Crack in the Sky

by Terry C. Johnston

  “Raised this child’s hair, you brown bastard!”

  Through the gauzy veil of powder smoke Titus watched the warrior spill backward onto the rear flank of his pony, pitching off as the animal bolted, sidestepping and spinning away on its rear legs.

  With his next heartbeat Titus heard the loud, shrill screech of the second horseman as the Indian savagely kicked his pony into action. Pounding his heels into the animal’s ribs, the warrior charged the lone trapper, swinging up the long-handled ax from where it hung just in front of his right leg.

  Bass dropped his rifle at his feet, rocking forward to brace himself, bending at the waist the instant he yanked that huge pistol from his wide leather belt, his left palm dragging back the big hammer. Without consciously aiming he brought the muzzle up just as the warrior crossed those few yards, firing at the black blur leaning off the side of the pony, at that shadow swinging his ax in a great, hissing arc.

  When the bullet struck the horseman in the upper arm, the ax spun loose from his grip. Already on its way, the heavy, bladed weapon began to tumble, careening crazily toward the trapper. Too close and no time to duck now.

  The handle slapped him on the front of his right shoulder as he started to twist aside, knocking Bass off balance, spinning him violently, pitching him on around to the side like one of his sister’s stocking dolls no more than a breath before the warrior leaned completely off the side of the horse, arms outstretched, his legs releasing their grip on the pony as he collided into the white man.

  With his weight the Indian speared Bass into the ground, driving the air from Scratch’s chest in a great explosion. The man immediately jerked back, sweeping a leg over him to straddle the trapper as Titus fought for breath, blinking to clear the star shower from his eyes … realizing the warrior had a knife in his hand and was starting his lunge forward with a cry of blood lust.

  Seizing that thick brown forearm slashing the huge knife downward, Titus braced himself, trying to squirm free beneath the warrior’s weight and those muscular legs pinning him to the slick grass. As he twisted this way and that, Bass suddenly felt the fingers seize his throat like a claw closing down his air supply.

  Remembering how death had loomed at the hands of the Mexican soldier.

  A hot pain spread down across his chest where the Indian squeezed with his knees, where Scratch realized he wasn’t able to draw in another breath—no chance of air getting past the searing agony of that claw shutting down his throat.

  Drops of the Arapaho’s sweat mixed with greasy earth paint plopped onto Scratch’s face as he flung his head back and forth, trying desperately to free himself from the warrior’s grip on his neck right below the jaw. As he arched his back violently, one leg suddenly broke free and he flung himself up against the warrior. Scratch drove the knee into his enemy, then a second, and a third time, feeling the warrior’s grip on his throat weaken with each blow.

  At the same moment he drove his knee up, Bass relaxed his own grip on that brown wrist … fooling the warrior.

  Reacting immediately, the Indian yanked back the arm clutching the knife. Already Scratch was driving the arm back with his own weight and with the might in his two arms, hurling the top of the handle right into the Arapaho’s temple with a resounding thunk. The large round base of the elk antler used for the handle split the flesh, instantly spraying blood over the trapper. When the warrior jerked in surprise and pain, Titus yanked the brown arm forward, then hurtled it backward again, this time into the corner of the eye socket.

  At that moment the strong legs began to loosen from their spider-lock around his middle. He savagely drove the knife handle into the bloody face a third time—smashing the forehead just above the eye. The skin opened up, oozing at first; then blood gushed from the ragged wound.

  Weaving a moment, the Indian gurgled something as his head bobbed back loosely as if it hung by disconnected wires. Scratch twisted to the side, tearing himself free of the claw at his throat, spinning himself loose, releasing the knife arm before he rolled away across the grass.

  Tumbling onto his knees, he vaulted forward, leaping onto the warrior’s back just as the bloody face spun around. Bass seized the wrist of that hand holding the knife, squeezing, struggling from behind the Indian to jab the weapon back into the enemy’s belly, to rake it across his chest, spear it deep between the ribs. With every attempt the Indian fought to control the blade, yanking it upward. His own undoing.

