Crack in the Sky tb-3

by Terry C. Johnston

  Better was it for him to wait until there was sufficient light to see far enough ahead along the thieves’ backtrail.

  Besides, he had him plenty to do until the gray of predawn came sliding over the bluffs to hail its first greeting to the Yellowstone valley.

  After warming his hands over the flames a moment more, Titus snatched up his small camp ax and turned toward the tall willow clustered along the riverbank. Wouldn’t be long before he’d have a sweat worked up, cutting enough branches to hide his plunder and plews.

  More than two weeks ago he had turned south from the Judith basin as the weather grew unbearably miserable. No longer was winter merely dallying with the northern plains. Deep cold left in the wake of a hellish storm descended so quickly upon this country that it left a man no doubt that autumn was long done with. Bass had pushed his luck about as far as any savvy man might, lingering that far north along the Missouri River country, trapping past the time when lesser men might have turned tail and run.

  But, damn—weren’t the plews fine!

  Big, fat beaver, the sort what wore pelts so large the mountain man called them blankets. And thick? Jumpin’ Jehoshaphat—but they were seal fat and sleek! It was damn near the finest trapping Titus Bass had ever done in the weeks he tarried past the falling of the leaves, the freezing of the smaller creeks and streams, lingering past the first icy glazing to the surface of the Judith and even the mighty Upper Missouri itself.

  Battling his way south, back up the Judith until it reached the foothills, he struggled on through the narrow breach between two mountain ranges, eventually crossing the low divide to drop into the valley of the Mussellshell. Scratch plodded south by east only as long as the animals’ strength held up each day, slowly making for his cache on the north bank of the Yellowstone. When he could tell they were close to being all but done in, Titus would be forced to find them someplace to camp where a small patch of grass had been blown clear. If he wasn’t that lucky, Bass would spend the last hour of light each afternoon chopping cottonwood he would peel before throwing the limbs onto his fire. Though it wasn’t the best of fodder for the animals—it had to be better than some of the withered, wind-dried grasses the stock had been forced to eat as the seasons quickly turned against man and beast in this icy land.

  This was to have been his last camp before reaching the cache. One last sleep before he would spend a day or so reopening the hole, laying in his high Missouri pelts with what he had already stashed away of the catch from earlier in the autumn. In addition, he had planned to stow away what he knew he wouldn’t need until late in the winter—like the extra weight of his traps, both American and Mexican made—when the streams and creeks and rivers began to open. And before he resealed the cache, he figured he should pull out a little of this and a little of that from his Taos and rendezvous goods: gifts of foofaraw and geegaws for the Crow.

  This one last camp before …

  After he had slogged back to his plunder with that first armload of brush, Scratch took a few minutes to pull his hands from his blanket mittens and warm them over the fire before turning to the business of dragging the bundles back into the willow near a small stand of cottonwood saplings. Retying each pack, Titus made sure every square inch was covered by the oiled Russian sheeting. Then he dragged up the first of the brush he had cut, working carefully to stuff the limbs down into the ropes on the top and all four sides.

  A second trip added more brush to his cover. A third, fourth, and finally a fifth time he trudged down to the riverbank to chop more limbs. By the time the sky to the east turned as red as that afterbirth expelled by a buffalo cow dropping a calf, he stood back and was satisfied he had concealed what he owned.

  Now he had to go after the rest of what little he had in this world.

  Stuffing his hands back into the mittens after rubbing his flesh over the fire, Bass laid his two buffalo robes one on top of the other. After folding his two blankets, he placed them inside the robes before turning in the edges of the furry hides. With a bundle more than two feet thick, Scratch took the last long braid of rawhide rope and lashed it all together into a pack some four feet long and nearly as wide.

  Rising from the cold, blue snow just beginning to turn a pale pink presaging the sun’s arrival, he hurriedly chopped down three of the strongest cottonwood saplings and trimmed them of branches and knots. Crossing one of the long, thin saplings over another, he tied the two together with some short sections of hemp rope. After cutting the third sapling into two pieces, he tied both sections across the wide vee formed by the others. Then, with his last piece of rope, Titus lashed his bedding and a small packet of dried meat to his improvised travois.

