While they were at it, why hadn’t they dug it at least a decent six feet deep? They didn’t have the excuse that the ground was too hard or too stony. The sand was soft and deep.
The more he thought on it, the more he became absolutely convinced he’d been deserted. The lads probably began to dig his grave; saw he wasn’t going to die after all; were in a hurry to catch up with the major; took to their heels. Ae. Took to their heels, grabbing his gun and possibles. The very lads he’d befriended and protected. Fitz and Jim. Lads he’d come to love. Lads he’d always chosen as his hunting companyeros. He could have chosen Augie Neill and Jim Anderson, but he had chosen Fitz and Jim. Jim had asked special for the privilege the first time and he had agreed. Augie and Jim Anderson didn’t care. They were too full of fun.
Fitz and Jim. Why should they desert him when he’d never done them any harm? He’d never deserted them.
Lying in the long crack in the rocks, the rock edges cutting into him cruelly in the long lonely dark night, Hugh brooded on their ungratefulness. He turned it over and over in his mind. It burned in him. Seared. Ungrateful devils. And that after he’d stuck his own neck out for them.
He’d get them if it was the last thing he ever did. If the Lord didn’t get them first.
He got up on his hands and one knee and crawled out of the long crack in the rocks and nosed on into the darkness ahead.
He crept on until he couldn’t anymore; stopped.
He let his head hang heavy from his bulky shoulders, too exhausted and too tired to slip forward on his belly, too weak to weep.
When he found it in him again to look up, he discovered dawn was just beginning to gray the east. He also discovered that in the dark, while he’d been busy with dark deserter thoughts, he had crawled between and beyond the pair of teat mesas. Ho-ah! That meant he was over the divide, that he had nothing but downhill going until he hit the Moreau.
Something in the sloping and far resloped landscape caught his eye. It was the silhouette of a great butte. It came up out of the tar-dark earth and reared over the graying horizon and against the sky like some altar of sacrifice. Its flat top glowed faintly pink where the first shafts of predawn red caught the dark red rock. It glowed a little as if the coals and bones of some sacrifice were still glowing on its flat place of fire.
Hugh’s old bleary eyes stared at it. Where had he seen it before? He was sure he’d seen it before. Sartain sure. Ae. The red dark reality of its rearing up before him and the vague red dark memory of it in his mind kept changing places, swinging around like a double-arrowed weather vane on a single pole.
Thunder Butte. Ae, that was it! Thunder Butte. Thunder Butte. Ae. He was seeing the back side of it. On the way up from Ft. Kiowa with Major Henry and the lads he’d seen the front side of it.
The seeing of it overjoyed him. The seeing of it brought Ft. Kiowa closer. What with downhill going ahead and good old Thunder Butte at last in sight, he was sure to make it now. Because once he’d crawled far enough to leave Thunder Butte out of sight behind him, he’d be on the Cheyenne and floating down on river currents.
He sighted down the long slope below him. The channel of a creek or a river angled off in front of him toward the southeast, angled just to the right and south of Thunder Butte. Was that the Moreau at last?
He looked beyond the angling zigzagging channel. Far over a low sloping he saw another channel. The second channel was deeper and wider, more pronounced, with a still further hogback ridge beyond it.
Hugh nodded. Ae. The first was probably only a good-sized creek and the second the Moreau itself. The creek probably joined the Moreau on the other side of Thunder Butte.
Hugh mapped out his trail. He’d take that gullyhead off to the left there and follow it down to the creek. The Thunder Butte creek would have water and wild roots and berries. Once on the creek, he’d cross it and follow it a ways until he got to that pass just south of the Thunder Butte, then crawl over the creek ridge to the Moreau. And at the Moreau he was sure to find a lot of water and good grub.
Dawn came up fast. It burst over the east rim of the earth in a vast racing explosion of pink then saffron then white clear light. The detail of the valleys stood out clearly in the strange zigzagging streaks of light and dark.
Hugh examined the rocky plateau around him. Nothing. Not a spear of grass. Not a stir of life. He’d have to go on without food again.