  With a sharp blow the knife handle smashed against the warrior’s jaw, and all fight went out of him. Like a wet sack of oats he spilled to the side, his eyes rolling back—out cold.

  Rocking to his knees, Bass grabbed a handful of the black hair, jerked the face toward him, and drove his fist into the sharp nose. Again. Then a final blow of fury as he tasted the sting of bile that had been at the back of his throat all along.

  Standing at last over his enemy, the trapper kicked the warrior in the ribs, then the gut, and finally drove his moccasin into the man’s jaw. The Indian gurgled on his blood, his jaw moving slightly as if trying to speak.

  The breeze murmured through the leaves.

  Alarmed, Scratch immediately knelt, prying the knife from the warrior’s hand and whirled in a fighting crouch, expecting the approach of another.

  But he found himself alone on the creekbank. Save for the two fallen warriors, Bass was alone. The only sounds around him were the chuffing of the animals, the hammer of his heart against his ribs … and that breeze slipping through the aspen overhead, calling out his name.

  Whispering it in celebration.

  Carrying his name forth in victory.

  * Sign for Southern Arapaho.

  * Sign for Northern Arapaho, symbolizing the pockmarks scarring the chest of long-ago chief who had survived a bout of smallpox.

  13

  Ol’ Make-’Em-Come had done its work slick as scum on blood soup.

  That much was plain to see when Bass hurried over to the warrior he had blown off the back of the pony.

  Not all that much left of the man’s face, what with the way the soft lead ball had flattened as it smashed right on through the bottom of the jaw. Nearly all of the lower half of the Arapaho’s face was gone in a shredded, bloody pulp. Only a small part of the jawbone and some slivers of flesh still hung from the front of the skull below the hole where most of his nose had been.

  Little wonder, Scratch thought. The bastard was sitting no more than five times the length of his fullstock from him when he pulled the trigger.

  The wonder of it was slowly beginning to soak in.

  His eyes crawled on down the muscular frame of the younger man. Perhaps somewhere in his midtwenties, no older than thirty, for certain. Bits of dried grass and dust furred his dark and sweaty body, fuzzing what bloody smears were left of his war paint. A strong man.

  Suddenly Titus thought how outsized he would have been if he had been conscious enough to make a fight of it that day after being wounded and knocked from his horse.

  Instead, the warrior had figured him for dead, taken the prized topknot, and left the white man where he lay beside the river.

  Funny how things worked out …

  Cautiously, Titus looked around him, turning this way … then that, his eyes roaming, carefully scanning the horizon for any movement, any life … any crack in the veil between this world and that.

  Maybeso there was some spirit, some power, some being watching over and protecting him back then. Watching over him even now.

  He tore his eyes away from the tree line behind him, listening to the hush of the wind creeping through the quakies. And stared back at the Arapaho he had killed. The man who had left him as good as dead.

  Something decorated with fringe and beads lay partially hidden by the warrior’s body. Bass planted the toe of his moccasin under a hip and gave a shove. There at the waist hung a long bag looped through the side of the man’s belt—something on the order of eight or so inches wide, it lay there twisted in the fall
of the body. Bass knelt, turning it over, feeling the large brass beads and the strands of thick hair as he pulled it free.

  Brown hair. Loose, wavy curls. A white man’s. There was no mistaking that.

  With the bag draped over one hand, he brought his fingers up and touched the curls hanging at the side of his head. Then rubbed the scalp and his own hair at the same time.

  This was his hair.

  Those brown, wavy locks more than a foot long clinging to that shriveled circle of a topknot were crudely stitched to the front of that belt bag. Like some of the fringe, many strands of the hair had been gathered and decorated with tarnished brass beads.

  He shoved aside two strands of animal sinew loosely stitching the scalp to the bag and slipped a single finger beneath the dried flesh. It was hardened to a rawhide stiffness with age. Nothing much left of his topknot now but this coup of a dead warrior.

  He gently caressed those long waves of brown hair lying across his palm. This scalp had nearly cost him his life. And it might well have saved his life too.

