trembled. Then some more. And more after that—licking his hand each time, sucking on each finger. Every drop like the most delicious taste he had ever experienced upon his tongue—
A bird flew inches overhead, crying out. Snowflash of tail feathers. Magpie. Come to pick at me, he thought. See if there was anything rotting yet.
It made the tears come to his eyes as he ruminated on that and sucked the drops off his fingers. How the carrion birds would have picked at his eyeballs, dug away at the bloody rings of crimson blossoming out from the bullet holes, both back and front.
Looking down at the right side of his shoulder again, the tears flowed easily. Damn good thing the bullet went right on through. Some things just naturally stood out as being lucky, he figured. Other things a man had to work at to find lucky. But with this there was no question. He had stopped bleeding. The holes were too high—the Indian’s round ball hadn’t crashed through his lights. No lung was punctured. And as much as his shoulder hurt, he could move the arm a little.
Besides, he reminded himself, the shoulder didn’t hurt near as much as his head—
It was that sudden flare of realization that rocked him to his core.
That piece of his flesh, that hunk of his long brown hair laying over the warrior’s thigh, being scraped free of blood and gore before it was stuffed beneath the bastard’s belt.
He took it with him and left me here—figuring me for dead.
At the same time that Bass’s heart leaped with celebration that the Arapaho hadn’t finished him off with a war club … he grew angry at the warrior, for there was no greater insult, nowhere near the coup, than to take his enemy’s hair. And then Bass became angry at himself for hurting so bad. Not just the back of his skull, but his heart with the shame of it.
From somewhere in the tender, raw, agonized tendrils of his mind, he knew he had to do something about covering that head of his. Slowly, gradually, Bass brought his dampened left hand to the back of his head. Gingerly he brushed wet, cool fingertips across the sun-fevered skull at first. Strange to find it so hard, so dry. And that, his numbed mind told him, was just the danger.
Got to cover it.
Dipping his left hand in the water again, Bass brought the wet fingers to the back of his skull, again and again he tapped them gently on that bare patch of bone where his topknot had once rested. Sensing as he did so that the edges of the wound, his very flesh where the hair was matted with blood, the crust of coagulate and flesh had already dried in a hard, ragged circle.
Tears came again as he realized he had survived. And told himself he would survive.
With the left hand he dug into the sand and pushed with both legs to shove himself toward the overhang of some willow where he spotted the rocks. There, back in the cool shadows, atop some of the smooth, round-topped rocks, lay the green topknots on each one.
With his quaking fingers, he scraped off the first of the cool, damp moss—then brought it to his dry, tortured skullcap. At first the soppy material made him shiver, it was so cold on the open wound. But as he applied a second scraping of moss, then more, the pain gradually subsided. And the ragged wound was soothed.
The animal snorted—quiet hooves on the rocky bank.
The bastard had come back!
Wheeling on his hip, Bass’s head swam, dizzy from such swift motion—fighting to clear his mind. Afraid. Dragging his left hand across the back of his belt, he found his scabbards empty. So fearful was he that Scratch brought both empty hands up into claws. Despite the pain it caused him in that shoulder. Those claws were all he had.
The animal snorted, and its unshod hooves clicked upon the rocks as it emerged from the brush.
He held his breath, heart thumping, ready to fight for his life now that it had been spared the first time….
“H-hannah,” he croaked in a hoarse whisper, the first sound his throat had made all day.
She stopped, her nostrils flaring a moment, sniffing the air and looking him over as if to be sure it was really him.
“Come … c’mere,” he said, his voice cracking. “C’mere, girl.” Bass tried to whistle, but barely got out a squeak.
Her head bobbed once, and she clattered forward on the rocks to stand over him, between her master and the sun. Shading him.
Bass was no longer alone.
19
Just when he was feeling sorry for himself, about the sorriest he’d ever been, Hannah showed up.
That mule had a head about her, Scratch would tell himself over and over across the next few days.
As he sat there staring at her for the longest time, not able to believe at first that she was real, no one could have convinced Titus that she wouldn’t eventually come back for him. Deep in his marrow, Bass knew that she had run as far as she had to until the warriors gave up their chase. Then it had merely been a case of her lying low long enough for the countryside thereabouts to clear of brownskins.
“Likely you moseyed back to stay close enough so’s you could watch me,” Bass murmured late that afternoon as sundown approached. “Waiting to learn if’n I was live, or dead.”
His affection for her burned all the more warmly in his heart as Bass reflected on what she’d done to take care of not just her own hide, but his as well.
“And when you saw me moving there by the river,” he told the mule, “you come out of hiding and made your way back to me. Just like a friend. A good …
Slowly it struck him just how little he had left in the world right about then. A year’s worth of prime, seal- sleek beaver plews gone the way of dust on the wind. Now the horses and mules, saddles and camp plunder, along with the lion’s share of what supplies of coffee, sugar, flour, and such he had been toting around since bidding the three farewell far up on the Yellowstone.
But at least he had Hannah, he thought as he looked up at her there on the riverbank where the mule came to a halt beside him, lowering her head so that he could reach up and rub between her ears—right there at the forelock the way she liked him to do. He had Hannah, the only friend he could imagine he had left in the world to count on.
There were others—men among Fitzpatrick’s and Sublette’s brigades. But they were so far away in days and distance that he told himself they could be of little help to him now—not in the shape he was in. Whereas before the attack he had planned on heading north to cut one of their trails so that he might end up with a few supplies and a whole heaping of companionship … now Scratch realized he just needed to get himself to anyone who could help him mend, help him heal, then reoutfit him.
Why, he might be lucky enough to find an old knife among the packs Hannah carried—besides it, he didn’t have a weapon to call upon. The two pistols were gone and his belt scabbards were empty when he had finally come to beside the Little Bear River.
Again he stared at the mule in amazement. She had returned for him, steadfastly loyal. Yet he and Hannah were nonetheless alone—here in enemy country, with nothing more than one another to rely upon.
It was enough to make a good man cry … then he remembered the tale the old frontiersman Isaac Washburn had told him. How in his first ordeal Hugh Glass had been mauled good by that sow grizzly, then left beside his own shallow grave with nary a weapon nor a horse. But the second time Glass found himself set afoot in enemy territory along the Platte, Washburn was along to discover just how good Ol’ Hugh felt despite their dire circumstances. Having his rifle, pistol, pouch, and powder—why, all that made a man feel right pert, so Hugh told Isaac.
“Damn,” Bass muttered, “just look at you feeling so danged sorry for yourself. You ain’t got no gun, that’s for certain. But, by God—you got some fixin’s there in that mule’s packs … and I got you too, girl,” he cooed to her.
The moss trickled down the back of his neck as he inched forward, reached out, and snagged her long lead rope—thankful it hadn’t become tangled in rocks or brush in her getaway flight, or in her faithful return to him.
