Crack in the Sky (66 page)

Here in this last push toward the plaza many of the revelers who were wrapped in thick multicolored Navajo blankets or kept themselves warm beneath striped serapes were huffing mightily on their last corn-shuck cigarillo rolled from a mild native tobacco wrapped in a small sliver of husk, this vice enjoyed by man and woman alike: a few last puffs taken before they would join the hundreds in climbing the steps to enter the cathedral’s huge double doors.

Past the bustle of carriages and carts rumbling noisily to a halt in the midst of that teeming throng of those on foot who streamed toward the morning Mass, the two lone Americans eventually reached the far side of the plaza. Here they were forced to squeeze their horses against one side of the narrow street as they swam against
the surging tide of bodies and carts, horses and burros, all those pilgrims intent upon reaching the town square. Then of a sudden the crowds thinned and trickled off, just about the moment the cathedral bells pealed one last time.

Joyous voices, the clamor of celebration, the bleats and whinnies and brays, all faded quickly behind them as the two trappers hurried down the trampled street toward the southern side of the sprawling village. Here and there they encountered a rumbling cart or a carriage chock-full of a family of anxious churchgoers realizing they were already late, racing past the Americans without so much as a greeting or a second look. Back in the shadows of the side streets mangy hounds and ribby, mixed-breed dogs roamed in pairs and packs, sniffing among piles of refuse. Some of the braver animals ventured out to bark or yip among their horses’ legs, yelping in surprise and pain when Hannah tumbled an unwary cur with her hoof.

Beneath the low-tracking sunlight of this midwinter day the whitewashed walls of the wealthy residents soon gave way to the earth-toned sepia of the poorer adobe homes, the appearance of it all quite striking against the expanse of those hills rising beyond the outskirts of town. There at the far reaches of Santa Fe among the growing stench of the open-air sewers, Bass and McAfferty hurried on by the well-marked bordellos and watering holes where a few bleary-eyed inhabitants stumbled from the doorways to stand in the morning sun, staring up at the two Americans. Half-dressed soldiers and still-drunk vaqueros emerged to shade their eyes as they gazed at the pair. Some of the dusky-skinned, buxom women pulled cigarillos from their lips and pushed unruly sprigs of black hair back from their faces to call out invitations to the trappers as the pair plodded on by. It struck Bass how a whole section of this capital city was devoted to whiskey and women, revelry and sin.

Just the sort of deadly mix that had put the two of them on the run.

With all the celebration of this holy day they had slipped on through the inhabitants of Santa Fe to reach the
southern road that would take them to the hacienda of wealthy rancho owner Luis Maria Cabeza de Vaca.

“If we don’t find no one around out to his place down on the Peña blanca,” McAfferty said at last as they nudged the horses into a lope, putting the mud-walled village behind them, “I figger they’ve all come here for church.”

“We’ll just lay low out to Vaca’s place,” Scratch agreed, “till the old man can come back to hide us.”

Ol’ Vaca was dead.

Killed the day before Christmas.

Only a matter of hours before Bass and McAfferty showed up at his hacienda, Luis Maria Cabeza de Vaca had been shot resisting a detail of Governor Manuel Armijo’s soldiers sent from Santa Fe to confiscate the beaver pelts and other property of Americans suspected of being hidden at Vaca’s rancho.

Near noon on that sacred holiday as the two gringos rode down from the low hills toward the mouth of the Peñablanca, instead of looking down from the heights on the splendor of the Vaca-family empire, they gazed at the deserted, still-smoldering ruin of half the buildings. As soon as they reined into the smoky yard, more than a dozen armed men appeared from all sides, every one of them smeared with cinders, their faces and clothing streaked with ebony and dried blood.

Among them were Vaca’s three sons, as well as a nephew who knew a little English—enough to explain that the governor’s
soldados
had come on the evening of the sacred holiday with a writ to search the grounds and buildings, orders to seize all Americans’ property and confiscate any goods being trafficked with the gringos.

