Lord Grizzly, Second Edition (26 page)

Old Hugh lay stunned, half against the major and half against the ax-hewn table. The lad's wild swing had been more than a mere man's punch. It'd been a regular giant's, it had. The Lord's vengeance wasn't prospering very well.

Then Hugh remembered all the days of his vengeance and of how he'd crawled through hell itself for this chance at a showdown with the lads, Fitz and Jim. The memory of the crawl rallied his long-nourished hate, and with an oath, and a violent twist of his body, Hugh tore free from Jim's grip.

Hugh roared, “So ye'd hit a companyero, would ee? Hit a companyero ye'd already deserted and left for dead, would ee? A companyero who'd always thought of ee as his own kin, would ee?” And before Major Henry could prevent it, Hugh, head lowered, arms flailing, charged Jim. Hugh decided a buck in the belly'd knock the wind out of the lad and so maybe give Old Hugh the upper hand again.

But Jim was too quick, too young, for Hugh. Jim sidestepped the rush; whacked Hugh over the back of the head with a heavy blacksmith fist; hit Hugh so hard Hugh saw the old dark come rising up all around him once more.

Hugh caught himself; turned to face Jim again. He ganted for breath. The gray beard around the edges of his mouth fluffed in and out on each puff and breath. “So it's tricks, is it? All right, let's see if tricks'll help you this time.” Arms wide, Hugh approached Jim warily. Suddenly he rushed Jim; got his huge arms around Jim's middle; shoved with all his power; and down both went beside the fur bed, Jim's fur cap flying off.

Hugh was astraddle Jim in an instant, and automatically, like in the old brawling days back in St. Lou, Hugh's thumbs sought out Jim's eyeballs.

Sitting on Jim, however, was not like sitting on a horse, broke in or not. Young Jim was supple, and he had hands, and while with his left hand he tried to defend his eyes, with his big right hand he sought out a hold under Hugh's thigh. When Jim finally got the hold under Hugh's thigh, he squeezed with all his might. It was as fair a hold as Hugh's. An eye for an eye.

Hugh gritted between clamped teeth, “Desert a man who thought of ye as if ye were his own son, would ee? Would ee? Well, we'll see, now, we'll see.”

Each held the other in an ever-tightening clutch of final mortal pain. Jim's blue eyes began to rise up out of their sockets and approach each other across the bridge of his nose; Hugh's thigh began to burn searingly and a spear of pain shot far up into his belly. Neither would let go; neither could let go. Jim's mouth stretched open in agony; Hugh's belly humped up in agony.

Jim finally left off defending his eyeballs with his left hand; instead he began to hit Hugh in the nose again and again with all he had. Jim hit and hit, hit with mashing sodden whacks. And all the while, with his right hand, he tightened up the twist he had on Hugh under his thigh.

Right in the middle of all the clutching and twisting red pain, Hugh abruptly remembered his lads, his sons back in Lancaster, remembered Mabel his she-rip of a wife, remembered how he'd deserted the lads and her, remembered how he'd become a roamer, a buccaneer even, and a killer. Who was he to cast the first stone? Who was he that he should gouge out the eyeballs of a lad who could easily have been his son?

Black regrets and old gray biles churned around and around. There were whirls and whorls of red pain. Hugh's head buzzed. He felt a faint coming on.

Ae, ae, who was he to cast the first stone? A bigger man would forgive a mere boy.

Hugh gave one final dig with his thumbs, and then heaved a huge sigh, and let his shoulders sag, and let go his hold.

Surprised, Jim let go too.

They stared at each other a moment or two, and then, breathing loudly like maddened bucks who'd been forced to part, they slowly got to their feet, and picked up their caps, and clapped them on.

Major Henry stepped up then. “All right, you two. That's enough now. Suppose we sit down and talk this over like sensible men. Jim, you sit here, at my right. Hugh, you sit here, on my left. The rest of you down the line on either side.” Major Henry took off his blue cap. He grimaced, showing white teeth. “And take off your caps. At my table you have some manners.”

Grumbling, glaring at each other, the two sat down on opposite sides of the table, Jim rubbing his eyes and knuckles, and Hugh rubbing his thigh and nose.

Major Henry beckoned to one of the guards. “I think this calls for a drink. John, go get us a bottle of brandy.”

After they'd all had a shot from a tin cup, and fresh tobacco had been passed around, tension eased somewhat and tongues loosened.

