Crack in the Sky

by Terry C. Johnston

  After hollowing out that hole on the north side of the Yellowstone not far from that huge, flat-topped sandstone monolith that stood on the river’s south bank, he went out that third morning and cut some willow branches, a mile downstream where they might not be missed and arouse suspicion. Then he chopped up some five-foot lengths of cottonwood deadfall and dragged them down into the hole, where he laid them out side by side to form a solid floor. On them his supplies would rest up and out of the dirt and mud in the event any water seeped into his cache. After a first layer of willow was stood against the walls and across the cottonwood floor, Bass started down with the plews that he would not need to pack around until he was headed south for rendezvous next summer.

  When he had all those autumn pelts and a little extra plunder secured in the cache, Scratch backed out through the neck of the hole and shoved in a last half-dozen leafy willow branches to finish off the lining of that shaft. Up on the ground once more, he jammed a cross-hatch network of willow limbs across the narrow neck of the cavern until it could support the replacement of the sod he had carefully removed in four large pieces when he had begun his excavation two days before.

  The final act was then to start his supper fire right on the top of that entrance to the cache, hoping to obliterate as much evidence as he could. As the sun came up the next morning and he prepared to ride north for the Judith to trap on into the early winter, Scratch took note of two nearby landmarks one last time: the position of the two big cottonwoods and that outcropping of red sandstone rock, in addition to how many paces his treasure lay from the downed tree, how many paces up from the bank of the narrow creek.

  Early next spring when his winter in Crow country was drawing to a close, he would come back here to dig up his autumn’s take and those few supplies he felt he could do without. But for now he had put the Yellowstone at his back and turned his nose north for the Judith, setting his course for that ground where the sow grizzly had forever changed everything between two men.

  He brought the horse, Hannah, and the packhorses to a halt and sighed in the silence of this place.

  Collars of old snow clung back in the shady places there in the copse of trees rising on the west bank of the river.

  “It was good enough for us back then, girl,” he said quietly as he swung off his horse and rubbed his thighs quickly, “so it ought’n do for us now.”

  As much as he wanted to walk down to the riverbank then and there, Bass resisted and instead busied himself with pulling the loads from the backs of the animals, removing saddles and blankets and pads from them all, leading them one by one toward a small clearing where the cool autumn nights were beginning to brown the last of the tall grass. He secured the forelegs of the last of the three with twisted rawhide hobbles, rubbed each animal down with tufts of sage, then turned back to see to his camp. After resetting the firestones he and Asa had used there last spring, Scratch went in search of firewood, forced to look for more than a half mile in any direction before he found enough to last him through the coming two nights. It was plain that McAfferty had cleared the nearby ground of every last scrap of deadfall that would burn as he kept his vigil over the mauled and mutilated Titus Bass.

  Then beside the fire pit he plopped down a hindquarter of the antelope he had shot that morning. With enough firewood laid in, and his bedding spread out, the time had come to fetch some water from the river bank. Snatching up the bail of his small cast-iron kettle, Scratch took a deep breath and started for the willows that lined the Judith a few yards off through the tall brush blanketing the meadow.

  On the far side of the river the beaver had been at work for years without count. Those industrious creatures had backed up part of the river into some low bottomland, where they had constructed at least half a hundred mud-and-branch lodges. He spotted some two dozen of the flat-tails still swimming about in the shallow waters or at work on the trunks of nearby trees. And there, off to his left, was the narrow strip of sandbar lying beneath the sharp cutbank, at least what remained of it after the spring floods had uprooted huge sections of the river bottom and carved away large slabs of the bank, relocating them downstream.

  Scratch wasn’t sure at first, but that spot some twenty yards to his left had a familiar feel about it—what with the gentle curve of the river, the overhanging vegetation, that small copse of trees on the far bank.

  He and McAfferty had been gone from here about the time the snow-melt was gorging all the streams and creeks and tiny rivulets that fed the Judith, swelling the river in its wide channel—well beyond the level of the sandbar. And with the way this land dried out at the end of each summer, that strip of ground at the bottom of the cutbank was once again exposed here in these chilly days as winter sank ever southward from the arctic.

  Halfway there he grew pretty sure. After another half-dozen steps he was certain. Although the Judith had deposited some sand and native silt, along with some limbs and roots and assorted river trash around the remains—that big a carcass could only be but one of two creatures. Either a buffalo, or a grizzly.

  And this skull plainly wasn’t huge and wide, nor did it bear a healthy set of horns.

  No. That was the skull of a grizzly.

