The Borough Press
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London SE1 9GF
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2015
Originally published in 2002 by Carroll & Graf
Copyright © Michael Punke 2002
Map © Jeffrey L. Ward 2002
Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers 2015
The Revenant film artwork © 2015 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
Michael Punke asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it, while at times based on historical events and figures, are the work of the author’s imagination.
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Source ISBN: 9780007521326
Ebook Edition © 2015 ISBN: 9780008117597
Version: 2015-11-24
For my parents, Marilyn and Butch Punke
Avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.
—Rom. 12:19
Contents
Copyright
Dedication
September 1, 1823
Part One
Chapter One: August 21, 1823
Chapter Two: August 23, 1823
Chapter Three: August 24, 1823
Chapter Four: August 28, 1823
Chapter Five: August 30, 1823
Chapter Six: August 31, 1823
Chapter Seven: September 2, 1823—Morning
Chapter Eight: September 2, 1823—Afternoon
Chapter Nine: September 8, 1823
Chapter Ten: September 15, 1823
Chapter Eleven: September 16, 1823
Chapter Twelve: September 17, 1823
Chapter Thirteen: October 5, 1823
Chapter Fourteen: October 6, 1823
Chapter Fifteen: October 9, 1823
Part Two
Chapter Sixteen: November 29, 1823
Chapter Seventeen: December 5, 1823
Chapter Eighteen: December 6, 1823
Chapter Nineteen: December 8, 1823
Chapter Twenty: December 15, 1823
Chapter Twenty-One: December 31, 1823
Chapter Twenty-Two: February 27, 1824
Chapter Twenty-Three: March 6, 1824
Chapter Twenty-Four: March 7, 1824
Chapter Twenty-Five: March 28, 1824
Chapter Twenty-Six: April 14, 1824
Chapter Twenty-Seven: April 28, 1824
Chapter Twenty-Eight: May 7, 1824
Historical Note
Acknowledgments
Key Sources
About the Author
Also by Michael Punke
About the Publisher
They were abandoning him. The wounded man knew it when he looked at the boy, who looked down, then away, unwilling to hold his gaze.
For days, the boy had argued with the man in the wolf-skin hat. Has it really been days? The wounded man had battled his fever and pain, never certain whether conversations he heard were real, or merely by-products of the delirious wanderings in his mind.
He looked up at the soaring rock formation above the clearing. A lone, twisted pine had managed somehow to grow from the sheer face of the stone. He had stared at it many times, yet it had never appeared to him as it did at that moment, when its perpendicular lines seemed clearly to form a cross. He accepted for the first time that he would die there in that clearing by the spring.
The wounded man felt an odd detachment from the scene in which he played the central role. He wondered briefly what he would do in their position. If they stayed and the war party came up the creek, all of them would die. Would I die for them … if they were certain to die anyway?
“You sure they’re coming up the creek?” The boy’s voice cracked as he said it. He could effect a tenor most of the time, but his tone still broke at moments he could not control.
The man in the wolf skin stooped hurriedly by the small meat rack near the fire, stuffing strips of partially dried venison into his parfleche. “You want to stay and find out?”
The wounded man tried to speak.