Crack in the Sky

by Terry C. Johnston

  “Eegod! Honor? That what this is all about?” Hatcher spat. “How the hell can this here greaser talk to me about honor when he and his men didn’t have the honor to fight like men? To fight like their dead leader fought? Maybeso to die like a man, instead of standing right here in front of real men and whining like alley cats about their goddamned honor!”

  It was plain to see how those words slapped the sergeant across the face like a sudden, unexpected challenge. His eyes glared like black coals; his lips curled, stretching taut over his front teeth as he struggled for words.

  “When we get back to Taos, he says he’ll let you tell the gov’nor what all we done to help his men in this fight.”

  Jack whirled on Kinkead in utter disbelief. “That what he said, Matthew? That we … only helped in this fight?”

  “Yep—says we just helped his men.”

  Flecks of spittle crusted the corners of Hatcher’s lips as he sputtered, “Tell that sumbitch Ramirez to step out of my way or I’m going to cut him up into pieces small enough that the jays can eat what’s left of ’im!”

  “Jack,” Kinkead said with a soothing tone, his words almost whispered. “Maybe you ought’n figger us a way to do this ’thout anyone else getting killed. They got us near surrounded now.”

  “I’ll gut my share of ’em afore—”

  “Lookee there, Jack,” Caleb interrupted Hatcher as his eyes flicked about of a sudden. “The greasers sure as Katie do got us circled.”

  “Goddamned Mex,” Isaac growled. “Only time they figger to fight is when they got the enemy outnumbered.”

  Scratch added, “And when they got the drop on us!”

  “Listen up,” Jack told them. “What say we leave it up to the women here?”

  “You mean let the women decide who they ride back to Taos with?” Elbridge asked.

  “That’s right,” Jack replied. “Matthew, tell this greaser we’re going to let the women decide.”

  After a minute of coaxing from Kinkead, the sergeant nodded in agreement, a smug look of victory already apparent on his face.

  “He says he’ll let the women decide.”

  “I’ll wager he thinks the womens will pick him,” Jack declared.

  “He’s probably right,” Kinkead replied. “After all, the womens are Mexican like these here soldiers.”

  “So ask ’em, Matthew,” Hatcher ordered. “Ask ’em who they’re riding back home with.”

  Scratch watched Kinkead pose that question. Instead of answering immediately, the daughter clutched her mother, burying her face against Bass’s coat. And the younger woman looked at the governor’s wife a moment, then stared at the ground before she muttered something. Finally the older woman held her chin high and in a soft voice gave her answer. Her words visibly caused a dark cloud to cross the soldier’s face.

  “What’d she say?” Hatcher demanded in a harsh whisper.

  Kinkead cleared his throat and said, “Says she’s been listening in on ever’thing we been saying, Jack.”

  “So what’s her answer?”

  “She’s telling Ramirez that they all three agreed the same together,” Matthew began. “Says they are going to ride back to their homes with the men who had risked their lives to save ’em—the Americans.”

  “I’ll be go to hell,” Rufus whispered in shock.

  “Then maybe we better get the bodies of these here other women wrapped up and ready to ride back,” Jack said as he turned away from the sergeant.

  Ramirez held out his beefy hands, saying something quietly to the women, his tone imploring, but instantly the oldest woman snapped at him angrily, one of her brown arms poking from the capote sleeve, pointing at the bodies of the other captives lying across the battlefield—both women and children. Hostages and prisoners dragged from their homes only to be brutally murdered in this attempt to save them all.

  “She just told him that she had her no doubt he and his soldiers wouldn’t never come along on this ride if it wasn’t for the Americans leading the bunch,” Matthew translated as the soldiers turned away, shamed by the woman’s strong words. “Said she’s sure there wasn’t no chance for any of them to come out alive if only the soldiers come along … because the coward soldiers likely wouldn’t come to rescue them at all.”

  As he and the others watched the haughty Mexicans shambling away, grumbling among themselves as they caught up their horses and shouted orders among their numbers to mount their wounded and load up their dead, Scratch asked, “That what finally made them soldiers back off from us?”