Watching Hugh scrounge around ill-at-ease on a three-legged teetery chair, hound-faced Silas Hammond said with comical gravity, “What's the matter, old hoss? You been ham-shot or somethin'?” Silas's scalping scar gleamed in the red light from the roaring pine fire.

“Yeh, Hugh,” gaunt Allen said smiling, taking up the cue. “Sittin' there you act as oneasy as a gut-shot coyote.”

Hugh grumbled in his gray whiskers. “I can't seem to get myself squared to this seat. That ten-prong buck I shot under the Blue Buttes wasn't done sucking when I last sot on a chair. Why don't we sit like men afront the fire there, Major? This thing's wilder'n my throwback mare. And rides harder'n an iron statue.”

Everybody laughed. The major declined the suggestion. And the men relaxed still more.

The bald cottonwood walls glowed red and pink by turns in the firelight. The mountain men's winter-burnt faces took on a deep scarlet hue.

Presently Major Henry signaled for Hugh to begin his side of the story.

Stubborn Hugh shook his head. “And let the boy Jim here take his picks on what I tell? Not this child.”

Again young Jim Bridger flushed, and after a moment of inner boiling found it in himself to speak up to the older man. “Damme, Hugh, don't call me boy neither. Or so help me Hannah, I'll—”

“Here here!” Major Henry said soothingly over his pipe. His blue eyes sparkled ice-gray in the pale-moon candlelight. His Missouri state militia cap on the table took on a deep blueblack shade. “Hugh, suppose you treat Jim here like a full-grown man till you've heard his side of it. At least.” Major Henry licked a trace of sweet brandy from his lower lip. “The truth is, Hugh, after what Jim did for us this winter, if there ever was a man, Jim here is it.”

Hugh held back a snort. His old gray eyes opened looking at Jim. “Oh?”

“Yes. Jim here's spent most of winter looking for beaver all the way to Colter's Hell. Alone.”

Hugh's opening mouth made a dark hole in his gray whiskers. “‘Alone'?”

“Exactly. And a man's work it was, I say.”

Proud Yount agreed emphatically from his end of the table. “That's right, Hugh. And we're all going to make our pile on what he found.”

Gaunt Allen said, “What the boy here done alone I know I couldna with an army behind me. That's a fact, Hugh. You can put your pile on it and feel safe. He's a reg'lar hivernan now.”

Hugh wriggled his big red nose. It still hurt. “Wal, if he did it alone. . . .” Hugh gave Jim a doubting look. “Tell me, lad, what was the Indian there?” Hugh took a slow puff on his old pipe, narrowed eyes watching Jim.

Jim mumbled a vague answer around the stem of his pipe.

“What? Speak up. And take that dummed pipe out of your mouth when you talk.”

Jim fired up. “Snake. Blackfeet. Some Flathead.”

Hugh's brows lifted. “You've learned to read sign then, I see.”

Jim said, “I learned it from the best, Hugh. From you. You know that.”

“Hrumpp!” Hugh put pipe to mouth again and blew out a cloud of smoke.

Major Henry said, “Well, Hugh, do we hear it yet tonight? or what?”

“Let the lad tell his side of it first,” Hugh said, gesturing with his spuming pipe, still trying to make himself comfortable on his teetery three-legged chair. “This child's just as curious to hear it as you.” Hugh glowered across at Jim. “Because this child still can't cipher how come you birds quit a friend. Deserted him.”

Jim burst out. “But Fitz and me didn't quit you, Hugh. We didn't.”

“Not?”

“No.”

“Go on. Tell it then. I'm listenin',” Hugh said grimly, biting the stem of his pipe. “With all three ears.”

 . . . Jim's story took up where Hugh's memory left off, just after the she-grizzly fell across Hugh's mangled body.

Allen and Silas were the first there. They saw the bloody, incredibly ripped-up body lying under the dead she-grizzly. At first glance they thought Hugh gone under. The two young grizzly cubs stood near, smelling at their dead mother and growling at Hugh's body. Allen and Silas shot the cubs. Then Allen and Silas pulled the great she-grizzly off Hugh's body.

Major Henry and Jim and Fitz and the rest of the party came galloping up. Just as they leaped down off their horses, Old Hugh let out a great agonized groan. Everybody jumped. And shivered. It was the first they knew he was still alive. The major took one look at Hugh and ordered the camp to be made beside the body on the sand in the gully.

