Crack in the Sky

by Terry C. Johnston

  One of them yelled at the other; then both put heels to their horses and raced toward the white man. He set himself, ready to spring to either side, ready even to pitch onto the ground when they reached him. But to his surprise neither one leaned off to swing at him with their club or tomahawk. Rather, they burst on past, kicking their ponies furiously.

  Right on the heels of the rest of those already fleeing the battle with wild shouts.

  “Hatcher!”

  It was Kinkead’s voice he heard as he turned.

  Matthew was pointing back into the timber where the Comanche had disappeared. They could still hear the hoofbeats. But instead of that hammering growing fainter, it was becoming louder.

  “They’re coming back!” Hatcher exploded out of the dawn shadows, hollering and waving.

  All the rest were looking back over their shoulders as the war cries and captives’ shrieks grew louder.

  “Get the women!”

  Bass spun to glance back toward the middle of the meadow, where he found three of the captives miraculously still on their feet—naked and shivering, trembling from fear and the cold, huddling and clutching one another.

  “Where’s the children?” Bass screamed at Solomon Fish as the trapper sprinted up beside him.

  The stocky man’s face went blank as he swallowed hard and replied, “Ain’t none of the li’l ones left.”

  In disbelief Titus groaned, “They kill ’em all?”

  Lumbering up, Graham shouted, “What ones they didn’t awready get off with!”

  “Watch out!” Hatcher warned.

  The three of them whirled around with Jack as a dozen horsemen exploded from the shadows at tree line, horses snorting frosty jets of steam from their nostrils, bearing their riders toward the men on foot, who set themselves for that charge. Behind the trappers arose the shrieks of the three naked captives as they saw the Comanche returning.

  Behind the women the soldiers themselves screamed in terror of being overrun and immediately turned on their heels, abandoning the women just behind that last stand being formed by those nine Americans.

  Scratch quickly searched for Rowland on either side of him as the horsemen urged more speed from their ponies, coming all the faster across that trampled ground. There, off to the side, he finally saw him—where Johnny was as good as dead, collapsed over the body of his dead wife.

  “Stand steady and look ’em in the eye!” Hatcher bellowed.

  “Take one of ’em with you when you go down, boys!” Isaac Simms shouted, that tobacco-stained, whitish beard of his quivering with rage.

  Bass barely had time to take another breath before the horsemen crashed into them with a deafening tangle of shouts and cries, screams and groans. In that clamor the trappers ducked and dived out of the way, some spinning about to reach up, immediately yanking horsemen down from their ponies as the warriors twisted to this side, then that, on the backs of their horses, attempting to slash at the whites with tomahawks, jabbing with knives of Mexican steel, and swinging stone-crowned clubs or stout bows at their enemies.

  Only five of the twelve made it past the desperate trappers; no more than a handful reached that undefended patch of snowy ground where the three terrified women suddenly whirled and sprinted off, with the horsemen right on their heels, scampering like rabbits surprised far from their burrow. Hatcher pulled out his huge knife and in one motion brought it back, then flung it forward with such force that its impact knocked a warrior off his pony.

  As if a keg of powder exploded beneath them, the nine Americans sprinted after the Comanche, screeching like demons with the coming of that crimson dawning of the day.

  A black-haired horseman reined up beside one of the fleeing women, slamming his horse into her, knocking the shrieking woman off balance. As she staggered to her feet, he leaned from his horse, reached over, and looped a dark arm around her naked body, wrenching the woman against the side of the pony.

  She kicked and thrashed her bare brown feet as they left the ground, struggling with what strength she had left in her, pummeling the man with her fists as he yanked the horse around, intending to escape with his prize still dangling off the side of his pony.

  As the other trappers swarmed toward the rest of the enemy, Bass shot away at an angle. Dropping his rifle behind him in that headlong dash, he pulled out his knife a breath before he leaped against the warrior, wrapping an arm around the Comanche’s dark neck.

  With the woman struggling on one side, and the trapper yanking him down on the other, the horseman freed his prisoner and smashed his open right hand into the white man’s face—his fingers clawing and tearing, searching for the eye sockets. The Comanche swiftly found Scratch’s left eye with a thumb he jabbed savagely into the soft tissue.

