Crack in the Sky tb-3

by Terry C. Johnston

  “Damn!” Williams exclaimed, leaping to his feet so suddenly, he startled all of them into stunned silence. “Ye really know a nigger what kill’t a medeecin man?”

  In amazement they all watched the skinny man shuffle-footing it there by the fire, restless as a bull in spring, very much like a man walking over a bed of coals, trembling uncontrollably every few moments as if he had come down with the ague.

  “Like Jack said,” Caleb was the first to dare speak, “feller’s name is Asa McAfferty.”

  “He really kill a medeecin man?”

  Hatcher nodded. “His hair turned white after rubbing out that Ree.”

  Another convulsion shot through Williams’s body as he attempted to hold his arms and hands still over the fire like a man in dire need of its warmth. “Ye sure it weren’t just a Ree warrior?”

  “Medicine man,” Hatcher agreed.

  And Solomon added, “A real rattle shaker.”

  Rubbing his hands together over the flames, Williams asked, “An’ his ha’r turn’t white?”

  “McAfferty’s did.”

  Williams looked straight at Bass. “Just as I tol’t ye, Scratch. Mark these words. I’ll lay that McAfferty these boys talking about is the sort what don’t just hear the hoo-doos through that crack in the sky yonder. He’s gone an’ see’d them spirits too!”

  Graham asked, “Say, Bill—you figger that’s what turned McAfferty’s hair white?”

  Slowly Williams turned so his rump faced the flames. As he rubbed the breechclout covering his bony posterior, Williams said, “Only thing I ever heerd of turning a soul’s ha’r white is coming eye to eye with a hoo-doo.”

  Caleb whispered solemnly, “Don’t say?”

  Williams pursed his lips in reflection for a moment, then said, “That McAfferty must be a nigger with some strong magic.”

  Leaning toward Hatcher’s ear, Gray whispered, “Here he goes with his magic talk now!”

  “If’n the rest of you don’t wanna hear what Bill’s got to say,” Titus snapped at Elbridge, “s’pose you g’won and have your own talk on your side of the fire.”

  Elbridge started to rise suddenly. “You ain’t gonna tell me where I ought’n go—”

  Hatcher suddenly put his hand out and grabbed hold of Gray’s arm. “Maybe ye ought’n go fetch yer squeezebox. And bring me my fiddle too.”

  “You figger on some music tonight?” Rufus asked as Gray reluctantly nodded and moved off, glaring back at Williams.

  “Music’s better’n my men squabbling over hoo-doos like some puffed-up prairie cocks.”

  “Didn’t mean to cause no trouble here,” Williams said.

  Still edgy, Bass watched Elbridge as he grumbled, “Ain’t your doing, Bill.”

  With a wag of his head Bill declared, “This here’s why I travel alone now, boys. Can’t allays count on folks caring to listen to what ’Nother man’s gotta say—even after they gone and asked me to tell ’em what I think.”

  “Elbridge just be the sort don’t want ye to know he’s unnatural scairt of ghosts and such—even the talk of it,” Hatcher whispered, glancing over his shoulder to be sure he wasn’t heard. “Scratch—I want ye to know he didn’t mean nothing by what he said.”

  “No harm done,” Williams volunteered.

  “Yeah,” Bass agreed, nodding. “No harm done. Didn’t know he was scared of such.”

  “Elbridge allays makes fun of ever’thing he’s afraid of,” Hatcher explained.

  “Ye’re friend’s awright being ’fraid,” Williams declared. “Something wrong with a man what ain’t afraid of nothing.”

  Jack nodded, staring at the flames for a moment more before he admitted, “Truth be, I ain’t so sure I wanna have any more talk of ghosts around me too.”

  Williams said, “Ain’t nothing ye be scared of with a little talk, Hatcher.”

  “That’s right, Jack,” Bass replied confidently as he laid the beaver fur back over his skull and tugged on the blue bandanna. “Only things a man should be scared of are them what a man can see. Like Injuns. Or grizz. Even a whiteout blizzard.”

