Lord Grizzly, Second Edition (19 page)

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 stream 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.”

A ravening gut worming its way across a tan wilderness.

“My bowels boiled, and rested not: the days of affliction prevented me. I went mourning without the sun: I stood up, and cried in the wilderness. I am a brother to dragons, and a companion to owls. My skin is black upon me, and my bones are burned with heat.”

He looked back over his shoulder. Thunder Butte loomed high, flat top first wavering close, then far, then close.

Up. Up. And the crest in the low pass gained at last. And dawn a lovely wildrose blossom.

“Meat. Meat. Gotta have—”

Ho-ah. What was that circling wheeling in the dawn-pinkened valley below? beside the twinkling Moreau? Not turkey buzzards?

He peered down the falling tan slopes.

Yes, buzzards. And this time it wasn't his meat they were celebrating. It was some downed critter's meat.

A surge of final ultimate energy sent him skedaddling down toward the meandering silvering Moreau River.

He scrabbled downhill until he came to the last drop-off. Cautiously, head raised like a grizzly predator, he peered past a final rock.