Crack in the Sky

14

The sun was content to hide its rise the following morning as the seven of them bid their melancholy farewell to John Rowland. Clouds had gathered through the night, blotting out the last shimmer of starshine as they stirred in the cold gloom, kicked life back into the fire, and went about seeing off one of their own.

No longer were there ten.

Joseph Little lay in a shallow grave scraped from the forest floor high in the Wind River Mountains.

Matthew Kinkead had stayed behind, vowing he’d had him enough of the wandering and the womanlessness, choosing instead a life among his Rosa’s people in Taos.

And now Rowland—turning back himself, unable to salve his grief among these good friends in these mountains. His final hope might be to find a healing to those deep wounds of his heart among Maria’s people.

That was just what Bass wished for him when it was Scratch’s turn to step up and fling his arms around another old friend in farewell. Quickly he whispered, “Johnny, I pray your feet’ll take you back where you can be happy once more.”

Rowland inched back in their embrace and looked into Bass’s eyes. “I find me what makes me happy again—I’ll be back to these here mountains. Lay your set on that.”

“Just make sure our trails cross afore too long,” Titus replied, slapping John on the shoulder and stepping back.

“Count on it, Scratch.”

By the fire’s light in the last hour before dawn that murky, gray morning, they had seen to it that Rowland was outfitted with what he would need to see him through the passes and down the high side all the way back to the valley lying at the foot of the Sangre de Cristos.

“I ain’t gonna listen to none of yer back talk, John Rowland: ye’ll take yer rightful share,” Jack Hatcher had declared when he had the rest begin to divide out Rowland’s portion.

“Ain’t right that I take more than I need to make it back,” John protested, laying a hand on Hatcher’s arm before his eyes touched those of the others. “I’ll be fine once I get there.”

For a long moment Jack did not move, nor did he speak. Then, with a voice clogged with regret, he said, “Yes, Johnny Rowland. I figger you will be fine once ye get back to Taos.”

So they had split off only what Rowland himself said he would take, everything else spread among those friends he was leaving behind, split among those men who one day soon would push on north themselves for rendezvous on the Popo Agie. And then Rowland had climbed into the saddle, waved as he turned his mount and packhorse, then never looked back as he reined out of the trees.

As the seven stood watching the man and animals grow smaller and smaller against the immensity of the Bayou Salade, the sky slowly began to seep … a gentle, cold spring rain. And with the way the weeping clouds continued to lower down the mountainsides around them, Bass sensed they were in for a long day of it.

As empty as his belly was that morning, Scratch hadn’t been hungry enough to eat like the others as they huddled over their tins of coffee at their smoky fire. Coffee was all he wanted to warm his gut that morning until he figured he could put it off no longer. Taking Hannah’s lead rope, Bass mounted up and rode off across the valley toward his half-dozen sets placed along a stretch of narrow stream that spilled into a wider creek tumbling toward the valley floor.

He tugged the soggy wide-brimmed hat down more firmly on his head, sensing the way the greasy blue bandanna rubbed that patch of bare skull. As soon as he returned to camp that morning, Bass vowed he would start work on the scalp he was to wear in place of his own. Cutting it down to a workable size, curing and tanning it over the next few days—then making the final trim so that it would lay over that lopsided circle of bone.

Then he decided. Instead of retracing his way back through yesterday’s sets, he turned downstream toward those last traps he had baited. Curious now to find out what had become of the two.

Something had been at the butchered Arapaho’s body. Some of the gut-pile was gone; some creature had attempted to drag off the corpse.

His eyes quickly scanning the scene, Bass slipped to the trampled grass, knelt by what remained of the man who had taken his scalp, and inspected the soppy ground. A free meal had drawn two of the lanky-legged beasts here. Sign of their pads tramping around the body, yonder around what they hadn’t finished of the gut-pile. It was enough to show him the wild dogs hadn’t been here too long ago.

Looking up, Bass figured they were somewhere close enough to be watching him. He had scared them off, but not far enough away that they wouldn’t be ready to return when he was gone. Standing, he gazed around at the wall of forest there beside the creek. It was fitting, he decided. Fitting that the wild predators of this high land would come to reclaim the warrior’s remains. Just as Bird in Ground had begun to teach him winters before—that great circle of life and death, then life again.

