Crack in the Sky tb-3

by Terry C. Johnston

  But more than anything else, he was finding the country itself different from what lay to the north.

  This mountain southwest was truly a land of extreme contrasts. While spring would give birth to richly flowered valleys, so too did high, snowcapped peaks rise well above the desert floor. Green, rolling meadows carpeted the slopes of hills all the way down to sun-hardened desert wastes speckled with ocatillo and barrel cactus, mesquite trees and frequent reminders of an even more ancient time in the sharp-edged, black lava fields that occasionally cluttered the landscape.

  Always the land of the lizard, horned toad, prairie dog, and rattlesnake, this was also a country where he found cottonwood and willow bordering the infrequent gypsum-tainted streams where that “gyp” water might well cause most unaccustomed travelers to grow sick, stricken with a paralyzing bowel distress.

  These vast, yawning valley plains stretched upward toward the purple bulk of hills, from there up to brick-red mountainsides timbered with the ever-emerald-green of pinion pine and second-growth cedar. At sunrise a man would find the treeless ridges staring back at him like some swollen, puffy, fight-ravaged eye. But by the time the sun rose high, that same vista would be painted a hazy blue, eventually turning to a deep purple as the sun finally sank to its rest. In such a land there was sure to come the summer heat of hell, the bitter cold of an unexpected and uncompromising blizzard in winter.

  For much of the last few weeks, the nine and their animals had threaded their way through this high land of brilliant color and startling contrast by following the Rio Grande itself as it flowed due south. Eventually, of an early afternoon, they stopped to water the animals for midday at the mouth of a narrow river that flowed out of the hills to the east to mingle its snow-melt with the Rio Grande.

  “That there be the Little Fernandez,” Caleb Wood instructed as he pointed toward the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.

  Come evening, with the sun setting across the valley, those hills themselves would take on a crimson hue so realistic that it had reminded the early Spanish explorers of the blood Christ Himself had shed on the cross.

  Isaac stepped up as their horses drank at the icy stream. “There be a pass up there a feller comes over. Just follow the crik down into this here valley, turn south yonder there … and you’ll run onto the village called Taos.”

  Overhead the last of a winter storm was spending itself among the high places, while on the valley floor where they put their animals back on the trail, the snow fell gently. Here a man might find refuge from winter’s harsh fury that battered the northern plains and Rockies. From spring until well into the fall here, green pastures welcomed the heat-jaded prairie traveler who stumbled in from the dry and dusty Santa Fe Trail. Here the shadows of the Sangre de Cristos offered a man respite from the harshest weather meted out by both summer and winter.

  The valley had long been a refuge to weary sojourners.

  As early as the 1300s the Indians had begun building the massive multistoried Pueblo de Taos, raising the thick mud walls near Taos Mountain at the northernmost end of the valley. Successive pueblos had been added over the centuries. Finally, after the threat of frequent and deadly attacks by roving bands of Comanche raiders had diminished, a new Spanish settlement was given birth. Named after a seventeenth-century Spanish pioneer who settled in the valley and made it his home, the tiny village came to be known as Don Fernando de Taos.

  Up ahead in the lengthening shadows of late afternoon raced Kinkead and Rowland, kicking their horses into a gallop to shoot past Rufus and Isaac. At the top of the bluish, twilit rise covered with snow, the two yanked back on their reins, settled their horses, and pounded one another on the back. As Hatcher led the others up this last gentle slope, Bass heard the excitement in how Johnny and Matthew yelled back and forth with childlike eagerness, pointing this way and that, pulling their caps from their heads to signal the others to hurry, their long hair tormented with each gust of wind.

  Bass stopped at last, gazing south, staring down into the valley for the first time. What with all the snow and those whitewashed adobe walls, it was hard for him at first to make out the village. Soon enough his eyes spotted the faint glow of candles and lamps brightening more and more windows as afternoon light oozed from the early winter sky.

  “That there’s Taos, Scratch,” Hatcher said quietly.

  “Welcome,” Kinkead added, his eyes beaming. “My Rosa’s yonder!”

