Crack in the Sky (43 page)

“A right fine job, even if I do say so my own self. Get Scratch that mirror again.”

He gently touched the brass wires that dangled from both ears while Rufus brought up the mirror. Turning it toward the light while he twisted about the log, Bass gazed at one ear in astonishment, then turned aside to inspect the other ear, his grin beginning to grow within that gray-striped beard.

“Well, Mad Jack Hatcher,” he declared, showing nearly all his teeth in glee, “you said you couldn’t—but you sure did make this mud-ugly nigger one purty feller.”

Through the heads and shoulders of the other trappers Bass again spotted Rowland squatting at the far side of the fire, scuffing up small clouds of dirt with a peeled stick he used to dig at the ground near his feet.

“Say, Johnny,” Scratch said, “don’t you think I look real purty now?”

“I s’pose,” Rowland mumbled so quietly, his words almost went unheard against the sough of the wind in the trees and the crackle of their fire.

The others moved aside as Titus clambered to his feet and stepped through them. He stopped at Rowland’s elbow. “Something eating a hole in your belly, ain’t it, John?”

Without looking up, the man answered, “Nothing wrong.”

“He’s been like this last few days,” Caleb explained, coming up at Scratch’s shoulder.

“Man can act any way he wants to,” Rowland snapped.

“We been friends long enough for me to know that something’s kicking around inside you and it won’t give ye no rest,” Hatcher said when he came to a stop on the other side of Titus.

Suddenly Rowland looked at the three of them. Then he blurted out his confession: “I wanna go back to Taos.”

“Go back?” Rufus repeated as he knelt nearby.

“I done decided it,” John declared. “Don’t wanna be up here right now.”

Jack inquired, “What’s pulling ye to give up on these here mountains?”

“You got me wrong,” Rowland protested. “I ain’t saying I’ve give up on the mountains from here on out, Jack.”

Jack settled on a log next to Rowland. “You and me, we fought more’n our share of red-bellies, Johnny. I figger ye can tell me what’s on yer mind.”

“I-I really dunno what this is all about,” Rowland admitted. “I ain’t never … never had me a feeling like this, Jack.”

“You had a hole cut outta your heart,” Bass explained quietly, sympathy flooding up inside him. “When you lost your Maria—it cut out a big hole from your heart.”

When Titus said it, Rowland looked up. Wagging his head, he said, “Ain’t none of this the same no more, Scratch. Not like it was before: when I didn’t have me no woman. Not like it was when I had Maria waiting for me back in Taos.”

“You turn back for the south, what you aim to do?” Solomon asked.

With a shrug Rowland admitted, “Don’t rightly know for now. Something’ll come by that I can do.”

“Sure of that,” Hatcher agreed. “A likely man such as you can do most anything he puts his mind to.”

“Maybe I can watch some sheep, do some hunting for other folks too,” John replied. “Pay for my keep till I get all this sorted through.”

“Maybe you figger you ain’t done with the mountains?” Bass inquired.

“No,” and John shook his head. “I don’t figger I’ll stay outta the mountains for the rest of my days. Just that … for now—I ain’t a damn bit of good to none of you.”

Hatcher clamped a hand on Rowland’s knee. “Johnny, ye damn well know we’ll ride with ye come what may. Not a man here gonna say ye gotta go out and trap when ye’re nursing that hole in yer heart. Don’t make me no never-mind if ye stay back to camp and watch over our
plunder and the stock while the rest of us go set traps. You just do what ye can till things get better, and we’ll stay together till they—”

“I don’t know when things’ll get better, Jack,” he interrupted. “Don’t know … if they’ll ever get better.”

Hatcher glanced up at the others when Rowland went back to staring at the fire. “Awright, Johnny. All I’m gonna ask of ye is ye leave us yer license.”

“Sure,” Rowland said. “I’m the only one of us with a license to trap in these parts since Matthew ain’t along this time out. Might be you could use it when you bring some fur back to Taos.”

“Won’t be till winter after next, I ’spect,” Jack declared.

