Cry of the Hawk

48

July-August, 1868

IN FIVE DAYS they had crossed the great, black-domed expanse of wilderness that “welcomed” any man suicidal enough to try that stretch of prairie south of the Platte River from Fort Kearney into the Smoky Hill country of Kansas.

Shad Sweete had driven them hard with what little darkness they had left that first night, leaving behind Dobe Town and its dusty huts and splatterings of yellow light as he steered them beneath the great dark map of the sky. Due south. Keeping the North Star over his right shoulder. Where he kept turning to look from time to time. Looking behind too, for he was sure they were following.

Yet as the sun tore itself in a bloody greeting from the bowels of the earth that first morning, the old trapper had still seen no sign of pursuit. Sweete led the others down into the cottonwood and willow and alder of the Little Blue River. For the next half hour they kept their horses plodding the middle of that stream, east for a ways until he found the mouth of a ravine that he thought would do.

It was there he told them to dismount, unsaddle, and picket the horses close by on the good grass just up the draw. When they were all back in the shade, he let the rest fall quickly asleep.

Shad woke Jonah Hook a few hours later as the sun climbed halfway to midsky. Without many words spoken between them, he showed the Confederate where to stretch out in the tall grass of the riverbank and watch their backtrail over an immense expanse of country laid out before him.

“Don’t you go back to sleep, Jonah.”

Hook rubbed the grit from his eyes with both sets of knuckles. “I won’t.”

“Hattie counting on you to keep your nose in the wind and eyes on the skyline, son.”

“I ain’t let her down yet. Go grab you some sleep, old man. I’ll be fine.”

Sweete stirred later when he heard footsteps. Pulling his pistol, he rolled over and pointed the weapon at the mouth of the narrow ravine as Hook was creeping in. “Someone coming?” he asked in a harsh whisper, his blood pumping full in his ears as he sat up.

“No,” Hook whispered back. “Just come to get Fordham. His turn to stand watch.”

Shad had glanced at the sky, finding the sun halfway to the far horizon, on the other side of the ravine now. The Southerner had stood a good five hours or better.

Yet he felt sorrier still for Fordham as the Mormon was rousted from his sound slumber. Neither Shad nor the Danite deserter had slept in more than two days before their sudden appearance in Dobe Town, coming east from Laramie, hoping for some word of Jonah Hook or the small splinter group of Danites the Confederate was searching for. Instead of finding word among those huts clustered along the Platte River, Fordham had recognized two of Boothog Wiser’s men still in the watering hole that dark morning, just about the time the shooting broke out somewhere down the long, rutted main street in that squalid little town.

By that time it had already been one hell of a ride for the two of them, tearing away from Laramie after a second of Jubilee Usher’s bounty hunters showed up at the fort, following Fordham’s trail that far. And before that second Danite died, he had spilled a little of the plans that Usher and Wiser were moving in separate battalions, north through Kansas—with orders to rendezvous at Laramie by midsummer, where they would celebrate the capture of Riley Fordham.

And for some reason that had again made the hairs stand at the back of Shad Sweete’s neck. The two leaders dividing their command made the old mountain man feel the need for pushing east as fast and as long as their horses could carry them. A week of solid riding, brutal on his old body. Swapping lathered animals for fresh at road ranches along the way. Pushing faster, compelled by some need to hurry. Arriving in time.

Only by the power of his medicine. By the power of Shad’s own spirit helper. Something Jonah Hook would likely never understand, he thought again now as he closed his burning eyes and tried for more fitful sleep that afternoon in the narrow ravine. He felt the ride more in his old bones than either of the younger men would ever realize.

Getting on in winters now—too many robe seasons behind him to go acting like some young bull who could ride all day and make love all night.

How he had longed for Toote to be curled under the shade of the willow with him as it grew hotter and the ants and beetles found his fragrant, sweaty body too much to their liking.