Of a sudden he remembered the second Indian, looking over to the grass and brush where he had left the wounded Indian. Hurrying back into the saddle, Titus brought the horse and Hannah around, moving them slowly across the soggy streambank as he leaned off the side, watching the ground and buckbrush for sign. In a matter of yards it became plain that the warrior had begun to crawl north, something pulling him on, something driving him out of the valley.

Maybe he spent the whole night crawling. Then again, maybe no farther than he could force himself to go with that broken leg while it grew slap-dark and the night sky began to clot with rain clouds. The farther Bass went, following the trampled grassy path, the more he marveled at the warrior’s stamina.

Scratch saw him ahead at the same moment the Arapaho heard the horses or felt their hooves on the ground—turning his head suddenly and peering behind him at the approaching white man. For but a moment the eyes showed fear … then slowly they narrowed into slits through which nothing but hate could show.

Reining up, Bass sat in the saddle for several minutes, looking this way and that from time to time, his eyes always returning to the wounded man, who had refused to budge any farther. Scratch wasn’t sure, but he thought he could hear the warrior’s raspy breathing in the midst of that rain battering his hat, splatting on the nearby willow leaves.

Finally he dropped to the ground, slowly moving back toward Hannah, always keeping his eyes on the Arapaho now. Reaching the mule’s side, Scratch quickly laid the rifle within the cradle of her packsaddle and made sure the oiled leather sock was secured over the lock’s hammer, frizzen, and pan. Patting the animal on her rump, he circled her flank and stepped toward the Indian.

By the time Scratch reached the other side of the mule, the Arapaho was flopping back onto his belly, attempting to crawl away, clawing futilely at the wet grass, his fingers digging desperately into the muddy soil. But when the trapper drew close, the Indian gave up and slowly rolled onto his back. Pain fleetingly crossed his eyes again as he prepared to meet his attacker. Then the look of unmitigated hate returned as Bass set a moccasin on one of the warrior’s brown arms.

Kneeling, Titus took hold of the man’s other arm and flung it out to the side of his body—then pressed his other moccasin on it. As he slowly settled onto his haunches, he firmly had the warrior pinned to the soggy ground. But even as Scratch dragged the skinning knife from the back of his belt, the Arapaho did not resist, did not struggle, did not move in the least. Instead he only stared, transfixed on the white man’s hand as it shifted the knife into position.

Planting the tip of the blade high upon the man’s right breast, Bass slowly dragged it down in a straight line until he reached the last rib, just above muscles banding the taut solar plexus. Again he pierced the skin up high on the chest, right next to that first bloody laceration, and crudely dragged the knife downward again, widening the superficial wound. As he began to carve a third stripe of crimson, Scratch watched the warrior’s eyes, watched how the lids fluttered as the man fought to ignore the pain, doing his level best to show the white man how he refused to exhibit any weakness.

With five long vertical cuts that together formed a bloody wound more than an inch wide, now Titus punctured the brown skin out near the hollow of the man’s right shoulder. Here for the first time he noticed how the brown flesh was goose-bumped with the soggy chill. After suffering through a night without the blanket that had been tied behind his simple snare saddle, after enduring this cold soaking—Bass felt a begrudging admiration for this Arapaho he pinned to the wet earth, a man who did not struggle as the white trapper began to drag the skinning knife vertically across his right breast … putting a top on the huge letter T. Four more times he scraped that blade across the brown flesh, opening the skin, moving glistening metal through oozing blood until he was satisfied with his work.

Then he began to mark this enemy with his second letter. Down the left breast he dragged the blade in a wide gash, making it as long as he had the T, this new incision opened right beside the breastbone. After it too had been widened four more times, Scratch added two crude semicircles to that vertical line, forming a huge B.

He finished by picking up a handful of the warrior’s hair in his left palm, splaying it out between his fingers a moment as he watched the Indian’s eyes move toward that hand.

“No,” Scratch said, not much above a whisper. “I ain’t gonna scalp you, nigger. Save that for someone else to do. For ’Nother time.”

Instead, Bass slowly dragged one side of the bloody knife blade across that clump of hair, then flipped the knife over to wipe off the other side on the hair. He placed the weapon back in its sheath.

“Figger I marked you ’nough awready,” he said to the Indian. “Them’s my letters.”

Taking his right index finger, Titus scraped his fingernail down the bloody cuts to retrace both letters, watching the warrior grimace as Bass opened up the wide lacerations and got them to oozing all the more.