He found a hollow in the rocks and curled up under his silvertip bearskin.
His last thought was the hope that a rattler might crawl in with him. A rattler was dangerous, ae, but a rattler was meat. Sweet meat.
He woke by midafternoon in blinding sunlight. His first thought was of Fitz and Jim and of how sweet revenge would be.
His next thought was of his belly and of how hungry he was. “This child could right now eat the wild hairs out of a bear, he could. A she-rip at that. Gladly.”
And his next thought was of how refreshed he felt after the sleep. It amazed him that his old creaking beat-up body could come back like a young man’s after a good sleep. “This child’s been in many a tough fix, with his body all in one piece and no bones broke, and it carried him out on two legs. But I’ll be dog if this don’t beat all the way it’s carryin’ me out this time.”
To quiet his belly he jammed a piece off his buckskin shirt; pummeled the piece to shreds; chewed it until leathery juices revived his saliva buds. “‘Tain’t exactly buffler boudins but it’ll do until I catch me some.”
He made a final sighting down the long undulating rock-cropped slope toward the creek ahead with Thunder Butte as the mark to go by.
Compared with the day before, the going was wondrous easy. There were still many sharp stones and rockjuts the first ways, but it was all downhill, and most places he could slide and coast.
The gullyhead widened into a ragged irregular gash. Volcanic ash showed black ribs in the pinkyellow clay cuts. Soon clumps of rusty red bunch grass began to appear; then cactus beds; and then anthills again. He had himself a few geranium-flavored acrid cactus ears, munching and chewing them thoroughly to get out every last drop of moisture and sustenance. He thought of having another but was afraid of getting the misery skitters. The misery skitters could weaken a man faster than a double dose of galloping consumption.
He crawled along steadily.
He was halfway down toward the Thunder Butte creek when night began to race in a dooming black from the east. The sun went down in a brilliant throw of colors, an explosion of yellows and whites and peony-pink glories, limning the whole irregular, jagged, scissored horizon from far southwest to high west to low northwest with a glowing white-hot gold.
Despite his terrible hunger, his emaciation, his parched throat, the nauseating pervading stench of his rotting back, Hugh couldn’t help but marvel at all the spectacular colorings. “With a little salt and some pepper to flavor it, a man might almost make a feast on it.”
He hurried on, every now and then looking out at it, and finding himself strangely exalted by the swift transformations of the marching, retreating, rioting glories, by the violent struggle between the shafts of light and the clouds of darkness.
At last darkness won out, absolutely, except for twinkling stars and a lazy recumbent quartermoon in the west.
With darkness, too, came easier terrain. Keeping well away from the gully and taking the ridges along the falling sloping draw, Hugh found the ground smooth again and easy to crawl on. If it weren’t for badly shredded knee and elbow guards, a stranger might think him out on some picnic lark, part of some three-legged sack race.
He crawled steadily all night long. Carefully he nursed what little strength he had. He stopped to rest and puff; once slipped off into a restless nap; crept on, slid on.
It was almost dawn when he hit the creek. For once he didn’t bother to make sure no Indians or she-grizzlies lurked in the brush along the creek banks. He plowed straight through the yellowing bullberry bushes and down into the little s
tream of running water, wading out into the middle of it, bad leg and all, and gulped water and splashed his face, all the while murmuring little talk to himself in his feverish joy at finding water, hinnying like an old boar happy to be at his favorite trough again.
Hugh drank until his belly hurt him.
He ate frost-ripened bullberries, and wild onion roots, and a few white grubs.
The sun was just up when he slid under low plum bushes in a short receding draw away from the creek.
A good day’s run. Almost ten miles. He was moving at last.
Again he woke in midafternoon, in brilliant lemon September sunlight.
This time, however, even though he’d had something to eat the night before, and had water and food again on rising, he didn’t feel refreshed. Going without food on the first hogback was finally catching up with him.
There was something else too. His back stunk worse; his brow felt feverish. And no matter how much he drank, the dry fur lining in his mouth wouldn’t wash away.
He checked over his bearskin elbow and knee guards; found he needed a complete new set. With a crude stone chisel he jammed out three new pads and bound them on.
