Crack in the Sky tb-3

by Terry C. Johnston

  Only then did Asa slowly step around the horse. “Any man be proud to ride with Mr. Bass.”

  “Awright,” Hatcher said with a little disgust at not learning what he wanted to know. “Which one of ye niggers is gonna dust off the truth and spit it right out—”

  “The two of us,” Titus interrupted, “we had us a couple bad scrapes, Jack.” He glanced over at McAfferty, seeing the appreciation shine in the white-head’s eyes. “Nothing more’n some Injuns tracking us down on the Heely. Then a few Mex soldiers jumped us in a whorehouse when we rode back in to Taos.”

  “Any soldiers we know?” Graham inquired with a grin.

  “That sergeant what they made a lieutenant.”

  Hatcher asked, “Ye get in yer licks afore ye was run out of town, fellas?”

  “I kill’t him,” McAfferty admitted flatly.

  Caleb whistled low, and Rufus asked, “Ramirez?”

  “That’s the truth,” Scratch added. “Him and a bunch of ’em … well, I don’t figger I can head back down to Taos for a few winters.”

  “Lordee!” Caleb hooted gustily. “That Mex nigger had it coming!”

  “Sounds to me like ye boys got tales to weave and stories to tell round our campfire tonight!” Jack howled. Then he whirled on McAfferty. “So ye gonna throw yer bed robes down with this bunch of bad mothers’ sons?”

  Asa looked over at Bass for a heartbeat, then gazed at Hatcher. “Yep, Jack. I’ll camp with my partner, Mr. Bass—right on through till it’s time for us to go our own trails for the fall hunt.”

  “He says the Lord’s steering him for the north country,” Bass explained to Hatcher, Wood, and Graham a few days later. “Keeps talking ’bout the Three Forks.”

  “Shit,” Jack said, wagging his head. “It ain’t like McAfferty don’t know that’s smack-dab in Blackfoot country.”

  “Why would a man up and decide to go there on his own?” Graham asked.

  “Sounds to me like a sure way to lose his hair,” Caleb grumbled. “So purty, long, and white—the nigger won’t have it for long he goes up there.”

  “There’s a hunnert ways for a man to die in Blackfoot country,” Rufus added grimly.

  “I don’t figger he’s worried a nit ’bout Blackfoots,” Bass declared. “Fact is, he wants to run onto ’em.”

  Hatcher shook his head, bewildered. “Man’s crazy what goes riding off to the Three Forks and he ain’t worried ’bout Blackfoot raising his hair.”

  Nodding slightly, Scratch stated, “Could be you’re not far off the mark there, Jack.”

  “Trapping’s real good up there,” Rufus admitted. “But a man’d have to be soft-brained to want that beaver so bad that he’ll risk his hide to get it when there’s plenty ’nough beaver other places.”

  “With what I can make out from all he’s said to me—it ain’t for trapping that he’s headed to Blackfoot country, fellas,” Bass said, watching how his declaration brought the others up short with a morbid curiosity.

  Jack demanded, “What the hell for, then, if it ain’t for the beaver?”

  “I can’t say right now,” he admitted. “I don’t know. But I’m sure it’s got something to do with that Ree medicine man and the bear what jumped me and them evil hoo-doos been following McAfferty last few years.”

  With a snort Hatcher said, “I thort Asa had him his Bible to keep off all them evil spirits!”

  Dragging the coffeepot toward him to refill his cup that morning, Scratch replied, “You may damn well just put your finger on it, Jack. Asa McAfferty might be coming to think the power of his Bible ain’t near as strong as the evil spirits in these here mountains. Maybeso—not near as strong as that ol’ medicine man’s evil powers.”

  Hatcher asked, “Evil for evil, is it?”

  “When good ain’t strong enough to protect him,” Bass sighed, “I figure a man will just twist the evil around any way he can.”

  On his way west with those wagons, carriages, and cattle, William Sublette’s eighty-one new hands had to kill and eat no more than eight of his small beef herd before they reached buffalo country, supplying them with the meat that would see them on through to the Wind River Rendezvous. Those fourscore greenhorns were immediately set upon by the hordes of veterans hungry for news from the States as the trader opened his mail pouches and cut through the twine tying up bundles of old newspapers. Then Sublette got down to cracking open his kegs of grain alcohol, sugared Monongahela rum, along with heavy bales of blankets, boxes of beads, tacks, and ribbon, as well as hundredweight barrels of sugar and coffee.