They saddled at sunset and rode that night until sunrise then hid and slept and kept watch until they rode again a third night beneath the swallowing prairie sky lit only by starshine and a late-summer moon that too quickly sailed overhead.

By the third day Hattie had begun to come around. It had taken time, day by day, hour by hour of the torture. But by the evening of that third day of hiding out the sun, as they were resaddling, refilling canteens at the little stream that Shad said they would follow south to the Solomon River, the girl had suddenly shaken her head, looked up and around at the sinking rose light in the sky, and found Riley Fordham tightening the cinch on his horse nearby.

Hattie started screaming, leapt to her feet, her throat filled with terror as she darted off—and ran right into Shad Sweete: the big man was a frightening stranger—surely part of Jubilee Usher’s band of Danites.

It took a long time for Jonah to calm his daughter, cradling her in his arms as she collapsed there beside the little creek bordered with elm and alder and plum brush. Jonah had waved the other two men off while she sobbed, muttering incoherently as the laudanum released its grip on her. Rocking her against him, he murmured soothingly into her ear.

The sun had fully torn itself from the sky that evening before she tore herself from her father’s embrace. She stared fully at last into his bearded face, touching him, kissing him, not really believing it was her own pappy. Then the terror caught in her throat as she remembered the two others who had been with her father. She turned, finding the pair seated close by.

“He’s one of them,” she whispered, pointing to Fordham.

“Riley Fordham, Hattie. He’s took care of you before.”

She said, “I never knew his name, but—I’ll never forget his face.”

“Riley—come on over here now,” Hook said. “The other’n, Hattie—he’s like a father to me now. Taught me, kept me alive a time or two. And they both saved our hides a few days back when I was busting you free of the ones had you prisoner.”

“You remember me, Hattie?” Fordham asked as he came to kneel nearby.

She nodded shyly, sliding behind her father. “Never knew your name.”

“I’m Riley.”

Hattie glanced sheepishly at Jonah, then stuck out her hand to the man. Fordham took it and shook.

“You’ve got good manners, Hattie Hook.”

“Her mama taught all the children good.” Hook choked on the sour ball of pain the thought of the boys caused him.

“He … Riley protected me, Pappy,” she explained in a whisper, holding her father all the tighter. “I never … without him—”

“Jonah, time we was going,” Sweete suggested. “We only got so much dark these summer nights. Let’s use every minute we got.”

“I did not introduce myself,” Hattie said. “Mr.—?”

“Shad Sweete,” he replied with a big grin, bending at the waist gallantly there among the dried grass and rustling plum brush to accept her tiny hand. “Much pleased to meet you, Miss Hattie.” Then he kissed the back of that filthy, alabaster, rope-burned hand.

“You see what he did? He kissed my hand, Pappy!” she exclaimed, suppressing a giggle.

Hook smiled at the old mountain man before Sweete turned to his horse. “That’s right, Hattie. Shad Sweete’s full of surprises.”

The afternoon of the fifth day found them striking the Kansas Pacific tracks just east of Fort Harker. Riley Fordham suggested they ride east from there.

“First town ought’n to be Salina,” Shad Sweete had told them.

“We’ll find a rail stop there, won’t we, Jonah?” Fordham asked.

“For certain we will,” Hook replied. “You still want to do what you set your mind to do?”

“I do. I owe Hattie for running out on her—like I told you that first night as we rode south from Dobe Town. I’m gonna watch over her for you, Jonah. That’s a promise. She’ll be safe while you go fetch the rest of your family.”

Hook had smiled, then glanced at Sweete, who nodded approvingly. “Looks like you got yourself a stepdaughter, Riley.”

“More like my little sister.”

By noon the sixth day they were riding into the outskirts of Salina, Kansas—a town smelling of new-cut lumber and weathering sideboards, of cattle dung and horse apples and the sweat of honest men at labor on this midsummer’s day. The commerce of the east probing west, ever west.

