Crack in the Sky tb-3

by Terry C. Johnston

  Damn! But this tug at his heart always caused his eyes to smart. “Take care of Rosa for me,” he asked. “She’s a fine woman, Matthew. And she’s got her a good man too.”

  Kinkead threw his arms around Bass, nearly squeezing the juices out of the smaller man before he stepped back and said, “You two watch over each other, won’t you?”

  “We will,” McAfferty vowed as he held out his hand. “Way I figger it—we both saved each other’s hash now.”

  Titus painfully pulled himself into the saddle. “Seems the score’s even atween us, Asa.”

  “That don’t matter a tinker’s damn if you niggers don’t live to get out of Mexico,” Workman growled. “Best get!”

  “Time to get high behind,” Bass agreed, shifting some weight off the wounded leg.

  McAfferty whirled about and swung into the saddle, adjusting his moccasins in the stirrups, tucking the tail of his capote around his leggings.

  “I swear I’ll see you boys again,” Bass promised as he nudged his horse into motion, yanking on Hannah’s lead rope.

  “Just make sure you don’t show your faces around Taos till folks down here forget just how ugly you two niggers really are,” Kinkead chided them. “Give it least a winter or two.”

  “Tell Rosa to keep you fed and happy in the sack, Matthew!” Bass said, turning in the saddle to hurl his voice back at Kinkead as they loped away. His words echoed off the canyon walls, “And keep your eye on the skyline. One day soon you’ll see this child back on your doorstep!”

  It was Christmas the day they reached Santa Fe. The plaza and surrounding streets were jammed with worshipers headed for Mass: horses and donkeys, carts and wagons and carriages, all squeezing past one another as the two Americans slipped off the hills and onto the muddy, rutted, snow-covered road, disappearing among the throngs merging to celebrate the Savior’s birth long, long ago.

  Swept along with the pious and the noisy, Bass and McAfferty stayed among the crowds as those masses pushed for the town square. Once there, they could thread their way back out on the far side of the village with little chance of standing out in the throng. Safer that, what with all the soldiers coming and going.

  Maybe the soldados posted here hadn’t been alerted to the killings in Taos. But maybe they had.

  As the streaming masses began to converge on the outskirts of town, Bass and McAfferty were swept on through the clutter of hovels where Santa Fe’s poorest inhabitants lived. Tiny pole-and-wattle huts, these were really shelters no more than a single room where a large family eked out their daily existence. While the walls of some were constructed with crude mud bricks, so too were the low roofs. Because they were nothing more than dirt and straw spread across a network of branches and limbs, when the rains came, or the soaking of wet winter snows, those roofs invariably leaked, often collapsing on the sleeping inhabitants below.

  If there happened to be any windows in the walls of those adobe huts the two Americans passed by this morning, they weren’t covered with glass. That extravagance was found only on the richest of homes standing closer to the town plaza. Here where the poorest lived, the tiny windows, most no larger than portholes, were covered instead with rawhide scraped to a translucent thinness, or even sheets of transparent mica quarried from the nearby hills.

  In the shadow of every house stood the squat outdoor ovens fashioned from adobe as well, each one shaped very much like bone-china coffee cups turned upside down on the icy ground. During the day these beehive-shaped ovens contained the fires tended by a woman for her baking; at night they and their warm coals provided shelter for each family’s dogs.

  Among the songs and joyous shouts, the two trappers were swept along beneath bright strips of cloth fluttering from banners held high, the Mexicans joining the brays and bleats of nervous animals, curses from the poor owners of the crude carretas, and cries from Indian servants guiding the carriages of their wealthy owners through the crowds along the hard-packed streets—faceless Americans lost in the cacophony of this sacred day, pushed ever onward toward the central square and the huge, towering cathedral. Along each side of the narrow avenues stood those carts and stalls of vendors crying out to the passing crowds, their loud and shrill voices hawking trinkets or cloth, coffee or sweets, perhaps some shiny bauble to offer a loved one, or a candle to light for the Virgin Madonna on this special day.

