Crack in the Sky tb-3

by Terry C. Johnston

  But every bit as much as a man might pray, Scratch realized a man also had to keep his powder dry and his weapons close at hand. And never be caught praying down on his knees with his eyes closed. Suicide, sure and certain.

  “Maybeso one day I’ll come back this way,” Asa told Workman as they swung into their saddles.

  “Give it some time, like Kinkead said,” the whiskey trader reminded them. Then he turned of a sudden and held up his hand to Titus Bass.

  “Near forgot to tell you, Scratch. Wanted to wish you a happy birthday.”

  “H-happy birthday?”

  Workman nodded. “Figger it’s well past midnight already. That makes it New Year’s Day, eighteen and thirty. How many rings that give you now?”

  “Thirty-six,” he replied, astonished. “Already a new year.”

  “You boys watch your hair,” Workman said as he took a step back and slapped Bass’s horse on the rump.

  “You watch your’n, Billy Workman!” Scratch cried as they reined away.

  At the top of the prairie McAfferty came alongside him as they loped beneath the North Star.

  “That’s twice now since we threw in together what I didn’t think we’d make the new year, Mr. Bass.”

  “Maybeso you’re a hard-user on your partners, Asa.”

  “Me?”

  “You was the one what rode us off down to Apache country.”

  McAfferty snorted. “And you was the one took us off down to whore country! ’For true and righteous are His judgments: for He hath judged the great whore, which did corrupt the earth with her fornication!’”

  When Titus turned to gaze at Asa, he found the white-head’s eyes glimmering with mirth. “Awright, you slick-tongued son of a bitch. I s’pose we are even. You got us in that fix down on the Heely, and I got us out.”

  “Then I pulled us out of the next mess you plopped us down in,” McAfferty concluded.

  “Way I see it,” Scratch declared, “we’re square, Asa McAfferty. No matter what happens atween us partners now, we’re square.”

  Scratch figured they couldn’t have anywhere near as much trouble from there on out as the two of them had their first few months after throwing in together. Leastways, that’s what he told himself as they loped out of the valley of the Rio Grande, slogged their way over the pass, and finally plunged down to the foot of the Front Range, where they struggled on north.

  At times they happened across a likely-looking stream flowing down from those emerald foothills and set up camp for a few days to work the banks hard, doing their best to strip the place clean of what beaver they could bring to bait. More times than he would care to count that winter and on into the early spring, they were forced to hole up and hunker down as a storm blustered over them, delaying their journey north. Nonetheless, those days imprisoned in camp gave them a chance to make needed repairs to traps, tune the locks in their rifles and pistols, sharpen knives, and reinforce saddles and tack.

  Those hours also gave Asa an opportunity to discourse on a variety of celestial and theological subjects, his long, meandering monologues taking him from the rightful place of the devil and evil among mankind, all the way to his assertions that the end of the world had already been foretold and its date was therefore cast in stone. No matter how good mankind might believe it would ever become, man was by nature still an evil creature and one day would be brought to task for his errant ways.

  “Even you, Asa McAfferty?” Bass asked skeptically.

  The white-head had looked up from the oiled strop where he was dragging a knife blade back and forth. The sharp edge lay still as he studied Scratch. After a long moment of reflection, he answered gravely, “Especially me.”

  As his partner went back to sliding the honed blade up and down the strop, Bass echoed, “You?”

  “The harshest penalty come that day of judgment for this wicked world will be meted out to those of us who have sought how best to serve the Lord our God … and failed Him in the end,” McAfferty explained. “’And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works.’”

  Scratch stared into the fire for a long time and eventually asked, “Ever thort to just turn away from all your Bible-spouting ways?”

  “There ain’t but a handful of men I’ve met in me life what’d understand what I’m about to say, Mr. Bass—but I figger you’re one of the few,” Asa began with measured confidence. “See, comes a time in his life a man does what he knows to be right … even when he knows no one else thinks he’s right. That might be my saving grace. My only prayer of spending eternity in the sky.”

