Hugh liked the place the first time he saw it, and so did his old mule, Heyoka. Hugh liked it because it was peaceful, with little or no sign of struggle, and because it reminded him vaguely of another time. Once Hugh even allowed to himself it would make a good place in which to build a log cabin come time he needed to settle down. And Old Heyoka on her part liked it because the grass was succulently tender and green, and the water fresh, and the shade cool. She also liked it because it was the one place her master allowed himself to loll on the grass hours on end. This gave her a chance to do what she most enjoyed: stand dozing on her feet in between feedings, her old dull purple eyes closed and long jack-rabbit ears folded down and ringtail switching automatically at an occasional passing fly. Because the spring ran briskly, and because there were no potholes or bogs around, there were no mosquitoes. Hugh called it Hidden Spring.
One day Hugh had bad luck. Somehow he just couldn’t seem to scare up a single blessed deer or rabbit. Even the usually busy squirrels were gone for the day. It made him wonder if he should read it as sign that red devils were about. And he might have considered the idea too if Old Heyoka had shown signs of uneasiness. Mules had a great sense of smell, especially for Indians, whom they seemed to fear more even than mountain lions and other varmints of the wild. But since Old Heyoka stilted along serenely and in her own slow way, and because the air was suckdry, which could account for the caution of wildlife, Hugh put the thought of danger from his mind. Besides, he was busy brooding on other matters.
The bright October sun had just passed high overhead when he gave up the hunt for the day. They were following the high west bank of the Missouri, going north. To the east lay the immane expanse of the rushing muddy river, some of its waters sheeting swiftly ahead, and some of it standing still, and some of it eddying backward. To the west of them, between the edge of the brown bankcut they stood on and the high bluffs a mile away, spread a thick fall-yellowed grove of ash and cottonwood and prickly brush.
“‘Tis no use, ol’ skate. The critters has dug in, they has. Best wait until sun sets, when they’ll all come out for that one last stretch afore they go to sleep. Or wait till mornin’ for a new day and better chances.”
Old Heyoka poked along, flopping first one ear and then the other.
“We’ll camp out in Hidden Spring for the night. It’s along here somewhere.”
Old Heyoka plodded along, flopping first the other ear and then the one.
“Hep-a! let’s head for it then,” Hugh said, clapping her on the rump and hawing her half-around. “I see the openin’ to it across the brush there.” They headed into the grove.
Old Heyoka seemed to sense what was up. Both her ears came up and her dull purple eyes opened full. She began to canter stiffly along.
Hugh glanced from left to right as they swung along. His triggers were set; his eyes naturally alert for the least movement. His eyes moved ceaselessly, noting the least tipping of a leaf, or passing mosquito, or far falling branch.
Every now and then, like hot water boiling over for a few seconds until the pressure was off, thoughts bubbled to the surface of his mind and broke into talk and gestures, meant for no one in particular, not even for his own ears.
“Someday, when this country gets settled up, long after my bones has fallen through my coffin, this country’ll be just like all the rest of the white settlements east a here. And that’s a miserable pity, that is. Such purty park country. But it’s a comin’. Look where St. Lou is now.”
Old Heyoka stroked along. The shade of a fluttering saffron-leaved cottonwood passed over them like a cloud shadow drifting over.
“Deceit. Selfishness. And the white girls looking and acting too much like pictures. Thievin’. Lyin’. One man set over against another. With the she-rips sittin’ on top. No, this child don’t want it nohow. As soon as that skunk Fitz shows, and I’ve had my right of him, this child’s headin’ upriver again. To Reed, and maybe beyond. No, there’s nothing like life in the free mountains. This child considers it against nature to leave buffler and feed on hog.”
Old Heyoka clopped along. The shade of a lemonyellow ash darkened them for a dozen steps.
“Tis true, out here a man’s time and his gone under is just ahead and around any turn, but this child still favors the free west.” Hugh waggled his old head sharply from one side to another, almost shaking off his wolfskin cap. “‘Tis so. When I go, to show the kind of life I’ve lived in her, I’m gonna ask them to bury me standin’ up. This child never yet looked up to any man, not in his day, and after I’m dead, I don’t want anybody lookin’ down and sayin’, ‘Here lies Ol’ Hugh Glass.’ No siree, not by the bull barley.”