  So Bass stared at the dead man for a long time before he flipped the body over with his foot. With the warrior resting on his stomach, Scratch carefully laid the long fringed bag across the dusty small of the bare back. He squatted beside the Indian’s shoulder, picking up that big knife he had wrestled off the second warrior. Looping his fingers through the long black hair, Scratch tugged back on the head, laying the big blade against the bare flesh of the forehead an inch below the hairline.

  There his hand froze a matter of heartbeats, his breath coming quicker.

  Suddenly he decided to lay the Indian’s knife aside, placing it atop the buckskin bag. Instead, Titus pulled the head back again and slipped his old skinning knife from its scabbard at the back of his belt.

  Only fitting, he figured.

  What he clutched in his hand was the only knife left him, back when this warrior took nearly everything from him. Its curved skinning blade had been sharpened so much by ol’ Gut Washburn that the metal had gradually been worn down over years of use until it was no more than an inch in width.

  Laying his right index finger along the top flat of the blade, Bass again pressed the sharpened edge on the warrior’s brow. Slicing through that thin layer of flesh, he quickly dragged the old skinning knife back toward the temple, right on through the middle of the right ear, and after tugging aside the warrior’s long hair, Bass finished that first cut just below the hairline at the nape of the neck. Yanking the long hair aside, he pulled the head over so it rested on the right cheek. Again he dragged the knife from the brow, down across the middle of the left ear, and on back to the incision he had left at the base of the skull.

  This would be a full scalp, complete with the tops of his dead enemy’s ears. No mere topknot as this warrior had taken from him. This day was clearly the doing of strong medicine.

  Bracing his knee at the back of the Arapaho’s neck, Bass gathered the hair in both hands and started pulling from the brow back. Slowly, the scalp began to give way, peeling from the skull with a crickling sound as it tore loose, tops of the ears and all, until there wasn’t much flesh left on the bloody cranium—nothing much left on the dead man’s head at all.

  Standing again, Scratch stared down at the scalp hanging limp from his hand, then gazed at his own scalp sewn to that belt bag while the warrior’s dripped the last of its blood and sticky gore across the toes of his moccasins. With the flush of a sudden impulse he began to whirl the fresh scalp vigorously round and round at the end of his arm, slinging off the last of the thick fluid and blood from the drying flesh.

  Remembering how he had awakened in that thick, hot fog. How he had watched the Indian scraping his scalp with the edge of his knife through the blood oozing into his eyes.

  There and then Bass knelt beside the Arapaho’s body, just as the warrior had knelt beside him on that river bank so long ago. Laying the whole scalp, flesh side up, atop one of his thighs, Titus began to carefully drag the side of the skinning knife’s sharp blade back and forth across the flesh, scraping it clean the way he fleshed an animal’s hide.

  Twilight continued to deepen as he worked at his task, the air cooling until he finally stood again, turned, and looked in the direction where he had left the second Arapaho.

  Unable to see the warrior, Bass narrowed his eyes, fingers tightening on the scalp. And he listened.

  The son of a bitch was trying to crawl away through the grass, slipping into the buckbrush bordering the creek. Quiet as the Injun was, Bass still heard him. Swapping the scalp to his left hand, taking the knife into his right, Titus moved along the creekbank, finding the warrior’s horse grazing on the far side of some bramble. Then he saw him.

  “You fixing to make it to your pony?”

  In the middle of pushing himself across the grass, the warrior jerked his head around, discovering the trapper coming up behind him. His eyes instantly filled with a dangerous mix of fear and hatred, the Arapaho tried to lunge forward in escape, grunting in pain as he dragged his broken ribs across the ground.

  “Come back here, nigger,” Bass growled, slamming his moccasin down on the warrior’s ankle.

  Clearly in agony, the Arapaho attempted to twist back far enough to grab hold of the trapper’s foot, to swat it off his leg. Amused at that effort, Titus cocked his foot back and slammed it under the Indian’s jaw. The warrior crumpled back on the grass, groaning low as blood oozed from his lips.

