Crack in the Sky

there was nothing conclusive to indicate that Vaca had been dealing with the Americans. Besides, the angry captain had been informed there would be gringos to arrest.

His men found no Americans.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Titus asked, “We square with Bill?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“H-happy birthday?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Me?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

At times they happened across a likely-looking stream flowing down from those emerald foothills and set up camp for a few days to work the banks hard, doing their best to strip the place clean of what beaver they could bring to bait. More times than he would care to count that winter and on into the early spring, they were forced to hole up and hunker down as a storm blustered over them, delaying their journey north. Nonetheless, those days imprisoned in camp gave them a chance to make needed repairs to traps, tune the locks in their rifles and pistols, sharpen knives, and reinforce saddles and tack.

Those hours also gave Asa an opportunity to discourse on a variety of celestial and theological subjects, his long, meandering monologues taking him from the rightful place of the devil and evil among mankind, all the way to his assertions that the end of the world had already been foretold and its date was therefore cast in stone. No matter how good mankind might believe it would ever become, man was by nature still an evil creature and one day would be brought to task for his errant ways.

“Even you, Asa McAfferty?” Bass asked skeptically.

The white-head had looked up from the oiled strop where he was dragging a knife blade back and forth. The sharp edge lay still as he studied Scratch. After a long moment of reflection, he answered gravely, “Especially me.”