The Revenant

The brilliant sparkle of the great star Vega seemed suddenly to fight for Glass’s attention. Next to Vega he picked out the Cygnus, the Swan.

Glass stared at Cygnus, and the more he stared, the more its perpendicular lines seemed clearly to form a cross. The Northern Cross. That was the common name for Cygnus, he remembered. It seemed more fitting.

He stood there on the high rampart for a long time that night, listening to the Missouri and staring at the stars. He wondered at the source of the waters, of the mighty Big Horns whose tops he had seen but never touched. He wondered at the stars and the heavens, comforted by their vastness against his own small place in the world. Finally he climbed down from the ramparts and went inside, quickly finding the sleep that had eluded him before.

TWENTY-EIGHT

MAY 7, 1824

JIM BRIDGER STARTED TO KNOCK on Captain Henry’s door, then stopped. It had been seven days since anyone had seen the captain outside of his quarters. Seven days ago was when the Crow stole back the horses. Not even Murphy’s successful return from a hunt could entice Henry from his seclusion.

Bridger took a deep breath and knocked. He heard a rustling sound from inside, then silence. “Captain?” More silence. Bridger paused again, then pushed open the door.

Henry sat hunched behind a desk made from two barrels and a plank.

A wool blanket draped his shoulders in a fashion that reminded Bridger of an old man huddled over the stove at a general store. The captain held a quill in one hand and a piece of paper in the other. Bridger glanced at the paper. Long columns of numbers crowded the page from left to right, top to bottom. Blotches of ink spotted the text, as if his quill had encountered frequent obstacles and stopped, spilling itself like blood onto the page. Wadded paper lay strewn across the desk and the floor.

Bridger waited for the captain to say something, or at least to look up.

For a long time, he didn’t do either. Finally the captain raised his head. He looked like he hadn’t slept for days, his bloodshot eyes peering out above sagging gray bags. Bridger wondered if it was true what some of the men were saying, that Captain Henry had gone over the edge.

“You know anything about numbers, Bridger?”

“No sir.”

“Me neither. Not much, anyway. In fact, I keep hoping that I’ve just been too stupid to make all this add up.” The captain stared back down at the paper. “Trouble is, I keep doing it over and over and it keeps coming out the same way. I think the problem’s not my math—it’s just that it doesn’t come out the way I want.”

“I don’t know what you mean, Captain.”

“What I mean is that we’re belly-up. We’re thirty thousand dollars in the hole. Without horses, we can’t keep enough men in the field to get it back. And we got nothing left to trade for horses.”

“Murphy just came in with two packs from the Big Horns.”

The captain absorbed the news through the thick filter of his own past.

“That’s nothing, Jim. Two packs of fur won’t put us back on our feet. Twenty packs won’t put us back on our feet.”

The conversation was not moving in the direction Jim had hoped. It had taken two weeks for him to raise the gumption to come see the captain. Now the whole thing was off track. He fought the instinct to retreat. No. Not this time. “Murphy says you’re sending some men over the mountains to look for Jed Smith.”

The captain offered no confirmation, but Bridger plowed forward anyway. “I want you to send me with them.”

Henry looked at the boy. The eyes staring back at him gleamed as hopeful as the dawn of a spring day. How long had it been since he felt even an ounce of that youthful optimism? A long time—and good riddance.

“I can save you some trouble, Jim. I’ve been over those mountains. They’re like the false front on a whorehouse. I know what you’re looking for—and it’s just not there.”

Jim had no idea how to respond. He could not imagine why the captain was acting so strangely. Maybe he really had gone mad. Bridger didn’t know about that, but what he did know, what he believed with unshakeable faith—was that Captain Henry was wrong.

They fell into another long period of silence. The feeling of discomfort grew, but Jim would not leave. Finally the captain looked at him and said, “It’s your choice, Jim. I’ll send you if you want to go.”

Bridger walked out into the yard, squinting at the bright morning sunlight. He barely noticed the crisp air that nipped at his face, the vestige of a season about to pass. More snow would fall before winter at last gave way, but spring had fixed its grip on the plains.

Jim climbed a short ladder to the palisade. He perched his elbows on the top of the wall, gazing toward the Big Horn Mountains. With his eyes he traced again a deep canyon that seemed to penetrate the mountain’s very core. Did it? He smiled at the infinite prospect of what might lay up the canyon, of what might lay on the mountaintops, of what might lay beyond.

He raised his eyes to a horizon carved from snowy mountain peaks, virgin white against the frigid blue sky. He could climb up there if he wanted. Climb up there and touch the horizon, jump across and find the next.