Crack in the Sky

11

As Mirabal’s daughter rushed onto the platform, lunging across the last two steps to clutch her father’s arm, screaming at him, the governor shoved Jacova behind him and continued yelling into the pandemonium.

Suddenly Mirabal drew his own pistol from the wide red sash there beneath the short-waisted chaqueta.

At that instant the screaming women were falling back toward the walls, leaving the two rings of antagonists alone in the middle of the long sala: that small knot of outnumbered Americans at the center, a thick ring of Mexican rivals surrounding them.

Firing his weapon into one of the thick wooden beams above their heads, Mirabal instantly silenced the entire room. The soldiers spun with a jerk. And the trappers looked up in alarm.

Bass wondered, Was this the signal for the killing to begin?

When he had their attention, the governor began to speak again in his loud, certain voice.

“He just ordered them soldados to put their pistols away,” Kinkead translated breathlessly.

For a moment no one moved; then the first of the soldiers began to comply … as if they had weighed the odds of disobeying not only their governor but their gracious host. The haughty Mexicans stuffed their pistols back into the colorful sashes tied around their waists, still brandishing their knives and short swords with unmasked glee.

“If one of us falls,” Hatcher growled, “the rest get round him—don’t let them greasers drag him off.”

“How many you figger we can take on?” Caleb asked.

Elbridge was the first to answer. “Many as they wanna throw agin’ us!”

Just as the soldiers took another cautious step toward their rivals, Mirabal hollered again.

Jack demanded, “What’s he saying?”

“Something about the knives,” Kinkead declared. “He don’t want no killing here.”

The governor hollered to some older men at the foot of the platform. Reluctantly two of them handed up their pistols to Mirabal. He immediately held them right over the heads of those standing below him on the clay floor, pointing the weapons directly at Ramirez.

Matthew swallowed hard, saying, “Mirabal just told ’im he’d be the first to die. If there’s gonna be blood, then Ramirez’s blood’s gonna be the first on this floor.”

“He—he’s really pulling them soldiers back?” Fish asked in that hushed room.

Kinkead nodded. “Says he won’t let the lieutenant and his men dishonor him twice.”

It was plain as sun how the governor’s words slapped the officer and his men every bit as hard as if he would strike them across the cheek.

“Says them soldiers dishonored him when they didn’t fight hard enough to save all the prisoners,” Matthew explained to his stunned companions.

“Weren’t their fault the bastards was yeller polecats,” Isaac grumbled.

Continuing, Kinkead declared, “He won’t stand for the soldiers dishonoring him again by killing in his … in his house …”

Bass listened to the way Kinkead’s voice dropped off. “What … what is it, Matthew?”

“He said there won’t be no killing in his house, ’specially no killing the men what brung his wife and daughter back to him safe.”

The lieutenant whirled on the governor, red-faced as he spat out his words, gripping the huge butt of that pistol stuffed into his sash. The officer’s whole body trembled with rage.

“He says that’s twice Mirabal’s shamed him and his men,” Matthew warned gravely. “Says they’re due the right to wipe off that shame, or there is no honor in this house.”

Slowly the governor lowered one of the pistols, pointing the other directly at the lieutenant’s head.

“If there’s gonna be killing, that Ramirez gonna be the first to die here. Mirabal ain’t gonna let them soldiers disobey him.”

Even though the room was as quiet as a convent at dusk, the governor bellowed like a bull, flushed with anger from the neck up.

“Told ’em to put away ever’thing,” Kinkead translated. “Knives too.”

“Why?” Hatcher asked.

Pausing before he answered, Matthew eventually explained, “Told Ramirez if they wanted to show they was honorable men, then they could fight like real men—’thout no guns or no knives.”

“No knives?” Simms repeated.

For a long time no one moved.

Then suddenly the lieutenant turned away from his men and stepped right to the foot of the platform, where he passed both his pistol and his long stiletto to Jacova. The governor’s daughter took the weapons as the rest of the Mexican males reluctantly handed over their weapons to women lining the adobe walls where candles flickered in the still air.

Mirabal hurled his voice over the heads of the others, speaking to the trappers.

Matthew translated, “Says it’s our turn to put our guns away—”

“Cache our guns?” Hatcher replied in disbelief. “Ain’t no way in hell I’m letting go of this pistol of mine—not when these sumbitches got us outnumbered the way they do.”

Silence fell heavy about them once more. And finally Mirabal spoke, filled with apparent regret.

“Governor says we ain’t the honorable men he thought we was when we brung his family back … not if we don’t put our guns and knives away like his soldiers done.”

“If we do,” Wood demanded, “then what?”

Matthew drew himself up hugely, “Then we’ll have us our fight.”

“Us agin’ alla them?” Isaac inquired.

“Just our fists, boys!” Kinkead cheered as he turned and passed his weapons to Rosa.