  By then it was light enough to plainly see the trail left by the raiders. Time to move out.

  Stepping into the vee just ahead of his bundle, Bass shoved the barrel of his rifle through two of the bedding ropes. He jabbed his pistol under another rope, then turned and adjusted the knife and tomahawk at his back, shifted the shooting pouch over his shoulder.

  Then he stepped forward, bent down, and pulled the two saplings off the ground.

  Surprised to find it wasn’t so heavy after all. And if he had left enough room at the base of the travois below that bottom crosspiece, the drag should ride well enough over the sagebrush and rocky ground, keeping his robes out of the ankle-deep powder.

  Squinting into the west as the light began to balloon around him, he thought of Hannah.

  Remembered how she had run off that day the Arapaho had jumped them. How she had come back later. How the mule had saved him, saved them both.

  “I’m coming for you, girl,” he vowed in a cold, dry whisper.

  Ain’t no red niggers gonna get you from me ’less I die trying to get you back.

  The intense cold of that early dawn nearly froze the hot mist in his eyes as he set out on the trail, realizing just how warm a man could be when he nursed on revenge.

  Stopping only long enough to blow and catch his wind or get a drink of water that first day, Bass didn’t eat until evening. After chewing on some dried strips of venison, he bent over the bank and cracked the thick scum of ice forming along the Yellowstone. He drank long and deep, knowing how vital it was to quench his thirst several times a day in this high, dry, cold land.

  Every bit as important, if not more so, as it was to take in water during the heat of late summer—just as crucial as such a thing could be in Apache country. Water might mean the difference between his keeping up with the raiders or never even standing a chance of catching them … the difference between life and death, alone as he was in this winter wilderness.

  He stood again, his weary bones protesting, pushing his face on into the brutal slash of that drying west wind.

  A while after the sun went down ahead of him, the wind died, no longer tormenting the valley, nor rawhiding his leathery face. Throughout the day’s march he had stopped here and there long enough to swipe one mitten or the other over his face, scouring the frost from his eyebrows and lashes, scrubbing the icicles from his mustache and beard where they collected as his heaving gusts of breath froze in a coating over his face. All day hauling his little travois onward in the path of the falling sun.

  Then, as twilight deepened the hues of that snow covering the nearby hills to shades of rose and lavender, he lunged to a stop, weary, exhausted, thirsty so quickly again … his heart rising to his throat in frustration and fear as he peered down the raiders’ trail.

  The hoofprints turned sharply to the left, following the gentle slope of the bank toward the river. The trampled snow he had been following disappeared through a wide notch in the brush and cottonwood.

  It would make a fine spot for an ambush. The sort of place where one or two of the warriors would lie back after the others had gone on, waiting there in hiding for the white man—if they suspected they were followed.

  But the more he stared at that wide breach in the brush along the bank, at that gentle descent the slope made
as it fell away to the shallow ford, as he studied the skeletal trees up and down the river, listening … Scratch grew all the more certain these warriors were so cocky they didn’t even give a good goddamn if they were followed by one lone trapper.

  So maybe he should let the sonsabitches know he was coming.

  “Hannah!”

  He listened to the voice echo back at him from the low hills lying south of the river. The deepening cold swallowed that plaintive sound quickly as a mist began to form at the river’s surface.

  Then Bass whispered, “I’ll find you yet, Hannah. I swear it, by God.”

  At the river’s edge he stared across the Yellowstone. A thickening ice had rimed itself along both banks in a scum more than two feet wide. He bent and chopped himself a wide hole, then leaned out and drank. The drops froze on his face as he stood to swipe off that thin crusting with a mitten.

  And, Lord, how that hurt too—merely rubbing his nose and cheeks with the stiffened wool of his mitten!

  Hannah was somewhere on the other side now. And the thieves were on the south bank of the Yellowstone with her and the horses. How far ahead, he had no way of knowing. But if he hesitated here, one thing was certain: he never would get the mule back. He never would catch up to the raiders. He never would see the startled looks on their faces as he rained his retribution down upon them.

