Crack in the Sky (15 page)

“Say, Mad Jack!” the fiery-headed trapper cried as he tottered up atop one good leg, the other a wooden peg, his face rouged with the blush of strong liquor.

“Tom! Ye ol’ she-painter!” Hatcher shouted back as he took the fiddle from beneath his chin. “Thought ye’d took off with Jackson or Bridger awready.”

“Nawww,” the peg-legged trapper said as he came to a weaving halt, his bloodshot eyes glassy. “Me and some boys are moving southwest in a few days. See for our own selves what lays atween here and California.”

“Yer favorite tune still be ‘Barbara Allen’?”

“Damn right,” Tom Smith replied. “That squeezebox feller know it good as you?”

Jack laughed. “Elbridge knows it better’n me!”

“Sing it for me, boys,” Smith said as he collapsed onto the grass, stretching out that battered wooden peg clearly the worse for frontier wear. “Sing it soft and purty.”

“I ain’t never see’d a man stand so good having him only one good leg,” Titus whispered to Matthew Kinkead.

“Peg-Leg Tom?”

Scratch nodded. “How he come by it?”

Isaac Simms answered, “Cut it off hisself, Scratch.”

“The hell you say!” Scratch replied in amazement, staring at the crude whittled peg.

“Isaac speaks the bald-face truth,” Caleb Wood stated with one bob of his jutting chin.

“Injun’s rifle ball broke both bones in the leg, right here,” Kinkead declared as he bent over and tapped his own leg just below the knee.

Simms snorted, “Figger on how much that’d pain a man!”

“Lookit the man just sitting there easylike, tapping the end of that ol’ peg on the ground like it was his foot,” Solomon said.

Scratch prodded, “So tell me who really cut it off him.”

“Isaac tol’cha: Smith done it his own self!” Kinkead declared. “Well, most of it anyways. First off he got good and drunk afore starting down through the meat with his own scalping knife.”

“Shit,” Bass whispered with a shudder.

“Passed out by the time it was to cut on bone,” Simms took up the story. “Two other’ns had to finish the job for him. They burned the end of that stump with a red-hot fire iron to stop the bleeding, then went off and buried the leg far ’nough away that Smith could never go lookin’ for it.”

“Go looking for it?” Scratch repeated.

“Damn, if that ain’t what I seen happen with ever’ man lost a arm or leg,” Solomon Fish stated. “Like something pulling, an’ yanking ’em to find that missing part of themselves.”

“Most ever’ man I know of in the mountains calls Tom by the name Peg-Leg Smith now,” Caleb said.

“Never have I seen a man get around so good on a peg,” Bass observed with fascination.

As Hatcher and Gray finished the song, Smith clapped and hooted, then asked, “How ’bout something a man can get up an’ stomp to, Jack!”

Hatcher thought a moment, then suggested, “Say,
Tom—how ’bout a tune writ special for all of us bachelors?”

Smith asked, “Bachelors? What the hell’s that?”

“What
we
are, ye stupid nigger!” Hatcher roared. “Any man ain’t married, he’s a bachelor!”

“Then sing it, by God!” Smith cried merrily as he struggled to rise, clambering clumsily onto his leg and peg, clapping and hobbling about in exuberance. “Sing it for all us happy bachelors!”

“Hooraw, niggers!” Tom cried as he spun round and round a few times, pivoting on the peg as his axis. “Let’s hear you beller for bachelors!”

Hatcher guffawed, “Ain’cha a marryin’ man, Peg-Leg?”

“You’re full of vinegar and prickly juice, Mad Jack—if’n you think any mountain man is the marryin’ kind!”

Caleb Wood spun up, grabbing hold of Smith’s left arm to do-si-do two spins round with him, shouting in glee, “Not too many Injun womens got ’em a hankering to bed theyselves down with that peg leg of your’n, eh?”

Balancing on the peg for a moment, Smith gave his wooden leg a sound kick with his moccasin, declaring, “This here peg ain’t the only thing on Thomas L. Smith them Injun womens know will stay stiff and hard as a tree trunk all night long!”

“Listen to this here ol’ firecracker head!” Matthew Kinkead crowed. “Spouting like he was the answer to every woman’s prayers!”

Puffing out his chest like a prairie cock on the strut, Smith snorted, “The hell if I ain’t!”

“I damn well know ye’d have women prayin’, all right!” Hatcher said.

“Prayin’ for mercy!” Smith shouted. “I’m a hard-user on the womens, I am!”

“No, Thomas!” Jack replied. “They’re prayin’ ye’ll just stay away from ’em with that li’l willer switch of yer’n when a real man like me carries round a oak stump in his britches!”

“I swear, Mad Jack Hatcher—you go spreadin’ talk like that, why—I’ll sit down right here, unbuckle my wood leg, and take after you with it! Whup you like a poor man’s field hand—whup you about the head and shoulders!”

“Ye take yer peg off, Smith—ye’ll never stand no chance of catchin’ a sprightly fella like me!”

“I can move when I wanna,” Peg-Leg argued, then smiled hugely in that flushed face. “In the robes an’ out!”

Fish roared, “Ain’t no way you’re ever gonna catch a squaw, Tom—less’n she wants to be catched.”

“’Nough of ’em still want me to catch ’em!” Smith gasped, his face red with easy laughter. He held out the peg and bent his good leg, collapsing again to the grass, where he rolled onto his back to thrash around, screaming as if in a fit, “Oh, me—I’m dyin’ o’ thirst, boys! Hoo-yoo! I’m dyin’ o’ thirst! Rum me quick! Rum me!”

