They piled up a great mound of loose sandstone, more than they needed, hesitant, it seemed, to move on to the final stage. Finally Glass threw a stone on the pile and said, “That’s enough.” He walked over to Pig’s body and the other men helped him pull the dead man to the opening of the makeshift crypt. They lay him there, all of them staring.
The task of saying something fell to Glass. He removed his hat and the other men quickly followed suit, as if embarrassed at needing a prompt. Glass tried to clear his throat. He searched for the words to the verse about the “valley of death,” but he couldn’t remember enough to make it appropriate. In the end, the best he could come up with was the Lord’s Prayer. He recited it in the strongest voice he could muster. It had been a long time since either Red or Chapman had said a prayer, but they mumbled along whenever a phrase evoked some distant memory.
When they were done, Glass said, “We’ll take turns carrying his rifle.”
Next he reached down and took the knife from Pig’s belt. “Red, you look like you could use his knife. Chapman, you can have his powder horn.”
Chapman accepted the horn solemnly. Red turned the knife in his hand. With a short smile and a brief flash of eagerness he said, “It’s a pretty good blade.”
Glass reached down and removed the small pouch that Pig wore around his throat. He dumped the contents onto the ground. A flint and steel tumbled out, along with several musket balls, patches—and a delicate pewter bracelet. It struck Glass as an odd possession for the giant man. What story connected the dainty trinket to Pig? A dead mother? A sweetheart left behind? They would never know, and the finality of the mystery filled Glass with melancholy thoughts of his own souvenirs.
Glass picked out the flint and steel, the balls and patches, transferring the items to his own possibles bag.
Sunlight gleamed off the bracelet. Red reached for it, but Glass caught his wrist.
Red’s eyes flashed defensively. “He don’t need that.”
“You don’t need it, either.” Glass returned the bracelet to Pig’s pouch, then lifted Pig’s massive head to replace the pouch round his neck.
It took another hour to finish their work. They had to bend Pig’s legs to make him fit. There was barely enough space between Pig and the walls of the outcropping to pull the blanket over his body. Glass did his best to tuck the fabric tightly over the dead man’s face. They piled the rocks to seal the crypt as best they could. Glass placed the last stone, gathered his rifle, and walked away. Red and Chapman stared for a moment at the stone wall they had built, then scampered after Glass.
They walked down the Powder River along the face of the mountains for two more days, until the river took a sharp turn west. They found a creek heading south and followed that until it petered out, swallowed in the alkali flats of the most wretched land they had crossed. They kept heading south toward a low mountain shaped flat on top like a table. In front of the mountain ran the wide, shallow water of the North Platte River.
The day after they reached the Platte a big wind picked up and the temperature began a rapid plunge. By late morning close clouds filled the air with big, puffy flakes. Glass’s memory of the blizzard on the Yellowstone remained vivid, and this time he vowed to take no chances. They stopped at the next stand of cottonwoods. Red and Chapman built a crude but solid lean-to while Glass shot and dressed a deer.
By late afternoon a full-fledged blizzard raged down the North Platte valley. The great cottonwoods creaked at the strain of the howling wind and wet snow piled up rapidly all around them, but their shelter held firm. They wrapped themselves in blankets and kept an enormous fire burning in front of the lean-to. Heat seeped from the great mound of crimson embers that accumulated as the night wore on. They roasted venison on the fire and the hot food warmed them from within. The wind began to subside about an hour before dawn, and by sunrise the storm had blown past. The sun rose on a world so uniformly white that it forced them to squint against its brilliant reflection.
Glass scouted downstream while Red and Chapman broke camp. Glass struggled to walk through the snow. A thin crust on the surface supported each step for an instant, but then his foot would break through and sink to the ground below. Some of the drifts measured more than three feet high. He guessed that the March sun would melt it all within a day or two, but in the meantime the snow would cripple their progress on foot. Glass cursed again the loss of their horses. He wondered whether they should wait, use the time to lay in a supply of jerky. A good supply of meat would relieve the need for daily foraging. And, of course, the faster they moved the better. A number of tribes considered the Platte their hunting ground—the Shoshone, the Cheyenne, the Pawnee, the Arapaho, the Sioux. Some of these Indians might be friendly, though Pig’s death certainly underscored the hazards.
