“See!” Jim cried triumphantly. “See! he’s still alive!”
They stayed.
Later that night Hugh began to talk more. He talked so much both Fitz and Jim believed he was about to come to at last.
Hugh’s talk was religious, which surprised them. He talked about Esau and Jacob, about how he was Esau, the first, who’d come out red all over like an hairy garment, while the other fellow was Jacob, the second, a smooth man, Rebekah’s favorite. He talked about how he too had sold his birthright in Lancaster land.
He also talked about a Mabel and two boys and about how a lowlived coward had deserted them back in white diggings.
Fitz said, “Don’t it sound to you like he’s talkin’ about himself?”
Jim said, “If he is he won’t be the first then.”
Fitz said, “Meanin’ what?”
Jim said, “Meanin’ we’ve already done it a dozen times in thought with him.”
Fitz shut up.
Toward dawn Hugh talked again, this time quite clearly. “Now, boy, I’ll soon be under. Afore many hours. And, boy, if you don’t raise meat pronto you’ll be in the same fix I’m in. I’ve never et dead meat myself, Jim, and wouldn’t ask you to do it neither. But meat fair killed is meat anyway. So, Jim, lad, put your knife in this old nigger’s lights and help yourself. It’s poor bull I am, I know, but maybe it’ll do to keep life in ee. There should be some fleece on me that’s meat yet. And maybe my old hump ribs has some pickin’s on ‘em in front. And there should be one roast left in my behind. Left side. Dip in, lad, and drink man’s blood. I did onct. One bite.”
Both Fitz and Jim shuddered at the awful words.
Fitz managed to say, “You’re a good old hoss, Hugh, but we ain’t turned Digger Indian yet.”
Hugh said, trying to sit up in his delirium, “Where from, stranger? What mout your name be? I’m Hugh Glass, deserter, buccaneer, keelboatman, trapper, hunter, and one-bite cannibal. Anyway what’s left after an old she-rip had her picks a him.” Hugh’s wild glazed eyes stared at them from between puffed up eyelids.
Jim said, “What—did—he—say?”
Fitz said, “He said ‘one-bite cannibal.’ An’ he asked us to dip in.”
Jim said, “Oh! that sounds terrible. Hellfire if it don’t. The thought of it makes the eyes stick out of a man’s head.”
Hugh said in his delirium, “One-bite cannibal. That’s what I said. ‘Twas on the Black Prairies by the Brazos. ‘Twas this way. I’d come back from a hunt and there sat my companyero Clint eating meat. ‘Dip in,’ he says. ‘I shot us a wild goat.’ I took a bite. ‘Twas the toughest meat this child ever set teeth to. Couldn’t seem to swallow it. Then I saw the butchered feet ahind a bush. Ten toes. Clint’d killed our guide, a miserable red-devil Comanche who couldn’t get along with his people. I shoulda knowed there was no antelope on the Brazos. Ae, and Clint paid the Lord for that too. In full. With his life. The Pawnees stuck him full a pine splinters and made a torch out of him.”
Fitz said, “‘Cannibal.’”
Jim said, “He didn’t know it! You can’t help what you don’t know! Clint lied to him!”
Hugh shouted up, “Hurrah, Jim! Run, lad, or we’ll be made meat of sure as shootin’.” Again Old Hugh tried to sit up, glazed eyes staring at them.
Fitz held him down. Fitz said, “‘Cannibal.’ ‘Tis hard to believe. ‘Cannibal.’”
Jim said, “He didn’t know it, Fitz! And he said he had trouble swallowin’ it! Even when he didn’t know it! That’s as deep as it was set in him.”
“‘Cannibal,’” Fitz said.
Hugh tried to sit up again. “Hurrah, Jim! Run, lad, or we’ll be made meat of sure as shootin’. The red devils is everywhere. Ahind the hills and down in the sloughs.”
Fitz pushed Hugh down once more. “‘Cannibal.’”
Jim said, “He didn’t know it, Fitz. He couldn’t help it, Fitz. You heard him.”
Hugh shouted, “Set your triggers, lads.”
Jim said, also trying to hold Hugh down, “Now, now, Hugh, old hoss. Hold still till we get the bridle on.”
Hugh said, voice suddenly fallen, confidential-like, “Jim, lad, let me tell ee somethin’. When the net falls on ee, there’s only two things to do. Set still ontil they take the net off again. Or run off with the net and all. And never come back. Because if you make the littlest move, you just entangle yourself all the more in the law. No, lad, do like I did. Run off with the net and all.”
