Sam was weighing his chances in every way he could conceive of. The tent was about ten feet across and about eight feet high where it was anchored to the center pole. lf he were to move fast inside it, Sam told himself, he would have to bend over, for if his head struck the tent the Indians outside might see the movement. The guard sat on a heavy robe. As he faced Sam he was just to the left of the flap, which had been thrown open and back. There were three big fires blazing outside; the voices were shrill. The firelight cast flickering illuminations over the guard’s face and gave a horrifying appearance of evil to his war paint. His right hand clasped the handle of the knife, his left the handle of the tomahawk. He had no gun. He was alert but tense; he had to turn his head now and then to peer out. Sam knew the man was burning with infernal thirst and was wondering if he would share the rum or be forgotten. Oh, they would bring him a chunk of roasted elk but would they bring him the water that turned a man into fire? If only he were the one who spoke some English, Sam could have talked to him and tried to make a frenzy of his resentment and impatience. As it was, he did nothing and said nothing; it would be best to look sleepy and tired. Sam was sitting straight across from the guard; their faces were only about six feet apart, their moccasined feet only about two. Sam’s face was in shadow; he knew that the guard could not see him clearly, but Sam could see the emotions convulsing the guard’s face. That Injun’s belly was burning for rum. If they forgot him he would be mad enough to grease hell with war paint before this night was over.
The guard made no move that Sam’s lidded eyes did not see. During the first hour he had turned to look out at least once every ten minutes; he was then looking out every five minutes; and at the end of an hour and a half he was looking out every minute or less, and the way he moved showed that he was itching with resentment and suspicion and that his thirst was like hell’s own. Nothing, Sam told himself, was more likely to make a guard think his prisoner secure than a boiling passion that took his mind olf him and returned it and took it off again. Alcohol could do it; a female could do it. Alcohol, it now seemed to Sam, was the redman’s curse, and woman the whiteman’s ….
Just itch all over, Sam thought, his bound hands in plain view on his lap, his head sunk as though he were half gone in fatigue and sleep. Just itch, you bastard, and keep looking. Sam had never felt more brilliantly alert, as though all his senses and mind and emotions shone in the full blaze of noon sunlight. Never had his eyes been sharper. Just git yourself a thirst like that in hell, Sam was saying inside; and over and over calculated the risks and his chances. He figured that he had been sitting with the guard about two hours. For nearly an hour he had smelled the roasting flesh. He knew that tripods of green trees had been set up and that hanging from them were the carcasses, slowly roasting in flames and smoke. Redmen when hungry never waited for flesh to cook but almost at once began to hack off bloody gobbets; and by the time their hunger was appeased there wasn’t much left but bone and gristle. Before long now these Indians would be drinking. Sam had hoped they would drink before they ate. Once they started drinking they would have pictures of mountain men bringing them whole rivers and lakes of rum, to ransom the Crow-killer, so that a second time they could capture him, for more lakes and rivers. What dreams children dreamed!
There now came to the door of the tent a face whose war paint had been smeared over with fresh blood. In this brave’s hands was a piece of pine bark, on which rested a pound or two of hot elk meat. The guard set the meat by him and began to gesticulate, and to talk in a high shrill voice ill-becoming a bold brave warrior; Sam knew that he was asking why he had not been fetched a cup of spirit water. The two braves gestured and yelled at one another, and the one who had brought the meat then went away. Sam did not move or lift the lids on his eyes, for he knew that his moment was drawing near. Very gently he tried to ease his cramps and relax his muscles.
