Crack in the Sky

by Terry C. Johnston

  Hatcher watched the others scurry off to their own belongings before he turned back to Titus. “Wolves, more’n likely.”

  “Wolves done this?” he asked, letting the ruined saddle spill from his hands.

  “That ain’t the least of it, I’d wager,” Jack replied, nodding at the rest of Bass’s gear.

  “Damn,” Scratch groaned as he turned to follow Hatcher’s eyes, discovering the mauled tatters of his buffalo-rawhide lariat, the scattered remnants of bridle, hackamore, and cinch, and even the remains of a leather-bound gourd canteen, all of it chewed into hardly recognizable shreds.

  “More’n one of ’em done this, Jack!” Isaac Simms called out.

  “Likely so,” Hatcher echoed. “They come in here in a pack.”

  Titus shook his head as he stared at the firelit debris. “Wolves dare come this close to a man?”

  “Hell,” Caleb growled, “likely was a pack don’t know enough to fear a two-legged man yet, Scratch.”

  “Cale’s right,” Simms added. “Most wolf packs ain’t had enough run-ins with men to be scar’t off from us.”

  “Chances be this pack hasn’t run across any big guns neither,” Hatcher explained.

  “So them damned dogs just come waltzin’ in here?” Bass whined. “While’st we was off for supper?”

  Rowland roared with laughter, slapping a knee. “And the critters had ’em their supper on your outfit!”

  “Lookit all they chewed, Jack,” Simms clucked, wagging his head sympathetically.

  “Bass ain’t got him near nothing left what don’t need some fixin’,” Rufus Graham declared.

  “In a bad way too,” Titus grumped as he sat there in the midst of what debris remained of his leather tack and gear.

  Hatcher knelt beside him. “Where’s yer pouch?”

  “Jehoshaphat!” Bass swore as he whirled in a crouch, lunging for the tight roll of his extra blanket where he had secured his rifle and shooting bag before they had strolled over to the supper fires—for no other reason than to guard them from a quick-moving thunderstorm while they were gone from their camp. Yanking at the edges of the blanket, he rolled the weapon free, quickly inspecting the strap and bag, the narrow thongs securing the two powder horns to the strap, finding no damage.

  “Ye’re a lucky man,” Hatcher intoned.

  “Ain’t that the solemn truth,” Kinkead whimpered. “Look how they got to mine.” He held up what little remained of his bag, spare balls and a ball screw, his bullet mold spilling from the huge, ragged hole gaping in what Matthew had left of his chewed pouch.

  “My only pair of spare mocs are gone,” Simms groaned as he picked through his few belongings.

  Graham held up his old smoothbore, showing the others those vivid teeth marks deeply scored up and down the shrunken, translucent rawhide wrap where in a time past he had repaired the cracked, weakened wood along the wrist of the stock. “They even tried eatin’ on this here. Just ’cause it’s leather.”

  “Shit,” Bass said as he gazed round at the wolf pack’s destruction the others held up for view. “Maybeso this means we ought’n have a man stay in camp all the time, Jack.”

  “Hell,” the outfit’s leader snorted, “come ronnyvoo, I don’t know a single man jack of these here yahoos be willing to stay ahin’t while the rest of us go traipsin’ off to have us whiskey, women, and song!”

  “Not me!” Wood bellowed. “You ain’t leavin’ me behin’t!”

  “Not me neither!” Rowland said. “You each watch over your own outfits!”

  Hatcher turned back to Bass. “See. Any other time of the year, a man be willing to stay back to camp for the rest. Be it trapping time, fall or spring—a man don’t mind taking his turn hanging back at a trappin’ camp.”

  “Maybeso we ought’n go cross the creek there,” Titus said, pointing. “Go yonder there with them company boys and put our camp with them. That way we ain’t gotta worry ’bout—”

  “We don’t have to move camp,” Hatcher interrupted.

  Bass couldn’t believe what he had heard. Did these lean and experienced trappers mean to tell him they were willing to take the chances of wild creatures slipping into their abandoned camp, to chew on anything and everything made of leather again in the future?

  “S-so you’re telling me we sit and wait for these here wolves to come back and ruin some more?”