“My family has been on this land for generations,” the nephew explained. “This is no way to treat my family!”

True to his personal code of honor, the old man had stood before the overwhelming array of soldiers without a weapon and refused the captain permission to search the grounds. Which prompted the officer to rein up to the old man and brutally slash him across the face with his quirt, splitting Vaca’s cheek open and knocking him down. Yet he struggled back to his feet and immediately attempted to yank the impudent soldier out of the saddle.

“The captain—he pull his pistol and shoot my uncle,” the nephew disclosed.

Before the smoke from that single pistol shot could clear, a general melee broke out as family members and ranch hands turned and raced for their weapons while the soldiers began their rampage. In the end it was Vaca’s old wife who ventured out of the hacienda waving a large white handkerchief in the stiff, cold wind, surrendering so that no more of her family would die, so that she could go to the body of her husband where he lay mortally wounded in the trampled yard, bleeding to death near the foot of their porch. A patch of dirty crimson still stained the crusty snow where Vaca fell.

After rounding up all the family and their employees, placing them all under guard in the middle of the yard, the soldiers rummaged through the house and outbuildings before they moved on to the barn and the barracks where the ranch workers slept. Only then did a young Paiute house servant turn back to look at the hacienda and emit a horrified scream. The house was on fire.

At first the captain had refused to allow the ranch hands to fight the flames, claiming that such a catastrophe was no work of his men. But after nearly half of the graceful old building had been consumed, he relented and allowed Vaca’s men to put up a valiant but hopeless effort against the flames.

Instead of ordering his men to help the family, the captain had his soldiers continue their search: eventually managing to find over two hundred pounds of beaver pelts
hidden beneath a trapdoor in the barn floor. Beyond that there was nothing conclusive to indicate that Vaca had been dealing with the Americans. Besides, the angry captain had been informed there would be gringos to arrest.

His men found no Americans.

“The governor and his
soldados,”
explained the nephew, “they hate the Americanos. They want us to hate them too. My uncle, he not hate. What he had he give to all who come to his door, to all guests. And now he lay in his grave.”

Three dark mounds stood out against the sunlit snow in the family cemetery on a low knoll behind the hacienda. Three new wooden crosses marked the last resting place of Cabeza de Vaca, along with two of his workers. This last resting place of the old man’s hospitality to American trappers.

Bass waited with the horses as McAfferty walked through the crude iron fence and knelt at the foot of that freshly turned sod so stark against the gleaming snow beneath a cloudless sky.

“‘Thou art my hiding place; thou shalt preserve me from trouble; thou shalt compass me about with songs of deliverance,’
” Asa grumbled as he returned and took up his reins. “There ain’t nothing for us here now, Mr. Bass.”

As McAfferty kicked his horse in the ribs and turned away, Bass reached down and shook hands with the old man’s sons, then told the nephew, “Your uncle died a brave man. Near every one of them soldiers I run onto—they been cowards. But a brave man like your uncle, he’s gone now to a place where there ain’t a single yellow-backed polecat coward … a place beyond the sky where other men of honor have welcomed him.”

The two of them swept around to the south before turning north by northeast for the foothills of the mountains. This would be far harder going than the road offered a wayfarer traveling north to Taos along the Rio Grande road. But they were wanted men, and it was clear there were soldiers out, prowling.

Just as clear that this was not a good season for an American in northern Mexico.

Four days later, after traveling during the cold of night and hiding out each day, Bass and McAfferty found a well-concealed
rito
, one of those narrow canyons through which a stream flowed out of the mountains toward the Rio Grande itself. After leaving their horses concealed from roving eyes, they moved out at moonrise on foot, reaching Workman’s place close to midnight.

“Bill Williams been out to see me,” the whiskey trader announced after he had hurried them into the back room of his stone house and they had explained why they weren’t hiding out at Ol’ Vaca’s place.

“Bill already heard what happen’t to us?” McAfferty asked.

