Crack in the Sky

by Terry C. Johnston

  “Ye be back afore morning?” Hatcher cried.

  But before Bass himself could answer, Elbridge yelled, “Shit, Jack! His blankets and robes is gone!”

  “Eegod! Ye got yerself a little hidey place picked out, don’t ye?” Jack asked before Scratch could utter a word.

  He was really beginning to feel the numbing tingle radiating across his forehead now that he was standing, doing all he could to remain standing. “My night to let the wolf loose, boys!”

  “See you tomorry,” Caleb replied with a slur and a wave.

  He weaved past their merry fire as some of the rest grabbed their crotches and hooted profanely. An exuberant Hatcher blew him a kiss before Bass turned toward the banks of the Popo Agie.

  That’s when he heard the loud voices of men mixing with the lighter giggles from women. Instead of wading on into the creek, Scratch decided to stay with the east bank. After crossing less than fifty yards he came upon an open piece of ground within the willow and cottonwood, where more than two dozen people milled about in the light of the rising half-moon. Trappers sauntered among the warriors and squaws who had come across the Popo Agie with one thought in mind: no two ways about it, there were treasures to be bartered from those white men hungry to lay with their dark-skinned women. Cloth and coffee, beads and bells, knives and awls, vermilion and ribbons.

  And all these beaver men wanted was a few minutes’ time to rut with a woman!

  Were there no females back in the land of these white men?

  For a few minutes Scratch stood shuffle-footed on the fringe of that merry gathering, watching the company men and a handful of free trappers mosey in and out through the group. They circled, appraising, then circled again, stopping now and then to have themselves a close inspection of this or that woman beneath the moonlight. He ought to have himself a look, Titus decided, just so the others wouldn’t pick over all the best there was before he got around to choosing.

  The warrior warily watched the white man approach, saying something quietly to his woman from the corner of his mouth. She nodded as she looked Bass up and down. Then smiled faintly. He set down the cup of brown Mexican sugar at his feet and asked How much? in sign, ending with that simple gesture of male readiness: a stiffened index finger on one hand sliding back and forth between the wide-spread Y of the first two fingers on the other hand.

  “A knife and some powder too?” he asked when the warrior gave his answer.

  He showed the man the calico, but it was the woman who fingered it with approval.

  “Listen—you go and offer ’em too much,” one of the company men growled as he lunged up to Bass’s elbow, “gonna make it miserable on the rest of us here on out!”

  “This free man giving these red whores too much?” grumbled another who lumbered up to stand at the other elbow.

  In the meantime the squaw knelt and retrieved the cup from the ground. Sniffing it first, she plunged a finger into the sugar.

  “Lookee thar’. He offers her a bunch of that smooth cloth, and see? She’s took her a shine to that cup of his,” the first man snorted. “What’s in that damn cup?”

  “Sugar.”

  “Shit—you’re giving ’em sugar!” the second trapper shrieked, and turned away, throwing his hands up in disgust. “Better get your whore quick now, boys. That free man’s riding up the price of a man’s poke but good!”

  The first warrior had snatched the cup from his wife and stiffly handed it back to Bass, wagging his head and pulling the woman away toward the other side of the clearing. Pursing his lips in frustration, Scratch began to circle again, feeling the glares of the company men hot between his shoulder blades. A second time around the glen he stopped before another warrior who had a woman stationed at either arm.

  “You have two wives?” he asked as he watched the plain-faced woman bend to retrieve the cup.

  But the warrior signed that he had one wife. The other—and he gestured to the woman who licked the brown sugar from the finger she had plunged into the tin cup—was the sister of his wife.

  “How much you want for her?” Scratch asked aloud as he signed, then indicated the warrior’s wife. She was clearly the better-looking of the two.

  The Shoshone put his arm on his wife’s shoulder and shook his head. Next he laid his arm on his sister-in-law’s shoulder and pointed to the cloth on Bass’s shoulder. And the tin cup. And then he used a finger to tap against the butt of the new pistol Titus had stuffed in his sash.

  “No,” Scratch said emphatically.

  The warrior glowered, turning both the women away so quickly, Titus had to lunge to snatch his tin cup back. But he promptly stepped in front of the warrior and stood his ground, forcing the trio to stop.

  “Here.”

  He handed the cup to the sister-in-law and freed the antelope-skin bag stuffed beneath his belt. From it he pulled a handful of the big pony beads. First he pointed to the beads, then to the cup the squaw held, and finally to the calico.

  “That’s too goddamned much to pay for a quick hump in the brush!” a voice snarled somewhere close behind him.

  Ignoring the grumblings of those around him, Bass inched his hand closer to the wife, holding the beads right under her chin, then slowly moved the hand so he could hold them right under the nose of her sister.

  “It ain’t too much for a goddamned woman,” Titus said, flinging his words over his shoulder at those behind him, the men he knew were watching his negotiations.

  The Indian shook his head again, tightening his arms around the shoulders of the two women and saying something to his wife’s sister. She handed the cup of sugar back to Titus.

  “You ain’t getting my pistol,” Bass snapped at the warrior. “Now, here’s a fair trade.”