  As straight-faced as he could say it, Jack stepped up to Scratch and declared, “No … we pee.”

  Titus wasn’t sure he’d heard Hatcher clearly. “Did you say … p-pee?”

  “Pee. Piss. Spray. Same thing, Scratch.”

  “P-pee?” Bass noticed most of the others smiling, some with hands over their mouths, trying to suppress their guffaws.

  “Eegod!” Jack roared. “So I gotta show ye how to pee now?”

  Hatcher whirled on his heel and stepped away, raising the tail of his long cotton shirt and tugging aside the blanket breechclout as he went purposefully to the bushes at the north end of their camp. Titus stood rooted to the spot, unsure just what he was to do.

  “G’won,” Caleb instructed, flinging a hand in Jack’s direction. “Rest of us be right behin’t you.”

  Suspicious that he was having his leg pulled but good, Scratch reluctantly followed in Hatcher’s steps, stopping nearby as the outfit’s leader pulled out his penis and began to spray the base of the thick brush with urine as he sidestepped to his left, still spraying a thin stream in the cool dawn air.

  “What the hell you peein’ for?”

  Hatcher inched away from Bass, doing his best to control the amount of urine he sprayed on the brush, slowly sidling in a wide arc at the far edge of their encampment. “Keeps the wolves away.”

  Bass laughed with how ridiculous that sounded. But the moment he began, he noticed that no one else was laughing with him. “How a li’l bit of your piss gonna keep wolves away?”

  “Wolf and other dog critters piss here and there to lay out their own ground,” Jack explained as he moved off a bit farther. “They tell others of their own kind what belongs to them, and what don’t.”

  “That means when we spray round our camp,” Simms declared, “chances are the wolves won’t come in to bother our gear and truck.”

  Wagging his head, Bass said, “But Hatcher ain’t got him enough pee to wet clear round this here camp.”

  Jack stood shaking his penis, empty. “Maybe not—but, Caleb, come on up aside me and mark our camp from here.”

  Wood stepped up, pulling at the antler buttons on the front of his leather britches to begin peeing right where Hatcher had left off. As Titus watched in amazement, the others began roaring with laughter, hopping drunkenly toward the bushes, where they each took their turn at this duty, circumscribing their camp with the smell of urine, marking off their territory, staking it out as if to declare to the wolves that this was a boundary not to be crossed.

  “Ain’t no little bit of your piss gonna make no never mind to no wolf pack,” Scratch snorted cynically as he watched the other eight having themselves far too much fun for him to take this seriously.

  “Ye can go piss yer likker away anywhere ye want, Scratch,” Hatcher stated. “Or ye can piss where it just might do all of us some good.”

  “Awright—you had your fun with me,” Bass replied lamely. “I’m certain you boys just laughing inside on my count.”

  “I’m dead to rights serious,” Jack argued.

  “This is one critter to another,” Caleb declared.

  “Wolf’ll stay away,” Solomon agreed. “I seen it my own self.”

  Kinkead held up the ragged remains of his shooting pouch. “Wish’t we’d done it afore we went off to supper. Where ’m I gonna get me ’Nother bag now?”

  “If’n there ain’t one to trade off these company fellers,” Rowland said, “we make you a new one, Matthew.”

  Hatcher turned to Bass as the edge of the sun broke over the nearby hills, spreading day’s light into the valley. “
Ye gonna pee … or ye gonna stand there gawkin’ at me like a idjit?”

  With a gust of easy laughter, Scratch stepped away toward the far bushes, pulling aside his breechclout as he said, “I’ll take my turn at it, Jack Hatcher. Then I’m sleeping out the day.”

  A damned good idea that had been: to sleep out the day there in the shade of their grove after last night’s drinking and raucous carousing at the brigade fire.

  But near midday another of the company’s brigades hoved into sight along the eastern hills, the noise and excitement electrifying the valley. Among them rode the merry Daniel Potts.

  “It’s been two year since last I saw you,” Bass cried with joy as Potts unhorsed himself among the early arrivals.

  “That really you, Titus Bass?”

  “Damn if it ain’t, Daniel.”

  “Thort you might’n gone under, friend.”

  “Came close,” Scratch replied, tapping a finger against the taut blue cloth tied over his head. “’Rapahos raised some hair an’ left me for dead.”