  His veins ran cold of a sudden. And his belly crimped the way it did when he had gone the better part of a day without feeding. His mouth went dry and pasty, almost the way it had with his ordeal down in the desert of Apache country.

  Predators had come and picked the bones all but clean before, perhaps since, the spring floods. A mountain man would call it high meat. A revolting victual Asa said the Mandans loved to eat on the high Missouri—meat gone bad … so decomposed it had liquefied enough that the Indians could spoon it out of the rotting carcasses of buffalo floating down the flood-swollen Missouri. When there was no end to rich, tender red meat a man could find on the hoof, why would anyone consider that putrid, stinking, worm-infested slime a delicacy?

  In revulsion Titus swallowed his gorge back down and took two steps closer to the skeleton. Then a final step that brought him right to its side, awash in memory. Snatches of recall, tattered shreds of recollections: where he had been when he had fired his pistol, when he had rammed the stake into her chest, where he likely landed when she pounced on him and blotted out the sky; and … could he remember anything at all of where he’d been when McAfferty pulled him out from beneath the dead sow?

  Just beyond the bones. There.

  Bass stepped over, stopped. Trembling slightly.

  It was almost like standing there and looking down on … on his own grave.

  Had it not been for Asa, he would have died right there.

  For a moment he fought the sting of tears and looked up and down the riverbank until he realized he could not stifle the sob.

  Bass sank to his knees in the hard, frozen sand beside the grizzly carcass. Put out his hand. And laid it on the huge shoulder blade.

  “You and me both, we was in the wrong place at the wrong time,” he said quietly. “If it been just the two of us—you’d won that day. If it’d been just me …”

  Then he suddenly thought of the two cubs, orphaned the moment their mother had lunged out of the willows after them, having scented danger in the smell of a man who had blundered into the midst of their play. Bears had ’em a mighty, mighty strong nose.

  And he knew in the marrow of him he could have been a quarter of a mile away, even a half mile or more … and it would have made no difference. He and that bear had been destined to bump up against one another on this very ground.

  Scooting around on his knees, he leaned forward, and there beside the bear’s skull Scratch smoothed out a circle of sand some two feet across. At the edge of that crude circle he stuck some small twigs he broke off a chunk of driftwood to mark the four directions of the wind. The he pulled his tomahawk from his belt and used the back of the blade to break loose the sun-bleached skull from the top of the spine, setting it in the middle of his circle.

  Squatt
ing at the edge of this crude altar and crossing his legs, Bass dragged up his belt pouch and pulled out a twist of Billy Sublette’s trade tobacco, laying it atop the skull. Using his skinning knife, he cut a little of the dry leaf from the twist and chopped it up fine enough to stuff down a pipe bowl. Setting the pouch, twist, and knife aside, Bass pulled his much-used clay pipe from its pocket in his shooting pouch, and stuffed it with those shreds of tobacco.

  He dragged his dirty fingers beneath each eye and smeared away the hot tears, then stuffed his hand back into his shooting pouch to pull out his strike-a-light tin. From it he took a piece of black char cloth, a small chunk of flint, and the large curl of fire steel. Holding the flint and char in his left hand, he hit the stone with sharp downward strikes, sending sparks into the charred cotton where the embers smoldered until he brought them to his lips, blowing on them gently. Over these tiny glowing dots of heat he laid a small shred of dried tinder and blew some more until the tinder caught. Laying the glowing tinder over the top of the bowl, he sucked steadily until the coals licked through the dry tobacco, and his pipe was lit.

  First a puff to each of the four directions, then one to the cold, cloudless blue sky overhead, and some final smoke he blew into the sacred circle he had smoothed before him.

  That done, he stared off at the nearby bluffs and the distant hills, feeling the sinking track of the sun as he smoked, and thought, and felt what this ground had to tell him. What it yet had to teach him.

  When he finally looked back down into that circle, Scratch put out his left hand and laid the fingers atop the bear’s skull.

  “Give me the power of this animal,” he asked in a quiet voice, feeling more humble than ever before in his life.

  “Because it died here, I could live,” Titus went on in a sob-choked whisper. “Make the rest of my days as strong as they can be because you give me a second chance here.”

  Then he puffed some more on the pipe, drawing in each breath deep, like a prayer in itself, feeling the smoke course deep into his lungs where he held it before he exhaled. And when the tobacco had all been consumed, he turned the bowl over and knocked out the ashes on the top of the skull. With his fingers he smeared the black and gray into the stark white bone, forming a large, dark circle.