  Oh, how Scratch had wanted McAfferty to explain all that, cursing himself for not being near smart enough to figure out the riddles and parables the man used to explain things. But in the end Titus was reluctant to admit his ignorance of spiritual matters. In the end he let it lay, and did not ask.

  As winter grew old, they crossed the South Platte, then struck its northern branch. Along it the pair traveled west toward the interior basin, then struck out for the Wind River. North to the Bighorn, eventually reaching the south bank of the Yellowstone itself.

  By and large the ice was growing spongy that day late in March, so they were forced to push downstream until they found a patch of more open water. There they stripped out of all their clothing but moccasins, tied all of it right onto the top of their packs, and led the reluctant animals into the icy river. Yelling their encouragement to one another and to the animals, their teeth chattering like bone dice in horn cups, the trappers swam across the mighty Roche Jaune, gripping bridles or saddle horns with trembling hands.

  On the far side Bass and McAfferty emerged from the water shivering so hard they could hardly stand, their half-frozen fingers fighting to loosen wet knots, finally freeing the oiled hides where they had safely wrapped their clothing. Back inside their warm buckskins, an outer pair of buffalo-hide moccasins, and their thick blanket capotes pulled over buffalo-fur vests, they made camp for the night on the spot—then pressed on the next morning.

  North by northwest they pointed their noses now, their faces battered by a wild mix of brutal spring rains, freezing sleet, and some soggy, late-season snows until more than a dozen days after putting the Yellowstone at their backs they struck a narrow, winding river where the redbud and willow were just beginning to bloom beneath a clearing sky.

  “By my reckoning, this here gotta be the Mussellshell,” McAfferty asserted as they dropped to the ground in that lush bottomland.

  Bass studied the stream up, then down, making note of the surrounding landforms. “You heard tell this was good beaver country, eh?”

  “Said to be prime beaver,” Asa replied; then he raised his rifle and gestured at the jagged line of peaks lying along the western horizon. “That yonder’s the edge of Blackfoot country.”

  They slept off and on throughout the lengthening days, grabbing a short nap here and there in the morning and afternoons, catching a few hours at night. This was a dangerous land where one of them had to arise in the dark hours after the moon had set and take half their animals out to graze in plain sight of camp. The other horses they kept tied close at hand just to be ready, in the event they had to run to save their scalps.

  While a trapper’s normal routine would have him going out early in the morning and again late in the afternoon, neither of these wary veterans ventured from their secluded camps during the daylight hours. Instead, Bass and McAfferty went to their traps only in the darkness before dawn, and in the blackness after twilight had faded from the sky.

  As they slowly worked their way up the Mussellshell toward the mountains, then crossed over the low divide and began to trap down the Judith River, the pair cautiously chose their camps: finding a spot with enough tall willow to hide their horses and their plunder, enough of the blooming cottonwood branches overh
ead to disperse the smoke rising from their tiny fires. A cold and horrid winter had given way to a wet and miserable spring, fraught with daily thunderstorms that soaked man and animal alike and made a man hanker for the coming warmth of summer days and the prospect of rendezvous.

  As the weeks tumbled behind them, their animals labored under the growing weight of heavier and heavier packs of beaver. And though they occasionally came across sign of war parties moving this way and that up the Mussellshell or down through the Judith Basin, neither Bass nor McAfferty saw a single warrior. By late spring it was almost enough to make a man grow complacent, if not downright lazy.

  With as warm and sunny as it had become that afternoon, Titus determined to move out of their new camp before slap-dark had descended upon the valley. At sunset he took up the big Mexican butcher knife they used in camp and stuffed it into the back of his belt. His rifle in one hand, his trap sack in the other, he nudged Asa with a toe.

  “Goin’ out—set me some traps.”

  McAfferty squinted into the afternoon light, then rubbed both eyes with his knuckles. “Ain’cha waiting till dark?”

  He snorted. “We ain’t see’d a feather.”

  “But we seen lots of sign up here this close’t the Missouri.”