  “But you’re standing here flapping your ugly mug just to show me you pulled through!”

  “Damn right I pulled through, Daniel!” Scratch bellowed. “I been working on me a thirst for two year now … but we come riding in here to hear the traders’s already been out here and gone!”

  “We’uns got our supplies back to early spring our own selves,” Potts explained, his merry eyes twinkling. “’Stead of you doing without come time for the fall hunt, I’ll see what I can spare you.”

  “No, I don’t want you to go short of nothing—”

  Daniel interrupted, “I won’t, Scratch. But likewise I won’t see no friend of mine go short neither. Not when I can help it.”

  Craning his neck here and there, Bass glanced over the rest of the new arrivals. “Where’s that dandy goes by the name of Jim Beckwith was with you two year ago?”

  “He ain’t with us—”

  “Beckwith go under?” Titus asked gravely.

  “Nawww,” Potts replied. “He’s riding with ’Nother brigade this spring. Are you here with them three what looked down their noses at Negra Jim?”

  Wagging his head, Bass explained, “Them three … they went under.”

  “How?”

  “Rubbed out somewhere’s on the Yallerstone.”

  “Potts’s face went sad as he said dolefully, “Likely Siouxs they were, Scratch. Maybeso Ree got ’em.”

  “Let’s pull your truck off your horse and get it over to the shade, Daniel Potts!” Titus suggested, wanting nothing more than to shake off the gray cloud brought him by that remembrance of those three. “You’re the child what’s got two year of stories to catch me up on!”

  Late that afternoon the growing encampment of white trappers witnessed the arrival of a large band of Flathead who announced that a sizable party of Americans would likely be reaching them sometime the following morning, as they were traveling not all that far behind the migrating village. By sunset the southwestern sky was dippled with the concentric swirls of rope-bound lodgepoles over which the women had stretched their smoked buffalo hides. Bright fires glowed at twilight outside each lodge as supper was prepared, a time when the young men were the first to venture into the trapper camp.

  “They’re a pretty people, don’cha think?” Potts asked as he settled in beside Bass at a large fire.

  “Handsome warriors they make, that they do.”

  Invited to sit around the fires, the Flathead men joined the Americans for supper, then for many cups of hot coffee and much smoking of the pipes that made the circles time and again. And finally the old men showed up out of the darkness, two of them dragging a large drum between them. Setting it down within the firelight’s glow, the two squatted, quickly joined by others who likewise sat cross-legged and removed sturdy drumsticks from their belts.

  One coarsely wrinkled man began to sing at the first thump of the huge drum, the others joining in as the songs and the celebration and the night went on.

  It was near dawn that second morning when Bass and some of the others dragged back to their camp across the creek. He stumbled forward to his knees on the bedding, more weary than he could remember being in a long, long time. Then he collapsed onto the blankets and let out a long sigh.

  “Wolves come back an’ chew up anything else of yer’n, Titus Bass?” Hatcher called out as his head sank back against his saddle.

  “Not that I see, Jack.”

  Hatcher chuckled. “Damn right they didn’t.”

  Then Caleb said, “And they won’t neither—not with us peein’ a line round our camp the way we done.”

  “That what kept the wolves away from our plunder, eh?” Scratch asked.

  “One of these days, maybeso ye’ll believe,” Jack advised as he rolled onto a shoulder and let out a contented sigh.

  “Right now all I wanna believe in is sleep,” Bass replied. “I got cut out of my sleep yesterday and again last night—so I’m aiming to sleep right on through to sundown today.”

  From across their small camp Kinkead asked, “What ’bout the wolves slipping in to chew on your possibles while you’re napping, Scratch?”

  “To hell with wolves. Long as the sonsabitches don’t gnaw on me, I’m sleeping right on through ever’thing.”

  But undisturbed they were not to remain.

  “Blackfoot to the north!”

  It was near midmorning on that third day when the distant voice bellowing the terrible news split into Bass’s hazy dreaming there in a patch of shade where the breeze rustled the brush overhead.

  “Blackfoot got some of our boys pinned down!”

