Crack in the Sky

12

“H’ar ye now!”

Bass and Elbridge Gray turned at the sudden call of that strange voice, their hands gone to their pistols.

Out of the quakies emerged a horseman in gaily ornamented buckskins pulling behind him two more ponies, their packs gently swaying from side to side as they were brought to a halt near the two trappers on the grassy creekbank. Mexican conchos dotted the outer seam of his leggings dyed with red earth paint, the same color as the sleeves on his war shirt. Over the fringed shirt he wore a faded, soot-stained waistcoat complete with pewter buttons.

With the way this stranger had his stirrups buckled real short and high along the ribs of his horse, he appeared to be perched atop a saddle far too small for his long, bony legs. From both ears dangled large sky-blue rocks of turquoise suspended on narrow wires that bobbed and jiggled as the man turned this way and that, looking first at Gray, then at Bass.

“H’ar yourself,” Scratch replied as he relaxed the grip on his pistol. “You ain’t no Injun now, are you?”

“Ye took me for Injun, did ye?”

Elbridge pointed to his cheek with a finger, saying, “Why’s a white nigger wear Injun war paint?”

The stranger’s narrow, slitted eyes suddenly came to life, twinkling within a tanned face of well-soaped saddle leather as he studied the pair for what seemed like the longest time. Then he spoke.

“Been living with Injuns for lotta moons.”

“You paint up like ’em?” Gray asked.

“I paint up like ’em, yeah,” the stranger replied matter-of-factly as he pulled his massive wolf-skin cap off and pointed to the bright purple of the vermilion pigment he had rubbed along the part in his hair.

“You’re sure a purty Injun, for a white man,” Scratch declared.

He turned to Bass. “I h’aint see’d a real honest-to-God white man in just shy of a year, boys. Where ye hail from?”

“The Illinois,” Gray answered, taking a step closer to the horseman. “By way of Taos this past winter.”

He nodded, his eyes quickly coming back to rest on Bass while he spit a thin stream of brown into the grass beside his saddle horse. “An’ you?”

“Kentucky, by way of St. Louie … and a winter in Taos.”

“Taos a good place for winter doin’s,” the stranger agreed. “Wha’chore names?”

“Titus Bass,” Scratch answered as he stepped up beside the horse and held a hand up to the rider. “And this here is Elbridge Gray.”

“Ye on yer own hook, ye two?” asked the stranger.

“No,” Bass replied, sensing his guard hairs bristle as he glanced past the horseman to the timbered hillside, wary. “S’pose you tell us your name.”

“Williams. William Shirley Williams,” he answered, innocently smiling.

“Sweet Marie!” Elbridge exclaimed. “That there’s a hull passel of Williams in that goddamned name!”

The smile faded as the horseman turned his straight-faced, expressionless stare back to Gray. Then, with a droll purse to his lips, he replied, “That be my name. But my friends call me Bill. I figger any white man up here got a good chance to be my friend—so whyn’t you two call me Bill?”

“Be pleased to call you Bill,” Bass replied, already liking the cut of the tall, skinny trapper. “My friends hale me as Scratch.”

Craning his neck to look up the aspen-choked hillside, Gray asked, “More niggers with you?”

“Nope. I ride alone now’days.”

“Leg on down here,” Bass proposed, stepping back. “We’re bound to finish setting our last two traps straightaway, then you can ride on up to camp with us. Make a night of it.”

Elbridge declared, “One of the t’others dropped a elk cow this morning. Some mighty fine eating—”

They both watched Williams visibly shudder, his whole body trembling, his face pinched.

With a wag of his head the rider said, “Good it weren’t no bull elk.”

“Bull ain’t near as good eating,” Bass stated.

“Don’t ye fellers never go kill a bull with one antler broke off and a’hanging like so,” he said, a sudden sharp and warning edge come to his voice as he balanced his long fullstock rifle across the tops of his bony thighs and raised both his arms to their full length on either side of his head, spreading his fingers as if they were antler points. Then he crooked the left arm at the elbow, swaying it crazily.

“Why?” Elbridge asked, cocking his head slightly. “He a bull in these parts what you got your own sights on?”

“No,” Williams said evenly, his eyebrows lowered meaningfully. “One of these days I’ll go under my own self, boys. And spirits awready showed me how I’m coming back.”

In utter disbelief Gray squeaked, “C-coming back?”

“My medeecin showed me in a vision I had this past winter,” Williams declared. “Coming back as a bull elk.”

Gray glanced over at Bass with a wink and a wry twist to his smile. “A bull elk, you say?”

“With his left antler growed crooked, jest like I showed ye,” Williams explained. “What’s wrong with ye two? Don’t tell me ye don’t believe in Injun medeecin?”

“Damn well don’t,” Bass declared. “But that don’t mean you can’t, William Shirley Williams.”

For a moment the older man regarded Titus before a smile eventually came to that well-tanned, leathery face. “So, tell me, Scratch. How long ye been out here to these mountains?”

“Since summer of twenty-five.”

“I come out west the y’ar afore that and laid in my first winter up near Salish Flouse in Hudson Bay country,” Williams explained as he rocked out of the saddle and landed on the ground. “Ye both been out in these hills for any time at all, boys—a shame ye h’ain’t learned much from the Injuns here ’bouts.”

