Cry of the Hawk

30

July, 1867

ELLIOTT EVENTUALLY CAUGHT up with Pawnee Killer’s Sioux.

But only when the warriors had loped far enough ahead to set up an ambush for the trail-weary soldiers. Had it not been for the captain’s battle savvy and a little bit of luck in sniffing out the ambush, that battalion of the Seventh Cavalry would have made history of a different sort.

As it was, they had to return to the main command, reporting their lack of success to a frustrated Custer.

“Except for bullets, this bunch is out of everything an army needs to march on,” grumbled Shad Sweete as he plopped onto his bedroll between scouts Jonah Hook and Will Comstock.

“You figure we’re ready to boil your greasy moccasins down for soup yet?” Hook asked, pointing at the old trapper’s feet.

He wiggled his toes thoughtfully. “You don’t want to even think of making soup out of these.”

They laughed together. Shad had to admit it helped ease the empty gnawing of their bellies. Following the trail of the fleeing Sioux across this fire-hot skillet bottom of a prairie, the scouts had found the land cleared of game.

“What I wouldn’t give now for some of that hardtack,” complained Will Comstock, a veteran frontiersman. “Weevils or no.”

“Meat’s meat!” Shad cheered. “Maybe them weevils ain’t buffler hump ribs—but they’d go a long way to cheering up a bowl of moccasin stew.”

“Don’t even talk about hump ribs,” Hook mumbled. “Makes my mouth water thinking about them spitting grease over a fire. Instead, we’re down to dreaming about moldy salt pork sold to the Yankees during the goddamned war!”

“Custer’s had enough himself,” Hickok said, coming up out of the darkness. “We’re moving out come first-light.”

Shad rolled up on his elbow as Hickok hunkered at the fire, warming his hands from the coming chill of a prairie night. “Where we bound for, he say?”

“Forced march. Sedgwick. Custer figures to get supplies over there on the South Platte.”

“Glory! It’s about time,” Comstock whispered, collapsing back on his bedroll and gazing overhead at the stars.

“We really gonna get some decent food at this fort?” Hook asked.

“If they got any.” Shad’s eyes measured Hickok.

“Who knows, fellas?” Hickok rose and trudged over to his own bedroll, kicking it flat. “All a man can do is hope.”

“If’n I was a praying man, I’d say amen to that. This bunch that Custer’s leading around is about ready to bolt on him,” Sweete said.

“They got the Colorado gold diggings not far yonder, that’s for sure,” Comstock said.

“Lure of gold is strong enough to lead men to point their noses off into Injun country anytime,” Hickok said.

“Trouble is, it ain’t only the lure of gold,” Sweete said. “Maybe now it’s the lure of some decent food, an end to this hot saddle ride, and a chance for a little piece of shade.”

The next dawn came early enough, but saw the column of dusty twos already pushing northwest toward the South Platte. Custer ordered his scouts out far ahead, with orders to set a bruising pace for his command. Into that furnace of early July on the high plains, the Seventh Cavalry marched, eating up mile after mile as the sun rose off the horizon, hung at midsky for the longest time with no water in sight, and slipped off into the western half of that cruel blue dome overhead.

No water. No stopping. No rest for man nor animal. Most of the dogs belonging to troopers, which had trotted out of Fort Hays with the command weeks before, collapsed from thirst and exhaustion as the hours rolled by, mile after grueling nonstop mile put behind the Seventh Cavalry.

Sixty-five miles in one long summer day.

It was just past the first streaking of stars across the prairie sky when Shad Sweete, Comstock, and Hook stopped at the top of a hill. There they spied the beckoning glow of windows below.

“Riverside Station.” Comstock pulled the floppy hat from his head and swiped a greasy sleeve across his dusty brow. His face, like the rest, was streaked with yellow alkali dust and rivulets of sweat.

“That the one Hickok’s been calling Valley Station?” Shad asked, eyeing the narrow ribbon of water, lying like a silver, moonlit thread across the darker prairie land just beyond the three small shacks and a skeletal corral comprising the outpost.

“Water down there?” Hook inquired, his voice cracking with dryness.

“You’ll have your drink soon enough,” Shad said.

“I’m going now.” Jonah ran his tongue over his cracked lips as he nudged heels into his horse’s flanks.

Sweete caught the reins.

“Let go me,” Hook demanded.

“We got a job to do, Jonah. Ride back—”

“You go do that, old man. Only need one to tell them goddamned soldiers to come on. I don’t only smell water—I see it!”

He yanked on the bridle again, causing Hook’s horse to sidestep suddenly. The ex-Confederate fought the reins a moment, then his right hand shot to his belt.

Comstock had his elk-handled quirt tacked down on Hook’s wrist in the next heartbeat. “Take your hand off the gun.”

His dark eyes flared. “Tell the old man take his hand off my horse!”