  That circle, and the circle of this sand altar, both were symbolic of the circle he realized was his own story. People, places, events—they were all to be experienced by him for a reason in the constant turn in the seasons of his life. He had been drawn here, compelled to venture this close to Blackfoot country for a good reason he now sensed he could understand.

  While he could not fathom what lured Asa McAfferty to go where he had gone, something told Scratch that the white-head’s journey was of a purpose … and Titus felt at peace with that. While McAfferty believed he was directed to go here and there by God, Bass believed people moved in and out of one another’s lives for reasons they might not know at those very moments.

  Come a day soon, perhaps, Bass figured he would understand why he and Asa had had their time together, why they had shared those terrible tribulations and bloody battles, why they had both come to know it was time to part from one another. Maybe one day he would understand about McAfferty—but not until he understood more about the workings of the mysterious, the ways of the spirit world.

  So here at last, here beside this sand altar and the remains of the huge creature that had almost killed him, Titus Bass discovered an inner serenity despite his not knowing.

  One day he might well sort out the mysteries of life. But for now, he was at peace with it.

  He’d follow the sonsabitches all winter if he had to.

  One thing was for certain: their village couldn’t be all that far away.

  And … they were cocky bastards too. They didn’t even give a red piss that they were leaving a good trail for him to follow.

  After all, they were on horseback. And they had left him afoot.

  Alone, and on foot here as winter deepened its bone-numbing cold, and the horizon far to the west threatened to snow in another day or so.

  Whoever they were, the red niggers had stolen in to make off with Hannah and the horses a few hours back. In those last seconds Bass heard them whooping as they swept down on the animals, as he was thrashing his way out of his blankets and robes, grabbing his weapons, and sprinting toward the patch of grass where he had picketed the critters.

  Beneath the silvery light of that half-moon he made out four riders, then a fifth as they loped away, driving his three animals ahead of them—still whooping, all flushed with their success.

  “Five of ’em, against one stupid, bonehead nigger!” he had grumbled while he watched the dark shadows bob as they faded across the snow, ultimately swallowed by that black of the distant hills themselves.

  “Goddamned Blackfoot!”

  His heart pounded. And he damn near felt close to tears, ready to bawl in frustration and rage. That hot adrenaline squirting into his veins was no longer enough to keep him warm as he stood there in the snow up past his ankles, the wind cutting at him as it weaved through the trees where he had made his last camp before he would reach the cache sometime around midday tomorrow.

  “Hannah!” he suddenly shouted into the darkness, despairing he would lose her.

  Only when he could no longer hear the hoofbeats on the hard, frozen ground did he finally think to breathe again. Staring at the half-moon still hanging about three hands over the western ridge, his eyes slowly descended onto the widening vee of trampled snow as the thieves’ trail emerged from the distance.

  Just like some roving bunch of Blackfoot. Cocky bastards that they were.

  But he swore he’d have ’em—their scalps and their balls too—if it took all winter. If it took all goddamned winter.

  Turning on his heel, Scratch lunged back to camp on cold, wood legs. There he knelt at the coals of last night’s fire and laid a few dry limbs upon the ashes. Bending low, he pulled the coyote-fur cap from his head and blew on the dim spots of crimson among the gray. They soon leaped to life, capturing the limbs, licking hungrily along the dry branches.

  He rocked back on his haunches and grabbed the old coffee kettle, shaking it. Still enough left in it to reheat, so he set the kettle right against the rekindled flames. Rubbing his hands over the fire, he realized he had but two choices. He could stay here where he would be guaranteed of warmth and commiserate with himself over the loss of his animals, willing to wait until he figured out how to come up with some more animals—which meant he was willing to let the red niggers get away with what was his.

  Or he could start moving now: here in the dark, hiding his plunder and furs from roaming eyes, then set off on that trail the thieves left behind.

  The gall of it burned in his belly like a twelve-hour coal. They loped off, knowing they had put him afoot, and thinking that he wasn’t about to follow them since he was at a decided disadvantage—either because he was one against a half dozen, or because he was on foot and they were covering ground much faster on horseback.

  Dammit! He may well be one against that handful of red thieves, but it didn’t make no never-mind to him that he was on foot against horsemen.

  Bass decided they wouldn’t figure a lone white man to be coming after them … so that arrogance just might work in his favor.

  From the looks of the moon hanging above those southwestern ridges, he calculated that he might have as much as two more hours before it was light enough to take off after them.

  Not that he couldn’t go now, racing off into the snow-covered night. But he was damned suspicious one of the thieves, maybe even two of them, might turn back in the dark, hiding somewhere along the trail left by the others, watching for any possible pursuit from the lone trapper.

  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 h
ail 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.