Gray demanded, “What you mean—we ain’t learned from the Injuns?”

“’Bout life … and dyin’ … and all the magic what lives all round us,” Williams said, his voice quieting, gesturing his right arm in a full half circle. Then he went to rubbing a sore knee as he continued. “There’s more for a man to learn hisself and unnerstand than most folks can ever start to know. But it takes a smart man to own up to not knowing about all the magic what lives around him.”

Titus scratched at his beard a moment. “Don’t reckon I savvy what sort of magic you’re talking ’bout.”

“He’s telling us about the sort what makes a coin disappear from a man’s hand,” Elbridge explained. “Magic what pulls that coin from ahind a man’s ear.”

Stroking his horse’s muzzle, then bending to pick up a front hoof to inspect it, Williams replied, “Ain’t that kind of magic at all, boys. Magic … like the spirits all round us. The ghosts of them what gone afore. Powerful beings—warriors and such. Hoo-doos what we can’t see ’cause we ain’t got our own magic strong enough yet.”

“And when we get our own magic strong enough,” Bass inquired skeptically, “you’re saying we can see them hoo-doos? See them spirits you talk about?”

With a wide smile Williams set the second forehoof on the ground and straightened, stretching his back. “Man makes his own magic strong, Scratch—then that man don’t just hear them spirits talking to him, he can see ’em too.”

“Shit!” Elbridge groused in total disbelief. “You been sipping at the cider jug far too long, Williams!”

The old horseman calmly turned from Elbridge without showing the slightest contempt for the man’s disbelief. “The spirits are around us alla time, Scratch. They show theyselves to me. They palaver at me. And I listen. I h’aint ashamed to tell ye listening to ’em has saved this nigger’s hash a time or two.”

Elbridge snorted, “How them hoo-doos save your hash?”

Without acknowledging Gray in the slightest, Williams continued. “Like it’s no more’n a curtain, Scratch—there’s nothing more’n a breath of air atween us and the world of them hoo-doos.”

“So you hear them spirits all the time, do you?” Titus asked, amazed that he sensed something more than sheer lunacy in the older man.

“No, don’t hear ’em not alla time,” he answered, gazing up at the clear blue of springtime’s fading light. “It’s … it’s like there’s that spirit world, and there’s our world right here. They’re two differ’nt places. But there h’ain’t nothing more’n a curtain up atween us and the other world. Atween us and all what we don’t unnerstand.”

Wagging his head, Titus asked, “So how’s a man ever hear or see these hoo-doos?”

“Only when there’s a rip in that curtain atween our world and the rest of what is.”

“Only then?”

“When there’s a tear in that curtain I tol’t you about. Maybeso think of it like … like a crack,” he declared, waving that arm of his at the horizon, describing a jagged line rising from the earth and ascending toward the darkening dome overhead. “A crack that goes all the way from here, where folks like us walk … clear to heaven.”

“A c-crack in the sky?” Elbridge chortled.

Now at last Williams turned to Gray and nodded emphatically. “That’s right, nigger. A man what opens hisself up to hearing the real world all round him—then that’s the man what can see right on into the world of spirits and hoo-doos by looking through that ol’ ragged crack in the sky.”

For the moment Bass wasn’t sure just how he felt about this ghosty horseman as he and Elbridge went about setting the last two of their traps here along a stretch of a new stream they hadn’t visited during last autumn’s stay in the Bayou Salade. But one thing was for sure—Williams had given him something to think about, something with some real heft to it. Titus figured the talk around the campfire that night wasn’t destined to be the usual fare of senoritas and Taos lightning and how big a carouse they would have come rendezvous on the Popo Agie. If no one else got this William Shirley Williams to talking about his magic and his hoo-doos and that crack in the sky, then Scratch vowed he sure as hell would.

More than three weeks of hard riding out of Taos had brought them into the southern end of the Bayou once more. How different the high, narrow mountain valley appeared this time. Last year they had reached South Park from the north near the tail end of summer, when the grasses were burned and curing beneath a relentless and high summer sun, just before the turning of the leaves.

Here in early spring the snows were only beginning to retreat up the mountainsides. The trees only starting to bud, the willow and alder giving no more than a hint of what would soon be their green glory. The streams were just opening up after a long winter’s rest beneath thick blankets of ice, every tiny freshet beginning to throb with snow-melt as the days lengthened, their narrow threads meandering through every meadow, adding their strength to the creeks that spilled from the snowfields overhead, continuing through the darkened stands of spruce and fir and lodgepole as they descended toward the great, long valley where the beasts gathered and took their nourishment.

Come this the season of prime plew. Early spring when the beaver possessed its finest coat. When the flat-tails were their busiest: warily emerging from the security of their winter lodges to labor through the short daylight hours constructing new slides and dams in every meadow. After three spring seasons stalking this high country, Bass knew down at the very marrow of him just how important was the spring hunt to a trapper.

When beaver were easiest to spook and hardest to bring to bait—spring was the time a man discovered if he had what it took to be a master trapper.

