Cry of the Hawk

16

Early February-Late April, 1866

JONAH HOOK KNOCKED the damp earth from his hands, then finished brushing them off on the worn clothing Boatwright had given the two former Confederate soldiers as a homecoming gift. They had both hurried back to the valley south out of Cassville.

The work in the dark Missouri loam had been more than Jonah had thought it would be when first he decided to dig in that spot back of the cabin. After finding a small bit of lamp oil left in the cabin, Jonah and Artus burned their old clothing out at the edge of the fields now gone to weed. Jonah didn’t stand there long, watching the oily smoke rise into the cold winter afternoon air.

“We got work to do, Artus,” he had directed.

And work they had.

Four holes, a good six feet long and some two feet wide. Another six feet deep. All lined in a row behind the cabin he had built for Gritta and Hattie, and the two boys yet to come when first they settled in this narrow valley. Now something had made him return to the homestead for this final ceremony. His digging of the four graves was some dark journey into the deepest recesses of his rage, and the despair he suffered at ever finding them again.

The cousins had spelled one another at that single spade, cursing the hard ground wrought of winter, thankful for the recent cold rains that had soaked some softness into the unforgiving flintlike, and frozen soil. Now they rested, gasping over the fourth and final hole.

“You understand, don’t you, Artus?”

Moser swiped a streak of dirt across his cheek, smearing sweat off with his dirty hand. “No. I don’t.”

“You got two graves up there to your place. That’s your family buried there.”

“But, Jonah—you don’t know what’s happened to your family.”

“That’s why I’m leaving the graves open.” He dropped the spade beside the last hole and turned away toward the cabin. “Maybe it’s like old man Hosking said it—they’re good as dead. Until I find ’em. And find who dragged ’em off.”

“Jonah!”

Hook turned, finding Moser pulling his misshaped hat from his head.

“Man never walks away from a grave without saying a few words.”

“What you mean?”

Moser waved a hand helplessly, searching for the words. “This is some like a funeral to you, ain’t it?”

He thought a minute. “I suppose it is.”

“We ought to say some special church words over these holes afore we leave.”

Hook came back, then dragged the floppy slouch hat from his long hair. “You’re right.”

Jonah stood there a few moments, sorting through a lot of thoughts. Mostly struggling to swallow down the rage and despair so that he could speak some of those few church words he could remember now without making them come out like he was flinging his anger up at God and the heavens.

“I really ain’t any good at this, Artus,” he whispered as if some-one or some-thing near might overhear.

“We gotta say something.”

“All right,” Hook sighed. “This is tough, Lord. The worst it’s ever been inside of me. Feel damned near gutted—I’m sorry for swearing. Do too much of that, I know. I’m not always what you want of me, I suppose. Never been much of one to get down on my prayer bones and taffy up to you, God. Hell, you know what’s in my heart better’n anyone. No sense me telling you what you already know’s inside me. All that’s left inside me now.”

Jonah knelt and picked up some of the fresh spoil beside the last grave. “This is for little Zeke. Born and baptized as Ezekiel before you, Lord.” Jonah tossed the moist clods into the dark hole.

Moving to the next hole, he spilled some loose soil through his fingers. “This is for Jeremiah. Until my boy and me can fill this damned hole up together.”

“You ain’t supposed to swear when you’re talking to the Lord, Jonah.”

“I’m sure He’s heard me swear enough that he thinks nothing of it now, Artus.” Hook stopped by the third grave. “And dear little Hattie—until you and your daddy can plant some wildflowers here on this spot.”

He felt it welling and didn’t know how to make it stop as he stepped to the final hole. And stared down into its emptiness, much like his own center, except for the anger and the despair—nothing else there but black emptiness.

It shook him a moment, right down to those old boots Boatwright had given him.

“Sometimes I curse myself, dear woman,” he began, quietly. “Ever bringing you out here from our home at the foot of Big Cobbler. Curse myself for wanting to make a home that would be ours—not your family’s or mine. Something that could be ours alone.”

As he began to sob, some of the tears fell on the back of his dirty hands he held clasped in front of him, trembling as they crimped a hold on that slouch hat.

“This never would happen back in the Shenandoah. Out here—in this land where there’s no law to speak of, where the guilty can ride in here and murder and steal, then run and hide in the Nations—” He stopped of a sudden, feeling out of control as he let the words spill.

“Pray that I find you, Gritta. Wherever they’ve taken you and the children. For the sake of them. For the sake of what we could be again—pray that I find you.”

He turned away suddenly, unable to go on, the last words choked with bile. Angrily he wheeled and kicked dirt into the last grave, then spun again and set off toward the cabin.

It was long after they had started out, on foot, south toward Fort Smith, that Jonah finally felt like he could talk again. The sky had cleared the last two days, and winter’s cold had gripped the land with an unrelenting hold. Their breath formed frosty streamers behind them as they moved along at a brisk pace, not only to cover ground, but to keep warm as well.

“Someone’s gonna have to prove to me they’re dead. You put your daddy in the ground—so you know he’s dead. Me—I ain’t got none of that. Not for the children. Not for Gritta.”

