Hugh Glass - Bruce Bradley by Bruce Bradley

Author:Bruce Bradley
Language: eng
Format: epub

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

ST. LOUIS--MARCH, 1820

WEST OF THE Missouri, things were beginning to warm up.

That's what everyone said, anyway. Within the next ten years, settlements would sprout up in areas that were now nothing but wilderness and indian territory. Adventures would be had and fortunes would be made.

Young Jim Bridger wanted both.

Ever since the Louis and Clark expedition of 1804--the year Jim had been born--people had talked about the rich, fertile land the expedition had found. Up until now the government, and the indians, had kept any kind of expansion in check. The talk was that would change soon. Nine years earlier, in 1811, Major Andrew Henry had made his own expedition over the Rockies. Most of the expedition had been wiped out by Blackfeet indians, but those who returned in the spring of 1812 brought out tales of an unimaginable wealth in furs, waiting to be taken by whoever got there first and managed to survive. Since then, the cry had been growing louder every year: "Did the United States Government make the Louisiana Purchase just to leave the land to the indians?"

The talk around Baird's Blacksmith Shop, where Jim worked, was that they hadn't. Any day now, the government would open the land up for those who were hold enough to take it. Jim's greatest fear was that it would happen before he was old enough to join them.

Old enough legally, anyway. Emotionally and physically, he was as ready as anyone to take on the new world.

The past few years had been especially hard, both on Jim and on his younger sister. Four years earlier, their family had moved from their home in Richmond, Virginia, to a spot along the Missouri River called the American Bottoms, six miles from St. Louis. Jim's father was a surveyor by trade, and there was no lack of work in the St. Louis area, but the job took him away from home for long periods of time.

One year after they arrived at the American Bottoms, in the summer of 1816, tragedy struck. Jim's mother died. Then, as winter began to set in, his baby brother followed her. Jim's father was away on both occasions, leaving Jim to handle all of the details and funeral arrangements, and anything else that needed to be taken care of.

A year after the death of his brother, just before Christmas of 1817, Jim's father died, leaving a thirteen-year-old Jim Bridger to take care of himself and his younger sister.

Not waiting for starvation or for handouts, Jim immediately began to look for work. He managed to obtain a canoe and, with the help of Pierre Chouteau, at Chouteau's General Store, began to trap for muskrat and mink. In addition to this, he found occasional work as a deck hand aboard Antoine Dangen's ferry, which ran from the American Bottoms to Old Cahokio, or East St. Louis.

He learned right away to distrust and dislike the average riverman, as well as to keep his wits about him. He had more to think about than just himself.

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