After losing both his career and his fiancée
(the back story revealed early) Hugh Glass finds himself in St Louis with no
clear idea of his next move. He joins an expedition up the Missouri River in
the employ of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company.
It is the 1820’s and west of the Mississippi
is hotchpotch of dangers. The native American Indians are subdued but
unreliable, some keen to trade, others keen to kill; the winter in the Rockies
is severe; and the grizzly bears roam wild and free.
While out scouting Glass comes across a she
bear with cubs. She goes for him and though he puts a shot in her chest it
doesn’t halt the charging beast and Glass has his arm and back clawed and his
leg badly bitten before the bullet takes effect and reduces the bear to a
lifeless mass on top of him.
Found by the main group and inexpertly
patched together Glass hangs on to life but he slows down progress, dangerous
with the hostile Arikara tribe in the vicinity. Two volunteers agree to stay
put, the expectation being to bury him when he finally expires; young Jim
Bridger out of gratitude for Glass’s past kindnesses, the mercenary John
Fitzgerald out of greed for the promised extra pay and with an eye to
inheriting Glass’s rather fine rifle.
When Glass inconveniently fails to die he is
abandoned, left with only his clothes and blanket; Fitzgerald making off with
his rifle, powder and flint, and Bridger with his hunting knife. Glass still
refuses to give up the ghost and instead begins to crawl.
What follows is a story of survival over the
stacked odds of climate, starvation, wild beasts, and wilder Indians; and of
revenge on the two miscreants not so much for the abandonment but for the theft
of his only means of self-support. Hugh Glass will survive (the included map
gives that away) so the real tension is in the pursuit of Bridger and
Fitzgerald.
It is a well written yarn, based on elements
of truth, which make it authentic in its setting and detail - a western with a
difference and a pretty good read.
