a little heavy on coincidences

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It was made clear in the movie he was tracking the boat and crew, albeit by a circuitous route. That was probably so he himself couldn't be tracked.

The other coincidences you mention were all about his transformation. Without them, this 'man in the wilderness' doesn't grow up spiritually and realize what's important, he would have just remained a man in the wilderness.

Interesting and under-rated film.



You have two forms of expression, silence and rage: Midnight Run

I understand your moral ambivalence about whether Zachary Bass should have cried out and warned the hapless mountain man trapper, his Indian wife, and her relatives before a wandering Indian raiding party massacred them. But before they died, these people killed at least three of the attacking Indian raiders.

If I put myself in his position, crippled and only able to crawl, weaponless and defenseless, I know that with the Indian raiders almost on top of the trapper and his family and within spitting distance of me, nothing would have changed. Crying out a warning wouldn't have helped the mountain man and his family and in-laws. The raiding Indians were already just about on top of them. At best they'd have only another couple seconds warning which wouldn't have made much of a difference. Moreover, Zachary Bass knew that he would also be instantly killed by the Indian raiders and the innocent people below would still die.

That might still beg the question, should Bass still have cried out a warning anyway? I would say that given the NO-WIN choices facing him, the question has no moral grounds. I know that Bass was not ethically obliged to commit suicide to help them. Just like the soldier who falls upon a live enemy grenade to save his nearby fellow soldiers, he usually receives some kind of posthumous recognition, decoration, and award, but he is not morally nor ethically obliged to fall upon that grenade. He might still try to dodge and dive for cover, even if it might be futile when the grenade explodes, possibly killing or injuring him and his fellow soldiers.

In a wilderness setting, it is not unlikely for people to have chance encounters with each other. People all have the same basic needs, like water, food and shelter. Since, in a wilderness setting the materiel required to satisfy these needs can be found in a limited number of places at any given time, People will run into each other on the way to and from sites like water sources, salt licks, berry bush locations, nut tree groves, fishing holes, etc. It is for this reason that the Apaches never camped near a water source. Instead they would water up, take all they could carry in skin bags, and camp 4-8 miles away from the water, avoiding possible enemy encounters. The encounters that Bass has with people in the wilderness don't strain my credulity a bit.

a little heavy on coincidences

Some of that does sound a bit too coincidental. But, perhaps some of those events could happen by chance.