Glass crested a butte and stopped dead in his tracks. A hundred yards in front of him, a small herd of fifty or so buffalo huddled together, holding a protective, circular formation from their own recent battle with the storm. The lead bull spotted him immediately. The animal pivoted into the herd and the great mass of animals began to move. They’re going to stampede.
Glass dropped to his knee and brought his rifle to his shoulder. He aimed at a fat cow and fired. He saw the cow stagger at the shot, but she held her feet. Not enough powder at this range. He doubled the charge, reloading in ten seconds. He sighted again on the cow and pulled the trigger. The cow pitched into the snow.
He scanned the horizon as he jammed the ramrod down the barrel.
When he looked back at the herd, Glass was surprised that they hadn’t stampeded out of range—and yet every animal seemed in flailing motion. He watched a bull struggling at the front of the herd. The bull lunged forward, sinking to his chest in the deep, wet snow. They can barely move.
Glass wondered if he should shoot another cow or calf, but quickly decided that they had more than enough meat. Too bad, he thought. I could shoot a dozen if I wanted.
Then an idea struck him, and he wondered why he hadn’t thought of it before. He moved to within forty yards of the herd, aimed at the biggest bull he could find and fired. He reloaded and quickly shot another bull. Suddenly two shots rang out behind him. A calf fell into the snow and he turned to see Chapman and Red. “Yee-haw!” yelled Red.
“Just the bulls!” yelled Glass.
Red and Chapman moved up beside him, eagerly reloading. “Why?” asked Chapman. “The calves is better eating.”
“It’s the hides I’m after,” said Glass. “We’re making a bullboat.”
Five minutes later eleven bulls lay dead in the little vale. It was more than they needed, but Red and Chapman were caught in a frenzy once the shooting started. Glass pushed his ramrod hard to reload. The flurry of shooting had fouled his barrel. Only when the charge was seated and the pan primed did he approach the closest bull. “Chapman, get up on that ridgeline and take a look around. That’s a lot of noise we just made. Red, start putting that new knife to use.”
Glass approached the closest bull. In his glazed eye shone the last dim spark of vitality as its lifeblood pooled around him on the snow. Glass walked from the bull to the cow. He pulled out his knife and cut her throat. This is the one they would eat and he wanted to be sure she was properly bled. “Come over here, Red. It’s easier if we skin them together.” They rolled the cow on her side and Glass made a deep cut the length of the belly. Red used his hands to pull the hide back while Glass cut it away from the carcass. They laid the hide fur-side down while they carved out the best cuts: the tongue, the liver, the hump, and the loins. They threw the meat on the hide and then went to work on the bulls.
Chapman returned and Glass set him to work, too. “We need to cut as big a square as we can out of each hide, so don’t be hacking away.”
His arms already red to the shoulder, Red looked up from the great carcass beneath him. Shooting the buffalo had been exhilarating; skinning them was just a big damn mess. “Why don’t we just make a raft?” he comp
lained. “There’s plenty of timber along the river.”
“Platte’s too shallow—especially this time of year.” Aside from the abundance of building materials, the great benefit of the bullboat was its draft—barely nine inches. The mountain runoff that would flood the banks was still months away. In early spring the Platte hardly trickled.
Around noon Glass sent Red back to camp to set fires for jerking meat.
Behind him Red dragged the cow’s hide across the snow, piled high with choice cuts. They took the tongues from the bulls, but otherwise worried only about the hides. “Roast up that liver and a couple of those tongues for tonight,” yelled Chapman.
Skinning the bulls was the first of many steps. With each hide, Glass and Chapman worked to cut the largest square possible—they needed uniform edges. Their knives dulled quickly against the thick winter fur, forcing them to stop frequently and sharpen their blades. When they finished it took three trips to drag the hides back to camp. A new moon danced merrily on the North Platte by the time they laid out the last skin in a clearing near the camp.
