Crack in the Sky

fiddler.

As he turned to glance at the heap of ash in the fire pit, Bass heard one of the animals snuffle out there in the darkness. He strained his eyes to peer into the inky gloom. After listening intently, he finally stared at the faint, glowing embers—wondering if he should throw some more wood on, or just curl down within his bedding and try falling back to sleep.

Absently digging at an itch nagging the back of his neck, he decided he would forget the fire. This was high season for ticks, tiny troublesome creatures who only weeks ago had killed one of the men already with the fever they carried. But his fingers reassured him that this itch was no tick, not even the lice he had played host to when he had first reached these Shining Mountains—digging so often and voraciously at his hide that the trio who happened upon Titus came to call him Scratch.

The name stuck, through all the seasons. With the coming and going of all those faces. Scratch—

Another snuffle from the horses.

They’re restless with the wind, he thought, shoving the blanket down off his legs and reaching for his moccasins. Horse be the kind of critter gets itself spooked easy enough in the wind, unable to smell danger. What with all this night moving around them, rustling—

One of them snorted loudly, in just that way the Shoshone cayuses did when all was not well.

He rose without knotting the moccasins around his ankles and snatched the pistol from beneath the wool blanket capote he had rolled for a pillow, then swept up the long, full-stocked flintlock rifle he curled up with between his legs every night. After that deadly battle with the Blackfeet, Scratch had even given the weapon its own name, calling it Ol’ Make-’Em-Come.

One of the other men stirred, mumbling as he turned over within his blankets, and fell quiet again.

Bass stepped from the ring of bodies, around the far side of their camp rather than heading directly for that patch of ground where they had driven their animals and confined them within a rope corral before turning in for the night.

“Better for a man to count ribs than to count tracks,” explained Jack Hatcher.

Far more preferable that a careful man’s animals should go without the finest grazing possible than to discover those animals were run off by skulking brownskins. Putting a feller afoot in a hostile wilderness. Forced to cache most all his plunder, then follow those horses’ tracks with only what a man could carry on his own back.

Was that hiss more of the wind soughing through the trees up ahead? Or … could it have been a whisper?

In the darkness, and this cold, Scratch knew a man’s ears might well play tricks on him.

Scratch stopped, held his breath, listened.

Behind him in camp he thought he heard one of them stir, throwing back his bedding, muttering now in a low voice that alerted the others. They were coming out of their deep sleep as quiet as men in a dangerous land could.

From beyond the trees the wind’s whisper grew insistent now. Then a second whisper—and the gorge suddenly rose in Bass’s throat. Whoever was out there realized the camp was awakening. He brought up the long rifle and stepped into the gloom between the tall trees, cautiously.

With a shriek the uneasy quiet was instantly shattered. A boom rocked the trees around him, the dark grove streaked with a muzzle flash.

The bastards had guns!

One of the trappers in camp grunted as the rest shouted and cried to the others, all hell breaking loose at once as shrill voices screeched battle calls from the dark timber.

In a crouch, he lunged forward. Not back to camp as more guns began to boom. But making for the horses.

The red niggers were after the remuda!

Behind him the voices of his friends grew loud as they met the assault—an instant before the dark shapes of the animals took form, congealing out of the darkness. Milling four-leggeds … then a two-legged took shape, and a second, he saw among the stock: slapping, yelling, driving some of the horses out of the rope corral. More of the huge shadows hopped within their sideline hobbles, attempting to break to freedom, straining to join those captured animals the raiders goaded into the darkness.

He recognized Hannah’s bawl. That high, brassy cry the mule gave when frightened—like that day Silas Cooper was about to kill the mare, or that day Bass lost his scalp and was left for dead.

Stepping to the edge of that copse of trees, he recognized her big, peaked ears on a nearby shadow. One of the raiders struggled to keep his hold on the mule’s horsehair halter. Scratch stepped sideways, close enough to make out the warrior’s body, seeing how young he was.

“Let go of ’er!”

Whirling around in a crouch, the youngster reached for the tomahawk at his belt, the metal head glinting with starshine as it flashed out at the end of the arm he swung back over his shoulder.

At Scratch’s hip the rifle boomed, its flash bright as midday—temporarily blinding Titus as he shoved the rifle into his left hand, snatching the pistol from his belt with his right. Ahead of him the raider crumpled in half, hit low in the gut with a ball of lead more than a half-inch round. Flopping to his side, the wounded man struggled to reach for the tomahawk that landed inches from his fingertips, the other arm clutched across his abdomen.

Bass leaped out of the trees, landing with a foot on the raider’s wrist. Instantly the Indian took the free hand and struggled to reach the knife scabbard flopping at his hip. Hannah snorted, bobbing her head, yanking back at her picket rope with that recognition of blood.

Not about to waste another shot on the thief, Scratch stuffed the pistol into his belt, raised the rifle above his head in both hands, then savagely drove the metal butt plate straight down into the warrior’s face. And a second time as the Indian twisted and thrashed, his last ragged breaths spewing from the crushed hole in his head like frosty streamers. After a third and harder blow, he no longer moved.

Stepping over his victim, Bass pulled the pistol free, crouched slightly, and slipped forward again into the darkness. To this side and that he shoved the frightened, chivvied animals, forcing a path through their midst. A hobbled horse clumsily lunged out of his way, and into that gap suddenly leaped another warrior, a long dagger clutched in one hand, a tomahawk held in the other. From side to side he rocked, gazing wickedly at the white man with a crooked smile.

Bass squeezed the trigger as he brought the pistol up. When the ball struck the warrior high in the chest, it drove him backward off his feet to land among the legs and hooves of the hobbled animals.

“Simms!”

It was Hatcher’s voice somewhere behind his right shoulder.

“Here, goddammit!”

“Ye see Bass?”

“He ain’t with me,” explained the voice coming from a different side of camp.

How he wished he had picked up his powder horn and shooting pouch before he’d left his bedding. Unable to reload, Titus instead leaned down and pulled the knife and tomahawk free from the warrior’s hands, then straightened and yelled, “Jack! I’m over here!”

“Bass?” Hatcher cried. “Was that Scratch’s voice?”

“Sounded like him—”

The voice had to be Kinkead’s, nearly muffled with the gunshot.

“Goddammit!” that booming voice screamed.

“Matt!”

A new voice asked, “You see Bass over by you, Rufus?”

While the trappers called to one another back in camp, no more than fifteen feet in front of him, Titus watched a warrior appear out of the night and those shadows clinging among the trees. The Indian crouched, stopping long enough to study the small clearing where the trappers had made their camp. From there it was plain to see that the horse thief had John Rowland’s narrow back all to himself. Raising his short horn bow, the warrior drew back on the string.

On instinct Bass flung his arm back, hurling the knife at the target. Too quickly. Off its mark, the weapon clattered against a nearby tree. The enemy jerked to the side, wheeling to find the white man behind him. Drawing back on his bow string once more, he now aimed the arrow at Scratch.