They stopped at a plain-fronted, two-story clapboard house set off the main street away from the whir of things, where hung a sign in a yard overgrown with too much ragweed and prairie bunchgrass. A rap on the door brought a fleshy woman wiping her flour-dusted hands on a dingy apron.

“Afternoon,” Riley said, smiling and setting his tongue for charm. “My name’s Fordham, and this here is Jonah Hook.”

The woman nodded to each, her eyes coming back to the girl standing between them.

“And this is Hattie, Mr. Hook’s daughter.”

“Hello, ma’am,” she greeted the woman softly.

“Hello yourself, young lady.”

“Could we ask a favor of you?” Fordham inquired.

“Room-and-board prices posted on the sign by the door,” she said, cutting him off.

“No, ma’am. We just want to know if Hattie could use some of your water, a clean towel, and a little of your lye soap to freshen up, a young lady and all … if you don’t mind.”

She was not long in eyeing the girl down, then up, once more, and determining the child was badly in need of a good scrubbing. “You come on in, young lady. We’ll take you up to my room where we’ll freshen you right up. You fellas, just make yourself comfortable on the porch here. I’ll send my girl out with some lemonade for you.”

The good part of an hour later, Hattie reappeared. While not washed, her dingy dress had been nonetheless dusted, and the many small tears repaired by the hand of a fine seamstress. The young woman stood before them, freshly scrubbed, cheeks rosy, eyes gleaming and bright, her hair washed, brushed, and newly braided, finished off with a scrap of ribbon.

“Her teeth were something awful, you ought to know, Mr. Hook,” the woman said.

Riley grinned at Jonah when Hook sheepishly covered his own mouth with a hand.

“We thank you for seeing to her teeth too,” Hook mumbled. “Lord, Hattie—it’s been so many years. You’ve growed so. And look at you now!”

“What do we owe you?” Hook asked the landlady.

The woman looked at the girl, then Jonah and Riley, and finally the big man in greasy buckskins. She gave Hattie a gentle hug, then a playful slap on her rear.

“You go ’long now, Hattie. It was my pleasure, fellas. You all take care of that little lady now. She’s something real special.”

Hook brought his hand up to shake the woman’s. “Real special. Thankee, ma’am.”

They led their weary horses back onto the main, dusty street, not finding it hard to locate the rail station, where they counted their assets after inquiring the cost of a ticket east.

“Got enough to get her to Kansas City,” Hook said.

“She needs to go farther than that,” Fordham declared, staring at the scrip in his hand. “Clerk said it cost forty dollars to get to St. Louis.”

“Only twenty’s what he said,” Hook replied. “But I don’t have that much. It’s for damn sure I ain’t asking for your money, Riley.”

“I’m paying. And I’m riding too—like I said from the start. Two tickets to St. Louis is forty dollars, and I’ve got enough for both.” He patted his belly, beneath his shirt where he had belted a leather wallet. “I figure to have a lot left over from what I eased away from Jubilee Usher when I ran out on him.”

“More’n enough to get you to St. Louis?”

“That, and enough to get Hattie enrolled in a good seminary.”

“Seminary?”

“A girl’s boarding school.” Fordham looked down at the young woman. “If that’s all right with you and your daddy.”

She beamed, went to embrace her father. “May I, Pappy?”

“I only just got you back, Hattie.” Clutching her to him, Hook finally smiled, crinkling the flesh on his homely, bony face. Moisture welled in the eyes that finally looked up at Fordham. “Whyn’t you go on now, Riley—and buy them two tickets to St. Louis. This young lady’s gonna need a proper escort she goes riding the rails east to boarding school.”

As Jonah stood and drew up the cinch in the gray light of summer’s dawn here outside Fort Laramie, he knee-popped the horse in the belly, causing the mare to blow. He yanked quickly and buckled—in, down, and in again. And remembered that sunny afternoon back nearly a month gone now. A July afternoon in a railroad town called Salina cropping up like a prairie weed beside the Smoky Hill and Kansas Pacific line.