“We’re going to ride back to the columns now,” Shad said quietly, hearing the coming of hoofbeats.

Hickok was among them, out of the growing darkness, his horse lathered at the withers, foam at the bit. “Trouble here, boys?”

Sweete never took his eyes off Hook. “No trouble, Bill. Me and Jonah here set to come back and give you word.”

“That must be Valley Station down there,” Hickok sighed. “And—praise God—that’s the Platte lying yonder.” He eyed the three scouts in the silver light. Comstock removed his quirt from Jonah’s wrist as Sweete released the bridle.

“C’mon, Will. You and me ride back and give ol’ Horse-Killer the good news about the station and water.” Hickok tilted his head toward Sweete. “Shad, you and Jonah stay here—ride on down and get yourselves a good drink and tell those fellas the Seventh’s coming in to bivouac tonight.”

Shad glanced at Hook. “All right, Bill. Obliged to you.”

Hickok started off, then flung his voice over his shoulder, turning in the saddle. “Just don’t muddy the water too much that it ain’t fit for the rest of us to drink, Jonah!”

They waited a moment, watching Hickok and Comstock disappear into the starry night splayed on the prairie hills before Sweete slapped Hook on the arm.

“Go pulling a gun on me, boy—I’ll break every one of your fingers in that hand I get the chance!”

“You gotta catch me first, old man!” he whooped, pounding heels into his weary horse, bolting off the hilltop.

Shad sang out at the top of his lungs as well when he set his animal in motion. There was no problem getting the horses rolling—both had been anxious on that hilltop, what with the smell of the nearby river in their alkali-crusted nostrils.

Halfway down the gentle slope, another yellow slash opened up on one of the three low-roofed buildings nestled fifty yards from the river. The short rectangle was as quickly filled with first one, then two and finally a third dark shadow, each making its way into the yard. From the glint of lamplight spraying into the dusty yard, Sweete could see the three held rifles at the ready.

“Ho! The ranch!” he hollered out.

“Who goes?”

“By damned—it’s white men!” yelled a second voice from the darkness.

Shad slowed his horse a bit as they loped past the yard and the three shadows, headed for the river. “A thirsty pair of scouts for the army.”

“What outfit?”

“Seventh Cavalry!” he hollered back, twisting in the saddle as Jonah reached the riverbank up ahead with a joyous splash.

“By damned—Custer’s outfit. You can’t be here,” a new voice called out, the body framed in the lamplit doorway. “How the hell you come across that piece of country so quick?”

By that time Sweete was in the water up to his knees, slurping and gurgling. He turned and hurled his voice up the bank to the four civilians who stood looking down on the two scouts and their thirsty horses.

“By damned is right, boys. When you’re chasing Sioux with George Armstrong Custer, you better be ready to ride across the fry pan plains of hell itself at double time!”

“Sweet Jesus, but you can’t be here yet!” the voice muttered from the top of the bank.

Shad spread his arms out, dripping wet from dousing his hair with a hatful of water. It seeped off his mustache and beard. “Take a look, pilgrims. This ain’t no goddamned ghost you got your eyes laid on.”

Hook joyously flung some water his way. “No, sir. We ain’t ghosts a’tall. Just a pair of poor resurrected souls come wandering in off that godforsaken prairie!”

Jonah got to his feet wearily as Hickok and Sweete came up to the small knot of civilian scouts huddled beneath the stars.

“No word waiting for Custer when we got in,” Hickok told them. Beyond the station’s three low-roofed buildings, the Seventh Cavalry was going into camp. The twinkling of those first few fires brightened the noisy celebration of water.

“Where we head from here—Custer figure that out yet?” Comstock asked.

“He wired for written orders from Sherman … Sheridan—anyone at this point, fellas,” Hickok explained. Then he glanced at Sweete.

The old mountain trapper nodded. “That’s when Custer found out the post commander at Sedgwick already sent written orders out to Custer. Somewhere … out there”—he flung his arm southwest—“there’s a Lieutenant Lyman Kidder and ten troopers of the Second U.S. Cavalry hunting for us now.”

Comstock dug a toe into the sandy soil. “Unless Pawnee Killer’s Sioux already got ’em.”

The group fell quiet a moment. Then Hickok spoke again.

“I figure we’ll find out soon enough what happened to that patrol. As for us, grab what shut-eye you can. We’re back in the saddle before sunup.”

“Marching north to Sedgwick, ain’t we?” Comstock asked. “It can’t be more’n fifty mile up there.”

Hickok shook his head. “Fort Wallace, Will.”

“Fort goddamned Wallace? Why in hell?”

“Custer figures its the only place where there’ll be enough supplies to ration this outfit,” Sweete told them. “’Sides, I think Custer can’t get Kidder’s outfit off his mind.”