To his credit, Red had worked diligently. Three low fires burned in rectangular pits. All the meat had been cut into thin slices and hung over willow racks. Red had been gorging himself all afternoon, and the smell of the roasting meat was overwhelming. Glass and Chapman stuffed mouthful after mouthful of the succulent meat. They ate for hours, contented not only by the abundant food, but also by the absence of wind and cold. It seemed incredible that they had huddled in a blizzard the night before.
“You ever make a bullboat?” asked Red at one point.
Glass nodded. “Pawnee use them on the Arkansas. Takes a while, but there’s not much to it—frame of branches wrapped in skin—like a big bowl.”
“I don’t see how they float.”
“The hides stretch tight as drums when they dry. You just caulk up the seams every morning.”
It took a week to build the bullboats. Glass opted for two smaller boats rather than one large one. All of them could fit into one in a pinch. The smaller craft were also lighter and could float easily in any water deeper than a foot.
They spent the first day cutting sinews from the buffalo carcasses and building the frames. They used large cottonwood branches for the gunwales, bent in the shape of a ring. From the gunwales they worked their way down with progressively narrower rings. Between the rings they braided vertical supports with stout willow branches, tying the joints with sinew.
Working the hides took the longest. They used six per boat. Stitching the skins together was tedious work. They used their knife tips to auger holes, then sewed the skins tightly together with the sinew. When they finished, they had two giant squares, each consisting of four hides laid out two-by-two.
In the center of each rectangle they placed their wooden frames. They pulled the hides over the gunwale with the fur toward the inside of the boat. They trimmed the excess, then used sinew to stitch around the top. When they were finished, they set the boats upside down to dry.
Caulk required another trip to the dead buffalo in the vale. “Jesus it stinks,” said Red. Sunny weather since the blizzard had melted the snow and set the carcasses to rot. Magpies and crows swarmed over the plentiful meat, and Glass worried that the circling carrion eaters would signal their presence. Not much they could do about it, except finish the boats and leave.
They cut tallow from the buffalo and used their hatchets to hack off slices from the hooves. Back at the camp they combined the reeking mixture with water and ash, melting it together slowly over coals into a sticky, liquid mass. Their cooking pot was small, so it took two days to prepare the dozen batches necessary to render the quantity they required.
They applied the caulk mixture to the seams, liberally smearing the mixture. Glass checked the boats as they dried in the March sun. A stiff, dry wind helped the process along. He was pleased with the work.
They left the next morning, Glass in one boat with their supplies, Red and Chapman in the other. It took a few miles to get the feel for their clumsy craft, pushing with cottonwood poles along the banks of the Platte, but the boats were sturdy.
A week had passed since the blizzard, a long time to sit in one place. But Fort Atkinson was a straight shot now, five hundred miles down the Platte. They would more than make up the time on the boats, floating all the way. Twenty-five miles a day? They could be there in three weeks if the weather held.
Fitzgerald must have passed through Fort Atkinson, thought Glass.
Glass pictured him, sauntering into the fort with the Anstadt. What lies had he invented to explain his presence? One thing was certain: Fitzgerald would not go unnoticed. Not many white men coming down the Missouri in winter. Glass pictured Fitzgerald’s fishhook scar. Man like that makes an impression. With the confidence of a relentless predator, Glass knew that his quarry lay somewhere before him, nearer and nearer with each passing hour. Glass would find Fitzgerald, because he would never rest until he did.
Glass planted his long pole against the bottom of the Platte and pushed.
TWENTY-FIVE
March 28, 1824
The Platte carried Glass and his companions steadily downstream. For two days the river flowed due east along the buckskin foothills of low mountains. On the third day the river took a sharp turn south. A snowcapped peak rose above the others like a head on broad shoulders. For a while it seemed they were headed straight toward the peak, until the Platte veered again, settling finally on a southeastern course.
