The Revenant Read online

  Glass looked at Mandeh-Pahchu, wondering how much the Mandan understood. Glass started to say something, then stopped, proceeding inside as the gate slammed closed behind him.

  Two ramshackle structures stood inside the walls. From one of them, the faint glow of light seeped through the greased hides that served as windows. The other building was dark and Glass assumed they used it for storage. The rear walls of the buildings served as the back wall of the fort. Their fronts faced a tiny courtyard, dominated by the stench of dung. The source of the odor stood hitched to a post—two mangy mules, presumably the only animals that the Arikara had been unable to steal. In addition to the animals, the courtyard held a large machine for pressing pelts, an anvil on a cottonwood stump, and a teetering pile of firewood. Five men stood inside, soon joined by the man from the blockhouse. The dim light illuminated Glass’s scarred face, and Glass felt their curious stares.

  “Come inside if you want.”

  Glass followed the men into the lit structure, crowding into a cramped room configured as a bunkhouse. A smoky fire burned in a crude clay fireplace against the back wall. The only redeeming quality of the sour-smelling room was its warmth, a heat generated as much by the proximity of other men as by the fire.

  The runty man started to say something more when his body contorted in a deep, wet cough. A similar cough appeared to afflict most of the men, and Glass feared the source. When the runty man finally stopped hacking, he said again, “We ain’t got any food to spare.”

  “I told you I don’t need your food,” said Glass. “Let’s settle on the price of a blanket and mittens and I’ll be gone.” Glass pointed to a table in the corner. “Throw in that skinning knife.”

  The runty man puffed his chest as if offended. “We ain’t meaning to be stingy, mister. But the Rees got us holed up in here. Stole all our stock. Last week, five braves come riding up to the gate like they want to trade. We open the gate and they start shooting. Killed my partner in cold blood.”

  Glass said nothing, so the man continued. “We haven’t been able to get out to hunt or cut wood. So you’ll understand if we’re frugal with our supplies.” He kept looking at Glass for affirmation, but Glass offered none.

  Finally Glass said, “Shooting at a white man and a Mandan won’t fix your problem with the Rees.”

  The shooter spoke up, a filthy man with no front teeth: “All I seen was some Indian slinking around in the middle of the night. How was I to know you’re riding double?”

  “You might make a habit of being able to see your target before you shoot.”

  The runty man spoke again. “I’ll tell my men when to shoot, mister. The Rees and the Mandans ain’t never looked no different to me. Besides, they’re forting up together now. One big thieving tribe. I’d rather shoot the wrong one than trust the wrong one.”

  Words began to spill from the runty man like water from a broken dam, and he pointed a bony finger as he spoke. “I built this fort with my own hands—and I got a license to trade here from the governor of Missouri. We ain’t ever leaving and we’ll shoot anything red that falls in our sights. I don’t care if we have to kill every damn one of those murdering, thieving bastards.”

  “Who exactly do you plan on trading with?” asked Glass.

  “We’ll make our way, mister. This is prime property. The army’ll come up here before long and set these savages straight. There’ll be plenty of white men trading up and down this river—you said it yourself.”

  Glass stepped into the night and the gate slammed behind him. He exhaled deeply, watching as his breath condensed in the cold night air, then drifted away on the hint of a frozen breeze. He saw Mandeh-Pahchu on his horse by the river. The Indian turned at the sound of the gate and rode forward.

  Glass took the new skinning knife and cut a slit in the blanket, poking his head through and wearing it as a capote. He put his hands into the furry mittens, staring at the Mandan and wondering what to say. What was there to say, really? I have my own business to attend. He couldn’t right every wrong in his path.

  Finally he handed the skinning knife to Mandeh-Pahchu. “Thank you,” said Glass. The Mandan looked at the knife and then looked at Glass, searching his eyes. Then he watched as Glass turned and walked away, up the Missouri and into the night.

  NINETEEN

  December 8, 1823

  John Fitzgerald walked to his sentry post, just down the river from Fort Union. Pig stood there, his heaving chest sending great clouds of his breath into the frigid night air. “My watch,” said Fitzgerald, practically friendly in his tone.