Jonah turned toward the southwest, at his back the twinkling firelights of the cavalry camp, staring into the slap-dark of the rolling prairie grassland that had swallowed Custer’s regiment and spit them back out again. He wondered if Kidder’s men would be so lucky.

The next morning the entire command was moving at first-light, moving away from the South Platte, reluctantly.

Twenty … twenty-five … thirty and more miles per day Custer put behind them. Pushing relentlessly toward Fort Wallace. That night a half dozen men slipped off unheard into the prairie darkness.

And the following dawn found the rest whispering at report before they saddled up and pushed off again behind their hard-driving commander. Better than forty miles he prodded them to march.

Through that night of 6 July more than two dozen slipped away, every last man of them taking his horse with him.

Already the mad chase had covered as many miles as he had fingers on one hand.

Pawnee Killer’s blood was up. His thirty warriors were warming to the kill. For this was truly fun—to have a wild chase such as this, running down each victim and killing him before continuing on the trail of the rest.

The Sioux had cut a fresh trail miles back—a dozen, perhaps as many as fifteen men. Iron-shod horses. White men.

Within minutes, his war party had been rewarded with finding the quarry in the distance. One man out in front by a few hundred yards. A leader riding in the van. And ten soldiers in a short double column.

The white man always rode like that, Pawnee Killer knew. While the Indian rode in single file.

His warriors now had four of the soldiers dead behind them in the running battle. The white men riding their worn-out horses would turn and attempt to shoot behind them at the warriors on their furious ponies.

The air crackled with sporadic gunshots. The white men cursed and cried out as the warriors drew near. But not a one gave up easily.

It was good, the Killer thought. Good that each one should fight to the last breath.

The last eight finally reined up in a frantic spray of dirt and summer-cured grass, dismounting on the run, dragging their lathered horses into a crude ring. They began shooting the animals as Pawnee Killer’s screeching warriors topped the rise.

Down behind the still-quivering, thrashing horses the last soldiers crouched, laying their pistols and long banded-barrel rifles over the still-heaving ribs of the foam-flecked army mounts. And began returning a hot fire like nothing Pawnee Killer had ever seen in his fighting life.

The white men had decided to sell their lives dearly.

He ordered his warriors to stay at a distance, crawling on their bellies along the slopes of the gentle hill to the west of the white men, through the grass on the south and east. The north was open, flat land. Unusable for attack.

From three directions the Brule warriors began walking in their deadly iron-tipped hail, arrow after arrow raining down from a cruel, cloudless sky on the last survivors of that wild chase across the summer-honed prairie.

First one, then another, and a third soldier cried out in pain—a yelp shut off in fear or death. And still more arrows rained down on them while the last of their big brown horses thrashed its way into death. Behind the still carcasses the men hid, only a few firing, and only then when they had a target.

The warriors gave them no targets.

Instead, the arrows arced out of the tall prairie grass far off, sailing into the cruel summer blue and down again in an ugly flight of whispering death that caused another soldier to cry out. And another. And still another.

Until all was quiet.

“Stop!” Pawnee Killer called out, waving both his arms as he came to his knees, signaling the warriors to the east and those on the long slope to the west.

Eventually he stood and took a half dozen steps toward the far ring of silent horses. Another ten steps, his heart pounding, afraid one of them would be alive … alive enough to—

He fired his leveled rifle as the figure stirred.

Then went to his knees to reload. Around him the warriors cried out, swirling madly out of the grass like demons who would no longer listen to his orders.

It was time to have someone pay for what they had lost to the soldiers in the recent moons.

They were over the barricade of still-warm carcasses in a matter of heartbeats—clubbing, slashing, hammering with their rifle butts. Counting coup and stripping weapons. Claiming the white man’s objects.

In a fury of bloodlust for what had been done by the soldiers to their families, stripping their women and children and old ones of their lodges and dried meat and blankets and robes, Pawnee Killer’s warriors hacked arms and legs and hands and feet from the bodies.

Heads were smashed to jelly beside the stinking carcasses of their tired horses.

The manhood parts were slashed from their bodies.

Thighs were opened up like a fresh buffalo kill, from hip to knee.

Bellies riven so that slick purple gut spilled forth.

“This one, you will want to see,” said one of the older warriors. “Come, Pawnee Killer.”

“Yes, I know him,” the chief said. “We will not take his scalp.”

“A Lakota?”

The chief nodded. “Guiding for the pony soldiers.”

“He should have known better, Pawnee Killer.”

“Perhaps he did not know better,” he replied. “These were brave men. They fought well while they could. It is the last thing we can do for him—leaving his body untouched. Scalp him only, but leave the scalp here.”

“You know his name?”

“Yes. It is Red Bead,” Pawnee Killer replied quietly, the wind rustling the summer-dried grass. “As children we played together in our camp along the Buffalo Wallow River.”