He checked his bum leg; discovered the cords binding his splint were slack. Ho-ah. The cracked bone was knitting then and the swelling was going down. Or could it be he was generally getting thin from lack of meat?
Rusty sunset had just fallen when he set out on the next lap home. He crossed to the right side of the creek and followed it down, always holding the black silhouette of Thunder Butte in sight dead ahead in the southeast.
The bronze quartermoon had just set when he ran into the remains of a Sioux warrior. Sewed up in a skin bundle, lying out full length, some six feet above ground on a scaffold of dry saplings, it swayed slack and lonely on four upright posts, black against the star-pricked sky. The tattered edge of a skin snapped in the slow night breeze. Little rawhide memento bags tolled in the slow breeze too.
Looking up at it, Old Hugh found himself suddenly lonesome for Bending Reed and the rites of her tribe, found himself lonesome even for the old days on the Platte with the Pawnees. The decaying leathery remains of the unknown warrior brought tears to his eyes. The white man might sometimes bury his dead kin six feet under, as deep as he made his privies, but the red devil placed his dead six feet above ground for all men to see, out of reach of varmint, as high as he would carry his head in the happy hunting grounds of afterlife. Ae, there swayed the honorable end of a free brave’s life on Mother Earth, reared up out in the open so that his gross dark ignorant body could be given back to the powers of heaven and to the four quarters of the universe and to all the rains and to the wingeds of the air and to the little people of the earth. Ae, the red devil still knew the old and true religion. He still walked with Grandfather Wakantanka on the bosom of Grandmother Earth.
Looking up at the swaying recumbent reposing body, watching the little memento bags belling in the breeze, and imagining the penny-skinned hawknose face composed in stoic calm and peace, Old Hugh found himself hating cautious Fitz and the boy Jim with redoubled fury. Even in the midst of the most precarious existence, the Sioux tribes had time to give their fallen warrior a decent and an honorable burial. But his two friends had not only deserted him, they had left him unburied.
“If I ever lay hands on those two low-lived snakes, them oily cowards, not even their bitch of a mother is gonna recognize ‘em after I get through with ‘em. I’ll tear ‘em limb from limb, and then feed ‘em hunk for hunk and rib for rib to the coyotes and turkey buzzards, and then collect their bones and burn ‘em and dump the ashes in a whorehouse privy. I will. If it’s the last thing I ever do. And may God forget to have mercy on their souls.”
Looking up at the peaceful body of the Sioux brave withering away in the slow cool night wind, Hugh vowed he’d at least live long enough to exact his sacred vengeance.
“And when I’ve finished with ‘em, I’m quittin’ white-man diggin’s. I’ll join up with Reed and her tribe, beargrease or no, like I’ve always had a hankerin’ to. I’ll make the Ree my true enemy, not just a lowlived red varmint like I’ve always said. The red devil has a code. We ain’t.”
He nubbed on, hand for hand, one good knee and one bum leg sliding along.
From the dead Sioux brave on, he didn’t see one solitary tree or bush. There was nothing but raw clay cuts, and rough stones, and wide islands of floury sand. There wasn’t even cactus.
All night long, with hovering Thunder Butte’s silhouette black against the southeast horizon, he kept thinking of Moses and his anger at the Israelites in the wilderness at the foot of Mount Sinai, kept thinking of Job and his tribulations in the wilderness at the foot of the treeless mountains of Arabia.
In the fury of his hating he got good mileage out of his torn old hulk of a body, some eight, nine miles across wicked terrain, until he hit a small spring coming down out of the rugged hills on the right.
The little spring had fresh cool water and a cluster of willows and plums. He drank the water; ate a few bitter willow twig tips; finished off with the hated plums. Then at dawn slept the deadsleep of the dead.
There was more brilliant lemon September sunlight in the afternoon when he awoke. Along with it came a wailing jerking wind that eddied sand around his body and half-buried his bum leg and made his eyeballs grind gritty in their sockets.