They entered the ravine. The brush up the bluff sides was stroked over with scarlet and eggyolk yellow. The spring trickled along briskly, the grass was still springgreen and as tender as pink-tinged lettuce, and the milkweed was flossed out with silver hair.
Old Heyoka slowed now and again to crop a mouthful of fresh grass.
“Hep-a,” Hugh said, slapping her gently. “Up to the head there, lass, where’s soft sand for this old back to lay in.”
It was as warm as a barn in the little valley. It was silent. Senses slept.
Hugh hauled up just below where water welled out of the ground near the foot of a towering saffron fully umbrellaed cottonwood. In hot summer he would have dismounted in the shade, but in autumn, October, both mule and Hugh instinctively stopped in the open sunlight.
Old Heyoka began to sip the cool swift water even as Hugh took off her saddle and apishamore. She shivered at the delight of free skin again.
Hugh knelt beside her and drank too, cupping up the water to his bearded mouth. He drank with the mousegray old mule until she’d finished, then he got up and staked her out some distance away.
Hugh opened his grubsack and had himself some dried jerky and fort biscuit and a pack of raisins. He had come to like raisins and ate them with real relish, one by one, biting each through and sucking juice and flesh until it had melted away.
He had a pipe of tobacco and then lay back in the soft warm sand near a patch of close-cropped grass, legs crossed over each other. His rifle lay within reach. His skinning knife was ready in his belt.
He closed his eyes. It was warm and red behind the eyelids.
He lipped a few puffs on his pipe; slowly let it smoke itself out.
Half-thoughts, half-notions, memories as fleeting as motes, lusts as evanescent as fireflies, passed through his mind. Being became a running stream.
He would have fallen asleep if a last fly of the year hadn’t come along and bit him a bee of a bite on his big red Scotch nose. The bite brought him up. He rubbed his nose energetically.
After that he stayed up. The fly bite touched off a chain of thoughts, one link leading to another, until he hit on the subject of Fitz, and then a quick hot flush of rage suffused him, making the hairs on his skin prick up.
“That miserable cowardly skunk! The Lord’s vengeance is mine and this child’s gonna get him. Someday.”
He sat up, and refilled and relit his corncob pipe.
“And what’s wrong with a little revenge may I ask? The Bible and the old times are full of it.”
He blew out clouds of smoke.
“Well then, Fitz, just why did you lie then when you told the major you’d buried me decent?”
Hugh swore, and Old Heyoka perked up one of her big fluted tube ears.
“One-bite cannibal or no, and all the rest, I still have my rights, Gen’ral.”
Hugh hit the soft sand beside him with the flat of his hand, so that it plaffed up over his leather buckskin leggings a little.
“You dummed Irisher you. So that’s where your book-larnin’ has brought you—to where you can make up fancy excuses for desertin’ your companyeros.”
Hugh tore up some nearby tufts of grass by the roots.
“Yessiree, Major, I ain’t restin’ until I count coup on Fitz, the miserable cowardly skunk
.”
Hugh blew up puff after puff of smoke. They rose to the heavens like miniature Indian smoke signals.
“What I ought to do afore I kill ee, Fitz, is torment ye a little. Tell ee I’m handin’ you over to your conscience. I was once given over to a one-bite cannibal conscience and ye can see the results. Ha.”
Hugh sucked his pipe until it crackled like fat frying over a hot fire.
“My conscience. Ha. So full a hant sons I keep seein’ them over and over again, no matter how downright onhuman the she-rip mother of the first two was.” Hugh scratched his big red nose. “Just full of ‘em. There was my boy Clint. And then came my boy Johnnie Gardner. And then my boys Augie Neill and Jim Anderson. And then my boy Jim Bridger. Ha. Just an old mule crazy for a colt, like the major says. Well, that’s what a bad conscience does for ee all right. Grows hants. First thing you know I’ll even be thinkin’ on Fitz as one of my boys.”
Hugh drew on his pipe until the fire in it went out. Then he clapped out the corncob and put it away.
“One thing this child is gonna make sure of. I’m gonna get my Ol’ Bullthrower back for sure. Comes to my rifle, I’d as liefsomer lend a man my wife. Or my heart’s blood. She shoots center she does.”
