Crack in the Sky tb-3

by Terry C. Johnston

  He had moments left, only heartbeats before he became nothing more than a scalp on some goddamned Blackfoot’s war club or bridle and a coup story told around a fire. Wouldn’t that take the circle? When this red son of a bitch yanked off his fur cap and the bandanna, going to scalp him—finding he’d already lost some hair!

  “The last joke’s on you,” he growled, none of those words understandable from that pinched, raspy throat.

  But as he said them, he shifted his left hand to dig at the brown fingers—prying. With the other he squeezed down on the wrist, twisting. So painfully slow, the hand that held that dagger began to turn the more Bass twisted and pried. He watched the Blackfoot’s eyes shift suddenly, staring down at his own hand now.

  That pain in his throat …

  Not knowing how many more breaths he could sacrifice before he had no fight left, Scratch suddenly released the enemy’s fingers and seized a handful of the hair at the back of the Blackfoot’s head in his left hand, pulling with all he had to the side. When the warrior yanked away, Bass was there to drive his forehead up savagely into the warrior’s blackened chin.

  With that sharp pain the Indian yanked to the side, away from Bass’s grip, trying to free his hair—just as the dagger twisted up in an agonizingly slow half circle, the tip of the blade now pointed toward that chin where a jagged slash of the black war paint had smeared off on the trapper’s forehead.

  He saw the black curtain oozing down over his mind, over his failing strength, over all that he remembered and knew that he ever was … then yanked once more on the enemy’s hair—savagely jerking the head straight back.

  At the very instant the warrior resisted, tugging his head forward against the white man’s painful pull, Scratch had the sharp point of the dagger positioned right below the chin … when it dropped violently.

  Not only did Bass feel the wide blade pierce the cartilage and soft tissue on its path upward through the back of the throat, on past the hard palate, and into the bottom of the man’s brain—but he heard its noisy journey of death as it cracked through hard tissue. Blood and gore gushed down over that handle decorated with those tiny brass nails.

  Above that border of black pain the warrior’s eyes suddenly rolled back to whites as his throat gurgled and his body went limp, pitching to the side, the double-edged blade penetrating the base of the Indian’s brain, severing motor control.

  Scratch’s throat whimpered with that first breath of air he dragged in, so painfully did it rush down his windpipe—like shards of shattered mirror glass the moment he rolled onto his side, away from the Blackfoot, coughing so violently he was sure he would expel pieces of his lung. He gasped in agony as he lumbered onto his hands and knees, watching the warrior’s legs thrash spastically for a moment, then go still as the man’s bowels voided in death.

  How it hurt to drag in anything larger than a tiny breath as his heart thundered in his ears like the beating of a war drum, the vapor hanging gauzy in front of his face as he looked about that small clearing. Four of them. So much blood beginning to slicken the frosty ground. Dead men come to kill him.

  Scratch felt the first heave of his empty stomach, sensed the initial burn of gall at the back of his throat—then his belly revolted as he rocked forward on hands and knees, spilling the putrid yellow bile on the trampled, frozen grass. Again, and again, and again he heaved up what little his stomach held, until there was nothing left but the spastic, wrenching seizures of each dry wretch.

  Did the killing ever get easier for a man?

  And if it ever did, at what cost?

  Wiping his mouth with the back of his right hand, he tasted the Blackfoot’s blood that had splattered over him as that knife plunged up through the throat and into the man’s brain. It made him gag anew.

  On the frosty broken shafts of grass he frantically wiped his hands, smearing the frozen moisture across his face—wiping, wiping, wiping at the blood smearing his flesh while hot, stinging tears pooled in his eyes.

  Then he finally crouched to the side, and with that half-frozen, bloodstained hand Bass yanked the crimson-coated knife from the enemy’s head … raised it toward the sky … and slashed a jagged line down from heaven above toward this earth below where men walked out their numbered days.

  “Bass!” he croaked with searing pain in his throat.

  “Bass!”

  And when the strident echo flung its answer upon him from the hills, that lone man hurled it back at the spirits of this great wilderness which must never forget his name.

  “BASS!”