“Who’s gonna hold the rest what we got?” Hatcher demanded.

Graham said, “Yeah—I ain’t trusting no one with my gun and my knife!”

“Lay ’em on that table by you,” a voice cried out in plain English from somewhere beyond the thick ring of Mexicans. “They be safe right there.”

“Damn,” Bass muttered as the slight figure poked his way through the last layer of soldiers and stepped into the open between the two groups of rivals.

“Johnny!” Hatcher bellowed with glee. “Come to fandango with yer friends?”

Rowland’s eyes bounced over the crowd a moment before he answered. “I s’pose you might say I come to fandango, Jack.”

“We was ’bout to have us a do-si-do with these here greasers,” Caleb explained.

“That’s what I was tol’t,” John replied. “My Maria’s mama—she come to get me over to Matthew’s place.”

“She come for ye?”

With a nod Rowland answered bravely, “Tol’t me there was trouble aplenty ’tween the soldiers and my companyeros. Said I should come help my friends—since they was such good boys to go help me get my Maria back from the Comanch’. M-my Maria.”

At Rowland’s pained words a flame burned gently in Scratch’s chest, a sharp warmth lodged just behind his breastbone. He felt the salty sting at his eyes.

“You gonna fight with us?” Elbridge asked, tugging manfully at his leather britches.

“I didn’t come to dance with the likes of you, you ugly nigger!”

Then Rowland moved past the trappers, laying his two pistols on the long table. He didn’t turn until he had taken his knife from its scabbard and propped it between the two pistols shoved in among the clay jugs of lightning and crystal bowls of sweet brandy.

Johnny turned back to the Americans, his eyes damp. “Yeah, boys—I come to fight ’longside my friends.”

Hatcher suddenly raised his chin and let loose a shrill wolf howl. The rest instantly followed suit, clearly unnerving the soldiers as John Rowland stepped up and squeezed in between Hatcher and Kinkead, both men making room for him in their tight circle.

Matthew ordered, “Rest of you—put your guns and knives away, fellers … just like Johnny done. Because—by God—we’re gonna give these here greasers the thrubbin’ they been needing ever since’t we come back from fighting the Comanche for ’em!”

One by one, wary and watchful, the trappers stepped over to the table, laid their weapons down, then quickly resumed their place in the tiny ring. Now there were nine of them. Nine against many times their number. But as the last of the Americans, Jack Hatcher himself, stepped back to that circle of defenders, the lieutenant growled a command of his own and the soldiers started forward.

But this time there were only the seven in uniform, and no more than nine in civilian clothing. Realizing he no longer had the great numbers behind him, the lieutenant halted right in his tracks, whirling around on his heel to glare back at those who no longer joined him.

Hatcher turned to Kinkead as Ramirez began shouting.

Matthew said, “The rest of ’em he’s calling cowards.”

“I figger ’em for smart fellers,” Bass declared.

“How you figger on that?” Solomon asked beneath that sharp hatchet of a nose dotted with huge pores forever darkened with fire soot and ground-in dirt.

Titus explained, “They’re smart enough to know that they ain’t got near as good a chance taking us on when they don’t have all them guns and knives.”

“Give ’em the thrubbing they deserve!” Caleb bellowed as the lieutenant turned around to face Hatcher.

With a sudden screech of rage Ramirez lunged forward, his arms raised, both hands stiffened like claws over his head. Jack was the first to swing his chair leg as the others rushed in behind the lieutenant.

Scratch didn’t see when his friends got into the melee—he was already swinging the thick chair leg he clutched in his sweaty hands at the first of two soldiers rushing him. That burly Mexican reached up, seizing the chair leg in midarc as he leaped up toe to toe. Bass brought up his knee in that instant the soldier was setting himself to strike, savagely driving it into the Mexican’s groin. But he had little time to enjoy watching the man crumple before him, clutching his genitals, his dark face gone pasty in pain.

For the second soldier had grabbed the end of the chair leg and rocked back with a jerk, then made a second attempt to loosen it from Bass’s grip. Instead, Scratch drove his heel down onto the Mexican’s shin, stabbing the man’s instep with all his weight. As the soldier lunged back, releasing the chair leg, Bass was already swinging it behind his shoulder—

—just when he felt a huge fist slam into his lower back.

The pain was so immediate, so severe, that he sensed the breath rush out of his lungs, sensed his knees turning to water.

Then came a second blow to his back, harder than the first. His legs went out right under him as if they weren’t there.

As Scratch went down, he heard the women’s screams for the first time. They almost drowned out the grunts of men colliding, bone and muscle and sinew crashing together, might against might. So loud was the screaming and that thunder of bone striking bone that he almost didn’t hear the sharp gust of wind rush from his lips as he struck the hard clay of the earthen floor.