  Jack turned and asked, “Ye’ll keep your head down tonight, Matthew? You too, Johnny?”

  They glanced quickly at one another and nodded.

  Kinkead declared, “We’re going our own ways, Jack. This first night I’m laying low with Rosa’s folks.”

  “How ’bout you, Rowland?”

  “Me too, Jack,” he answered, his happy face gone serious. “Don’t wanna dance with no trouble—not after two years.”

  Hatcher nodded. “That’s the chalk of it, boys. Slip into town quietlike, and don’t let many folks see ye. We’ll catch up to ye down to the square in a day or two.”

  “You’ll see to our animals and plunder, won’t you, boys?” Matthew asked the group.

  “G’won now,” Jack coaxed the two. “Ye got wives waiting for ye down the hill in Taos. Get yer gullet shined with lightning and yer stinger dipped in sweet, warm honey tonight!”

  Rowland turned to gaze at Kinkead. “Jack don’t have to ask me twice!”

  They started to whoop like wild men as they kicked their horses into motion, but Hatcher hollered at them to be quiet. Instead, the two men raced down the snowy slope toward the distant village without another sound out of them but the hammer of the hooves, and the pounding of their excited hearts.

  “Look at them two, won’t you?” Caleb asked as the others sat in silence. “Like a pair o’ bulls in the spring—”

  “You’d be bellering like a scalded alley cat if’n you had you a woman tucked away down there!” Rufus scolded Wood.

  Caleb wheeled on him. “Who says I don’t have me a woman tucked away down there?”

  “They really got wives down in that town?” Titus asked. “Mexican wives?”

  “Yup,” Jack replied, then winked wickedly.

  “So what we gonna do when we get down there tonight? Find us some women and whiskey?” Bass inquired, the tip of his tongue licking his cracked lower lip.

  “We ain’t going to Taos tonight,” Jack explained as he raised his face to the sky, peering this way and that at the onrushing darkness.

  Down in the valley the distant peal of a solitary bell drifted up the slope. After two rings a second bell took up the faint chorus. Back and forth the two rang for the space of a half-dozen heartbeats, then faded off into the cold as silence replaced their joyous song.

  “What was that?” Scratch asked.

  “Church down there,” Isaac said. “Got two towers. A bell in each tower. They ring ’em at break o’ day, then at noon. And again at eventide.”

  “Bells,” Bass repeated. “I’ll be go to—”

  Caleb said, “Looks like we got here about the right time of the day.”

  “Right time of the day for what?” Scratch proclaimed.

  “To get ourselves round to the far side of town ’thout the Mexicans seeing us come in,” Hatcher declared, raising his right arm and pointing with his rifle to the hills west of the village.

  “Them greasers cause us trouble?”

  “Not the plain folks,” Isaac said. “Just the greasers what run everything. The soldiers and the tax fellers what don’t want Americans to trap no Mexican waters.”

  “How the hell they gonna know if we pulled our beaver outta Mexican streams?”

  “They don’t,” Jack said with a shrug. “So they tax all the beaver we got—no matter where it come from.”

  This was startling news. Titus continued, “How’s a man s’posed to pay a tax when he ain’t got no money to begin with?”

  “Them tax collectors and the soldiers what ride around with �
��em take the government’s cut from yer beaver.”

  “My beaver!” Bass shrieked. “They ain’t gonna take any of my beaver—not after I lost those last packs when Bud, Silas, and Billy went under!”

  “That’s just what we’re trying to explain to ye, Scratch,” Hatcher said. “Them greasers working for the governor ain’t gonna have a chance to take none of our beaver.”

  “Not a plew,” Caleb echoed.

  “H-how we keep ’em from it?”

  “By taking our asses on over yonder there to the west now that it’s dark,” Jack explained.

  “What’s over there?”

  “Workman’s caves,” Caleb answered. “That child makes good corn whiskey.”

  “W-whiskey?” Bass stammered.

  “Taos lightning,” Hatcher said. “Take the top of yer head off cleaner’n a Blackfoot tomahawk!”

  “Lemme at it!” Bass croaked, his dry throat constricting in excitement.

