Cry of the Hawk

17

Late Summer, 1866

“WHAT YOU FIGURE on us doing now?” Artus Moser asked his cousin.

Jonah Hook’s lips were drawn across his sharply chiseled face in a thin line he dared not break just yet.

Moser swiped a damp bandanna down his face in what had become an automatic gesture here in late July on the southern plains, deep in the eastern part of Indian Territory, also known as the Nations. They stood on the crude covered porch of a trader’s house, one of those who by government license could legally trade with both the civilized and warrior bands assigned reservations here. While he had been glad to see white faces and hear English, the trader to the Creek tribe had nonetheless been less than forthcoming with information.

Here among the gentle timbered hills that formed the Kiamichi Mountains, Moser and Hook had wandered for days, asking their questions, growing more and more frustrated that so few understood their words, even less understood their attempts at crude sign language—anything to make the Creeks understand they were looking for a large band of white horsemen who were carrying along with them a light-haired white woman and three children.

“We can’t stay here, Jonah.”

“What you want from me?” Hook snapped, his cheeks red with more than the sticky heat. Even the leaves of the hardwood trees seemed to seep a damp, oppressive warmth into the heavy air.

“I come here with you—to help you find Gritta, dammit.” Moser kept his voice low as he glanced back through the open doorway, his eyes finding the trader behind his long counter, stirring a breeze before his face with one of those paper fans.

“C’mon—we gotta get away from here.” Hook stepped off the low porch, heading out.

“Where, Jonah? Back home?”

Hook whirled. “We ain’t got no home back there now. Not you. Not me.”

Moser turned as he heard the scrape of the old trader’s stool on the wood floor. The man was coming out of the steamy darkness of his store, then stopped and leaned against the doorjamb, as if he would go no farther into the heat.

“Didn’t realize you boys was on foot. Come all the way down from Missouri, walking, did you?”

“Most of us walked home from the war—lot farther’n that,” Moser replied. He watched the droplet of sweat creep down the old man’s bulbous nose, wondering when it would fall. Instead, it seemed to cling tenaciously there, pendant like a clear jewel the old man wore.

“Man who walks on foot, and goes off searching for someone who rides a horse, can’t really expect to get anywhere.”

Hook came to the step but did not mount to the porch. “Don’t you think we thought of that? They may be ahead of us—way ahead of us … but that don’t mean I gotta give up just ’cause they’re moving faster’n us.”

The trader fanned himself a bit more, moving the clear drop of sweat back and forth until it fell. “I suppose I wanted to be sure of my first impression of you fellas—that you weren’t here to stir these folks up. Enough of that going on, what with the Cheyenne and Kiowa and those Arapaho pushing up against these Creek from the west. Creek just wanna be left alone, you know.”

“We told you why we come here,” Hook said. “And now, since you can’t help us, we’ll be on our way.” He turned from the porch again, but stopped when the trader’s words yanked him around.

“You got any money on you—we can talk about you boys buying some horses.”

Moser nodded, starting to speak, but Hook opened his mouth first.

“What we need horses for, old man? No one knows a thing about this bunch we’ve been trailing out of Missouri. Ever since we crossed the line into the Territories—seems these bastards just up and disappeared like smoke.”

“Wish I could help you there, truly do. But took me years to get the trust of these people. You gotta understand, these Creek been chivied all the way from Alabam’ by white soldiers not that many years ago. Any white man come in here don’t see a welcome sign hung out.”

“Didn’t expect to stay round here long enough to have no one hug me,” Hook said.

“So you won’t be needing the horses, is it?”

“We could use ’em—we just don’t have no money.”

“Neither one of us come home with anything,” Moser replied, knowing it was a lie. He had seen Jonah dig up those few dollars from under that stone in the hearth. But Artus also knew that money had to last them as long as they could stretch it on the necessaries. Right now, a horse was a luxury. But in glancing at his cousin, Moser saw the light had changed in his eyes.

“I didn’t see no horses out in the corral when we come up,” Hook said suspiciously.

“I won’t keep them out where someone can walk off with them,” the trader explained. He pointed the fan off in a general southern direction. “My wife’s people keep them with their stock. Down by their place, a few miles off.”

“That your wife in there, the Injun squaw?”

“She’s Creek—yes.”

“Handsome woman.”

“Give us twelve children through the years. We almost stopped count on the grandchildren,” the trader said with a smile.

“Her people trade for horses?”

“Only if they know you.”

“They know you, don’t they?”

The trader fanned himself, studying Hook over the top of the fan. “So tell me, what you got to trade if you don’t have money?” He eyed their weapons. “That rifle of yours be worth two horses any day, son.”