  His mind still numbed with half-baked, interrupted sleep, Bass rolled off his hip and onto his knees, blinking against the glare of bright summer light, trying to focus on the middistance where two horsemen were approaching out of the north, their lathered animals racing along the eastern side of the lake as they bellowed their warning.

  Reluctantly, he joined the rest as they quickly splashed across the stream to stand with the company men as the two riders reined up in a shower of dust and grass clods. Both of them had stripped to the waist in the heat, tying black silk bandannas around their heads.

  Some man on foot called out, “Damn if we didn’t take you for Injuns at first!”

  One of the riders gulped, saying, “We throwed off our clothes to look the Injun when we rode through the Blackfoots what got us surrounded.”

  “Who you fellers with?” Porter demanded as he lunged up to seize hold on one of the reins.

  Brody answered for the dry-mouthed riders, “He’s with Campbell!”

  Someone hollered, “Bob Campbell’s bunch?”

  Brody explained to the anxious group, “Campbell’s brigade was up to Flathead country last winter.” Then he squinted into the bright light, staring right up at the breathless rider. “You boys taken any dead or wounded?”

  Wagging his head, the second rider answered, “Don’t rightly know. There was some thirty of us to start with, I s’pose. Campbell sent us riding soon as we was jumped.”

  “You sartin they’re really Blackfoot?” a man cried out.

  “Nary a man in this company don’t know him Blackfoot from Digger!” someone shouted angrily. “Bob Campbell says they’re Blackfoot, then they’re Blackfoot, by God!”

  “Where?”

  The first rider pointed north. “Fifteen mile, maybe.”

  “That’s a long ride,” Porter replied. “A hard one at full-out too.”

  Brody nodded. “Best we get started, boys! Let’s leave back a dozen or so to stay with camp and the extra animals.”

  “Bring in them horses and mules what we ain’t riding!” Porter ordered.

  Brody turned, his eyes scanning the crowd until he found Mad Jack. “Hatcher! Your bunch planning on throwing in for this fight?”

  “Don’t see why not,” Jack responded. “We ain’t the kind to let Blackfoot have their way with no American. To hell with Bug
’s Boys!”

  An instant and spontaneous roar erupted from the seventy-some trappers knotted around those two weary riders and played-out horses.

  Bass pushed through the throng to reach the knee of one of the horsemen, saying, “Get yourself down and watered. We’ll bring you up a fresh horse afore we’re ready to ride out.”

  “You comin’ with us, Titus Bass?”

  Turning, Scratch found Daniel Potts headed his way, followed by a handful of familiar faces. “You boys riding out to the fight?”

  “No booshway gonna order me to stay back to camp and nursemaid no cavvyyard when there’s Blackfeets to fight! Damn right I’m going!”

  Bass cheered, “I’ll ride with you.”

  “Be quick about it,” Daniel ordered. “I don’t want the others to have the jump on us!”

  Splashing his way across the creek and sprinting into the meadow, Bass hurriedly freed the long halter rope from the iron picket pin he had driven into the ground near their camp, leaped atop the pony’s bare back, and loped it back to his blanket shelter at an urgent trot. After dropping his shooting pouch and horns over his right shoulder, then gathering up his pistol and the fullstock Derringer rifle, Scratch vaulted onto the warm, bare backbone of his saddle horse. This time he would ride far and hard without that secondhand Shoshone snare saddle. Without stirrups, he kicked his heels into the pony’s ribs.

  “Hep! Hep-hawww!”

  By the time the first of the trappers were streaming north along the eastern shore of Sweet Lake, Flathead warriors were mounting up at the edge of their village. Women and children darted here and there, bringing their men shields and bows and quivers filled with war arrows. Everywhere dogs were underfoot, barking and howling, somehow aware of the importance of this moment as the Flathead men quickly completed their personal medicine, got themselves painted and dressed for battle, then sprinted off to fight their ancient enemies.

  What a sight that determined cavalcade made that summer morning! Beneath a brilliant sun the colors seemed all the brighter in the flash of wind-borne feathers and scalp locks and earth paint, the showy glint of old smoothbore muskets and shiny brass tomahawks and fur-wrapped stone war clubs waved high beside those long coup-sticks held aloft in the mad gallop just as any army would carry its hard-won banners before them as it rode against its foe.