“Want you to remember me, nigger. Want you to remember what you saw me do to your friend yesterday. I ain’t gonna make sign for you like I done yesterday when I told you that nigger scalped me. Want you go back to your people and tell ’em what happened here. Go back and show ’em my letters I put on you.”

He wiped off the bloody fingertip in the warrior’s hair and stood, finding his knees had stiffened in the time he had been squatting over his enemy. Bass stepped off the warrior’s arms.

“That’s gotta be some big medicine to your kind. You come crawling back to your people … telling ’em the story how I killed and cut up the man what took my hair. He your brother? Your friend?”

After Titus waited a moment, staring down at the Indian’s face, studying it for some betrayal, he sighed.

“It’s good you hate me now. Hate me for what I done to your friend. Hate’s good and clean … much better feeling than someone what just don’t give a shit. I understand hate lot better’n I can understand a man what ain’t got a heart big enough to feel big feelings. I figger a man what don’t hate big ain’t the sort what feels anything in a big way.”

Slowly dropping to one knee beside the warrior’s shoulder, Bass pushed an unruly sprig of his own hair out of his eyes.

“I had folks what took from me. It hurt so bad I wanted to hate someone, just one someone for it. But … I didn’t know who to hate, so it ate at me inside. Maybeso it still does.”

Holding his fingertip just above the wounds, he quickly traced the letters again.

“So you know that’s me.”

Then he tapped the index finger against his own chest. And quickly retraced the letters again before tapping the finger against his own blanket capote once more to emphasize.

“That’s my letters. That’s me. Want you tell ’em I killed the nigger took my hair. And I marked his friend with my letters. I could kill you, kill you for trying to kill me. But … I figger this gotta be bigger medicine.”

He stood again.

“G’won now, nigger. And remember what happened here. Remember who marked his letters on you … ’cause I want you to hate me. Want you to hate me bad as I been hating that nigger what stole my hair.”

Bass turned and started away, then stopped and looked back at the man sprawled on the ground, unmoving.

“Can you hate me bad as I been hating your friend? Maybeso that’s worse’n me killing you right off. Letting the hate eat you up the way it’s been eating at me.”

Then he smiled crookedly at the warrior. “I’m gonna wear that nigger’s hair for my own now. And I carved my hate into you. So I don’t figger I got no more hate to eat me up now. Leastways, any hate for the one what stole my hair. That hate’s all gone now.”

Scratch turned away and dragged the rifle off Hannah’s packsaddle, then stuffed a wet moccasin into a stirrup and rose to the wet saddle. Bringing the horse around, he led the mule down to the creek and crossed the water, its surface dippled with huge drops the size of tobacco wads.

The hate was finally gone.

Dragging the chill air deep into his lungs, Bass suddenly sensed how light he felt.

So light he just might float right up through that jagged fracture forming in the clouds way out yonder in the sky. Right up through that crack in the heavens where the sun’s first rays were streaming through.

Summer had a way of suddenly appearing there at your shoulder one day.

The long spring had actually started with the last heavy snows of winter as the land renewed itself, then drifted past the soaking rains come to bless this high, parched land, and finally gave way to the here-and-gone-again thunderstorms that formed along the western horizon nearly every afternoon.

Only a matter of weeks after Scratch put the Arapaho warriors behind him, summer reached the high country, and with its arrival came the time to begin their march southeast from the Bayou Salade. Following what Hatcher explained was the southern fork of the great Platte River, they turned northeast at the far end of the Puma Mountains, staying with the river canyon as it tumbled toward the far western edge of the great plains.

There were days when they stuffed their bellies with elk, mule deer, and antelope. At other times they feasted on migrating duck and geese, or scared up an occasional fantailed, red-wattled turkey roosting in the low branches of the leafy trees blooming along the Platte’s meandering course.

At the emerald foot of the front range they left the gurgling river behind as it meandered onto the plains while they hugged the base of the mountains in a course that led them due north. After more than two hundred miles, some eight long summer days of march, Hatcher’s band struck the North Platte, swam the animals over to the north bank, then turned their noses to the northwest.

“I figger we come almost half the way,” Jack declared that evening as they went into camp beside the North Platte. “Maybeso ’Nother ten days is what it’ll take us to get where they told us Sublette’s gonna hold ronnyvoo.”