  “To hell with fearing what I can see,” Hatcher declared sourly, staring into the fire. “Only things this child’s ever been afraid of are what I can’t see.”

  Spring was all but done warming the earth in advance of summer, carpeting the hillsides with a new color every day as wildflowers of bewildering hues raised their heads to sway in the breezes drifting along the slopes where snow-melt raced toward the valley floor. More than a moon had passed since Bill Williams had departed as he said he would—leaving at sunup the next morning, the old man had crossed to the far side of the Bayou where he disappeared into the shadowy timber. And was gone.

  Better than a month of hard work trapping first one creek, then another, trying every stream that showed some promise by its beaver dams, slides, and lodges. As diligently as the beaver labored to fell the young saplings that forested their watery meadows, the trappers worked all the harder still. Time enough for a man to fit in a little sleep here and there after setting the traps at sundown, rising early to check the line at sunrise the next day. After dragging the pelts and traps back to camp, scraping and fleshing and lashing them onto willow hoops, a man might catch a little shut-eye before the sun began to fall and it was time to haul the traps back out as twilight brought a delicate rose-colored alpenglow to this high valley.

  “Billy Sublette damned well better get his ass to the Popo Agie this summer,” Rufus Graham often grumbled, reminding them how the trader had distributed supplies to company men well before last July’s rendezvous.

  Hatcher agreed, “All this prime beaver gonna stake us to one big hurraw!”

  “If Sublette brings out the likker,” Isaac argued in that overly solemn way of his, scratching aimlessly at his whitish beard stained with dark, yellowish-brown streaks that characterized the man’s careless tobacco chewing.

  Was that all a man worked for? Bass wondered. Did a man force himself through endless hours standing up to his crotch in the icy streams only to earn himself some two weeks of revelry with whiskey and women and wildness? Was there nothing more to what days were granted a man?

  Such brooding thoughts troubled his head as Titus chopped down aspen saplings for float-sticks, peeling each before sharpening one end, then lashing them together in a bundle for the next day’s sets. These were matters rarely considered by most men adrift here early in the far west. By and large they were of a breed who existed in the here and now, and that was all that concerned any of their kind. That day, perhaps the next, maybe even those thoughts of how fast the summer rendezvous was approaching … those were the only concerns of most trappers: survival, and that which lay on the immediate horizon for a man—what to eat the next time their bellies rumbled, where to lay their blankets and robes the next time they grew weary, where to find water and grazing for their stock …

  But never, never, never did any of the rest want to talk again about what Bill Williams had stirred up within Titus Bass. And as the days rolled past in slow, easy succession, Scratch was beginning to believe the others refused to talk about those uncertain, frightening matters because such talk stirred up feelings better left untouched within each of Hatcher’s men. Simple men. Iron-hard, hand-forged men. The sort not easily given to ruminations on life and death and what might exist beyond one’s grasp.

  A man lived. Then a man died. So be it.

  Yet as many times as Bass tried to convince himself he should put such notions out of his mind, those notions grew more troublesome. After all, he spent so damned much time alone every day. Hours alone with only his thoughts, with matters that deeply pricked a man who had begun to fear he hadn’t spent near enough time listening to the stories his mother read her children from her Bible.

  Did a man’s life tally up for no more than dumb luck? How else could he account for one man going under to nothing more than ticks … when he himself had been shot, scalped, and left for dead? Was it a rol
l of the dice or a lay of the cards that determined who lived and who died? Or … was it something more?

  Was it as Williams explained it: that Titus Bass had been told plain as sun that there was a heap more living in store for the sort of man who survived a scalping by those intent on killing him?

  For some reason unfathomable to a simple man, had Titus Bass been chosen not to die? Had he been somehow plucked from the grasping claws of death itself? Why had he been spared a fate that befell other men? Who were these capricious and fickle spirits deciding such things?

  Who had yanked him from the gaping maw of death?

  Were they at his shoulder then and there? And if he listened hard enough, would he hear them?