Hugh swore.
“What? I don’t have it in me to kill the skunk? Ye’ll see, ye’ll see. Just let him cross my path just once more. An eye for a tooth and a tooth for an eye, that’s what I say.”
Hugh swore twice.
“And then that money that the major collected, Fitz, for you and the lad Jim to stick by me—what’d you do with that Judas money? Ha?”
Hugh jumped to his feet.
“It’s more than a man can stand, thinkin’ on it, day after day. C’mon, ol’ skate, best we get a move on and hunt us up some meat. Afore I mistake ee for Fitz and let you have it in the lights.”
Hugh was about to untie Old Heyoka’s hitching strap, when he heard a commotion outside the gate. He looked up, saw blue-clad riflemen and leather-clothed trappers bustling around a common center, voices full of excitement and surprise.
“What mout the trouble be out there?” Hugh called to a tall blue-clad guard on the riflewalk over the gate.
“Heard say there’s another scaresome skeleton in from the mountains,” the guard said, looking down.
Hugh let his hand slip off the knot of the hitching strap. Instinctively his hands picked up his rifle and set the trigger. “Another? Who is it?”
“Said he was part of Captain Smith’s party.”
Hugh felt queersome. It was probably Fitz.
The commotion of men came slowly through the opened gate. A second blue-clad guard led the way. Riflemen and trappers continued to boil around a common center.
Rifle in hand, and standing behind Old Heyoka, Hugh watched the walking scarecrow go by. It was no surprise to Hugh to see the scarecrow carrying Old Bullthrower, his old friend and rifle. It was downer Fitz at last.
Fitz walked along stoutly. His deepset haunted eyes looked quietly out at the world. His pink Irish cheeks, now burnt black by the Platte prairie sun, were only partially sunken, and his brown hair, where it showed from beneath a wool hat, was still untouched by gray. His step was still quick and his movement fluid. His turndown lips had worn back to a cold hard scimitar of determination. His chin was darkly bearded, and his leathers in tatters.
Hugh saw him; fingered the trigger; thought: “Should I shoot him?”—and then let him go. Hugh turned his back on him and said to his old mule, “This child can wait till he’s had meat and rest. I want Fitz as full as a wood tick afore I mash out his miserable life.” Hugh untied the knot and got aboard Old Heyoka. “Hep-a. We’ll go make meat for him to feed on. Soldier’s rations is poor grub for mountain men.”
Two days later, just back from one hunt and ready for another, with his hand again on the knot of Old Heyoka’s hitching strap, a voice of an old time hailed him.
“Hugh, old hoss, I hear you’re lookin’ for me.”
Hugh stiffened; slowly turned. His hand slid automatically from knot to gun, automatically set the trigger.
“Hugh, the gen’ral tells me you’ve got a stick to shave with me.”
It was Fitz, coming toward him from the general’s quarters. Fitz carried Old Bullthrower. Two days rest and meat and new leathers had worked wonders for him. He looked like a new man. His eyes were bright, his shaven jowl pink, his turndown lips lifted a little.
Hugh stood looking at Fitz and slowly felt himself fill up, swell up, until he thought he’d burst. He thought: “Should I shoot him? Now?”
Fitz said, “I’ve got somethin’ for you too. Your favorite rifle. Ol’ Bullthrower. I kept it for you through thick and thin. Kept’er greased and primed.”
Hugh stared. His heavy gray brow raised, and white circles grew around his old gray eyes. He stared at his old friend the flintlock.
“Here, take it, man, it’s yours, ain’t it?”
Hugh let down the trigger of the second-hand gun he had in hand and set it against the hitching post. He took Old Bullthrower. Without thinking, out of old habit, his hands took their old familiar hold on the rifle and raised it to his shoulder and his eyes sighted along it.
“First-rate rifle, Hugh. A centershot if there ever was one. I know why you favored it. It’s saved my life many a time.”
Hugh cradled it in his arms.
Fitz said briskly, “And as for Ol’ Blue, your hoss, I lost him to the Indians beyond the Fiery Narrows. Too bad. I meant to keep him for you too. And them same Indians got your hoss pistol and your old skinning knife.”