In only a few moments the Indian returned with a tin cup in his hand. Sam knew that in the cup was rum. The guard eagerly took the cup and sniffed, and he was so enchanted that he laid the knife on his lap, and seizing the cup with both hands, put the rim to his lips. Sam’s gaze was on the other Indian; he was praying that the fellow would go away. He had hoped that the guard would be alone with him when he drank and that his first gulp would be so large it would strangle him. Sam was to say later that both his prayers were answered. The Indian in the tepee doorway, eager to get back to the drinking and feasting, did vanish; and the blockhead with the cup of rum did take such a huge mouthful that the fiery spirits choked him. He suddenly tightened all over and was fumbling to set the cup down when Sam moved with the swiftness that had become legendary. In an instant his powerful hands were on the redman’s throat. Everything that he did now had been thought through, over and over, so that there would be no false move or wasted moment. As hands seized the throat a knee came with terrific force into the man’s diaphragm, paralyzing his whole torso. In the next instant Sam released the throat and his right hand seized the knife. He twisted his right hand around until he could put the blade to the leather and sever it, and the moment that was done, the left hand was back to the throat to be sure it made no sounds, and the right hand was gathering the robe, tomahawk, and piece of elk meat. He then slipped under the back of the tent into the gray—white night.
In a flash he was gone across the pale snow and into the trees.
24
IT WAS SNOWING hard. During the hours when he sat waiting for his chance Sam had known that he would need the Almighty’s help if he were to outrun the pursuit of fifty-eight hell-fiends, and the bitter cold and deep snows of winter. His instincts told him that he was going east but he was not sure. of it. During this day’s march he had seen a range of mountains west of him, another north, and another east, and he had thought the range on the east was the Continental Divide. If it was, the Missouri River was only forty or fifty miles east of it, and from there across the desolation to Kate was a hundred and fifty or two
hundred miles.
During his many hours of thinking and planning he had recognized that it would be folly to go south, over the trail up which they had come, or west to the Flatheads. His captors would expect him to take one of these routes. They would not expect him to go north into Blood and Piegan land, or to be fool enough to try to cross the Divide after heavy snows had come. Earlier in the day the war party had crossed a river but he did not know what river it was. He had never been through this country. He had heard that there were several rivers in this area, all of which came down from the Divide and flowed west. Up one of these rivers looked to him like the only possible way to freedom.
After he had trotted swiftly for four or five miles he stopped to listen. He could hear no sounds. He put the piece of meat to his nostrils, for he was as famished as a wolf. While sitting and waiting he had wondered if he ought to take one of the guard’s thighs, but he was a sentimental man and he thought he would rather starve than eat human flesh. He had calculated all the risks and had decided that in starvation lay his greatest danger. He could hope to get his hands on little except roots along streams, berries still clinging to bushes, a fool hen possibly, a fish now and then in a shallow pool, rose hips, marrow in old bones; or, if very lucky, a deer or an antelope stuck in deep snow.
He was glad that it was snowing hard. He was singing inside at the thought of being free. He thanked God for both and he thanked Him for rum. He hoped that rum and rage would make fifty-seven warriors so drunk that they would fall down and freeze to death. He thought he had heard bones snap in the guard’s neck. If they found him dead all hell would break loose; they would run round and round and the dogs would be baying at their heels. But Sam doubted that they would take his trail before morning. They would think he had gone back down the path to the Three Forks and that they could catch him in a day or two; or they would think he had headed for his in-laws and would get stuck in deep snow. If it were to snow all night they might not be able to tell by morning which way he had
taken. But the dogs would know.
There was a cold wind down from the mountains. He listened again and thought he heard faint shrieks, and dogs barking, but he could not be sure. His direction now was due north and two hours before daylight he came to a river. Taking off his moccasins and leather leggins he waded into the shallow stream and turned up it, to the east, walking as rapidly as he could, in water only ankle-deep or sometimes to his crotch. It was cold but for a while it did not seem cold; his blood was hot from exertion, his soul singing, his hopes high. He had yanked off the guard’s medicine bag and was amazed to find in it his mouth harp. It was as if a brother had joined him, or Beethoven’s ugly face up in the sky had smiled. When first captured he would not have given a buckskin whang for his life; but now, with God’s help, he was a free man again, and he would remain free and alive, even if he had to live on tree bark. The redmen might follow his path to the river but there they would lose it, and two or three of them might go upriver but most of them would go downriver. He could not, like John Colter, find an acre of driftwood and lie under it for half a day and most of a night; he could only hoard his strength and keep going. Some of the river stones cut his feet but he remembered that John’s feet had been filled with cactus thorns; he was starved but he told himself that Colter had lived on hips and roots; Hugh Glass with maggots swarming in his wounds had crawled for a hundred miles; and a man named Scott, starved it and sick unto death, had dragged himself forward for sixty miles. And yonder Kate sat in the cold and sang. A man could do it if he had to. He recalled other tales of heroism and if fortitude, to warm and cheer him as he struggled up the river.
