Crack in the Sky

my friends, spend time, trap, and winter up with ’em … then move on afore we find we ain’t friends no more. Maybeso that makes me a hard one to live with, eh, Mr. Bass?”

“None of ’em claimed you was a hard keeper, McAfferty.”

“I ’spect they wouldn’t—that’s why I moved on after a couple seasons with them boys. Took off afore we wasn’t friends no more. Do you figger it’s wrong to ride off before being round others starts to stick in my craw? Is it wrong that I pack up plunder and plews and get high behind down my own trail?”

“Don’t sound unreasonable to me, if’n a man’s made of such,” Bass declared.

“You the sort what likes to mosey on his own, Mr. Bass?”

“I …” And Scratch paused a moment, reflecting, “I s’pose I am. Truly.”

“Never was much a joiner, was you?”

“Can’t say I was.”

Then McAfferty’s eyes narrowed as he gazed at Titus. “The trapping’s better when there ain’t so many to split the take.”

With a shrug Bass said, “We allays worked our own places on the stream. Never was a problem for me.”

“Just give yourself a shake or two and think on it. How good you’d do ’thout all them others working that same stream.”

“It ain’t all about the beaver—”

But McAfferty grabbed hold of Bass’s elbow and turned him so they directly faced the west slope of the Tetons. With an arm, he waved slowly across their granite ruggedness, saying, “Now, look up there and tell me how good you’d do in beaver country, if you was the only one working a stream. Maybeso it’s only you and ’Nother trapper.”

He turned to appraise Asa. “I had me a good spring what got me a fine hurraw on the Popo Agie. Had me ’nough plews last fall to get me a fine winter down to Taos too.”

“Fine place, ain’t that Taos?” McAfferty said in a low voice, letting go of Bass’s elbow and licking his lips almost as if remembering the taste of aguardiente and Mexican tobacco.

“Catched all the beaver I needed to outfit for me ’Nother year, ’long with a little likker—”

“But think of what you’d have if all them beaver been your own.”

Wagging his head, Scratch said, “A man don’t need all the beaver to hisself.”

McAfferty stepped right around in front of Titus again, toe to toe. “But there’s some men what need one hell of a lot of country for their own. Now, you just try to tell me I got you wrong, Mr. Bass. You tell me you ain’t one to wanna drink up all that big space out there for your own self.”

“I … I ain’t never thought about—”

“You tell me you ain’t the sort what wouldn’t jump at the chance to see new country, country where you chose to go—not where you foller along behind the rest.”

He shook his head, as if it didn’t make sense. “Much as I fought me Blackfoot, I ain’t so damned certain a man on his lonesome ain’t a crazy nigger just waiting to die.”

Asa rocked back on his heels a moment. “So you’re the sort figgers you wanna die in a tick bed back east somewheres, white folk’ sheets pulled up around as you go off to sleep, eh?”

“Damn well don’t.”

McAfferty’s booming voice beginning to rise dramatically, Asa stated, “Then set off on your own hook—and say to hell with Blackfoot country when there’s more land to see than you and I both’ll ever lay eyes on in our natural lives.”

If it wasn’t downright contagious, just the way this ex-circuit-riding preacher man stirred up the juices within him.

“You understand that, don’t you, Mr. Bass?” McAfferty said. “You don’t have to trap Blackfoot country, less’n you cotton to the idee of losing more of your scalp.”

“Lost all I wanna lose—”

“There’s country far south of here what ain’t had a trap set in it. Ever.”

“There’s country like that down to Taos?”

McAfferty wagged his white mane vigorously. “I ain’t talking about Taos, or that Santa Fe country. I’ve heard tell of other rivers what take a man off torst the Californios.”

“There’s beaver there?”

“There’s beaver on the Heely!”

Scratch swallowed hard, considering, weighing, hefting it the way he would hoist his trap sack first thing of an evening as he went out to make his sets.

Eventually Titus asked, “Ain’t a white man been there afore?”

“Not one I hear tell of ever set a mokerson down out in that country.”

Bass finally tore his eyes from McAfferty’s convincing gaze to stare again at the deep-purple-hued peaks. “Sounds to me like you’re talking about a couple fellers throwing in together, Asa. Them two fellers what Jack and the rest of his bunch says’re the best trappers in these here mountains.”

Asa stepped up so close that Scratch could feel the warmth in the man’s breath as he spoke, their noses all but touching as they locked eyes. “I’m saying you throw in with me, Mr. Bass—and you ain’t ever gonna wish you hadn’t. There’s streams out there so thick with beaver, a man don’t have to … but you said it ain’t the beaver you’re here for, is it, Mr. Bass?”

“The plews keep me in coffee and powder,” Titus declared. “The fur buys the geegaws for a squaw or two —”

“But the beaver ain’t what brought you,” McAfferty interrupted, a single finger tapping against Bass’s breastbone. “And that beaver ain’t what keeps you here either.”

Right there, staring into the depths of that man’s blue eyes, he was certain McAfferty was peering right on down into his very soul. Finding the truth there that he himself had rarely considered, if ever admitted to. Perhaps this was the same powerful pull that he had seen drag grown-up folks out of those crowds gathered on the banks of rivers back east in Kentucky where he had grown up, the lure that pulled men and women right out of the crowd to join a preacher man standing waist-deep down in the stream, the same seductive call that caused those people to turn themselves over to that preacher and have themselves laid back in the water within the cradle of his arms….

“I ain’t so sure—”

“You’re certain enough that you don’t belong in no outfit no more, Mr. Bass,” Asa interrupted, his voice softer now.

“Don’t mean I can just ride off from Jack and the others—”

“And I ain’t expecting you to,” McAfferty whispered. “You wanna hook up with me?”

“Hadn’t thought ’bout it afore.”

“But you’re thinking ’bout it now.”

He finally nodded.

“Telling ’em’s a simple thing,” Asa explained. “Jack Hatcher’s the sort what understands. Time came for me to go, I set it by him and he didn’t stand in my way.”

Bass nodded again, then said, “So did Matthew Kinkead, and Johnny Rowland too.”

“Them too, yes,” McAfferty echoed. “Comes a time when a man must make his own way and don’t follow the shadow of others.”

“I’m a better trapper’n any of ’em,” Scratch declared, surprising himself.

“You ought’n be showed for just how good you are!”

Scratch turned and gazed at the distant trees across the creek, off in the direction where he had pitched camp with Jack Hatcher’s bunch. Where Asa McAfferty camped too. Then he peered back at the white-head. At last he spoke.

“Where’s that country you said ain’t never had a trap laid down in it that you know of?”

“On the Heely.”

“I s’pose you’re right that if nary a white man ever set a foot down in that country,” Titus confirmed, “then it bears out that there ain’t never been no traps set along those rivers.”

McAfferty’s eyes widened, a smile crinkling that stark white beard. “No one there, Mr. Bass. No one … but Injuns.”