Crack in the Sky tb-3

by Terry C. Johnston

  “Titus Bass,” Scratch answered as he stepped up beside the horse and held a hand up to the rider. “And this here is Elbridge Gray.”

  “Ye on yer own hook, ye two?” asked the stranger.

  “No,” Bass replied, sensing his guard hairs bristle as he glanced past the horseman to the timbered hillside, wary. “S’pose you tell us your name.”

  “Williams. William Shirley Williams,” he answered, innocently smiling.

  “Sweet Marie!” Elbridge exclaimed. “That there’s a hull passel of Williams in that goddamned name!”

  The smile faded as the horseman turned his straight-faced, expressionless stare back to Gray. Then, with a droll purse to his lips, he replied, “That be my name. But my friends call me Bill. I figger any white man up here got a good chance to be my friend—so whyn’t you two call me Bill?”

  “Be pleased to call you Bill,” Bass replied, already liking the cut of the tall, skinny trapper. “My friends hale me as Scratch.”

  Craning his neck to look up the aspen-choked hillside, Gray asked, “More niggers with you?”

  “Nope. I ride alone now’days.”

  “Leg on down here,” Bass proposed, stepping back. “We’re bound to finish setting our last two traps straightaway, then you can ride on up to camp with us. Make a night of it.”

  Elbridge declared, “One of the t’others dropped a elk cow this morning. Some mighty fine eating—”

  They both watched Williams visibly shudder, his whole body trembling, his face pinched.

  With a wag of his head the rider said, “Good it weren’t no bull elk.”

  “Bull ain’t near as good eating,” Bass stated.

  “Don’t ye fellers never go kill a bull with one antler broke off and a’hanging like so,” he said, a sudden sharp and warning edge come to his voice as he balanced his long fullstock rifle across the tops of his bony thighs and raised both his arms to their full length on either side of his head, spreading his fingers as if they were antler points. Then he crooked the left arm at the elbow, swaying it crazily.

  “Why?” Elbridge asked, cocking his head slightly. “He a bull in these parts what you got your own sights on?”

  “No,” Williams said evenly, his eyebrows lowered meaningfully. “One of these days I’ll go under my own self, boys. And spirits awready showed me how I’m coming back.”

  In utter disbelief Gray squeaked, “C-coming back?”

  “My medeecin showed me in a vision I had this past winter,” Williams declared. “Coming back as a bull elk.”

  Gray glanced over at Bass with a wink and a wry twist to his smile. “A bull elk, you say?”

  “With his left antler growed crooked, jest like I showed ye,” Williams explained. “What’s wrong with ye two? Don’t tell me ye don’t believe in Injun medeecin?”

  “Damn well don’t,” Bass declared. “But that don’t mean you can’t, William Shirley Williams.”

  For a moment the older man regarded Titus before a smile eventually came to that well-tanned, leathery face. “So, tell me, Scratch. How long ye been out here to these mountains?”

  “Since summer of twenty-five.”

  “I come out west the y’ar afore that and laid in my first winter up near Salish Flouse in Hudson Bay country,” Williams explained as he rocked out of the saddle and landed on the ground. “Ye both been out in these hills for any time at all, boys—a shame ye h’ain’t learned much from the Injuns here ’bouts.”

  Gray demanded, “What you mean—we ain’t learned from the Injuns?”

  “’Bout life … and dyin’ … and all the magic what lives all round us,” Williams said, his voice quieting, gesturing his right arm in a full half circle. Then he went to rubbing a sore knee as he continued. “There’s more for a man to learn hisself and unnerstand than most folks can ever start to know. But it takes a smart man to own up to not knowing about all the magic what lives around him.”

  Titus scratched at his beard a moment. “Don’t reckon I savvy what sort of magic you’re talking ’bout.”

  “He’s telling us about the sort what makes a coin disappear from a man’s hand,” Elbridge explained. “Magic what pulls that coin from ahind a man’s ear.”

  Stroking his horse’s muzzle, then bending to pick up a front hoof to inspect it, Williams replied, “Ain’t that kind of magic at all, boys. Magic … like the spirits all round us. The ghosts of them what gone afore. Powerful beings—warriors and such. Hoo-doos what we can’t see ’cause we ain’t got our own magic strong enough yet.”

