Crack in the Sky

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