  His left eye had sparkled for the first time later that spring while Scratch sat in a hot pool he chanced across near the Land of Smoking Waters on his slow tramp toward the southern pass, easing toward rendezvous.

  And now it lit up a second time as he sat in that hot, tarry pool of thick black goo here in the Bighorn basin.

  So many fiery, shooting stars burst in a brilliant fan of shimmering color from that lone left eye that when he shut the right, he found himself all but blinded.

  At first Titus believed it was somehow nothing more than those wavering veils of steam rising off the hot pools of thick, stinking, sulphurous ooze that collected in these low places widely known among the beaver hunters who crisscrossed the mountain west. But even when he stood with his naked, sticky body and trudged a few yards away from that steamy vent to the cooling relief of a nearby stream, where he plopped down onto his rump, submerged right up to his chest—the eye still sparkled with the fire only a Rocky Mountain night could rain upon the earth.

  So he sat there until his hide grew cold as winter meat.

  Rising, Titus lunged back to the tar pool, where he eased his bare flesh down into the hot, thick ooze with a long sigh. Taking one last check on the horizons, Bass closed his eyes and let the heat soak to his marrow. He hadn’t been this warm since … since sometime last fall. Indian summer. Some seven, maybe eight suns since he had run onto those white faces and white voices he ached so to see now.

  Here in this aching silence where only the spring breeze or the flap of a bird’s wing or the distant passing of a fluff of cloud brought any sound to his ears, Bass grinned—remembering how last fall up on the Bighorn he had crossed trails with that large brigade of some two dozen Rocky Mountain Fur trappers on their way south for winter encampment and he was making for Absaroka. They made camp together that cold night so old friends could share stories of the land, the price of beaver, word on this tribe or that, and any shred of news that might make the prospect of a lonely winter a bit more bearable.

  Seems that Tom Fitzpatrick and his supplies had finally made it north from Taos all the way to the Platte, where Henry Fraeb finally ran onto him in all his desperate searching. Throughout those early days of autumn, Broken Hand and his hired men had their work cut out for them: with winter coming they could accomplish nothing save for traipsing around Blackfoot and Yellowstone country, running down the various brigades so the overdue Fitzpatrick could reoutfit them from those much-needed goods brought up from the Jackson and Sublette train when it reached Taos from the States.

  “We was all just starting to settle in over to the mouth of the Powder—just like we done last winter, Scratch,” Jim Bridger had explained beside that one night’s fire they had shared in their trail crossing. “Cutting cottonwood for horse fodder, laying in grass, and building our huts for the time the wind blows mean.”

  “That there’s pretty mild country for winter doin’s,” Bass had commented. “Man can make meat, and the snow don’t get all that deep.”

  “But we got drove out!” Henry Fraeb bellowed from the far side of the fire.

  “Frapp means to say the goddamned American Fur men showed up in our own blessed backyard like ticks sucking blood from a bull!” Milt Sublette exclaimed angrily.

  “Am-american Fur?” Bass repeated with worry. “Wasn’t it just a couple year back Hugh Glass was preaching to every nigger at ronnyvoo about a fort American Fur was building at
the mouth of the Yellowstone? Saying we all ought’n take our furs there ’stead of trading at ronnyvoo?”

  “Mackenzie,” Bridger snarled, nodding. “That’s the bastard building the post.”

  Then Sublette added, “He’s took to calling himself ’King of the Missouri’!”

  “Now the son of a bitch sent out two fellers named Vanderburgh and Dripps to run down our brigades,” Tom Fitzpatrick spoke up for the first time as he whittled on a green bough. “Them two had ’em a bunch of green hands along—don’t bet any of ’em ever laid a trap under water!”

  “Shit! Ain’t a one of ’em knows fat cow from poor bull!” Bridger roared with laughter. “So them two booshways said right to our faces they was gonna camp where we was camped, and go where we was to go—all so they could learn the best of the beaver trade in the mountains afore they snatched it right out from under us!”

  “Was they serious?” Scratch had asked.

  “We could tell they wasn’t just flapping their jaws!” Sublette grumbled. “They was American Fur—so that means John Jacob Astor … which means all the money in the world throwed up against us poor boys.”