Sam was not feeling sorry for himself. He was not that kind. He was not telling himself that he would perish. He was only warming himself with the feats of brave free men, his kind of men. Afraid that he was moving only about three miles an hour in his tortuous journey up the river, he looked round him but there was no other way. Until daylight he would keep moving and perhaps for an hour after daylight, for he thought it would take the redmen half the morning to find his path and follow it to the river. He would find some snuggery back under the bank—an old beaver house or a wash under an overhanging earth ledge or a pile of driftwood; and he would hole up until night came again. He could catch a few hours’ sleep, if he lay on his belly, for in that position his snoring, Lotus had told him, was light. He would eat half the elk meat and all the rose hips he could find; and when darkness came he would be gone
again.
What he found was a high-water eddy underwash, under a grove of large aspen; the spring torrents had raised the river four or five feet above its present level, and the high waters swirling round and round in the eddy had cut away the earth back under the trees. Sam crawled for thirty feet and after putting on his leggins and moccasins and wrapping the robe around him he cut off morsels of flesh and chewed them thoroughly. Never had elk tasted so good. Looking out the way he had come, he could see only a hint of daylight. If Indians were to wade up the river, as he had done, it was possible that they would spot his hideaway and crouch low to look back under. But they would never wade far in a river. They would think he had made a raft and gone downriver, toward his in-laws, and by the time they discovered their error he would be over the Divide.
All day until dusk he rested and slept a little and heard no Indians and saw nothing alive but one hawk. All day the snow fell. All night he took his slow way up the river. By midnight he had reached the foothills; by morning he was fighting white water. An hour after daylight he had found no hiding place, but in shallow pools he had caught a few small trout, a part of which he ate for breakfast, with a handful of rose pods. He was still struggling upward on bruised and bleeding feet when about noon he saw a cavern back in a ledge of stone. Its mouth was close to the river, with a wide shelf of spilled stones at the entrance. Leaving the river, he climbed up across talus to look in. The cavern was far deeper than he had expected, so deep in fact that his gaze went blind back in the gloom. He smelled wild-beast odors, and the odors of dove, bat, and swallow. After entering the cave he stood under a ceiling thirty feet high and looked round him. At one side he saw a smaller cave that also ran back into gloom; this he explored to find a spot where he could lie down. The animal smells in the smaller cave were overpowering. They were so heavy and so saturated with mustiness and dusts that he could feel them in his nostrils.
Returning to the mouth of the cavern, he stood by a brown stone wall to give him protective coloring and looked back down the river. The falling snow was only a thin mist now, the kind that makes way for freezing cold; he could see far down the river’s meandering course and across the valley. There was no smoke from Indian fires anywhere. He went down to the river for a water-washed stone on which to lay his meat and fish. Then, sitting in the cavern mouth, he cut off about three ounces of meat and ate it, and two fish no larger than his finger. Along the riverbanks he had gathered about a quart of rose hips. How a man could live and walk for a week on nothing but these, as some men were said to have done, he could not imagine.