  It had been enough to make a man’s eyes bug right out of his head, Hatcher told Scratch. Why, with each of those ten high-walled, canvas-topped wagons weighed down with more than eighteen hundred pounds of supplies apiece, all of it valued at some thirty thousand dollars—trader Billy had reached that sixth annual rendezvous with more staples and geegaws to hanker after than any man had ever seen in the mountains!

  And there had even been enough left among the “necessaries” for Titus Bass to outfit himself for what was to be the first winter on his own.

  A pair of black-striped Indian trade blankets—one red and the other green—went for twenty-five dollars in fur. Coffee and sugar, some salt and a little flour, along with a carefully calculated amount of St. Louis shot-tower bar lead and more of the black coarse-grained English powder.

  “Most everything’s been picked over,” apologized a bulb-nosed, weasel-eyed clerk with a warm smile as he placed the items Bass was selecting in a large square wicker basket. “You been waiting to come trade off them furs of yours?”

  “Nawww. I happed to come in late for ronnyvoo this year.”

  “Sounds like you rode in from far off.”

  “North,” he explained as he brought up a handful of the long-spiked brass-headed tacks he could use for repairs, or for decoration on knife scabbard or riflestock. “Been up near the Englishers’ land.”

  “That’s a ways for a man to travel for supplies,” the clerk marveled, flashing that genuine smile.

  “Ain’t so far,” Scratch explained. “Not when there ain’t but one place for a man to outfit hisself for the coming year. And that be right here.”

  The clerk pulled back on his leather braces self-importantly. “This here’s my second trip west with Mr. Sublette.”

  Bass looked up from the trays before him, laying a half-dozen hanks of large Crow beads in the clerk’s basket. “Sublette gonna be back next ronnyvoo?”

  “Most certainly,” the man replied. “Just because the old company sold out to a new one, Mr. Sublette still has the contract to supply their summer fair. He says as long as he can make a profit for himself and his investors, he’ll be buying up goods each winter and starting out west from St. Louis each spring—just as soon as the prairie’s dry enough for the wagons.”

  “Wagons,” Scratch repeated with a snarl, glancing up at those two nearby carriages that came and went almost steadily with company men and free trappers taking themselves rides in the fancy conveyances, roaring with laughter and giddy with the silliness of such vehicles making it all the way to the Rocky—by God—Mountains! “Prefer a good mule my own self.”

  “Mr. Sublette says he can get more in a wagon for his money,” the clerk admitted.

  “I’ll bet he can,” Scratch replied, and fingered some soft sateen ribbon. “And he’s gotta make him his profit, or the new company will have to go off and find it ’Nother trader.”

  Despite the fact that this summer’s trade fair was undeniably the largest held to date—taking in more than 170 packs of beaver, the most ever—it was plain to see that Jedediah Smith, David Jackson, and William Sublette were beginning to question the future profits they might wrench from the mountain trade. Or maybe it was nothing more than the toll taken by all those seasons in the Rockies, those years gone from kin left behind in the East, every winter-count giving a man far too much time to dwell on old friends rubbed out and no longer around.

&n
bsp; When Sublette handed mail to his two partners, Davy learned that he had lost another member of his family to pneumonia. And ’Diah opened a letter from his brother, reading that their mother had died.

  Maybe the partners’ decision to sell out was nothing more than those two of them believing they had had enough of the uncompromising wilderness and the unforgiving winters. Perhaps the time had come to invest their fortunes in more civilized ventures. Besides, Sublette had arrived at rendezvous with news that John Jacob Astor’s American Fur Company no longer appeared to be content to stay on the Missouri. And not only were Astor’s men eager to entice small bands of free trappers to the new fort they were raising at the mouth of the Yellowstone—but word was that American Fur had even dispatched a full-fledged brigade into the Central Rockies so they could give the upstarts a run for their money.

