a fishhook scar and a new respect for cutlery. He became fascinated with knives, acquiring a collection of daggers and scalpers in a wide range of sizes and shapes.

  At the age of twenty, Fitzgerald fell in love with a young whore at a dockside saloon, a French girl named Dominique Perreau. Despite the financial underpinnings of their relationship, the full implications of Dominique’s métier apparently did not register with Fitzgerald. When he walked in on Dominique plying her trade with the fat captain of a keelboat, the young man fell into a rage. He stabbed them both before fleeing into the streets. He stole eighty-four dollars from his brothers’ store and hired passage on a boat headed north up the Mississippi.

  For five years he made his living in and around the taverns of Memphis. He tended bar in exchange for room, board, and a small salary at an establishment known, with pretensions that exceeded its grasp, as the Golden Lion. His official capacity as barkeep gave him something he had not possessed in New Orleans—a license to engage in violence. He removed disorderly patrons with a relish that startled even the rough-cut clientele of the saloon. Twice he nearly beat men to death.

  Fitzgerald possessed some of the mathematical skills that made his brothers successful storekeepers, and he applied his native intelligence toward gambling. For a while he was content to squander his paltry stipend from the bar. Over time he was drawn to higher stakes. These new games required more money to play, and Fitzgerald found no shortage of lenders.

  Not long after borrowing two hundred dollars from the owner of a rival tavern, Fitzgerald hit it big. He won a thousand dollars on a single hand of queens over tens, and spent the next week in a celebratory debauch. The payoff infused him with a false confidence in his gambling skills and a ravenous hunger for more. He quit his work at the Golden Lion and sought to make his living at cards. His luck veered sharply south, and a month later he owed two thousand dollars to a loan shark named Geoffrey Robinson. He dodged Robinson for several weeks before two henchmen caught him and broke his arm. They gave him a week to pay the balance due.

  In desperation, Fitzgerald found a second lender, a German named Hans Bangemann, to pay off the first. With the two thousand dollars in his hands, however, Fitzgerald had an epiphany: He would flee Memphis and start someplace new. The next morning he took passage on another boat north. He landed in St. Louis late in the month of February 1822.

  After a month in the new city, Fitzgerald learned that two men had been asking at pubs about the whereabouts of a “gambler with a scar on his face.” In the small world of Memphis moneylenders, it had not taken long for Geoffrey Robinson and Hans Bangemann to discover the full measure of Fitzgerald’s treachery. For one hundred dollars each, they hired a pair of henchmen to find Fitzgerald, kill him, and recover as much of their loans as possible. They harbored little hope of getting their money back, but they did want Fitzgerald dead. They had reputations to uphold, and word was spread of their plan through the network of Memphis taverns.

  Fitzgerald was trapped. St. Louis was the northernmost outpost of civilization on the Mississippi. He was afraid to go south, where trouble awaited him in New Orleans and Memphis. That day Fitzgerald overheard a group of pub patrons talking excitedly about a newspaper ad in the Missouri Republican. He picked up the paper to read for himself:

  To enterprising young men. The subscriber wishes to engage one hundred young men to ascend the Missouri river to its source, there to be employed for one, two, or three years. For particulars enquire of Captain Henry, near the lead mines in the country of Washington, who will ascend with, and command, the party.

  Fitzgerald made a rash decision. With the paltry remnants of the money he had stolen from Hans Bangemann, he bought a weathered leather tunic, moccasins, and a rifle. The next day he presented himself to Captain Henry and requested a spot with the fur brigade. Henry was suspicious of Fitzgerald from the beginning, but pickings were slim. The captain needed a hundred men and Fitzgerald looked fit. If he’d been in a few knife fights, so much the better. A month later Fitzgerald was on a keelboat headed north up the Missouri River.

  Although he fully intended to desert the Rocky Mountain Fur Company when the opportunity presented itself, Fitzgerald took to life on the frontier. He found that his skill with knives extended to other weapons. Fitzgerald had none of the tracking skills of the real woodsmen in the brigade, but he was an excellent shot. With a sniper’s patience, he had killed two Arikara during the recent siege on the Missouri. Many of Henry’s men had been terrified in their fights with various Indians. Fitzgerald found them exhilarating, even titillating.

  Fitzgerald glanced at Glass, his eyes falling on the Anstadt lying next to the wounded man. He looked around to make sure that Bridger wasn’t returning, then picked up the rifle. He pulled it to his shoulder and sighted down the barrel. He loved how the gun fit snug against his body, how the wide pronghorn sites found targets quickly, how the lightness of the weapon let him hold a steady bead. He swung from target to target, up and down, until the sights came to rest on Glass.