“I’ll bet it would, old man,” Hook replied caustically. “It ain’t for sale. How you expect a man to survive out here if he don’t have a rifle?”

“You both hefting around big belt guns—”

“The rifle ain’t for sale.”

“Nothing else you want to trade, like them belt guns?”

“You take ’em for two horses?” Moser asked hopefully.

“I’ve got an old mare, fifteen years she is. Give you her for them two belt guns of yours.”

Hook laughed humorlessly. “You’re crazy, old man. We ain’t interested. C’mon, Artus.”

“Maybe there’s something we can—”

“C’mon, Artus.” He kicked off through the red dust that stived up into the heavy, damp air broken by shafts of unrelenting sunshine that broke through the thick-leafed trees.

Moser wanted to say something to the old man, but could not think of anything. He shrugged and leapt off the porch, following his younger cousin. Artus caught up with Jonah at the trees where they penetrated the cooler, heavy air of the forest, following the trail that had brought them here.

“Where we going now?”

“You’re always asking me. Why don’t you tell me where we ought to go.”

Moser thought hard on it, unable to feel right about anything he might suggest. “I don’t know where, now that we lost that bunch.”

“Then you ain’t a bit of help to us, are you?”

“S’pose not.”

“How ’bout if I suggest something then?”

“All right, Jonah. Where we should go?”

“Get us some horses.”

“Where we gonna get some—” He stopped, remembering. “You ain’t thinking of trying to trade them Creek nothing for a couple of horses, are you?”

Jonah shook his head, a crooked smile growing on his face. “I been thinking. We need to find work. And up to Nebraska Territory they’ve got work. But—I also been thinking we can’t walk up there.”

“So how you gonna get horses?”

“We’re gonna borrow ’em.”

His throat seized up as his heart leapt. “You mean steal ’em. That’s what you mean!”

Jonah grabbed him. “They got plenty. They won’t miss two.”

Moser swallowed hard, trying to figure it as Hook grabbed his shoulders, bringing his face close.

“Artus, it’ll be all right. We’ll wait until way past moonrise, then go in and lead a couple horses out.”

“How we gonna do that? We ain’t got any tack—”

“The old trader back there. In his barn. We’ll go back after dark and get us bridles and what we can carry off.”

“Bareback?”

“If we have to.”

“Them Creek, they’ll shoot horse thieves, you know that.”

“Shit, Artus.” Hook smiled. “You been shot at before.”

“If you boys plan on doing any harder work than lifting that whiskey glass and poking whores,” announced the army major, “I know where a man can earn good money.”

“Thirteen dollars a month and two squares?” hollered a dirty civilian from the back of the watering hole the major had just entered, leading an escort of four privates.

There came an immediate burst of laughter from those in the room. Jonah Hook grinned and turned back to his drink. He and Artus Moser, like so many others, knew all too well what hard work soldiering could be.

“Slave work—that’s what it is, Major!” yelled out another of the civilians.

The officer waited for the group to quiet itself. “I’ve come to offer enlistment in the frontier army. General William Tecumseh Sherman has already dispatched a large body of troops from this department to Indian country.”

“Injun country? What the hell you think that is right out that door, Major? The cobble-paved streets of St. Louie?”

More laughter followed the jeering catcalls from the civilians long at working on their thirsts in the dimly lit, mud-floored saloon that passed for a barroom in Dobe Town, just beyond the boundaries of the Fort Kearney military reservation in Nebraska Territory.

“Colonel Henry B. Carrington recently departed with hundreds of foot troops to protect the Bozeman Trail for emigrants heading to the mines of Idaho and Montana.”

“Now that’s where a man can make him some money,” Artus whispered into Jonah’s ear.

“If he makes it through Injun hunting grounds with his hair.” Hook watched Moser absently stroke a palm over the back of his head.

“Colonel Carrington’s mission in protecting the Bozeman Road has depleted this department’s manpower strength. General Sherman hopes we can enlist what we need in the way of good soldiers right here on the prairie,” the major went on.

Down the rough-plank bar from Jonah a man with a hawkish beak of a nose turned about on the major and leaned his elbows back on the bar.

“Major, maybe you should just take your enlisting outfit on outta here. Most of these boys already had their fill of soldiering—for either Uncle Billy Sherman or Robert E. Lee.”

The major turned toward the speaker. “I take it you fought for the Confederacy?”

“I did not, Major. From The Wilderness and Gettysburg, Cold Harbor and Manassas. And I fought at the siege of Atlanta under Sherman hisself.” He turned back to the bar. “I had enough of soldiering. I can make more at a poker table in a week than I can in a month of Sundays as a buck-assed private, digging privy holes and shining officers’ boots.”