  Maybe the time had come for the three of them to find a smarter way to make their fortunes than this annual gamble that was the Rocky Mountain fur trade. So while Billy reaffirmed his desire to continue supplying the summer rendezvous during that first week of August in the valley of the Wind River, ’Diah and Davy decided that they just might invest their hard-won earnings in the lucrative Santa Fe trade down in the southwest.

  Over the past two days with most of the bartering done for the year and the old company accounts being settled, the firm of Smith, Jackson, & Sublette formally dissolved their partnership, and for a promissory note in the amount of more than fifteen thousand dollars they sold out to five new partners. Now Billy Sublette would be supplying his brother, Milton, along with Tom Fitzpatrick, Henry Fraeb, Jean Baptiste Gervais, and Jim Bridger himself—all long-time veterans of the mountain trade.

  And with their new partnership, the five gave birth to the Rocky Mountain Fur Company.

  Gabe, Milt, and Broken Hand would take more than two hundred men north along the Bighorn, cross the Yellowstone and plunge into the heart of Blackfoot country—performing a grand and daring sweep that would take them all the way to the Great Falls of the Missouri before circling south toward the Three Forks, then trapping their way to the east along the Yellowstone with plans to winter at the mouth of the Powder. Just let Bug’s Boys dare try tackling a brigade that size.

  Those Blackfoot be damned!

  At the same time, OP Frapp and Jervy laid plans to lead their brigade west from rendezvous for the continental divide, striking the Snake, which they would follow west to its forks before the great cold began to close in and they made for their winter camp in Willow Valley.

  And come the spring that enterprising brigade would venture even farther to the west now that Jedediah Smith was no longer a booshway, no longer able to object to his partners and force his employees to refrain from trapping in that land beyond the spine of the continent, a region jointly held by treaty with the English of the Hudson’s Bay Company. Come spring more than a hundred Americans of the newly born Rocky Mountain Fur Company intended once again to lay claim to that beaver-rich region.

  The English be damned.

  Let there be no mistake! The Rocky Mountain Fur Company had come to the mountains!

  Every one of those hot summer days at rendezvous hundreds upon hundreds of dollars had been spent upon supplies, foofaraw, and the trader’s grain alcohol—a lot of it bartered for women, bet on games of chance with cards or dice, and wagered on horse races, wrestling matches, shooting contests, and footraces for those hearty or daring enough to venture out into the late-July heat.

  “They had a feller get so drunk he kill’t one of his friends,” Caleb exclaimed one afternoon, coming back with Bass from watering their horses.

  “Funniest damned thing,” Scratch added, wagging his head and smiling with those teeth the color of pin acorns, “they had the feller what did the killing tied up to a tree till he sobered.”

  “And was he ever bellering!” Wood declared.

  Snorting with a gust of laughter, Titus continued, “But they had the dead feller he killed laid out on the ground right where he was shot, flat on his belly. And the four of ’em what tied the killer up … why—they was using that dead nigger for a card table while they was all playing eucher!”

  Caleb slapped Bass on the shoulder, laughing. “With that poor, dead nigger going stiff on ’em!”

  His eyes narrowing in disgust, Asa McAfferty grumbled, “Don’t s’prise me one whit. So much alcohol. This many niggers. Why, a man gets tight enough on all that demon rum in Sublette’s kegs … purely amazing to me more men don’t get theirselves killed.”

  Hatcher watched the white-head shuffle off. “Asa—maybe ye ought’n go get ye a drink of Sublette’s milk!”

  “Milk?” he roared in disbelief the instant he wheeled about on his heel.

  “That damn milch cow!” Elbridge Gray explained. “I had me a pint cup of it this afternoon—warm it was, fresh from the udder like I ’membered it back to Ohio.”

  Scratch couldn’t fathom it himself. “Milk? You gone and drunk yourself milk here in the Rocky Mountains?”

  “I done it too,” Solomon boasted. “Sublette’s been selling it ever’ morning and evening: two dollar a pint cup.”

  “Jumping Jehoshaphat!” Bass grumbled, and shook his head. “First off he brings wagons and fine folks’ carriages and beef cows out to ronnyvoo in these here tall hills … and now Sublette sells milk to trappers? What is the Rocky Mountains coming to?”

  “Sublette and his other two partners are turning back for St. Louie in the morning,” Rufus explained. “You want you a drink of milk, Titus Bass—you better make it tonight!”

