Lafitte had no intention of abandoning his chosen profession, but he had learned the value of sovereign sponsorship. Mexico was at war with Spain. Lafitte established a settlement he called Campeche on the island of Galveston and offered his services to Mexico City. The Mexicans commissioned Lafitte and his small navy, authorizing the attack of any Spanish ship. Lafitte, in turn, won a license to plunder.
The brutal reality of this arrangement now played out before Hugh Glass’s eyes. When two crew members stepped forward to aid the mortally wounded captain, they too were shot. The three women onboard, including an ancient widow, were carried to the cutter, where a leering crew welcomed them aboard. While one band of pirates went belowdecks to inspect the cargo, another group began a more systematic appraisal of the crew and passengers. Two elderly men and one obese banker were stripped of their possessions and pushed into the sea.
The mulatto spoke Spanish as well as French. He stood before the captured crew, explaining their options. Any man willing to renounce Spain could join the service of Jean Lafitte. Any man unwilling could join their captain. The dozen remaining sailors chose Lafitte. Half were taken to the cutter, half left to join a pirate crew on the Bonita Morena.
Though Glass spoke barely a word of Spanish, he understood the gist of the mulatto’s ultimatum. When the mulatto approached him, pistol in hand, Glass pointed to himself and said one word in French: “Marin.” Sailor.
The mulatto stared at him in silent appraisal. An amused smirk appeared at the corner of his mouth, and he said, “Ah bon? Okay, monsieur le marin, hissez le foc.” Hoist the jib.
Glass desperately rummaged the corners of his rudimentary French.
He had no idea of the meaning of hissez le foc. In context though, he understood quite clearly the high stakes connected with passing the mulatto’s test. Assuming that the challenge involved his bona fides as a sailor, he strode confidently to the fore of the ship, reaching for the jib line that would set the ship into the wind.
“Bien fait, monsieur le marin,” said the mulatto. It was August of 1819.
Hugh Glass had become a pirate.
* * *
Glass looked again at the gap in the woods where Fitzgerald and Bridger had fled. His jaw set as he thought about what they had done, and he felt again the visceral desire to strike out in pursuit. This time though, he also felt the weakness of his body. For the first time since the bear attack, his mind was clear. With clarity came an alarming assessment of his situation.
It was with considerable trepidation that Glass began an examination of his wounds. He used his left hand to trace the edges of his scalp. He’d caught a blurry glimpse of his face in the pooled waters of the spring, and he could see that the bear had nearly scalped him. Never a vain man, his appearance struck him as particularly irrelevant in his current state of affairs. If he survived, he supposed that his scars might even afford him a certain measure of respect among his peers.
What did concern him was his throat. Unable to see the throat wound except in the watery reflection of the spring, he could only probe gingerly with his fingers. Bridger’s poultice had fallen off in his short crawl the day before. Glass touched the sutures and appreciated Captain Henry’s rudimentary surgical skills. He had a vague memory of the captain working over him in the moments after the attack, although the details and chronology remained murky.
By craning his neck downward he could see the claw marks that extended from his shoulder to his throat. The bear had raked deeply through the muscles of his chest and upper arm. Bridger’s pine tar had sealed the wounds. They looked relatively healthy, though a sharp muscular pain kept him from lifting his right arm. The pine tar made him think of Bridger. He remembered that the boy had tended his wounds. Still, it wasn’t the image of Bridger nursing him that stuck in his mind. Instead, he saw Bridger looking back from the edge of the clearing, the stolen knife in his hand.
He looked at the snake and thought, God, what I’d give for my knife. The rattler had yet to move. He suppressed further thoughts about Fitzgerald and Bridger. Not now.
Glass looked down at his right leg. Bridger’s tar smeared the puncture wounds in his upper thigh. Those wounds also looked relatively healthy. Cautiously, he straightened the leg. It was stiff as a corpse. He tested the leg by rolling slightly to shift his weight, then pushing down. Excruciating pain radiated outward from the wounds. Clearly, the leg would bear no weight.
Last of all, Glass used his left arm to explore the deep slashes on his back. His probing fingers counted the five parallel cuts. He touched the sticky mess of pine tar, suture, and scab. When he looked at his hand, there was fresh blood too. The cuts began on his butt and got deeper as they rose up his back. The deepest part of the wounds lay between his shoulder blades, where his hand could not reach.
Having completed his self-examination, Glass arrived at several dispassionate conclusions: He was defenseless. If Indians or animals discovered him, he could muster no resistance. He could not stay in the clearing. He wasn’t sure how many days he had been in the camp, but he knew that the sheltered spring must be well known to any Indians in the area. Glass had no idea why he had not been discovered the day before, but he knew his luck could not last much longer.
Despite the risk of Indians, Glass had no intention of veering from the Grand. It was a known source for water, food, and orientation. There was, however, one critical question: Upstream or down? As much as Glass might want to embark in immediate pursuit of his betrayers, he knew that to do so would be folly. He was alone with no weapons in hostile country. He was weak from fever and hunger. He couldn’t walk.
It pained him to consider retreat, even temporary retreat, but Glass knew there was no real option. The trading post of Fort Brazeau lay 350 miles downstream at the confluence of the White River and the Missouri. If he could make it there, he could reprovision himself, then begin his pursuit in earnest.
Three hundred and fifty miles. A healthy man in good weather could cover that ground in two weeks. How far can I crawl in a day? He had no idea, but he did not intend to sit in one place. His arm and leg did not appear inflamed, and Glass assumed they would mend with time. He would crawl until his body could support a crutch. If he only made three miles a day, so be it. Better to have those three miles behind him than ahead. Besides, moving would increase his odds of finding food.
* * *
The mulatto and his captured Spanish ship sailed west for Galveston Bay and Lafitte’s pirate colony at Campeche. They attacked another Spanish merchantman a hundred miles south of New Orleans, luring their prey into cannon range under the guise of the Bonita Morena’s Spanish flag. Once aboard this newest victim, the Castellana, the buccaneers again conducted their brutal triage. This time the urgency was greater, since the cannon barrage had ripped open the Castellana below the waterline. She was sinking.