Crack in the Sky

by Terry C. Johnston

  “Horses,” Bass muttered angrily at himself, whirling around. Then he turned back suddenly to yell at Rowland. “Your gun loaded, Johnny?”

  “Yeah, why?”

  “Come with me,” Bass growled, growing more angry with himself as he dashed away. “The goddamned horses.”

  As the two white men drew close, the animals neighed and whinnied—some recognizing their smell, others still frightened. They milled nervously in what was left of their rope corral strung in a wide circle, looped tree to tree to tree. That one section cut by the raiders was not enough for the horses to dare snatch at their freedom: with a hand still clutching the end of the rope he had cut, one of the warriors lay dead. The foreign smell of the Indian, perhaps that faint hint of his blood on the wind, kept the rest of their nervous animals from bolting past the body sprawled on the forest floor.

  “How many you figger the niggers got?” Rowland asked as he moved among the horses, quieting them—patting necks, stroking withers and flanks.

  “Likely a handful,” Bass replied, worried. For he still hadn’t seen her among the others.

  Simms was suddenly at the far side of the corral, ducking under the rope. “Mule’s over here, Scratch!”

  “Damn,” he croaked thickly, shoving his way through the rangy Indian cayuses, fighting his way to the mule. He stopped, finding he could breathe again just at the sight of her.

  Reaching Hannah’s side, Titus laid an arm affectionately over her neck, hugging the animal.

  “Kinkead’s hurt,” the stocky Simms said as he came to a halt beside Bass. “Hurt bad.”

  “He gonna make it?”

  “Hatcher don’t know yet,” Simms admitted, his pale, whitish-blond hair aglow in the night.

  “Damn.” Scratch turned toward the far side of the corral. His eyes found Rowland. “Me and Johnny stay here while you get some more rope.”

  “They cut through more’n one place?”

  “No,” he answered Simms. “We’re lucky. Who was they anyway?”

  Isaac shrugged. “From the quick look-see I got of the two of ’em we dropped … likely they was Blackfoots.”

  He swallowed hard. Blackfoot again. “G’won—get the rope, Isaac.”

  Simms turned and moved away without a word.

  Blackfoot.

  What were the chances this had been a different raiding party from the one that had struck Hatcher’s outfit weeks ago as they were trapping their way northwest from Shoshone country? Slim chance, if any. When Goat Horn had brought his warriors across those days and nights of hard riding to pull the trappers’ fat out of the fire, reaching the white men as the Blackfoot raiders were circling in tighter and tighter to make the kill … what were the chances that those angry, defeated Blackfoot had been driven on north, back to their own country?

  And what were the chances they had doubled back to try again?

  “They was Bug’s Boys awright,” the rail-thin Rowland said behind him.

  Turning, Bass saw John standing over one of the bodies.

  “You get this’un, Scratch?”

  Titus stepped over to the Indian lying sprawled on the ground. “The first’un,” Bass admitted. “Didn’t kill him right off with a ball. Not much more’n a boy.”

  “Ain’t much left of the young’un’s face.”

  Swallowing, Titus declared, “He come on a man’s errand.”

  “Damn if he didn’t. Looks of it—this here boy was ready to chop you into boudin meat.”

  Shaking his head, Bass turned away, watching Simms approaching. “It don’t make the killing any easier, Johnny.”

  “By jam—these niggers’re wuss’n animals,” Isaac declared as he came to a halt. “Blackfeets is like painters and wolves, Scratch. No better. A little smarter mayhaps. But they ain’t wuth no more’n a critter.”

  “Isaac’s right,” Rowland said, bobbing his head of unkempt hair. “And your hand put two of ’em outta their misery this night.”

  “Two?” Simms echoed with interest, stroking at his long, pale beard.

  Jabbing a bony thumb over his shoulder, Rowland explained, “’Nother’un’s back there—nigger was fixin’ to lay me out when Bass finished him.”

  “Damn. If that don’t take the circle!” the overly solemn Simms said with uncharacteristic enthusiasm. “Two of ’em. C’mon, let’s get this here rope up quick. Jack wants us back in camp so we can figger what’s to do about them horses the others got off with.”