“One of you gonna have to be me,” Rowland explained, rubbing his palms down the tops of his thighs in that manner of a man who has come to a difficult decision. “Now that I be a Mexican citizen, they call me Juan Roles. Who’s gonna be me?”

“I will,” Rufus volunteered as he squatted near Rowland.

“You’ll do,” John replied, trying out a weak smile, then gazed at the flames.

After a long, uneasy silence Hatcher asked, “Tomorrow, Johnny?”

“Don’t see me no reason to hang on when I’ve made up my mind to go.”

Caleb said, “Want some whiskey, for saying our fare-thee-wells tonight?”

“You fellers go right on,” Rowland answered. “I don’t much feel like drinking. I found out whiskey just don’t kill this hurt no more.”

“Come a time,” Bass said, “you’ll be back in these hills with us. Back to skinning beaver and fighting Injuns. Come a time when you’re ready to get on with the living.”

“Right now it don’t feel like I’ll ever wanna do much of anything ever again,” Rowland declared. “Thing of it is: a man what don’t care much if he goes on living … that man sure as hell gonna end up dead lot sooner’n he should.”

The sun was content to hide its rise the following morning as the seven of them bid their melancholy farewell to John Rowland. Clouds had gathered through the night, blotting out the last shimmer of starshine as they stirred in the cold gloom, kicked life back into the fire, and went about seeing off one of their own.

No longer were there ten.

Joseph Little lay in a shallow grave scraped from the forest floor high in the Wind River Mountains.

Matthew Kinkead had stayed behind, vowing he’d had him enough of the wandering and the womanlessness, choosing instead a life among his Rosa’s people in Taos.

And now Rowland—turning back himself, unable to salve his grief among these good friends in these mountains. His final hope might be to find a healing to those deep wounds of his heart among Maria’s people.

That was just what Bass wished for him when it was Scratch’s turn to step up and fling his arms around another old friend in farewell. Quickly he whispered, “Johnny, I pray your feet’ll take you back where you can be happy once more.”

Rowland inched back in their embrace and looked
into Bass’s eyes. “I find me what makes me happy again—I’ll be back to these here mountains. Lay your set on that.”

“Just make sure our trails cross afore too long,” Titus replied, slapping John on the shoulder and stepping back.

“Count on it, Scratch.”

By the fire’s light in the last hour before dawn that murky, gray morning, they had seen to it that Rowland was outfitted with what he would need to see him through the passes and down the high side all the way back to the valley lying at the foot of the Sangre de Cristos.

“I ain’t gonna listen to none of yer back talk, John Rowland: ye’ll take yer rightful share,” Jack Hatcher had declared when he had the rest begin to divide out Rowland’s portion.

“Ain’t right that I take more than I need to make it back,” John protested, laying a hand on Hatcher’s arm before his eyes touched those of the others. “I’ll be fine once I get there.”

For a long moment Jack did not move, nor did he speak. Then, with a voice clogged with regret, he said, “Yes, Johnny Rowland. I figger you will be fine once ye get back to Taos.”

So they had split off only what Rowland himself said he would take, everything else spread among those friends he was leaving behind, split among those men who one day soon would push on north themselves for rendezvous on the Popo Agie. And then Rowland had climbed into the saddle, waved as he turned his mount and packhorse, then never looked back as he reined out of the trees.

As the seven stood watching the man and animals grow smaller and smaller against the immensity of the Bayou Salade, the sky slowly began to seep … a gentle, cold spring rain. And with the way the weeping clouds continued to lower down the mountainsides around them, Bass sensed they were in for a long day of it.

As empty as his belly was that morning, Scratch hadn’t been hungry enough to eat like the others as they huddled over their tins of coffee at their smoky fire. Coffee was all he wanted to warm his gut that morning until he figured he could put it off no longer. Taking Hannah’s lead
rope, Bass mounted up and rode off across the valley toward his half-dozen sets placed along a stretch of narrow stream that spilled into a wider creek tumbling toward the valley floor.

