Lord Grizzly, Second Edition (33 page)

“Sure, old hoss. That's it. I know just how you feel.” Hugh hit Old Heyoka on her dusty tail to set her into motion. “Hep-a! ol' skate. ‘Tis a mercy run this time.”

Clyman slowly turned his head and looked down at Hugh holding him up. “I—ain't—dreamin'?—Them—is—the—Stars—and—Stripes?”

“They are, lad. Fort Atkinson.”

“Thank—God—for—that.”

“Yes, thank God for that, lad.”

Hugh continued to hold Clyman in the saddle as he walked beside the mule.

Clyman couldn't help talking, slow as it was. “You're—white—Hugh.”

“That I am.”

“And—you're—alive.”

Hugh laughed shortly. “‘Tis so. Though there be some who've wished I'd stayed dead there on the Grand.”

“Who?”

“Fitz and Jim.”

Clyman glanced down at Hugh. Slowly he shook his head. “Not Fitz—and—Jim—Hugh.—Not—them.”

Hugh said nothing. Instead he gave slow-stilting Old Heyoka another clap on her dusty ringtail rump.

When Hugh finally got Clyman into the fort, and up on a leather bed in his quarters, he wondered a little if he'd come along in time after all. Because Clyman looked like an old man, a huge hairy skull sitting in the midst of seemingly crumbling bones with only his small dark blue haunted eyes still alive.

But Clyman surprised him. Soup and whisky, and bread and buffalo hump, and a shave, soon revived him. Within a week's time he was able to walk from his leather bed to the mess room and back again three times each day. And within another week he could talk normally again. And he seemed to shed the aged look too, the first week regaining middle age and the second week his youth.

“Tell about the whole consarn,” Hugh said one day as they sat smoking their pipes on the halved-log steps in front of their quarters. A saffron-bright September sun slanted warm upon them. Hugh was in his old leathers while Clyman leaned back in a fresh set of yellow fringed buckskins. The fort yard swarmed with busy carpenters and draymen and trappers. A mule brayed at a hitching post near the gate.

“‘Twasn't much,” Clyman said slowly, sucking deep on his corncob pipe.

“‘Twas fair enough to kill ye,” Hugh said, blowing out a little fog of smoke.

“‘Twas my own fault,” Clyman said, looking beyond Hugh.

The mule honked again.

The sun warmed the backs of their hands as they held pipe to mouth.

Hugh said, “Who said it wasn't?”

Clyman blinked.

“Don't tell me that Fitz deserted you too?”

“No, not Fitz. He wasn't in it. No, ‘twas Tom Fitzpatrick who was with me. Though ‘twas myself that was foolish.”

“Tell about the whole consarn,” Hugh urged again, old gray eyes drawn up shrewd and wondering.

So Clyman told about it. How he and Tom Fitzpatrick scouted ahead of Captain Diah Smith's party packing beaver plew bound for the States; how they went down the Sweetwater looking for a place to cross; how, when they found a shallow place in the river, Clyman elected to stay with their plunder while Tom went back to guide Smith and company to the spot. Clyman built a bower in some willows and holed in. A few days later he heard voices and, looking out, spotted a war party of Indians. He didn't feel safe, so he left horse and plunder and walked backward from the place across open sands and hid in some rocks some distance from the stream. He hid out some eleven days waiting for the Indians to move away and for Tom and Diah Smith to come along. When he finally climbed out of his hideout, he found his horse and plunder gone. When Tom and Diah still didn't show up, he decided to follow the Sweetwater to where it flowed into the Platte, and then take the Platte across the long prairies to Ft. Atkinson on the Missouri. All he had to do was follow the river and he was sure to get in safely. It was summer, there was plenty of buffalo and game around, and he was well armed. And all would have gone well if he hadn't run into a Pawnee war party, who robbed him of everything except his gun and a little powder and a few balls. From then on Clyman gradually weakened into the stumbling cross Hugh had seen out of his prairie pothole. Clyman said he saw numerous bands of wild horses, and even creased one, but, like Hugh, had shot too low and had killed it. Clyman saw buffalo and managed to kill one. But the nearer he came to the fort the more barren and desolate and game-forsaken the country became.

“What was grub?” Hugh asked, between puffs on his pipe.

“Mostly grass and gopher.”

“‘Twas the same with me. All the way to Fort Kiowa. And then along the White.”

The mule brayed again.

Clyman looked at Hugh. “Drinkin' the White give you granpap hair, Hugh?”

Hugh's lips twisted and his white whiskers moved over his cheek. “Might have. Except a spook played with me all of forty mile.”

Clyman nodded. “I've seen them too.”

Hugh laughed. “If that grizzly got a good look at me he saw one too.”

Clyman nodded some more.

Hugh said, “So it wasn't Fitz who deserted ye then?”

“Like I said, Hugh, ‘twasn't Fitz but Tom who was with me.” Clyman scowled. “And I wasn't deserted. Tom done his best and done right.”

“Ye're sure?”

“As sure as I'm sittin' here.” Again Clyman scowled. “Hugh, ye've sure got desertin' on the brain, ain't ye?”

Hugh fell silent.

Clyman clapped out his corncob in the palm of his skinny bony hand. “Hugh, you've forgot you was young once.”

“Meanin' what?”

“Meanin' we all left the States for a reason.”

Hugh thought on it awhile. “What was your reason, Jim, if I may be askin'?”

Clyman also thought on it awhile. He sighed. “A woman. And a hankerin' to see the West.”

“And why see the West?”

“Because it was out there. Because it drawed me. Because I wanted to be where I'd never been.”

Hugh fell silent.

Clyman said, “And yours, Hugh?”

Hugh bit on his lips within his bush of a white beard. The white fur over his cheeks moved.

Clyman said, “Course ‘tain't really none of my business, Hugh. I was just wonderin'.”

Hugh saw them all right—Mabel and the two sons he'd deserted back in Lancaster. And seeing them clearly again in his mind's eye, he shivered.

Clyman seemed to read his mind. Or else he'd been talking with General Ashley. Clyman said, “It's too bad you never had kids of your own, Hugh. Then maybe you might have been able to take their side a little.”

Hugh jumped to his feet. His voice was suddenly in a rage of agony, “But goddam it, Jim, I just can't seem to forget what them two miserable cowards done, stealin' my gun and knife and leavin' me to die alone! And lyin' to the major!”

Clyman put his pipe in his possible sack. He looked up at Hugh, looked through and around behind him. “Hugh, it's like I say. You've sure got desertin' on the brain, ain't ye?”

Keeping the fort supplied with meat kept Hugh and two other hunters humping every day of the week.

After they beat out the brush near the outpost, they gradually extended their forays up and down the Missouri breaks.

Some days Hugh had to ride out more than twenty miles before he saw game at all. A couple of times he was gone for three days, riding out to a chosen spot one day, hunting the spot the second day, and coming in with the meat the third.

One of these chosen spots, and known only to him, was in a ravine some thirty miles up the river. The ravine ran back from the Missouri about a mile. It was some hundred yards wide, with steep sides some two hundred feet up, and heavily brushed over with prickly ash and wild gooseberry and mean blackberry and tall ash and slender elm. Like a park, the bottom of the ravine was comparatively treeless, with each tree grown out to its full umbrella potential. All of it was grassed over like an Eden. Through it meandered a flashing trout stream, running as clear and as pure as new glass over yellow black-speckled sands.

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.