  In minutes Bass was kneeling at Kinkead’s feet with some of the others. Titus asked Hatcher, “How he be?”

  “I’m fit as any the rest of you sonsabitches,” Kinkead grumbled as he pulled out the thick twig he had been clenching between his teeth. For the moment this stocky man was sitting propped back against a pack of beaver, Caleb Wood behind one shoulder for support. Matthew turned his chin toward the other shoulder and growled, “Leave me be, Mad Jack! You never was any good with a knife—”

  “Shuddup, child,” Hatcher ordered. “An’ quit yer hitchin’! Ye’re making this wuss’n it has to be.”

  Kinkead gasped in pain, flung his head back with a groan, and shoved the twig back between his teeth as Hatcher proceeded to dig into the dark, moist wound on the big man’s muscular chest. From it fluttered the long shaft of a Blackfoot arrow—buried deep in the right breast.

  “Hold him still, goddammit!” Hatcher ordered, exasperated. “Help me, Bass. Hold him down!”

  Now there were three restraining that bull of a man almost as wide as he was tall.

  “You gonna finish it sometime afore the damn sun comes up?” Bass eventually asked in a grunt as he tried to stay atop Kinkead’s strong legs.

  “I can feel the goddamned arrow point,” Hatcher admitted, shifting the knife blade this way, then that, with one hand, his other gently tugging now and then on the shaft. “I don’t wanna pull the goddamned thing free ’thout the arrow point. Hold him down, or I ain’t gonna get this done afore a month of sunrises!”

  Kinkead growled like a wounded bear, hissing around his twig at Hatcher as Jack rose to his knees above the man, brought back his arm, and suddenly slammed a fist against Kinkead’s jaw.

  Spitting the twig free, the wild-eyed Kinkead almost succeeded in getting up despite the other three. Unfazed by the blow, he angrily spat, “What the hell you go and do that for—”

  Jack swung his fist again, harder this time, connecting with a crack like a cottonwood popping in the dead of winter. Kinkead’s eyes rolled back, and his head sagged to the side, all that dead weight propped back against Caleb Wood.

  “Now I can get done what needs doing ’thout him jabberin’,” Hatcher said as he resituated himself over Kinkead. “You boys can’t keep him still … by bloody damn I’ll put him to sleep my own self.”

  In a matter of moments Hatcher’s deft touch had extracted the arrow. All that probing and digging left a mess of Kinkead’s chest, but both shaft and arrow point were free. “Get yer medeecins, Isaac,” he ordered. “Patch him up and get him covered quick.”

  Simms turned away toward his bedroll.

  Jack rose, wiped his skinning knife across his legging, and shoved it back into the scabbard at his hip. “The rest of ye, gather round.” He looked among them until he spotted Rowland. “How many they get away with, Johnny?”

  Rowland shrugged and nodded to Bass.

  Titus answered. “Maybe half a dozen, Jack.”

  “Damn.” Hatcher was deep in thought a few moments. “Every man make sure yer loaded. Leave behind any extra guns ye got with Rufus and Isaac”

  “Me?” Simms asked as he returned with his parfleche of herbs.

  “You and Rufus gonna stay behind here with Matt,” Hatcher ordered. “Drag up some cover, case they double back to make another go at us.”

  “Where you going?” Graham asked with that slight lisp of his as he started to drag a bundle of pelts over.

  “Me and the others,” the tall, angular Hatcher said, “we’re going after
them horses.”

  Domesticated four-legged critters were worth their weight in beaver plews in this country. Horses or mules, it made little difference to this small band of American fur trappers.

  Yet this was more than a matter of having a few of their animals stolen from them. The thieves had been Blackfoot—likely some of the same bunch who had struck them earlier that spring. Had that whole raiding party come at them this time, they could have run right over the white men like a herd of elk trampling across a meadow of wildflowers.

  This had become a matter of honor. A matter of a warrior’s pride. It didn’t take very many seasons surviving in these mountains before a trapper came to understand that blood was the only language the Blackfoot understood. Force, and might, and blood.

