TWENTY-SIX
APRIL 14, 1824
LIEUTENANT JONATHON JACOBS RAISED HIS ARM and barked out an order. Behind him a column of twenty men and their mounts reined to a dusty halt. The lieutenant patted his horse’s sweaty flank and reached for his canteen. He tried to affect nonchalance as he drew a long swig from the canteen. In truth, he hated any moment away from the relative safety of Fort Atkinson.
He particularly hated this moment, when the galloping return of his scout could herald a wide variety of misfortunes. The Pawnee and a renegade band of Arikara had been raiding up and down the Platte since the snow began melting. The lieutenant tried to check his imagination as he awaited the scout’s report.
The scout, a grizzled plainsman named Higgins, waited until he was practically on top of the column before he reined his own mount. The fringe on his leather jacket bounced as the big buckskin slid to a sideways halt.
“There’s a man walking this way—up over the ridgeline.”
“You mean an Indian?”
“’Sume so, Lieutenant. Didn’t get close enough to find out.” Lieutenant Jacobs’s first instinct was to send Higgins back out with the sergeant and two men. Reluctantly, he came to the conclusion that he should go himself.
As they neared the ridgeline they left one man to hold the horses while the rest of them crawled forward on their bellies. The wide valley of the Platte spread before them for a hundred miles. Half a mile away, a solitary figure picked his way down the near bank of the river. Lieutenant Jacobs pulled a small looking glass from the breast pocket of his tunic. He extended the brass instrument to its full length and peered through.
The magnified view bobbed up and down the riverbank as Jacobs steadied the scope. He found his target, holding on the buckskin-clad man. He couldn’t make out the face—but he could see the bushy smudge of a beard.
“I’ll be damned,” said Lieutenant Jacobs with surprise. “It’s a white man. What the hell is he doing out here?”
“He ain’t one of ours,” said Higgins. “All the deserters head straight for St. Louis.”
Perhaps because the man appeared to be in no immediate danger, the lieutenant felt suddenly gripped by chivalry. “Let’s go get him.”
* * *
Major Robert Constable represented, albeit not by choice, the fourth generation of Constable men to pursue a career in the military. His great-grandfather fought the French and Indians as an officer of His Majesty’s Twelfth Regiment of Foot. His grandfather stayed true to his family’s vocation, if not to its king, fighting against the British as an officer of Washington’s Continental Army.
Constable’s father had poor luck when it came to military glory—too young for the Revolution and too old for the War of 1812. Given no opportunity to win distinction of his own, he felt the least he could do was to offer up his only son. Young Robert had yearned to pursue a career in the law and dreamed of wearing the robes of a judge. Robert’s father refused to stain the family lineage with a pettifogger, and used a friendship with a senator to secure a spot for his son at West Point. So for twenty unremarkable years, Major Robert Constable inched his way up the military ladder. His wife had stopped trailing after him a decade earlier, and now resided in Boston (in close proximity to her lover, a well-known judge). When General Atkinson and Colonel Leavenworth returned east for the winter, Major Constable inherited temporary command of the fort.
Over what did he reign supreme? Three hundred infantrymen (equally divided between recent immigrants and recent convicts), a hundred cavalrymen (with, in an unfortunate bit of asymmetry, only fifty horses), and a dozen rusty cannons. Still, reign supreme he would, passing on the bitter brine of his career to the subjects of his tiny kingdom.
Major Constable was sitting behind a large desk flanked by an aide, when Lieutenant Jacobs presented the weather-beaten plainsman he had rescued. “We found him on the Platte, sir,” reported Jacobs, breathlessly. “He survived an Arikara attack on the north fork.”
Lieutenant Jacobs stood beaming in the bright light of his heroism, awaiting the certain accolades for his brave act. Major Constable barely looked at him before he said, “Dismissed.”
“Dismissed, sir?”
“Dismissed.”
Lieutenant Jacobs continued to stand there, somewhat dumbfounded at this brusque reception. Constable put his command more bluntly: “Go away.” He held his hand in the air and whisked it, as if shooing a gnat. Turning to Glass, he asked, “Who are you?”
“Hugh Glass.” His voice was as scarred as his face.
“And how is it that you find yourself wandering down the Platte River?”
“I’m a messenger for the Rocky Mountain Fur Company.”
If the arrival of a badly scarred white man had not piqued the major’s jaded interest, mention of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company did. Fort Atkinson’s future, not to mention the major’s ability to salvage his own career, depended on the commercial viability of the fur trade. What other significance could be found in a wasteland of uninhabitable deserts and impassable peaks?
“From Fort Union?”
“Fort Union’s abandoned. Captain Henry moved to Lisa’s old post on the Big Horn.”
The major leaned forward in his chair. All winter he had dutifully filed dispatches to St. Louis. None contained anything more compelling than bleak reports about dysentery among his men, or the dwindling number of cavalrymen in possession of a horse. Now he had something! Rescue of a Rocky Mountain man! The abandonment of Fort Union! A new fort on the Big Horn!
“Tell the mess to send hot food for Mr. Glass.”
For an hour, the major peppered Glass with questions about Fort Union, the new fort on the Big Horn, the commercial viability of their venture.
Glass carefully avoided a discussion of his own motivation for returning from the frontier. Finally, though, Glass asked a question of his own. “Did a man with a fishhook scar pass through here—coming down the Missouri?” Glass used his finger to trace a fishhook beginning at the corner of his mouth.
Major Constable searched Glass’s face. Finally he said, “Pass through, no…”
Glass felt the sharp pang of disappointment.
“He stayed on,” said Constable. “Chose enlistment over incarceration after a brawl in our local saloon.”
He’s here! Glass fought to steady himself, to erase any emotion from his face.
“I gather you know this man?”