Crack in the Sky tb-3

by Terry C. Johnston

  He stared at his leggings for a long moment, rubbing the brain-tanned, fire-smoked hide between a thumb and forefinger. “You really s’pose it’d work?”

  “Mad Jack Hatcher says it’ll work?” Caleb Wood cheered, “It’s gonna work!”

  Jack himself boasted, “Less’n a week from now, ye’ll be wearing this nigger’s hair for yer’n.”

  “The hull thing?” Solomon asked.

  “Hell, no,” Hatcher growled. “We gonna cut that skelp down so after it’s cured, it’ll be just a li’l bigger’n that bone on the back of Bass’s head.”

  “Fit right over it?” Scratch inquired.

  “Like it was made to be there,” Jack said enthusiastically.

  “Jumpin’ Jehoshaphat!” Bass roared, slapping his knee as he stood. “I’ll wear the nigger’s hair what got mine, boys!”

  “Gonna look a li’l strange to me,” Isaac said.

  Bass whirled on him. “What the hell’s gonna look so strange ’bout it?”

  “Ain’t same color as your’n.”

  He peered down at the scalp, a disappointment sucking the wind right out of him. “Damn, if you ain’t right. It don’t look like—”

  “It don’t have to,” Jack interrupted, shouldering Simms aside. “The nigger’s hair is yer’n, no matter that it don’t look like yers. It’s the medicine what counts!”

  With Hatcher’s contagious enthusiasm, he felt cheered anew. “Damn right, Jack! It’s the medicine what counts.”

  “But Scratch’s hair is brown,” Solomon grumped, “and that there’s black as night.”

  “Scratch’s ain’t gonna be brown much longer anyways,” Caleb declared.

  Bass cocked his head, asking, “What you mean by that?”

  “You ever look at your hair since we moseyed down to Taos last winter?” Wood tried to explain. “Ever give that beard of your’n a good look too?”

  “This child sure is getting gray awready, ain’t he?” Rufus said.

  Grabbing a hank of hair at the side of his head, Titus held it out before his eyes in the firelight. “This here ain’t gray!”

  “That ain’t where ye’re going gray right now, Scratch!” Hatcher bellowed. “Up there on top of yer head. Down there on yer beard. Here,” and he grabbed some of the silver-flecked hair hanging right there at the temple. “Lookee there.”

  Sure enough, if those strands didn’t radiate some gray in the firelight.

  “Get me a mirror, you sonsabitches,” he grumbled at them. “I wanna see this for my own self.”

  Hatcher turned to the rest. “Get the man a mirror, boys. He deserves to see just how he’s getting on in years.”

  “But I ain’t a ol’ man,” Bass whimpered as he sank down upon the log with the scalp in hand.

  Hatcher took the scalp from him and handed it back to Caleb. “Here, get that salted down real good for me. Roll it up like ye’d do a skin, and tie a whang around it till we can start on it in a couple of days.”

  Caleb turned away as Isaac returned with a small mirror the size of a large man’s palms put side by side. Bass shifted on the log so he could look into the mirror with enough light to inspect his graying hair. Still, his eyes always came back to his mustache and beard. In a stripe of gray that ran down the middle of the brown mustache, on below his lower lip and down the extent of his brown beard, the hair stood out like that white band running down a skunk’s back.

  “Damn, if I didn’t notice,” he confessed as he studied the gray hairs spreading back from his temples, the graying of that hair hanging from his brow.

  “Ain’t getting old,” Hatcher declared. “Just getting gray earlier’n most, Titus.”

  “Sometimes … it feels like old,” Bass explained as he peered at himself in the mirror, examining his first wrinkles, the spread of those deeply furrowed crow’s-feet.

  “Chirk up, friend!” Jack cheered. “Why, ye got plenty to bark about this night!”

  Isaac leaped in front of Bass, there between Scratch and Hatcher, grinning wildly. “Don’t you figger it’s ’bout time to punch some holes in Titus’s ears?”

  “A damned fine idee!” Hatcher roared.

  “P-punch some holes in my ears?”

  “Hang some purties from ’em,” Rufus said, leaning in to tap his earrings with a fingertip.

  “Y-you said … a hole?”

