The Wandering Hill by Larry McMurtry

Author:Larry McMurtry
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster

34

“Dern ‘em, they should die when they’re supposed to!” he insisted.

PEOPLE won’t always die when they’re supposed to,” Tom Fitzpatrick insisted. All those who had watched the young warrior ride away with his own lance sticking out of his chest were confused in their heads about what they had just witnessed. Kit Carson was terribly agitated—he had stayed in the lookout tower until the little band of warriors was out of sight, hoping to see the wounded man fall dead; but he didn’t.

“Dern ‘em, they should die when they’re supposed to!” he insisted. “Right’s right!”

“Now, Kit—just look at Hugh Glass,” the Broken Hand argued. “I’d never seen a man that torn up, and neither had Jimmy Bridger. Hugh’s chest was ripped open, most of his ribs were broken, and his scalp was nearly torn off. I thought he was dead and so did Jimmy, or we would never have left him, Sioux or no Sioux. But then, six months later, here he comes, as alive as I am.”

“I ‘spect you all know Tom Smith,” Charbonneau remarked. “A horse fell on him and he busted his leg so bad that it couldn’t be set, so Tom sawed it off himself. Not only that, he got up the next day and whittled himself a fine peg leg.”

“One of Ashley’s men had to have his guts sewed back in after that big fight with the Rees,” Tom remembered. “Hugh Glass helped hold his guts in and Jedediah Smith did the sewing.”

“I have seen a few sights in that line myself,” Lord Berrybender remarked. Though Milly had done her best, his face still looked as if it had been nastily peppered.

“The Spaniards, you know, are cruel to their own peasants,” Lord B. continued. “Stick ’em on sharpened tree stumps and leave them to die. Picked a fellow off that had been stuck on a stake for two days—the surgeon sewed him up and off he went. Never know what humans will stand until you’ve seen a bit of war.”

Though Jim Snow listened to all this talk about combat wounds and mutilation, he did not contribute. Some men were tough, there was no denying that, but his failure to kill the young warrior still puzzled him. A bullet was a small thing—it might pass straight through and do little damage. But a lance? Yet the man had walked almost a mile, got on a mule, and rode away.

Pierre Boisdeffre was fretting that this miracle would embolden the Blackfeet, who were plenty bold anyway. The medicine men would use the incident to belittle the power of the whites. A hundred warriors might move against them tomorrow—he doubted that his little stockade would stop a hundred warriors.

“I expect it’s time to start south,” Jim said to Kit.

“I don’t see why,” Kit said, and then he got up and walked off. Everyone agreed that lately young Kit had been impossible to deal with.

“There’s not a better guide in the West than our Kit,” Tom said. “Only he takes bossing.

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