Nodding, Workman continued, “He brought me a dozen traps for you boys. Soon as he heard the story of what you done over at the Barcelos place, he come right on out here to see what he could do to help. I told him we just shooed you off to Santa Fe—but that I had some of your furs here. That’s when he said you told him you was needing some traps to replace them what you had to leave behind on the Heely.”

“Damn straight—I told him we was pretty short on traps,” Bass replied.

Workman hauled a huge sack out of a dark corner. As he swung it across the earth floor, it clattered, coming to a rest. “Juniata steel, boys. Best traps a feller can buy him in Mexico.”

Titus asked, “We square with Bill?”

“He took what he needed in trade from your plews,” Workman answered. Then his eyes got anxious. “You ain’t fixing on staying here, are you?”

Scratch could see the apprehension glazing the man’s eyes. He said, “Naw, we just come for what was left here when we lit out afore.”

Workman’s shoulders sagged, limp with relief. “Ain’t safe around here for you.”

“Ain’t safe down in Santy Fee neither,” McAfferty added.

“Tomorrow night we’ll be back to gather up what’s
ours and be gone,” Bass said. “Afore we do, you take what’s fair for all you done by us.”

The whiskey maker waved a hand in the dark room. “You boys don’t owe me a thing.”

“It’s only right,” Scratch protested. “For all you done—”

“Mr. Bass is right,” Asa added. “Likely them
soldados
will be back to see you.”

They were out of there before the eastern sky grayed. And back at dark the next night to load up what they had left behind more than a week before. With every hour Bass himself grew all the more anxious, all the more certain in McAfferty’s belief that the soldiers would be back. After seeing Vaca’s place, and those three fresh scars on the earth—it was almost enough to make him a praying man: begging God to spare William Workman and all the rest who had put their necks in a gallows noose simply to help out a few Americans come to Mexico.

But every bit as much as a man might pray, Scratch realized a man also had to keep his powder dry and his weapons close at hand. And never be caught praying down on his knees with his eyes closed. Suicide, sure and certain.

“Maybeso one day I’ll come back this way,” Asa told Workman as they swung into their saddles.

“Give it some time, like Kinkead said,” the whiskey trader reminded them. Then he turned of a sudden and held up his hand to Titus Bass.

“Near forgot to tell you, Scratch. Wanted to wish you a happy birthday.”

“H-happy birthday?”

Workman nodded. “Figger it’s well past midnight already. That makes it New Year’s Day, eighteen and thirty. How many rings that give you now?”

“Thirty-six,” he replied, astonished. “Already a new year.”

“You boys watch your hair,” Workman said as he took a step back and slapped Bass’s horse on the rump.

“You watch your’n, Billy Workman!” Scratch cried as they reined away.

At the top of the prairie McAfferty came alongside him as they loped beneath the North Star.

“That’s twice now since we threw in together what I didn’t think we’d make the new year, Mr. Bass.”

“Maybeso you’re a hard-user on your partners, Asa.”

“Me?”

“You was the one what rode us off down to Apache country.”

McAfferty snorted. “And you was the one took us off down to whore country! ’For
true and righteous are His judgments: for He hath judged the great whore, which did corrupt the earth with her fornication!’”

When Titus turned to gaze at Asa, he found the white-head’s eyes glimmering with mirth. “Awright, you slick-tongued son of a bitch. I s’pose we are even. You got us in that fix down on the Heely, and I got us out.”

“Then I pulled us out of the next mess you plopped us down in,” McAfferty concluded.

“Way I see it,” Scratch declared, “we’re square, Asa McAfferty. No matter what happens atween us partners now, we’re square.”

Scratch figured they couldn’t have anywhere near as much trouble from there on out as the two of them had their first few months after throwing in together. Leastways, that’s what he told himself as they loped out of the valley of the Rio Grande, slogged their way over the pass, and finally plunged down to the foot of the Front Range, where they struggled on north.