  “No,” Matthew answered quietly. “It’s what she told ’em there at the last.”

  “What was that?” Hatcher asked.

  Kinkead said, “The woman told ’em she figgered it would be far better for any woman to live the rest of her life being a slave to the Comanche … better that than to live as the wife to a coward dog what wasn’t ready to fight and die to save his woman.”

  It took the rest of that day and on through the long, cold night, when they camped on their way back over the mountains and down to the Taos valley, for Bass to begin to forget that pitiful, solitary wail that escaped from John Rowland at the moment Kinkead translated the Mexican woman’s declaration: how a courageous man would fight and die to rescue his wife.

  Better to live as a slave to the savage, heathen Comanche than to live ashamed and married to a coward who wasn’t prepared to give his life to save his own woman.

  That afternoon as they recrossed the divide and began their descent toward the valley, storm clouds clotted along the western horizon. Thick as a blood soup, they made for an early sunset as the procession continued east, clouds drawing closer with every hour, dragging down the temperature, giving the wind a cruel bite. Both Rufus Graham and Solomon Fish each managed to kill an elk close to twilight. Food for them all, and in as good a place as any to hunker down for the rest of that night they would have to endure.

  As darkness sank around them, Hatcher had Kinkead instruct the sergeant that his men must put out a night guard not only around their camp but around the horse herd too. While the Comanche might be too wary to attack the trappers and Mexicans in the dark, they wouldn’t be at all skittish about rushing in and riding off with some or all of the enemy’s horses. There were four fires that night, three of them placed close together where the Mexican soldiers gathered to fight off the cold and gloom. And the fourth fire where the nine Americans huddled with the three Taos captives. Clear enough was it that the line had been drawn. Just as clear enough that were it not for the wife and daughter of the governor, Ramirez’s soldiers might well have tried to wipe out the upstart trappers.

  For the longest time that night as the cold deepened, young Jacova Mirabal kept her eyes fixed on the American who had rescued her mother, watching Bass move from place to place as he brought in wood, or stirred up the fire, or cut and cooked slices of the meat for the women, or even helped them with the cold, damp horse blankets—all that the Americans had to offer as protection from the terrible temperatures as dawn approached.

  That storm rushing out of the west was at hand. Winter’s clouds hovered just overhead as the sky paled enough to travel.

  “Matthew,” Hatcher called across the fire to the big man with his back propped against a tree, dozing fitfully. “Get them greasers up and moving. We’re lighting out soon.”

  A little rest and the chance to sit around a warming fire wasn’t near enough to improve the disposition of the soldiers. Sullen and bleary-eyed as they slowly dragged themselves out of their blankets on the snowy ground, the Mexicans glared at the trappers with even more hate than they had the day before. A very sinister loathing was reserved for Scratch when young Jacova chose to ride alongside him again that cold dawn as they continued their descent down the western slope of the Sangre de Cristos, smoke from the distant villages already visible on the far horizon below the approaching storm clouds.

  As the sun rose against the peaks at their backs, it spread a soft l
ight into the Taos valley below, brushing its rosy tint across the gray smudge of morning cookfires that would be warming every home, hut, and hovel. But all too soon that cheery glow was gone as the sun continued to rise behind the thickening clouds, swallowed by the oncoming storm as the riders made their way toward the valley floor.

  By the time the party reached the first of the northernmost ranchos, word began, to spread of the rescuers’ return. Riding at the head of the cavalcade were Ramirez’s soldiers, each of them triumphantly waving their weapons—lances or swords or muskets—as they drove ahead of them what cattle and sheep they had managed to recapture after the ambush. Some distance behind the Mexicans trailed the Americans, the ten of them led by the trio of captives who, by choosing to ride with the trappers, made it apparent to the growing throngs who gathered to watch their procession that they would rather ride among the gringos than with their own countrymen.

