Fitzgerald was at Atkinson, enlisted in the army. Old Hugh raged and stormed, but did not dare to touch him. They talked it over; Fitz explained why he had left the grizzly bear camp—had stayed five days, at the risk of his own life, until there wasn't any nursing to be done; and when he had gone on Hugh Glass was the same as dead and he ought to have stayed dead. Wasn't that reasonable?
Hugh scratched his scarred head and half agreed. The commanding officer ordered that he be given a brand new outfit; whatever he needed. This squared matters, and Trapper Hugh proceeded to entertain the garrison with his tall stories of how he had been "et by a b'ar," and had been chasin' his plunder for ten months, between the lower Missouri and the Yellowstone.
This bear adventure made "Old Glass" a celebrated figure among the traders and trappers of beaver days on the Upper Missouri. As seemed to him, he had earned the right to live forever, in defiance of Injuns and "varmints." But in the winter of 1832-1833 the Arikaras killed him, on the ice of the Yellowstone River, hard by the mouth of the same Big Horn where he had so astonished the Andrew Henry fort nine years before.
CHAPTER XV
A FRACAS ON THE SANTA FE TRAIL (1829)
AND THE BUILDING OF BENT'S FORT
The United States east of the Upper Mississippi River was opened to the white race by the settlers, who fought to locate their homes in the country of the Shawnees, the Mingos, the Delawares, the Potawatomis, and all.
The newer United States of the vast Louisiana Territory, west of the Upper Mississippi River, was for a long time thought to be of little value as a home land. Its value seemed to lie in furs and in trade with the natives.
After the exploration by Captain Meriwether Lewis and his friend Lieutenant Clark, the fur-hunters were the Americans who opened the trails into the country of the Sioux, the Arikaras, the Blackfeet, the Crows and all. They did not make permanent homes; they built only rude forts, as store-houses, and when outside lived in camps like Indian camps. They did not till the ground. When they left, the country was about the same as before, given up to the wild men and the wild animals.