Gasping for breath, he twisted about to look up—finding that shadow looming over him become the first soldier he had kneed as the Mexicans rushed them. While Scratch drew himself into a ball, the soldier drove his cowhide boot into Bass’s ribs again and again. With each blow great bubbles of air exploded from Titus’s lungs, replaced by searing pain. Moccasins and boots scuffed around his head as he fought to curl himself tighter … struggling not only against the Mexican’s boot, but fighting down the frightening remembrance of that brutal beating at the hands of Silas Cooper.

Suddenly the Mexican’s foul breath was in his face as the soldier grabbed a handful of Bass’s shirt, raising the American slightly, then driving his fist into Titus’s face. A second time the man pulled Bass halfway up off the floor, only to slam his jaw back down with another blow.

He was going to kill him, just as Cooper tried!

But this time Scratch vowed he would not lie there and take a beating like a whipped dog.

From somewhere at the marrow of him Titus found the strength to seize the Mexican’s left wrist in both of his hands. He jerked it up at the same moment he opened his mouth, instantly clamping down with his teeth on that soft web of skin between the thumb and forefinger. Grinding, sawing, chewing on the hard thumb bone and musky tissue that tasted of days’-old dirt and spilled aguardiente.

The Mexican smashed his other fist into the side of his head again as the man cried out in pain.

Bass bit down harder.

Again the soldier hammered a fist into Scratch’s cheek. But not near as hard as before.

Through every blow Titus locked down harder on the skin, feeling that single bone grind beneath his teeth, feeling the flesh tearing away and the gushes of warm blood oozing over his tongue—thick and salty.

Of a sudden the fist opened and clawed at Scratch’s neck, a thumb pressed against his larynx so hard, Bass wasn’t sure he would breathe again. Freeing his right hand from the Mexican’s wrist, Bass lashed out clumsily, finding his enemy’s face. Seizing the fleshy jowl, his fingers crawled up the whiskered cheek until he found the eye socket. Remembering his struggle with the Comanche, Titus plunged his thumb past the edge of bone, stabbing into the soft, pliant tissue.

Above him the man flinched, yanking his head to the side—unable to free himself of Bass’s terrible thumb. Instead, all the Mexican could do was tighten on the gringo’s neck.

As Scratch watched the first sharp pricks of light shoot from the center of his head with that convulsive pain crushing his throat, he flexed his thumb spastically, digging deeper and deeper into the eye socket. Each time he did, he sensed the Mexican relax that iron vise on his throat just a little, before the man clamped down once more.

His decision was made—knowing he would either die without drawing another breath … or he would have to disable the Mexican and possibly kill the soldier outright.

With another sharp jab of his thumb, Scratch felt the bony rim of the socket, realizing he had reached the corner of the man’s eye. As he struggled to draw a breath into his tortured, quaking lungs, Bass scooped his thumb to the side with what little resolve he had left.

Beneath his thumb soft membranes tore away from the socket. A sudden gush of warmth spilled over his thumb and hand. The Mexican’s unearthly cry stung his ears as the soldier jerked backward, releasing that mortal grip on the American’s throat.

Scratch was unable to focus at first; all the movement around him was a watery blur, like that deafening cacophony of noise—unable to pick out any one sound, any single voice. He struggled to breathe: for him every gasp was filled with such exquisite pain. Air! How it hurt to suck it in … but it was air!

Then his vision cleared enough that he saw the Mexican stumbling backward against other soldiers, both hands held at his face, his mouth open, screaming in agony. That black hole within a black mustache and beard—with a sound so shrill, it reminded Bass of a wild animal.

Blood slicked down the Mexican’s cheek as two soldiers rushed to him—

Then someone grabbed Scratch, snatching hold of the back of his collar, dragging him backward.

On instinct Scratch whirled clumsily, still fighting for breath, locking his hands around the arm that yanked him across the trampled floor.

“Easy, goddammit!” Elbridge bellowed.

It was Gray’s face. And his arm pulling Titus back toward the others, who were again drawing into a tight circle. Their faces and heads and knuckles bloodied. Two of them still holding their heavy chair legs.

“Bass put his goddamned eye out!” Kinkead yelled with glee.

Jerking back around the moment Elbridge got him to the others, Titus looked for the soldier—found him. Someone had a white handkerchief out and was pressing it against the man’s cheek, where a wide ribbon of crimson shimmered in the candlelight. Above that bloody handkerchief the eyelid fluttered loosely over the socket. Empty was it, like a grave yet unfilled, black as night.

Several women burst out of the crowd to join the two soldiers helping their own stumble away toward the door. The sound the blinded man made was one of excruciating agony, a shrieking warble slowly dying in that suddenly hushed room. Mingled with the muted murmurs of the crowd were the gasps for air and grunts of newfound pain from nearly all the fighters taking stock of their own injuries.

