The captain thought back to his conversation with Glass the night before. Was it only last night? In 1809, Drouillard’s death had been the beginning of the end. Henry’s party abandoned the stockade in the Valley of the Three Forks and fled south. The move put them out of range of the Blackfeet, but did not protect them from the harshness of the Rockies themselves. The party endured savage cold, near starvation, and then robbery at the hands of the Crow. When they finally limped from the mountains in 1811, the viability of the fur trade remained an unsettled question.
More than a decade later, Henry again found himself leading trappers in pursuit of the Rockies’ elusive wealth. In his mind Henry flipped through the pages of his own recent past: A week out of St. Louis, he lost a keelboat with $10,000 in trading goods. The Blackfeet killed two of his men near the Great Falls of the Missouri. He had rushed to Ashley’s aid at the Arikara villages, participated in the debacle with Colonel Leavenworth, and then watched the Arikara close the Missouri. In a week of overland travel up the Grand, three of his men had been killed by Mandans, normally peaceful Indians who attacked by mistake in the night. Now Glass, his best man, lay mortally wounded after stumbling upon a bear. What sin has plagued me with this curse?
* * *
Back in the clearing, Bridger arranged a blanket over Glass and turned to look at the bear. Four men worked at butchering the animal. The choicest cuts—the liver, heart, tongue, loin, and ribs—were set aside for immediate consumption. The rest they cut into thin strips and rubbed with salt.
Bridger walked up to the great bear’s paw and removed his knife from its scabbard. As Fitzgerald looked up from his butchering, Bridger began to cut the largest of the claws from the paw. He was shocked at its size—nearly six inches long and twice as thick as his thumb. It was razor sharp at the point and still bloody from the attack on Glass.
“Who says you get a claw, boy?”
“It ain’t for me, Fitzgerald.” Bridger took the claw and walked to Glass.
Glass’s possibles bag lay next to him. Bridger opened it and dropped in the claw.
The men gorged for hours that night, their bodies craving the rich nutrients of the greasy meat. They knew it would be days before they ate fresh meat again, and they took advantage of the feast. Captain Henry posted two sentries. Despite the relative seclusion of the clearing, he worried about the fires.
Most of the men sat within reach of the flames, tending skewers of willow branches laden with meat. The captain and Bridger took turns checking on Glass. Twice his eyes were open, unfocused and glazed. They reflected the firelight, but seemed not to spark from within. Once he managed to swallow water in a painful convulsion.
They fed the fire in the long pits often enough to keep heat and smoke on the racks of drying meat. In the hour before dawn, Captain Henry checked on Glass and found him unconscious. His breathing had become labored, and he rasped as if each breath required the sum total of his strength.
Henry returned to the fire and found Black Harris there, gnawing on a rib. “Coulda been anyone, Captain—stepping on Old Ephraim like that. There’s no accounting for bad luck.”
Henry just shook his head. He knew about luck. For a while they sat in silence, as the first hint of another day was born in a barely perceptible glow on the eastern horizon. The captain gathered his rifle and powder horn. “I’ll be back before the sun’s up. When the men wake up, pick two to dig a grave.”
An hour later the captain returned. The shallow beginnings of a grave had been dug, but apparently abandoned. He looked at Harris. “What’s the hitch?”
“Well, Captain—for starters he ain’t dead. Didn’t seem right to keep digging with him laying there.”
They waited all morning for Hugh Glass to die. He never gained consciousness. His skin was pallid from the loss of blood and his breathing remained labored. Still, his chest rose and fell, each breath stubbornly followed by another.
Captain Henry paced between the stream and the clearing, and by midmorning sent Black Harris to scout upstream. The sun stood directly overhead when Harris returned. He had seen no Indians, but a game trail on the opposite bank was covered with the tracks of men and horses. Two miles upstream Harris had found a deserted campsite. The captain could wait no more.
He ordered two men to cut saplings. With Glass’s bedroll, they would fashion a litter.
“Why don’t we make a travois, Captain? Use the mule to pull it?”
“Too rough to pull a travois by the river.”
“Then let’s move off the river.”
“Just build the damn litter,” said the captain. The river was the sole marker across unknown terrain. Henry had no intention of veering so much as an inch from its banks.
FOUR
AUGUST 28, 1823
ONE BY ONE the men reached the obstacle and stopped. The Grand River flowed directly into the steep face of a sandstone cliff, which forced it to turn. The waters swirled and pooled deeply against the wall before spreading widely toward the opposite shore. Bridger and Pig arrived last, bearing Glass between them. They eased the litter to the ground. Pig plopped heavily to his rump, panting, his shirt stained dark with sweat.
Each man looked up as he arrived, quickly appreciating the two choices for moving forward. One was to climb along the steep face of the cliff. It was possible, but only by using hands as well as feet. This was the path taken by Black Harris when he had passed two hours before them. They could see his tracks and the broken branch on the sagebrush that he had grabbed to pull himself up. It was obvious that neither the litter bearers nor the mule could make the climb.
The other option was to cross the river. The opposite bank was level and inviting, but the problem was getting there. The pool created by the embankment appeared at least five feet deep, and the current ran swift. Seam water toward the middle of the river marked the place where the stream shallowed. From there it was an easy wade to the other side. A surefooted man might keep his feet in the deep water, holding his rifle and powder above his head; the less agile might fall, but could certainly swim the few yards to the shallower water.
Getting the mule in the river was no problem. So famous was the animal’s love of water that the men called her “Duck.” At the end of the day she would stand for hours in water up to her sagging belly. In fact, it was this odd predilection that kept the Mandans from stealing her along with the rest of their stock. While the other animals were grazing or sleeping along the shore, Duck was standing in shallow water on a sandbar. When the bandits tried to take her, she was firmly stuck in the mud. It ultimately took half the brigade to pull her out.