  “Easy, now—I ain’t gonna kill you,” Titus said quietly as he knelt, realizing how much it hurt where the ax had smacked his shoulder minutes ago. “That’d be too damned easy, don’t you see?”

  He leaned down and rolled the warrior onto his back. The eyes fluttered a little, as if the man as struggling to stay conscious.

  “I wan’cha alive, you red bastard. Just enough alive so you can earn your miserable life back.”

  With that he raised his right foot into the air, momentarily suspending it directly over the warrior’s lower leg, then slammed the foot down with savage force halfway between knee and ankle, shattering both bones.

  The sudden, excruciating pain wrenched the warrior off the ground in an arch of agony—screeching. Half-coagulated blood spewed from his mouth as he sputtered some garbled oaths, whimpering in pain and spitting out pieces of his teeth and blood to clear his mouth.

  “Good,” Scratch muttered as he knelt beside the warrior’s head. “I want you wide-awake for what comes next.”

  As the Arapaho writhed, Bass held the scalp inches above his face and shoved the bloody skinning knife right under the man’s nose—pressing up, up, up as crimson drops beaded along the blade. The warrior quickly stopped writhing.

  “That’s better,” he said as he got to his feet. “Now you’re coming with me.”

  Laying the skinning knife in his left hand with the scalp, Bass filled his right with the warrior’s hair, dragging up the man’s head and slowly bringing the body around in a wide circle to begin slowly, foot by foot, tugging the Arapaho’s deadweight through the grass. Towing him back toward the dead scalper.

  Each time he tugged the warrior forward with a lunge, the Indian grunted low in his throat, a guttural sound of deep pain that always ended with a quiet, shrill whimper. Then Bass would drag him another three or four feet through the tangle of grass, the man’s head suspended by his long hair, and he would groan in pain again. On and on, until they crossed better than sixty feet of creekbank to stop at the outflung arm of the dead warrior.

  “This here’s the son of a bitch what scalped me,” Scratch told him, releasing the man’s hair.

  Then he knelt where the wounded warrior could watch his pantomime of removing the Indian’s scalp. That done, Bass reached up and took the blue bandanna from his head, turning slightly to point to his own bare skull—tapping the bare bone to be certain the wounded man understood. Next he pointed his gnarled finger to that brown hair stitched to the dead warrior’s belt bag. Back to his skull his fin
ger went a second time, then once more to the bag. Over and over that blood-crusted finger moved slowly as he continued to gaze straight into the Arapaho’s hate-filled eyes.

  At last he saw something register there, some understanding, perhaps a recognition that only increased the pain and fury in the eyes.

  After tugging on his bandanna, Bass held up two fingers. Then he positioned both hands in front of him at waist level, palms and fingers pointed up, fingers waving gently as he raised them slowly.

  Again he signaled two.

  And once more he made the grass sign for “summer.”

  The Indian’s eyes came away from Scratch’s hands to meet the trapper’s eyes. Sure enough sign the warrior understood.

  “That’s right. Two summers ago.”

  Then he tapped the end of his finger on the dead Indian’s chest. And when the wounded man’s eyes came back to his, Bass said, “This nigger. That’s right. Two summers ago, this here red nigger.”

  As before, he used both hands to sign. Extending only the forefinger on the right hand, Titus held out his left arm, the first two fingers on that hand pointing down, symbolizing the legs of a man. Now he struck that man repeatedly with the right forefinger.

  Coup.

  “Good. This friend of your’n counted coup on me two summers ago. You savvy that, you bastard?”

  He signed all of it over again.

  Two.

  Summers.

  Counted coup.

  Then he ripped off the bandanna a second time, pointing to the bare skull bone. And finally to that patch of long, wavy brown hair loosely sewn to the buckskin bag.

  When those black, luminous eyes locked back on his, Bass resumed signing. He tapped his own breast with his right hand, then placed the back of that hand against his forehead, the first two fingers extended and held apart, slightly curved. He raised the hand slowly, moving it round and round in a simulated rise of smoke from a fire.