Suddenly the ring of Mexicans around the gringos appeared to shrink.

“Ye done good, Scratch!” Hatcher cheered, slapping him on the shoulders.

“I—I really put his eye out?”

“Ain’t nothin’ but a hole there now,” Caleb answered. “I see’d that a few times afore. Leastways, he’s lucky you didn’t kill—”

Kinkead shushed them as the governor began speaking again. “He’s asking them soldiers if they had ’em enough.”

Their only answer was a sudden shriek from the lieutenant and those left standing with him as they rushed the Americans again. Both forces met with a mighty noise, the wooden sound of hard bone meeting hard bone. Men grunting and cursing in both languages. Bodies slammed to the floor.

Scratch saw the lights again, felt himself sinking to his knees, watched figures swimming before him in an inky pool. Like the summer night he first laid between Amy’s soft thighs beside that old swimming hole. This was just as black, just as liquid as that.

He caught himself with one arm, starting to blink as he looked up, turning to gaze back over his shoulder—finding the Mexican lunging over him with most of what had been a huge chair still in both his hands.

Bass tasted blood, wondering if it was the eyeless soldier’s blood … or if it was his own. It was dripping down his neck, along his jaw and cheek, through his beard and onto his lips. Must have opened up the back of my head, he thought in a blur as he blinked again, trying to focus on the Mexican bringing down the chair against his head and shoulders a second time.

That blow sounded exactly like one of his mother’s heavy churns dropped onto their puncheon floor, back in Kentucky. Hollow, ringing, and with the same dull echo as he felt the cool, earthen floor smack against his cheek.

He shivered so hard, he thought his teeth were going to rattle out of his mouth. Clacking so loud, they sounded almost like those bone dice in that ivory cup of Ebenezer Zane’s—the way the old riverboatman shook them whenever he gambled with his flatboat crew on its float down to New Orleans that autumn of 1810.

Bass was certain his cheek still lay against the clay floor in Mirabal’s sala, so cold it felt. And he wondered how long he had been out as he attempted to open his puffy eyes.

“Lookee there!” Jack’s voice sang beyond the foggy, black curtain. “The nigger’s coming to, boys!”

Then he felt a cool, damp rag brush his forehead, down his cheeks, as he struggled to pry open his eyes again. They remained so heavy.

“Maybe not, Jack. His eyes jumpin’—that’s all.”

That sounded like Elbridge.

“Likely had all the mortal sense knocked out of him clear back to the Wind River, I’d wager.”

Caleb.

“What with that wallop he took, I don’t reckon the child’s gonna wake up for a week.”

Bass tried to say the name, “R-rufus?”

“Eegod—ye hear that, fellers?” Hatcher said. “He called for Rufus.”

The damp cloth brushed his face again as he forced his eyes open into slits. There were people before him—at least he took the milky forms to be people. It hurt to move his eyes. Not that there was any real pain right in his eyes—just the dull throb everywhere in his head. Moving his eyes hurt about as bad as anything.

Then he suddenly smelled something strange. Different. Sweet and alluring. It damn sure wasn’t the odors of those men he had ridden miles and months with.

This was the smell of a woman!

Slowly prying open an eye a bit farther, Bass rolled it so he could peer first in one direction, then in the other. His eyes fluttered open as soon as he saw her.

Recognizing that small, smooth face with its high cheekbones. The large, dark eyes. The lips she had rouged with crimson alegría juice. The lips moved—she was talking to him, speaking with that gentle voice of hers so like a soft breeze.

Trying to speak himself, all Bass could do was get his dry lips open and a few strange sounds past them. Nothing that made any sense.

“Matthew, tell the man what she’s saying to him.”

“Scratch—the governor’s daughter here come to see how you was after the fight last night.”

Sure felt like he’d been down in the black a lot longer than that.

“M-morn … ing?” he croaked.

“It’s near evening now,” Hatcher replied, coming up beside Kinkead to peer directly down into Bass’s face.

“The girl come out here special with her servant and her driver too,” Kinkead explained. “She was afraid you was dead, what with the way we dragged you out of there last night.”

Elbridge Gray was chuckling, then said, “The way we tied you over the backbone of your horse like you was gone under for sure.”

“Wa … ter?”

Someone gave the young woman a half gourd of water, into which she dipped her fingers, then laid them against Bass’s parched lips. Time and again his tongue licked the droplets off as she continued to brush water there until his throat no longer felt so dry. Filled with a sickening pain, Scratch knew his throat was bruised severely. Yet he was relieved to find he nonetheless could speak with a raspy harshness.

“My h-head …”

“Likely gonna hurt for some time to come too,” Hatcher warned. “Solomon here sewed ye up.”

“My head—sewed?”

Fish answered, “Yep. Ain’t never sewed so many stitches afore neither, Scratch. You was a awful mess.”

