Crack in the Sky (20 page)

On those mornings that Bass found himself out in the autumn chill to set his traps, he would stand and stare for long periods of time at the pageant of sky and water and wing—there were so many of the ducks and geese that there could not possibly be room for any more out on the huge marshes and icy bogs. Yet still they came as if spewed out of the sky.

From this direction and that, the smoothbores echoed from the far hills, his fellow trappers out hunting, their guns loaded with shot instead of a huge round ball. And every night the men roasted the rich, fat meat over their fires, this a welcome change from a diet of elk and venison and buffalo.

Other, smaller songbirds feasted before the coming onslaught of winter on those insects, locusts, and beetles clinging cooled and torpid on those grasses dried by the slash of autumn winds. Time hung in the balance here, and fall was clearly a time when it was decided just what creatures survived, what creatures would not. Each species was making ready for the coming change in its own ages-old dance of the seasons, each life-form readying itself for the time of cold and death that was winter in this high country.

True, the coming winter would decide just what would live, and what would not. This intricate rhythm that hummed around him each new and glorious day was a rhythm begun so long ago that aeons had still rested in the womb of time.

The first storm came and went, not yet cold enough for the snow to stay longer than a couple of days. Then the second and third storms rolled through the valley, each
snowfall lasting a little longer before it finally melted, soaking into the soggy ground, dripping off the thick spruce boughs, feeding every creek, stream, and freshet a sudden, final burst of life before winter would squeeze down hard.

“When you figger for us to pull out?” Elbridge Gray asked one evening around their fire as the wind came up, beginning to blow off the high slopes with a wolfish howl.

Standing to stretch, Hatcher said, “Trapping’s been so damned good—I’d like to stay right to the last day afore the passes close up.”

Caleb Wood declared, “Trouble is, a man can’t never tell when he’s gonna stay a day too long … till he tries and finds the passes are all snowed in.”

“Ye saying it’s time to go south?” Jack asked.

With a shrug Caleb replied, “I dunno. Last week or so I been thinking real hard on Taos—”

“Ain’t a one of us ain’t been thinking real hard on Taos,” Matthew Kinkead interrupted.

Hatcher stepped over and laid a hand on Kinkead’s shoulder. “Ye’ll be there afore the hard cold sets in.”

Matthew’s eyes softened, and with a hound-dog expression crossing his jowly face, he sobbed, “Wanna see my Rosa.”

John Rowland looked up and asked, “You ever get the feeling she might one day figger you for dead, Matthew? That you been gone so long from her … she goes out and gets herself ’Nother husband?”

Slowly wagging his big shaggy-bear head, Kinkead gave that considerable thought, then answered, “I don’t figger her the kind to do anything of the sort … not till one of you boys rode into Taos and tol’t her your own self I gone under.”

“And even then Rosa’s the sort of woman what just might expect one of us to bring her something special of yer’n, Matthew,” Hatcher explained as he knelt by the coffeepot. “Something what would show her ye was really gone.”

Isaac Simms asked, “What would that be, Kinkead?”

“Yeah,” echoed Solomon Fish, “what would be the
one thing we’d have to show your Rosa to prove to her you been rubbed out?”

He scratched his big onion bulb of a nose with a dirty, charcoal-crusted finger, deep in thought. Then he said, “I s’pose it’d be this here kerchief I wear round my neck.” Using a couple of fingers, Kinkead lifted the soiled black cloth, emblazoned with a multitude of painted red roses in full bloom.

“Rosa give you that, didn’t she?” Titus asked.

He nodded, looking down at it a moment. “Winter afore last, when this bunch was all in Taos—afore we come north last two year. She and me, we bought this here kerchief down to a poor woman’s blanket she had spread out in a warm spot there in the sun, over to the Taos square.”

“I remember that ol’ brown Injun gal!” Rowland crowed with excitement. “I see’d that same kerchief my own self that morning and was coming back to buy it.”

Kinkead nodded, grinning. “Yep: that were the first time I met this here skinny son of a bitch.” And he pointed at the rail-thin Rowland.

“We got to talking,” John began.

Then Kinkead continued, “And you said you was done with that bunch you’d been trapping with for more’n a year.”

“Some folks just ain’t meant to run together,” Rowland agreed.

Matthew said, “You told me your outfit was breaking up that winter, picking sides then and there in Taos.”

