Crack in the Sky

close to being a word, only a frightening sound—some guttural, wild, and feral noise the people in that crowd understood.

“Wagh!”

With that ear-shattering cry of the grizzly boar preparing for battle against one of its own, Jack pushed on through the crowd, walking up to a wooden door, where he looped the long black hair over the top hinge, took a quick step back, then spit on the scalp.

As others, mostly old men and young boys at first, shoved out of the throng to imitate the trapper by spitting on the scalp themselves, Hatcher turned and pushed his way back through the crowd. At that moment some of the infuriated Mexican women threw themselves back onto the body, resuming their brutal, passionate dismembering of the dead enemy.

Jack grabbed a handful of his horse’s mane and flung himself onto its back. Taking up the reins, he brought the animal around and began to part the growing crowd that clamored for vengeance upon the raiders. One by one the Americans slipped their horses through that narrow gap in the mob. Alarmed by sudden and wild shrieks from the Taosenos, Bass turned to look over his shoulder—seeing the Indian’s head appear above the throng. In the next moment it was hoisted far above the Mexicans at the end of a long, sturdy pike, the people swirling about on their heels like a throbbing mass below this gory, eyeless trophy they began to carry back toward the square.

As the mob washed away, a group of young boys led by a pair of old women stayed behind to tie lariats to the wrists and ankles of the headless body. As the last rope was knotted, the youngsters took off on foot, wildly screaming together as the beaten, bloodied, pummeled body bounced, tumbled, and flopped crazily behind the racing boys. Hobbling along behind the torso came the teetering old women, both of them striking what was left of the enemy again and again with firewood switches.

While the clamor of the mob faded toward the square, from a side street came the sudden clatter of boot heels echoing off the cold whitewashed walls of the village. Suddenly more than fifty Mexican soldiers burst around a corner. The trappers brought up their long weapons. For a terrifying instant, both groups stared at one another provocatively—ready for the other side to open fire. Every bit as disheveled as the Americans, the soldiers looked as if they too had just been pulled from their beds. Very few of them wore a complete uniform—and those who had managed to pull on their coats hadn’t taken the time to button them in the morning’s cold. Red-eyed, pasty-faced: these were men rousted from their barracks with the toe of a boot or the point of a bayonet.

“Senores!” the thin-faced officer at the head of the formation finally yelled as he took two steps toward the trappers, slapping a sword against his tall boot. “Americanos!”

With his eyes locked on the officer, Hatcher quietly spoke from the side of his mouth, “Willy—ye know their talk better’n I do. Tell ’em to get out of our way so we can find our friend.”

After a quick dialogue, Workman said, “This one—he’s the ensign.”

“What’s that?” Hatcher demanded.

“The big soldier chief here ’bouts,” the whiskey maker replied. “Name’s Don Francisco Guerrero. These here are his soldiers ’cause he’s Senior Justice and War Captain of San Geronimo de los Taos.”

A smirk crossed Jack’s bony face. “This bastard’s got too damned many names for me, boys! Willy, tell him to get his ass out of our way.”

Wagging his head emphatically, Workman protested, “But they ain’t fixing to stop us—”

“Damn right these greasers won’t stop us!” Isaac bellowed as he came up to stand shoulder to shoulder with Hatcher.

Workman continued, “But this here Guerrero says they found the Injuns’ trail.”

“Where?”

“Heading north out of town,” Workman said to Hatcher, pointing.

“With them red niggers gone, we go find Johnny—”

“They want us to help ’em go after the Comanche.”

Hatcher turned to look at Workman now. “Why they want our help trailing after a bunch of Injuns?”

“Guerrero here, he says the Comanche took some women and children with ’em.”

“We know that!” Jack snapped.

“One of them women is the wife of the gov’nor,” Workman explained quietly. “And … they run off with his li’l girl too.”

“Why us?” Hatcher demanded, eyeing the soldiers suspiciously.

Licking his lips, Workman sighed, “They figure the only chance they got of trailing the Comanche is using us gringos as trackers.”

“Why use us gringos?”

Workman grinned. “These Mex think we’re damned close to being ’bout as bad as Injuns anyway, Jack.”

“So we work for the Mexican army as trackers?” Jack squeaked in protest. “’Cause we’re the only ones can foller Injuns?”

“To hell with ’em!” Caleb snarled. “They can track the Comanche on their own!”

“There’s J-johnny!”

At Isaac’s wild cry, Scratch jerked around.

His forehead smeared with blood, Rowland suddenly emerged from a thick veil of smoke that clung close to the snowy ground like the bushy tail of a black cat switching back and forth as it waited patiently for a mouse to come within pouncing distance. Soot smeared his face in broad, grotesque patches.

“T-they got m-my … Maria,” John sobbed, his eyes pooling, tears spilling down his cheeks, tracking the black soot as he stood before the smoking ruin of the hovel that was his Taos home.

Hatcher held down his hand, grasping Rowland’s in sympathy. “We been told they got away with some women, and young’uns too.”

John nodded, choking on his sobs. “When I come out of the house, I see’d they had the gov’nor’s wife and his little g-girl with ’em,” Rowland explained. He turned away suddenly, looking to the north, swiping a hand first beneath his nose, then dragging it beneath both eyes, smearing soot. “The red-bellies knocked me in the head and left me for dead, I s’pose. Afore they took ’em all that means—”

“We’re going after your Maria now, Johnny,” Rufus said as Rowland looked away, a man clearly uncomfortable with his grief.

“We’ll bring her back to ye.”

Rowland whirled back around on them, his wild eyes darting between his friends and the soldiers, his lips moving wordlessly for a moment before his voice crackled in its growing rage the moment he lunged forward and seized hold of Hatcher’s reins. “I’m going after her with you!”

“Ye’re … hurt right now,” Jack explained, rubbing his fingers across his own forehead there below the front of his badger-fur cap. “Better ye stay behind.”

As if he had been unaware of the wound, John touched his bloody brow where the gaping skin had been split with a club of some sort. Rowland said, “Ain’t nothing can keep me from killing my share of those red sonsabitches.”

“It’s gonna be a long ride—”

“You ain’t leaving me!” he shrieked, balling up a fist and daring to shake it right under Hatcher’s chin. “I can find my own way just as good as I can ride with the rest of you.”

Hatcher dropped his reins and with that empty hand gripped Rowland’s defiant fist. “Ye ain’t goin’ on yer own, Johnny. Ye’re gonna ride with yer friends. We aim to all go after yer Maria with ye—together.”

Bass watched those simple words shake that wounded, grieving man right down to the soles of his moccasins. He stood there trembling, tears gushing from his eyes as he tried to control the sobbing, tried his best not to show his grief in front of these hardened, bloodied veterans of mountain winters and Indian warfare.

“It’s awright, Johnny,” Solomon reminded him quietly as the wild shrieks of the mob faded behind them. “A man what lost his wife got him a right to get broke up just like you.”

Jack reminded, “Ain’t a one of us wouldn’t cry too.”

“Been you got rubbed out, Johnny,” Isaac admitted, “I’d be broke up like that my own self.”

Rowland suddenly dragged in a deep breath, slowly pulling his fist from Hatcher’s grip as he gathered himself together with a trembling shudder of emotion. Biting his lower lip a moment, the trapper blinked his eyes clear, swallowed hard, and said, “Lemme find a horse—just gimme chance to find me a horse … they got mine … run off