Then Hatcher and the rest began to laugh.

Jack declared, “Nigger, was ye ever a tolerable mess! Just laying there on that floor—out colder’n a preacher’s wife on her wedding night. But soon as I had Solomon here get down to take a look at ye, he pulled that blue bandanny off’n yer noodle, and that’s when the hull room got scared!”

“S-scared?”

“Hell, yes!” Kinkead replied as he came up to stand beside Jacova. “All them soldiers and guests thought somehow you’d had your hair knocked right off with that chair the nigger hit you with.”

“My hair?” he asked, none of it making sense right then.

“Ye stupid idjit!” Hatcher roared. “Solomon scalped ye again—right where you was scalped by them Arapaho!”

Unable to contain his amusement, Caleb gushed, “Them Mexicans was all worried you’d been hit hard ’nough to knock off a big knot of your hair!”

“So we brung you on out here,” Kinkead continued. “You been sleep till now.”

Scratch inquired, “What come of the greaser’s eye?”

“I s’pose one of their own got the feller fixed up best they could,” Kinkead answered. “But he was bound to lose the eye for good—no two ways of it.”

Rufus clucked, “Made all of ’em mad as a spit-on hen.”

“I s’pose that’s why that soldier hit you so damned hard with the chair,” Elbridge explained.

He swallowed a gob of saliva, finding it hurt terribly. When he opened his eyes again after that wave of pain had passed, Titus found Jacova hovering over his face.

“How long she been here?”

Matthew said, “Soon as she could get dressed at sunup, she come on out to see ’bout you.”

“Told ye,” Hatcher said, “this’un’s sweet on ye.”

“Too damn sweet on you for my notion,” Kinkead replied sternly in that solemn way of his.

With a squeak Scratch protested, “I ain’t done nothing to make her sweet on me, Matthew.”

“Hell, I know that, Titus,” he responded. “S’pose she just don’t know no better’n to fall for a wuthless gringo.”

“Rosa got herself a good gringo,” Bass replied.

Kinkead was visibly touched, his lower lip quivering slightly. “And you been a good friend to Rosa’s gringo.”

“Maybeso tell the girl go on back home now,” Scratch said, his eyelids falling. “Tell her I’m gonna be fine now but I wanna get me some more sleep.”

Eyes closed, he listened as Kinkead spoke low to the young woman. Then, without a single word from her, Bass felt soft fingers lightly touch his swollen cheek before they briefly squeezed his hand. And she was gone. It grew quiet as he heard the voices of the others move off. Bass shivered once in the growing cold, then quickly slipped off to sleep.

When next he awoke, Scratch found himself ravenous. Opening his eyes, he found the cavern still lit with a number of thick candles, the gray of dawn at the entrance to the cave no more than a thin sliver from where he lay. But he also discovered that the back of his head still throbbed mercilessly—worse even than when he had been scalped. Just beyond the room where they had placed him, he heard low voices.

It hurt too much to try raising his head, what with the way his neck and shoulder muscles protested, that wide band of painful stricture wrapping itself around his head like the jaws of a huge iron trap. Bass closed his eyes and welcomed the sleep that allowed him to leave the pain behind.

Sometime later the voices grew louder.

He awoke with a start, irritated at first that they weren’t letting him sleep any longer. Then he concentrated: slowly discerning the different voices, able to tell that they were angry.

“Hatcher!”

Oh, how it hurt to call out!

Those angry voices fell quiet as he shut his eyes, trying to squeeze off the throb in his head. Feet shuffled into the cavern.

“Scratch? Ye call me, Scratch?”

Looking up, Bass saw most of the faces around his bed. “Why you so all fired mad?”

At first no one answered.

Then Hatcher glanced at the others and eventually looked at Bass. “Goddamn Mexicans wanna come throw us out of the country.”

“But they ain’t,” Workman asserted.

“Willy here just come from town with Matthew,” Hatcher continued. “He heard from Padre Martinez that the soldiers and most of the folks in town was talking about coming out here to try flushing us out.”

“Flush us out?” Bass echoed. “They figger to kill us?”

“Sounds like it,” Matthew said. “But Mirabal and the padre wasn’t about to let ’em. Fire’s out for now.”

“Then … everything’s fine.”

“No,” Workman answered sadly. “None of you fellers can trade off your plews in town. Fact be, the governor wanted the padre to tell us that he could do all in his power to make sure no mob come out to kill us … but he couldn’t have us coming in to Taos no more this winter.”

“Means we gotta stay out here,” Caleb grumbled.

“That ain’t so bad, I s’pose,” Bass figured, relieved.

Solomon snorted, “What the hell use of a man coming to Taos if’n he can’t drink till he’s shit-faced drunk!”

“Or dance with the gals!” Graham shouted.

Elbridge roared, “And get his pecker soaked with poontang!”