  “Shit! I’d ruther let you fellers suck down all of Sublette’s milk so I can go tell Bug’s Boys that Jack Hatcher’s bunch is coming north: a bunch more likely to nurse on their mamas’ breasts as they are to hanker after a fight with them Blackfoot!”

  Late on the morning of August 4, Smith, Jackson, and Sublette did indeed set off at the head of that column of ten wagons, a pair of carriages, and some fifty men, heading south by east for the North Platte and the settlements, hauling a small fortune in beaver pelts. Both brigades of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company rolled out to bid them farewell, as well as most of the free men of the mountains—all of them eager to see the booshways off in proper style.

  Unlike General Ashley, these three were men who had first come to the mountains as nothing more than hire-ons. They had worked hard, played their cards smart, and stepped forward when called upon to do the difficult. All three had seen more than their share of friends cut down by enemy warriors. All three had suffered the cold, endured the heat and thirst, put up with the hunger and the fatigue like any man.

  So it was that three grand and rousing huzzahs were raised for the three booshways at the moment they set off for the States. Cheers and whistles, accompanied by a final shaking of hands and backslapping all around. Here was a trio who would do to ride the river with. Here were three men who had come from humble beginnings to rise all the way to the top of the mountain trade itself.

  Here were men who would be missed in those seasons yet to come.

  At least Sublette would return come summer, Bass mulled as he turned back to camp with the others. And those five partners of the newly formed Rocky Mountain Fur Company weren’t the sort to quake with fear at the prospect of Blackfoot or tremble at the threat of John Jacob Astor. Sure, there were places in the Rockies where the beaver had been thinned out. But down in the marrow of him, Scratch knew there still had to be a passel of holes back in the mountains where a man could find virgin streams overrun by the flat-tails.

  All a man had to do was ride a little farther, work a little harder, climb a little higher, and he would discover those untouched valleys.

  Especially if he rode alone.

  “Yestiddy—over in the company camp—I come upon a feller named Green reading to some other niggers,” Rufus declared that night as the Wind River Valley quieted just past dark.

  “Reading?” Hatcher repeated.

  “I gone
over and sat for a while myself,” Graham continued. “Listened to a story he was reading for them others.”

  “He had a book he was reading from?” Bass inquired, his interest suddenly pricked.

  Rufus nodded, spreading out his hands across his lap to show the tome’s size. “A big damn book.”

  “What sort of story was it?” Titus asked, his interest piqued.

  “That feller Green said it was Shakes … Shakes … ah, shit! I can’t remember—”

  McAfferty interrupted, “Shakespeare?”

  “That’s it!” Rufus cheered with a snap of his fingers. “Shakespeare. Some story of a king.”

  “Richard?” Asa inquired.

  “Naw,” Graham replied.

  McAfferty brushed the long white hair off his shoulder. “Must’ve been Macbeth.”

  Rufus shook his head in amazement. “That’s it! Macbeth!

  Green was reading that story to a bunch of ’em. Why, he even had him a Bible laying by his side. Told me he read to any fellers what would listen ever’ day—winter or summer, on the trail or not. Said that big ol’ Shakespeare book of his had more’n one story in it, and his Bible was crammed full of tales to read round a camphre.”

  “The Lord’s truth that is,” McAfferty agreed. “‘Fraise ye the Lord. Fraise God in His sanctuary: praise Him in the firmament of His power!’”

  “So, McAfferty?” Hatcher asked. “Ye ever read any of that Shakespeare?”

  Asa said, “Some I have. Not much. But enough to know that when I set off time to read, I’ll read the stories in my Bible. God’s own word.”

  “You ever read that Macbeth story?” Titus inquired.

  “Not much of it,” McAfferty admitted. “Only far enough to know that one man hankered to be king enough to think he just might murder the real king. Now, the Bible has a story about the first Asa.”

  “The first Asa?” Solomon echoed.

  “He was a king back in Bible day,” McAfferty said. “‘Abijah slept with his fathers, and they buried him in the city of David: and Asa his son reigned in his stead. In his days the land was quiet ten years. And Asa did that which was good and right in the eyes of the Lord his God: for he took away the altars of the strange gods, and the high places, and brake down the images, and cut down the groves.’”