  “Ooo-hoo! Looks like Titus here got him a thirst, fellas!” Elbridge barked.

  “Time we got down off this hill anyway,” Jack advised. “A cold night like this, best thing a man can do is to find him a warm place where the wind won’t blow—”

  “Like Workman’s caves!” Caleb interrupted.

  “Damn right,” Hatcher continued. “A warm place where he and his companyeros can pour some whiskey down their gullets!”

  “Cómo la va?”

  The loud voice came booming out of the night, echoing and reechoing off the narrow canyon walls. It was enough to cause Scratch’s skin to prickle with cold despite his layers of clothing.

  “Workman?” Hatcher called out after he had thrown his hand up and stopped them all as they were slowly picking their way along the dry creekbed in the inky darkness. “That you, Workman?”

  “Who the hell’s asking?”

  “Jack Hatcher.”

  They heard sounds from the night—above and to their left: stones clunking together, pebbles ground underfoot.

  “Mad Jack Hatcher, is it?”

  Suddenly a figure emerged out of the gloom here at the bottom of the deep, dry creekbed.

  Jack sang, “So there ye are, Willy!”

  “You don’t smell like no ghosts,” the stranger said as he stepped to within a rifle’s length of the muzzles of their horses. “And for sartin you don’t look to be Mexican soldiers neither.”

  With a shrug Hatcher explained, “Just a bunch of fellers need a place to spread out our robes and hide away our packs for the season, Willy.”

  “Done for the winter, are you, Jack?” the man asked. “If’n that be so, kick off there and give me a proper greetin’.”

  Quickly dismounting, Hatcher stomped up and the two of them embraced, pounding shoulders and backs as Bass strained to get himself a better look at this William Workman. With nothing better than dim starshine it was hard to tell more than the fact that the man kept his face shaved and his hair cropped short, looking no different from a settlement storekeeper back in the States. Across his arm lay a rifle; in the wide belt that encircled his blanket coat were stuffed a pair of pistols. He wore no hat despite the cold, his pale face smiling as he turned from Hatcher to look up at the others.

  “Who all’s with you, Jack?”

  “Ye know ’em, Willy,” Hatcher explained. “All here with me ’cept Kinkead and Rowland.”

  Workman moved up another two steps, peering over the group. “Where’s Joe?”

  “Little’s gone,” Caleb replied.

  “That you, Wood?” Workman asked. “You still throwin’ in with this bastard Hatcher?” He turned to Jack. “How’d Little go under? You run onto some Blackfoot way up there where you was going?”

  “He went sick, Willy. Got him the ticks last spring.”

  Then Isaac added, “Just afore the Blackfoot jumped us.”

  With a raw snort of humorless laughter, Workman said, “I warned you sonsabitches not to go up there to Blackfoot country when you lit out of here more’n a year ago. But would Mad Jack Hatcher listen to any sane man?”

  “Hell, no!” Hatcher answered, slapping Workman on the shoulders. “What good would it do me ever to listen to a sane man?”

  Workman brought up the muzzle of his rifle, pointing it in Bass’s direction. “So who’s the new man?”

  “C’mon down here, Scratch.”

  “Scratch, is it?” Workman echoed as Bass kicked out of the saddle. “This new hand got him a real name?”

  “Titus Bass,” Scratch said, pulling off a mitten to hold out his hand.

  “Good to make your ’quaintance, Titus. Whoa—your grip feels cold. Mayhaps we ought’n get you boys on inside to warm up.”

  “Ye got lightning? That’ll warm me quick!” Hatcher declared as he and Workman turned and started off into the dark.

  “You’ll dang well play that fiddle o’ your’n for every drop, Jack,” the whiskey maker warned. “There ain’t no free drink at Workman’s still.”

  “Ye gone and wounded me, Willy! No man can’t never say Jack Hatcher don’t pay his own way.”

  “What’s to eat, Willy?” Elbridge asked, trotting up right behind the two.

  “Got me most of a small cinnamon I shot up in the foothills two day back,” Workman answered. “That sow was young enough to still be tender.”