  Once again Fitzgerald thought about how the Anstadt soon would be his. They hadn’t talked about it with the captain, but who deserved the rifle more than the man who stayed behind? Certainly his claim was better than Bridger’s. All the trappers admired Glass’s gun. Seventy dollars was paltry pay for the risk they were taking—Fitzgerald was there for the Anstadt. Such a weapon should not be wasted on a boy. Besides, Bridger was happy enough to get William Anderson’s rifle. Throw him some other crumb—Glass’s knife, perhaps.

  Fitzgerald mulled the plan he had formed since he volunteered to stay with Glass, a plan that seemed more compelling with each passing hour. What difference does a day make to Glass? On the
other hand, Fitzgerald knew exactly the difference a day meant to his own prospects for survival.

  Fitzgerald set the Anstadt down. A bloody shirt lay next to Glass’s head. Push it against his face for a few minutes—we could be on our way in the morning. He looked again at the rifle, its dark brown striking against the orange hue of fallen pine needles. He reached for the shirt.

  “Did he wake up?” Bridger stood behind him, his arms full of firewood. Fitzgerald startled, fumbling for an instant. “Christ, boy! Sneak up on me again like that and I swear to God I’ll cut you down!”

  Bridger dropped the wood and walked over to Glass. “I was thinking maybe we ought to try giving him some broth.”

  “Why, that’s mighty kind of you, Bridger. Pour a little broth down that throat and maybe he’ll last a week instead of dying tomorrow! Will that make you sleep better? What do you think, that if you give him a little soup he’s going to get up and walk away from here?”

  Bridger was quiet for a minute, then said, “You act like you want him to die.”

  “Of course I want him to die! Look at him. He wants to die!” Fitzgerald paused for effect. “You ever go to school, Bridger?” Fitzgerald knew the answer to his question.

  The boy shook his head.

  “Well, let me give you a little lesson in arithmetic. Captain Henry and the rest are probably making around thirty miles a day now that they’re not dragging Glass. Let’s figure we’ll be faster—say we make forty. Do you know what’s forty minus thirty, Bridger?” The boy stared blankly.

  “I’ll tell you what it is. It’s ten.” Fitzgerald held up the fingers of both hands in a mocking gesture. “This many, boy. Whatever their head start is—we only make up ten miles a day once we take after them. They’re already a hundred miles ahead of us. That’s ten days on our own, Bridger. And that assumes he dies today and we find them straight away. Ten days for a Sioux hunting party to stumble on us. Don’t you get it? Every day we sit here is another three days we’re on our own. You’ll look worse than Glass when the Sioux are finished with you, boy. You ever see a man who got scalped?”

  Bridger said nothing, though he had seen a man scalped. He was there near the Great Falls when Captain Henry brought the two dead trappers back to camp, butchered by Blackfeet. Bridger vividly remembered the bodies. The captain had tied them belly down to a single pack mule. When he cut them loose, they fell stiffly to the ground. The trappers had gathered round them, mesmerized as they contemplated the mutilated corpses of the men they had seen that morning at the campfire. And it wasn’t just their scalps that were missing. Their noses and ears had been hacked away, and their eyes gouged out. Bridger remembered how, without noses, the heads looked more like skulls than faces. The men were naked, and their privates were gone, too. There was a stark tan line at their necks and wrists. Above the line their skin was as tough and brown as saddle leather, but the rest of their bodies was as white as lace. It looked funny, almost. It was the type of thing that one of the men would have joked about, if it hadn’t been so horrible. Of course nobody laughed. Bridger always thought about it when he washed himself—how underneath, they all had this lacy white skin, weak as a baby.

  Bridger struggled, desperately wanting to challenge Fitzgerald, but wholly incapable of articulating a rebuttal. Not for lack of words, this time, but rather for lack of reasons. It was easy to condemn Fitzgerald’s motivation—he said himself it was money. But what, he wondered, was his own motivation? It wasn’t money. The numbers all jumbled together, and his regular salary was already more wealth than he had ever seen. Bridger liked to believe that his motive was loyalty, fidelity to a fellow member of the brigade. He certainly respected Glass. Glass had been kind, watching out for him in small ways, schooling him, defending him against embarrassments. Bridger acknowledged a debt to Glass, but how far did it extend?

  The boy remembered the surprise and admiration in the eyes of the men when he had volunteered to stay with Glass. What a contrast to the anger and contempt of that terrible night on sentry duty. He remembered how the captain had patted him on the shoulder when the brigade departed, and how the simple gesture had filled him with a sense of affiliation, as if for the first time he deserved his place among the men. Wasn’t that why he was there in the clearing—to salve his wounded pride? Not to take care of another man, but to take care of himself? Wasn’t he just like Fitzgerald, profiting from another man’s misfortune? Say what you would about Fitzgerald, at least he was honest about why he stayed.

  SIX

  August 31, 1823

  Alone in the camp on the morning of the third day, Bridger spent several hours repairing his moccasins, both of which had developed holes in the course of their travels. As a consequence, his feet were scraped and bruised, and the boy appreciated the opportunity for the repair work. He cut leather from a rawhide left when the brigade departed, used an awl to punch holes around the edge, and replaced the soles with the new hide on the bottom. The stitching was irregular but tight.