During the fall was another matter entirely: the animals had been out of their lodges and active since the melting of the high snowpacks. They were less guarded and careful in the autumn, when their activities were nudged into an even higher intensity than they had been during the summer. With the cooling of the days and the chilling of the nights, the beaver became more animated, roaming farther, extending their territory with the arrival of fall.

But for now—this season of rebirth—the bucktoothed rodents were extremely wary, watchful, and suspicious of the castor set out to lure them to their deaths.

“I come outta Boone County, on the Ohio River, northern Kentucky,” Bass answered the newcomer’s question. “Where you from back east?”

Brushing the hair back from his shoulder, so long it oft tangled in the beard that fell halfway down his chest, Williams said, “Borned in a cabin on Horse Crik, tucked up under Skyuka Mountain.”

Hatcher asked, “Where’s that, Bill?”

“Rutherford County, in Northern Carolina.”

“How long ago was that?” Isaac inquired.

“I’m forty-two this last Janeeary.”

Scratch commented eagerly, “I’m born in January. When’s your day?”

“The third.”

Bass nodded. “Mine’s the first.”

“New Year’s, eh? Two of us start the year off right, don’t we?” He held out his cup as Caleb Wood started around the fire with a blackened coffee kettle.

“Scratch says ye travel alone,” Hatcher declared.

“Last time I rode with others, I come north out of Taos with Pratte and Savary.” He sipped at the steaming coffee a moment, then continued. “Pratte died that trip out and Savary took over. We went on trapping and wintered up in Park Kyack afore we come back to Taos the spring of twenty-eight. After that I swored I’d never ride with a outfit again.”

“Ain’t so bad,” Scratch explained. “When you ride with the right outfit.”

“Said you come west in twenty-four?” Gray repeated.

“Up to Blackfoot country, where the Englishers play,” Williams snorted.

“God-blamed Blackfoot!” grumbled Rufus Graham. “Too many good men gone under at their hands!”

“I quit that country come spring—damn them Blackfoot,” Williams growled. “Got my carcass back to live with the Osages, where I run onto the surveyors gonna mark the road from the Missouri clear down to Santy Fee. They needed ’em a feller what knew how to talk sign—so I was took along.”

“When you get back to trapping?” Solomon asked.

“That fall—pulled out’n Taos and headed down the Rio del Norte, then moseyed on over to the Heely. Plew down in that country weren’t near prime as they was up where them Blackfoot roam.”

“Plew is prime in Blackfoot country,” Caleb agreed.

“I fi’t me more’n my share of Blackfoot,” Williams said with clear disgust. “They deviled me for a time the next year—when I set off on my lonesome. Niggered me clear down to the Wind River Mountains. Didn’t did get shet of Bug’s Boys till I made it far up the Bighorn.”

Hatcher asked, “So ye stay in these parts now?”

With a wag of his head Williams replied, “H’ain’t been healthy for this coon up north there in Blackfoot country. And the ’Paches caught me flat-footed of a time down on the Heely.”

“Apache?” asked Rowland.

“That’s right. When I tried the Heely a second go-round. Bastards stripped me, stole my guns, my horse and mule, ever’thing. Then they pointed me out to the desert and laughed as I took off barefoot.”

“How’d you pull yourself out of that fix?” Bass inquired.

“Pointed my nose torst the Spanish country. Only place I could reckon on. Way I lays the set—it were just shy of two hunnert miles afore I run onto some Zunis. They took me in like I was some special kin. I spent some time with them folks, healing up. Then went on over an’ stayed with some Navajos.”

Elbridge said, “Eventual’ you come back Santy Fee?”

“Taos—that’s when I hooked up with Pratte and Savary,” Williams said dolefully. “This nigger’s had him good fortune to pull out’n the thick of it a time or two. So I figger my luck runs high ’nough I don’t dare travel with no brigade no more.”

“You fixin’ on trapping the Bayou now?” Scratch asked.

He stared at the fire a moment, then answered, “Nawww, I’ll mosey on. You fellers busy here this side of the Park. If’n I take a shine to it, I’ll lay some traps on the far side. It don’t pay to crowd ’Nother man.”

“Enough beaver in the mountains for us all!” Isaac cheered.

“Damn right there is,” Williams said. “If’n we don’t trap ’em out, the Englishers do.”

“Trap ’em out?” Bass echoed. “How we ever trap out all the beaver?”

Of a sudden Williams grew animated, his eyes alive with the loathing and hatred he felt for the huge Hudson’s Bay Company. “Them Frenchie brigades the Englishers put out up north go right on into a stretch of country and trap ever’ living flat-tail there is. Strip that country clean: ever’ stream, ever’ beaver too—not matter that they catch some kits while they’re at it.”

“Sons of bitches,” Rowland grumbled.

“They h’ain’t got no business in our country,” Williams declared. “I plan to stay north of the greasers and south of the Englishers and all their Frenchie parley-voos. ’Sides, I’ve come to be partial to the Utes. But watch yer ha’r when there’s ’Rapahoes about.”

“The hell you say?” Bass growled. “Last time I run onto Arapaho my own self, I damn near went under.”

