Crack in the Sky (39 page)

Who had yanked him from the gaping maw of death?

Were they at his shoulder then and there? And if he listened hard enough, would he hear them?

Climbing down off the bank, he waded upstream with the trap, float, and bait sticks.

So many questions.

Quickly scraping out a shelf for the trap a few inches below the surface of the stream, Scratch positioned the trap and strung out the chain, driving the long, pointed sapling into the graveled creekbottom. Returning the small ax to the back of his belt beside the knife scabbard, he moved downstream toward his rifle and pouch.

At the sharp-sided bank he hoisted himself onto the grass and sat there dripping, finally settling back against the tree trunk where his rifle leaned.

Too many questions.

He would try listening. Williams had claimed a man might just hear the other side if he listened hard enough. The breeze stirred the leaves around him a moment; then the quakies settled. In that momentary silence he strained to listen. Then felt the air move around him unexpectedly. Almost as if it were something of substance … some one touching his shoulder.

Scratch turned, expecting to find … but there was nothing.

He sighed and went back to listening. The breeze came up again, rustling through the aspen leaves overhead. Stirring all the trees around him as he gazed out upon the floor of the valley. When his eyes began to droop, the wind chuttered among the leaves—murmuring, almost whispering.

“Bass.”

Alert anew, eyes open, Scratch turned this way, then that. Listening. The breeze stirred again.

“Bass.”

Slowly he raised his face to peer overhead into the branches cluttered with tiny, trembling green leaves.

“Bass.”

Only the breeze nudging the leaves just gently enough that he had imagined they were murmuring his name.

When he brought his gaze back down, Scratch spotted them.

Two riders across the valley floor. Not where he would expect to see any of the rest of Hatcher’s outfit. And the two were close enough … for him to see their long, loose hair and the feathers tossing on the breeze that had whispered his name through the branches overhead.

“Bass.”

The hair bristled at the back of his neck with that next chutter of the leaves.

For a moment he studied the sky above the two horsemen, on either side of them, the very air between them. Hopeful he would actually be able to see the ragged tear rent in that filmy curtain between the other world and his. Wondering if he would indeed be able to see for himself that crack in the sky through which these riders had suddenly appeared.

As the riders slowly approached the far bank of the stream, Titus leaned to the side and brought the rifle into his lap—snapping the frizzen forward to assure himself that the pan was loaded. Next he saw to the charge in his pistol, then stuffed its barrel back in his belt. The pair of horsemen stopped when he rose from the ground holding the fullstock rifle at his right hip, his finger gently nudging back the rear set trigger until he felt the sear engage.

Titus stared at them for what seemed like a long time, waiting for the two warriors to declare themselves as friend or foe, ready for when they would plunge off the far bank into the stream and rush him. Then as one of the horses began to paw and bob its head impatiently, a rider spoke, gesturing with his bow.

Bass let him finish what he had to say, then tried to explain, “I don’t know your tongue.”

Scratch put the fingers of his left hand to his lips, moving
them directly out toward the warriors as he shook his head vigorously.

Passing the bow over his head, the horseman stuffed it within a quiver half-filled by arrows. With his hands freed, the Indian began to sign.

But those gestures weren’t making any sense, their being this far apart. Bass shook his head.

Apparently frustrated, the sign talker said something to the other, and they both nudged their ponies into motion.

Bass took a step forward, planting his feet as they entered the stream. He brought the rifle up, the cheekpiece braced between his bottom ribs and arm.

“Stop right there!”

Yanking back on their reins, both horsemen halted their ponies near the middle of the stream. Down the creek Titus heard the warning slap of a single beaver near that dam the creatures had been building over the last few days. More tails slapped the surface of the water; then it gradually grew quiet again.

So quiet, he heard the air nuzzle the quaky leaves above him.

“Bass.”

