Crack in the Sky

As his partner went back to sliding the honed blade up and down the strop, Bass echoed, “You?”

“The harshest penalty come that day of judgment for this wicked world will be meted out to those of us who have sought how best to serve the Lord our God … and failed Him in the end,” McAfferty explained. “’And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works.’”

Scratch stared into the fire for a long time and eventually asked, “Ever thort to just turn away from all your Bible-spouting ways?”

“There ain’t but a handful of men I’ve met in me life what’d understand what I’m about to say, Mr. Bass—but I figger you’re one of the few,” Asa began with measured confidence. “See, comes a time in his life a man does what he knows to be right … even when he knows no one else thinks he’s right. That might be my saving grace. My only prayer of spending eternity in the sky.”

Oh, how Scratch had wanted McAfferty to explain all that, cursing himself for not being near smart enough to figure out the riddles and parables the man used to explain things. But in the end Titus was reluctant to admit his ignorance of spiritual matters. In the end he let it lay, and did not ask.

As winter grew old, they crossed the South Platte, then struck its northern branch. Along it the pair traveled west toward the interior basin, then struck out for the Wind River. North to the Bighorn, eventually reaching the south bank of the Yellowstone itself.

By and large the ice was growing spongy that day late in March, so they were forced to push downstream until they found a patch of more open water. There they stripped out of all their clothing but moccasins, tied all of it right onto the top of their packs, and led the reluctant animals into the icy river. Yelling their encouragement to one another and to the animals, their teeth chattering like bone dice in horn cups, the trappers swam across the mighty Roche Jaune, gripping bridles or saddle horns with trembling hands.

On the far side Bass and McAfferty emerged from the water shivering so hard they could hardly stand, their half-frozen fingers fighting to loosen wet knots, finally freeing the oiled hides where they had safely wrapped their clothing. Back inside their warm buckskins, an outer pair of buffalo-hide moccasins, and their thick blanket capotes pulled over buffalo-fur vests, they made camp for the night on the spot—then pressed on the next morning.

North by northwest they pointed their noses now, their faces battered by a wild mix of brutal spring rains, freezing sleet, and some soggy, late-season snows until more than a dozen days after putting the Yellowstone at their backs they struck a narrow, winding river where the redbud and willow were just beginning to bloom beneath a clearing sky.

“By my reckoning, this here gotta be the Mussellshell,” McAfferty asserted as they dropped to the ground in that lush bottomland.

Bass studied the stream up, then down, making note of the surrounding landforms. “You heard tell this was good beaver country, eh?”

“Said to be prime beaver,” Asa replied; then he raised his rifle and gestured at the jagged line of peaks lying along the western horizon. “That yonder’s the edge of Blackfoot country.”

They slept off and on throughout the lengthening days, grabbing a short nap here and there in the morning and afternoons, catching a few hours at night. This was a dangerous land where one of them had to arise in the dark hours after the moon had set and take half their animals out to graze in plain sight of camp. The other horses they kept tied close at hand just to be ready, in the event they had to run to save their scalps.

While a trapper’s normal routine would have him going out early in the morning and again late in the afternoon, neither of these wary veterans ventured from their secluded camps during the daylight hours. Instead, Bass and McAfferty went to their traps only in the darkness before dawn, and in the blackness after twilight had faded from the sky.

As they slowly worked their way up the Mussellshell toward the mountains, then crossed over the low divide and began to trap down the Judith River, the pair cautiously chose their camps: finding a spot with enough tall willow to hide their horses and their plunder, enough of the blooming cottonwood branches overhead to disperse the smoke rising from their tiny fires. A cold and horrid winter had given way to a wet and miserable spring, fraught with daily thunderstorms that soaked man and animal alike and made a man hanker for the coming warmth of summer days and the prospect of rendezvous.

As the weeks tumbled behind them, their animals labored under the growing weight of heavier and heavier packs of beaver. And though they occasionally came across sign of war parties moving this way and that up the Mussellshell or down through the Judith Basin, neither Bass nor McAfferty saw a single warrior. By late spring it was almost enough to make a man grow complacent, if not downright lazy.

With as warm and sunny as it had become that afternoon, Titus determined to move out of their new camp before slap-dark had descended upon the valley. At sunset he took up the big Mexican butcher knife they used in camp and stuffed it into the back of his belt. His rifle in one hand, his trap sack in the other, he nudged Asa with a toe.

“Goin’ out—set me some traps.”

McAfferty squinted into the afternoon light, then rubbed both eyes with his knuckles. “Ain’cha waiting till dark?”

He snorted. “We ain’t see’d a feather.”

“But we seen lots of sign up here this close’t the Missouri.”

“You’re like a mother hen,” Titus replied as he turned away. “It’s only bait sticks I’m cutting. Ain’t no Bug’s Boys gonna catch me out.”

Still wet from that afternoon’s thundershower, the tall grass and leafy brush soon soaked through his leggings and moccasins, beading on the long flaps of his thick wool capote. Constantly moving his eyes across the surrounding hills, looking for anything that shouldn’t be there, Scratch searched for a likely spot to cut his bait-and float-sticks. Plenty of green willow up and down the Judith—but where would he find a place concealed enough to work?

At the edge of the river he spotted the narrow sandbar that ran in a jagged strip from the bank toward the edge of the water, a damp piece of ground some thirty yards long. Up to his left the sandbar jutted against a sharp cutbank better than eight, maybe ten, feet high. And off to his right the cutbank fell away to nothing but a gentle slope as the grassy bank descended to the river’s edge.

Damn good place to cut his willow, peel it, and prepare his traps—all of it out of sight from the surrounding hills and meadows. A pretty spot, too, here as the light was beginning to fade and turn the rustling leaves to a deeper hue.

After clambering through the thick copse of willow and buckbrush, Titus dropped his heavy trap sack onto the edge of the sandbar and propped his rifle against it. Directly behind him hung a wide canopy of willow suspended over the edge of the cutbank. It was there he pulled the tomahawk from his belt and began to hack at the base of some of the thicker branches, tossing them into a pile near the trap sack. After he had nearly two dozen cut, Scratch turned back and squatted on the sandbar to begin peeling the first limb, slowly fashioning it into a bait- stick, sharpening its thicker end so that he could drive it into the bank just above a set he would make come morning. At the other end of the stick he used his knife and fingers to peel back layers until he had the limb fanned out for some three or four inches down the wand. The better to hold more of the “beaver milk” that would lure a curious flat-tail to drop one of its feet within the jaws of his trap.

Downstream … there among the willow along that gently sloping, grassy bank … maybe it was only the wind sighing.

But he waited. Glanced over at his rifle, and waited a moment more. Yeah, probably only the breeze rustling those branches up there.

He tossed the finished stick aside and picked up another, starting to hack off the small limbs and nubs with that big butcher knife. Peeling, stripping, peeling some more.

Of a sudden the hair stood on the back of his neck as the breeze shifted into his face and he frantically sorted out the meaning of that rank smell. Whatever it was, he scratched up a memory strong enough to trigger revulsion, then some growing fear. He kept clawing for the answer as he turned slightly, his right hand beginning to tremble —and that scared the hell out of him. Just to look down at the butcher knife and see it quaking.

Perhaps it was an Indian pony—this rank odor of dampness. Maybeso it might even be a damned Blackfoot he smelled on that hint of wind coming into his face, bristling the guard hairs on the back of his neck, stirring him to