Williams grinned in the fire’s light. “Ye’re a lucky man. Them ’Rapahoes can be bad as Bug’s Boys when it comes to a white man. They’ll kill ye flat out and run off with all ye had. They leave ye ’thout an outfit?”

“They took that—’cept for the rifle they didn’t find, run off with all my animals but for my dear mule,” Scratch explained.

“Leastways ye come out of it with yer ha’r,” Williams observed, his leathery brow wrinkling in remembrance. “Live to fight ’Nother day. Jest like I done a time or two—did ye lay up in some rocks a’hiding till the red niggers quit the country?”

“Weren’t so lucky as you, Bill,” Scratch replied, reaching for the knot at the back of the bandanna he tied over the top of his head. “One of the black-hearts took part of me with him.”

Slowly nudging the large knot upward, Bass removed the bandanna and a circular scrap of beaver fur in one smooth motion, turning his head. As he did so, Williams could see the results of the scalping that had removed a crude circle some six inches in diameter from the crown of his head late in the summer of twenty-seven.

Setting his coffee tin down and wiping a forearm across his lips, Williams scrambled to his feet and stepped right up to loom over Bass. He took Scratch’s head in both hands and turned it gently toward the firelight, peering at the skull plate from all angles, then inspected the wound so closely, he was almost rubbing the end of his nose against the yellowed bone.

“It pain ye any?”

“Not after I learn’t to keep it covered.”

“With that patch o’ beaver plew?”

“Found this here fur is the trick,” Bass replied. “Sun does a powerful evil to my skull if I don’t keep it covered.”

“’Magine it would, Scratch.” He continued to study the bone closely. “Back east where I was raised up from a kit, I heard me a time or two of fellers getting scalped and living to tell the tale of it.”

“They done their best to kill this nigger off,” Hatcher said. “But I figger Scratch here just born under a good star.”

Williams gently patted the bare bone, then shambled back to his place at the fire and settled down with his cup. “Way I figger it, Bass—ye been told plain as sun that there be a heap more living in store for any man what lost his ha’r but wasn’t put under by the niggers what took that skelp from him.”

“Maybeso,” Gray replied with a cynical wag of his head as he quickly tallied the befuddled reactions of the others around the fire and began to grin widely. “But only if you’re a coon what believes there’s hoo-doos hiding behin’t every tree!”

“Hoo-doos, is it?” Hatcher asked with a snort, animated once again.

Elbridge gushed, “Don’t that beat all, Jack? Williams here says after he’s dead, he’s coming back as a bull elk what got it one bad antler.” And he showed them, mimicking what the old trapper had told the two of them near sundown. “If that ain’t the kicker—he says the Injuns are the ones show us how to talk to ghosts.”

But instead of laughing right off, Jack appeared to study Williams, then finally brought his gaze back to Gray and said, “Sounds to me like Bill Williams here savvies things same way as Asa McAfferty.”

“O-o-oo! That name just give me the trembling willies!” Isaac shrieked.

“Me too,” Rufus agreed with a shudder. “That crazy coon gone and rubbed out a ’Rikara medicine man—”

“Damn!” Williams exclaimed, leaping to his feet so suddenly, he startled all of them into stunned silence. “Ye really know a nigger what kill’t a medeecin man?”

In amazement they all watched the skinny man shuffle-footing it there by the fire, restless as a bull in spring, very much like a man walking over a bed of coals, trembling uncontrollably every few moments as if he had come down with the ague.

“Like Jack said,” Caleb was the first to dare speak, “feller’s name is Asa McAfferty.”

“He really kill a medeecin man?”

Hatcher nodded. “His hair turned white after rubbing out that Ree.”

Another convulsion shot through Williams’s body as he attempted to hold his arms and hands still over the fire like a man in dire need of its warmth. “Ye sure it weren’t just a Ree warrior?”

“Medicine man,” Hatcher agreed.

And Solomon added, “A real rattle shaker.”

Rubbing his hands together over the flames, Williams asked, “An’ his ha’r turn’t white?”

“McAfferty’s did.”

Williams looked straight at Bass. “Just as I tol’t ye, Scratch. Mark these words. I’ll lay that McAfferty these boys talking about is the sort what don’t just hear the hoo-doos through that crack in the sky yonder. He’s gone an’ see’d them spirits too!”

Graham asked, “Say, Bill—you figger that’s what turned McAfferty’s hair white?”

Slowly Williams turned so his rump faced the flames. As he rubbed the breechclout covering his bony posterior, Williams said, “Only thing I ever heerd of turning a soul’s ha’r white is coming eye to eye with a hoo-doo.”

Caleb whispered solemnly, “Don’t say?”

Williams pursed his lips in reflection for a moment, then said, “That McAfferty must be a nigger with some strong magic.”

Leaning toward Hatcher’s ear, Gray whispered, “Here he goes with his magic talk now!”

“If’n the rest of you don’t wanna hear what Bill’s got to say,” Titus snapped at Elbridge, “s’pose you g’won and have your own talk on your side of the fire.”

Elbridge started to rise suddenly. “You ain’t gonna tell me where I ought’n go—”

Hatcher suddenly put his hand out and grabbed hold of Gray’s arm. “Maybe ye ought’n go fetch yer squeezebox. And bring me my fiddle too.”

