Tom Fitzpatrick had said to Jim Bridger, "I’ve never known a man who loves life like Sam. Every hour for him is a golden nugget." That was pretty fancy talk for a mountain man but Tom had read a lot and had a way with words. Part of the force that sent Sam trudging across the white prairies was love of life, a gladness for health and youth that filled him as Mozart’s gayest music filled him; and part of it was his belief that the earth on which he walked had been designed by the greatest of the artists, and that if a man had the courage and fortitude not to fail it, it would not fail him. In Sam’s rough mountain-man philosophy those persons who became the wards of sadness and melancholy had never summoned for use and trial more than a part of what they had in them, and so had failed themselves and their Creator. If it was a part of the inscrutable plan that he was to live through this ordeal, and again cover the bones of wife and child with mountain lilies, the strength was lying in him, waiting, and he had only to call on it—al1 of it—and use it, without flinching or whimpering. If he showed himself to be a worthy piece in the Great Architect’s edifice he would live; in Sam’s philosophy that was about all there was to it.
He intended to call on all he had, to the last desperate gasp of it. He would walk and rest, walk and rest; and if there was nothing to eat, he would rest, and walk again. The sun’s nimbus told him that the temperature was falling. Cold might be better for him than falling snow, for if he had to buck deeper snow than this he would fail fast. Nothing wore man or beast down faster than wading in soft snow, crotch-deep. As he walked Sam sighted his course on a line just a little north of what he thought was the little Belt Mountains. It was about seventy or eighty miles to Judith River, where he might find berries and bones, or a rabbit at which he could hurl his knife, or the stiff hide of a dead old bull. To appease by a little the gnawing in his stomach he now and then cut a short tassel from the fringe up and down his trousers. A man could chew a piece of tanned leather for an hour, with no result, except that it would become a soft impermeable pulp that would ill his mouth. What Sam did` was to chew out the smoke and tanning fluids and swallow them. When he was far enough from the river to feel secure he burst into song; and what a picture he was, a tall tawny creature on a white map, singing at the top of his voice a Mozart aria to Lotus! He was remembering the times when he sang to her and played and the few times she sang with him.
Thinking of her reminded him of their feasts together, and so next he sang the Champagne Aria. Then he sang anything he could think of that at all expressed the miracle of being alive and able to sing. There were birds that sang half their time, and there were people who complained half their time. The birds were worthy of their loveliness and their wings. There were creatures like the wolverine that never sang, but went snarling and clacking its teeth through shadow-depths all day and all night. The bull elk sang, the bull moose; and the buffalo bull was often so full of life and joy that he would paw and beller and swing round and round, bugging his eyes at the wonderful prairies and the bear grass on long stems with their domes of white blossoms. A meadow lark would sit in a tree and sing exquisite lyrics all afternoon, a wood thrush would sing the variations of its little sonata until sleep overcame it, and a bluebird through a long golden morning would sit in a high tree and empty its soul to spring. The long-tailed chat talked morning, noon, and night, and despaired in his efforts to express the wonder of it; and the incredible mockingbird filled all musicians with, apologies and shame ....
Such was Sam’s mood as he passed through ravines and over hills. The old snow down under was frozen hard but on top of it was about a foot of new snow, which was soft and nice gainst his moccasined feet. Now and then he glanced back at the deep trail he was making. With the morning sun filling it an Indian on a high hill could see it but he would think it a wolf path. Sam had decided to walk without stopping, if he could, all the way to Judith River, but when fifteen miles from the Missouri he saw the first wolves, and before long came to wet bones of the long-legged hare. He picked some of them up but they had been stripped clean. Even the hide had been eaten. Taking the larger bones with him till he came to an outcropping of stone, he smashed them with the hatchet and sucked up a little marrow fat and soft bone pulp.
Five wolves decided to follow him. He did not mind. Since he was not walking like a thing crippled or old he knew that they did not expect to eat him. They were curious and hopeful. Sam supposed they wondered why he was out here in wolf land, alone, and what he intended to do. A wolf knew when a man had a gun; he was more wary then. Some mountain men thought they recognized it as a weapon; others, that they smelled the gunpowder. Even the magpie was bolder when a man had no gun.
The five wolves trailed him at a distance of about thirty yards but now and then the boldest of the five, a big fellow that would weigh, Sam guessed, a hundred and forty pounds, would come trotting ahead of the others; and if Sam stopped and turned the wolf would stop, ears forward, mouth open, and look at him. His tongue lay between the lower canines, long and curved, but because the tongue was too wide for the space between the teeth it lay up and over their points. The eyes had large round black holes for pupils, and an iris that looked pale green in the snowlight. The face did not seem ferocious but only curious, almost friendly; but Sam knew that the long gaunt body was hungry and that in its animal way the wolf was looking at him as something to eat. "I reckon," Sam said, "you’d taste a lot better than old marrow-bones and rose hips but I’ll never know without you come closer." At thirty feet he thought he could put his knife in the beast’s heart.
The wolf became so bold that he came within fifty feet but when Sam balanced the knife to hurl it the wolf suddenly slunk back. Once the wolf pointed his nose to the sky, and almost closing his eyes, opened his lungs to their full power in the chilling winter wolf-call. It was this mating cry that made greenhorns shiver all night. Why the Creator had designed the beast so that it mated in the deep snows of winter was another riddle; a lot of arrangements in the divine plan mortal mind could see little sense in. If, Sam thought, he only had urine from a male wolf a hundred miles away he could splash it on the first tree he came to, and this big lubber after snifling it would go out of his senses. The city dog and the country dog on meeting acted much the same way. If he had a trap and a rabbit for bait—but if he had a rabbit he would not be thinking of wolf meat for supper.
Averaging five miles an hour except in ravines where the crust gave way under him, Sam walked all day; and when darkness fell he thought he was only twenty miles from the Judith River. The northern foothills of a mountain range had been on his right for some time but he had seen no sign of game there or of living thing. Along the Judith, as along most rivers, there were buffalo feeding on river-bottom grasses and shrubs. He hoped to find an old or sick one. Numbed by fatigue and hunger, he kept walking. Two hours after dark, three, four, he was still walking, with five wolves trotting along behind him.
Then he came to the river, and the first thing he did was to find an open place and lie on his belly and drink. With night the cold had deepened and the frost was burning his ears. He searched up and down the river till he found a shelter he could crawl under, and with the hatchet he dug into the earth deeper than the winter chill, making a coffin area large enough to house him. He was protected by dense snow-laden brush on all sides but the river side. He had hoped to sleep but after curling up in the robe he found the earth so cold and the air above him so bitter that he sat up and considered his problem. Without food he might walk another two or three days but he doubted that he could do it without both food and sleep. The thought then seemed to him so cowardly and shameful that he tried to put it away; and while making an effort to do this it occurred to him that he ought to laugh. Wondering what he could laugh at, he thought of the fifty-seven braves rushing round and round like big red ants, or wasps, whose house had been destroyed. So he exploded a shout that could have been heard a mile up or down the river, and then burst into song:"Hey, git along, git along, Sammy! Hey, git along, Sam along Joe!" Had Hugh Glass ever laughed while crawling the hundred miles?—or Colter, as he slunk through the night, stark naked, starved, his feet soled with cactus needles?