  Isaac asked, “Bet you’ve got some corn too.”

  “We can rustle you up some corn cakes to go ’long with that bear meat.” Workman stopped and turned as the others came to a halt in a broad semicircle around him. “You boys go on with Jack here and get your packs off them horses afore we draw too much attention standing round here in the dark o’ night. You know where you can corral your animals after you’ve got your beaver underground in the cave. Then you come on over to the mill house where I got the fire going, and we’ll catch up on what all you fellers see’d since last you was in Taos.”

  That bear meat was superb, kept cool hanging back in the cavern across the dry creekbed from the hut and mill house William Workman had built himself out of all the loose stone found underfoot in this broken countryside west of Taos. Some two years previous he and John Rowland had discovered the narrow entrance to the cave just big enough for a dismounted rider to bring his horse through if the need arose. Once through the portal, however, the cavern opened up. Several smaller rooms jutted off that large main room.

  After dropping their packs and possibles just outside the cave entrance, Scratch helped Isaac and Elbridge wrangle the horses and mules up the creekbottom another sixty yards to a bend in the canyon where Workman had constructed a post corral big enough to contain the animals a large trapping party would bring in. Against one side of the fence they found a pair of hayricks filled with cut grass, which the three trappers pitched into the corral for their trail-weary stock after removing all the bits and rope halters, draping them over the top fence rail.

  By the time they stepped through the rough-hewn door into the low-roofed mill house, the fragrance of boiling corn and frying hoecakes instantly set Bass’s mouth to watering.

  “I ain’t had no corn since … since I put the Missouri River at my back in twenty-five,” he stated as Caleb Wood handed him a flat tinned plate. Titus brought the johnnycakes right under his nose and drank in their heavenly fragrance, conjuring up memories of a warm hearth, memories of a long-ago home slowly bubbling to the surface within him like a hearty rabbit stew.

  “You ain’t been out here long,” Workman commented.

  “Wondered if I’d ever get away from there,” Titus replied as he propped his rifle against a stone wall, pulled the strap from his shoulder so his shooting pouch draped from the long weapon’s muzzle.

  “Settlers moving out toward the Santy Fee Trail at Franklin,” the man said. “But I don’t think they’ll ever put down roots on the prairies. Not anywhere near that god-forsook country a man goes through ’tween here and there. Ain’t worth the trouble to plow that ground.”

  “Too damn hot, that c
ountry,” Elbridge garbled around a hunk of bear, corn soppings dripping into his chin whiskers. “What fool’d dare try to grow something in that desert, I’ll never know.”

  As he speared a slab of the dark, lean bear loin onto Bass’s tin, Workman continued. “I ain’t been here much longer’n you, truth be. Got here first of July that year. Me and Matthew,” he said, pointing his butcher knife off in the general direction of town, “the two of us and a third one named Chambers was gonna start us our own still.”

  “Ye see just how far Matt got being a whiskey maker,” Hatcher said.

  “Door’s still open for him,” Workman said. “You tell ’im I can always use a partner around here again.”

  “Ye tell ’im yourself, Willy,” Jack declared. “I figger he’ll be looking for something to do now that he’s give up on the mountain trade for a while.”

  “He don’t figger to trap anymore?”

  Hatcher replied, “What he’s been saying since spring.”

  Turning back to the fire to stab another slice of bear from the huge iron skillet suspended on a trivet over the glowing coals, Workman said, “I’ll lay that he’s off seeing his Rosa.”

  “Missed her something fierce,” Solomon said.

  “Don’t doubt it,” Workman agreed. “My eye’s landed on a purty Mex gal my own self.”

  “Marrying kind?”

  “Enough of the marrying kind that I went out and got myself baptized in the Mexican church last June,” their host explained.

  “B-baptized?” Hatcher stammered, spewing a mouthful of his meat onto the pounded clay floor.

  “By Padre Antonio Jose Martinez,” he said, laying a slice of bear on Caleb’s plate. “In town the folks all call me Julian.”

  “Hoo—”

  “Julian,” Workman repeated the name for them. “S’pose that’s William in their tongue, eh?”