Hugh slept.
The next morning Fitz saw them. A war party of some hundred Ree braves. They were well-armed and loaded for bear. They were led by ancient Chief Elk Tongue and the ferocious brave Stabbed. They were across the river. There was no time to lose. The two of them just didn’t have a tinker’s chance in a hot tin pan against them. Their only chance was to make a run for it and hope their ponies were faster than the Ree mounts, for once they were caught they were in for horrible tortures. The red devils were fiends for knowing just where the tenderest parts of a man were. Looking at the Rees across the river and at Hugh beside him, Jim was so terror-stricken and conscience-stricken, both, he couldn’t move.
“Let’s go, Jim,” Fitz said.
“I can’t,” Jim cried.
Fitz’s hazel eyes were calm. He looked down at Jim; then at Hugh. Then Fitz reached down and took Hugh’s guns and skinning knife and possible sack and flint and steel.
“Hey there! What’re you doin’?” Jim cried. “Gonna leave him without any way of pertectin’ himself?”
Fitz said, “You don’t think I’m so foolish as to leave them guns and possibles for the Rees, do you? To kill us with later? Only a fool’d do that. You’ve got to be hardheaded about such things, Jim.”
Jim cried, “But the wolves?”
Fitz said, “C’mon. We’ve done our full duty. Only a fool’d want to do more. You’ve rubbed the fur the right way long enough. C’mon.”
Jim said, hiding his face, “I can’t, Fitz. Hugh was my friend. He stuck up for me.”
Fitz clambered his pony and grabbed hold of the lead rope to Old Blue. All three horses were snorting at the Ree Indian smell coming toward them on the wind across the river. “C’mon, Jim, get aboard that horse.”
Still Jim couldn’t get up.
Fitz held a gun on Jim. “Dammit, Jim, get aboard that horse. That’s an order. Somebody’s got to have horse sense around here.” Fitz waggled his gun at Jim. “Don’t you see, Jim? If we go now, the red devils’ll chase us and so maybe even leave Hugh in peace.”
“In peace for what? The wolves and the vultures?”
“Get! That’s an order!”
Then Jim got up on his horse. Jim’s face was white, numb.
They rode off lickety-split, the Rees chasing after them. And, just as Fitz said, in chasing after them, the Rees missed finding Hugh. . . .
Jim’s young hoarse voice quit. Silence. Hearts beat quick and fast. Pineknots snapped in the fireplace.
Major Henry’s eyes, Jim’s young eyes, Yount’s eyes, Silas’s eyes, Allen’s eyes, all were on Hugh.
Hugh said in a low monotone, “Major, did Fitz really sew me up?”
Major Henry nodded slowly, solemnly, blue eyes grave on Hugh.
Hugh trembled. The single arteries down each side of his nose pulsed dark in the light from the red pine fire. “I feel mighty queersome,” Hugh said.
Major Henry grimaced, baring white teeth. Major Henry took up pen and gray ledger and prepared to make another entry.
Hugh rubbed his sore nose. He knew that every man there was thinking about his confession that he was a one-bite cannibal.
Hugh said suddenly, “He that is without sin in this matter, let him be the first to cast a stone!”
No one said a thing.
“The first. Because, not knowin’, you’d’ve taken that first bite too.”
“Suppose we admit that,” Jim said, looking Hugh square in the eye. “Ain’t we even all around then?”
Jim glared right back. “Littler’n what you did to Mabel and the boys? Littler’n all the killin’ you did when you was a buccaneer?”
Silence.
Hugh couldn’t hold his eyes up to Jim’s. He said slowly, “All right, Jim. I’ll let you go for now. But remember. Your life is mine on loan until I hear what Fitz has to say about your black treachery.”
Jim jumped up on his side of the table as if he meant to take another swing at Hugh.
“Now, now,” Major Henry said, getting up too. “Now, now, we still ain’t heard Hugh’s story yet, Jim. How he managed to get here.” Major Henry smiled at both Jim and Hugh. “And I’m oncommon curious to hear about that.”
5
SOME WEEKS LATER, refreshed by plenty of food and rest, and feeling as spry as a spring rooster again, Old Hugh volunteered to deliver an important message to Ft. Atkinson on the Missouri just above the Platte.