Again the sign talker tried. But now that he was closer, Scratch could see just what the warrior had to say in sign: with only the first two fingers of his right hand extended, the others closed in the palm, the Indian held the hand momentarily in front of his chin, the extended fingers pointing at the sky. Then he slowly moved the hand up until it was about level with the top of his head, slowly bringing them down to point at the white man. Several times he repeated the same gesture while Titus stared quizzically at the two.

“Oh, damn!” he gushed, suddenly remembering.
“Friend
. Why—you’re saying friend.”

Bracing the rifle against his hip, Scratch mimicked the sign with his left hand. Then he tapped the rifle with his hand, pointing to himself and making the sign for friend again.

Finally the warrior nodded.

“That’s right, fellers,” Bass murmured to himself. “This here gun’s my friend.”

Scratch formed a fist with his left hand, extending only the index finger, and held it out in front of his body, finger pointing upward.
People
.

“What people are you?” he asked aloud.

The two looked at one another and shook their heads. They weren’t understanding. Perhaps he had it wrong.

Then he thought of asking it another way. Again the hand with only the index finger went up, pointing at the sky, but now he brought it downward in a graceful arc, in the path taken by an arrow shot straight into the sky.

“What band are you?”

Through it all he studied the way the riders wore their hair, the feathers, their clothing and horse trappings—anything that might give him a clue. Here in South Park, he realized this pair could be anything from wandering Comanche or Kiowa or Southern Cheyenne come a distance to hunt. But then he realized if they had come from so far away, chances were good more warriors were somewhere close at hand. They didn’t look all that much like Ute, he decided, regarding their hair and the elaborate face painting.

Painted. Maybeso they were from a warrior band foreign to this part of the mountains, come here with a large raiding party, painted for battle. Not some local fellas, out hunting for their families, to take meat and hides back for their village.

Painted.

Locking his eyes on them, Scratch intently studied their faces for any betrayal as to their intentions.

Again he signed slowly, saying aloud the words: “What band are you?”

One of them wagged his head, and the second horseman repeated the sign for “friend.” Again they talked low to one another, both of them gazing this way and that, upstream and down. It began to make him more than a mite nervous, what with the way they peered all around more than look at him … as if they were assuring themselves he truly was alone.

Tapping their heels against the ribs of their ponies, both warriors eased toward the bank, where Bass stood some twenty feet back from the water’s edge.

He licked his lips, feeling his right palm begin to sweat, anxious to put his trigger finger inside the guard. But with the trigger now set to go off at a touch—he knew he must hold the finger there against the trigger guard.

The animals lunged onto the bank, and their riders brought the dripping ponies to a halt less than fifteen feet from the white man.

One made the sign for “friend” again, then both peered upstream and down, their eyes quickly darting into the trees behind the trapper, able to see his saddle horse and the pack mule.

Again he signed “friend” too, his gaze darting back and forth between the two copper-skinned horsemen … making mental pictures of their loose hair, the handful of feathers tied at the crowns of their head. One had his coup feathers arrayed in a cock’s spray at the back of his head; the other tied his so they descended down the side of his hair as it spilled over his shoulder. Metal conchos were riveted on the belt of one; a stone war club hung from the front of a snare saddle, a big metal ax swung by a rawhide thong from the other saddle.

One of the horsemen signed something new and baffling. He made a fist of his right hand, only the index finger extended upward, held along the right side of his nose. In this position the warrior moved the hand up and down slightly there next to the nose.
*

Bewildered, Bass shook his head, gesturing helplessly with his left hand briefly before he returned it to grip the forestock of his rifle.

Once again the warriors glanced about them. One grinned wickedly and nodded to the other. Their eyes flicked past the trapper to those two animals grazing in the trees, then returned to the white man. Now one of them made another new sign.

This time he formed a claw out of his right hand, fingers and thumb held apart, bent and cupped, which he brought a few inches away from his heart at the left side of his chest—where he repeatedly tapped the clawlike fingertips against his breast.
*

Bass had never seen that sign ever before. Once more he shook his head and wagged his left hand in that gesture of nonunderstanding.

The warrior who had done the lion’s share of the signing nudged his pony closer, his lips pursed in frustration, giving a minute gesture of his own for the other warrior to advance beside him.