They made good time. Occasional headwinds slowed their progress, but more common was a stiff western breeze at their tail. Their supply of buffalo jerky eliminated the need to hunt. When they camped, the upside-down bullboats made good shelter. It took an hour every morning to recaulk the bullboats’ seams with the supply they’d carried with them, but otherwise they could spend almost every daylight hour on the water, drifting toward Fort Atkinson with minimal exertion. Glass was grateful to let the river do their work.
It was the morning of the fifth day on the boats. Glass was spreading caulk when Red came tumbling back into camp. “There’s an Indian over the rise! A brave on a horse!”
“Did he see you?”
Red shook his head vigorously. “Don’t think so. There’s a creek—looked like he was checking a trap line.”
“You make out the tribe?” asked Glass.
“Looked like a Ree.”
“Shit!” said Chapman. “What’re Rees doing on the Platte?”
Glass questioned the reliability of Red’s report. He doubted Arikara would wander this far from the Missouri. More likely Red had seen a Cheyenne or a Pawnee. “Let’s go take a look.” For Red’s benefit he added, “Nobody shoots unless I do.”
They moved forward on hands and knees as they approached the crest of the butte, their rifles in the crooks of their arms. The snow had long since melted, so they picked their way through clumps of sage and dry stalks of buffalo grass.
From the top of the hill they saw the rider, or rather his back, as he rode down the Platte at a distance of a half mile. They could barely make out the horse, a piebald. There was no way to know his tribe, only that Indians were close.
“Now what do we do?” asked Red. “He ain’t alone. And you know they must be camped on the river.”
Glass shot an irritated glance at Red, who had an uncanny knack for spotting problems and an utter inability for crafting solutions. That said, he was probably right. The few creeks they’d passed had been small. Any Indians in the area would hug tight to the Platte, directly in their path. But what choice do we have?
“Not much we can do,” said Glass. “We’ll put someone up on the bank to scout when we hit an open stretch.”
Red started to mutter something and Glass cut him off. “I can pole my own boat. You men are free to go where you want—but I intend to float down this river.” He turned and walked back toward the bullboats. Chapman and Red took a long look at the fading rider, then turned to foll
ow Glass.
After two more good days in the boats, Glass guessed they had covered a hundred and fifty miles. It was nearly dusk when they approached a tricky bend in the Platte. Glass thought about stopping for the night, waiting to navigate the stretch in better light, but there was no good spot to put ashore.
Bookend hills forced the river to narrow, which deepened the water and sped the current. On the north bank, a cottonwood had fallen partway across the river, trapping a wild tangle of debris behind it. Glass’s boat led the other by ten yards. The current carried him straight toward the downed tree. He sunk his pole to steer around. No bottom.
The current accelerated, and the protruding branches of the cottonwood appeared suddenly like spears. One good poke and the bullboat would sink. Glass raised himself on one knee and braced the other foot against the boat’s ribbing. He lifted his pole and searched for a place to plant it. He saw a flat surface on the trunk and thrust his pole forward. The pole caught. Glass used all his strength to heave the clumsy craft against the current. He heard the rush of water against the boat as the current lifted its backside, pivoting the craft around the tree.
Glass faced backward now, giving him a direct view of Red and Chapman. Both braced for impact, rocking the boat precariously. When Red raised his pole he nearly bashed Chapman in the face. “Watch out, you idiot!” Chapman pushed his pole against the cottonwood as the current pressed hard from behind. Red finally extricated his pole and planted it loosely on the debris.
Both men heaved against the river, then ducked low as the current pushed them through the top of the half-submerged tree. Red’s shirt caught a branch, bending it sharply back. The shirt ripped and the branch whipped backward, catching Chapman squarely in the eye. He cried out at the stinging pain, dropping his pole as he pressed his hands to his face.
Glass continued to stare backward as the current pushed both boats around the hill and toward the southern bank. Chapman stood on his knees in the bottom of their bullboat, facedown with his palm still pressed to his eye. Red looked downstream, past Glass and his boat. Glass watched as a terrified look captured Red’s face. Red dropped his pole, desperately reaching for his rifle. Glass spun around.
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