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?
There now rose before him, as he shivered, a vivid picture of the Indians. A brave had come with a second drink for the guard and had seen him lying there, dead, with eyes and tongue choked half out of him. Shrieking, he had run to the chief; and half drunk and stuffed with half-cooked elk meat, the redmen had rushed to the tent to stare with amazement at one of their most valiant. Then all hell had broken loose. The Indian camp must have been like an anthill after squaws built a fire around it. What odors!—of stinking war paint, fire smoke, rum, howling dogs, and rage; and what yells of fury and frustration! What wild barking from the dogs, what terrified snortings and whinnying from the horses; and then what a bedlam as fifty-seven men, clutching their guns and tomahawks, ran back and forth, east, west, north, their senses fogged with rum and their black eyes turning yellow!