Harris heard a sound in the brush and drew his pistol. Captain Henry stepped into the clearing. The men filed grimly behind, eyes moving from Glass to the sow, from Harris to the dead cub.
The captain surveyed the clearing, oddly numb as his mind filtered the scene through the context of his own past. He shook his head and for a moment his eyes, normally sharp, seemed not to focus. “Is he dead?”
“Not yet. But he’s tore to pieces. His windpipe’s cut.”
“Did he kill the sow?”
Harris nodded. “I found her dead on top of him. There’s a ball in her heart.”
“Not soon enough, eh.” It was Fitzgerald.
The captain knelt next to Glass. With grimy fingers he poked at the throat wound, where bubbles continued to form with each breath. The breathing had grown more labored, and a tepid wheeze now rose and fell with Glass’s chest.
“Somebody get me a clean strip of cloth and some water—and whiskey in case he wakes up.”
Bridger stepped forward, rummaging through a small satchel from his back. He pulled a wool shirt from the bag, and handed it to Henry. “Here, Captain.”
The captain paused, hesitant to take the boy’s shirt. Then he grabbed it, tearing strips from the coarse cloth. He poured the contents of his canteen on Glass’s throat. Blood washed away, quickly replaced by the wound’s heavy seep. Glass began to sputter and cough. His eyes fluttered, then opened wide, panicky.
Glass’s first sensation was that he was drowning. He coughed again as his body attempted to clear the blood from his throat and lungs. He focused briefly on Henry as the captain rolled him to his side. From his side, Glass was able to swallow two breaths before nausea overwhelmed him. He vomited, igniting excruciating pain in his throat. Instinctively, Glass reached to touch his neck. His right arm wouldn’t function, but his left hand found the gaping wound. He was overcome with horror and panic at what his fingers discovered. His eyes became wild, searching for reassurance in the faces surrounding him. Instead he saw the opposite—awful affirmation of his fears.
Glass tried to speak, but his throat could muster no sound beyond an eerie wail. He struggled to rise on his elbows. Henry pinned him to the ground, pouring whiskey on his throat. A searing burn replaced all other pain. Glass convulsed a final time before again losing consciousness.
“We need to bind his wounds while he’s down. Cut more strips, Bridger.”
The boy began ripping long lengths from the shirt. The other men watched solemnly, standing like casket bearers at a funeral.
The captain looked up. “Rest of you get moving. Harris, scout a wide circle around us. Make sure those shots didn’t draw attention our way. Someone get the fires going—make sure the wood’s dry—we don’t need a damn smoke signal. And get that sow butchered.”
The men moved off and the captain turned again to Glass. He took a strip of cloth from Bridger and threaded it behind Glass’s neck, tying it as tightly as he dared. He repeated the action with two more strips. Blood soaked the cloth instantly. He wound another strip around Glass’s head in a crude effort to hold his scalp in place. The head wounds also bled heavily, and the captain used water and the shirt to mop the blood pooling around Glass’s eyes. He sent Bridger to refill the canteen from the river.
When Bridger returned, they again rolled Glass onto his side. Bridger held him, keeping his face from the ground, while Captain Henry inspected his back. Henry poured water on the puncture wounds from the bear’s fangs. Though deep, they bled very little. The five parallel wounds from the bear’s claws were a different story. Two in particular cut deep into Glass’s back, exposing the muscle and bleeding heavily. Dirt mixed freely with the blood, and the captain again dumped water from the canteen. Without the dirt, the wounds seemed to bleed even more, so the captain left them alone. He cut two long strips from the shirt, worked them around Glass’s body and tied them tightly. It didn’t work. The strips did little to stop his back from bleeding.
The captain paused to think. “These deep wounds need to be stitched or he’ll bleed to death.”
“What about his throat?”
“I ought to sew that up too, but it’s such a damn mess I don’t know where to start.” Henry dug into his possibles bag and pulled out coarse black thread and a heavy needle.
The captain’s thick fingers were surprisingly nimble as he threaded the needle and tied an end knot. Bridger held the edges of the deepest wound together and watched, wide-eyed, as Henry pressed the needle into Glass’s skin. He worked the needle from side to side, four stitches pulling the skin together in the center of the cut. He tied off the ends of the thick thread. Of the five claw wounds on Glass’s back, two were deep enough to need stitches. For each wound, the captain made no effort to sew the entire length. Instead, he simply bound the middle together, but the bleeding slowed.
“Now let’s look at his neck.”
They rolled Glass onto his back. Despite the crude bandages, the throat continued to bubble and wheeze. Beneath the open skin Henry could see the bright white cartilage of the gullet and windpipe. He knew from the bubbles that the windpipe was cut or nicked, but he had no idea how to repair it. He held his hand over Glass’s mouth, feeling for breath.
“What are you gonna do, Captain?”
The captain tied a new end knot in the thread on the needle. “He’s still getting some air through his mouth. Best we can do is close up the skin, hope for the rest he can heal himself.” At inchwide intervals, Henry sewed stitches to close Glass’s throat. Bridger cleared a piece of ground in the shade of the willows and arranged Glass’s bedroll. They laid him there as gently as they could.
The captain took his rifle and walked away from the clearing, back through the willows toward the river.
When he reached the water he set his rifle on the bank and removed his leather tunic. His hands were coated in sticky blood, and he reached into the stream to wash them. When some spots would not come clean, he scooped sand from the bank and scrubbed it against the stains. Finally he gave up, cupping his hands and pressing the icy stream water to his bearded face. Familiar doubt crept back. It’s happening again.
It was no surprise when the green succumbed to the wilderness, but it came as a shock when the veterans fell victim. Like Drouillard, Glass had spent years on the frontier. He was a keel, steadying others through his quiet presence. And Henry knew that by morning he would be dead.