While looking round him he sneezed. The echoes of it startled him, for they were remarkably loud and clear. Impressed by the cavern’s acoustics, he spoke, saying, “Hot biscuits ,” and sang a few bars of an old ballad. The echoing astonished and then alarmed him. It was somewhat like music from a great organ, rolling through vaulted chambers, with ceilings high and low. He burst into a Mozart theme, and the echoes rolling away from him into the far dark recesses sounded to him like an orchestra playing. He wondered if he was losing his mind. After he had found a spot where he could lie and try to sleep he thought of the Rocky Mountains caverns he had explored, and of the strange sculpturing that water, wind, and time had made underground. “Almighty God—” he said, and liked so well the amplified and golden-toned echo that he uttered other words. “Dear Lotus, dear son—Lotus!” he said more loudly, and from all around him back in the stone mountains the word came back to him like an organ tone.
Sam was not a man who usually felt gooseflesh in moments of danger but he had been enfeebled by hunger and want of sleep. Gooseflesh spread over him in the moment when he smelled the danger; turning swiftly to a sitting position, tomahawk in one hand and knife in the other, he saw ambling toward him not more than fifty feet away a grizzly so large that it seemed almost to fill the cavern. In a flash Sam knew that the reverberating echoes had disturbed the monster’s slumber, somewhere back in the gloom, and it had come to give battle to its enemy. That it intended to give battle Sam knew the instant he saw it. The next moment he was on his feet, advancing, the hatchet ready to strike and the knife to plunge. He marched right up to the beast and smote the prow of the nose a crushing blow with the head of the axe. In an instant his arm came back and he struck again, and this time the blow fell across the sensitive nostrils. The big furry fellow said woof-woof and began to back off, with Sam after him, hoping for grizzly steaks; but almost at once the beast vanished, and there was only the whimpering plaintive sound of a frightened child, as the shuffling fur ball hastened back to its winter bed.
Pale from fright and weakness and breathing hard, Sam watched it disappear. He felt for a moment that he was being tested with more than he could bear. Hungry, weary to the depths of his marrow, and numbed through with cold, he would now have to leave the cavern and go. There might be a whole pack of grizzlies back in the dark; and even if there were not, the whimpering one would nurse his injuries and come forth again. Over by the entrance Sam stood a few moments, looking out. He knew by the nimbus around the winter sun that the weather was going to change. After seven days of deep storm the temperature would fall; sometimes in this area it went to thirty, forty, even to fifty below. Sometimes there were blizzards that not even the wolves and hawks could endure. There was cold that split trees open with the sound of gunfire; that froze broad rivers from bank to bank and almost to their bottoms; and the snow so hard that even the giant moose with its sharp hoofs could walk on it. It was cold
that welded a man’s hand to the steel of gun or knife, if he was fool enough to touch it.
After searching the valley for sign of Indians and seeing none Sam looked up the river gorge to the continental backbone. After he had crossed the Divide the rivers would be flowing east instead of west, and he would be going down instead of climbing. With the robe flung across his left shoulder the food enfolded by a piece of it and tucked up under an armpit, the hatchet in his left hand and the knife in his right, he scrambled down to the water’s edge; sat and took off moccasins and leggins and trousers; and thrust wounded feet into the icy waters. Then he waded upstream. He guessed he might as well eat the remainder of the elk and the three small fish, and keep going and keep going. After he had gone a mile or two he peeled the outer bark off a spruce and licked the juice of the cambium. It was resinous and bitter. Hank Cady had said that lessen a man has something better he kin live on it if he hafta. The cambium itself Sam found unchewable, and so peeled off strips of it and licked the juice, as he had licked fruit juices off his hands as a child. While licking the juice he looked round him, wondering if there was anything else on this mountain that a man could eat. During the long miles up this river he had seen no birds, except a hawk or two and one duck; no sign of grouse or sage hen, no sign of deer or elk trail. On the mountain slopes above him he could see no snowpaths. The untramped, unmarked snow on either side of the river was about three feet deep. He wondered if it would be less exhausting to plow through it than to fight his way up over slippery boulders, in water from a foot to three feet deep. Wading in river waters up a mountain canyon was the most fatiguing toil he had ever known; he was sure he was not covering more than two miles an hour but he kept at it, doggedly, all day long, pausing only when night closed round him.
Mountain Man - Vardis Fisher Page 26