“You figger on some music tonight?” Rufus asked as Gray reluctantly nodded and moved off, glaring back at Williams.

“Music’s better’n my men squabbling over hoo-doos like some puffed-up prairie cocks.”

“Didn’t mean to cause no trouble here,” Williams said.

Still edgy, Bass watched Elbridge as he grumbled, “Ain’t your doing, Bill.”

With a wag of his head Bill declared, “This here’s why I travel alone now, boys. Can’t allays count on folks caring to listen to what ’Nother man’s gotta say—even after they gone and asked me to tell ’em what I think.”

“Elbridge just be the sort don’t want ye to know he’s unnatural scairt of ghosts and such—even the talk of it,” Hatcher whispered, glancing over his shoulder to be sure he wasn’t heard. “Scratch—I want ye to know he didn’t mean nothing by what he said.”

“No harm done,” Williams volunteered.

“Yeah,” Bass agreed, nodding. “No harm done. Didn’t know he was scared of such.”

“Elbridge allays makes fun of ever’thing he’s afraid of,” Hatcher explained.

“Ye’re friend’s awright being ’fraid,” Williams declared. “Something wrong with a man what ain’t afraid of nothing.”

Jack nodded, staring at the flames for a moment more before he admitted, “Truth be, I ain’t so sure I wanna have any more talk of ghosts around me too.”

Williams said, “Ain’t nothing ye be scared of with a little talk, Hatcher.”

“That’s right, Jack,” Bass replied confidently as he laid the beaver fur back over his skull and tugged on the blue bandanna. “Only things a man should be scared of are them what a man can see. Like Injuns. Or grizz. Even a whiteout blizzard.”

“To hell with fearing what I can see,” Hatcher declared sourly, staring into the fire. “Only things this child’s ever been afraid of are what I can’t see.”

Spring was all but done warming the earth in advance of summer, carpeting the hillsides with a new color every day as wildflowers of bewildering hues raised their heads to sway in the breezes drifting along the slopes where snow-melt raced toward the valley floor. More than a moon had passed since Bill Williams had departed as he said he would—leaving at sunup the next morning, the old man had crossed to the far side of the Bayou where he disappeared into the shadowy timber. And was gone.

Better than a month of hard work trapping first one creek, then another, trying every stream that showed some promise by its beaver dams, slides, and lodges. As diligently as the beaver labored to fell the young saplings that forested their watery meadows, the trappers worked all the harder still. Time enough for a man to fit in a little sleep here and there after setting the traps at sundown, rising early to check the line at sunrise the next day. After dragging the pelts and traps back to camp, scraping and fleshing and lashing them onto willow hoops, a man might catch a little shut-eye before the sun began to fall and it was time to haul the traps back out as twilight brought a delicate rose-colored alpenglow to this high valley.

“Billy Sublette damned well better get his ass to the Popo Agie this summer,” Rufus Graham often grumbled, reminding them how the trader had distributed supplies to company men well before last July’s rendezvous.

Hatcher agreed, “All this prime beaver gonna stake us to one big hurraw!”

“If Sublette brings out the likker,” Isaac argued in that overly solemn way of his, scratching aimlessly at his whitish beard stained with dark, yellowish-brown streaks that characterized the man’s careless tobacco chewing.

Was that all a man worked for? Bass wondered. Did a man force himself through endless hours standing up to his crotch in the icy streams only to earn himself some two weeks of revelry with whiskey and women and wildness? Was there nothing more to what days were granted a man?

Such brooding thoughts troubled his head as Titus chopped down aspen saplings for float-sticks, peeling each before sharpening one end, then lashing them together in a bundle for the next day’s sets. These were matters rarely considered by most men adrift here early in the far west. By and large they were of a breed who existed in the here and now, and that was all that concerned any of their kind. That day, perhaps the next, maybe even those thoughts of how fast the summer rendezvous was approaching … those were the only concerns of most trappers: survival, and that which lay on the immediate horizon for a man—what to eat the next time their bellies rumbled, where to lay their blankets and robes the next time they grew weary, where to find water and grazing for their stock …

But never, never, never did any of the rest want to talk again about what Bill Williams had stirred up within Titus Bass. And as the days rolled past in slow, easy succession, Scratch was beginning to believe the others refused to talk about those uncertain, frightening matters because such talk stirred up feelings better left untouched within each of Hatcher’s men. Simple men. Iron-hard, hand-forged men. The sort not easily given to ruminations on life and death and what might exist beyond one’s grasp.

A man lived. Then a man died. So be it.

Yet as many times as Bass tried to convince himself he should put such notions out of his mind, those notions grew more troublesome. After all, he spent so damned much time alone every day. Hours alone with only his thoughts, with matters that deeply pricked a man who had begun to fear he hadn’t spent near enough time listening to the stories his mother read her children from her Bible.

Did a man’s life tally up for no more than dumb luck? How else could he account for one man going under to nothing more than ticks … when he himself had been shot, scalped, and left for dead? Was it a roll of the dice or a lay of the cards that determined who lived and who died? Or … was it something more?