“Don’t have to explain it to me, Jonah. Just tell me why we’re headed south. I figured we’d be heading west, into Kansas where them Yankee jayhawkers always came from before.”

“No, not this time,” he shivered with the cold. “We’re going someplace else.”

“The Nations?”

Jonah stopped, dragging Moser to a halt. “How’d you know?”

Artus shrugged. “You said it there at the graves—about the Nations.”

Then Jonah remembered. “Yeah. I gotta watch that—getting angry and spilling things like that. Always done it.”

“Why there?”

“I figure that’s the best place to start looking.”

Moser wagged his head as they started walking again, both grown cold from the standing. “Still don’t get it. You must have a good reason to wanna—”

“Boatwright told me.”

“Told you what? When did he tell you anything like that? You gotta be getting crazy about this—”

“I’m not crazy!” Hook growled. “Boatwright told me while you was pulling out the clothes for us. Whispered to me that he had good information that was give to him—about that bunch come through here end of last summer. They was talking about heading south and west into the Nations.”

Moser smiled slowly. “Shit, Jonah—if that don’t beat all! This pair of country boys got us something to track now!”

“I don’t believe I heard what you said, Sullivan,” growled Boothog Wiser at the man standing ten feet off as the entire guerrilla camp fell to silence around them.

Mike Sullivan glanced about him for a moment, then drew his shoulders back. “I said: you don’t always got first right to every woman we take.”

“That’s what I thought you said.” Wiser shuffled over to stand beside the frightened dark-skinned Creek woman they had captured earlier that spring morning.

April was half gone, and the men sensed the warmth in their blood, making them randy and ready to mount the first female they had come across after pulling out of the streamside camp, riding on into the timbered mountains in the foggy eastern stretches of Indian Territory. Boothog himself had grown weary of a long and cold winter. And the nigger girl.

They had left her body somewhere back among those limestone caves.

Now Wiser became acutely aware of the way the men stared at his left boot, which concealed the deformed foot. Whenever he caught a man staring, they looked away quickly, almost ashamed. More so afraid.

“Whenever you’re ready to take over, Sullivan—just let me know. I’ll step aside, you think you’re man enough to be second in command to Colonel Usher.”

Wiser slowly stepped behind the frightened, trembling young woman, her broad nose and thick lips betraying her mixed blood. Creek Creole. Black slave blood tainting the Indian purity, he thought, as he ran his hand down the curve of her neck, pushing aside her dress so that he could feel along her smooth shoulder the color of milk and coffee. As he did it, his left hand slipped unseen to the inside pocket he had sewn into his wool mackinaw.

Sullivan appeared buoyed by the clear hostility for Wiser he believed he saw some of the other men show. He took a step forward.

“I figure I’m ready to tell you to step aside, Major. I’m man enough to take over from you—and the rest of the men figure you’ve had too long a turn at the reins on us.”

“They do?” Boothog asked, not looking up, content still to stroke the young woman’s bare shoulder, sensing her shudder with his caress. Like a frightened bird in the palm of his hand … the way he remembered it as a boy, before crushing the life from the tiny bird, sensing the strong muscles and bone resist his grinding crush in those last seconds of fight.

“Go ’head—tell him, fellas.” Sullivan looked from side to side at the rest, almost twenty strong now, and more gathering, curious. Wiser had a few out scouting. “You got tongues—tell the major he’s done and I’m the one to take over for him.”

Wiser looked up. “This true, gentlemen? You all are of one mind with Mr. Sullivan here?”

None of them spoke. Most could not hold Wiser’s gaze as he touched each one of them with his hard, cold eyes.

“You said for me to tell you.” Sullivan took another step closer to Wiser. “Move aside if you don’t want to get hurt.”

“How do you figure I’ll get hurt, Sullivan?”

The big, hard-muscled man laughed, shrill and short. “Every man here knows I’m the best with fists there is. You don’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell of beating me. You’re … you was just raised with fancier folks, Major. I’d lick you too quickly.”

“I don’t stand a chance, is it?”

“If you want to fight to prove it, so be it,” Sullivan said, starting for Wiser, bringing his hard-boned fists up.

In a blur the pistol hand came out of the coat and fired beside the Creek woman’s elbow, making her shriek as she jerked herself away from Wiser in terror. The black-powder smoke made an ugly stain in the clearing beside her, the way Sullivan’s screech of horror made a blot on Wiser’s ears.

But Boothog had hit the man right where he wanted. He was marksman enough never to miss what he pointed the pistol at.

Sullivan was down, with both hands clamping his thigh where the bullet had plowed through meat and bone. Bright blood seeped between his fingers as he grimaced in pain.

“You there!” Wiser ordered, pointing the pistol. “And you. There, and there. You four—tie him down.” He waited a couple of rapid heartbeats, his own blood pounding in his ears, then hammered back the pistol once more.

“I told you, tie him down!”

Rope came out with hands that struggled over Sullivan.

“Drag him over there,” Wiser commanded. “Tie his hands to those two trees. No, spread him out. Get two stakes for his feet and hurry about it!”