  “Get me my awl!” Hatcher bellowed, ignoring Titus completely.

  Scratch nearly came off the log as Rufus whirled away. “Your awl?”

  “I could do it with a needle, Scratch,” Hatcher said, stepping right up beside Bass to grab hold of Bass’s earlobes, tugging on them to turn Titus toward the light. “But a needle makes it a round hole, ye see?”

  “Which means it takes longer to heal,” Caleb explained.

  Hatcher nodded. “We’ll get some glover’s needles from the trader this summer: they got three sides filed on ’em like a awl.”

  “Awright,” Titus replied with no small measure of relief. “L-let’s just wait till we got the proper needle—”

  “But don’cha wanna have it done on the night ye killed that red nigger what took yer hair two years back?” Jack asked.

  Everyone came to an immediate stop around him, turning to look his way, expectantly awaiting his answer.

  Clearing his throat nervously, Scratch explained, “It’s a mighty fine thing you wanting to celebrate with me—”

  Solomon hollered, “Birthdays too!”

  “But I ain’t so sure ’bout putting holes in my ears—”

  “Nothing to it,” Jack assured. “Why, ye had bigger holes shot in you with G’lena lead, bigger holes poked in yer hide by Injuns. Hell—don’cha ’member?”

  “By jam,” Isaac said. “We can hang some wires in ’em!”

  “Maybeso Scratch don’t wanna,” Caleb came up to say, patting a hand on Bass’s shoulder protectively. “S’awright—we can just wait till ronnyvoo an’ do it.”

  “No,” Titus answered of a sudden. “By Jehoshaphat’s drawers: let’s punch them two holes!”

  As if a horn of powder had gone off, there was a flurry of frantic motion as Rufus returned with the awl held aloft triumphantly. Hatcher began giving instructions while he stuffed the awl’s point down in the hot coals for a few minutes. Elbridge brought over a scrap of oiling rag to lay over the shoulder while they punched through Bass’s flesh. And Solomon went off to fetch a small coil of brass wire out of his plunder.

  “Cut me two pieces,” Jack explained to Solomon as he returned. “Not too long neither.”

  In minutes the others were ready, all of them crowding in on either side of Hatcher to get themselves a firsthand look at the operation on one of the ears.

  “Turn this way,” Hatcher instructed, tugging on the right ear to turn Bass’s head.

  Elbridge draped that old piece of oiling cloth over the right shoulder beneath the ear where Hatcher was pinching the lobe tightly between thumb and forefinger.

  “Damn—how much you gonna hurt me like that?” Scratch growled, rolling his eyes back to try peering at Jack’s hand.

  “I don’t pinch it like this,” Hatcher explained, “it’s gonna hurt worse when I punch the hole.” He looked up at Isaac. “Got that chunk of pine from the woodpile for me?”

  Simms handed him a small sliver of kindling wood about six inches long and some two inches wide.

  Jack held it near the tip of Bass’s nose momentarily. “This here pine’s good and soft, Scratch.”

  His brow knitted suspiciously. “What you use it for?”

  “Gonna put it ahind yer ear like this,” he answered, slipping the flat piece of kindling behind the lobe. “I do this so yer hide don’t tear on the backside. Keeps that skin flat when I’m punching through.”

  “Y-you ain’t gonna tear my skin, are you?”

  “Eegod! I done this more times’n I can ’member.” Hatcher turned to Simms. “Time to make some blood, boys. Gimme the awl, Isaac.”

  Simms
bent and retrieved the awl from the glowing coals. He swiped it free of ash across his longhandle sleeve, then blew on it for good measure.

  “Them ashes don’t hurt nothing,” Caleb declared. “They’re cleaner’n most anything.”

  Hatcher took the awl from Isaac. “Gonna punch the hole now, Scratch.”

  “Awright. Go right on ahead.”

  Looking at Fish to see that he held the two short sections of wire, Jack delicately placed the awl’s sharp point at the center of Bass’s earlobe. Only then did he move the fingers he had been using to pinch the lobe and numb all feeling from the tissue.

  Although he did feel the awl’s point penetrate the lobe, Scratch heard the sound of the piercing more than he felt it.

  “You hit it center, Jack,” Caleb said with approval.