They crossed better than 230 more miles, another eleven hot days of travel across the broken wastes—trudging up the North Platte to reach the mouth of the Sweetwater, climbing that river north by east toward the base of the Wind River Mountains, passing timeless monuments formed aeons before in a glacial age: the incredible humpbacked shape of Turtle Rock, then on to Split Rock as the high ground, buttes, ridges, and low mountain ranges continued to rise on either side of them. Where the Sweetwater angled off toward the southwest to begin its gradual climb toward the Southern Pass, the seven sunbaked, hardpan wayfarers crossed to the north bank of the stream and pressed on into the verdant foothills of the Wind River range. One after another of the tiny freshets rushed together out of the grassy meadows in sparkling braids to form narrow creeks that tumbled east toward the widening streams until they reached that low divide above the Popo Agie, or Prairie Chicken, of the Crow.

In the broad valley below him, Bass spotted the narrow wisps of smoke rising from the leafy cottonwood canopies, eventually smeared and smudged by the cool breezes drifting down from those high places above them where thick mantles of snow still remained despite the advance of the seasons.

He had figured there would be more camps.

“Ain’t many of ’em here ’bouts,” Titus grumped.

“Not yet, there ain’t,” Caleb Wood replied.

“Don’t look to be no trader’s tents,” Hatcher complained. “We beat Sublette in to ronnyvoo.”

Solomon declared, “Damn sight better’n getting here after all the whiskey’s been traded off!”

Beyond the creek, on the far side of the tall green mushroom of trees, stood some two dozen browned hide lodges, their blackened smoke flaps pointed toward the east.

“Sho’nies?” Rufus asked.

“This here be their country,” Hatcher said. “Though I figgered there’d be more of ’em.”

Bass said, “Maybeso it’s early for them too.”

“Let’s camp!” Isaac Simms roared.

Now, after all those weeks—the hot, dusty leagues—that curling blue ribbon of the Popo Agie beckoned them across those last two miles, down into the grassy bottom where the stalks rubbed a horse’s belly, brushed a man’s stirrups as the trappers fanned out in a wide front to make their presence known as white men upon nearing the camp. Again at last to see faces old and new, trapper and trader alike after so many months with only the earthy hues of Spanish skin or the coppery sheen of Indian flesh, both friend and foe alike … not to mention how they had tired of the sameness to one another’s drab, familiar faces.

“Ho, the camp!” Jack was the first to bellow as they drew close, attracting the attention of those relaxing back in the shade of the towering cottonwoods.

From up and down a short stretch of the river, more than twenty-five men appeared from the tall willows and brush, stepping into the brilliant sunshine of that midafternoon, the land grown so hot that shimmering fingers of heat wavered above the valley’s wide meadows. They shaded their eyes with flat hands or squinted up beneath the brims of their weathered hats to watch the strangers approach.

“Where from, fellers?” a large man prodded the riders.

Caleb Wood dragged his big hat from his head and smacked it across his dusty thigh, stirring an eruption that drifted off on the warm breeze. “Wintered down to the greaser country in Taos. Come up by way of Bayou Salade for spring trapping.”

“Mexico, you say?”

And a second man in the crowd asked, “Did I hear ’em say they rode up from Mexico?”

Inquired another of those moving up on foot, “Are the plew prime down there?”

“’Bout as sleek as I ever see’d ’em,” Jack replied as his group came to a halt near the trees and the others crowded close to the horsemen.

A man came up to stand below Hatcher. “First thort you mought’n be some of Davy Jackson’s outfit.”

“He ain’t working to the south last season, is he?” Jack replied.

“No,” the man declared, “but some us figgered he was sending fellers over from the Pilot Knobs with his catch, like him and Sublette planned he would.”

Isaac asked, “What’s the price o’ beaver this summer?”

“Sublette ain’t come in yet,” the first man answered. “’Spect him any day now.”

“Who you boys?” Solomon inquired.

A tall, ruggedly handsome figure of a man Bass recognized had worked his way through the gaggle of greeters, scratching at a bearded cheek. He held up his hand to Hatcher, and with a distinct Scottish burr he announced, “I’m booshway of this brigade. Name’s Robert Campbell. We’re down from Crow country up on the Powder.”

“Crow country, eh?”

“But the Blackfeet were devils this year,” Campbell explained. “Lost four of my men to the bastards at the Bad Pass in the Bighorns.” They finished shaking and he dropped his hand. “Did I hear right that you’re not from Davy Jackson’s bunch?”

“On our own hook,” Jack stated. “Hatcher’s my name.”

