Cry of the Hawk

24

April, 1867

“I HEAR THE pickings are good up there in Kansas,” said the tall, long-haired, bald-topped Jubilee Usher in his soft-edged yet cannonlike voice.

Boothog Wiser longed to have the power to move men as Usher did, to wrap them up into his powerful presence and move them. Yet Wiser had to be content threatening this band of freebooters and cutthroats. Whereas Usher motivated through awe, Wiser maintained control only through fear.

Usher laid his big arm over the beefy shoulder of one of the band of scouts under Captain Eloy Hastings newly returned to Indian Territory from a long reconnaissance. “Fordham here tells me the country’s wide open up there.”

Riley Fordham smiled. Wiser couldn’t blame him. Any man among them would kill to bask in the glow of their leader’s bright light.

“Tomorrow morning, we’re pulling out,” Usher went on. “Riding north. The railroad’s up there in Kansas, boys. And you know what that means.”

“Whiskey!”

“Women too!”

“Yes,” Usher goaded them. “All that and more. It’s about time this bunch had a holiday, don’t you think?”

The roar of their voices was deafening, that band of more than forty now backslapping and shoulder pounding, dancing little jigs in anticipation of the hurraw they would have themselves once up there in Kansas Territory.

“I want the harness soaped and the wagon hubs greased,” Usher commanded, bringing some order to the raucous celebration. “Work first, boys. Then we play!”

Usher turned away from the celebrants, dragging Riley Fordham with him as he stepped back toward Wiser. “C’mon, Major Wiser. Let’s go have a drink with Riley.”

“A drink, Colonel Usher?” Fordham asked.

“Some of my best.”

Fordham licked his lips. “I’d drink your whiskey anytime. Not like the rest of that mule piss the rest of us been drinking.”

When they stood beneath the awning of Usher’s tent, each holding a china cup at the end of an arm, Usher’s Negro manservant poured the whiskey red as a bay horse from a decanter. Wiser watched Fordham close his eyes and drink in the hefty aroma of the aged whiskey.

Usher raised his cup. “To your successful journey, Riley.”

“Yes, sir, Colonel.”

“To Kansas, Colonel,” Wiser said as he brought his cup to his lips. He savored these moments shared with Usher, especially the bonded whiskey. Moments when Usher was as smooth as old scotch whiskey.

“Yes, Riley. Tell us about your trip to Kansas with Captain Hastings,” Usher suggested as he took his cup from his lips.

Fordham swiped a hand across his mouth, his eyes already alive with the potency of the whiskey. “Like a juicy fruit, Colonel. Ready to drop into our hands.”

Usher smiled the benign smile that made his whole face glow. “How far has the railroad penetrated?”

“They must be starting work by now, Colonel. West of Abilene. Track runs along the Smoky Hill River.”

“Headed west for Colorado?” Wiser asked.

“You remember Colorado, don’t you, Mr. Wiser?”

Boothog had fond recollections of the high country and the gold camps and the women who flocked to the places where men came to dig gold from the hard earth. He liked remembering the women. Times were this flat, rolling land ate at Boothog’s soul the way this running and hiding, and running again did. Times were he longed for those high places where the powdered, painted women flocked, there to do things to a man he had only dreamed of.

“Maybe Kansas has some women worth the trouble, Colonel,” Wiser replied.

Usher smiled, his big teeth brilliant in that shining face. “A man can find that sort of woman anywhere, Major.”

“They come west, right along with the track crews, Colonel,” said Fordham. “Chippies and the gamblers and the drummers all come marching right along with the railroad.”

“You see, Major Wiser. In Kansas we will find your type of woman.”

“Just once, Colonel—for once in my life I’d like to spread the legs on a woman like that one you’re keeping all to yourself.”

Boothog watched the grin drain from Usher’s face like water from a busted pail.

“She is not your kind—and you’ll not entertain such thoughts ever again, Mr. Wiser. That woman is truly a different sort, meant for the likes of me. Are we agreed on that?”

Wiser realized his mouth had gone dry. “We’re agreed, Colonel.”

“Make this the last time we will talk on this subject,” Usher said as Wiser’s eyes flicked to Fordham’s face with the movement of a hummingbird. “We are different people, Major. And we have different needs. Yours, well—yours are more primitive. While mine … what I have with that woman is something spiritual. Divine and ordained—we are truly bound to one another in the manner of the temple wed. Yet you likely don’t understand. Nor will you ever.”