  “You’re like a mother hen,” Titus replied as he turned away. “It’s only bait sticks I’m cutting. Ain’t no Bug’s Boys gonna catch me out.”

  Still wet from that afternoon’s thundershower, the tall grass and leafy brush soon soaked through his leggings and moccasins, beading on the long flaps of his thick wool capote. Constantly moving his eyes across the surrounding hills, looking for anything that shouldn’t be there, Scratch searched for a likely spot to cut his bait-and float-sticks. Plenty of green willow up and down the Judith—but where would he find a place concealed enough to work?

  At the edge of the river he spotted the narrow sandbar that ran in a jagged strip from the bank toward the edge of the water, a damp piece of ground some thirty yards long. Up to his left the sandbar jutted against a sharp cutbank better than eight, maybe ten, feet high. And off to his right the cutbank fell away to nothing but a gentle slope as the grassy bank descended to the river’s edge.

  Damn good place to cut his willow, peel it, and prepare his traps—all of it out of sight from the surrounding hills and meadows. A pretty spot, too, here as the light was beginning to fade and turn the rustling leaves to a deeper hue.

  After clambering through the thick copse of willow and buckbrush, Titus dropped his heavy trap sack onto the edge of the sandbar and propped his rifle against it. Directly behind him hung a wide canopy of willow suspended over the edge of the cutbank. It was there he pulled the tomahawk from his belt and began to hack at the base of some of the thicker branches, tossing them into a pile near the trap sack. After he had nearly two dozen cut, Scratch turned back and squatted on the sandbar to begin peeling the first limb, slowly fashioning it into a bait-stick, sharpening its thicker end so that he could drive it into the bank just above a set he would make come morning. At the other end of the stick he used his knife and fingers to peel back layers until he had the limb fanned out for some three or four inches down the wand. The better to hold more of the “beaver milk” that would lure a curious flat-tail to drop one of its feet within the jaws of his trap.

  Downstream … there among the willow along that gently sloping, grassy bank … maybe it was only the wind sighing.

  But he waited. Glanced over at his rifle, and waited a moment more. Yeah, probably only the breeze rustling those branches up there.

  He tossed the finished stick aside and picked up another, starting to hack off the small limbs and nubs with that big butcher knife. Peeling, stripping, peeling some more.

  Of a sudden the hair stood on the back of his neck as the breeze shifted into his face and he frantically sorted out the meaning of that rank smell. Whatever it was, he scratched up a memory strong enough to trigger revulsion, then some growing fear. He kept clawing for the answer as he turned slightly, his right hand beginning to tremble—and that scared the hell out of him. Just to look down at the butcher knife and see it quaking.

  Perhaps it was an Indian pony—this rank odor of dampness. Maybeso it might even be a damned Blackfoot he smelled on that hint of wind coming into his face, bristling the guard hairs on the back of his neck, stirring him to remember. Something like the fetid, putrid stench of bear oil smeared on a warrior’s skin, or the bear grease rubbed into his braids … a smell so suddenly recognizable as the red nigger rushed close enough to grapple with you—

  With their snorts of surprise and curiosity, he watched them both lumber his way out of the willow. But the moment he fell back to his haunches and struggled to drag his legs back under him, the two grizzly cubs skidded to a halt, whirled ungainly, and bumped into one another, their eyes frightened of this big creature they had just discovered. And then they began to whimper.

  A sure call for their mother.

  So fast did the next few heartbeats thump within his chest—enough time for the sow to burst through the thick willow brush behind her cubs. Time enough for her to stick her nose into the breeze and size up the threat posed to her offspring. Time only for him to start scooting backward.

  She shakily rose on her back legs, opening her massive jaws and rolling back her muzzle to expose those yellowed fangs dripping with foamy slobber.

  Glancing at the rifle that lay between them, Bass got only to his knees in that instant the sow dropped to all four and heaved his way with a lurch. Shoving the butcher knife into his left hand with that half-peeled willow branch he was already holding, he yanked out his pistol and raked back the goosenecked hammer, getting it up in front of him just in time to blot out her snout as she opened that gaping maw and began to roar.