  “Sons of a bitch,” Fraeb grumbled in his thick German accent.

  Fitzpatrick declared, “Then and there we figgered to hold us a council and see which way our stick would float.”

  Bridger nodded. “All five of us decided we wasn’t the sort to hang around and watch Vanderburgh and Dripps camped across the river all winter, then have ’em dog our shadows come spring green-up.”

  “So the next night—right at slap-dark—we slipped out and got skedaddling away from them bastards,” Sublette explained.

  Bass shook his head sadly. “May come a time when American Fur’s money is the only money in the mountains,” he growled.

  “Astor’s always been the sort what runs off all competition wherever he sets hisself down,” Sublette agreed.

  “So if you’re running from this here Vanderburg and Dripps now,” Scratch began, “where is it you’re fixing to winter up?”

  Bridger answered, “The five of us decided to get over to the west side of the mountains. Cross the southern pass, jump the Green, and on to the Snake afore the last of the passes close.”

  “Seems there’d be Nepercy and some Flathead over yonder,” Sublette explained. “Those Injuns a little friendlier than the folks up there in Blackfoot country.”

  “Where you bound for this winter?” Fitzpatrick asked.

  “Crow land,” he had said. “Rotten Belly’s band. Not till the creeks is froze.”

  Early the following morning a few of the young, green hands who had come up from Taos with Fitzpatrick had thought to have themselves a bit of fun ribbing Bass and Fraeb about being too old to muster the mountains.

  “Lookit them ol’ gray-heads, will you?” one had roared as Scratch had tightened the last of the ropes on Hannah’s packs.

  “Lucky Ol’ Frapp’s got us along to take keer of him when times get lean or we run onto some Injuns!” a second cried, eliciting more wild laughter that Fraeb and Bass did their best to ignore.

  But the third made the mistake of saying, “Lookee there! What ’bout that other’n we run onto yestiddy? Looks to be this man’s fixing to ride off on his own like some crazy ol’ coot what wouldn’t know no better.”

  Titus had slowly turned on the three young tormentors. “You young pups figger me for old?”

  At which the trio of greenhorns had busted out with so much guffawing that he was sure they liked to bust a belly seam.

  “Listen to this ol’ bastard!”

  “Not so old I can’t pin your ears up a’hint your ass, son,” he growled, slowly pulling his pistol from his belt to stuff it under one of the pack ropes.

  “Watch out, now!” one of the trio cried in laughter.

  “We better not move too fast for ’im!”

  The third shouted, “What the hell’s one ol’ man gonna do against the three of us?”

  And that hired hand got to laughing so hard that he fell right over and rolled on the cold ground. Titus figured he had taken about all he was going to take—even if these were Bridger’s men.

  Lunging for the one laughing uncontrollably and rolling on the ground beside the fire, Scratch seized the young man at the collar and by the belt, and with that strength most often stoked by the fires of anger, he hurled the greenhorn off the ground and flung him into the other two. With arms and legs flailing, the young man went crashing into the first greenhorn, but the second and larger of the pair managed to sidestep and immediately rushed for Bass, both thick arms swinging with wild, windmill haymakers.

  Scratch ducked to the side, tripping the young man as he rushed by, sending him sprawling onto his belly. Whirling about, Bass landed on the man’s back, knocking off his hat and yanking back on the greasy hair with his left hand at the same time he was pulling his knife from its scabbard with his right. He pressed the blade against the taut, outstretched neck just hard enough that a little blood began to bead along the razor-sharp metal.

  “Scratch … Scratch,” Bridger cooed the moment he reached the scene.

  “Get this crazy ol’ man off me, Bridger!”

  A few yards away the other two tormentors were bellowing and bawling like newborn calves until Fraeb told them to shut up.

  Calmly, Scratch said, “I figger to show this brassy young’un how a old man whips a ignernt greenhorn, Jim.”

  Bridger replied, “Shame of it is, Bass—we need ever’ man we got. Now that American Fur’s come to the mountains—”

  “Even this’un what don’t know his own asshole from a badger den?”

