Crack in the Sky tb-3

by Terry C. Johnston

  The man’s head bobbed, his fleshy jowls quivering like the wattle at the neck of a tom turkey. “Maybe his whole outfit too. Just like Jed Smith—the other’n who’s a company partner. Word is he’s dead somewhere far west of here with all his men. Been two years now, and Smith ain’t showed up at rendezvous.”

  “So Sublette figgers Jackson’s been rubbed out too?” Solomon repeated.

  Leaning an elbow on a stack of pelts, the clerk said, “Jackson was up in Flathead country. And Sublette says that’s right near Blackfoot country. I suppose it ain’t hard to figure Jackson’s run into trouble and got himself killed too.”

  Caleb clucked, “Damn well might be a real stroke of luck, for that leaves Sublette the whole company, don’t it?”

  “Maybe, but Mr. Sublette figures to wait on here for a week or little more, then if Mr. Jackson doesn’t show, Mr. Sublette said he’s going to head on west to the Snake River with what he’s got in supplies to search for some sign of Jackson’s brigade before he turns back for the fall hunt.”

  “That Smith feller’s gone,” Hatcher observed flatly. “This long and ain’t none of his bunch showed … why, it’s for sartin he’s been rubbed out. But Jackson, now, that’s a savvy booshway. I reckon he could pull his fat out of just about any fire.”

  Caleb asked, “Sublette say if he figgered this was a good year for beaver?”

  “I saw him just twice today, when he come around my tent with Campbell.” The clerk wagged his head and rolled his eyes heavenward. “Mr. Sublette just shook his head each time he looked through them furs his men brought in over the last season.”

  “Don’t sound like he’s a happy man to me,” Bass observed.

  “Not when he don’t have near all the beaver he was counting on taking in,” the clerk stated.

  “And now he figgers he lost him his two partners,” Solomon added.

  “So tell me if Sublette’s gonna trade for our furs come tomorrow?” Titus asked.

  “He ain’t said nothing ’bout it, neither way,” the clerk admitted. “But from what I see, he’ll likely open up trade with all you fellers come morning. There ain’t any more company fur to take in. Leastways, not till he finds. Jackson’s brigade.”

  “If he finds ’em at all,” Hatcher declared.

  “What’s your tobaccy?” Scratch inquired of the hawk-nosed clerk who stood impassively writing down the value of the pelts another of Sublette’s employees was reciting from his weighing of Titus Bass’s plews.

  “You buy your supplies down there.” The man jabbed a finger at another awning. “I just record your take.”

  Bass felt as if Sublette and the company had everything arranged just so they could skin a cat every which way of Sunday. No matter if a man worked hard trapping, skinning, fleshing, and packing them beaver plews all the way through from last autumn, the St. Louis trader always held the high cards. But for those suspicious Mexicans down in Taos, there wasn’t another trader for better than eighteen hundred miles of the Popo Agie.

  “This all you’re trading in?”

  Bass looked up at the second of the clerks, a moon-faced man without distinguishable characteristics: he looked like every other settlement sort, town hanger, and citified nabob.

  “That’s all I’m trading with you.”

  The man went back to peering down at his ledger, dipped his quill, and went back to writing. “Not a good year for you, was it?”

  “That ain’t all the fur I got.”

  The clerk stopped his hand and glared at Scratch with the crimson creeping up from his neck. “I just asked you … if this was all you was trading.”

  “It is,” Scratch repeated, flashing the man his teeth. “But it ain’t all I caught. Only what I trapped this last spring.”

  Now the clerk was clearly angry at the confusion caused him. He sputtered for a moment, his face growing as red as the Indian paintbrush that dotted this high valley in early summer. “Do you want to do business with us or—”

  “I ain’t got no more furs to trade to you,” Titus explained, eager to settle the dust. “The rest I sold in Taos last winter.”

  With a great rush of air the clerk sighed as if he had been asked to coax milk from a stone. “Very well.”