  But the Indian pulled the women away again. This time he let them go, standing right there watching their backs, his hands filled with beads and sugar, his heart despairing.

  “Serves you right, nigger!”

  He turned on a group of them sniggering at him.

  “That’s right,” another bawled. “Serves you right for stacking up the price of a hump that’a way.”

  From the corner of his eye Bass saw them moving his way: an older warrior, leading four women. Halting in front of the white trapper, the wrinkled Shoshone with an expressive face stepped aside and gestured in turn to each of the four. Scratch quickly appraised them in the silver light.

  “No men,” the man signed.

  Maybeso he means they ain’t got no husbands.

  Setting down the cup and dumping the colorful beads back into the small skin pouch, he asked, “No men?”

  “Killed,” the warrior replied with his hands. “Rubbed out by Blackfeet.”

  “Your daughters?”

  He nodded, then spoke in Shoshone. “Show me your beads.”

  Handing the old man the pouch, Bass watched the Shoshone pour out some of the beads and inspect them in his palm. Then he held them out so his four daughters could appraise them.

  His deep, dark eyes gazed into the white man’s. “The cup?”

  Bass picked up the tin and waited while the man licked the tip of his finger, dipped it in the Mexican sugar, then licked the fingertip once more.

  “I got the cloth too,” Scratch said in English, taking the strip of calico from his shoulder as the grumbling from the white men around him grew louder.

  One of the women stepped forward, and immediately a second, both of them fingering the cloth. But the old man motioned them back suddenly, then nodded. Moving aside, he gestured again to his four daughters in turn, moving his arm from the trapper to each woman as if asking that a decision be made before a price was negotiated.

  The oldest looked a lot like Fawn, and the youngest, a mere slip of a girl, looked very similar to Slays in the Night’s daughter. That one couldn’t be any older than fourteen, maybe fifteen, summers. But the warrior had said they all had been married. An immediate tug at his heart made him feel sorry for the girl, for
the old man too. He hoped she would not be chosen this night … but realized that was muddle-headed thinking. She’d likely be the first to go to one of the others, a man who might not treat her near as kindly as he would.

  Then he wondered if he was feeling sorry for her, or if he was trying to talk himself into picking her instead of the others.

  “How many summers?” he asked.

  “Seventeen.”

  Titus peered closer at the girl. She had to be younger than that. Why, Amy Whistler was that same age when she and he …

  So Bass repeated the number. “Seventeen.”

  With a nod the old man reached over and inched the young woman forward as if about to consummate the deal.

  Jehoshaphat! That’s half my age!

  Still clutching the skin pouch, the old man upended the bag and poured out all the beads into the hands of another woman standing behind the youngest, who kept her eyes fixed on the ground. Then the warrior gave the pouch back to the trapper at the same time he took the tin cup from Bass’s hand. His final gesture was to take the folded strip of cloth from where it hung over the white man’s arm—leaving Scratch with nothing more to hold.

  In a whisper the young woman turned slightly and said something to the man. Instead, it was the oldest of her sisters who answered curtly. Chastised, the young woman turned back, glanced up at Bass for a brief moment, nodding her head at him before her eyes returned to the ground at her feet.

  Shooing the trapper away, the old warrior turned on his heel, pulling a soft pouch from his belt. Spreading its top and holding it out as he shuffled away, he had the oldest of the sisters pour the beads into it while the other two women took turns licking sugar from the fingers they repeatedly plunged into the cup. With his bag poked back under his belt, the old Shoshone unfurled the long strip of cloth and draped it around his own shoulders, swirling this way, then that, admiring it on himself in the moonlight.

  “Gonna make himself a shirt, I’d reckon,” Scratch said to no one at all.

  “Damn you, free trapper!”

  Turning slightly, he found that group of company men glaring at him anew.

  “That’s right—we oughtta cut your goddamned oysters off right here and now!” a second one bellowed menacingly. “Then you’d never go daubing no Injun gals again!”

  For a moment he measured them in the moonlight limned through puffy clouds embroidered with silvery borders. If they meant him real harm, they wouldn’t be blustering—he figured as his heart began to beat faster with this challenge, uncertain if it did so out of anticipation for the woman, or from the danger the four company men presented with their swagger.

  That’s likely what it was, he decided. Nothing more than strut and swagger. Nonetheless, he laid his left hand on the handle of his knife for a moment while he wrapped his right hand around the curved butt of the new pistol. Squaring his shoulders as the four continued their hooting and catcalls, Bass turned and grabbed the woman by an elbow. She let him guide her through the rest of the Indians and trappers crowding the glen.

  And she did not protest as he led her back along that east bank of the Popo Agie until they reached the bower he had constructed over his sleeping robes. He prayed she understood what was expected of her when he came to a halt and let go of her arm. For a moment she watched him as he freed the knot in the wide, colorful sash, then laid the pistol on it near his blankets, just within reach.