  As he examined his handiwork his eyes fell on Glass. Flies buzzed around his wounds and Bridger noticed that Glass’s lips were cracked and parched. The boy questioned again whether he stood on any higher moral plane than Fitzgerald. Bridger filled his large tin cup with cold water from the spring and put it to Glass’s mouth. The wetness triggered an unconscious reaction, and Glass began to drink.

  Bridger was disappointed when Glass finished. It was good to feel useful. The boy stared at Glass. Fitzgerald was right, of course. There was no question that Glass would die. But shouldn’t I do my best for him? At least provide comfort in his final hours?

  Bridger’s mother could tease a healing property from anything that grew. He wished many times that he had paid more attention when she had returned from the woods, her basket filled with flowers, leaves, and bark. He did know a few basics, and on the edge of the clearing he found what he was looking for, a pine tree with its sticky gum oozing like molasses. He used his rusty skinning knife to scrape off the gum, working until his blade was smeared with a good quantity. He walked back to Glass and knelt next to him. The boy focused first on the leg and arm wounds, the deep punctures from the grizzly’s fangs. While the surrounding areas remained black-and-blue, the skin itself appeared to be repairing. Bridger used his finger to apply the gum, filling the wounds and smearing the surrounding skin.

  Next he rolled Glass to his side in order to examine his back. The crude sutures had snapped when the litter spilled, and there were signs of more recent bleeding. Still, it wasn’t blood that gave Glass’s back its crimson sheen. It was infection. The five parallel cuts extended almost the entire length of his back. There was yellow pus in the center of the cuts, and the edges practically glowed fiery red. The odor reminded Bridger of sour milk. Unsure what to do, he simply smeared the entire area with pine gum, returning twice to the trees to gather more.

  Bridger turned last to the neck wounds. The captain’s sutures remained in place, though to the boy they seemed merely to conceal the carnage beneath the skin. The wheezing rumble continued from Glass’s unconscious breathing, like the loose rattle of broken parts in a machine. Bridger walked again into the pines, this time looking for a tree with loose bark. He found one and used his knife to pry loose the outer skin. The tender inner bark he gathered in his hat.

  Bridger filled his cup again with water at the spring and set it in the coals of the fire. When it boiled, he added the pine bark, mashing the mixture with the pommel of his knife. He worked until the consistency was thick and smooth as mud. He waited for the poultice to cool slightly, then applied it to Glass’s throat, packing the mixture against the slashes and spreading it outward toward his shoulder. Next Bridger walked to his small pack, pulling out the remnants of his spare shirt. He used the cloth to cover the poultice, lifting Glass’s head to tie a knot firmly behind the man’s neck.

  Bridger let the wounded man’s head return gently to the ground, surprised to find himself staring into Glass’s open eyes. They
burned with an intensity and lucidity that juxtaposed oddly against his broken body. Bridger stared back, searching to discern the message that Glass clearly intended to convey. What is he saying?

  Glass stared at the boy for a minute before allowing his eyes to fall closed. In his fleeting moments of consciousness, Glass felt a heightened sensitivity, as if suddenly made aware of the secret workings of his body. The boy’s efforts provided topical relief. The slight stinging of the pine gum had a medicinal quality, and the heat from the poultice created a steeping comfort at his throat. At the same time, Glass sensed that his body was marshaling itself for another, decisive battle. Not at the surface, but deep within.

  By the time Fitzgerald returned to camp, the shadows of late afternoon had stretched into the fading glow of early evening. He carried a doe over his shoulder. He had field-dressed the animal, slitting her neck and removing the entrails. He let the deer fall next to one of the fires. She landed in an unnatural pile, so different from her grace in life.

  Fitzgerald stared at the fresh dressings on Glass’s wounds. His face tensed. “You’re wasting your time with him.” He paused. “I wouldn’t give a tinker’s damn, except you’re wasting my time too.”

  Bridger ignored the comment, though he felt the blood rise in his face. “How old are you, boy?”

  “Twenty.”

  “You lying piece of horseshit. You can’t even talk without squeaking. I bet you never seen a tit that wasn’t your ma’s.”

  The boy looked away, hating Fitzgerald for his bloodhound ability to sense weakness.

  Fitzgerald absorbed Bridger’s discomfort like the nourishment of raw meat. He laughed. “What! You never been with a woman? I’m right, aren’t I, boy? What’s the matter, Bridger—you didn’t have two bucks for a whore before we left St. Louis?”

  Fitzgerald eased his large frame to the ground, sitting down to better enjoy himself. “Maybe you don’t like girls? You a bugger, boy? Maybe I need to sleep on my back, keep you from rutting at me in the night.” Still Bridger said nothing.