Hugh Glass! A miracle! But he it was.
"We thought you were dead and buried, man!"
"Wall, I ain't, not by a jugful. An' I wants my plunder an' the scalps o' them two villains."
"They aren't here. They're down at Atkinson."
What? Fort Atkinson was the Council Bluffs, on the lower Missouri one thousand miles away.
"I'll git 'em yit," vowed old Hugh. "If I'd only have knowed! I warn't very fur from Atkinson."
In February he started for Atkinson, with four other men. They traveled across country, through central Wyoming, and struck the Platte; paddled down the Platte in hide boats that they made—and ran right into the Arikaras. By night-fall old Hugh found himself again alone; he had lost all four of his comrades (two had been killed before his eyes), and most of his new outfit. But, he said:
"I felt quite rich when I found my knife and steel in my shot pouch. These little fixin's make a man feel right peart when he is three or four hundred miles away from anybody or anywhere—all alone among the painters (panthers) and the wild varmints."
In the early spring the buffalo calves are young and senseless. He easily caught them, cut them up, made a fire and cooked the meat; and in June he was at Fort Atkinson.
By this time he had forgiven the youngster. He was willing to believe that the "young feller" wasn't used to trapper ways, and hadn't known any better. But he still bore a grudge against Fitzgerald.