  Just the way Asa McAfferty’s avenging angels would rain fire and brimstone down upon the unholy come their Judgment Day.

  If he camped here, he might as well give up.

  But if he crossed now, and pushed on into and through this night … he might just stand a chance of catching them somewhere west of the ford, catching them sometime tomorrow. Because red niggers as cocky as this bunch would most assuredly figure on stopping close to dark, making their beds around a warm fire, and sleeping out the night in warmth.

  Bass listened to the river lap against the bank beneath that thickening rime of ice near his feet. And realized it was the only way.

  He dropped the travois and turned around to the bundle of robes and blankets. Stripping off his mittens, he stuffed them under a top section of rope where he could grab them quickly, without fumbling. A man’s hands would have to be warm enough to grip a thin piece of char, hold a chunk of flint at the right angle, to sweep down with that gentle curve of the fire-steel without trembling if he was going to get himself a fire started on the far bank.

  Next came the thick fur-lined buffalo moccasins he stuffed under the ropes, as well as an inner pair of fur-lined elk-hide moccasins. Bass decided to leave on the soft, smoke-tanned elk-hide moccasins he wore right against his flesh: he might well need that thin layer of protection against the river-bottom rocks, the grip they could give him as he raced across this ford of the Yellowstone.

  Now came the leggings, one shivering leg at a time. After he had removed his shooting pouch and powder horn and laid them both alongside his rifle, he pulled the thick blanket capote from his arms and laid it atop the bedding bundle. Next he dragged the rifle from the ropes and set the weapon down within the coat, wrapping the leggings around the muzzle, clear back to the lock. By the time he pulled off the breechclout and his belt, his legs were shaking with the bite of intense cold.

  Scratch clenched his chattering teeth together and yanked the long buckskin war shirt over his head, off his arms, and slapped it down on the rifle. Rolling it into a long tube that covered the lock and buttstock, he had one last item of clothing to remove.

  His frozen fingers trembled as they fought the buttons loose from their holes on his faded red wool longhandles. Yanking it down off his arms, on down off his chest and belly, Bass tugged the dirty, smoke-stained cloth over each moccasin and stood again to drape it across the rifle and his buckskin clothing. He swaddled the sides of the coat over it all, rolled up his bundle, and wedged this long wool-wrapped packet under two sections of rawhide rope.

  Pausing only long enough to take a deep breath, Titus whirled and seized the cottonwood saplings of his travois, rising from the snow with them. At the riverbank he hesitated a moment, gazing at the ice and the slow-moving water … his eyes eventually moving across the wide black ribbon to the far bank where the raiders’ trail disappeared into the brush…. Then he finally looked at the sky to the west.

  Snow before morning.

  If it stormed hard enough … and he hadn’t caught them by sunup, his chances ran somewhere between slim and none that he would have a trail clear enough to follow.

  Titus stepped into that wide crack he had hacked through the layer of ice skimming the riverbank.

  His breath immediately seized in his chest—so sudden and tight were the frozen bands around his ribs that Scratch doubted he would ever breathe again.

  Already his feet and calves ached with the deep cold, just standing there….

  “It ain’t nothing you haven’t felt afore,” he convinced himself as he stepped deeper into the water, the cold quickly climbing up his legs, sensing the travois poles begin to float their load on the river’s surface behind him.

  Before he plunged any deeper, Titus realized he would have to step out of the vee and float his travois the rest of the way as he plodded across on foot. The slow water swirled sluggishly at midthigh, gushing up against his shrinking scrotum and manhood as he high-stepped out of the travois, pushed it ahead of him, and plunged on into the river—measuring each step carefully as his toes felt their way along the river bottom in the growing darkness, each foot securing a hold before he moved another half-yard.

  All too quickly the water rose past his hips, over his waist, to midchest and finally to his armpits as he pushed on—not even a third of the way across yet. So deep already that he grew worried this wasn’t a shallow ford at all. But the raiders had to know.