Another man declared, “Heard of you afore. Welcome. Drop your leg and let’s camp!”

“What’s your name, mister?” Caleb asked as he leaped to the ground and presented the stranger his hand.

“Jacob Slaughter.”

Campbell stepped over, waving his arm toward the trees. “C’mon, then—any man’s always welcome in Robert Campbell’s camp!”

“Yonder looks good for us,” Jack explained, pointing upstream. “We’ll picket the horses, then mosey down for supper.”

That evening the company trappers hosted Hatcher’s outfit. Over the flames broiled juicy quarters of elk and antelope, as well as two bighorn sheep that hunters had brought down to camp earlier in the day.

“Ain’t never had me no sheep afore,” Scratch told the man who served up a slab of the red meat thicker than two of his fingers. He stuffed the end of the sliver in his mouth and sliced off a healthy bite, finding the texture and sweet taste of the meat entirely pleasant.

The company man settled on his haunches right at Bass’s knee. “And I ain’t never knowed no one gone to Mexico afore. Heard tell the food’s every bit as hot as the sun can boil a man’s brains there. Any of that true?”

“A feller can get hisself a pepper belly, that’s for sartin,” Isaac piped up on the far side of Titus.

“Forget the goddamned food!” A second of Campbell’s men squatted near them. “The women—tell me ’bout them.”

“Nawww,” Scratch said, shaking his head. “You don’t want us to go and tell you ’bout them Mexican women.”

“Hell if I don’t!” he roared in mock wounding.

“We been dry since we come in to ronnyvoo,” explained that first of the company trappers who pointed across the stream. “Them Snakes over there ain’t bringing out their wimmens for none of us.”

“Course they ain’t,” grumbled the second man. “Leastways not till Sublette gets here with shinies and foofaraw what can make any Injun woman plop on her back and open her legs for an American!”

“So go right ahead and tell us ’bout them greaser gals!” a third man exclaimed as he strode up, grease dripping from his lower lip into his chin whiskers.

“Why, now … they ain’t like no white gals I ever poked,” Bass said, trying his best to emulate that knowledgeable tone of the backwoods schoolteachers he had suffered under for so many years. “Not like no Injun women neither. My, my—”

“That’s a crock of shit!” Wood blurted out. “And this nigger’s full of it up to the bung!”

Bass whirled on him, growling around a chunk of bighorn sheep, “Careful who you say is full of shit, Caleb!”

“This here pilgrim ain’t never bedded down no Mex gals but one,” Wood continued. “Nary but that one.”

“It ain’t cause I didn’t wanna—”

“Must’a took a shine to her since you humped just her all winter long!” Caleb interrupted.

Scratch shrugged, explaining, “She was a good whore. Good ’nough to last me the winter.”

“You had a Mex whore?” asked one of the company men.

“Mama Louisa’s fine Taos whores,” Caleb declared. “I been through ’em all—forwards and backwards, boys. I can tell you anything you wanna know ’bout them greaser womens.”

Another company man lunged in anxiously. “They any good?”

“Good? You ask me if them bang-tails is good?” Wood replied. “Just how good a willing woman gotta be when a man’s been ’thout for nigh onto half a year?”

They were attracting more of Campbell’s trappers as Caleb warmed to his task before this attentive audience.

“They really good, eh?”

“Good ain’t the word for it,” Caleb declared matter-of-factly. “Better’n any red gal, twice’t as good as any white whore I poked.”

One man licked his lips unconsciously; another dragged the back of his forearm across his mouth, eyes wide, glistening in primal stimulation.

“G’won, Caleb,” Hatcher said as he walked up, a curved and meaty rib in hand. “Tell ’em how good them greaser women are for American men.”

Wood nodded, leaned forward, and said in a low, dramatic voice, “You boys know them Mex folks cook most of their food with hot peppers in it?”

He waited until most of his audience bobbed their heads in eager agreement.

“Well, now—I s’pose it’s them peppers.”

“What ’bout them peppers?” demanded a Campbell man.

Caleb looked at him straight-faced. “I figger the peppers they eat just makes them Mex gals naturally eager to jump on a likely American. Makes ’em just ’bout as hot to jump on your wiping stick as them peppers they eat in their food!”