  The minute he sank to the ground and began to untie his moccasins, she flung her own blanket aside, then seized hold of the fringed bottom of her hide dress with both hands—pulling it up over her thighs, her bare hips, the flat of her belly as he stared transfixed at that dark wedge of hair there at the crown of her legs … on up she dragged the dress, pulling it inside out over her shoulders as her small breasts bounced free and he swallowed hard, suddenly so dry-mouthed he could barely swallow—watching every shimmy of her flesh as the woman slipped the dress down one arm, then another, and finally tugged it off over her head.

  Sweeping both hands down the length of her long, loose black hair before she tossed it over her shoulder, the woman knelt onto the rumple of blankets he had prepared, folding her own neatly at the side of the bed, then laid her skin dress upon it. At last she sank onto her back, and gazed over at the white man staring mule-eyed and slack-jawed at her provocative, bare-skinned beauty.

  Scratch sensed the urgency suddenly seize hold of him, realizing any self-control was no longer possible. More quickly than she had, he wrenched up the bottom of his leather shirt and ripped it from his arms, yanking it over his head, flinging it into the brush. Where the shirt landed, it mattered not.

  Reaching beneath the front flap of his breechclout, Titus’s fingers flew at the knot tied in the wide rawhide whang that secured the wide strip of wool around his waist. That whang came whipping off in one hand at the same time the other hand ripped the breechclout from between his legs. He heaved both of them into the surrounding brush.

  Still wearing his leggings, Scratch knelt at her knees. She spread her legs and held her arms up to him, grasping one of his wrists and pulling him toward her gently as she reached out with a hand, fingers searching for his manhood.

  He nearly choked on readiness when she wrapped her hand around him, guiding him down, down, then forward, ever so gently as the woman sought to place him against her just so.

  Lying here now with the woman as his heart continued to slow, Titus remembered how she had half closed her eyes while he had driven himself into her. Not sure if that had been pleasure for her, or merely pain with his fury to plant himself fully, completely within her moist warmth.

  Barely opening his eyes from time to time as they lay together, Scratch became aware that time was passing only because of the journey taken by that half-moon limned behind the silver-framed cotton puffs in its climb from there to there across the cloudy sky. He wasn’t really aware he had been sleeping until he felt her rustle beside him, bringing him fully awake.

  For a moment she peered over a shoulder at him, her narrow, naked back only inches from his face; then she reached out to drag her dress into her lap. As she began to pull the hide garment right side out, Bass propped himself up on an elbow and studied what he could see of her, finding himself stirred once more. Just as the woman was about to stab her arms into the sleeves of the dress, he seized her, twisting her down onto the blankets.

  In her first words to him, these spoken in a low, husky voice, she began to give him hell, shaking her head emphatically as he flung the blanket off himself and rolled over to position himself between her legs. With one arm shoving upward against his chest, the woman clamped her other hand over herself so he could not enter.

  “Now what you doing that for?” he groaned, rocking back on his knees in distress, his hardened flesh wagging forlornly.

  Pushing herself backward, the woman slid far enough away from him that she could sit up and reach for the blanket, which she yanked into her lap.

  “You was all for me crawling on you afore,” he groaned, dejection thick in his voice. “Why not now when I can make it last a little longer for us both?”

  After a pause she shook her head, then motioned that she intended to head over to her village across the creek.

  He tried to inch forward, eager to grab one or the other of those small breasts. “Lemme crawl on you one more time … then you get on back to your camp.”

  Curling her legs up defensively, she put out an arm to hold him at bay. Then she made the sign for no trade.

  “No … no trade?”

  For a moment he was confused; then it struck him. “What I give your father was for just the first time, that it?”

  She continued to stare at him. At least she wasn’t moving to get away.

  Good enough for the first time—all right, he thought. If he was going to convince her to spread her legs for him a second time, Bass figured he was going to have to come up with something to give her that she would not have to share with her older
sisters. Something for her and her alone.

  Turning to stare at the free trappers’ camp some sixty yards away in an attempt to divine what he could offer her, Bass heard her moving of a sudden. When he whirled back, he found her dragging her dress over her head and arms.

  “No, stay,” he begged in desperation, his hardened flesh still insistent, his heart in despair of finding something to offer her.

  But then he lunged to the side, flinging back the flap on his shooting pouch to dig around inside until his fingers found one of the awls he had traded for that afternoon. Scratch scooted back on his knees to present it to her in his flat palm.

  After a moment of consideration she took it from his hand, tapped a finger pad against its sharp tip, and considered his offer a moment longer … before she laid it back in his hand and went back to pulling the dress down over her breasts.

  Jehoshaphat! What did he have that would make her eyes shine enough to lay back down for him!

  Glory!

  He dived back at his shooting pouch, stuffed a hand into the pocket at the back, and swept out a long length of the wool ribbon generally used to bind an edge on blankets. This he held out in his hand for her to inspect.

  By that time she wasn’t watching him—rising to her knees so she could tug the dress down over her hips when she suddenly spotted the selvage ribbon and froze. Despairing that it was not enough, he moved that open hand closer to her, bringing it up beneath her chin so she could see just what it was that he offered her. The woman lifted the narrow strip of wool from his palm, inspecting it in the moonlight. Then shook her head and dropped it back across his hand.