Slamming a fist into an open palm, Hatcher growled, “Maybeso we just should’a kill’t our share of them greasers when we had us a chance and been done with it!”

Workman wagged his head. “From the sounds of things—you’d never got out of Mirabal’s house, you gone and done that.”

“What’s so bad ’bout them not letting us go into Taos no more this winter?” Scratch asked.

Caleb said, “We don’t go in—we can’t get all our plew traded off for supplies.”

It was quiet a moment before Workman replied, “Maybe you don’t need to trade all them plews.”

Hatcher guffawed. “With what we gonna get our truck and plunder for spring?”

“What you need?” the whiskey maker asked.

“Powder and lead!” Caleb answered. “I know we need that.”

“All right—see just how much you need,” Workman declared, something clearly going on between his ears. “I’ll see what I got here. See what I can get my hands on too.”

“We better have us some of that Mex coffee afore we head out,” Hatcher demanded, skepticism still on his face.

“What else?” Workman asked with growing intensity. And when the others began to suggest flints and wiping sticks, blankets and awls, the whiskey maker suddenly shushed them all and said, “I’ll tell you what, Jack. You boys figger all what you’re needing to get you through the spring hunt till ronnyvoo up north—maybe we can see you’re outfitted when you take off come the break of winter.”

Solomon knelt close to Bass and said, “They keep us outta town—looks like you ain’t gonna see that li’l senorita what’s sweet on you.”

Kinkead looked down at them. “I figger Scratch here’s part of our trouble too.”

“Bass?”

He started to raise his head to protest, but it hurt too damned much. From his pillow he demanded, “How I’m to blame for all this?”

“That were a fair fight, Matthew!” Hatcher suddenly leaped into the argument.

“That’s right, Matthew,” Elbridge said. “I see’d lots of men lose a eye—”

“Had to be that man’s eye,” Kinkead explained. “Hell he was a Montoya. One of the richest families down the valley.”

“So tell me what a man s’pose to do when a nigger’s trying to kill him?” Scratch asked.

“Bass here ain’t to blame for our troubles,” Caleb protested.

“’Course he ain’t,” Kinkead agreed, laying his big paw of a hand on Scratch’s shoulder. “But it’s for certain Mirabal hisself knows his daughter’s sweet on an American gringo—and that makes for a bad case of things, no matter what.”

Rufus asked, “Thort the governor liked us after we got his wife and daughter back from those Comanche?”

“He likes gringos when they help him out all right,” Kinkead declared. Then he slowly moved his eyes down to look at Bass. “But he don’t want no gringo in his family.”

Suddenly Hatcher burst out in laughter and finally bowed elegantly. “Here he is—his own self, boys!” he roared, then straightened and saluted. “This here’s Governor Mirabal’s new son-in-law!”

“I ain’t no such a thing!”

Elbridge got into the ribbing. “You’re sure ’nough caused us a heap a trouble: going off to court that man’s li’l girl!”

“Ain’t been courtin’ nobody!”

“Maybe you just better leave the womens alone,” Graham joked.

“I told you stupid niggers—”

“Speaking of women,” Hatcher said suddenly, quieting the rest. He turned quickly to Workman. “What the hell we gonna do for the rest of the winter here ’thout women?”

“Glory thunder!” Caleb roared as it struck him like a load of adobe bricks. “No women to dip my stinger in?”

Isaac grumbled, “See, Scratch? All your damned fault!”

“Hold it,” Workman hushed them, waving his arms. “Maybe I can get Louisa to bring some of her girls out here ever’ now and then.”

“Sure,” Caleb cheered. “We got the likker here!”

Then Solomon joined in, “And Willy’ll bring the womens!”

“Workman says he’s gonna round us up some plunder for the spring hunt too!” Hatcher added.

“Maybeso we’ll make a winter of it after all!” Elbridge agreed.

“But ain’t none of this my fault,” Bass protested. “Ain’t done nothing to make that Mex gal go sweet on me!”

“Hell, Titus Bass,” Hatcher said, laying a hand on Scratch’s shoulder, “I might be mad as a swarm of wasps at ye for making eyes at that woman—”

“I didn’t make no eyes at her!”

With a loud laugh Hatcher nodded. “Simmer down, Scratch. I know ye ain’t done a damned thing to put us in this fix. Truth is, ye’re too damned mud-homely for any but a blind woman to fall in love with!”

Just like Caleb Wood and his saddlebag filled with notched sticks, William Workman kept track of such things. Keeping count, knowing what year it was, even what month it was. Hell, the whiskey maker was as hard about such things as was the padre and his church. Ciphering such things as if they really mattered—marking off days on some calendar.

When all a man had to do was watch the sky, feel the change in the air. Maybe even see how the sun was pushing a little more toward the north in its track now that it didn’t snow near as hard or as often as it used to. One might even believe the days were getting longer too—if a man believed in such superstition.