Hatcher scissored his legs so he stood directly over the man, his fiddle and bow tucked beneath his left arm, peering down as somber as a settlement undertaker. “Maybeso ye ought’n dig poor Tom his grave, fellers. He’s sure to die of thirst, don’cha see?”

With a small whimper Smith asked, “W-why, Jack?”

“We ain’t got us nary a drop of likker left in our camp!”

Smith bolted upright like he’d been gut-shot, his eyes gone wide. “You ain’t g-got no more l-likker in camp?”

“Mad Jack said it true!” Caleb declared.

His eyes glaring in anger mixed with disappointment, Smith sputtered, “T-then what the hell are you f-fellers so gay about?”

Solomon Fish waved an arm toward the mountains, explaining, “Tomorrow we’re off for the high country and our autumn hunt!”

“That’s all?”

Hatcher nodded. “That’s all I need to make me happy.”

“Where you going this year, Jack?” Smith prodded, and he relaxed back on an elbow.

Jack chuckled. “We ain’t none of us tellin’.”

“Awww, c’mon now,” Peg-Leg pleaded. “Don’t reckon to foller you anyways—”

“I can’t be sartin of that,” Hatcher grumped.

“You know I’m headed to Californy, Jack.”

Isaac Simms inquired, “What’s way yonder in Californy, Peg-Leg?”

“Dark-skinned womens.”

“Hell, child,” Elbridge argued, “they got dark-skinned women where we’re headed to winter up in Taos.”

Gazing at the sky, Smith got a wistful look in his eyes
as he said, “Not like the dark-skinned womens I heard tell of live out to Californy.”

“Ain’t they Mexicans just like the folks down to Taos and Santy Fee?” asked John Rowland.

Wagging his head, Smith said, “No, sir. Them down that way just be poor Injun and greaser half-breeds.”

“So tells us what sort of dark-skinned women they got in California,” Hatcher demanded.

“Womens there got royal Span-yard blood in ’em.”

Rufus said, “That so?”

Peg-Leg nodded. “The truth of it. And I hear them gals is looking to show a good time to any American rides their way.”

Jack roared, “Hell, the womenfolk down to Taos show an American a mighty fine time, Tom!”

“You boys go and winter up to Taos now,” Smith advised. “As for me and my band—we’re headed for Californy to see just how hot them high-toned Span-yard gals can get when a outfit of real men come riding into their country!”

“Hell, the real men will be riding into Taos come this winter!” Hatcher roared as he propped the fiddle under his chin.

“Real men?” Smith asked, cocking his head to the side and grinning as he looked around him at each of Jack’s trappers. “Real men would’ve saved a last drink for their old friend, Peg-Leg Smith! Afore we all hit the trail!”

“Har!” Jack snorted. “Any man claims he has a real wood peg for a cock wouldn’t come beggin’ in my camp for no last drink!”

His face turning sad and downcast, Smith puffed out his lower lip and moped, “Looks like you found me out, boys! I ain’t got no hardwood cock that will pleasure a gal all night long.” Then immediately he grinned as he began to boast, “But this here’s one child what can still outride, outshoot, outbeller, and outthump the lot of you weak sisters! Mark my words, fellers—there’s comin’ a time when all the fun will be gone in these here mountains. And on the day you sorry niggers come dragging your sorry asses into Californy—don’t ’spect Thomas L. Smith, the
king of Californy, to be waiting there with open arms for any of you!”

“You gonna own all of Californy?” John Rowland asked.

He turned on Rowland, one finger jabbing at the sky. “I damn well will own it, child! When the Mexicans have everything south of the Arkansas, when Sublette’s company rules the Rockies and American Fur owns the Missouri, ’cause Hudson’s Bay lays its claim to everything else west of here … then all that’s left for likely fellers like me to do is plant my stake out to Californy, where the pickin’s is good.”

“But the price of beaver ain’t fallin’, Tom,” Hatcher argued.

“I see more niggers coming out here every year,” Smith replied in a quiet, grave tone. “Every summer they bring more trappers into these here mountains. One day they’ll bring a train of wagons. Then they’ll bring out white womens! And you boys know what comes next, don’cha?”

Isaac asked, “What, Tom? What comes next?”

“Everywhere white womens go, they build churches an’ towns, stores an’ schools! They bring in the constables an’ the lawyers—all of ’em telling men like us, ‘You cain’t do this! You cain’t do that!’”

“Too damn much room out here for to worry ’bout any of that,” Titus finally spoke his piece.

Smith turned to regard the stranger he did not know. “Maybeso, mister. Maybeso. But I do know there’s a passel of folks back east—likely enough to fill up all of this out here if’n the first ones come out and spread the word.”

“I figger a man can just keep moving ahead of ’em,” Scratch observed.

He hobbled toward Bass unsteadily, his eyes squinting in the bright summer light. “S-stay ahead of ’em, you said?”

Bass nodded. “Yep. Stay out front of all them what come west to raise their houses and towns.”

With a wag of his head Smith said, “What kind of life is that gonna be for niggers like us, boys? What good is life
for a man just to be pushed on ahead of the crowds … knowing them settlement folks is ruining everything we left behind when we moved on?”

“Maybeso a man don’t have to turn around and see what they’re doing to what he’s left behind,” Bass protested.

“No,” Smith said quietly. “No, he don’t. Just like he don’t have to cry when he loses a good friend neither. A man just don’t have to give a damn when them farmers and white womens and towns come out here and ruin all this for the likes of us.”

“So that’s the reason ye’re haulin’ yer plunder to California, is it?” Hatcher asked.