Jan would be eternally grateful to the trapper who picked him up, even if the smell that emanated from the old coot was enough to make Jan lose what little was still in his stomach. To be fair, the vomiting might have been due to the crease the bullet had laid across his head. The trapper also gave him a drink from his canteen. That was vastly appreciated. Even if the trapper was not precisely careful with his injuries, he did throw Jan up on the horse and let him ride.
Jan thanked Henderson for not letting him die. The Englishman tended his wounds, dug out the bullet, and declared the bone not broken, only bruised. He fought the fever that threatened to overcome Jan’s resolve to live, forced water and broth down him, and prayed over him. He even pulled Jan’s Bible out during one of Jan’s lucid moments and read to him from Psalms as he was instructed.
Nonetheless, Jan was not grateful for Henderson’s interference once he could sit up on the bales of hay serving as his sick bed. “What do you mean I can’t go yet?” Jan growled at his nurse. “My family’s up there without sufficient provisions. Winter’s here. I can’t stay down in Fort Reynald with them alone in the cabin.”
“Neither can you travel safely,” insisted the Englishman. “Your wounds are not sufficiently healed. You haven’t regained your strength. The only thing I can say is you’ve been without fever for all of twenty-four hours. It would be suicide, sir, and what good would you be to your wife and children, dead on the trail?”
Jan threw the tin cup he held across the room.
“And there is the matter of the identity of who ambushed you,” continued Henderson, undaunted by Jan’s display of temper. “Your pack horse came back here with its full load. I know, I watched you fasten each item on with my own eyes, and I unloaded those same items with a foreboding in my heart.
“It was because the horse showed up at the fort’s gate that I knew you were in trouble. I know you will forgive me for not setting out to search for you, myself, but I have not yet overcome my disability. Therefore, I sent one of the trappers I know to be a good man in my stead.”
Jan lowered his head carefully back down to what was serving as his pillow. The Englishman’s rhetoric was making the headache worse, if that were possible.
“Your bay is missing, it’s true,” continued Henderson, ignoring the groan from his patient. “I can’t believe someone shot you and left you for dead for one horse and didn’t take the one loaded with supplies.”
“He just didn’t catch Horse,” muttered Jan.
“Couldn’t catch Horse? Which was the steadier of the two when you stayed with me before? Gert or Horse? Horse! She’s the more domesticated of the two. It was Horse who turned around and headed for the nearest stable when she found herself loose.”
“Go away, Henderson,” groaned Jan. “I bow to your superior judgment for today.”
He had to bow to the Englishman’s judgment for more than one day. When he did rise from the bed, he swayed. Henderson told him it was loss of blood. His vision blurred. Henderson said it was due to a concussion. His knees buckled. Henderson said it was weakness from the fever. Jan threw a boot at him. Henderson said he was getting better.
Few of the trappers were in the habit of visiting with the stuffy ex-butler. Instead, they congregated around the potbellied stove of the main mercantile building. Most of these men would spend the entire winter in the relative comfort of the fort, gambling, drinking, and occasionally having what they called fandangos where the men got liquored up enough to dance wildly to the Mexican guitars even without female partners. In early spring, those men would disperse into the mountains to trap the furs at their peak of splendor.
Jan and Henderson had plenty of time to talk and, since he was good for little else, Jan began telling stories as he was in the habit of doing with the children. Henderson found them amusing and eventually asked another man to join them. By the end of the second week, Jan entertained a room full of men. It was one form of entertainment available at the fort.
Most mountain men practiced telling tall tales. They enjoyed having someone with stories they hadn’t heard before—someone who also appreciated the telling of their outlandish yarns. When Jan began to end the evening storytelling sessions with preaching, they stayed to listen.
Predicted heavy snowfall was a topic of much speculation. Determining whether or not it would be an especially hard winter depended upon woolly worms and how high off the ground the hornets had nested that year. Jan listened to all these conjectures with growing alarm. Although skeptical of the old sayings, he wanted to return to Tildie and the children with all possible speed. One night, he announced to Henderson that he was leaving the next day. In the morning there was two feet of snow on the ground.
“It’ll melt quick,” advised one of the trappers. “First snow never stays.”
Jan was frustrated, but knew the foolishness of starting off in uncertain weather. Two gray cold days followed, spitting snow out of the clouds in frequent flurries. On the third day, a burst of sunshine and a quick thaw surprised the fort. Jan made plans to borrow a riding horse from Henderson and repack Horse. He was determined to set out before yet another spell of bad weather delayed him.
“I don’t want you brought back across a saddle, sir,” said Henderson.
“Then we won’t make it known that I’m leaving”, answered Jan. “I’ll slip out at first light tomorrow morning.”
The only difference in their nightly routine was that when Jan presented the gospel that night to the trappers, he made a more obvious push for the men to make a decision for accepting Christ.
In the morning, he left before most of the fort’s populace awoke.