Was it as Williams explained it: that Titus Bass had been told plain as sun that there was a heap more living in store for the sort of man who survived a scalping by those intent on killing him?

For some reason unfathomable to a simple man, had Titus Bass been chosen not to die? Had he been somehow plucked from the grasping claws of death itself? Why had he been spared a fate that befell other men? Who were these capricious and fickle spirits deciding such things?

Who had yanked him from the gaping maw of death?

Were they at his shoulder then and there? And if he listened hard enough, would he hear them?

Climbing down off the bank, he waded upstream with the trap, float, and bait sticks.

So many questions.

Quickly scraping out a shelf for the trap a few inches below the surface of the stream, Scratch positioned the trap and strung out the chain, driving the long, pointed sapling into the graveled creekbottom. Returning the small ax to the back of his belt beside the knife scabbard, he moved downstream toward his rifle and pouch.

At the sharp-sided bank he hoisted himself onto the grass and sat there dripping, finally settling back against the tree trunk where his rifle leaned.

Too many questions.

He would try listening. Williams had claimed a man might just hear the other side if he listened hard enough. The breeze stirred the leaves around him a moment; then the quakies settled. In that momentary silence he strained to listen. Then felt the air move around him unexpectedly. Almost as if it were something of substance … some one touching his shoulder.

Scratch turned, expecting to find … but there was nothing.

He sighed and went back to listening. The breeze came up again, rustling through the aspen leaves overhead. Stirring all the trees around him as he gazed out upon the floor of the valley. When his eyes began to droop, the wind chuttered among the leaves—murmuring, almost whispering.

“Bass.”

Alert anew, eyes open, Scratch turned this way, then that. Listening. The breeze stirred again.

“Bass.”

Slowly he raised his face to peer overhead into the branches cluttered with tiny, trembling green leaves.

“Bass.”

Only the breeze nudging the leaves just gently enough that he had imagined they were murmuring his name.

When he brought his gaze back down, Scratch spotted them.

Two riders across the valley floor. Not where he would expect to see any of the rest of Hatcher’s outfit. And the two were close enough … for him to see their long, loose hair and the feathers tossing on the breeze that had whispered his name through the branches overhead.

“Bass.”

The hair bristled at the back of his neck with that next chutter of the leaves.

For a moment he studied the sky above the two horsemen, on either side of them, the very air between them. Hopeful he would actually be able to see the ragged tear rent in that filmy curtain between the other world and his. Wondering if he would indeed be able to see for himself that crack in the sky through which these riders had suddenly appeared.

As the riders slowly approached the far bank of the stream, Titus leaned to the side and brought the rifle into his lap—snapping the frizzen forward to assure himself that the pan was loaded. Next he saw to the charge in his pistol, then stuffed its barrel back in his belt. The pair of horsemen stopped when he rose from the ground holding the fullstock rifle at his right hip, his finger gently nudging back the rear set trigger until he felt the sear engage.

Titus stared at them for what seemed like a long time, waiting for the two warriors to declare themselves as friend or foe, ready for when they would plunge off the far bank into the stream and rush him. Then as one of the horses began to paw and bob its head impatiently, a rider spoke, gesturing with his bow.

Bass let him finish what he had to say, then tried to explain, “I don’t know your tongue.”

Scratch put the fingers of his left hand to his lips, moving them directly out toward the warriors as he shook his head vigorously.

Passing the bow over his head, the horseman stuffed it within a quiver half-filled by arrows. With his hands freed, the Indian began to sign.

But those gestures weren’t making any sense, their being this far apart. Bass shook his head.

Apparently frustrated, the sign talker said something to the other, and they both nudged their ponies into motion.

Bass took a step forward, planting his feet as they entered the stream. He brought the rifle up, the cheekpiece braced between his bottom ribs and arm.

“Stop right there!”

Yanking back on their reins, both horsemen halted their ponies near the middle of the stream. Down the creek Titus heard the warning slap of a single beaver near that dam the creatures had been building over the last few days. More tails slapped the surface of the water; then it gradually grew quiet again.

So quiet, he heard the air nuzzle the quaky leaves above him.

“Bass.”

Again the sign talker tried. But now that he was closer, Scratch could see just what the warrior had to say in sign: with only the first two fingers of his right hand extended, the others closed in the palm, the Indian held the hand momentarily in front of his chin, the extended fingers pointing at the sky. Then he slowly moved the hand up until it was about level with the top of his head, slowly bringing them down to point at the white man. Several times he repeated the same gesture while Titus stared quizzically at the two.

“Oh, damn!” he gushed, suddenly remembering. “Friend. Why—you’re saying friend.”

Bracing the rifle against his hip, Scratch mimicked the sign with his left hand. Then he tapped the rifle with his hand, pointing to himself and making the sign for friend again.

Finally the warrior nodded.

“That’s right, fellers,” Bass murmured to himself. “This here gun’s my friend.”

Scratch formed a fist with his left hand, extending only the index finger, and held it out in front of his body, finger pointing upward. People.

“What people are you?” he asked aloud.

The two looked at one another and shook their heads. They weren’t understanding. Perhaps he had it wrong.