Major Henry accepted the offer.
Major Henry knew what he was doing. Hugh was tearing mad to go, was going to go anyway if an excuse weren’t given him, because Hugh believed downer Fitz was at Ft. Atkinson. The major knew that revenge, or the Lord’s vengeance as Hugh persisted in calling it, was still seething in Hugh’s breast. And that need for revenge, plus Hugh’s remarkable daring, was sure to get the message through.
The major had been talking to a friendly Crow chief. The chief told about beaver south of the Big Horn and Wind River Mountains. “So thick and so tame,” the Crow chief said, “your men won’t have to set traps. They can club ‘em over the head and get all they want.” Major Henry trusted the Crow chief and decided to move his entire camp south. Spring trapping time was rapidly approaching and after that came trading time at the summer rendezvous. And General Ashley would have to know about the change in plans because the general was coming up with fresh supplies and provisions and trading materials for the rendezvous. So the urgent need for a competent messenger.
The major assigned four men to accompany Hugh: Dutton, More, Marsh, and Chapman. The major also made a private messenger out of Dutton. To Dutton he gave the job of warning General Ashley what Hugh had in mind for Fitz. Dutton was also told to put Fitz on guard should he get the chance. The major swore Dutton to secrecy and then sent him off with Hugh.
Hugh and his men put out for Platte early one balmy morning in March, the month of the Sore-eye Moon. They traveled straight south down the valley of the Little Big Horn, cut between the Wolf Mountains to the east and the dark shouldering Big Horn Mountains to the west, crossed over the highlands to the southeast until they came to Crazy Woman Creek, then took the Powder River straight south again. In the valleys the country was barren. When it wasn’t white with late snow it was silver with sage. There was little game, less water, and only sparse patches of dead prairie grass. Up in the highlands the country was greened over with pine and greasewood. It was land red devils would avoid in the winter and, therefore, fairly safe.
Twice the men had the good luck to run onto small herds of lost buffalo in rolling bald country, once on the Salt River below Pumpkin Buttes and the other time, also on the Salt, below Teapot Rock. It was poor bull at the Pumpkins, but at the Teapot the lads had a fairly young cow.
“This cow beats painter,” young Chapman said with satisfaction. They were all seated around a fire, each working on a fine morsel of hump rib. Chapman was eating his carefully, like a St. Lou dandy might nibble at a quartermoon of melon. Chapman had black snapping eyes and a humorous manner. His hunting coat of fringed elkskin, compared with the greasy clothes of the others, was almost as spotless and yellow as the day he put it on. Chapman usually saw the light side of things.
Hugh nodded, smacking his lips and cleaning off his whiskers, “Good, that it is. But cow tastes better later in the spring. After she’s had fresh sweetgrass for a month. Then you can’t beat cow.”
Twice, too, the men had the good luck to find water just when they needed it most, once where the Powder River turned west and once near the source of the Salt. At the Salt the men had even given up trying to chop down through ice to get at water.
“She’s frozen solid,” More announced, throwing his ax aside disgusted. More had the haunted look of the tall misfit, the look many mountain men had, except that where others had open faces like Jim Bridger’s, he had a sinister-appearing face.
Hugh scoffed at More and got down on his knees in the snow and ice chips beside the green-edged hole. Hugh took out his skinning knife and with a downward stabbing motion plunged the knife into the very point of the hole. There was a slicing sound in the ice and then water welled up around Hugh’s hand and in a moment the green hole was full of water.
“See,” Hugh said.
“Well I’ll be a son to a mule if that don’t beat all,” More exclaimed, smiling surprised from out of the hood of his gray woolen capote. “And here I thought I’d already dug up sand bottom.”
“You did,” Hugh said, “but that’s just where the water sometimes still runs. Through the sand under the ice.”
When they hit the Platte below the Sweetwater River, just across from the Haystack Range—a range that kept rising like black doom as they approached it—they had more good luck. The weather turned warm and the snow vanished almost overnight, revealing that they’d moved from grayyellow land to land bright with pink outcroppings and green rabbit brush and tender bright-green sweetgrass. There was also budded cottonwood. After a long drygrass diet the ponies relished the sappy cottonwood bark.