“You, sir—are the sort of soldier the army needs on the frontier at this moment in history. With the great rebellion subdued back east, our Republic can now turn its attention to the matter of pacifying the plains.”

“Go tell that to the goddamned Sioux!” yelled a faceless voice from the smoky recesses.

“No one is saying it will be easy,” said the major, hurling his voice into the barroom once more. “What say you now? Any of you ready for adventure in the Army of the West? I’ll have enlistment forms ready at this far table when you’ve thought it over and want to join those who will fight to bring peace to this land, once and for all, now that the Rebels lost.”

Jonah turned. “We didn’t lose.”

The major turned back to find the tall, thin rail of a man who had flung his words at the officer’s back. “The South lost the war more than a year ago—in case you haven’t heard.”

“I heard, Major. And I was there. But—the South didn’t lose.” Jonah listened as the barroom behind him fell still again. The Union veteran at the bar had turned around once more, this time to study Hook.

“If the South didn’t lose, mister—what would you call it?” asked the major, slapping his gloves across the front of his britches, sending sprays of fine dust into the smoky, oily atmosphere.

“We was whipped.”

“Damn right you were whipped,” shouted one of the major’s escort.

“I don’t see any difference,” said the major.

“Big difference. If a man loses, that means he give up. And I don’t know of many who gave up fighting until Robert E. Lee told ’em he was done and wanted his soldiers to go on home.”

“You lose or you’re whipped. Same—”

“No it ain’t, Major. When a man’s whipped, it means his enemy’s got more strength, better rifles, more rifles. But it don’t mean he lost. It just means his enemy whipped him.”

“The man’s right, Major,” said the Union veteran as he inched down along the bar toward Hook. “It would be about like me and the Johnny here taking on the five of you soldiers because your damned big mouth won’t stop flapping.”

“I won’t be talked to like—”

“And if the two of us get whipped by the five of you—which ain’t really likely, me taking a hard look at your escort here—then we get whipped. But we didn’t lose the fight.” He turned to Hook. “Isn’t that what you’re trying to explain to this dunderhead of a major?”

Jonah smiled. “You said it just fine for me, mister. Just fine. I’d buy you a drink—but I’m afraid my cousin and me are a shade light.”

“No matter,” replied the Union man, turning his back on the major and escort. “Let me offer you two a drink on me.” He snagged the neck of the bottle being held by the barkeep. “Put it on my bill.”

“They wanted to see the color of our money before we got a drink,” Moser apologized.

“It’s like that out here. There’s a lot of worthless scrip floating around these days. Gold will always do the trick. That, and army money.”

“Always army money,” Jonah replied. “Ain’t no other work for a man what needs a job to eat.”

“Take heart, friends. The army isn’t the only good money on the plains,” said the veteran. “I’m Eli Robbins.”

They shook hands and introduced themselves, then helped themselves to Robbins’s bottle.

“You look like you ain’t hurting for walking-around money,” Moser said.

Robbins smiled. He stood taller than Moser and almost as tall as Hook, but with a good thirty pounds on the whipcord-lean Confederate from Missouri. “I suppose I’m not. Work when I have to—never really want to. When my poke gets short, I know where to go looking. What brings you two Southern boys all the way out here to the middle of Nebraska?”

“Jonah come through these parts a couple times while he served out here—fighting Injuns.”

The stranger’s eyebrow lifted. “You was with one of them galvanized outfits, eh?”

“Third U.S. Volunteers,” he answered. “Kept the telegraph up and the roads open when we could.”

Robbins chuckled. “That was a job of soldiering. Outfits like yours cut their teeth on Sioux and Cheyenne I hear.”

Hook wiped his bushy black mustache with the back of his hand. “What you said before, Eli—you got any ideas where we could find work?”

“I’m fixing on moseying south myself in a day or two. Hear the K-P needs hunters.”

“What’s the K-P?” Moser asked.

“Kansas Pacific Railroad. Word has it that the track gangs have reached Abilene.”

“Down in Kansas.”

He nodded. “They need hunters to supply meat for their bed gangs and riprap as well.”

“Bed gangs?” Moser asked.

“Level the road where the track will lay. Riprap cuts through timber and brush, crossing water with bridges.”

“I’ve shot mule deer and antelope before,” Jonah said, pouring himself another glass of the red whiskey. “I figure I could do that.”

Robbins chuckled. “You won’t be shooting no mule deer or antelope out there, Jonah. Them gangs get real hungry.”

“Why no deer or antelope?”

Robbins snorted with a chuckle. “Didn’t you ever see ’em while you was soldiering out there in Dakota Territory?”

“See ’em—see what?”

“Buffalo, goddammit! The K-P needs buffalo hunters!”