Then he thought of asking it another way. Again the hand with only the index finger went up, pointing at the sky, but now he brought it downward in a graceful arc, in the path taken by an arrow shot straight into the sky.

“What band are you?”

Through it all he studied the way the riders wore their hair, the feathers, their clothing and horse trappings—anything that might give him a clue. Here in South Park, he realized this pair could be anything from wandering Comanche or Kiowa or Southern Cheyenne come a distance to hunt. But then he realized if they had come from so far away, chances were good more warriors were somewhere close at hand. They didn’t look all that much like Ute, he decided, regarding their hair and the elaborate face painting.

Painted. Maybeso they were from a warrior band foreign to this part of the mountains, come here with a large raiding party, painted for battle. Not some local fellas, out hunting for their families, to take meat and hides back for their village.

Painted.

Locking his eyes on them, Scratch intently studied their faces for any betrayal as to their intentions.

Again he signed slowly, saying aloud the words: “What band are you?”

One of them wagged his head, and the second horseman repeated the sign for “friend.” Again they talked low to one another, both of them gazing this way and that, upstream and down. It began to make him more than a mite nervous, what with the way they peered all around more than look at him … as if they were assuring themselves he truly was alone.

Tapping their heels against the ribs of their ponies, both warriors eased toward the bank, where Bass stood some twenty feet back from the water’s edge.

He licked his lips, feeling his right palm begin to sweat, anxious to put his trigger finger inside the guard. But with the trigger now set to go off at a touch—he knew he must hold the finger there against the trigger guard.

The animals lunged onto the bank, and their riders brought the dripping ponies to a halt less than fifteen feet from the white man.

One made the sign for “friend” again, then both peered upstream and down, their eyes quickly darting into the trees behind the trapper, able to see his saddle horse and the pack mule.

Again he signed “friend” too, his gaze darting back and forth between the two copper-skinned horsemen … making mental pictures of their loose hair, the handful of feathers tied at the crowns of their head. One had his coup feathers arrayed in a cock’s spray at the back of his head; the other tied his so they descended down the side of his hair as it spilled over his shoulder. Metal conchos were riveted on the belt of one; a stone war club hung from the front of a snare saddle, a big metal ax swung by a rawhide thong from the other saddle.

One of the horsemen signed something new and baffling. He made a fist of his right hand, only the index finger extended upward, held along the right side of his nose. In this position the warrior moved the hand up and down slightly there next to the nose.*

Bewildered, Bass shook his head, gesturing helplessly with his left hand briefly before he returned it to grip the forestock of his rifle.

Once again the warriors glanced about them. One grinned wickedly and nodded to the other. Their eyes flicked past the trapper to those two animals grazing in the trees, then returned to the white man. Now one of them made another new sign.

This time he formed a claw out of his right hand, fingers and thumb held apart, bent and cupped, which he brought a few inches away from his heart at the left side of his chest—where he repeatedly tapped the clawlike fingertips against his breast.*

Bass had never seen that sign ever before. Once more he shook his head and wagged his left hand in that gesture of nonunderstanding.

The warrior who had done the lion’s share of the signing nudged his pony closer, his lips pursed in frustration, giving a minute gesture of his own for the other warrior to advance beside him.

“Hold it, fellers.”

He immediately took a step back so that he would still be able to make a wide arc with the rifle if they suddenly rushed him. For the first time he realized his heart was hammering beneath his breastbone, his mouth gone dry and pasty. He watched the ponies come to a halt, dripping—wishing he had a drink from that stream right then.

The warrior repeated his sign of that right hand cupped and tapping the left side of his breast, but he did so as he urged his pony to the right a little, separating himself from the other rider. At the same time, the second horseman inched to his left a little and they both came to a halt. Now they waited some ten feet apart—the sort of gesture that did nothing to inspire his confidence in their good intentions.

His hand grew sweaty there on the wrist and forearm of the rifle, his heart thundering in his ears as the warrior on his left finished tapping his breast.

Bass shook his head and, from the right corner of his eye, saw the other warrior inching his pony more to the left. The niggers get far enough apart, they can rush me from two sides—put me under.

No more than twenty feet now …

Taking another step backward, Bass wheeled the rifle to his right, aiming it at the second Indian. Then his eyes suddenly narrowed as they locked on that wide strip of porcupine quillwork sewn along the man’s legging. His gaze slowly climbed up the legging, then dropped back down to that moccasin.

Rocking onto the balls of his feet, Scratch felt everything inside him go cold. Glaring up at the face, quickly looking over the war paint, the way the man tied the feathers in his long, free hair. Then Bass’s darkened eyes ran back down the wide strip of porcupine quillwork sewn along the outside seam of the legging … once more to that moccasin stitched with the same central rosette, sewn with quills of the same colors.

And he was sure.

After the better part of two long years … he was sure.

The burning gall rose like a flood, flinging itself through that cold core of him in a rage.

“You red son of a bitch!” he roared as his left hand flung up the barrel of that fullstock rifle, finger stabbing inside the trigger guard, jerking back in a burst of blinding fury.

Even as the huge .54-caliber ball smashed the warrior in his face, spraying a corona of blood that haloed his head, Bass was already bellowing.