  Wau-augh!

  He felt the pistol buck in his hand as she was yanked up short—immediately swiping the arm and that tiny weapon aside as smartly as she would swat a troublesome mosquito, the pistol’s smoky bark buried beneath the terrible battle cry of a mother wronged and duty bound to protect her young. She brought that paw up to rub at the side of her jaw where the ball smashed through her face. Then gazed down at her enemy and grumbled something great and fearful at the back of her throat the moment she rocked back down onto all four and lumbered into motion.

  In that final moment before she swatted him, and the pistol went wheeling into the willow, he remembered how the thick tufts of green grass exploded into the air as she sank each paw into the ground, how the glittering sand spurted from each foot in a golden cascading spray as she exploded toward him.

  One powerful paw crashed over the rifle and the heavy trap sack as she scrambled past the cubs and closed on her prey—the open sack clattering across the wet earth, the rifle cartwheeling end over end toward the water lapping against the rain-dampened sandbar.

  Wau-au-au-au-gh-gh-gh!

  With her huge maw open and dripping with that terrifying roar, the sow bellowed the grizzly’s battle cry as she pounced upon Bass with such a powerful rage that she bowled both of them over, spilling them across the wet sand and into the tall grass like the large rawhide balls small Indian boys batted back and forth across the ground in their exuberant, youthful games.

  He felt the sudden, hot tenderness at his back, rolling groggily onto an elbow, knowing she had caught him with a paw, raking him with one or more of her four-inch claws as she burst past him—

  Wau-au-au … gh-gh-gh!

  Already she was catapulting onto her hind legs, digging in with her forepaws, wrenching up sand and grass as she righted herself and twisted about in her turn. Angrier perhaps that she had not crushed the puny creature in that first grand charge. Just the way she had had to deal with any male she encountered ever since that day in early spring when she had emerged from her den with those two young cubs given birth and suckled during the last of winter’s rage suffered on this north country.

  Waughgh!

  Leaping across th
ose last ten feet, the sow cut off the light, cut off all air as she dropped out of the sky onto the trapper scrambling like a crab to get out of her path. He landed on his back as everything went black, went suffocating.

  Scratch cried out as she reared back suddenly and smacked him with a monstrous paw, as if he were no more than a bothersome badger she was trying to dig out from beneath a rotted log. The fire around his lungs was so great, it felt as if his ribs had been torn loose from his chest as he was hurtled to the side on the sandbar.

  Waugh!

  Again she bellowed as he blinked grains of sand from his eyes, dragging his cheek off the ground, finding her resting on all fours a few yards away, turned to look at her cubs. Calling to them noisily with those jaws, that curving muzzle drawn back to expose the rows of monstrous yellowed teeth.

  The moment the two cubs started his way, Bass shoved onto a hip, his chest refusing him a deep breath, his back burning, hot one instant, icy cold the next as the wind slashed across it. If he could run now, he might stand a chance of getting to the rifle a heartbeat before she got to him. Just spin around as he cocked the hammer, fire as she settled upon him again—

  Then he knew it was too late already. That flicker of time’s candle to consider what to do and how to do it had already cost him his chance.

  Just take her with his own bare hands.

  When she spotted him rising to his knees, coming shakily to his feet, she wheeled fully on him. Then twisted her head to locate her cubs the moment before they bounced against her.

  Enraged, her hump hair stiffened. The sow batted the first aside, backhanded the second, sending them both sprawling away toward the cutbank, yelping and whimpering as they tumbled to a stop, licking at their bruises. Then she slowly turned on the trapper, wobbly on his two legs.

  He tried to blink the sandy grit from his eyes, clear the dry shreds of cobweb from his head as she flexed her back, shifted her feet, planting them squarely as she rose on those huge, haunches. Then she too stood on hind legs. And windmilled at the air with those long, deadly instruments, her claws bared, glinting in the last rays of the sun.