But the whiskey maker told them it was drawing close to the end of February, in the year of eighteen and twenty-nine. With the coming of that spring, Bass realized he had been gone from St. Louis four years.

In those quiet moments of remembrance and reflection, Scratch looked around the cavern at what any of them had to show for their seasons in the high country. Especially him. Nearly wiped out more’n twice. But at least he still had the rifle he’d come west with … and he had Hannah too. She’d grown seal fat and sleek over a winter of leisure. Their saddle horses and pack animals all healed up too—those niggling sores and bites and skin ulcers gone the way of the Mexicans’ holiday celebration in Taos. Gone the way of the new year too. Another raucous, liquor-soaked, wenching new year of it they had with Mama Louisa’s whores and William Workman’s finest squeezings to welcome in eighteen and twenty-nine.

Which meant he was thirty-five now. Nowhere near as young as most of those he had watched head upriver from St. Louis. Not near as young as he hoped he could have always stayed. But, he figured, if a man had him only a certain number of winters—if the years were indeed allotted out to each man—then a man must surely choose on his own hook just how to spend what was given him. Indeed, over time Scratch had made peace with that. A man who asked too much out of life was clearly an unhappy sort.

But a man who discovered the richness in every new day he was granted … the sort of man who gave thanks at every sunset—now, to Scratch’s way of thinking that was a man who was doubly blessed.

They weren’t in all that bad a shape when they got down to going through all their plunder right after the turn of the year. Not that they couldn’t use a little more of this and some of that. But with what Workman already had—and what he could buy either in Taos or on down the road to Santa Fe, where most of the merchants didn’t know word one of the troublesome Americans up at Taos—Hatcher’s bunch laid in all of what they figured they would need to get them through to rendezvous slated to gather that year on the Popo Agie.

Lead and powder, a lot of coffee and a little of that Mexican sugar, sixty-weight sacks of salt from the Chihuahua mines, flints and wiping sticks and assortments of screws for their guns, along with some repairs Bass made to all the aging and broken traps the outfit packed along from season to season. Sure did keep himself warm sweating over Workman’s forge through winter’s coldest days while the others repaired packsaddles and tack, sending the whiskey maker out to buy what he could of Spanish horse gear for the coming trip.

Returning from the nearby Pueblo, Workman brought back his mule loaded high with the colorful wool blankets traded from the Navajo who lived far to the west—woven so thick they were all but impervious to water. And with some two dozen woolly skins the whiskey maker bartered off sheep ranchers, hides that the trappers could stretch and tan to a supple softness, Hatcher’s men now had ideal pads to place beneath their packsaddles.

Over the long winter Kinkead hadn’t changed his mind about staying, no matter what any of them said, no matter the growing excitement as the time to depart drew nigh. Matthew was staying behind this trip out. Perhaps for good. His narrow brush with the Blackfeet had only made him pine for his Rosa all the more. Kinkead was determined to stay behind and do what he could to support his wife right there in Taos.

Workman explained that it was likely time to be breaking for the north—it being the second week of March—when Hatcher rushed into the cavern one fine afternoon and demanded they all come outside and take themselves a whiff of the air.

“If it don’t smell like spring’s coming!” Hatcher gushed as they all hurried out into the sun, a chill breeze wending its way down the creekbottom. “If it ain’t time to light out—then … I’ll eat Caleb Wood’s longhandles!”

“That sure as hell is a safe bet,” Elbridge assured. “Can’t doubt it’s spring!”

Rufus agreed, “And a man sure don’t wanna take a chance on losing that bet—having to eat that man’s longhandles!”

“Really time to go, Jack?” Bass inquired.

“Damn right it is.”

Solomon asked, “When you figger?”

Hatcher turned and looked them over. “How long it take ye boys to be ready?”

Caleb asked the others, “Day after tomorry?”

They all nodded.

“Then it’s settled—day after tomorrow,” Hatcher affirmed. Then he looked at Workman. “Anything ye need us to do here for ye … afore we pull out?”

“Can’t think of anything needs doing, nothing needs fixing neither. ’Bout time you niggers got out from being under my feet!” the whiskey maker said with a hint of sadness.

“Gonna miss ye, Willy,” Hatcher said, slapping Workman on the shoulder.

“Been good having you boys here too,” Workman admitted quietly.

Solomon asked, “Even what with all the trouble we caused you?”

“What trouble?” he repeated. “What trouble was that?”

“The trouble Titus Bass brewed up for us at the governor’s!” Elbridge roared.

“Wasn’t no trouble,” Workman replied, turning to look at Scratch. “The girl stayed away just like her father warned her to, and likely things be all settled down come next winter when you boys come back.”

“Likely won’t be back till winter after next,” Hatcher explained, seeing the disappointment it brought Workman. “We’ll stay north, trap long as we can, Willy.”