  At the same moment one of the grimy, char-smudged fingers found the corner of Bass’s mouth, where it began ripping at softer flesh.

  Jerking his head to the side, Scratch almost pulled that finger free. Grunting in exertion, the warrior clawed his enemy’s face with renewed strength as Bass filled his hands with coarse black hair. Bass knotted the hair around his fingers, pulling that face closer, closer to his while he worked to free his right hand and the knife it held.

  With a roar the Comanche smashed his head against the white man’s temple, stunning Titus. He began to blink his eyes clear as the warrior snapped his head forward again. But this time Bass was ready. Opening wide, he clenched his teeth around the bony, grease-painted nose like the jaws of a trap.

  Screaming in pain, the Comanche rammed his thumb all the farther into the white man’s eye.

  Now the agony in that one eye became so great, Scratch could no longer keep the other open. He squeezed them shut.

  With his teeth locked around that big nose, Bass flung his weight this way and that, blindly yanking and tugging, trying to unhorse his enemy. Grinding his teeth ever tighter as he twisted about, he felt the grimy, war-painted skin tear loose across hard cartilage, tasted the sticky blood as it oozed from the torn flesh, warm and thick on his tongue as the hard tissue continued to crackle beneath Bass’s powerful jaws.

  Twisting, jerking, yanking backward, Titus finally felt his top teeth grind down onto his bottom teeth—and snapped backward from the enemy’s face. With the warrior’s shrill scream, the smelly claw flew back from Scratch’s face: no more did those fingers spear his eye, no more did they rip at the side of his mouth.

  With blood gushing from the middle of his face, the Comanche screamed in even greater pain.

  With the severed nose still in his mouth, Scratch gave one final heave, leaping again as he yanked savagely on the warrior’s hair. Dragging the man’s head to the side with an audible snap, Bass felt the warrior’s muscles relax, freeing the woman and the pony at the same time.

  Spilling backward, Bass fell to the ground, his fingers still tangled in the warrior’s long hair as the Comanche lumbered to his knees, grunting and huffing from that sudden hole in his face where blood streamed and air bubbled. With one hand he touched the terrible wound, looked at his fingers, then reached for his own knife.

  Lunging out, Scratch slashed his-blade across the warrior’s blood-splattered buckskin shirt, bright crimson spurting from the wound opened beneath the garment. He raked the knife back again, higher still across the chest, as the warrior clumsily brought his knife out.

  Then a third time, now across the side of the Comanche’s neck, severing the thick vein and artery in a brilliant spray of blood. The warrior gasped as he fell forward in the throes of a last convulsion, the knife still clutched in that hand held out before him.

  As the Comanche plunged toward him, attempting to kill his killer, Scratch twisted aside. The warrior’s knife pierced the flap of Bass’s blanket coat before it plunged on into the icy ground, buried up to the guard. His eyes already dead, the Indian brushed past Titus, collapsing upon the handle of his own knife, those last terrible spurts of blood splattering across the long tail of Scratch’s coat as the body
collapsed against his legs.

  Shocked to find himself slammed into the snow, Bass tried to roll away, discovering that his legs and one arm were pinned beneath the dead man. He twisted and yanked desperately, trying to free himself … when a shadow flitted over him.

  From the corner of his eye Bass watched arms drag the body back so he could roll away. He rose onto his hip and elbow, turning back, prepared to thank one of his friends—but his mouth froze open in surprise. Scratch found his rescuer a woman in her midforties, naked and blue-lipped, her arms, back, and face bloodied and tracked with swollen welts.

  Embarrassed for her, Scratch was on his feet and yanking at the buckle to his belt before he was conscious of dropping the wide leather belt and its knife scabbard on the ground. Quickly he tugged the blanket coat from his shoulders and swept it behind the naked woman. After stuffing her arms down the sleeves, she wrapped it securely around her and looked up at him, muttering something in Spanish as her red, puffy eyes began to seep again.

  It took only a moment before her voice faded to a shrill, tiny squeak of unutterable pain and the woman collapsed to her knees, pitching slowly forward until her brow pressed against the ground as she wailed inconsolably.