“I’ll never, never cross you, Jubilee.”

“Colonel Usher,” Jubilee snapped, the sharp narrowing of his eyes indicating to Wiser that there was another man in their presence.

“Yes, Colonel,” Boothog replied, remembering that other passion Usher possessed: always being addressed by his rank in front of the men. No matter when he and Wiser were alone—Boothog could address him as he pleased. But whenever they were before the men …

Usher turned and retrieved a long leather cylinder from the field table beneath the canvas canopy. From it he pulled a series of maps, found the one desired, then laid it flat upon the table, placing lunch dishes and an inkwell at the corners.

“Fordham, come over here and show us where you were on your journey to Kansas.”

Wiser watched as the two of them hunched over the map, Fordham moving his finger this way, then that, at times a little uncertain.

“I don’t read much, Colonel—”

“It doesn’t matter, Riley.”

“But this looks familiar … the rivers and creeks here.”

“Good. Now show us where the outlying settlements are from here, and here. With the railroad coming their way—it means gold for us. Lots of gold.”

Wiser watched and listened as Fordham went on, explaining the fruits of his scout north into Kansas Territory. But Boothog listened only halfheartedly. He glanced at the nearby tent flaps, not daring to let Usher catch him looking. Yet it excited him nonetheless to know that behind those flaps was the light-haired, blue-eyed Missouri woman they had captured two years before. He had rarely seen her since—only moving from the tent to Usher’s ambulance, where she rode hidden, always with a cloak hood over her head, helped along by Usher and the Negro manservant. And Wiser never heard her anymore. In the beginning she had cried out each time Usher climbed atop her. But it hadn’t taken long for that to come to an end.

She rarely made a peep now.

Still, Wiser hungered for her. There was something in the woman that he had never found in the others. But then, the rest had all had many men before him. They were used, soiled merchandise. Not like the settler woman.

That was why Wiser wanted the girl, the woman’s daughter—in the worst way. More and more over the last months, he found himself getting dry-mouthed just looking at the young girl. Waking up at nights, knowing he had dreamt of her. Wondering if he could wait long enough, till she was old enough and Usher would finally give her over to him. Then at last, Boothog would have one of the two things he wanted most.

Telling himself he must be satisfied with only one of them.

Simply because Major Lemuel Wiser couldn’t bring himself to believe he would ever have the nerve to kill Jubilee Usher.

Shad Sweete thought he recognized something familiar about the distant, thin rail of a man at first, then put the nudge of recollection out of his mind. It simply couldn’t be.

Not that the rider didn’t look one whole hell of a lot like someone he knew—or had known—but that it just didn’t seem likely to find the man out here. Must be the sun playing tricks on him.

No way Jonah Hook would be riding in behind Milner and James Butler Hickok, with the rest of those civilian scouts. Hook had gone back home to Missouri, and Sweete doubted there would be anything that could drag the Confederate off his farm, what with the way he talked and talked about his family and his place all through those months they had shared out on the Emigrant Road and up to the Powder River country. Likely nothing could shake Hook loose.

“Shad Sweete!”

“That you, Joe?” he called back to California Joe Milner.

The long-bearded plainsman brought his mule to a halt beside Sweete there at the edge of the parade of Fort Harker, central Kansas. “Before you go to hugging your how-dos on me, I figured I’d better ask you if you know this young fella. He claims you do.”

“Howdy, Shad,” the thin one said, kicking a leg over the saddle and dropping to the ground on both feet.

“Jonah?”

“By damned,” Joe said, “you do know one another!”

Shad embraced Hook fiercely. “What the hell you—”

“I don’t think Joe believed me when I told him I’d rid with you and Bridger,” Hook said. “Gabe here with you?”

“He’s gone back east, Jonah,” Shad said quietly. “Figures his time might come soon.”

“He dying?”

“Not just yet. But he’s give up on scouting for a time. Now answer my question, boy—what the devil brings you here when you got family back to home depending on you?”

Shad watched as Jonah glanced at Milner, and Milner urged his mule away with the rest of the scruffy civilian scouts James Butler Hickok had brought in from Hays to join up with Custer’s chief of scouts.

Jonah’s eyes narrowed. “They’re gone, Shad.”

“Dead?”

He shook his head. “I wish I knew. Not a trace.”

“Up and gone—like smoke?”

“Stole.”

“Took off, like prisoners?”

“Or worse.”

“You know who?”