The whiskey maker nodded a little sadly. “All right then. You all got work to do, I’m sure of that. And I have me some kegs to fill for you.”

“Some l-likker for us?” Rufus asked.

“Ain’t gonna let you boys go ’thout nothing for your trip!”

Early the next morning they began work on their saddles and tack, assuring themselves that all their equipment was trail-ready. That done, they all gathered in a circle with their firearms—each man to show the others that his weapons were cleaned, locks tight, and everything in top order. This was no drill without life-and-death necessity: the entire outfit might well depend upon the weapon of a single man.

From there they broke out the powder and lead, coffee, salt, and sugar, along with what other heavy items they would be carrying—placing it all into small packs that could be divided among the animals following them north.

That finished just past sunset, Workman called them in for supper and some lightning, along with some sugar-and cinnamon-coated treats he had purchased in town.

As Hatcher’s men settled on the floor with their cups of aguardiente and their mugs of steaming coffee, Workman went to the corner and returned with eight bags, each the size of a man’s thigh.

The first was accepted by Jack. “What’s this, Willy?”

“Look inside your own self, nigger,” Workman replied, handing out the lightweight burlap bags.

“Tobaccy!” Hatcher roared with loud approval. He pulled out a dark, fragrant twist of rolled and dried tobacco leaf, sniffing it hungrily.

“How much all this cost you?” Caleb asked as he accepted his sack.

“Not that much down in Santy Fee.”

“This much Mexican tobaccy had to cost you some,” Solomon declared.

“I already got my due out from your plews,” Workman explained.

Jack asked, “Ye saying we’re even?”

The whiskey maker looked at Hatcher. “We’re even, boys. I got more’n enough plews from you to cover everything else and this tobaccy.”

“You done a lot for us this winter, Willy,” Scratch said.

“Whiskey and women and now some smoke,” Caleb cheered.

“It ain’t only the things ye traded for us,” Hatcher explained. “You and Matthew saw to it them greaser soldiers didn’t come try rubbing us out.”

“Where is Matthew anyways?” Rufus asked.

“Here it is our going-off hoot and Matthew ain’t here,” Isaac said.

Workman replied, “Kinkead said to tell you he’d be here afore first light. Said he knows how Jack hates to burn daylight—so he’ll be here afore you pull out.”

Matthew Kinkead was good at his word. Always had been. And that cold mid-March morning was another painful tearing away for Titus Bass. They had fought Blackfeet together, covered more miles than any man back east might imagine, slept and ate and talked around countless fires in what had been more than a year of scuttling across trackless wastes and climbing over never-ending mountain ranges. But now Matthew was staying behind with his Rosa.

Titus knew he would miss the big bear of a man as much as he had ever missed anyone in his life of wandering.

“You listen up to what Mad Jack Hatcher tells you,” Kinkead instructed as he released Bass from a terrible squeeze.

“That’s right, ye best listen to me,” Hatcher echoed as he took up the reins to his saddle horse.

But Matthew continued as if he hadn’t heard Jack say a thing. “You listen to Hatcher … and then you damn well go do just the opposite!”

They all laughed together, but this time it wasn’t the easy laughter that comes from camaraderie on the trail. This was the strained laughter of men parting from good companions, longtime friends, compatriots in battle, men who had survived long, harsh winters together. Slowly Matthew made the rounds of those riders gathered in what was a long oval of horses and pack animals. Then he finally stepped back to join the whiskey maker at the stone threshold to Workman’s hut.

“We got miles to go, pilgrims!” Hatcher cried as he turned back to his horse, his voice cracking with sentiment. “And you sumbitches are burning my daylight!”

“Let’s ride!” another cried.

A voice called, “Hep-hepa, you trail niggers!”

“To the Shining Mountains!” Matthew Kinkead cried, dragging a hand beneath his big bulb of a nose and raising his arm overhead as the others filed out of the creekbottom, up the wide trail to the prairieland above.

“To the … the Shining Mountains!” Bass roared, his throat clogging as he leaned far out of his saddle to quickly shake Kinkead’s and Workman’s hands while he moved past.

“There’s beaver waiting!” Hatcher sang out from the head of their column.

Caleb hollered, “Here’s to likker-lovin’ coons like us!”

“Billy Sublette better hide his whiskey!” Isaac bellowed.

“Injun bucks better hide their daughters!” Rufus cheered.

As they went on and on like that, their loud voices careening off the stone walls of the creekside, Bass turned in his new Spanish saddle with a groan of stiff leather … gazing back at Workman and Kinkead. He pulled off his blanket mitten and raised a bare hand in the shocking cold of that dawn. Saw them both wave to him one last time as the trail took him around a bend and they fell out of sight.

Farewells never got any easier. No matter how old he got, farewells damn well never got any easier.