  “And when we get our own magic strong enough,” Bass inquired skeptically, “you’re saying we can see them hoo-doos? See them spirits you talk about?”

  With a wide smile Williams set the second forehoof on the ground and straightened, stretching his back. “Man makes his own magic strong, Scratch—then that man don’t just hear them spirits talking to him, he can see ’em too.”

  “Shit!” Elbridge groused in total disbelief. “You been sipping at the cider jug far too long, Williams!”

  The old horseman calmly turned from Elbridge without showing the slightest contempt for the man’s disbelief. “The spirits are around us alla time, Scratch. They show theyselves to me. They palaver at me. And I listen. I h’aint ashamed to tell ye listening to ’em has saved this nigger’s hash a time or two.”

  Elbridge snorted, “How them hoo-doos save your hash?”

  Without acknowledging Gray in the slightest, Williams continued. “Like it’s no more’n a curtain, Scratch—there’s nothing more’n a breath of air atween us and the world of them hoo-doos.”

  “So you hear them spirits all the time, do you?” Titus asked, amazed that he sensed something more than sheer lunacy in the older man.

  “No, don’t hear ’em not alla time,” he answered, gazing up at the clear blue of springtime’s fading light. “It’s … it’s like there’s that spirit world, and there’s our world right here. They’re two differ’nt places. But there h’ain’t nothing more’n a curtain up atween us and the other world. Atween us and all what we don’t unnerstand.”

  Wagging his head, Titus asked, “So how’s a man ever hear or see these hoo-doos?”

  “Only when there’s a rip in that curtain atween our world and the rest of what is.”

  “Only then?”

  “When there’s a tear in that curtain I tol’t you about. Maybeso think of it like … like a crack,” he declared, waving that arm of his at the horizon, describing a jagged line rising from the earth and ascending toward the darkening dome overhead. “A crack that goes all the way from here, where folks like us walk … clear to heaven.”

  “A c-crack in the sky?” Elbridge chortled.

  Now at last Williams turned to Gray and nodded emphatically. “That’s right, nigger. A man what opens hisself up to hearing the real world all round him—then that’s the man what can see right on into the world of spirits and hoo-doos by looking through that ol’ ragged crack in the sky.”

  For the moment Bass wasn’t sure just how he felt about this ghosty horseman as he and Elbridge went about setting the last two of their traps here along a stretch of a new stream they hadn’t visited during last autumn’s stay in the Bayou Salade. But one thing was for sure—Williams had given him something to think about, something with some real heft to it. Titus figured the talk around the campfire that night wasn’t destined to be the usual fare of senoritas and Taos lightning and how big a carouse they would have come rendezvous on the Popo Agie. If no one else got this William Shirley Williams to talking about his magic and his hoo-doos and that crack in the sky, then Scratch vowed he sure as hell would.

  More than three weeks of hard riding out of Taos had brought them into the southern end of the Bayou once more. How different the high, narrow mountain valley appeared this time. Last year they had reached South Park from the north near the tail end of summer, when the grasses were burned and curing beneath a relentless and high summer sun, just before the turning of the
leaves.

  Here in early spring the snows were only beginning to retreat up the mountainsides. The trees only starting to bud, the willow and alder giving no more than a hint of what would soon be their green glory. The streams were just opening up after a long winter’s rest beneath thick blankets of ice, every tiny freshet beginning to throb with snow-melt as the days lengthened, their narrow threads meandering through every meadow, adding their strength to the creeks that spilled from the snowfields overhead, continuing through the darkened stands of spruce and fir and lodgepole as they descended toward the great, long valley where the beasts gathered and took their nourishment.

  Come this the season of prime plew. Early spring when the beaver possessed its finest coat. When the flat-tails were their busiest: warily emerging from the security of their winter lodges to labor through the short daylight hours constructing new slides and dams in every meadow. After three spring seasons stalking this high country, Bass knew down at the very marrow of him just how important was the spring hunt to a trapper.

  When beaver were easiest to spook and hardest to bring to bait—spring was the time a man discovered if he had what it took to be a master trapper.