“Raised this child’s hair, you brown bastard!”

Through the gauzy veil of powder smoke Titus watched the warrior spill backward onto the rear flank of his pony, pitching off as the animal bolted, sidestepping and spinning away on its rear legs.

With his next heartbeat Titus heard the loud, shrill screech of the second horseman as the Indian savagely kicked his pony into action. Pounding his heels into the animal’s ribs, the warrior charged the lone trapper, swinging up the long-handled ax from where it hung just in front of his right leg.

Bass dropped his rifle at his feet, rocking forward to brace himself, bending at the waist the instant he yanked that huge pistol from his wide leather belt, his left palm dragging back the big hammer. Without consciously aiming he brought the muzzle up just as the warrior crossed those few yards, firing at the black blur leaning off the side of the pony, at that shadow swinging his ax in a great, hissing arc.

When the bullet struck the horseman in the upper arm, the ax spun loose from his grip. Already on its way, the heavy, bladed weapon began to tumble, careening crazily toward the trapper. Too close and no time to duck now.

The handle slapped him on the front of his right shoulder as he started to twist aside, knocking Bass off balance, spinning him violently, pitching him on around to the side like one of his sister’s stocking dolls no more than a breath before the warrior leaned completely off the side of the horse, arms outstretched, his legs releasing their grip on the pony as he collided into the white man.

With his weight the Indian speared Bass into the ground, driving the air from Scratch’s chest in a great explosion. The man immediately jerked back, sweeping a leg over him to straddle the trapper as Titus fought for breath, blinking to clear the star shower from his eyes … realizing the warrior had a knife in his hand and was starting his lunge forward with a cry of blood lust.

Seizing that thick brown forearm slashing the huge knife downward, Titus braced himself, trying to squirm free beneath the warrior’s weight and those muscular legs pinning him to the slick grass. As he twisted this way and that, Bass suddenly felt the fingers seize his throat like a claw closing down his air supply.

Remembering how death had loomed at the hands of the Mexican soldier.

A hot pain spread down across his chest where the Indian squeezed with his knees, where Scratch realized he wasn’t able to draw in another breath—no chance of air getting past the searing agony of that claw shutting down his throat.

Drops of the Arapaho’s sweat mixed with greasy earth paint plopped onto Scratch’s face as he flung his head back and forth, trying desperately to free himself from the warrior’s grip on his neck right below the jaw. As he arched his back violently, one leg suddenly broke free and he flung himself up against the warrior. Scratch drove the knee into his enemy, then a second, and a third time, feeling the warrior’s grip on his throat weaken with each blow.

At the same moment he drove his knee up, Bass relaxed his own grip on that brown wrist … fooling the warrior.

Reacting immediately, the Indian yanked back the arm clutching the knife. Already Scratch was driving the arm back with his own weight and with the might in his two arms, hurling the top of the handle right into the Arapaho’s temple with a resounding thunk. The large round base of the elk antler used for the handle split the flesh, instantly spraying blood over the trapper. When the warrior jerked in surprise and pain, Titus yanked the brown arm forward, then hurtled it backward again, this time into the corner of the eye socket.

At that moment the strong legs began to loosen from their spider-lock around his middle. He savagely drove the knife handle into the bloody face a third time—smashing the forehead just above the eye. The skin opened up, oozing at first; then blood gushed from the ragged wound.

Weaving a moment, the Indian gurgled something as his head bobbed back loosely as if it hung by disconnected wires. Scratch twisted to the side, tearing himself free of the claw at his throat, spinning himself loose, releasing the knife arm before he rolled away across the grass.

Tumbling onto his knees, he vaulted forward, leaping onto the warrior’s back just as the bloody face spun around. Bass seized the wrist of that hand holding the knife, squeezing, struggling from behind the Indian to jab the weapon back into the enemy’s belly, to rake it across his chest, spear it deep between the ribs. With every attempt the Indian fought to control the blade, yanking it upward. His own undoing.

With a sharp blow the knife handle smashed against the warrior’s jaw, and all fight went out of him. Like a wet sack of oats he spilled to the side, his eyes rolling back—out cold.

Rocking to his knees, Bass grabbed a handful of the black hair, jerked the face toward him, and drove his fist into the sharp nose. Again. Then a final blow of fury as he tasted the sting of bile that had been at the back of his throat all along.

Standing at last over his enemy, the trapper kicked the warrior in the ribs, then the gut, and finally drove his moccasin into the man’s jaw. The Indian gurgled on his blood, his jaw moving slightly as if trying to speak.

The breeze murmured through the leaves.

Alarmed, Scratch immediately knelt, prying the knife from the warrior’s hand and whirled in a fighting crouch, expecting the approach of another.

But he found himself alone on the creekbank. Save for the two fallen warriors, Bass was alone. The only sounds around him were the chuffing of the animals, the hammer of his heart against his ribs … and that breeze slipping through the aspen overhead, calling out his name.

Whispering it in celebration.

Carrying his name forth in victory.

* Sign for Southern Arapaho.

* Sign for Northern Arapaho, symbolizing the pockmarks scarring the chest of long-ago chief who had survived a bout of smallpox.