  In the air drifted the close smell of animal and man, fresh dung and old sweat, in addition to a mingling of savory spices simmering in a hundred different kettles hung over fires burning along each avenue. Cedar and piñon added their thready smoke to the cold, frosty air as the huge bells began to peal and the crowd shouted anew, surging forward in a hurry through the rutted streets of icy corduroy. All were eager to reach the cathedral and find themselves a place to sit, if only a place to stand, before the priests began their sacred high Mass on this most holy day.

  Here the wealthy rancho owners and their families rubbed shoulders with the hacienda peons and the slaves who worked their fields. Many of the tribes in the region raided neighboring bands, stealing children from one another, then selling these prizes to slave traders, who would bring them to the Mexican villages where the captives would be sold at auction. Young boys grew up working in the fields or tending the owner’s animals. There was an even higher demand for young girls to work the many household chores it took to keep their master’s rancho operating. The Navajo were the most numerous and, therefore, made the most wealth at this trade in human misery, while the destitute Paiute were driven to venture to the Mexican towns, where, having no captives of their own and possessing nothing else to trade, they reluctantly sold their children into slavery.

  Suddenly the Nativity procession came to an abrupt halt as a parade of small children streamed in from a side street, raising their beautiful voices in a song of the blessed birth, some of them bearing streamers over their heads, the rest carrying tall tallow candles, flames fluttering on the morning air as they marched in formation past the braying burros and whinnying mules, the crowd clapping and joining in that joyous, youthful song. At the end of their line came groups of the oldest youngsters, who carried on their shoulders long platforms bearing crude papier-mâché effigies of the magi, lowly shepherds, the sacred Madonna and Joseph, and of course the infant Christ swaddled and lying in his simple corncrib.

  Immediately behind these children appeared the holy fathers: a half-dozen black-robed priests, swinging the smudge of their sacred incense and surrounded by their young acolytes. As the holy men passed by, some of those in the crowd fell to their knees and cried out for heavenly mercy and temporal blessings; others turned their faces and palms heavenward, making sacred vows, while most merely bowed their heads in silence while the padres moved on past, the oldest of the altar boys struggling beneath the huge wooden cross he dragged along.

  As soon as that replica of the dying Christ nailed to the crossed timbers went by, the somber devout rose from their knees, joyous smiles returning to their faces, and songs began to spill from their tongues, many clapping in ecstasy as they resumed their celebration of this holiest of Christian holidays.

  Here in this last push toward the plaza many of the revelers who were wrapped in thick multicolored Navajo blankets or kept themselves warm beneath striped serapes were huffing mightily on their last corn-shuck cigarillo rolled from a mild native tobacco wrapped in a small sliver of husk, this vice enjoyed by man and woman alike: a few last puffs taken before they would join the hundreds in climbing the steps to enter the cathedral’s huge double doors.

  Past the bustle of carriages and carts rumbling noisily to a halt in the midst of that teeming throng of those on foot who streamed toward the morning Mass, the two lone Americans eventually reached the far side of the plaza. Here they were forced to squeeze their horses against one side of the narrow street as they swam against the surging tide of bodies and carts, horses and burros, all those pilgrims intent upon reaching the town square. Then of a sudden the crowd
s thinned and trickled off, just about the moment the cathedral bells pealed one last time.

  Joyous voices, the clamor of celebration, the bleats and whinnies and brays, all faded quickly behind them as the two trappers hurried down the trampled street toward the southern side of the sprawling village. Here and there they encountered a rumbling cart or a carriage chock-full of a family of anxious churchgoers realizing they were already late, racing past the Americans without so much as a greeting or a second look. Back in the shadows of the side streets mangy hounds and ribby, mixed-breed dogs roamed in pairs and packs, sniffing among piles of refuse. Some of the braver animals ventured out to bark or yip among their horses’ legs, yelping in surprise and pain when Hannah tumbled an unwary cur with her hoof.

