The little hollow stood barely fifty yards from the Missouri. Hugh Glass sat cross-legged beside a small fire, the flames tickling at the lean carcass of a rabbit suspended on a willow spit.
As he waited for the rabbit to roast, Glass became suddenly aware of the sound of the river. It was an odd thing to notice, he thought. He had clung to the river for weeks. Yet suddenly he heard the waters with the acute sensitivity of new discovery. He turned from the fire to stare at the river. It struck him as strange that the smooth flow of water would create any sound at all. Or that the wind would, for that matter. It occurred to him that it wasn’t so much the water or the wind that accounted for the noise, but rather the objects in their path. He turned back to the fire.
Glass felt the familiar soreness in his leg and adjusted his position. His wounds posed constant reminders that, while he was healing, he was not healed. The cold accentuated the ache in both his leg and his shoulder. He assumed now that his voice would never return to normal. And of course his face gave permanent notice of his encounter on the Grand. It wasn’t all bad, though. His back no longer caused him pain. Nor did it hurt to eat, something he appreciated as he inhaled the scent of the roasting meat.
Glass had shot the rabbit a few minutes earlier in the fading light of the day. He’d seen no sign of Indians for a week, and when the fat cottontail loped across his path, the prospect of such a tasty dinner had been too much to pass up.
A quarter mile upriver from Glass, John Fitzgerald had been watching for a spot to put ashore when he heard the nearby crack of the rifle. Shit! He paddled quickly toward shore to slow his forward drift. He bobbed in an eddy, back-paddling, as he peered through the dimming light to identify the source of the shot.
Too far north for Arikara. Assiniboine? Fitzgerald wished he could see better. The flicker of a campfire appeared a few minutes later. He could make out the buckskin form of a man, but could discern no detail. He assumed it was an Indian. Certainly no white man had business this far north, not in December, anyway. Are there more than one? Daylight faded rapidly.
Fitzgerald weighed the options. He sure as hell couldn’t stay where he was. If he put ashore for the night, it seemed likely that the shooter would discover him in the morning. He thought about creeping up and killing the shooter, except he still wasn’t sure whether he faced one man or many. Finally he decided to attempt slipping past. He would wait for the cover of nightfall and hope the distraction of the fire would keep the shooter’s eye—and any others—off the water. Meanwhile, the full moon would provide enough light to steer.
Fitzgerald waited almost an hour, quietly pulling the prow of the dugout onto the soft sandbar. The western horizon swallowed the final remnants of daylight, sharpening the glow of the campfire. The shooter’s silhouette hunched above the fire, and Fitzgerald assumed that he must be busy tending his dinner. Now. Fitzgerald checked the Anstadt and his two pistols, setting them within easy reach. Then he pulled the dugout off the bank and jumped aboard. He paddled twice to push the boat into the current. After that he used the paddle as a rudder, gently placing it on one side or the other. As much as he could, he let the boat drift.
Hugh Glass tugged at the rabbit’s hindquarter. The joint was loose, and with a twist he tore off the leg. He sunk his teeth into the succulent meat.
Fitzgerald tried to steer as far away from the shoreline as possible, but the current ran practically beside it. The fire approached now with dizzying speed. Fitzgerald tried to watch the river while simultaneously peering at the back of the man by the fire. He could make out a capote made from a Hudson’s Bay blanket—and what looked like a wool hat. A wool hat? A white man? Fitzgerald looked back toward the water. A giant boulder loomed suddenly from the dark water of the river—barely ten feet in front of him!
Fitzgerald thrust his paddle deep into the river, pulling as hard as he could. He lifted the paddle at the end of the stroke and pushed it against the rock. The dugout turned—but not enough. Its side scraped the rock with a rasping grate. Fitzgerald paddled with all his strength. No point holding back now.
Glass heard a splash followed by a long scrape. He reached instinctively for his rifle, then turned toward the Missouri, moving quickly away from the light of the fire. He crept rapidly toward the river, his eyes adjusting from the glare of the firelight.
He scanned the water for the source of the sound. He heard the splash of a paddle and could just make out a canoe at a distance of a hundred yards. He raised his rifle, cocking the hammer and sighting on the dark form of a man with a paddle. His finger moved inside the trigger guard.… He stopped.
Glass saw little point in shooting. Whoever it was, the boatman appeared intent on avoiding contact. In any event, he was headed rapidly in the opposite direction. Whatever his intention, the fleeing boatman appeared to pose little threat to Glass.
Onboard the dugout, Fitzgerald paddled hard until he rounded a bend in the river, a quarter mile from the campfire. He let the dugout drift for almost a mile before guiding the boat to the opposite bank and searching for a suitable landing.
Finally he pulled the dugout from the water and flipped it, spreading his bedroll underneath. He chewed on a piece of jerky while he contemplated again the figure by the fire. Damn strange spot for a white man in December.
Fitzgerald carefully lay the rifle and his two pistols beside him before curling beneath his blanket. The bright moon flooded his campsite with pale light. The Anstadt caught the light and held it, the silver fittings gleaming like mirrors in the sun.
* * *
Captain Henry finally caught a stretch of good luck. So many good things happened with such rapid succession that he barely knew what to make of it.
For starters, the skies shone blue as indigo for two straight weeks. With the good weather, the brigade covered the two hundred miles between Fort Union and the Big Horn River in six days.
When they arrived, the abandoned fort stood almost as Henry remembered it. The condition of the post far exceeded his expectations. The years of abandonment had worn on the structure, but most of the timber remained solid. The find would save them weeks of hard labor, cutting and hauling logs.
Henry’s experience with the local tribes (at least initially) presented another stark contrast to his dismal fortune at Fort Union. He dispatched a party led by Allistair Murphy and showered gifts on his new neighbors, primarily bands of Flathead and Crow. In his relations with the local Indians, Henry discovered that he was the beneficiary of his predecessor’s diplomacy. Both tribes seemed relatively happy at the resettlement of the post. At least they were willing to trade.