  Climbing down off the bank, he waded upstream with the trap, float, and bait sticks.

  So many questions.

  Quickly scraping out a shelf for the trap a few inches below the surface of the stream, Scratch positioned the trap and strung out the chain, driving the long, pointed sapling into the graveled creekbottom. Returning the small ax to the back of his belt beside the knife scabbard, he moved downstream toward his rifle and pouch.

  At the sharp-sided bank he hoisted himself onto the grass and sat there dripping, finally settling back against the tree trunk where his rifle leaned.

  Too many questions.

  He would try listening. Williams had claimed a man might just hear the other side if he listened hard enough. The breeze stirred the leaves around him a moment; then the quakies settled. In that momentary silence he strained to listen. Then felt the air move around him unexpectedly. Almost as if it were something of substance … some one touching his shoulder.

  Scratch turned, expecting to find … but there was nothing.

  He sighed and went back to listening. The breeze came up again, rustling through the aspen leaves overhead. Stirring all the trees around him as he gazed out upon the floor of the valley. When his eyes began to droop, the wind chuttered among the leaves—murmuring, almost whispering.

  “Bass.”

  Alert anew, eyes open, Scratch turned this way, then that. Listening. The breeze stirred again.

  “Bass.”

  Slowly he raised his face to peer overhead into the branches cluttered with tiny, trembling green leaves.

  “Bass.”

  Only the breeze nudging the leaves just gently enough that he had imagined they were murmuring his name.

  When he brought his gaze back down, Scratch spotted them.

  Two riders across the valley floor. Not where he would expect to see any of the rest of Hatcher’s outfit. And the two were close enough … for him to see their long, loose hair and the feathers tossing on the breeze that had whispered his name through the branches overhead.

  “Bass.”

  The hair bristled at the back of his neck with that next chutter of the leaves.

  For a moment he studied the sky above the two horsemen, on either side of them, the very air between them. Hopeful he would actually be able to see the ragged tear rent in that filmy curtain between the other world and his. Wondering if he would indeed be able to see for himself that crack in the sky through which these riders had suddenly appeared.

  As the riders slowly approached the far bank of the stream, Titus leaned to the side and brought the rifle into his lap—snapping the frizzen forward to assure himself that the pan was loaded. Next he saw to the charge in his pistol, then stuffed its barrel back in his belt. The pair of horsemen stopped when he rose from the ground holding the fullstock rifle at his right hip, his finger gently nudging back the rear set trigger until he felt the sear engage.

  Titus stared at them for what seemed like a long time, waiting for the two warriors to declare themselves as friend or foe, ready for when they would plunge off the far bank into the stream and rush him. Then as one of the horses began to paw and bob its head impatiently, a rider spoke, gesturing with his bow.

  Bass let him finish what he had to say, then tried to explain, “I don’t know your tongue.”

  Scratch put the fingers of his left hand to his lips, moving them directly out toward the warriors as he shook his head vigorously.

  Passing the bow over his head, the horseman stuffed it within a quiver half-filled by arrows. With his hands freed, the Indian began to sign.

  But those gestures weren’t making any sense, their being this far apart. Bass shook his head.

  Apparently frustrated, the sign talker said something to the other, and they both nudged their ponies into motion.

  Bass took a step forward, planting his feet as they entered the stream. He brought the rifle up, the cheekpiece braced between his bottom ribs and arm.

  “Stop right there!”

  Yanking back on their reins, both horsemen halted their ponies near the middle of the stream. Down the creek Titus heard the warning slap of a single beaver near that dam the creatures had been building over the last few days. More tails slapped the surface of the water; then it gradually grew quiet again.

  So quiet, he heard the air nuzzle the quaky leaves above him.

  “Bass.”

  Again the sign talker tried. But now that he was closer, Scratch could see just what the warrior had to say in sign: with only the first two fingers of his right hand extended, the others closed in the palm, the Indian held the hand momentarily in front of his chin, the extended fingers pointing at the sky. Then he slowly moved the hand up until it was about level with the top of his head, slowly bringing them down to point at the white man. Several times he repeated the same gesture while Titus stared quizzically at the two.