Jim said, “Lookin' at him made me bawl like a big baby, so torn up he was. I couldn't help it.”

Both the major and Fitz, with Jim helping, washed Hugh's wounds with fresh water from the nearby stream. The major next assigned Fitz to the job of sewing up Hugh's wounds, Jim helping again. Fitz was very careful with the awl and deer sinew, and when he had done the major pronounced it a good job.

“All the while he sewed I bawled like a big baby,” Jim said. “Especially the times when Fitz had to punch the awl through the skin. It was like sewin' up a skin suit again after the hounds had chewed it to pieces playin' with it.”

Fitz and Jim skinned the grizzly. The cook Pierre butchered the cubs and the grizzly, and the camp had bear steak for the first time on the trip. Hugh had at least done that much for the party. He'd maybe disobeyed orders but at least he'd made meat where Allen and his two men hadn't.

Fitz and Jim offered to hold the deathwatch through the night. It was the least they could do for Old Hugh now.

Hugh groaned and talked out of his head most of the night. Fitz and Jim took turns wetting his lips with brandy. They expected him to die hourly.

Just before the major went to sleep, he ordered Fitz and Jim to dig a grave for him and have it ready by sunrise. Both the Rees and the Mandans might be down on them again at dawn, the major said, and the party had to be ready to fly at a moment's notice. This Fitz and Jim did, dug the grave down some three feet before they hit rock and hardpan.

Sometime during the night, Hugh's horse, Old Blue, came back to the party. An inquiring nicker announced his presence.

When dawn opened pink over them at last, Hugh was still miraculously alive and the party hadn't been attacked by red devils.

They had breakfast, mostly bearmeat, a few biscuits, with coffee and a pipe of tobacco. Not a word was said.

After breakfast, Major Henry squatted beside Hugh and studied him.

Hugh was still unconscious. Sometimes he moaned pitifully. His big chest heaved unsteadily. He tossed restlessly on the grizzly skin. Each breath looked like it might be his last. His mauled black-and-blue face was hot and his big body raged with fever. Every now and then he groaned. Once he mumbled incomprehensibly. His wounds had stopped bleeding.

“Still alive,” Major Henry said.

Fitz nodded dully. “It's his heart. He always had a young heart.”

“Well, we'll give him a couple hours more. To either come to or go under.”

Fitz said, “If he comes to?”

“Well . . . I don't know then. We can't carry him the condition he's in.”

Proud Yount came over and stood looking down at Hugh and listening to the talk. He spoke up finally. “‘Twere best for everybody all around if he died.”

Major Henry and Fitz said nothing.

“I bawled like a big baby seein' him fightin' it without knowin' it,” Jim said.

At noon Major Henry finally made up his mind. “Mountain men, we can't wait any longer. We're dead ducks sitting here like this. We've got to move on.”

Silence beside the murmuring creek.

“Since we can't move Old Hugh, we'll have to leave him here. Who'll volunteer to stay with him till he either dies or comes to?”

Silence on the heat-seething sand.

“I know it's asking a lot of you men. But we've got to do something.”

Yount said, “It was the dummed fool's own fault he got mauled. He disobeyed orders.”

Silence in the midst of the flittering plum leaves.

“We can't go into that now,” Major Henry said at last. “That's water over the dam and gone.”

Silence under the high blue dome of heaven.

“Who'll volunteer?”

Finally Jim raised a hand.

“You know the hazards?”

Jim nodded. If the red devils caught him it was torture and sure death.

Yount said, “But what for, Major? He's just a dead man who's sure to die.”

“Well, Jim?”

“I'm stayin',” Jim said, trembling. Jim didn't have it in him to leave the old man to his fate. He liked the old man and the old man had been kind to him. The old man had taught him a lot about how to survive in wild red-devil country. And the old man had also covered up for him when he and Fitz had slept on guard duty the night before.

“You sure you want to stay, Jim?”

“Yes.”

The major smiled a little. Then he looked scornfully at the others sitting around the dying body of the old grizzled man.

“Looks like I don't have any other men about to do what turns out to be a boy's job,” Major Henry said sarcastically. Major Henry got out pen and gray ledger to make a few entries.

“I guess it falls to my lot too, Major,” Fitz said then. “The three of us were together most times on this trip.”