  Field-workers and wranglers from those first ranchos streamed onto the road, joining the procession on its way toward Taos itself, more and more people joining in to scurry along both sides of the march—shouting and cheering, waving hats and shawls and scarves over their heads, singing praises for the deliverance of the three still alive. Others wailed and sobbed, crying piteously for the captives brutally butchered by the Comanche—an eerie, discordant cacophony that loudly battered Scratch’s ears, one that suddenly swelled in volume and intensity when they drew within sight of the walls of the village itself.

  Suddenly the cathedral bells began to toll wildly. On rooftops stood young boys holding aloft thick streamers of colorful cloth billowing on the cold wind. Girls of all ages pushed forward on either side of the procession to hold up offerings of bread, fruit, and even a live chicken to the victors. The soldiers eagerly snatched up all that was given: life in the army was not far from abject poverty. Bass himself took a loaf of warm bread, then passed it back to Jacova, who thanked him with that sad smile on her lovely brown face smudged with soot and grime and blood. Some of the villagers rushed up to Jacova and her mother, bowing their heads respectfully while lifting a corner of the blanket each held around them, these impoverished people kissing the dirty wool with such reverence, such gratitude that both mother and daughter had been spared.

  No more than fifty yards ahead lay the town square. And at its center waited Padre Jose Martinez; beside him stood the governor, Don Frederico de Jesus Mirabal. How stoic the man is, Titus thought as he watched this official calmly gaze at his loved ones returning. Were these his own wife and daughter, Bass was certain he would be shoving his way through the gauntlet himself, unable to wait patiently on the cathedral’s low steps as the bells continued their joyous peal.

  Here and there among the crowd were those already dressed in black—a rebozo that fully covered a woman’s head and shoulders for some, was no more than a poor shawl for others. These were the mourners crying and wailing as they searched among the survivors and did not find a loved one—abruptly realizing that one of the blanket shrouds covered a family member or friend. The shrill keening grew all the louder as the procession drew closer and closer still to the church, then stopped … when all fell quiet but for the muffled sobs of so many mourners, the uneasy snuffles of the weary, hungry horses.

  In a loud voice that rocked from the sides of the tiny square, Governor Mirabal spoke.

  “Welcome back, my family!” Kinkead translated as the governor moved off the steps and hurried to his wife’s side.

  Holding up his arms, Mirabal pulled his wife down from the horse, kissing both her cheeks, her forehead, enthusiastically before he embraced her savagely and wheeled about to do the same in helping his daughter from her mount.

  With his wife, Manuela, beneath one arm, Jacova under the other, the governor climbed back to stand atop the steps of the small cathedral, where he spoke to the murmuring crowd.

  In a whisper Matthew repeated, “He says he wants everyone to be quiet while the padre gives a prayer.”

  For long minutes the brown-robed priest droned on, his eyes closed and his face turned heavenward as he gestured first with one arm, then the other, and eventually made the sign of the cross, bowed his head, and kissed the crucifix around his neck—at which point all the crowd raised their heads.

  Again the governor spoke in his loud, stentorian voice.

  “He says he wants to do something important to show his gratitude to the soldiers who returned his family to him—”

  But Kinkead interrupted his translation as Bass and the others watched Manuela turn to her husband, raise her face to his ear, and whisper to him as he bent toward her.

  The moment she began speaking to him, the governor’s gaze shifted to stare at the party of gloating soldiers; then he straightened, and his eyes darted farther back in the square to find the small party of Americans. Mirabal bent slightly and spoke in hushed tones to his wife. Both she and Jacova whispered something to him before he pulled them against him all the more fiercely and began to speak to the throng.

  Matthew said, “Now he says he wants to do something very, very special for the men who his wife and daughter say put up their lives to save his family. He wants to … to …”

  “To what, Kinkead?” Hatcher demanded as Matthew fell silent.

  With his chin quivering, his eyes moistening, and a big smile splitting his bearlike beard, Matthew answered, “The governor wants to give the Americanos a very special baile!”

  Solomon Fish asked, “A baile?”

