Revenant : A Novel of Revenge (9781250066633) Page 3

  The grizzly dropped to all fours and was on him. Glass rolled into a ball, desperate to protect his face and chest. She bit into the back of his neck and lifted him off the ground, shaking him so hard that Glass wondered if his spine might snap. He felt the crunch of her teeth striking the bone of his shoulder blade. Claws raked repeatedly through the flesh of his back and scalp. He screamed in agony. She dropped him, then sank her teeth deep into his thigh and shook him again, lifting him and throwing him to the ground with such force that he lay stunned—conscious, but unable to resist any further.

  He lay on his back staring up. The grizzly stood before him on her hind legs. Terror and pain receded, replaced by a horrified fascination at the towering animal. She let out a final roar, which registered in Glass’s mind like an echo across a great distance. He was aware of enormous weight on top of him. The dank smell of her coat overwhelmed his other senses. What was it? His mind searched, then locked on the image of a yellow dog, licking a boy’s face on the plank porch of a cabin.

  The sunlit sky above him faded to black.

  * * *

  Black Harris heard the shot, just ahead around a bend in the river, and hoped that Glass had shot a deer. He moved forward quickly but quietly, aware that a rifle shot could mean many things. Harris began to trot when he heard the roar of the bear. Then he heard Glass scream.

  At the willows, Harris found the tracks of both the deer and Glass. He peered into the path cut by a beaver, listening intently. No sound rose above the hushed trickle of the river. Harris pointed the rifle from his hip, his thumb on the hammer and his forefinger near the trigger. He glanced briefly at the pistol on his belt, assuring himself it was primed. He stepped into the willows, carefully placing each moccasin as he peered ahead. The bawling of the cubs broke the silence.

  At the edge of the clearing Black Harris stopped to absorb the scene before him. An enormous grizzly lay sprawled on her belly, eyes open but dead. One cub stood on hind legs, pressing against the sow with its nose, futilely seeking to evoke some sign of life. The other cub rooted at something, tugging with its teeth. Harris realized suddenly it was a man’s arm. Glass. He raised his rifle and shot the nearer of the two cubs. It fell limp. The sibling scampered for the cottonwoods and disappeared. Harris reloaded before walking forward.

  Captain Henry and the men of the brigade heard the two shots and hurried upstream. The first shot didn’t worry the captain, but the second one did. The first shot was expected—Glass or Harris bringing down game as they had planned the night before. Two shots closely spaced also would be normal. Two men hunting together might come upon more than one target, or the first shooter might miss. But several minutes separated the two shots. The captain hoped that the hunters were working apart. Perhaps the first shooter had flushed game to the second. Or perhaps they had been lucky enough to come across buffalo. Buffalo would sometimes stand, unfazed by the clap of a rifle, allowing a hunter to reload and casually pick a second target. “Keep tight, men. And check your arms.”

  For the third time in a hundred paces, Bridger checked the new rifle that Will Anderson had given to him. “My brother don’t need this no more,” was all he had said.

  In the clearing, Black Harris looked down at the body of the bear. Only Glass’s arm protruded from underneath. Harris glanced around before setting his rifle on the ground, tugging at the bear’s foreleg in an attempt to move the carcass. Heaving, he pulled the animal far enough to see Glass’s head, a bloody tangle of hair and flesh. Jesus Christ! He worked urgently, fighting against the fear of what he would find.

  Harris moved to the opposite side of the bear, climbing across the animal to grab its foreleg, then tugging, his knees pressed against the grizzly’s body for leverage. After several attempts, he managed to roll the front half of the bear so that the giant animal lay twisted at the midsection. Then he pulled several times at the rear leg. He gave a final heave, and the bear tumbled heavily onto her back. Glass’s body was free. On the sow’s chest, Black Harris noticed the matted blood where Glass’s shot had found its mark.

  Black Harris knelt next to Glass, unsure of what to do. It was not through lack of experience with the wounded. He had removed arrows and bullets from three men, and twice had been shot himself.

  But he had never seen human carnage like this, fresh in the wake of attack. Glass was shredded from head to foot. His scalp lay dangling to one side, and it took Harris an instant to recognize the components that made up his face. Worst was his throat. The grizzly’s claws had cut three deep and distinct tracks, beginning at the shoulder and passing straight across his neck. Another inch and the claws would have severed Glass’s jugular. As it was, they had laid open his throat, slicing through muscle and exposing his gullet. The claws had also cut the trachea, and Harris watched, horrified, as a large bubble formed in the blood that seeped from the wound. It was the first clear sign that Glass was alive.

  Harris rolled Glass gently on his side to inspect his back. Nothing remained of his cotton shirt. Blood oozed from deep puncture wounds at his neck and shoulder. His right arm flopped unnaturally. From the middle of his back to his waist, the bear’s raking claws left deep, parallel cuts. It reminded Harris of tree trunks he had seen where bears mark their territory, only these marks were etched in flesh instead of wood. On the back of Glass’s thigh, blood seeped through his buckskin breeches.

  Harris had no idea where to begin, and was almost relieved that the throat wound appeared so obviously mortal. He pulled Glass a few yards to a grassy, shaded spot and eased him to his back. Ignoring the bubbling throat, Harris focused on the head. Glass at least deserved the dignity of wearing his scalp. Harris poured water from his canteen, attempting to wash away as much of the dirt as possible. The skin was so loose that it was almost like replacing a fallen hat on a bald man. Harris pulled the scalp across Glass’s skull, pressing the loose skin against his forehead and tucking it behind his ear. They could stitch it later if Glass lasted that long.

  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.

  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.