  “Since when are you so cheery about standing watch?” asked Pig, then ambled toward camp, looking forward to the four hours of sleep before breakfast.

  Fitzgerald cut a thick plug of tobacco. The rich flavor filled his mouth and calmed his nerves. He waited a long time before he spit. The night air bit at his lungs when he breathed, but Fitzgerald didn’t mind the cold. The cold was a function of a perfectly clear sky—and Fitzgerald needed a clear sky. A three-quarter moon cast bright light on the river. Enough light, he hoped, to steer a clear channel.

  Half an hour after the change of guard, Fitzgerald walked to the thick willows where he had cached his plunder: a pack of beaver pelts to trade downstream, twenty pounds of jerky in a jute sack, three horns of powder, a hundred lead balls, a small cooking pot, two wool blankets, and, of course, the Anstadt. He piled the supplies next to the water’s edge, then turned upstream to get the canoe.

  As he crept along the riverbank he wondered if Captain Henry would bother sending anyone after him. Stupid bastard. Fitzgerald had never met a man more likely to catch the tail end of a lightning bolt. Under Henry’s star-crossed leadership, the men of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company never stood more than a short step from calamity. It’s a wonder we’re not all dead. They were down to three horses, which limited the reach of their trapping parties to a few local waters, long since played out. Henry’s numerous efforts to trade with the local tribes for new mounts (or, in many cases, to buy back their own stolen mounts) met with uniform failure. Finding food each day for thirty men had become a problem. The hunting parties had not seen buffalo for weeks, and their primary subsistence now consisted of stringy antelope.

  The final straw came the week before, when Fitzgerald heard a whispered rumor from Stubby Bill. “Captain’s thinking about moving us up the Yellowstone—occupy what’s left of Lisa’s old fort on the Big Horn.” In 1807, a cagey trader named Manuel Lisa established a trading post at the junction of the Yellowstone and Big Horn rivers. Lisa named the structure Fort Manuel, and used it as a base for trade and exploration of both rivers. Lisa maintained particularly good relations with the Crow and the Flathead, who used the guns they bought from Lisa to wage war on the Blackfeet. The Blackfeet, in turn, became bitter enemies of the whites.

  Encouraged by his modest commercial success, in 1809 Lisa founded the St. Louis Missouri Fur Company. One of the new venture’s investors was Andrew Henry. Henry led a party of a hundred trappers on his ill-fated venture to the Three Forks. On his way up the Yellowstone, Henry had stopped at Fort Manuel. He remembered the strategic location, ample game, and timber. Henry knew that Fort Manuel had been abandoned for more than a dozen years, but he hoped to salvage the beginnings of a new post.

  Fitzgerald did not know the distance to the Big Horn, but he knew it lay in the opposite direction from where he wanted to go. While frontier life had been more agreeable than he expected when he fled St. Louis, he had long since grown weary of the bad food, the cold, and the general discomfort of forting up with thirty smelly men. Not to mention the considerable chance of getting killed. He missed the taste of cheap whiskey and the smell of cheap perfume. And, with seventy dollars in gold coins—the bounty for tending Glass—he thought constantly about gambling. After a year and a half, things should have quieted down for him in St. Louis—perhaps even farther south. He intended to find out.

  Two dugout canoes lay upside down on t
he long beach below the fort.

  Fitzgerald had examined them thoroughly a few days before, determined that the smaller of the two was better made. Besides, though the downstream current would carry him, he needed a vessel small enough to manage on his own. He quietly flipped the canoe, set its two paddles inside, and pulled it across the sandbar to the water’s edge.

  Now the other. In planning his desertion, Fitzgerald had worried about how to immobilize the second canoe. He considered boring a hole through the log skin before arriving at a more straightforward solution. He returned to the second canoe, reaching underneath to grab its paddles. Canoe’s no good without a paddle.

  Fitzgerald pushed his canoe into the water, jumped aboard, and paddled twice to set the boat in the current. The water grabbed the canoe and propelled it downstream. He stopped after a few minutes to pick up his stolen provisions, then put the boat in the current again. In a matter of minutes Fort Union disappeared behind him.