The first thing he saw on looking around was towering altarlike Thunder Butte hovering high in the southeast skies. He thought he could make out a pair of eagles circling it. The whole jagged tossing country seemed pegged down and held in place by the massive redstone butte.
He drank morning cool water; ate a few bitter willow twig tips; munched down a dozen ripe plums.
He felt burnt out when he began his crawl again.
“Meat,” he murmured, “meat. Gotta have meat soon or this hoss can fold up his wings and call it a day.”
Why live? Ae, what was the use?
“‘Cept that if I let myself go under, cautious Fitz and that boy Jim’ll get away with lettin’ me die the hard way. Desertin’ me. Them low-lived cold-bellied snakes. If it’s the last thing I do, I’m gonna ring their necks and hang ‘em out to dry for turkey-buzzard bait in the winter.”
His burning hate finally revived him enough to get him going for the night’s crawl ahead.
The bed of the creek straightened and widened, and every quarter mile it became easier going for him across the soft fanning silt aprons. The creek continued shallow and aggrading, playing from side to side in the gorge, building layer of sand and silt upon sand and silt, alluvial fan upon alluvial fan.
Hugh stopped for a sip from the creek now and then. Gradually it turned bitter to the taste, became sharp with wild salt and alkali.
“This child’s gotta have meat soon,” he murmured, “meat.”
But watch and prey as he might, he found nothing, found nothing, neither night mouse nor coiled rattler nor vested vulture.
It wasn’t until dawn that he hit another spring trickling out of the hills to the right of the stream. A few yellowed bullberry bushes grew along its cut. He drank greedily of the cool fresh water; ate greedily of the half-dried half-rotten bullberries.
He had a last look around before crawling off to sleep. Thunder Butte loomed high over him, a massive red altar of sacrifice waiting a little off to the north of him, east by north. At least so it seemed. He had looked at it so often and so long, had dreamt about it in nightmare so often, he wasn’t sure any more of his sense of direction, or his sense of size, or his sense of distance.
The dry fur lining his mouth and covering his tongue felt thicker.
“What this child wouldn’t give for a peaceful pipe of ‘bacca to improve the taste in the mouth ain’t fit for sayin’.”
But the fury of his hate had carried him another eight, nine miles closer to Ft. Kiowa and Bending Reed.
He slept the sleep of the unborn child.
When sleep receded
and his old gray eyes uncracked, he found the wind down and the blue skies streaked with faint white mare’s tail.
He also found that it was the misery skitters which had awakened him. Plums and the half-rotted bullberries. Or maybe the wild salt and alkali at last.
He groaned out of the midst of his miseries.
Why live? Ae, what was the use?
“Dig out the grave again, lads, this child’s headin’ that way, he is. His hash is settled at last.”
Seven times the misery fits convulsed and possessed him. Seven times he was sure he was dying on the spot. Miserably. Head low. A gut-shot skittering coyote. And yet seven times he revived enough to think of going on to get his revenge.
Up on one knee, bad leg trailing in the willow-twig slape, hanging onto the brittle limb of a dead willow, he had a look down the creek to the east.
“Gettin’ a little too clost to Thunder Butte and parts east to suit me, lads. Any closer to the Missouri and I’m liable to stumble onto a nest of Rees.”
He surveyed the rise of tan bluffs to the south. The little spring led up a gully, and the gully in turn led up toward the low pass over the hogback, the same pass he’d spotted way back on the first divide.
“It’ll be hard doin’s again climbin’ that, even if it is a low one.” Hugh shook his old matted grizzly head. “But what’s to be done is gotta be done, skitters or no. This child don’t dare go any farther east. It’s sail south or nothing.”
He had a good drink and started in.
Twilight came red; night came rusty with halfmoon illumination.
Up. Up. And the misery fits seven times seven.
The trials and tribulations of an old broken man swollen with pus and hate.
“Job and his boils had nothin’ on this child and his sores.”
Powerful weak.
Meat. Meat. Meat.
Where did his old beat-up body get the guts to go on?
“A whangdoodle at that. Only a whangdoodle could make a go of it off a nest a maggots in his back and rot in the blood.”
Lord Grizzly, Second Edition Page 18