“A little. A bad bunch running through Missouri there at the end of the war. Taking what they wanted from farms and settlements.”

“Heard tales there was a lot of that,” Sweete replied, not knowing what else to say.

Inside were a hundred feelings felt for the young man right now—but none which Shad could put to word. Instead, he drew Jonah near again. A fierce hug.

“Damn, it’s good to see you, Shad.” He pulled back, dragging a hand angrily beneath his nose. “Want you meet a cousin of mine. Hired on for the wagon train.”

“What you been doing since last I saw you?” Shad asked, eyeing the columns of cavalry pulling in behind the scouts, marching across the parade and preparing to go into camp on the far side of Fort Harker.

“Got back home finally, that winter. Found my place empty, almost like it was a coffin somebody had dragged the body out of.” Hook described the scene, kneading the leather rein in his hands as the spring sun loped down into the west. “Run onto my cousin at the place, and we went into town to try to find out something.”

“Anybody know what come of your family?”

“Only the old sheriff. Enough to send us off on the trail of that bunch into Indian Territory.”

“Wagh!” Sweete grunted. “That’s some. Likely that’s where the trail up and disappeared.”

“Nobody likely to talk to me and Artus down there. Finally run out of money and come north to work for the railroad.”

“Hard doin’s, Jonah.”

“Hunted buffalo, Shad.”

“Don’t that beat all by a long chalk now!”

“Then freeze-up come, and we hunkered down in a little dugout near Fort Hays for the winter.”

“Just the two of you?”

He dug a toe into the rain-dampened earth. “Had a Pawnee gal with me.”

“Been some time, Jonah—you without a woman. How’d you run onto her?”

“That’s a story for another time, how I come to be toting her out of Abilene. That’s where I first run onto Hickok. There was some bad characters and … the woman saved my life.” Hook yanked aside his shirt and longhandles to show the puckered bullet hole high in his chest. “Army doctor pulled the bullet out over to Fort Hays.”

“Lordee,” Shad whispered. “Some winter doings, weren’t they?”

“When green-up come, we needed work, and run onto California Joe, said he was hired on to work for Hickok for this big army march against the Injuns.”

“Hickok remember you?”

“When he found out I’d hired on to scout for this march, with California Joe, Hickok told the rest I’d do to back him up in a hot fight of it.”

“Hickok’s all right, Jonah. A square shoot any day. Damn! But this ain’t the first time we’ve marched with the army together!”

“Damn well pray it’s the last, Shad.”

“You eat since breakfast?”

When Hook wagged his head, Sweete said, “Then come along with me.”

“I’ll wait for my cousin and then be along.”

“We’ll wait together,” Shad replied.

“I’ll find you, old man.”

“Likely you won’t, Jonah.” He flung an arm southwest of the fort. “Camped down there.”

“You staying with some of those Injuns down there on the creek?”

“Got the woman along. Our girl too.”

“They come north with you?”

“Gathered ’em up after last winter and moseyed north, fixing to find work myself. Never would I thought that we’d run onto one another this way. And from the looks of you, Jonah Hook is needing some fattening up at Toote Sweete’s kettle.”

“Good vittles?”

“Does a badger ever back down? None finer. C’mon, we’ll gather up that cousin of yours over to the wagon yard and get down to the camp.”

Minutes later the three were among the handful of smoked-hide lodges, dogs barking, the half-wild animals heeling them as they sniffed the newcomers. A few barefoot children dashed across the sodden prairie and pounded earth surrounding each lodge.

“Which one of these is your daughter?” Jonah asked.

“Which?” Shad replied, then laughed, head thrown back for a moment. “Ain’t none of these children, Jonah.” He pointed. “That’s my child—there.”

Coming head down out through a nearby lodge door, then standing full height to a little over five feet, she was clearly no child.

“That’s your daughter?” Moser asked, the first of the pair able to squeak out the question.

“Pipe Woman is twenty summers this year. Helps her mama around the lodge now. Too old to be running with the children.”

Jonah swallowed hard. “That ain’t no child, Shad. She’s gotta be the most beautiful Injun I ever saw.”

“Wait’ll you see her mama. Toote!” he called out. Shad’s daughter raised her head from her work as the men approached, her own broad smile brightening the high-cheeked face, eyes bouncing from one to the other of the two newcomers politely, then finding the earth once more in that traditional coy manner of her people.

“C’mon out here, woman—we got us guests for dinner!”