  Captain Henry sat alone in the musty confines of his quarters, the only private room at Fort Union. Beyond privacy, a rare commodity at the fort, there was little to commend the space. The only heat and light came from an open doorway to the adjoining room. Henry sat in the cold and dark, wondering what to do.

  Fitzgerald himself was no great loss. Henry had distrusted the man since the first day in St. Louis. They could do without the canoe—it wasn’t as if he’d stolen their remaining horses. The loss of a fur pack was maddening, but hardly fatal.

  The loss was not the man who was gone, but rather its effect on the men who stayed. Fitzgerald’s desertion was a statement—a statement loud and clear—of the other men’s unspoken thoughts: The Rocky Mountain Fur Company was a failure. He was a failure. Now what?

  Henry heard the latch open on the bunkhouse door. Short, heavy footsteps scuffed across the dirt floor toward his quarters, then Stubby Bill stood in the doorway.

  “Murphy and the trapping party’s coming in,” reported Stubby.

  “They got any plews?”

  “No, Captain.”

  “None at all?”

  “No, Captain. Well, you see, Captain—it’s a little worse than just that.”

  “Well?”

  “They ain’t got no horses, either.”

  Captain Henry took a moment to absorb the news.

  “Anything else?”

  Stubby thought a minute and then said, “Yes, Captain. Anderson is dead.”

  The captain said nothing further. Stubby waited until the silence made him uncomfortable, then he left.

  Captain Henry sat there for a few more minutes in the cold darkness before making his decision. They would abandon Fort Union.

  TWENTY

  December 15, 1823

  The hollow formed a near perfect bowl on the floor of the plains. On three sides, low hills rose to shelter the depression from the relentless winds of more open ground. The hollow funneled moisture toward its center, where a stand of hawthorn trees stood vigil. The combination of the hills and the trees created considerable shelter.

  The little hollow stood barely fifty yards from the Missouri. Hugh Glass sat cross-legged beside a small fire, the flames tickling at the lean carcass of a rabbit suspended on a willow spit.

  As he waited for the rabbit to roast, Glass became suddenly aware of the sound of the river. It was an odd thing to notice, he thought. He had clung to the river for weeks. Yet suddenly he heard the waters with the acute sensitivity of new discovery. He turned from the fire to stare at the river. It struck him as strange that the smooth flow of water would create any sound at all. Or that the wind would, for that matter. It occurred to him that it wasn’t so much the water or the wind that accounted for the noise, but rather the objects in their path. He turned back to the fire.

  Glass felt the familiar soreness in his leg and adjusted his position. His wounds posed constant reminders that, while he was healing, he was not healed. The cold accentuated the ache in both his leg and his shoulder. He assumed now that his voice would never return to normal. And of course his face gave permanent notice of his encounter on the Grand. It wasn’t all bad, though. His back no longer caused him pain. Nor did it hurt to eat, something he appreciated as he inhaled the scent of the roasting meat.

  Glass had shot the rabbit a few minutes earlier in the fading light of the day. He’d seen no sign of Indians for a week, and when the fat cottontail loped across his path, the prospect of such a tasty dinner had been too much to pass up.

  A quarter mile upriver from Glass, John Fitzgerald had been watching for a spot to put ashore when he heard the nearby crack of the rifle. Shit! He paddled quickly toward shore to slow his forward drift. He bobbed in an eddy, back-paddling, as he peered through the dimming light to identify the source of the shot.

  Too far north for Arikara. Assiniboine? Fitzgerald wished he could see better. The flicker of a campfire appeared a few minutes later. He could make out the buckskin form of a man, but could discern no detail. He assumed it was an Indian. Certainly no white man had business this far north, not in December, anyway. Are there more than one? Daylight faded rapidly.

  Fitzgerald weighed the options. He sure as hell couldn’t stay where he was. If he put ashore for the night, it seemed likely that the shooter would discover him in the morning. He thought about creeping up and killing the shooter, except he still wasn’t sure whether he faced one man or many. Finally he decided to attempt slipping past. He would wait for the cover of nightfall and hope the distraction of the fire would keep the shooter’s eye—and any others—off the water. Meanwhile, the full moon would provide enough light to steer.