“Hold it, fellers.”

He immediately took a step back so that he would still be able to make a wide arc with the rifle if they suddenly rushed him. For the first time he realized his heart was hammering beneath his breastbone, his mouth gone dry and pasty. He watched the ponies come to a halt, dripping—wishing he had a drink from that stream right then.

The warrior repeated his sign of that right hand cupped and tapping the left side of his breast, but he did so as he urged his pony to the right a little, separating himself from the other rider. At the same time, the second horseman inched to his left a little and they both came to a halt. Now they waited some ten feet apart—the sort of gesture that did nothing to inspire his confidence in their good intentions.

His hand grew sweaty there on the wrist and forearm of the rifle, his heart thundering in his ears as the warrior on his left finished tapping his breast.

Bass shook his head and, from the right corner of his eye, saw the other warrior inching his pony more to the left. The niggers get far enough apart, they can rush me from two sides—put me under.

No more than twenty feet now …

Taking another step backward, Bass wheeled the rifle to his right, aiming it at the second Indian. Then his eyes suddenly narrowed as they locked on that wide strip of porcupine quillwork sewn along the man’s legging. His gaze slowly climbed up the legging, then dropped back down to that moccasin.

Rocking onto the balls of his feet, Scratch felt everything inside him go cold. Glaring up at the face, quickly looking over the war paint, the way the man tied the feathers in his long, free hair. Then Bass’s darkened eyes ran back down the wide strip of porcupine quillwork sewn along the outside seam of the legging … once more to that moccasin stitched with the same central rosette, sewn with quills of the same colors.

And he was sure.

After the better part of two long years … he was sure.

The burning gall rose like a flood, flinging itself through that cold core of him in a rage.

“You red son of a bitch!” he roared as his left hand flung up the barrel of that fullstock rifle, finger stabbing inside the trigger guard, jerking back in a burst of blinding fury.

Even as the huge .54-caliber ball smashed the warrior in his face, spraying a corona of blood that haloed his head, Bass was already bellowing.

“Raised this child’s hair, you brown bastard!”

Through the gauzy veil of powder smoke Titus watched the warrior spill backward onto the rear flank of his pony, pitching off as the animal bolted, sidestepping and spinning away on its rear legs.

With his next heartbeat Titus heard the loud, shrill screech of the second horseman as the Indian savagely kicked his pony into action. Pounding his heels into the animal’s ribs, the warrior charged the lone trapper, swinging up the long-handled ax from where it hung just in front of his right leg.

Bass dropped his rifle at his feet, rocking forward to brace himself, bending at the waist the instant he yanked that huge pistol from his wide leather belt, his left palm
dragging back the big hammer. Without consciously aiming he brought the muzzle up just as the warrior crossed those few yards, firing at the black blur leaning off the side of the pony, at that shadow swinging his ax in a great, hissing arc.

When the bullet struck the horseman in the upper arm, the ax spun loose from his grip. Already on its way, the heavy, bladed weapon began to tumble, careening crazily toward the trapper. Too close and no time to duck now.

The handle slapped him on the front of his right shoulder as he started to twist aside, knocking Bass off balance, spinning him violently, pitching him on around to the side like one of his sister’s stocking dolls no more than a breath before the warrior leaned completely off the side of the horse, arms outstretched, his legs releasing their grip on the pony as he collided into the white man.

With his weight the Indian speared Bass into the ground, driving the air from Scratch’s chest in a great explosion. The man immediately jerked back, sweeping a leg over him to straddle the trapper as Titus fought for breath, blinking to clear the star shower from his eyes … realizing the warrior had a knife in his hand and was starting his lunge forward with a cry of blood lust.

Seizing that thick brown forearm slashing the huge knife downward, Titus braced himself, trying to squirm free beneath the warrior’s weight and those muscular legs pinning him to the slick grass. As he twisted this way and that, Bass suddenly felt the fingers seize his throat like a claw closing down his air supply.