  Beneath the low-tracking sunlight of this midwinter day the whitewashed walls of the wealthy residents soon gave way to the earth-toned sepia of the poorer adobe homes, the appearance of it all quite striking against the expanse of those hills rising beyond the outskirts of town. There at the far reaches of Santa Fe among the growing stench of the open-air sewers, Bass and McAfferty hurried on by the well-marked bordellos and watering holes where a few bleary-eyed inhabitants stumbled from the doorways to stand in the morning sun, staring up at the two Americans. Half-dressed soldiers and still-drunk vaqueros emerged to shade their eyes as they gazed at the pair. Some of the dusky-skinned, buxom women pulled cigarillos from their lips and pushed unruly sprigs of black hair back from their faces to call out invitations to the trappers as the pair plodded on by. It struck Bass how a whole section of this capital city was devoted to whiskey and women, revelry and sin.

  Just the sort of deadly mix that had put the two of them on the run.

  With all the celebration of this holy day they had slipped on through the inhabitants of Santa Fe to reach the southern road that would take them to the hacienda of wealthy rancho owner Luis Maria Cabeza de Vaca.

  “If we don’t find no one around out to his place down on the Peña blanca,” McAfferty said at last as they nudged the horses into a lope, putting the mud-walled village behind them, “I figger they’ve all come here for church.”

  “We’ll just lay low out to Vaca’s place,” Scratch agreed, “till the old man can come back to hide us.”

  21

  Ol’ Vaca was dead.

  Killed the day before Christmas.

  Only a matter of hours before Bass and McAfferty showed up at his hacienda, Luis Maria Cabeza de Vaca had been shot resisting a detail of Governor Manuel Armijo’s soldiers sent from Santa Fe to confiscate the beaver pelts and other property of Americans suspected of being hidden at Vaca’s rancho.

  Near noon on that sacred holiday as the two gringos rode down from the low hills toward the mouth of the Peñablanca, instead of looking down from the heights on the splendor of the Vaca-family empire, they gazed at the deserted, still-smoldering ruin of half the buildings. As soon as they reined into the smoky yard, more than a dozen armed men appeared from all sides, every one of them smeared with cinders, their faces and clothing streaked with ebony and dried blood.

  Among them were Vaca’s three sons, as well as a nephew who knew a little English—enough to explain that the governor’s soldados had come on the evening of the sacred holiday with a writ to search the grounds and buildings, orders to seize all Americans’ property and confiscate any goods being trafficked with the gringos.

  “My family has been on this land for generations,” the nephew explained. “This is no way to treat my family!”

  True to his personal code of honor, the old man had stood before the overwhelming array of soldiers without a weapon and refused the captain permission to search the grounds. Which prompted the officer to rein up to the old man and brutally slash him across the face with his quirt, splitting Vaca’s cheek open and knocking him down. Yet he struggled back to his feet and immediately attempted to yank the impudent soldier out of the saddle.

  “The captain—he pull his pistol and shoot my uncle,” the nephew disclosed.

  Before the smoke from that single pistol shot could clear, a general melee broke out as family members and ranch hands turned and raced for their weapons while the soldiers began their rampage. In the end it was Vaca’s old wife who ventured out of the hacienda waving a large white handkerchief in the stiff, cold wind, surrendering so that no more of her family would die, so that she could go to the body of her husband where he lay mortally wounded in the trampled yard, bleeding to death near the foot of their porch. A patch of dirty crimson still stained the crusty snow where Vaca fell.

  After rounding up all the family and their employees, placing them all under guard in the middle of the yard, the soldiers rummaged through the house and outbuildings before they moved on to the barn and the barracks where the ranch workers slept. Only then did a young Paiute house servant turn back to look at the hacienda and emit a horrified scream. The house was on fire.

  At first the captain had refused to allow the ranch hands to fight the flames, claiming that such a catastrophe was no work of his men. But after nearly half of the graceful old building had been consumed, he relented and allowed Vaca’s men to put up a valiant but hopeless effort against the flames.

  Instead of ordering his men to help the family, the captain had his soldiers continue their search: eventually managing to find over two hundred pounds of beaver pelts hidden beneath a trapdoor in the barn floor. Beyond that there was nothing conclusive to indicate that Vaca had been dealing with the Americans. Besides, the angry captain had been informed there would be gringos to arrest.