  Not until that moment when the woman began to wail did he become conscious of the sudden quiet in the narrow depression where Hatcher’s men had sprung their trap. Nothing more on the cold wind but the soft noise of horses snuffling, the whimpers of the wounded, the soft crunch of footsteps across the icy ground.

  And with the next gust of breeze, the quiet was gone. More of the Mexicans were strutting down the slope toward the battleground now, yelling and screaming of a sudden. A few of them loped through the pack on horseback, carrying their own spears. These riders roamed the ground like a pack of dogs, searching out any of the enemy still alive. Once found, a wounded Comanche was pierced with two, three, or four of the Mexicans’ spears while those on foot rejoiced and shouted, rushing in to hack at the body until it was dismembered, even before the enemy’s heart had beaten its last.

  Going to his knees, Scratch scooted close to the woman, then laid an arm across her shoulders. She raised her head, looked into his face, then nestled her cheek against the hollow of his neck and began to quake. Some forty yards away Isaac Simms had wrapped a large horse blanket around a small woman, and Kinkead was talking with the third captive in her native tongue as he clutched a large Mexican blanket around her trembling shoulders.

  Suddenly the small woman with Simms turned, crying out in anguished Spanish, causing the woman Bass was comforting to lift her face, holding out her arms and screeching for the small woman who was rushing her way.

  Bass helped her stand, then steadied the woman as she hobbled forward on bare, frozen feet. Closer and closer sprinted the small woman, closer still until Scratch could plainly see she was not a woman at all, but a young girl barely on the threshold of her teen years.

  Kinkead and some of the others stepped over dead bodies of Indians and a soldier, following the girl and the other woman toward the oldest of the three, who continued to clutch Bass.

  “Mi Jacova!” she shouted at the girl.

  “Mama! Mama! Mama!”

  How they embraced, forgetting their wounds. They kissed and kissed again, hugging and squeezing their arms around one another as the trappers came up.

  “That’s the gov’nor’s wife,” Kinkead said. “Her name’s Manuela.”

  “And that’s her girl?”

  “Yes, Scratch,” Matthew replied. “Her name’s Jacova. For all her papa’s treasures, she’s his prize. He’ll be some punkins to see they both come back alive.”

  At that moment Bass felt a tug to turn, finding Hatcher at his elbow. He pointed.

  Rowland lay across the body of his dead wife, wailing.

  “Get me a blanket,” Jack told Isaac.

  Simms understood and nodded, turning away toward the battlefield, where he knelt beside a dead Comanche wearing a bloodstained blanket tied around his waist. With it Isaac met Bass at Rowland’s side.

  Hatcher helped Bass lift the grieving husband off the woman so Simms could spread the blanket over the naked body. Then Scratch slowly turned the woman over, dragging the blanket up to cover her face.

  “Isaac, get her ready to travel,” Hatcher requested in a whisper. “Pull some rope off one of them dead horses.”

  As Rowland sat sobbing between Bass and Hatcher, Simms prepared the body for their journey back to Taos. Lashing the rope around and around the blanket-wrapped shroud, Isaac tied his last knot just as one of the soldiers strode up to Kinkead. The Mexican spoke in the clipped tones of a man who clearly thought he was talking to someone occupying a lower station in life.

  Caleb hobbled up, a leg bleeding, to ask, “Who the shit is this nigger?”

  “Sergeant of this here outfit,” Kinkead grumbled. “Name of Ramirez. Sergeant Jorge Ramirez.”

  “What’s he saying to you, Matthew?”

  “Says it’s time for him to take the women and the girl back to the gov’nor in Taos.”

  “Take ’em back?” Elbridge Gray echoed. “Why, them damned soldados didn’t do nothing to save ’em!”

  Hatcher nodded, giving his order: “Tell him that, Matthew.”

  Behind the sergeant, what others weren’t tending to their own wounded or their dead continued to mutilate and dismember the enemy dead. Matthew brought himself up to his full height, casting a shadow over Ramirez as he repeated the declaration.

