The Revenant

by Michael Punke

Getting the mule in the river was no problem. So famous was the animal’s love of water that the men called her “Duck.” At the end of the day she would stand for hours in water up to her sagging belly. In fact, it was this odd predilection that kept the Mandans from stealing her along with the rest of their stock. While the other animals were grazing or sleeping along the shore, Duck was standing in shallow water on a sandbar. When the bandits tried to take her, she was firmly stuck in the mud. It ultimately took half the brigade to pull her out.

“Bien fait, monsieur le marin,”

He stood for a moment at the pyre, old conventions calling from a distant past. He wondered for a moment what words had been spoken at his mother’s funeral, what words had been spoken for Elizabeth. He pictured a mound of fresh-turned earth next to an open grave. The notion of burial had always struck him as stifling and cold. He liked the Indian way better, setting the bodies up high, as if passing them to the heavens.

He stood there on the high rampart for a long time that night, listening to the Missouri and staring at the stars. He wondered at the source of the waters, of the mighty Big Horns whose tops he had seen but never touched. He wondered at the stars and the heavens, comforted by their vastness against his own small place in the world. Finally he climbed down from the ramparts and went inside, quickly finding the sleep that had eluded him before.