  “Damn if I don’t always hit center,” Hatcher replied. “Here. Gimme a wire.”

  Jack passed the awl off to Isaac and took from Solomon a short length of thick brass wire the trappers employed for making a variety of repairs around camp: all the way from wrapping about cracked wrists and forestocks on their rifles to making strong, long-lasting repairs to saddles and other tack where sinew would likely break down and unravel.

  “Isaac, set that awl back to the coals for me,” Hatcher instructed as he seized the short piece of wire near its end.

  After wiping off a little blood that oozed from the new hole, Hatcher carefully poked the wire through to the back side. Quickly he bent the wire into a crude hoop without tugging on the lobe too much, then looped and twisted the ends back on themselves so that the hoop wouldn’t be falling out by any accidental rubbing.

  “How’s that feel?” Jack asked as he began to pinch the left ear, nudging Bass’s head in the opposite direction toward the firelight.

  “Don’t feel much of a thing,” Bass confessed, surprised.

  “Awl,” Hatcher said as Elbridge dragged the cloth off the right shoulder and draped it over the left.

  “He’s sure gonna be one pretty nigger!” Gray declared.

  Hatcher placed the awl tip against the earlobe right where he wanted to make the hole. “Shit! Ain’t no pair of goddamned brass ear wires gonna make this mud-ugly son of a bitch into a pretty nigger!”

  He rolled his eyes up at Jack. “Who you calling mud-ugly?”

  Hatcher punched the awl through the lobe into the soft pinewood stop, yanked the awl out, and when he had handed it off, took the second piece of wire and slipped it through to loop it off. Then he stepped back, cocking his head from this side to that, back and forth, first inspecting one ear, then the other.

  “A right fine job, even if I do say so my own self. Get Scratch that mirror again.”

  He gently touched the brass wires that dangled from both ears while Rufus brought up the mirror. Turning it toward the light while he twisted about the log, Bass gazed at one ear in astonishment, then turned aside to inspect the other ear, his grin beginning to grow within that gray-striped beard.

  “Well, Mad Jack Hatcher,” he declared, showing nearly all his teeth in glee, “you said you couldn’t—but you sure did make this mud-ugly nigger one purty feller.”

  Through the heads and shoulders of the other trappers Bass again spotted Rowland squatting at the far side of the fire, scuffing up small clouds of dirt with a peeled stick he used to dig at the ground near his feet.

  “Say, Johnny,” Scratch said, “don’t you think I look real purty now?”

  “I s’pose,” Rowland mumbled so quietly, his words almost went unheard against the sough of the wind in the trees and the crackle of their fire.

  The others moved aside as Titus clambered to his feet and stepped through them. He stopped at Rowland’s elbow. “Something eating a hole in your belly, ain’t it, John?”

  Without looking up, the man answered, “Nothing wrong.”

  “He’s been like this last few days,” Caleb explained, coming up at Scratch’s shoulder.

  “Man can act any way he wants to,” Rowland snapped.

  “We been friends long enough for me to know that something’s kicking around inside you and it won’t give ye no rest,” Hatcher said when he came to a stop on the other side of Titus.

  Suddenly Rowland looked at the three of them. Then he blurted out his confession: “I wanna go back to Taos.”

  “Go back?” Rufus repeated as he knelt nearby.

  “I done decided it,” John declared. “Don’t wanna be up here right now.”

  Jack inquired, “What’s pulling ye to give up on these here mountains?”

  “You got me wrong,” Rowland protested. “I ain’t saying I’ve give up on the mountains from here on out, Jack.”

  Jack settled on a log next to Rowland. “You and me, we fought more’n our share of red-bellies, Johnny. I figger ye can tell me what’s on yer mind.”

  “I-I really dunno what this is all about,” Rowland admitted. “I ain’t never … never had me a feeling like this, Jack.”

  “You had a hole cut outta your heart,” Bass explained quietly, sympathy flooding up inside him. “When you lost your Maria—it cut out a big hole from your heart.”

  When Titus said it, Rowland looked up. Wagging his head, he said, “Ain’t none of this the same no more, Scratch. Not like it was before: when I didn’t have me no woman. Not like it was when I had Maria waiting for me back in Taos.”

  “You turn back for the south, what you aim to do?” Solomon asked.

