“Keep your mouth shut, Fitzgerald, or I swear on my brother’s grave I’ll rip out your bloody tongue.”
“Your brother’s grave? Not much of a grave now, was it?”
The men within earshot paid sudden attention, surprised at this conduct, even from Fitzgerald.
Fitzgerald felt the attention, and it encouraged him. “More just a pile of rocks. You think he’s still in there, moldering away?” Fitzgerald paused for a moment, so that the only sound was the scraping of the blade on the stone. “I doubt it—speaking for myself.” Again he waited, calibrating the effect of his words as he spoke them. “Course, could be the rocks kept the varmints off. But I think the coyotes are dragging little bits of him across…”
Anderson lunged at Fitzgerald with both hands extended.
Fitzgerald brought his leg up sharply as he rose to meet the attack, his shin catching Anderson full-force in the groin. The kick folded Anderson in two, as if some hidden cord drew his neck to his knees. Fitzgerald drove his knee into the helpless man’s face and Anderson flipped backward.
Fitzgerald moved spryly for someone his size, pouncing to pin his knee against the chest of the gasping, bleeding man. He put the skinning knife to Anderson’s throat. “You want to go join your brother?” Fitzgerald pressed the knife so that the blade drew a thin line of blood.
“Fitzgerald,” Glass said in an even but authoritative tone. “That’s enough.”
Fitzgerald looked up. He contemplated an answer to Glass’s challenge, while noting with satisfaction the ring of men that now surrounded him, witnesses to Anderson’s pathetic position. Better to claim victory, he decided. He’d see to Glass another day. Fitzgerald removed the blade from Anderson’s throat and rammed the knife into the beaded sheath on his belt. “Don’t start things you can’t finish, Anderson. Next time I’ll finish it for you.”
Captain Andrew Henry pushed his way through the circle of spectators. He grabbed Fitzgerald from behind and ripped him backward, pushing him hard into the embankment. “One more fight and you’re out, Fitzgerald.” Henry pointed beyond the perimeter of the camp to the distant horizon. “If you’ve got an extra store of piss you can go try making it on your own.”
The captain looked around him at the rest of the men. “We’ll cover forty miles tomorrow. You’re wasting time if you’re not asleep already. Now, who’s taking first watch?” No one stepped forward. Henry’s eyes came to rest on the boy, oblivious to the commotion. Henry took a handful of determined steps to the crumpled form. “Get up, Bridger.”
The boy sprang up, wide-eyed as he grasped, bewildered, for his gun. The rusted trading musket had been an advance on his salary, along with a yellowed powder horn and a handful of flints.
“I want you a hundred yards downstream. Find a high spot along the bank. Pig, the same thing upstream. Fitzgerald, Anderson—you’ll take the second watch.”
Fitzgerald had stood watch the night before. For a moment it appeared he would protest the distribution of labor. He thought better of it, sulking instead to the edge of the camp. The boy, still disoriented, half stumbled across the rocks that spilled along the river’s edge, disappearing into the cobalt blackness that encroached on the brigade.
The man they called “Pig” was born Phineous Gilmore on a dirt-poor farm in Kentucky. No mystery surrounded his nickname: he was enormous and he was filthy. Pig smelled so bad it confused people. When they encountered his reek, they looked around him for the source, so implausible did it seem that the odor could emanate from a human. Even the trappers, who placed no particular premium on cleanliness, did their best to keep Pig downwind. After hoisting himself slowly to his feet, Pig slung his rifle over his shoulder and ambled upstream.
Less than an hour passed before the daylight receded completely. Glass watched as Captain Henry returned from a nervous check of the sentries. He picked his way by moonlight among the sleeping men, and Glass realized that he and Henry were the only men awake. The captain chose the ground next to Glass, leaning against his rifle as he eased his large frame to the ground. Repose took the weight off his tired feet, but failed to relieve the pressure he felt most heavily.
“I want you and Black Harris to scout tomorrow,” said Captain Henry. Glass looked up, disappointed that he could not respond to the beckoning call of sleep.
“Find something to shoot in late afternoon. We’ll risk a fire.” Henry lowered his voice, as if making a confession. “We’re way behind, Hugh.” Henry gave every indication that he intended to talk for a while. Glass reached for his rifle. If he couldn’t sleep, he might as well tend his weapon. He had doused it in a river crossing that afternoon and wanted to apply fresh grease to the trigger works.
“Cold’ll set in hard by early December,” continued the captain. “We’ll need two weeks to lay in a supply of meat. If we’re not on the Yellowstone before October we’ll have no fall hunt.”
If Captain Henry was racked by internal doubt, his commanding physical presence betrayed no infirmity. The band of leather fringe on his deerskin tunic cut a swath across his broad shoulders and chest, remnants of his former profession as a lead miner in the Saint Genevieve district of Missouri. He was narrow at the waist, where a thick leather belt held a brace of pistols and a large knife. His breeches were doeskin to the knee, and from there down red wool. The captain’s pants had been specially tailored in St. Louis and were a badge of his wilderness experience. Leather provided excellent protection, but wading made it heavy and cold. Wool, by contrast, dried quickly and retained heat even when wet.
If the brigade he led was motley, Henry at least drew satisfaction from the fact they called him “captain.” In truth, of course, Henry knew the title was an artifice. His band of trappers had nothing to do with the military, and scant respect for any institution. Still, Henry was the only man among them to have trod and trapped the Three Forks. If title meant little, experience was the coin of the realm.
The captain paused, waiting for acknowledgment from Glass. Glass looked up from his rifle. It was a brief look, because he had unscrewed the elegantly scrolled guard that covered the rifle’s twin triggers. He cupped the two screws carefully in his hand, afraid of dropping them in the dark.
The glance sufficed, enough to encourage Henry to continue. “Did I ever tell you about Drouillard?”