Hugh raised his old gray eyes from Old Bullthrower and stared at Fitz. He thought: “Should I shoot him? Now? Even though he’s probably never been a one-bite cannibal like me?” Old Heyoka switched her scabby ringtail beside him.
Fitz said, “Hugh, the gen’ral tells me you harbor a grudge against me and Jim. Well, Hugh, if I was in your shoes, I can’t say as I’d much blame you. But, Hugh, we boys intended you no harm. No harm. We did what we did the best we could at the time. You’ll just have to take the will for the deed.”
Hugh continued to feel full-up inside. He thought: “Now?” He set the trigger.
Fitz said, “You know how I work. Practical. Try not to let feelin’s color what I see.”
Still Hugh said nothing. His hands held tight onto Old Bullthrower.
Fitz said, hazel eyes looking straight at him, “Hugh, there’s still a half-dozen men out on the prairies there. Along the Platte somewhere, waitin’ beside a big cache of beaver plew. All the gen’ral’s wealth. And the gen’ral’s rounded up a couple dozen ponies for me and I’m goin’ out to get them. How about helpin’ me, Hugh?”
Hugh still said nothing. And still he held tight onto Old Bullthrower as if he had to wrestle it down.
Fitz continued to look Hugh square in the eye. “You ain’t got your mad up against us boys, have you, Hugh?”
Hugh shivered. Now? Old Heyoka flopped her fluted tube ears in turn beside him.
Fitz then held out a leather sack to Hugh. “We boys’re also givin’ you this.” The small sack clinked with silver money.
Hugh looked down at it dumbly.
Fitz put it in his hand. “It’s the money the major collected for when Jim and I watched over you on the Grand.”
Hugh held it a second, then suddenly threw it down on the ground, threw it so violently the dry leather pouch burst open and a few dull tarnished silver coins rolled out across the dusty fort yard.
Fitz jumped back and looked up astonished at Hugh.
Hugh roared, “What do you take me for? You devil! I don’t want my own gravedigger’s pay, for godsakes! Not a gravedigger anyway who didn’t have the guts to finish his job!”
Fitz continued to look astonished. “Why, Hugh, we boys thought you’d be glad to get the money. It’ll set you up for a while.”
“‘Glad’?” Hugh managed to croak.
“Sure.”
“‘Glad
’?”
“Well, Hugh, if that’s the way you feel about it, I’m sorry. When Jim told me at the rendezvous that you’d come back alive, come back from the dead, we decided then and there you was entitled to that money.”
“‘Back from the dead’?”
“Yes. When we left you, Hugh, you were as dead as . . . as . . .”
Hugh trembled violently from head to foot. He was afraid he was going to faint. “If I was dead, why didn’t you finish your job as gravedigger and bury me decent?”
“Because we didn’t get the time, Hugh. The red devils was on top of us.” Fitz’s brows lifted in surprise again. “You didn’t expect us to bury you at the risk of our own lives, did you?”
Hugh stared from behind the half-lidded low-centered eyes. He had trouble seeing Fitz.
Fitz said, “Well, if that’s what’s botherin’ you, Hugh, I hope you forgive us. We boys did the best we could.”
We boys. O them haunt sons!
“We just couldn’t take the time, Hugh. We’d’ve been dead too if we had.”
A huge and terrible sigh gushed up out of Hugh. This was the hardest of all. Ae, bar none it was.
“I’m sorry, Hugh.”
“So I’ve come to it at last. I’m being asked to forgive the devil who left me for dead by that devil himself.”
Fitz backed a step. “‘Devil’?”
“Yes, ‘devil.’” Hugh looked down at Fitz from his great height. “Fitz, tell me, why did you lie to the major? Tellin’ him you saw me dead and buried on the forks of the Grand?”
Fitz looked down a second. “Well, Hugh, I must admit that there I made a mistake. I should have told that straight. Not that it would have made any difference, of course.” Fitz looked up again; tried to smile. “But you see, Hugh, by the time Jim and I got to the major, we’d gone over it so often it’d got a little mixed up in our heads. Got set wrong. You know.”
“So you did lie to the major then?”
Fitz looked Hugh in the eye. “Yes, Hugh, yes, I did. And not Jim. I was in charge.”
Lord Grizzly, Second Edition Page 33