  During the fall was another matter entirely: the animals had been out of their lodges and active since the melting of the high snowpacks. They were less guarded and careful in the autumn, when their activities were nudged into an even higher intensity than they had been during the summer. With the cooling of the days and the chilling of the nights, the beaver became more animated, roaming farther, extending their territory with the arrival of fall.

  But for now—this season of rebirth—the bucktoothed rodents were extremely wary, watchful, and suspicious of the castor set out to lure them to their deaths.

  “I come outta Boone County, on the Ohio River, northern Kentucky,” Bass answered the newcomer’s question. “Where you from back east?”

  Brushing the hair back from his shoulder, so long it oft tangled in the beard that fell halfway down his chest, Williams said, “Borned in a cabin on Horse Crik, tucked up under Skyuka Mountain.”

  Hatcher asked, “Where’s that, Bill?”

  “Rutherford County, in Northern Carolina.”

  “How long ago was that?” Isaac inquired.

  “I’m forty-two this last Janeeary.”

  Scratch commented eagerly, “I’m born in January. When’s your day?”

  “The third.”

  Bass nodded. “Mine’s the first.”

  “New Year’s, eh? Two of us start the year off right, don’t we?” He held out his cup as Caleb Wood started around the fire with a blackened coffee kettle.

  “Scratch says ye travel alone,” Hatcher declared.

  “Last time I rode with others, I come north out of Taos with Pratte and Savary.” He sipped at the steaming coffee a moment, then continued. “Pratte died that trip out and Savary took over. We went on trapping and wintered up in Park Kyack afore we come back to Taos the spring of twenty-eight. After that I swored I’d never ride with a outfit again.”

  “Ain’t so bad,” Scratch explained. “When you ride with the right outfit.”

  “Said you come west in twenty-four?” Gray repeated.

  “Up to Blackfoot country, where the Englishers play,” Williams snorted.

  “God-blamed Blackfoot!” grumbled Rufus Graham. “Too many good men gone under at their hands!”

  “I quit that country come spring—damn them Blackfoot,” Williams growled. “Got my carcass back to live with the Osages, where I run onto the surveyors gonna mark the road from the Missouri clear down to Santy Fee. They needed ’em a feller what knew how to talk sign—so I was took along.”

  “When you get back to trapping?” Solomon asked.

  “That fall—pulled out’n Taos and headed down the Rio del Norte, then moseyed on over to the Heely. Plew down in that country weren’t near prime as they was up where them Blackfoot roam.”

  “Plew is prime in Blackfoot country,” Caleb agreed.

  “I fi’t me more’n my share of Blackfoot,” Williams said with clear disgust. “They deviled me for a time the next year—when I set off on my lonesome. Niggered me clear down to the Wind River Mountains. Didn’t did get shet of Bug’s Boys till I made it far up the Bighorn.”

  Hatcher asked, “So ye stay in these parts now?”

  With a wag of his head Williams replied, “H’ain’t been healthy for this coon up north there in Blackfoot country. And the ’Paches caught me flat-footed of a time down on the Heely.”

  “Apache?” asked Rowland.

  “That’s right. When I tried the Heely a second go-round. Bastards stripped me, stole my guns, my horse and mule, ever’thing. Then they pointed me out to the desert and laughed as I took off barefoot.”

  “How’d you pull yourself out of that fix?” Bass inquired.

  “Pointed my nose torst the Spanish country. Only place I could reckon on. Way I lays the set—it were just shy of two hunnert miles afore I run onto some Zunis. They took me in like I was some special kin. I spent some time with them folks, healing up. Then went on over an’ stayed with some Navajos.”

  Elbridge said, “Eventual’ you come back Santy Fee?”

  “Taos—that’s when I hooked up with Pratte and Savary,” Williams said dolefully. “This nigger’s had him good fortune to pull out’n the thick of it a time or two. So I figger my luck runs high ’nough I don’t dare travel with no brigade no more.”

  “You fixin’ on trapping the Bayou now?” Scratch asked.

  He stared at the fire a moment, then answered, “Nawww, I’ll mosey on. You fellers busy here this side of the Park. If’n I take a shine to it, I’ll lay some traps on the far side. It don’t pay to crowd ’Nother man.”