  With a shrug Rowland admitted, “Don’t rightly know for now. Something’ll come by that I can do.”

  “Sure of that,” Hatcher agreed. “A likely man such as you can do most anything he puts his mind to.”

  “Maybe I can watch some sheep, do some hunting for other folks too,” John replied. “Pay for my keep till I get all this sorted through.”

  “Maybe you figger you ain’t done with the mountains?” Bass inquired.

  “No,” and John shook his head. “I don’t figger I’ll stay outta the mountains for the rest of my days. Just that … for now—I ain’t a damn bit of good to none of you.”

  Hatcher clamped a hand on Rowland’s knee. “Johnny, ye damn well know we’ll ride with ye come what may. Not a man here gonna say ye gotta go out and trap when ye’re nursing that hole in yer heart. Don’t make me no never-mind if ye stay back to camp and watch over our plunder and the stock while the rest of us go set traps. You just do what ye can till things get better, and we’ll stay together till they—”

  “I don’t know when things’ll get better, Jack,” he interrupted. “Don’t know … if they’ll ever get better.”

  Hatcher glanced up at the others when Rowland went back to staring at the fire. “Awright, Johnny. All I’m gonna ask of ye is ye leave us yer license.”

  “Sure,” Rowland said. “I’m the only one of us with a license to trap in these parts since Matthew ain’t along this time out. Might be you could use it when you bring some fur back to Taos.”

  “Won’t be till winter after next, I ’spect,” Jack declared.

  “One of you gonna have to be me,” Rowland explained, rubbing his palms down the tops of his thighs in that manner of a man who has come to a difficult decision. “Now that I be a Mexican citizen, they call me Juan Roles. Who’s gonna be me?”

  “I will,” Rufus volunteered as he squatted near Rowland.

  “You’ll do,” John replied, trying out a weak smile, then gazed at the flames.

  After a long, uneasy silence Hatcher asked, “Tomorrow, Johnny?”

  “Don’t see me no reason to hang on when I’ve made up my mind to go.”

  Caleb said, “Want some whiskey, for saying our fare-thee-wells tonight?”

  “You fellers go right on,” Rowland answered. “I don’t much feel like drinking. I found out whiskey just don’t kill this hurt no more.”

  “Come a time,” Bass said, “you’ll be back in these hills with us. Back to skinning beaver and fighting Injuns. Come a time when you’re ready to get on with
the living.”

  “Right now it don’t feel like I’ll ever wanna do much of anything ever again,” Rowland declared. “Thing of it is: a man what don’t care much if he goes on living … that man sure as hell gonna end up dead lot sooner’n he should.”

  14

  The sun was content to hide its rise the following morning as the seven of them bid their melancholy farewell to John Rowland. Clouds had gathered through the night, blotting out the last shimmer of starshine as they stirred in the cold gloom, kicked life back into the fire, and went about seeing off one of their own.

  No longer were there ten.

  Joseph Little lay in a shallow grave scraped from the forest floor high in the Wind River Mountains.

  Matthew Kinkead had stayed behind, vowing he’d had him enough of the wandering and the womanlessness, choosing instead a life among his Rosa’s people in Taos.

  And now Rowland—turning back himself, unable to salve his grief among these good friends in these mountains. His final hope might be to find a healing to those deep wounds of his heart among Maria’s people.

  That was just what Bass wished for him when it was Scratch’s turn to step up and fling his arms around another old friend in farewell. Quickly he whispered, “Johnny, I pray your feet’ll take you back where you can be happy once more.”

  Rowland inched back in their embrace and looked into Bass’s eyes. “I find me what makes me happy again—I’ll be back to these here mountains. Lay your set on that.”

  “Just make sure our trails cross afore too long,” Titus replied, slapping John on the shoulder and stepping back.

  “Count on it, Scratch.”

  By the fire’s light in the last hour before dawn that murky, gray morning, they had seen to it that Rowland was outfitted with what he would need to see him through the passes and down the high side all the way back to the valley lying at the foot of the Sangre de Cristos.

  “I ain’t gonna listen to none of yer back talk, John Rowland: ye’ll take yer rightful share,” Jack Hatcher had declared when he had the rest begin to divide out Rowland’s portion.