Crack in the Sky (74 page)

Squatting at the edge of this crude altar and crossing his legs, Bass dragged up his belt pouch and pulled out a twist of Billy Sublette’s trade tobacco, laying it atop the skull. Using his skinning knife, he cut a little of the dry leaf from the twist and chopped it up fine enough to stuff down a pipe bowl. Setting the pouch, twist, and knife aside, Bass pulled his much-used clay pipe from its pocket in his shooting pouch, and stuffed it with those shreds of tobacco.

He dragged his dirty fingers beneath each eye and smeared away the hot tears, then stuffed his hand back into his shooting pouch to pull out his strike-a-light tin. From it he took a piece of black char cloth, a small chunk of flint, and the large curl of fire steel. Holding the flint and char in his left hand, he hit the stone with sharp downward strikes, sending sparks into the charred cotton where the embers smoldered until he brought them to his lips, blowing on them gently. Over these tiny glowing dots of heat he laid a small shred of dried tinder and blew some more until the tinder caught. Laying the glowing tinder over the top of the bowl, he sucked steadily until the coals licked through the dry tobacco, and his pipe was lit.

First a puff to each of the four directions, then one to the cold, cloudless blue sky overhead, and some final smoke he blew into the sacred circle he had smoothed before him.

That done, he stared off at the nearby bluffs and the distant hills, feeling the sinking track of the sun as he smoked, and thought, and felt what this ground had to tell him. What it yet had to teach him.

When he finally looked back down into that circle, Scratch put out his left hand and laid the fingers atop the bear’s skull.

“Give me the power of this animal,” he asked in a quiet voice, feeling more humble than ever before in his life.

“Because it died here, I could live,” Titus went on in a sob-choked whisper. “Make the rest of my days as strong as they can be because you give me a second chance here.”

Then he puffed some more on the pipe, drawing in each breath deep, like a prayer in itself, feeling the smoke course deep into his lungs where he held it before he exhaled. And when the tobacco had all been consumed, he turned the bowl over and knocked out the ashes on the top of the skull. With his fingers he smeared the black and gray into the stark white bone, forming a large, dark circle.

That circle, and the circle of this sand altar, both were symbolic of the circle he realized was his own story. People, places, events—they were all to be experienced by him
for a reason in the constant turn in the seasons of his life. He had been drawn here, compelled to venture this close to Blackfoot country for a good reason he now sensed he could understand.

While he could not fathom what lured Asa McAfferty to go where he had gone, something told Scratch that the white-head’s journey was of a purpose … and Titus felt at peace with that. While McAfferty believed he was directed to go here and there by God, Bass believed people moved in and out of one another’s lives for reasons they might not know at those very moments.

Come a day soon, perhaps, Bass figured he would understand why he and Asa had had their time together, why they had shared those terrible tribulations and bloody battles, why they had both come to know it was time to part from one another. Maybe one day he would understand about McAfferty—but not until he understood more about the workings of the mysterious, the ways of the spirit world.

So here at last, here beside this sand altar and the remains of the huge creature that had almost killed him, Titus Bass discovered an inner serenity despite his not knowing.

One day he might well sort out the mysteries of life. But for now, he was at peace with it.

He’d follow the sonsabitches all winter if he had to.

One thing was for certain: their village couldn’t be all that far away.

And … they were cocky bastards too. They didn’t even give a red piss that they were leaving a good trail for him to follow.

After all, they were on horseback. And they had left him afoot.

Alone, and on foot here as winter deepened its bone-numbing cold, and the horizon far to the west threatened to snow in another day or so.

Whoever they were, the red niggers had stolen in to make off with Hannah and the horses a few hours back. In those last seconds Bass heard them whooping as they
swept down on the animals, as he was thrashing his way out of his blankets and robes, grabbing his weapons, and sprinting toward the patch of grass where he had picketed the critters.

Beneath the silvery light of that half-moon he made out four riders, then a fifth as they loped away, driving his three animals ahead of them—still whooping, all flushed with their success.