Some of the men whooped in glee; others stomped a moccasin on the ground or slapped a thigh, while a few whistled with lurid approval. This was just what they wanted to hear. More fantasy to feed their womanless dreams as brigades of men roamed this far and lonely mountain west. Fanciful dreams to warm a man on cold winter nights, trapped in the fastness of the wilderness, far from Indian camp or white settlement or Mexican village. Sometimes dreams might just be enough for a man to make it through to spring, on till rendezvous.

If he made it, then a man had cause to celebrate—what with waiting and yearning all year long to find himself a gal who would fulfill even the slightest of his inflated fantasies … for after a long autumn, a terrible winter, and an endless spring of fevered, womanless dreaming, it damn well didn’t take much at all for most any woman to fill those wildest of cravings.

As Bass leaned back against a pack of company beaver, Campbell’s men leaned in attentively, totally captivated by Caleb Wood’s exploits with one Mexican maiden after another: tales of bared shoulders, filmy camisoles allowed to hang so loose, they barely covered the rounded tops of a woman’s breasts, how those Taos females shamelessly flaunted their ankles and calves beneath a swirl of short skirts, their cheeks reddened with a bright-red berry juice, clenching corn-husk cigarillos between their full and provocative lips.

How brazen were those brown women, he explained, women who called out to the Americans whenever they passed through the town’s narrow byways. Women actually beckoned a man to join them for a drink, a meal, and often more … for some modest payment. Women eager, perhaps, to find and catch themselves a likely American husband rather than some poor, earth-grubbing pelado.

“Ain’t none of ’em got any money?” asked one of the company men.

“Most don’t have much at all,” Hatcher explained as he came up and sat. “Only a few got anything to call their own. Their kind looks down their noses at the rest of their people, not just Americans.”

A Campbell man turned to Caleb. “You ever poke one of them rich gals?”

“Nary a one what was real rich,” Wood admitted with a wag of his head. “They wear too damn many clothes—just like our own gals back in the States. Almost like they don’t wanna show no skin on their bodies. So them poor gals is the only ones ever showed me a good time … they’re the kind of woman what gonna show you ever’thing on their bodies!”

As Bass dragged out his tiny pipe, then retrieved a small chunk of tobacco carrot from his belt pouch, he listened to Caleb and Jack go on to tell the company men about the wonders of Mexican women. Between a finger and thumb he crumpled a bit of the dried leaf over the bowl, tamped it in with a fingertip, then crumpled in some more until he had the pipe filled. After retrieving a twig from the fire, he lit the tobacco, inhaled, then sighed, ruminating again on Kinkead and Rowland.

John must surely have made it back to Taos by now, he decided. Likely Rowland went straight for Matthew’s place—stay there for a time till he sorted out what he figured to do. Till he figured out how he could get himself over the miseries for his Maria.

As much as he had made peace with himself for leaving those two women in the past, Scratch wondered how a man ever came to feel so much for a woman that he found himself grieving and lost without her. Then he remembered sensing more than a twinge of that sort of strong, undeniable feeling for Marissa Guthrie. Admitting that it was possible to feel that way about a woman … because it was just that sort of feeling that compelled him to leave Marissa before that feeling grew into an unmovable thing, before his need for her outweighed his hunger to see what lay beyond the next valley.

More than likely it was possible for a man to care about a woman and stay to one place with her as much as a man could be lured to see what lay over the next hill, what beckoned from the far valley, what adventure awaited him far away from the bothersome nattering of a woman who rarely gave her man room to breathe, room to be.

Poor Rowland, having give up so much for that woman … only to have what little he had left of a sudden took from him by the Comanche in those mountains above Taos.

How sad it made Titus to remember the melancholy of that dreary, rainy morning when John parted company from old friends.

Rowland had taken the small folder of waxed paper from the crude pocket sewn inside his blanket capote, thinking on it a moment before handing the folder to Rufus Graham.

“You keep this now,” he told Graham. “You boys get stopped here or there by some Mex soldados, just show ’em your paper here, Juan.”

“Juan?” Rufus echoed.

“That’s the name on that paper what says you can trap in Mex waters,” Rowland instructed. “I don’t need it … leastwise not for some time to come.”

“So that’s your license?” Elbridge asked, tapping a finger against the corner of the waxed envelope Rufus held.

“To the greasers my name is Juan Roles.” He repeated what they all knew. “Now you carry the license for the rest of these here men, Rufus.”

“I’ll hang on to it till you need it again,” Graham replied. “You just ask for it back.”