  Back to his ledger he went, wagging his head slightly as he added and carried numbers from column to column. While the clerk finished his computations, Bass gazed over at the rest who had finished this grueling part of the process. Hatcher and the others already stood among the stacks and kegs, crates and boxes of trade goods—fingering this and that, chattering excitedly about most everything they picked up and held to the light. There remained no more than a handful of other free men waiting patiently behind Scratch for their turn at the trader’s scales.

  The clerk carefully tore a strip from the bottom of his ledger page and handed it to another man, who stuffed the strip of paper beneath the rope holding together Bass’s beaver skins. Then the hawk-nosed man wrote a little more and tore another strip of paper from the bottom of the page.

  He held it out to Bass.

  “Here’s your credit.”

  “My credit—for over at the store?”

  The clerk looked past Scratch at the trapper pushing up behind him. “Next! You’re next, now—come along lively!”

  Pressed from behind, Bass stepped aside, trying to hold the rustling strip of paper still enough to read it in the breeze. It was hard for him to make out that writing scratched on the white foolscap beneath the glare from the summer sun. Stepping into the shade beneath the edge of an awning, Titus studied the marks again. Several words were scrawled there, that much he was sure of. And beneath each of them a number. In addition, at the far end of the strip was a fourth number, written bigger than the rest, and circled as well.

  “Scratch—how much you got to spend?”

  He looked up, finding Rufus Graham before him. “You read this?”

  Rufus shook his head. “Can’t read a’t’all.”

  “Near as I make it, I got me a few hundred dollars for supplies.”

  “How much hundreds?”

  “That looks like a nine,” he answered, squinting his eyes as his dirty fingernail pointed out a number. “Damn, but I never was a good one at ciphering numbers. Could do it once, but it’s been too long since I done any of that.”

  “None of the others can help you neither,” Graham admitted. “None of us read.”

  “S’all right,” he sighed, looking up. “Only place I can spend it is here anyways.”

  “’Cept you go back to Taos.”

  “Ain’t a chance of that,” Titus said, starting toward the rest, who were dickering with a pair of clerks beneath a far awning.

  “This here tobaccy ain’t half-bad!” Caleb declared as he turned toward Bass when the two walked up to the others.

  “Better’n Mexican,” Hatcher agreed.

  Scratch asked, “How much?”

  The clerk perched behind the wooden crates holding several hundredweight of twisted brown carrots of tobacco declared, “Two dollar the pound.”

  “Same as it’s been for the last two year,” Isaac stated.

  “Damn good thing too,” Bass grumbled. “Missed out on American tobaccy last year.”

  Asked the clerk, “You’re ready to buy?”

  “I damn well waited the better part of a day and a goddamned half to buy,” Titus snapped. “If’n that don’t take the circle! You better believe I’m ready—”

  “Where’s your paper?” the clerk interrupted.

  Handing the man his slip, Bass watched the clerk glance quickly at the numbers, then look over at the first of Sublette’s men. “This here right?”

  “What’s right?” the other civilian asked.

  “This says five hundred fifty-nine?”

  The man glanced at Bass a moment before he remembered. “Five hundred fifty-nine is the right amount.”

  As the first clerk went back to grading and weighing pelts, the store clerk said,
“Take your pick,” and began to write in his own ledger. “You got enough to near buy what all you want.”

  “Damn,” Titus said as it began to hit him. “I ain’t really had no chance to buy nothing but what it took to live on for so long now—I … I don’t know how to act, boys.”

  “What you need?” Solomon said as he came up and laid a hand on Bass’s shoulder.

  Hatcher chuckled, bursting out with, “The nigger needs just ’bout ever’thing!”

  “I got me a gun,” Bass said.

  “You need a pistol?” asked the clerk.

  “I got the one Hatcher loaned me,” he replied. “How much are those you’re selling?”

  “They’re smoothbore, sixty caliber—sell for fifty dollars.”

  “Oooo!” exclaimed Caleb. “That hurts.”

  Hatcher came up to stand beside Titus, saying, “You go ahead on and keep that’n I loaned ye long as ye want.”

  “If I can buy me my own, I’ll do that. Much ’bliged, Jack,” he said, then turned back to the clerk. “Gimme one of them pistols to look at.”