  If they let a small band of the enemy get away with a handful of horses …

  Hell, there was never the slightest debate. The six saddled up and rode north toward the far-off spine of the distant mountains, feeling their way in the darkness, hoping that their guess was right. They could wait until first light to circle around camp and locate the enemy’s trail. Or they could push out now in the dark, gambling that they would pick up the trail a few hours from now when dawn finally overtook them—without wasting that time and miles by sitting on their hands.

  As the first ballooning of light emerged out of the east, they reached the foothills on the southern slopes of the range, Hatcher riding at the head of the others, who were strung back from him in a vee like the long-necked honkers that had been winging their way north overhead for weeks now, returning to summer haunts.

  “There!” Hatcher hurled his voice over his shoulder, throwing up an arm to stop the others as he reined up.

  Clattering to a halt, the rest gazed down the open, grassy slopes broken by stands of timber, cut here and there with narrow freshets flowing bank-to-bank with spring runoff fed from the snowfields far above them.

  “They’re covering ground,” Bass declared as he studied the distant figures.

  “Damn if they ain’t,” the beefy Fish agreed.

  Hatcher turned his horse around, his half-feral eyes moving from man to man to man accusingly, “Ye boys figger us to go on? Or do we cut our losses and turn back now?”

  “It’s a long shot,” Rowland said almost apologetically.

  “Yeah,” Wood stated. “Ain’t no guarantee we’ll ever catch up after all this riding—”

  “They can’t run forever,” Bass grumbled, exasperated at their second-guessing. “I’m fixin’ to go, even if the rest of you don’t.”

  “Just you?” Rowland squeaked. “You’d be teched—”

  With a shrug Titus interrupted, “If’n it’s just me, I’ll wait till dark one night soon and crawl in, cut them horses loose. Ride back this way … ride back like hell itself.”

  “Eegod, boys! Just like a Injun would do it his own self!” Hatcher said, a grin of admiration beginning to crease his face.

  “Damn straight,” Bass said, grinning too, determination bright in his eyes.

  A half-wild look in his eyes, Hatcher glanced over the others, the grin fading from his mouth as he said, “Bass is right. Those sumbitches can’t run forever. They’ll have to stop one day soon—for graze, or water, or just to climb down from the bony backs of our god-blessed ponies.”

  “And then we’ll have ’em,” Gray said with sudden enthusiasm. He wore a cap he had stitched together himself from a scrap of old wool blanket, sewn with a peak on either side to crudely resemble wolf ears.

  Rowland shook his head. “If’n we ain’t dead in the saddle afore then our own selves.”

  Hatcher nudged his horse up close to Rowland. “Ye comin’, Johnny?”

  “Ain’t a thing wrong in you turning back to help Isaac and Rufus see to Kinkead,” Bass declared protectively. “No man can fault you there.”

  For a moment Rowland appeared to consider that option. Then he sighed, “I come this far awready.”

  Titus quickly slapped Rowland on the back and turned to Hatcher. “C’mon, Jack—let’s go see this through.”

  Dawn came and went, then midday with it. In the early afternoon they crossed a wide, shallow creek, tarrying only long enough to water their horses a little, not enough to make the animals loggy. No more than a few moments for man and beast to gulp down the cold, clear mountain runoff, enough to give the saddle horses a burst of newfound energy. They pushed on into the afternoon and watched as the sun began to tumble toward the horizon behind their left shoulders.

  “How many more you figger?” Solomon Fish asked the others who were stretched on their bellies with him, all six having left their animals tied in a copse of trees far below them before they scrambled up the slope to the top of the rimrock that color of old, sun-dried blood.

  Eyeing the warriors below, Elbridge Gray replied, “Baker’s dozen, at least.”

  The lean-faced Rowland stared down at the two hands he held up, flipping up fingers slowly, then folding them back down as he mouthed his numbers. “That makes more’n … oh, shit! We ain’t got us—”

  “Hush yer face, Johnny!” Hatcher snapped.

  “Way I see it,” Bass declared, “with that other bunch what just come in to join up with them horse thieves, looks to be they evened up the odds now.”

  Rowland gulped, “Even … evened up the odds?”

  “Yepper,” Titus replied. “I figger things is about a draw now.”

  Mad Jack cackled low, wagging his head, eyes merry in the deepening twilight. “Eegod—if’n ye don’t take the circle, Titus Bass! With us having even-up odds, just what ye got in mind for to get our horses back from that camp they’re making down there?”