With a shrug John continued, “They give it to me ’cause I got married to Maria. Padre Martinez baptized me in their church and married me the same day to her. That’s why they give me a license last winter after we come back … come back from fighting them Comanche and why they ain’t gonna ever give the rest of you a license.”

“No, Johnny,” Hatcher said, stepping up to tap his finger against the envelope, the huge dollop of an emblazoned wax seal growing brittle and cracking. “They give ye that license ’cause you was a brave man.”

Rowland shook his head. “I become a Mexican citizen, so they give it to me—”

“They didn’t give it to ye when you was baptized, did they?” Jack demanded.

“N-no.”

“And they didn’t give it to ye when you got married neither, did they?”

“No,” Rowland admitted.

“You was a brave man, going with the rest of us to get them women and children back from the Comanch’,” Hatcher explained. “They give ye that license for being a brave man with the rest of us.”

“You think they knowed the rest of us was going to use Johnny’s license?” Elbridge Gray had asked.

“Damn right they did,” Jack said. “And I don’t figger it made ’em no never-mind. It was the governor’s way of saying to us—saying to Johnny—he was grateful for what we done to bring his family back to him.”

Throughout the winter there had been other expressions of gratitude for the men who had risked their own lives to rescue those who meant nothing to them, to rescue women and children who weren’t even American. The tax assessor had turned his head and looked the other way, or had conveniently been busy or out of Taos when William Workman rode into town to trade. For gringo trappers who expected to trade off their furs in barter for supplies from Mexican merchants, the local officials normally levied a tax of 60 percent on every beaver plew brought into Mexican territory. After all, to the government’s way of thinking, there was simply no way an American could prove that his packs of fur weren’t Mexican beaver.

But throughout that long winter in Taos, they hadn’t suffered any hefty governmental tax. And by disposing of the beaver a few pelts at a time, Workman was able to see that Hatcher’s men were resupplied by the time they prepared to set off north for another trapping season. In fact, the $3.50-per-pound price the whiskey maker was able to wrangle in pesos for their plews in Taos actually turned out to be a half dollar higher in American money than they figured they would have made packing those furs to rendezvous where they would trade them off to Billy Sublette. That meant Hatcher’s men earned at least five dollars per hide in Taos.

Perhaps for no better reason than because John Rowland’s Mexican wife had been slaughtered with a Comanche lance.

Scratch stared off through the trees, gazing across the stream at that cluster of buffalo-hide lodges, watching the fires kindled out in front of each one, studying the shadowy figures passing this way and that in the Shoshone village.

As Campbell’s men carried on with Hatcher and Wood, Titus suddenly interrupted them to ask, “Any you fellas know what band that be over yonder?”

Some of the company men turned to look at him in surprise, wagging their heads.

Jack glanced across the creek, then turned back to ask, “Ye don’t figger it might be Goat Horn’s bunch, do ye?”

“Nawww. That camp ain’t near big enough,” Bass replied. “But maybeso that bunch knows where Goat Horn’s people are … knows if they’re coming in for ronnyvoo too.”

Hatcher asked, “Ye fixing to see about it?”

“Morning be soon enough, I s’pose.”

This here was Snake country, no doubt of that.

But that wasn’t Goat Horn’s band.

Two of the headmen in the village across the creek did know of the chief and his oldest son, Slays in the Night. But in sign and little of their spoken tongue, the two explained they did not know where Goat Horn’s band was that spring, nor if he would bring his people to join in the white man’s rendezvous.

Last night had been a restless one for Scratch. First he had grown too warm, kicking off his blanket and robe. Later he became chilled. Then warm again as he tossed and fought through dreams and remembrances of Pretty Water.

A great, gray disappointment settled upon him when he discovered there would be no familiar faces, no joyful reunion with Slays in the Night, nor with the old, blind shaman, Porcupine Brush, nor a chance to gaze upon, perhaps to embrace, that woman who had cared for him as his shoulder had knitted, as he had nursed his rage in losing his topknot to the Arapaho. Not a young woman, but he had found Pretty Water all the more desirable because of her experience in the robes. She knew what it took to satisfy herself, and more so, she practiced what it took to satisfy a man.

He had crossed the Popo Agie on foot that summer morning as soon as it was light enough for a few of the Shoshone women to emerge from their lodges and go about kindling fires, preparing breakfasts, seeing to infants bundled tightly in their cradleboards.

Only two of Campbell’s men stirred when a dejected Bass recrossed the stream and slogged onto the east bank. Their coffee was just beginning to boil as Scratch walked up.