  “Oh, damn!” he gushed, suddenly remembering. “Friend. Why—you’re saying friend.”

  Bracing the rifle against his hip, Scratch mimicked the sign with his left hand. Then he tapped the rifle with his hand, pointing to himself and making the sign for friend again.

  Finally the warrior nodded.

  “That’s right, fellers,” Bass murmured to himself. “This here gun’s my friend.”

  Scratch formed a fist with his left hand, extending only the index finger, and held it out in front of his body, finger pointing upward. People.

  “What people are you?” he asked aloud.

  The two looked at one another and shook their heads. They weren’t understanding. Perhaps he had it wrong.

  Then he thought of asking it another way. Again the hand with only the index finger went up, pointing at the sky, but now he brought it downward in a graceful arc, in the path taken by an arrow shot straight into the sky.

  “What band are you?”

  Through it all he studied the way the riders wore their hair, the feathers, their clothing and horse trappings—anything that might give him a clue. Here in South Park, he realized this pair could be anything from wandering Comanche or Kiowa or Southern Cheyenne come a distance to hunt. But then he realized if they had come from so far away, chances were good more warriors were somewhere close at hand. They didn’t look all that much like Ute, he decided, regarding their hair and the elaborate face painting.

  Painted. Maybeso they were from a warrior band foreign to this part of the mountains, come here with a large raiding party, painted for battle. Not some local fellas, out hunting for their families, to take meat and hides back for their village.

  Painted.

  Locking his eyes on them, Scratch intently studied their faces for any betrayal as to their intentions.

  Again he signed slowly, saying aloud the words: “What band are you?”

  One of them wagged his head, and the second horseman repeated the sign for “friend.” Again they talked low to one another, both of them gazing this way and that, upstream and down. It began to make him more than a mite nervous, what with the way they peered all around more than look at him … as if they were assuring themselves he truly was alone.

  Tapping their heels against the ribs of their ponies, both warriors eased toward the bank, where Bass stood some twenty feet back from the water’s edge.

&nb
sp; He licked his lips, feeling his right palm begin to sweat, anxious to put his trigger finger inside the guard. But with the trigger now set to go off at a touch—he knew he must hold the finger there against the trigger guard.

  The animals lunged onto the bank, and their riders brought the dripping ponies to a halt less than fifteen feet from the white man.

  One made the sign for “friend” again, then both peered upstream and down, their eyes quickly darting into the trees behind the trapper, able to see his saddle horse and the pack mule.

  Again he signed “friend” too, his gaze darting back and forth between the two copper-skinned horsemen … making mental pictures of their loose hair, the handful of feathers tied at the crowns of their head. One had his coup feathers arrayed in a cock’s spray at the back of his head; the other tied his so they descended down the side of his hair as it spilled over his shoulder. Metal conchos were riveted on the belt of one; a stone war club hung from the front of a snare saddle, a big metal ax swung by a rawhide thong from the other saddle.

  One of the horsemen signed something new and baffling. He made a fist of his right hand, only the index finger extended upward, held along the right side of his nose. In this position the warrior moved the hand up and down slightly there next to the nose.*

  Bewildered, Bass shook his head, gesturing helplessly with his left hand briefly before he returned it to grip the forestock of his rifle.

  Once again the warriors glanced about them. One grinned wickedly and nodded to the other. Their eyes flicked past the trapper to those two animals grazing in the trees, then returned to the white man. Now one of them made another new sign.

  This time he formed a claw out of his right hand, fingers and thumb held apart, bent and cupped, which he brought a few inches away from his heart at the left side of his chest—where he repeatedly tapped the clawlike fingertips against his breast.*

  Bass had never seen that sign ever before. Once more he shook his head and wagged his left hand in that gesture of nonunderstanding.

  The warrior who had done the lion’s share of the signing nudged his pony closer, his lips pursed in frustration, giving a minute gesture of his own for the other warrior to advance beside him.