“Yep, some fellers following Ewing Young, and some others saying they was gonna tag along behind Antoine Robidoux. Only me and McAfferty didn’t take no side when the outfit tore apart.”

“McAfferty?” Hatcher inquired. “That when you two come and hooked up with us?”

With a nod Rowland looked up at their brigade leader and answered, “Damn—but that nigger never was the same since’t he killed that Ree medicine man. He started to get … strange after that. Strange and … downright spooky.”

“Damn if he didn’t after he killed that medicine man,” Fish replied.

“Just the fall afore we run all the way south to Taos—two year ago now.”

“All the way from Ree country. That was a far piece to travel just to winter up,” Graham observed.

“McAfferty, he was a nigger what wasn’t gonna stay in that country where he’d just killed the ol’ rattle shaker,” Rowland recalled. “Hell, he told us it wasn’t healthy for a man’s hide to be caught in country anywhere close to where the Ree stomped around.”

Scratch found that long trek hard to believe. “Just for him killing a Ree medicine man you tramped all the way down to Taos?”

“Don’t you see?” Rowland tried to explain in a quiet voice that hushed the others. “This here McAfferty had him dark hair—shiny like a new-oiled trap and near black as the gut of hell itself—afore the night he had to kill that Ree medicine man.”

Bass asked, “What you mean,
had
to kill the Ree?”

For a moment Rowland pursed his lips as if he were trying to pull out the particulars of that memory. “Something to do with what feller had the strongest medicine … to do with that medicine man fixing to steal McAfferty’s Bible.”

“He carry a Bible hisself?” Scratch inquired.

“Yup,” John answered. “The man left us with hair black as charred hickory. An’ he come back with it turned.”

“No shit?” Titus asked. “So that’s when his hair become white?”

Turning to Bass, Rowland explained, “McAfferty’s hair is as white as new snow.”

“What turned his hair?” Titus inquired.

John stared into the fire for long moments before answering. “Maybeso the hoo-doos.”

“Hoo-doos!” shrieked Rufus Graham with a gust of sudden laughter.

“That’s right,” John said, nonplussed. “Like I said,
McAfferty left our bunch with black hair … and come back with it and his beard turned white.”

Rufus declared, “Like the man see’d a ghost!”

With a shrug Rowland continued, “The man never told any of the rest of us what scared him so. Said he wouldn’t talk about it—claimed that he’d always counted on God to watch his backside agin’ the devil.”

“Not a word of what hoo-doo spooked him, eh?” Caleb asked.

“Nary a peep did we pull outta him,” John explained dolefully. “All the way down to Taos that fall, I don’t recall the nigger sleeping much at all.”

“How’s a man get by ’thout any sleep?” Scratch asked with a yawn.

“All I can tell you is on our trip south that white-headed nigger was awake when I closed my eyes ever’ night, and he was awake when I opened my eyes again come morning.”

Skeptically, Scratch asked, “Awake, doing what?”

“Just looking up at the sky near all the time, moving his lips like he was talking to somebody, keepin’ a tight hold on his Bible.”

“That’s spooky right there,” Hatcher declared.

“He packed that Ol’ Bible along in his possibles ever since I knowed him. Never saw him pull it out much,” Rowland explained. “But after that night when he come back with his head turned white, McAfferty was one to keep that saddle-worn Bible right in his hand or laying by his side … ever since.”

“McAfferty sounds to me like a man what got hisself spooked but good!” Bass observed.

Hatcher agreed, “Right from the very first time I laid eyes on him down to Taos, I knowed in my bones there was something a mite odd about that child.”

“Yep,” echoed Solomon. “Young as he was—to have his hair turn like it did.”

“Don’t matter how young a feller is when hoo-doos reach out an’ grab hold,” Rowland protested, stretching out his arm, making a claw of his fingers. “Hoo-doos gonna leave their mark on you.”

Bass snorted. “Sounds to me like you believe in ghosts your own self, Johnny.”

“How ’bout it, boys? Any of ye see’d any of McAfferty’s hoo-doos yer own selves when ye was with him?” Hatcher added.

Shaking his head, Wood said, “I ain’t never seen none for myself … but I rode many a mile, and many a moon, with Asa McAfferty. I saw what become of a man who did see a hoo-doo. A man what see’d a Ree Injun rattle shaker’s hoo-doo!”