  “Enough beaver in the mountains for us all!” Isaac cheered.

  “Damn right there is,” Williams said. “If’n we don’t trap ’em out, the Englishers do.”

  “Trap ’em out?” Bass echoed. “How we ever trap out all the beaver?”

  Of a sudden Williams grew animated, his eyes alive with the loathing and hatred he felt for the huge Hudson’s Bay Company. “Them Frenchie brigades the Englishers put out up north go right on into a stretch of country and trap ever’ living flat-tail there is. Strip that country clean: ever’ stream, ever’ beaver too—not matter that they catch some kits while they’re at it.”

  “Sons of bitches,” Rowland grumbled.

  “They h’ain’t got no business in our country,” Williams declared. “I plan to stay north of the greasers and south of the Englishers and all their Frenchie parley-voos. ’Sides, I’ve come to be partial to the Utes. But watch yer ha’r when there’s ’Rapahoes about.”

  “The hell you say?” Bass growled. “Last time I run onto Arapaho my own self, I damn near went under.”

  Williams grinned in the fire’s light. “Ye’re a lucky man. Them ’Rapahoes can be bad as Bug’s Boys when it comes to a white man. They’ll kill ye flat out and run off with all ye had. They leave ye ’thout an outfit?”

  “They took that—’cept for the rifle they didn’t find, run off with all my animals but for my dear mule,” Scratch explained.

  “Leastways ye come out of it with yer ha’r,” Williams observed, his leathery brow wrinkling in remembrance. “Live to fight ’Nother day. Jest like I done a time or two—did ye lay up in some rocks a’hiding till the red niggers quit the country?”

  “Weren’t so lucky as you, Bill,” Scratch replied, reaching for the knot at the back of the bandanna he tied over the top of his head. “One of the black-hearts took part of me with him.”

  Slowly nudging the large knot upward, Bass removed the bandanna and a circular scrap of beaver fur in one smooth motion, turning his head. As he did so, Williams could see the results of the scalping that had removed a crude circle some six inches in diameter from the crown of his head late in the summer of twenty-seven.

  Setting his coffee tin down and wiping a forearm across his lips
, Williams scrambled to his feet and stepped right up to loom over Bass. He took Scratch’s head in both hands and turned it gently toward the firelight, peering at the skull plate from all angles, then inspected the wound so closely, he was almost rubbing the end of his nose against the yellowed bone.

  “It pain ye any?”

  “Not after I learn’t to keep it covered.”

  “With that patch o’ beaver plew?”

  “Found this here fur is the trick,” Bass replied. “Sun does a powerful evil to my skull if I don’t keep it covered.”

  “’Magine it would, Scratch.” He continued to study the bone closely. “Back east where I was raised up from a kit, I heard me a time or two of fellers getting scalped and living to tell the tale of it.”

  “They done their best to kill this nigger off,” Hatcher said. “But I figger Scratch here just born under a good star.”

  Williams gently patted the bare bone, then shambled back to his place at the fire and settled down with his cup. “Way I figger it, Bass—ye been told plain as sun that there be a heap more living in store for any man what lost his ha’r but wasn’t put under by the niggers what took that skelp from him.”

  “Maybeso,” Gray replied with a cynical wag of his head as he quickly tallied the befuddled reactions of the others around the fire and began to grin widely. “But only if you’re a coon what believes there’s hoo-doos hiding behin’t every tree!”

  “Hoo-doos, is it?” Hatcher asked with a snort, animated once again.

  Elbridge gushed, “Don’t that beat all, Jack? Williams here says after he’s dead, he’s coming back as a bull elk what got it one bad antler.” And he showed them, mimicking what the old trapper had told the two of them near sundown. “If that ain’t the kicker—he says the Injuns are the ones show us how to talk to ghosts.”

  But instead of laughing right off, Jack appeared to study Williams, then finally brought his gaze back to Gray and said, “Sounds to me like Bill Williams here savvies things same way as Asa McAfferty.”

  “O-o-oo! That name just give me the trembling willies!” Isaac shrieked.

  “Me too,” Rufus agreed with a shudder. “That crazy coon gone and rubbed out a ’Rikara medicine man—”