  So he pressed on, struggling with his travois every now and then as the river’s surface tugged at it, shoving it sideways from him. Nearly halfway across, the water rose above his shoulders, lapped at his ragged beard.

  Damn, if it really weren’t warmer here under the water!

  Then he realized that would mean the air itself was colder than the Yellowstone.

  Bass knew his life depended upon how quickly he could move across the second half of the river, onto the bank, and into his clothes.

  By the time he was no more than calf-deep in the Yellowstone and no more than a few feet from the river’s edge, Bass felt his muscles beginning to fail his willful heeding. Slow, sluggish, moving no faster than the oozing flow of pine sap.

  Reaching that ice scum frozen against the south bank, he flung his wooden arms aside and dropped the cottonwood saplings, his fingers still cramped into frozen, unresponsive claws. Slowly, painfully, he turned in that cold air, his legs half-submerged in the Yellowstone, ordering his body back toward the bundle, toward the clothing protected by that capote.

  As much as he cursed his fingers, he still couldn’t get them to respond. So in one last, desperate move, Scratch used his teeth to drag the first mitten free of the rawhide rope, and stuffed the unwilling hand inside its warmth. Then, realizing his strength was quickly failing, he yanked the second mitten free and plunged his right hand inside.

  With clawlike fists he started to rub the scratchy wool up and down each bare arm quickly, over the flesh on his chest and belly, down across his thighs, knees, and calves—right to the river’s surface as he lumbered back slowly, almost stumbling and going down twice on his frozen feet. One at a time, it seemed, his fingers began to respond to his commands, moving within their woolen cocoon until he could ball up a fist and release it.

  Pulling one hand from its mitten, Scratch seized the top of the travois and dragged it up the frozen bank until the bedding bundle no longer bobbed atop the water’s surface. With both hands back in their mittens, he valiantly struggled to pull the long bundle of his capote from beneath the lashing. Clumsily yanking back on the flaps of the coat, he pulled it out from beneath the rifle and his other clothing. How glorious it felt t
o stuff his arms into that warmth! Even with his hands trembling terribly, he somehow got the wide finger-woven sash knotted at his waist.

  Maybe he would make it after all.

  Hannah was counting on him. He knew that. If she couldn’t get freed from her captors, then he knew she was counting on him to come after her. Driven by the same deep bond that had compelled her to come back for him after the Arapaho had driven her off, scalped him, and left the white man for dead.

  He owed her for that, and for the other times she had been there to warn him of danger, times when she pulled his hash out of one fix or another.

  Shaking like a quaky leaf in a September gale, Bass snatched up his shooting pouch and looped it over his shoulders before he lunged thick-legged up the gentle slope of the bank, his soggy moccasins slipping on the icy crust as the leather began to freeze. Collapsing into the snow beside a large branch of deadfall cottonwood, Titus hurriedly brushed aside what he could of the ice at the base of a low drift, then began snapping off the smaller limbs and twigs. As soon as he had a pile formed at his knees, Scratch dragged his pouch into his lap, fought up the flap.

  Stuffing his right mitten between his teeth, he yanked it from his hand and began to dig through the pouch for his tinderbox. From the container made of German silver back in Kentucky, he took a small chunk of blackened char. Against it he laid a piece of flint, then pulled out his fire-steel.

  As soon as a tiny spark ignited the char, he pulled a small nest of tinder from the box and laid it upon the cloth and blew until the dried tinder burst into flame. Oh, to feel that welcome warmth on his face!

  Placing the fiery tinder atop some of the twigs, he gradually laid more of the tiny branches over the struggling flames—adding one piece at a time as each new twig caught fire.

  Finally he laid on some of the branches as thick as his wrist. Feeling confident enough that the flames wouldn’t snuff themselves out, Bass stood shakily, dragging his frozen knees and calves out of the snow. Snugging the flaps of his capote around him, he stood dangerously close to the flames, sensing how quickly the sudden, surprising warmth seeped into the flesh of his lower body. Through the layers of his coat, he vigorously rubbed his thighs again, then moved away only long enough to grab his longhandles and leggings.