  His men found no Americans.

  “The governor and his soldados,” explained the nephew, “they hate the Americanos. They want us to hate them too. My uncle, he not hate. What he had he give to all who come to his door, to all guests. And now he lay in his grave.”

  Three dark mounds stood out against the sunlit snow in the family cemetery on a low knoll behind the hacienda. Three new wooden crosses marked the last resting place of Cabeza de Vaca, along with two of his workers. This last resting place of the old man’s hospitality to American trappers.

  Bass waited with the horses as McAfferty walked through the crude iron fence and knelt at the foot of that freshly turned sod so stark against the gleaming snow beneath a cloudless sky.

  “‘Thou art my hiding place; thou shalt preserve me from trouble; thou shalt compass me about with songs of deliverance,’” Asa grumbled as he returned and took up his reins. “There ain’t nothing for us here now, Mr. Bass.”

  As McAfferty kicked his horse in the ribs and turned away, Bass reached down and shook hands with the old man’s sons, then told the nephew, “Your uncle died a brave man. Near every one of them soldiers I run onto—they been cowards. But a brave man like your uncle, he’s gone now to a place where there ain’t a single yellow-backed polecat coward … a place beyond the sky where other men of honor have welcomed him.”

  The two of them swept around to the south before turning north by northeast for the foothills of the mountains. This would be far harder going than the road offered a wayfarer traveling north to Taos along the Rio Grande road. But they were wanted men, and it was clear there were soldiers out, prowling.

  Just as clear that this was not a good season for an American in northern Mexico.

  Four days later, after traveling during the cold of night and hiding out each day, Bass and McAfferty found a well-concealed rito, one of those narrow canyons through which a stream flowed out of the mountains toward the Rio Grande itself. After leaving their horses concealed from roving eyes, they moved out at moonrise on foot, reaching Workman’s place close to midnight.

  “Bill Williams been out to see me,” the whiskey trader announced after he had hurried them into the back room of his stone house and they had explained why they weren’t hiding out at Ol’ Vaca’s place.

  “Bill already heard what happen’t to us?” McAfferty asked.

  Nodding, Workman continued, “He brought me a do
zen traps for you boys. Soon as he heard the story of what you done over at the Barcelos place, he come right on out here to see what he could do to help. I told him we just shooed you off to Santa Fe—but that I had some of your furs here. That’s when he said you told him you was needing some traps to replace them what you had to leave behind on the Heely.”

  “Damn straight—I told him we was pretty short on traps,” Bass replied.

  Workman hauled a huge sack out of a dark corner. As he swung it across the earth floor, it clattered, coming to a rest. “Juniata steel, boys. Best traps a feller can buy him in Mexico.”

  Titus asked, “We square with Bill?”

  “He took what he needed in trade from your plews,” Workman answered. Then his eyes got anxious. “You ain’t fixing on staying here, are you?”

  Scratch could see the apprehension glazing the man’s eyes. He said, “Naw, we just come for what was left here when we lit out afore.”

  Workman’s shoulders sagged, limp with relief. “Ain’t safe around here for you.”

  “Ain’t safe down in Santy Fee neither,” McAfferty added.

  “Tomorrow night we’ll be back to gather up what’s ours and be gone,” Bass said. “Afore we do, you take what’s fair for all you done by us.”

  The whiskey maker waved a hand in the dark room. “You boys don’t owe me a thing.”

  “It’s only right,” Scratch protested. “For all you done—”

  “Mr. Bass is right,” Asa added. “Likely them soldados will be back to see you.”

  They were out of there before the eastern sky grayed. And back at dark the next night to load up what they had left behind more than a week before. With every hour Bass himself grew all the more anxious, all the more certain in McAfferty’s belief that the soldiers would be back. After seeing Vaca’s place, and those three fresh scars on the earth—it was almost enough to make him a praying man: begging God to spare William Workman and all the rest who had put their necks in a gallows noose simply to help out a few Americans come to Mexico.