  After he started inspecting the weapon, slowly dragging back the big hammer to check the crispness of the lock, holding it against his ear to listen to the action, Bass had the clerk hold up this or that, quoting one price after another.

  Closing his eyes in sensual pleasure, Scratch sniffed at the bag of green coffee beans below his nose.

  “Two dollar a pound.”

  “Better weigh out twenty-five pounds. How’s your powder?”

  “Best grade is two-fifty the pound.”

  Titus turned to Hatcher and Gray. “You figger it’s better’n that Mex powder we got along?”

  “Gotta be,” Jack replied.

  “It’s American,” the clerk asserted. “Du Pont.”

  “All right,” and Scratch nodded. “I’ll take fifty pounds. What’s Galena?”

  “Lead’s only a dollar and a half.”

  “We got us some of that Taos lead from down in the Mexican mines,” Rufus said.

  Bass cogitated a few moments, staring up at the underside of the awning over his head as the sun baked down on them. “I’ll take me a guess and go with seventy-five pounds. And I need me some good awls.”

  The clerk spun around and swept up a sample from the boxes behind him. “These are three for fifty cents.”

  They appeared sturdy with their fire-hardened steel points and hardwood handle. “Gimme six.”

  Solomon asked, “You want ’Nother blanket?”

  So Bass looked at the clerk, “How much?”

  “White blankets for twenty dollars.”

  “That’s a lot just to keep a man warm,” Bass grumbled.

  The easterner said, “You want it sewed into a capote, them are only twenty-five each.”

  “How much your striped blankets?”

  “They ain’t near as much,” Hatcher explained. “He’s charging just fifteen dollar for striped ones.”

  “Because they ain’t as big as the white ones,” the clerk declared.

  “Better gimme a white blanket.”

  As the clerk returned with the neatly folded blanket, he asked, “Need any pepper or salt?”

  Scratch shook his head. “Got plenty of that down to Taos last winter.”

  “Beads-or ribbon?”

  “What do them hanks of beads cost a man?”

  Shoving forward that heavy tray containing thick hanks of the big colored variety commonly called pony beads, the clerk answered, “Five dollars a pound.”

  “Show me how much a pound is,” Bass requested.

  In a moment the man had weighed out several hanks of the various colors. “That’s five pounds. So it’ll be twenty-five dollars.”

  “All right,” Titus said with a smile. “I’ll take them five pounds, but put back them white and black’uns—gimme only them real purty colors: like that green and blue, the yellow and that blood color too. See that brown, gimme that too.”

  “You need nails?” the clerk asked after he had laid out the long hanks of beads atop the white blanket.

  “Lemme see what you have.”

  After inspecting the various sizes of short brass nails a man used for both repair and decoration, he asked, “How much?”

  “Fifty cents a dozen.”

  “Let’s see—five dozen of ’em oughtta do.”

  “You want any ribbons?”

  “Show me what you got to trade.”

  The clerk brought out a box containing a rainbow of cotton ribbon. “It’s six bits the yard.”

  “Better let me have my pick of ten yards.”

  “I figure you’ll want some bolt cloth too, won’t you, mister?” and he patted a stack of different patterns and colors.

  “Tell me how much that’ll cost me.”

  As he started down the stack of bolts, the clerk called out the prices, “This here scarlet is the best grade. Mr. Sublette likes it best too. It’s a wool. Goes for ten dollars.”

  “Ten dollars a yard?”

  “A yard. The coarse blue is eight dollars. But the calico here is only two-fifty.”

  “What’s that on the bottom?” he asked, pointing.

  “Striped cotton. It’s a soft material like the calico.”

  “Sounds like I can get me a lot more of that ’stead of the coarse cloth,” Bass declared. “Let’s say … ten yards of each of them two. Show me how much cloth that’ll be.”

  After Scratch had seen just how much twenty yards of material would be, he felt himself growing more excited about the possibilities—staring again at the various colors of the beads, figuring gifts like these would be able to communicate where his rudimentary talents with the Shoshone tongue left off.

  “You got some vermilion, don’t you?”