One of the men pulled the kettle to the edge of the flames to slow its roiling. “Coffee?”

“Never passed up a cup,” he admitted with a sigh, settling to the ground by the fire. “Either of you fellers know a man named Potts?”

“Daniel?” replied the first.

“That’s him.”

Asked the second, “How you know Potts?”

“Come to meet him my first ronnyvoo out here, back to twenty-six.”

The coffee maker tossed Bass a tin cup. “Potts give up on pulling the tiger’s tail. He’s gone back east.”

“East.” Bass said it as if that land were a far and foreign place now after these few short years.

“Daniel figgered he ought’n made his fortune out here already,” the second man explained. Then he peered into the smoky fire. “Ain’t none of us gonna make ourselves rich men.”

The coffee maker wagged his head. “’Cept maybe the booshways like Smith or Jackson—like Sublette his own self.”

“’Diah Smith’s gone under,” the second man claimed. “Ain’t no man see’d him since he took his men to Californy two y’ar ago now.”

“Davy Jackson ain’t the kind what’ll make hisself a rich man neither,” the first man declared. “He’ll allays be a working man like the rest of us.”

“But that Sublette—now, he’s gonna make hisself a tidy nest egg afore long,” the second trapper said as he began to carve thick slices of red meat from the rear haunch of an elk.

“Plain to see that some men come out here to this high land for the money,” Scratch commented as he brought his coffee tin to his lips. “Dame Fate does end up smiling on some of them what come for the money.”

“Like Billy Sublette,” the coffee maker replied.

But the meat carver commented, “Then there’s most what your Dame Fate might as well spit on—like poor Daniel Potts.”

“I met a couple other fellas that same ronnyvoo,” Bass explained, suddenly remembering faces. “I ain’t seen either of ’em here. One was named Bridger.”

“Jim Bridger?” the first trapper asked. “Bridger did go back east with Sublette last year—see his ol’ home and family some … but he ain’t give up on the mountains.”

“He’s got him some family he wanted to see back to Missoura,” the other man explained.

And the coffee maker said, “Likely Jim’ll be back out with Sublette’s pack train when it shows up in the next few days.”

For a while Titus watched the flames in the fire pit as more men began to stir in their blankets, some rising to move out to the bushes, where they relieved themselves. A few came over to join the three at the fire, while most simply returned to their bedrolls and drifted back to sleep as the chilly air brightened with the sun’s first appearance in the east.

“Knowed me ’Nother fella—his mama was a slave and his daddy was a Virginia tobacco grower,” Bass began to explain. “They come out to Missouri when he was a tad. That feller had him his mama’s dark skin and curly hair—”

“And he wore it long and fancy,” interrupted one of the new arrivals to the fire as he came to a halt. “Fact be, all his clothes was damned fancy, wasn’t they?”

He turned to the stranger. “You know him?”

“Sure sounds like Beckwith. He was half-Negra, if’n that’s what you’re trying to get at with the talk of his mama being a slave.”

“Jim Beckwith, that’s him,” Titus replied, remembering all the more now. “So what become of him? He off north with Davy Jackson’s outfit?”

The meat carver shrugged. “No. Beckwith signed off the books with Campbell middle of the winter last. Decided to go out on his own and live with the Crow.”

Scratch asked, “Why’d a man like him wanna go off and live with them Crow ’stead of staying with his own kind?”

The new arrival looked at Bass. “Beckwith said he figgered them Crow was closer to his own kind than we white folk was.”

“Seems that last fall some of us boys played a joke on him, figgering to have us a hoot making them Crow think Beckwith was one of their own what was stole from ’em when he was just a child,” said the coffee maker.

The meat carver chimed up, “Don’t you know Beckwith even had him a mole on his eyelid, just like a li’l child what was stole from them Crow years back! So when we told them Crow that Beckwith was their own kin, why—one of them ol’ squaws spotted that mole!”

“And she was dead sartin Beckwith was her long, lost boy come back home to roost once more!” roared the coffee maker, slapping his knee.

“Beckwith figgers to be something big on a stick with them Crow now,” explained the new arrival at the fire.

The round-faced meat carver said, “Could be you ’member some others, eh?”

Staring into the smoky fire, Titus wagged his head and grumbled, “’Cept for them friends of mine what ride with Jack Hatcher, ain’t a man around I know anymore.”