“Five of ’em, against one stupid, bonehead nigger!” he had grumbled while he watched the dark shadows bob as they faded across the snow, ultimately swallowed by that black of the distant hills themselves.

“Goddamned Blackfoot!”

His heart pounded. And he damn near felt close to tears, ready to bawl in frustration and rage. That hot adrenaline squirting into his veins was no longer enough to keep him warm as he stood there in the snow up past his ankles, the wind cutting at him as it weaved through the trees where he had made his last camp before he would reach the cache sometime around midday tomorrow.

“Hannah!” he suddenly shouted into the darkness, despairing he would lose her.

Only when he could no longer hear the hoofbeats on the hard, frozen ground did he finally think to breathe again. Staring at the half-moon still hanging about three hands over the western ridge, his eyes slowly descended onto the widening vee of trampled snow as the thieves’ trail emerged from the distance.

Just like some roving bunch of Blackfoot. Cocky bastards that they were.

But he swore he’d have ’em—their scalps and their balls too—if it took all winter. If it took all goddamned winter.

Turning on his heel, Scratch lunged back to camp on cold, wood legs. There he knelt at the coals of last night’s fire and laid a few dry limbs upon the ashes. Bending low, he pulled the coyote-fur cap from his head and blew on the dim spots of crimson among the gray. They soon leaped to life, capturing the limbs, licking hungrily along the dry branches.

He rocked back on his haunches and grabbed the old coffee kettle, shaking it. Still enough left in it to reheat, so he set the kettle right against the rekindled flames. Rubbing his hands over the fire, he realized he had but two choices. He could stay here where he would be guaranteed of warmth and commiserate with himself over the loss of his animals, willing to wait until he figured out how to come up with some more animals—which meant he was willing to let the red niggers get away with what was his.

Or he could start moving now: here in the dark, hiding his plunder and furs from roaming eyes, then set off on that trail the thieves left behind.

The gall of it burned in his belly like a twelve-hour coal. They loped off, knowing they had put him afoot, and thinking that he wasn’t about to follow them since he was at a decided disadvantage—either because he was one against a half dozen, or because he was on foot and they were covering ground much faster on horseback.

Dammit! He may well be one against that handful of red thieves, but it didn’t make no never-mind to him that he was on foot against horsemen.

Bass decided they wouldn’t figure a lone white man to be coming after them … so that arrogance just might work in his favor.

From the looks of the moon hanging above those southwestern ridges, he calculated that he might have as much as two more hours before it was light enough to take off after them.

Not that he couldn’t go now, racing off into the snow-covered night. But he was damned suspicious one of the thieves, maybe even two of them, might turn back in the dark, hiding somewhere along the trail left by the others, watching for any possible pursuit from the lone trapper.

Better was it for him to wait until there was sufficient light to see far enough ahead along the thieves’ backtrail.

Besides, he had him plenty to do until the gray of predawn came sliding over the bluffs to hail its first greeting to the Yellowstone valley.

After warming his hands over the flames a moment more, Titus snatched up his small camp ax and turned
toward the tall willow clustered along the riverbank. Wouldn’t be long before he’d have a sweat worked up, cutting enough branches to hide his plunder and plews.

More than two weeks ago he had turned south from the Judith basin as the weather grew unbearably miserable. No longer was winter merely dallying with the northern plains. Deep cold left in the wake of a hellish storm descended so quickly upon this country that it left a man no doubt that autumn was long done with. Bass had pushed his luck about as far as any savvy man might, lingering that far north along the Missouri River country, trapping past the time when lesser men might have turned tail and run.

But, damn—weren’t the plews fine!

Big, fat beaver, the sort what wore pelts so large the mountain man called them blankets. And thick? Jumpin’ Jehoshaphat—but they were seal fat and sleek! It was damn near the finest trapping Titus Bass had ever done in the weeks he tarried past the falling of the leaves, the freezing of the smaller creeks and streams, lingering past the first icy glazing to the surface of the Judith and even the mighty Upper Missouri itself.