Wiser turned to more than twenty men who were standing, staring at the wounded Sullivan being trussed and shackled.

“You—six of you, get my tent set up now. When I finish with Sullivan, I want to relax in privacy with the squaw.” He waved his pistol and a half dozen bolted from the pack to immediately set to work pulling the canvas wall tent from the back of the high-walled wagon. Wiser turned back and shuffled over to Sullivan.

The man spit at Boothog, then went back to shrieking, begging for help, someone to stop the bleeding from his leg.

“When are you going to learn, Sullivan … or any of you for that matter? When will you learn that it is foolish for me to compete with some of you on the physical plane? I am smarter than all of you put together, and there will never be any question of that. Will there?”

The group muttered their grudging agreement.

“And any of you who ever thinks of trying to prove yourselves smarter than me should come and take a look at Mr. Sullivan.”

Wiser moved closer to the man, stopping at Sullivan’s head. He knelt and pulled a knife from a beaded sheath. It wasn’t a particularly long knife, rather short compared to the bladed weapons the rest of the men wore on their hips. But it was a slightly curved Green River skinning knife, the sort the old fur trappers had used during the heyday of the beaver trade. And Wiser kept it expertly honed.

With a quick flick of his wrist, before Sullivan or the rest realized it, Wiser slicked off a fair-sized chunk of the end of Sullivan’s nose. Blood oozed immediately as Sullivan struggled, shrieking for someone to pull Wiser off.

“An amazing weapon. Centuries old, gentlemen. Man has made himself long knives and short ones, cutlasses and foils and sabers. Yet nothing has ever come along to take the place of one small but well-honed skinning knife.”

Roughly he pushed Sullivan’s head to the side, clamping the man’s cheek down into the dirt with a knee. As the man screamed and thrashed, he delicately sliced off Sullivan’s entire ear. The ground below Sullivan’s cheek was blotting with the free-flowing blood.

“Do you think he’s had enough, gentlemen?”

No one dared answer. He laughed, knowing they were afraid, not knowing how to answer his question. If they said yes, he’s had enough, likely they might be forced to trade places with Sullivan. If they said no, that their fellow freebooter had not yet had enough—then they themselves became accomplices to the bloody torture.

Wiser drew the knife down the length of Sullivan’s chest, slicing open his shirt and opening a narrow ribbon of bloody flesh at the same time. Sullivan’s screeching and thrashing was rising in volume, matched only by the stunned silence of the rest of the onlookers.

“These Indians in this western country have some unique and rather beautiful methods of making an enemy suffer. And, gentlemen—any man who says he is going to disobey me, or thwart my control, is an enemy of mine. Mark my words—the next man who attempts what Mr. Sullivan has tried will end up in far worse shape than what you will see exacted upon this frail mortal. Watch, gentlemen—and heed well the lessons taught you this day.”

With a snap, Wiser turned Sullivan’s head over, grinding the bloody stub of the ear into the dirt while he carved off the other ear. He then went first to one wrist, and the other, gently slashing open the veins just below the hemp rope lashing the man to the trees.

“This where I shot you?” he asked, scooting down to the bleeding thigh wound.

Sullivan was whimpering, occasionally cursing, then begging again for mercy. Just to be left alone.

“I can’t leave you be,” Wiser explained. “You will serve far greater purpose in this moment of pain than the worth of your whole miserable life.” With a balled fist, he smacked the bullet hole, causing Sullivan to arch his back, and thrash the leg in agony.

“Exquisite pain, isn’t it? A lesson, this is—that all pain is itself a lesson, Mr. Sullivan.”

Wiser pricked open the bullet hole in the man’s britches, slashing up and down the trouser leg. Then with the tip of his knife, Wiser began slowly to burrow the knife into the bullet hole itself while Sullivan screeched inhumanly.

He dragged the knife blade from the bullet hole, which now pumped more vigorously.

“The Indians will cut off a man’s balls too, Mr. Sullivan.” He cut at the man’s belt, slashed off the buttons at the fly and yanked up the penis and scrotum, hearing an audible gasp from the rest of the onlookers, wide-eyed and ashen all.

“Are you man enough to live the rest of your life without your manhood, Mr. Sullivan?”

The victim writhed, mumbling incoherently, tears mingling with the blood and dirt smeared on his face.

“I didn’t think so, Mr. Sullivan. You may talk a good game—but you aren’t really as brave as you would make out to be, are you?”

With a quicksilver movement, Wiser dragged the knife blade across Sullivan’s windpipe, watching his victim’s eyes widen as Sullivan began to gurgle and froth.

“That sound is your last breath of air before you die, Mr. Sullivan. I don’t think you worthy enough to live—hardly worthy enough to ride with Jubilee Usher and his chosen Angels. So I’m not going to cut your balls off until you’re dead. Then I’m going to feed them to Colonel Usher’s hounds. And leave you right here for the crows who roost in these trees.”

Wiser wiped the knife blade off on Sullivan’s trousers as the thrashing slowly ceased. Then the victim lay still, silent.

He stuffed the knife back in its scabbard and turned to the group. “Is my tent ready? I so feel like making sport with that nigger squaw now.”