  “Maybeso we can teach this’un something afore he gets his hair raised,” Sublette said as he came up, doing his best to stifle a laugh.

  “Cut ’im, I say,” Fraeb grumped. “The young nigger’s got it coming, boys. He was rawhiding me and Bass here.”

  And Scratch added, “Said we was too old for the mountains—”

  “You ain’t! You ain’t too old!” the greenhorn whimpered there beneath the veteran mountain man.

  “Damn well knocked all three down, did you?” Bridger asked as he stroked his beard.

  “I did, Jim. But I was fixing to kill only one of ’em.”

  Bridger walked over slowly, thoughtfully cupping his chin in one hand as he stared down at the greenhorn. “Being old back east where you come from is one thing, mister.”

  “Y-yes,” the man whined plaintively with wide, frightened eyes as Bass tugged back on his hair again, exposing more of the young man’s white flesh and maintaining the blade’s pressure against the neck.

  Then the booshway knelt at the young man’s head. “Don’t look to be you got far to go till you kill ’im quick, Bass,” Bridger said, peering at the knife first this way, then that. “Where you got it now, you’ll cut right through his windpipe slick as crap through a goose if I know how sharp you keep your knives.”

  “It’s sharp, Jim. Damned sharp.”

  By now the greenhorn sobbed. “P-please, Bridger.”

  The booshway gazed down at the newcomer to the mountains. “Are you paying attention to what this here cast-iron mountain nigger’s teaching you?”

  “I’m t-trying!”

  “Like I said—being a old man back east is one thing, son,” Jim said as he stood slowly and rubbed his knees. “But any old man you run onto out here got him the hair of the bear in him. There’s a damned good reason he’s got old out here in these mountains while a lot of li’l young shits like you gone under and got themselves rubbed out.”

  Sublette said, “You ever again run onto a man old as Titus Bass here—you best figger that son of a bitch has managed to live all those years out west cause he’s tough enough to take all what the mountains can throw at him.”

  For a moment the greenhorn’s eyes rolled back toward Scratch. “Yes, sir, Mr. Titus Bass, sir.”

  Scratch wobbled the knife blade back and forth a little more against th
e flesh of the neck. “You got something to say to me, son?”

  “I-I … I’m sorry I talked bad ’bout you being old—”

  With such swiftness that it startled the youth, Bass pulled the knife away, releasing the youngster’s hair so suddenly that his chin smacked the ground. Scratch stood, taking his knee from the middle of the young man’s back.

  Slowly rolling onto his hip and rising onto his knees, the greenhorn rubbed his neck with his hand, then held that hand out before him to stare at the blood on his palm.

  “You damn well could’ve killed me!”

  “I was fixin’ on it—but you pulled your own hash from the fire.”

  Looking up at Bridger, the youngster gasped, “Awright. I figger I didn’t have no room to be talking like that to this fella—”

  “Like I told you: one thing you’re gonna learn out here,” Bridger explained as he pulled on his woolen mittens, “if you don’t know who you’re talking to, or you don’t know what the devil you’re talking about … you bloody well better keep your goddamned mouth shut and your ears open.”

  “Otherwise,” Milt Sublette added, “your scalp might soon be hanging on some red nigger’s lodgepole.”

  With a snort Henry Fraeb growled, “Or better yet—your hair be hanging from some ol’ man’s belt!”

  Spring had mellowed as Bass wandered south, hankering to have himself another look at Park Kyack. Maybeso to run onto that band of Ute after all these years. See if Fawn had found herself a man.

  Lord, but that was a good woman what deserved a decent man to see after her.

  But he hadn’t found the Ute, hadn’t run across any bands of Shoshone either when he turned around and headed back north toward that country where the Crow roamed. Horse thieves that they were, in the end they had always done right by him.

  Climbing across the foothills of the Wind River range late that spring, he had fashioned a hat out of the fur of a kit beaver caught in one of his traps down on the Popo Agie. Nowhere big enough to warrant a man’s trading it at the coming rendezvous planned for Pierre’s Hole, Scratch dug out the sinew he kept among his possibles and made himself a respectable replacement for the rubbed and worn coyote-skin cap that had seen him through many a winter.