“Damn! If that don’t give me goose bumps the way Johnny’s talking!” exclaimed Isaac Simms, rubbing both of his forearms as if he had just suffered a sudden chill.

“Shit!” roared Elbridge Gray. “Johnny’s got you jumping at shadows now too!”

Hatcher turned to Rowland, asking, “Whatever come of McAfferty that winter we rode back to Taos, John?”

At that moment in the timber above their protected valley, a wolf raised its voice to the clear, starlit autumn sky.

All nine of them turned and listened as the morose howl drifted away slowly, the sound swallowed by the utter, black immensity of that night.

After a bit of reflection Rowland answered, “Like I said, he didn’t figger to join up with Young or with Robidoux’s outfit. Hell, truth was both of ’em made it real plain that they didn’t want him along come spring.”

“So he go north with another outfit?” Scratch inquired.

“No,” Rowland answered. “Near as I know, he never looked for a bunch to trap with after that. Like he knowed others down that way was talking about his hoo-doos that winter, like he knowed there wouldn’t be a man wanted to trap with him.”

Rufus asked, “What happened to him?”

“Dunno,” John stated. “I heard tell he up and pulled out of Taos late two winters ago. There in Mexico one day. Gone the next.”

Wood asked, “By hisself?”

“Yup. I heard he was all on his lonesome.”

“Damn,” Hatcher grumbled. “Here I was first thinking he become a strange goat … an’ now I’m feeling a mite sorry for this McAfferty. Feel sorry for a man what no one wants around.”

“How ’bout you, Johnny?” Elbridge asked. “Would you want to trap with McAfferty now?”

Shaking his head emphatically, Rowland answered, “Not a whore’s chance in Sunday meeting I’d ever travel the same trail with that one. Something ’bout him killing that rattle shaker, something ’bout that ol’ rattle shaker’s hoo-doo medicine made McAfferty go … go real soft in the head.” Then with a sudden, uncontrollable shudder of his body, John added, “This coon’ll stay as far away from that crazy bastard as I can.”

“He’s trouble,” Rufus added.

“Nawww, not like he’s a bad sort,” Rowland explained. “Just that … well, let’s say trouble follers on his bachtrail ever since the rattle shaker’s hoo-doos come after him. Way I see it: McAfferty’s gonna have trouble dogging him the rest of his days, for here on out.”

“Man’s got enough to worry about in Injun country,” Solomon declared. “He don’t have to take on a partner what’s been turned soft in the head.”

“So how ’bout you, Hatcher?” Bass inquired with a grin. “You ain’t gonna get soft in the head an’ keep us here till all the passes outta this valley are closed in, are you?”

“Nawww,” Jack replied. “I figger we each have us one more turn at camp keeper—five days more—and we’ll get on outta here.”

“To Taos!” Kinkead roared with renewed enthusiasm.

“Damn right,” Hatcher answered. “We push on over the high side and make for the mud-house Mexican settlements.”

“Ah! Women got skin the color of smoked leather,” Isaac Simms growled, a hunger glistening in his eyes.

Rufus Graham agreed, “And Workman’s likker, clear as a summer sky and as strong as the kick of a mule.”

“I’m half-froze for corn an’ beans,” Caleb Wood said wistfully, then licked his lips. “Don’t make me no never-mind
that their bread is flat as it can be—it’s still bread to this here starvin’ nigger!”

“I ain’t had me no greaser bread since we put Taos at our rumps!” Rowland grumbled.

“This here nigger can’t wait to get me some of that greaser tobaccy,” explained Elbridge Gray. “How ’bout you, Jack? What you wanna get when we shine in Taos?”

“Music … music I don’t have to make for everyone else,” Hatcher explained, looking up at the cold sky dreamily. “I wanna listen and dance to such music them greasers play … while’st holding my arm round the waist of a thin gal or a plump one—hell, it don’t make no matter to me! My, my, my: how I look forward just to spin a woman to some music and look down at her purty face, seein’ right there and then in those eyes that she wants this here child to plant his wiping stick atween her legs.”

“Stand back, you damned greasers!” Rowland shouted to the heavens. “Bow your brown heads to American free men come riding in from the mountains! Get back you damned
pelados
an’ make way for free mountaineers come to shine in Taos!”