  “Wh-what I got in mind?” Scratch asked with a snort. “You’re the one with all the notions, Jack. I’m just here to help out. I ain’t no smart nigger now.”

  “I was hoping ye was gonna show us ye was a lot more dad-blamed smarter’n me, coon,” Hatcher said. “’Cause I ain’t got no plan neither. No way. Nothing ’cept my hankering to sashay in there quiet as can be come slap-dark, cut loose what’s ours, an’ run the rest off so’s they can’t trail us.”

  “Gotta be quick and brassy ’bout it,” Titus added.

  “Pick yourself a strong one to ride out with,” Solomon advised gravely.

  Caleb Wood finally spoke up, “Chances are good these red niggers gonna come fair boiling after us, on horse or foot.”

  “No two ways about it, boys,” Jack reminded the rest, “we gotta drive off all their ponies.”

  “Don’t know about you,” Bass said as he started scooting back down the slope, a bone-deep weariness penetrating to his core, “but this here’s one child gonna grab him a few hours shut-eye till it’s time to go crawling in there and kill us some Blackfoots.”

  “Dead on my feet, my own self,” Hatcher agreed, flinging his arms back and stretching like a skinny, long-legged cat. “C’mon, boys. It’s been a long day awready. And from the looks of things, we’re fixin’ to lose some more sleep tonight.”

  Bass lay curled up in the frosty, fireless dark with the others, listening to the men snort and clear their throats, turn about and flop over, doing their best to root around and get themselves comfortable on the cold, cheerless ground. He wondered if the others were thinking on the Blackfoot and their fire. Likely the rest were all thinking on the same thing he had on his mind. Women.

  He brought his hand up and gently touched the long braid tied in what hair hung in front of his right ear. Thinking about Pretty Water—how she had braided it for him the first time, then taught him to do it for himself.

  For some reason tonight, he couldn’t get her out of his thoughts. That Shoshone gal who had taken on the boldest share of his nursing after buffalo hunters had discovered Bass near the spot where they had killed the sacred white medicine calf. According to that band of wandering Snake Indians, Scratch was responsible for bringing them that calf—a powerful, mystical symbol of the Creator’s blessing, a promise of
plenty after so many, many weeks of want.

  A damned lucky thing it had been for Titus Bass too. A hole in his chest from an Arapaho bullet, the scalp ripped from the crown of his head, grown weak as a newborn beaver kit after days of wandering half-conscious clinging to the back of his steadfast Hannah … never before had Scratch been so close to death’s door as he was that day last summer when Hatcher’s bunch and the Shoshone hunters happed onto him.

  Suddenly become hero to the tribe if not their savior—Bass was treated like a chief, picked from the ground by the hunters and laid upon downy soft buffalo robes. Dragged on a travois back to the huge camp where Titus was descended upon by the women of the tribe, every last one of them clucking and chattering at once as they hoisted him into a huge buffalo-hide lodge where he would stay for the next two weeks while he was knitting up.

  As he began to put back on the weight he had lost in his ordeal, the Shoshone women started out to care for him in relays, coming and going to change the noxious, slimy poultices they compressed into his bullet wounds, supporting him gently against their fragrant softness as they poured rich, greasy soup past his lips, or bathed him with scraps of cloth dipped in cool water. There had been nothing remarkable about any of those hovering faces, or the healing hands, or the gentle chatter he did not understand in the least … until one morning he awoke to the soft, lyric humming of a new woman he found sitting by the low flames warming the fire pit.

  With her back turned toward him, for the longest time Bass contented himself to watch her sway gently back and forth in time to her half-whispered song as she repeatedly poked her bone awl through a piece of smoked leather, then drove the end of some sinew through the hole, down and through over and over again, tightening each stitch with a tug of her deft fingers.

  He so surprised her the moment he asked for water that she stabbed herself with the awl.

  But as soon as she whirled on him with a startled jerk, placing that bleeding fingertip to her lips where she licked at the blood—Bass’s mouth went dry. Finding himself pasty-tongued as he looked into those eyes that reminded him so much of Marissa Guthrie’s, that settler’s daughter back along the river south of St. Louis.