Battling his way south, back up the Judith until it reached the foothills, he struggled on through the narrow breach between two mountain ranges, eventually crossing the low divide to drop into the valley of the Mussellshell. Scratch plodded south by east only as long as the animals’ strength held up each day, slowly making for his cache on the north bank of the Yellowstone. When he could tell they were close to being all but done in, Titus would be forced to find them someplace to camp where a small patch of grass had been blown clear. If he wasn’t that lucky, Bass would spend the last hour of light each afternoon chopping cottonwood he would peel before throwing the limbs onto his fire. Though it wasn’t the best of fodder for the animals—it had to be better than some of the withered, wind-dried grasses the stock had been forced to eat as the seasons quickly turned against man and beast in this icy land.

This was to have been his last camp before reaching
the cache. One last sleep before he would spend a day or so reopening the hole, laying in his high Missouri pelts with what he had already stashed away of the catch from earlier in the autumn. In addition, he had planned to stow away what he knew he wouldn’t need until late in the winter—like the extra weight of his traps, both American and Mexican made—when the streams and creeks and rivers began to open. And before he resealed the cache, he figured he should pull out a little of this and a little of that from his Taos and rendezvous goods: gifts of foofaraw and geegaws for the Crow.

This one last camp before …

After he had slogged back to his plunder with that first armload of brush, Scratch took a few minutes to pull his hands from his blanket mittens and warm them over the fire before turning to the business of dragging the bundles back into the willow near a small stand of cottonwood saplings. Retying each pack, Titus made sure every square inch was covered by the oiled Russian sheeting. Then he dragged up the first of the brush he had cut, working carefully to stuff the limbs down into the ropes on the top and all four sides.

A second trip added more brush to his cover. A third, fourth, and finally a fifth time he trudged down to the riverbank to chop more limbs. By the time the sky to the east turned as red as that afterbirth expelled by a buffalo cow dropping a calf, he stood back and was satisfied he had concealed what he owned.

Now he had to go after the rest of what little he had in this world.

Stuffing his hands back into the mittens after rubbing his flesh over the fire, Bass laid his two buffalo robes one on top of the other. After folding his two blankets, he placed them inside the robes before turning in the edges of the furry hides. With a bundle more than two feet thick, Scratch took the last long braid of rawhide rope and lashed it all together into a pack some four feet long and nearly as wide.

Rising from the cold, blue snow just beginning to turn a pale pink presaging the sun’s arrival, he hurriedly
chopped down three of the strongest cottonwood saplings and trimmed them of branches and knots. Crossing one of the long, thin saplings over another, he tied the two together with some short sections of hemp rope. After cutting the third sapling into two pieces, he tied both sections across the wide vee formed by the others. Then, with his last piece of rope, Titus lashed his bedding and a small packet of dried meat to his improvised travois.

By then it was light enough to plainly see the trail left by the raiders. Time to move out.

Stepping into the vee just ahead of his bundle, Bass shoved the barrel of his rifle through two of the bedding ropes. He jabbed his pistol under another rope, then turned and adjusted the knife and tomahawk at his back, shifted the shooting pouch over his shoulder.

Then he stepped forward, bent down, and pulled the two saplings off the ground.

Surprised to find it wasn’t so heavy after all. And if he had left enough room at the base of the travois below that bottom crosspiece, the drag should ride well enough over the sagebrush and rocky ground, keeping his robes out of the ankle-deep powder.

Squinting into the west as the light began to balloon around him, he thought of Hannah.

Remembered how she had run off that day the Arapaho had jumped them. How she had come back later. How the mule had saved him, saved them both.

“I’m coming for you, girl,” he vowed in a cold, dry whisper.

Ain’t no red niggers gonna get you from me ’less I die trying to get you back.

The intense cold of that early dawn nearly froze the hot mist in his eyes as he set out on the trail, realizing just how warm a man could be when he nursed on revenge.

Stopping only long enough to blow and catch his wind or get a drink of water that first day, Bass didn’t eat until evening. After chewing on some dried strips of venison, he bent over the bank and cracked the thick scum of ice forming along the Yellowstone. He drank long and deep, knowing
how vital it was to quench his thirst several times a day in this high, dry, cold land.