  Then Kinkead told the other Americans, “Says he demands the women—’specially the woman and her daughter—so he can turn ’em over to the gov’nor when they get back to Taos.”

  Hatcher stood. “Didn’t ye tell him we figger these soldiers didn’t save the womenfolk, so we don’t figger they got any right takin’ the womenfolk back?”

  “Just what I told him.”

  “Tell the sumbitch again,” Jack growled. “Then tell him we’re taking the women back on our own. They can come along, or they can stay here and tear these here bodies apart like they was the ones what won the fight.”

  When Matthew’s words struck the Mexican’s ears, more of the soldiers stopped their butchery and moved over to join the sergeant arguing with Kinkead.

  “He says they have more guns than we do.”

  “This bastard brung it right down to the nut-cutting, didn’t he, boys?” Jack snorted. “Awright, Matthew, tell him he sure ’nough does have him more guns right now … but we got more balls, and these yellow-backed greasers ain’t going to back down no American!”

  With that answer to his bold demands, the sergeant’s eyes darkened in fury. Suddenly he shouted at the other Mexicans—silencing their angry murmurs. In the uneasy quiet Ramirez glared at Kinkead as he spoke.

  “This one says he’s asking us one last time to turn over the women afore he orders the men to kill … kill us all.”

  At that challenge several of the Americans pulled back the hammers on their firearms as they stepped backward around Rowland and his wife, slowly ringing the three freed captives. Those who did not have loaded weapons pulled knives or reached down and scooped a tomahawk or club from the ground. In a moment all eight had their backs together, the women and Rowland at the center of that tiny circle.

  Close to shaking with rage, Hatcher growled, “Matthew, ye tell this sick-dog, sad-assed, whimpering greaser that I wanna know what right they got to take the women back for themselves … when these here yellow-livered cowards wasn’t even brave enough to jump footfirst into the fight to save these here women!”

  As Kinkead translated, the eyes of nearly all the Mexicans glowed with even more hatred—but not a one of them dared initiate an assault on the trappers. Their spokesman trembled with rage as he spat out his words.

  Matthew said, “He says they’re not cowards—”

  “Like hell they ain’t!” Bass interrupted with a snort of derision.

  Sputtering in anger one moment, Ramirez fell to wheedling the
next, attempting to explain the lack of action and courage of his men during the fight.

  Kinkead translated, “Says he wasn’t able to get the rest to keep fighting after Guerrero was killed. The rest were … were—but I don’t think he can find a nice word for them being scared.”

  Hatcher shook his head in disgust. “Then tell that sumbitch to have his men either start this fight right now—or get back outta our way, and make it quick!”

  With that said to the Mexican, he waved his men back a few yards, then turned once more to growl at Kinkead.

  “Just who the hell is this greaser to take on these high airs?” Bass inquired.

  Matthew explained, “Now that Guerrero’s dead—this one takes over, I s’pose.”

  Watching the soldiers inch back a short distance, Hatcher repeated, “That give this Ramirez nigger the due to rub up against us the way he is?”

  As the soldiers closed in around their leader once more, Matthew said, “They don’t figger these here women any safer with us than they was with the Comanche.”

  Most of the Americans laughed at that declaration, a few even jabbing one another with elbows, some wagging their heads in amused disbelief.

  But while the others guffawed, Caleb Wood stepped up to demand, “Merciful heavens! Why the hell aren’t these here women safe with the men who saved ’em?”

  “Because he don’t figger us for Christians,” Kinkead said. “Leastwise, none of the rest of you.”

  “How you so special?” Simms grumbled, pulling at a blond ringlet in his beard with a grubby finger.

  “Remember how I got myself baptized in the Mexican church some time back,” Kinkead explained.

  “Don’t mean to stomp on yer Rosa’s church, Matthew,” Hatcher began, “but the way we see it, ye tell this son of a lily-livered bitch that I don’t give a damn if he’s Christian or not…. Tell him his bunch wasn’t in this fight enough for me to call ’em brave men.”

  When Kinkead turned back to Hatcher after delivering those inflammatory words, he said, “Seems you’re dishonoring not just him but the other soldiers who died here this morning if you don’t let ’em take the prisoners back to their families in Taos.”