He tugged the soggy wide-brimmed hat down more firmly on his head, sensing the way the greasy blue bandanna rubbed that patch of bare skull. As soon as he returned to camp that morning, Bass vowed he would start work on the scalp he was to wear in place of his own. Cutting it down to a workable size, curing and tanning it over the next few days—then making the final trim so that it would lay over that lopsided circle of bone.

Then he decided. Instead of retracing his way back through yesterday’s sets, he turned downstream toward those last traps he had baited. Curious now to find out what had become of the two.

Something had been at the butchered Arapaho’s body. Some of the gut-pile was gone; some creature had attempted to drag off the corpse.

His eyes quickly scanning the scene, Bass slipped to the trampled grass, knelt by what remained of the man who had taken his scalp, and inspected the soppy ground. A free meal had drawn two of the lanky-legged beasts here. Sign of their pads tramping around the body, yonder around what they hadn’t finished of the gut-pile. It was enough to show him the wild dogs hadn’t been here too long ago.

Looking up, Bass figured they were somewhere close enough to be watching him. He had scared them off, but not far enough away that they wouldn’t be ready to return when he was gone. Standing, he gazed around at the wall of forest there beside the creek. It was fitting, he decided. Fitting that the wild predators of this high land would come to reclaim the warrior’s remains. Just as Bird in Ground had begun to teach him winters before—that great circle of life and death, then life again.

Of a sudden he remembered the second Indian, looking over to the grass and brush where he had left the wounded Indian. Hurrying back into the saddle, Titus brought the horse and Hannah around, moving them
slowly across the soggy streambank as he leaned off the side, watching the ground and buckbrush for sign. In a matter of yards it became plain that the warrior had begun to crawl north, something pulling him on, something driving him out of the valley.

Maybe he spent the whole night crawling. Then again, maybe no farther than he could force himself to go with that broken leg while it grew slap-dark and the night sky began to clot with rain clouds. The farther Bass went, following the trampled grassy path, the more he marveled at the warrior’s stamina.

Scratch saw him ahead at the same moment the Arapaho heard the horses or felt their hooves on the ground—turning his head suddenly and peering behind him at the approaching white man. For but a moment the eyes showed fear … then slowly they narrowed into slits through which nothing but hate could show.

Reining up, Bass sat in the saddle for several minutes, looking this way and that from time to time, his eyes always returning to the wounded man, who had refused to budge any farther. Scratch wasn’t sure, but he thought he could hear the warrior’s raspy breathing in the midst of that rain battering his hat, splatting on the nearby willow leaves.

Finally he dropped to the ground, slowly moving back toward Hannah, always keeping his eyes on the Arapaho now. Reaching the mule’s side, Scratch quickly laid the rifle within the cradle of her packsaddle and made sure the oiled leather sock was secured over the lock’s hammer, frizzen, and pan. Patting the animal on her rump, he circled her flank and stepped toward the Indian.

By the time Scratch reached the other side of the mule, the Arapaho was flopping back onto his belly, attempting to crawl away, clawing futilely at the wet grass, his fingers digging desperately into the muddy soil. But when the trapper drew close, the Indian gave up and slowly rolled onto his back. Pain fleetingly crossed his eyes again as he prepared to meet his attacker. Then the look of unmitigated hate returned as Bass set a moccasin on one of the warrior’s brown arms.

Kneeling, Titus took hold of the man’s other arm and flung it out to the side of his body—then pressed his other moccasin on it. As he slowly settled onto his haunches, he firmly had the warrior pinned to the soggy ground. But even as Scratch dragged the skinning knife from the back of his belt, the Arapaho did not resist, did not struggle, did not move in the least. Instead he only stared, transfixed on the white man’s hand as it shifted the knife into position.

Planting the tip of the blade high upon the man’s right breast, Bass slowly dragged it down in a straight line until he reached the last rib, just above muscles banding the taut solar plexus. Again he pierced the skin up high on the chest, right next to that first bloody laceration, and crudely dragged the knife downward again, widening the superficial wound. As he began to carve a third stripe of crimson, Scratch watched the warrior’s eyes, watched how the lids fluttered as the man fought to ignore the pain, doing his level best to show the white man how he refused to exhibit any weakness.