Further down the Platte, across from the Laramie Range, they came upon bright red rimrock crested with green cedar. The contrast of green cedar against red soil raised involuntary sighs. There was hard work to be done, always, but as they rode along, the men sometimes couldn’t resist looking for long moments at the green foliage growing out of red land. Faces brightened; voices lifted; blood pulsed sweet and clean. They were true men of the wilderness. They’d lived for the ever-new in the wild and their senses had become as sharp as a pregnant squaw’s. The sky was blue—it hurt the eye like a bright light. The air was fresh—it stung the lungs like a sweet ether.
They crossed the Platte above the Guernsey Hills. And still they had good luck.
Dutton said, “This can’t go on.” Dutton was a gaunt hollowcheeked blond with big floppy ears and big knuckles. He tended to look at the down side of things. Sudden greening spring seemed to gnaw at him instead of exhilarate him.
“What can’t go on?” Hugh asked, looking up from where he rode along on swaying sure-step Skunk.
“This breeze of luck we’re having, that’s what.”
“‘Tain’t luck,” Hugh said, wise old eyes looking out at the land by themselves.
“What is it then, a gift from somebody?”
Hugh’s smile moved his whiskers. “‘Tain’t exactly a gift, no. Though it’s bein’ given us. Because of who we are.”
Dutton stared at Hugh. “You’re not arguin’ we got this comin’?”
“I might. A child can’t help but have good luck as long as he’s doin’ Lord’s work.”
Dutton fell silent and his pale blue eyes slid to one side as if afraid that the private knowledge he had might be revealed in them.
“This child’s been chosen, that’s why. I’ve been gettin’ sign all along.”
Dutton said nothing.
“‘Tis so,” Hugh said. “Spring grass can’t shine too soon for me and the Lord.”
They followed the North Platte in a southeasterly direction, with always a wary eye out for Indian sign, always and ever studying the varying and lifting and falling horizons, the pinkish rimrock and bold Laramie Peak to the south and the Rawhide Buttes and Spoon Butte to the north.
They were well into the wide bowl of Goshen Hole, just above Scotts Bluff and Wild Cat Ridge, and the sun had ascended into April, the Moon of the Ducks Coming Back, when Hugh first noticed it. His throwback dun mare, Skunk, began to sniff the wind and act restless.
“Ho-ah,” Hugh said. “Skunk smells something.” Hugh held up his hand and the party trailing out behind him in single file immediately stopped.
“What? Hugh?” Marsh called out. Marsh was in charge of the pack horses heavy with beaver plew meant for General Ashley. Marsh was a laugher. His face was always either in the grip of a laugh or on the brink of a laugh. When he wasn’t laughing there was a look on his face as if he expected to be told something that would make him laugh. The laugh, and the expectation of the laugh, had, over the years, finally creased his face with an indelible smile. Marsh resembled a merry gargoyle atop a medieval castle wall. Marsh considered Old Hugh one of the most comical men he’d ever seen. This annoyed Hugh. Hugh liked being a wag now and again, like any man, but at the moment he was all business.
“What? Hugh?” Marsh said again, face sobering down to a mute smile.
“Skunk’s got her nozzle onto something.” Hugh stood up in his saddle and peered intently into the bowl of Goshen Hole. “And this child got a whiff too.”
Marsh looked around and studied the pack horses, some ten of them, each with a pair of balanced packs on its back. Marsh studied the horses of Dutton, More, and Chapman. Marsh’s smile continued to fade a little. “The other horses are quiet. Skunk’s probably just in heat, is all.”
“All the more reason to believe her,” Hugh said shortly, old gray eyes wild yet watchful on the bowl below. Hugh took off his wolfskin cap to hear the better.
Dutton rode up. “What’s up, Hugh?”
“Shhh.”
Hugh studied the terrain carefully. They were riding on a south rim of land overlooking Goshen Hole. The North Platte drove straight across it from northwest to southeast. The whole of Goshen Hole looked like the scooped-out bed of an ancient lake. Across the river, some miles away, rose the whitegray chalk sides of the Box Butte tableland. A few wild cedars and scrubby pitch pine clung to the upper chalk edges. Black and gray sage and sweet cactus and rabbit brush dotted the bowl bottom like a poor man’s scraggly beard. Below and ahead beside the river grew a thick grove of willows. The willows were already reddish brown with rising sap. Grama grass had just begun to green the baked sands and shakes of the shores and islands of the swift river. Tucked into the crevices and sunwarmed pockets of the ravines leading down to the river were the first yellowgreen sprouts of saxifrage and sour dock and windflower and beardtongue.
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