  Fitzgerald waited almost an hour, quietly pulling the prow of the dugout onto the soft sandbar. The western horizon swallowed the final remnants of daylight, sharpening the glow of the campfire. The shooter’s silhouette hunched above the fire, and Fitzgerald assumed that he must be busy tending his dinner. Now. Fitzgerald checked the Anstadt and his two pistols, setting them within easy reach. Then he pulled the dugout off the bank and jumped aboard. He paddled twice to push the boat into the current. After that he used the paddle as a rudder, gently placing it on one side or the other. As much as he could, he let the boat drift.

  Hugh Glass tugged at the rabbit’s hindquarter. The joint was loose, and with a twist he tore off the leg. He sunk his teeth into the succulent meat.

  Fitzgerald tried to steer as far away from the shoreline as possible, but the current ran practically beside it. The fire approached now with dizzying speed. Fitzgerald tried to watch the river while simultaneously peering at the back of the man by the fire. He could make out a capote made from a Hudson’s Bay blanket—and what looked like a wool hat. A wool hat? A white man? Fitzgerald looked back toward the water. A giant boulder loomed suddenly from the dark water of the river—barely ten feet in front of him!

  Fitzgerald thrust his paddle deep into the river, pulling as hard as he could. He lifted the paddle at the end of the stroke and pushed it against the rock. The dugout turned—but not enough. Its side scraped the rock with a rasping grate. Fitzgerald paddled with all his strength. No point holding back now.

  Glass heard a splash followed by a long scrape. He reached instinctively for his rifle, then turned toward the Missouri, moving quickly away from the light of the fire. He crept rapidly toward the river, his eyes adjusting from the glare of the firelight.

  He scanned the water for the source of the sound. He heard the splash of a paddle and could just make out a canoe at a distance of a hundred yards. He raised his rifle, cocking the hammer and sighting on the dark form of a man with a paddle. His finger moved inside the trigger guard … He stopped.

  Glass saw little point in shooting. Whoever it was, the boatman appeared intent on avoiding contact. In any event, he was headed rapidly in the opposite direction. Whatever his intention, the fleeing boatman appeared to pose little threat to Glass.

  Onboard the dugout, Fitzgerald paddled hard until he rounded a bend in the river, a quarter mil
e from the campfire. He let the dugout drift for almost a mile before guiding the boat to the opposite bank and searching for a suitable landing.

  Finally he pulled the dugout from the water and flipped it, spreading his bedroll underneath. He chewed on a piece of jerky while he contemplated again the figure by the fire. Damn strange spot for a white man in December.

  Fitzgerald carefully lay the rifle and his two pistols beside him before curling beneath his blanket. The bright moon flooded his campsite with pale light. The Anstadt caught the light and held it, the silver fittings gleaming like mirrors in the sun.

  Captain Henry finally caught a stretch of good luck. So many good things happened with such rapid succession that he barely knew what to make of it.

  For starters, the skies shone blue as indigo for two straight weeks. With the good weather, the brigade covered the two hundred miles between Fort Union and the Big Horn River in six days.

  When they arrived, the abandoned fort stood almost as Henry remembered it. The condition of the post far exceeded his expectations. The years of abandonment had worn on the structure, but most of the timber remained solid. The find would save them weeks of hard labor, cutting and hauling logs.

  Henry’s experience with the local tribes (at least initially) presented another stark contrast to his dismal fortune at Fort Union. He dispatched a party led by Allistair Murphy and showered gifts on his new neighbors, primarily bands of Flathead and Crow. In his relations with the local Indians, Henry discovered that he was the beneficiary of his predecessor’s diplomacy. Both tribes seemed relatively happy at the resettlement of the post. At least they were willing to trade.

  The Crow, in particular, were flush with horses. Murphy traded for seventy-two of the animals. Streams spilled off the nearby Big Horn Mountains, and Captain Henry set out a plan for the aggressive deployment of his newly mobile trappers.