  “Chinee, I do,” the clerk replied. Returning to the rough-hewn plank, he held up a wooden tray that contained a profusion of small waxed packets the size of a man’s fist, one of which he opened to show the deep-purple pigment. “It ain’t cheap.”

  “How much?” Hatcher asked.

  “Six dollars a pound.”

  Bass scratched the end of his nose, sensing the eyes of the others riveted on him. “Better make it five pounds.”

  “All that red paint for you, Scratch?” Rufus asked.

  “Shit!” Caleb snorted. “It ain’t all for him, you idjit! Scratch’s gonna get his stinger wet with that Chinee vermilion!”

  Graham wagged his head in doleful confusion. “How’s Scratch gonna get his stinger wet with …” Then it struck him like a bolt of summer thunder. “Say! You’re gonna get yourself one of them Sho’nie gals, ain’cha?”

  Bass winked and turned back to the clerk. “Show me what you got in wiping sticks and flints.”

  “Good hickory, these be,” the clerk replied, turning back to his crates. “And for flints: we got English and French.”

  “Get them French ambers,” Hatcher suggested. “Likely we’ll pay more for ’em, but they’ll last longer’n the English.”

  By the time he had picked out a bundle of two dozen straight-grained hickory wiping sticks, as well as three pounds of the pale amber flints imported from France, along with several handfuls of assorted screws and worms for gun repair and cleaning, he finally asked the clerk to total it all up. He looked again over at his stack of pelts beneath that first awning, remembering just how many plews he had sent downriver with Silas Cooper. Then he suddenly squeezed his eyes closed in that way he hoped would shut off the terrible memory.

  Letting out a long sigh, the trader’s employee came back to the free men and announced, “That all comes to four hundred seventy-three.”

  Several of the others whistled low, but Bass remained undismayed. “What’s that leave me?”

  “Eighty-six.”

  Scratch licked his lips and asked, “So how much is your whiskey?”

  “He don’t just wanna get his stinger wet!” Caleb hooted behind him. “Bass wants to get his gullet scrubbed too!”
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  “Damn right I do!”

  The clerk cleared his throat. “Whiskey sells two dollar the pint.”

  He squinted again, trying to imagine how much a pint was. “How much is that a gallon?”

  “Eight dollars.”

  For a moment more Scratch looked around at the other six trappers. “I got enough for three gallons start off with?”

  “That’s twenty-four dollars. And you’ll have a little money left over for some more.”

  “That’s the way I want it,” Bass said with satisfaction. “Go get a kettle, one of you.”

  “I ain’t gotta go anywhere to get a goddanged kettle,” Caleb yelled with glee, leaning over to retrieve the kettle he had purchased from the ground. “Here, mister—put a gallon of that likker right in here.”

  The clerk looked at Bass.

  At which Scratch roared, “You heard the man. This here’s a free man, master trapper in the Rocky—by God—Mountains. So you better pour us some whiskey in that kettle and give me my trade goods … then step back outta our way, ’cause these here cocks o’ the walk are struttin’ bold and brassy tonight!”

  16

  He had forgotten just how good an Injun gal could smell, all earthy and fragrant with her own body heat, skin smeared with some bear oil, maybe some crushed sage or flower petals rubbed in her hair.

  Quite different from them Mexican gals, who stank of cheap aguardiente and corn-husk cigarillos just like their menfolk. But the Taos whores sure did know how to raise hell and put a chunk under it to entertain a mountain man wintering down their way!

  Still, he was glad to be back in the mountains, back to Injun gals what didn’t chatter that much at all like them Mexican whores while they serviced their customers. These Injun women knew what they were about when it came to earning that handful of beads, that cup of Mexican sugar, or that yard of calico he held out to finally entice one of them to follow him back toward a spot he had prepared in the middle of a patch of willow.

  She grasped his rigid flesh in the moonlight as he centered himself over her and began to lunge forward hungrily as she half closed her eyes.

  Starved as he was, Scratch did his best to go at it slow. Knowing that after having gone so long without, this was bound to be over with all too soon anyway. Best savor it while he could.