  “A dance!” Kinkead roared, then went to laughing lustily, sweeping up his Rosa and swinging her around and around while she giggled like a young girl.

  “A dance?” Rufus asked.

  Matthew joyously cried, “The governor his own self is gonna thank us niggers for saving his family! By holding a dance in our honor!”

  10

  Jehoshaphat, if that liquor didn’t taste good!

  Despite the remembrance of how this evil brew had lopped off the top of his head the last time he had settled down to put on nothing more than a nice, rosy glow. It had been that first night at Workman’s, when he’d ended up waking the next morning feeling as if his head were clamped in the jaws of a huge trap, his mouth tasting as if Ramirez’s soldados had marched across his tongue in muddy boots.

  “Best you go at it slow this time, Scratch,” Kinkead warned. He stood before Titus like a jolly monolith, his arm wrapped securely around Rosa’s shoulder.

  “This here stuff is pure-dee magic, Matthew!” Bass replied, licking his lips as he refilled his clay cup with the ladle. “I’ll be go to hell if it don’t beat that Monangahela rum I was broke in on back to the Ohio country.”

  “Bet this here wheat brew of Workman’s does pack a bigger wallop too!” Hatcher declared as he stepped up to get himself a refill at the table placed a’straddle the corner of the long sala, the parlor where valley folks had begun to arrive and all was gaiety beneath the huge fluttering candles and smaller mirrored lanterns.

  Besides that fermented grain beverage manufactured by William Workman at his new distillery west of the village, Governor Mirabal and his wife, Manuela, were serving what was variously known among the American trappers as “Pass brandy” or “Pass wine”—given that name from the fact that this grape product was routinely brought up from Chihuahua through the “pass” in the mountains, those fine spirits transported as far north as Santa Fe and Taos in oaken kegs and earthen jars.

  “Scratch—just you be careful that Taos lightning don’t whack you in the back of the head when you ain’t looking!” Caleb cried as he held out his cup for another ladle of the heady concoction.

  “Aguardiente I hear it’s called,” Bass declared with an expert roll of his r.

  “Ah-wharr-dee-en-tee! Listen to this here nigger spit that out so smooth!” Hatcher snorted. “Picking up on the Mex talk, he is.”

  “Only a little,” Scratch admitted.

  “Maybeso just enough to get yourself hunkered atween the legs of some purty seno
rita,” said Solomon Fish as his eyes studied those comely maids moving about the room.

  Quickly gazing over the small knots of dark-eyed, rosy-cheeked young women, Scratch wagged his head and replied, “Maybeso this child’s gonna learn enough of their Mex talk to dig hisself down into one helluva lot of trouble!”

  Slipping his knife from its scabbard hung at the back of his belt, Titus plunged the narrow tip of it into the open clay crock sitting on the table among stacks of clay cups, huge basket-wrapped jugs, and crystal bowls. Spearing some clumps of coarse brown sugar on the flat of his blade, Scratch dumped the grains into his cup, stirring a bit before he licked both sides of the knife and returned it to the scabbard—then took himself a long drink he let lay on his tongue, savoring the hearty burn.

  Jumpin’ Jehoshaphat! If that Mex way to drink this here liquor didn’t make his sweet tooth shine!

  Back at Workman’s place that first night in the valley more than two weeks before, Rufus Graham had introduced him to the way many Taosenos sweetened and softened the locals’ favorite potion. As strong black Mississippi River coffee became a dessert with heapings of cane sugar, this Mexican aguardiente went down all the smoother after a man sweetened it with a coarse brown sugar transported all the way north from Mexico’s southernmost provinces.

  As new as these villages in northern Mexico might be to gringo traders from the States, the Taos valley had been settled well before the arrival of the first English to the eastern shores of North America. From the time the Spanish first ventured north to the Rio Grande country, the simple people of this valley had celebrated the annual tradition of the Taos Fair in late July or early August. Drawn by the prospect of riches, traders of many colors flocked to this high land locked beneath the dark snowcapped peaks of the Sangre de Cristos.