With the whistle growing more and more faint, he and Shad Sweete had reined up atop the first row of low hills shouldered along the timbered river course, turning in their saddles to gaze back at those last few cars of the eastbound disappearing into the shimmering summer haze of that late afternoon.

“She’s gonna be fine, Jonah,” Sweete had told him.

“I know she is.”

“Time we get to Laramie, chances are Riley’s wire be waiting for you already.”

“It’s something I need to know. Where she is. Who she’s with. For so long—”

“Any man can understand that. Especially Riley Fordham. He’ll wire you where she is. The school matron’s name.”

Shad swiped at troubling, buzzing, green-backed flies tormenting the men and horses in the afternoon heat.

Still Jonah had sat, watching until the last smudges of billowing wood smoke was all that remained on the far horizon. “She wants me bring her mother home,” he had said ….

Here at Fort Laramie now Sweete lumbered up beside the younger man as the cool breezes worked their way off the Medicine Bow Mountains to the west. Down the valley of the LaRamee River, through the smoked-hide lodges clustered in a small circle where the old mountain man and wife and daughter camped among the others in the shadow of the white soldiers’ fort.

Hook tugged the diamond hitch on the pack animal before Sweete spoke.

“I want you know I was disappointed as you, Jonah—finding Usher’s bunch already pushed through here before we got back.”

“I’ll find him,” Jonah replied. “I know who. And I know where now. I’ll get Gritta back home with Hattie. Like I promised the girl.”

Shad motioned the women on over, Toote and Pipe Woman, when they emerged quietly from the lodge into the new light of day. “Any use me asking to go ’long with you, son?”

He turned to the old mountain man. “I s’pose there’s still a lot for me to learn, Shad. But not this trip. The track is plain enough to read—and we both know they’re headed back to that Salt Lake country. It’s just a matter of time now.”

“Man always needs someone watching out for his backside, Jonah.”

He dropped the stirrup leather and strode over to the older man. “If ever I feel the need of that—I know one man I can trust to do it. You pulled my fat out of the fire a time or two.”

“You’re still a young hoss, too. Lots of time for us.”

Toote hugged Jonah just as she had when he had pulled away on that trail east. But now, to everyone’s surprise but her own, the young woman came forward into the arms Toote backed away from.

“Come back, Jonah Hook,” Pipe Woman said quietly in her rough-edged English. She had clearly practiced for this leave-taking.

He gazed down into her pretty face, noticing the dark, cherry eyes misting over. He suddenly sensed the hurt of tearing away, like flesh from flesh.

“I got to find her.” He looked at Shad for help. “Dead or alive. I got to—”

Sweete put his big hands on his daughter’s shoulders and gently pulled her back from Hook. “We know. I’ll make her understand why you’re going, Jonah.”

“You do, don’t you?”

Sweete nodded. “Come gimme a hug, son. And tell me you’ll be back. Tell Pipe Woman too. That you’ll be back. One day.”

He looked at her, snagged her arms again, and crunched her with all he had to give at that moment, feeling a little less hollow for human closeness. He brushed her cheek with his lips, knowing if he did anything more, he would be sorry for it. Like he was doing Gritta wrong because he would likely find himself staying when he had to be pushing on after Jubilee Usher and the Danites. There was a woman and two boys out there.

Releasing Pipe Woman, Jonah quickly hurried into the big man’s arms and turned away before he betrayed himself.

“You know her heart is riding off with you, Jonah. Take care that you do come back to us.”

Atop the young mare, yanking on the halter to the pack animal, then reining away, Jonah swallowed down the emptiness and hurt. He rode away, hard and fast. Not knowing for sure what else to do now with the hollow pain.

Knowing only that he could not stay while there was still blood and kin and half of him still out there among the deserts and mountains.

Still out there … somewhere.