Cry of the Hawk

25

April, 1867

IT WAS TO be an expedition to show the flag.

“Hancock the Superb,” they called him. He, who had been most responsible for holding the vital center of the Union line against Pickett’s deadly charge at Gettsyburg. Let the nomadic warriors of the plains know that “The Thunderbolt,” General Winfield Scott Hancock, had led troops into every one of those bloody battles fought by the Army of the Potomac.

Yet now Hancock had to figure out how to deal with Indians on the Great Plains.

“Looking more and more like the bands want war,” Shad Sweete told Jonah on their march away from those log-and-adobe buildings that made up Fort Harker standing beside the Smoky Hill River. They were pointing their noses south by west on the Olde Santa Fe Trail, headed for Fort Larned erected along the Arkansas River. “What with the way they’ve been making hay on the freight roads—shutting things down flat. Hickok says that the general plans to give the Cheyenne and Sioux just that—war.”

Right about now Hook wasn’t all that sure this was where he wanted to be. He had been pushed and prodded and goaded from one war into another, from the Civil War into Connor’s War on the Powder. And looking for some whisper of a trace of his family, Hook found himself riding at the head of a huge column of cavalry, infantry, and artillery might marching off toward what had the makings of a new war.

“Ain’t he even gonna try talking to the Injuns?” Jonah asked innocently.

“For certain he will. Hickok says the general plans on palavering with the chiefs, first off. But damn if Hancock don’t make a lot of bluster and carry a damned big stick when he claims he’s just going out to palaver,” Sweete replied. “Bragging that he won’t tolerate no insolence from the warrior bands.”

General Hancock was, in fact, forced to cool his heels at Fort Larned. On 7 April, after having arrived with a force of fourteen hundred soldiers of the Seventh Cavalry, 37th Infantry, along with a battery of the Fourth Artillery and a pontoon train, the general was informed a delegation of chiefs was indeed on its way to see him. Then, as if the weather itself conspired against the Thunderbolt’s plans to subdue the tribes of the Great Plains, a spring snowstorm caught the delegates in their camp some thirty miles west from Fort Larned, up the Pawnee Fork of the Arkansas River. Five days later, only two Cheyenne chiefs came in from the snowy countryside: White Horse and Tall Bull.

“Damn if Hancock didn’t give them two Cheyenne what for,” Hook explained to Sweete and the other scouts at their camp fire that next morning while coffee boiled. “Like a Bible-thumping circuit rider, preachifying hell and damnation if they didn’t toe his line.”

Shad knelt over the fire, dragging the coffeepot from the flames, allowing the roiling water to slow itself. He pushed it toward his guest. “That’s why we’re marching up Pawnee Fork this morning, Jonah. General wants to preach his piece to more’n just them two.”

“Something down in my gut troubles me—telling me I don’t want to get so close to that many Injuns ever again.” Hook wrapped a greasy bandanna around the pot handle so he could pour coffee into the tin cups the others had waiting. “What I saw up there at Platte Bridge two years back was enough to last any man a normal lifetime.”

Shad grinned. “But here you squat, marching with the army on the trail of these red buggers—”

“Don’t remind me how stupid I am, Shad!”

“Why the devil you sign on with this outfit, Jonah—you don’t figure to get so close to Injuns?”

“Right about now, I’m wondering why I signed on myself.”

“Keep your nose in the wind and your eye up there on the horizon—you’ll fare through all right,” Sweete reminded.

The following afternoon, Hickok and Milner had the advance party of scouts spread out on a broad front, each of those plainsmen knowing they could expect to meet warriors riding out to protect their villages at any moment. Instead, mile after mile of shimmering prairie was crossed, with no sign of the bands or their crossing.

Late in the afternoon, only the horizon betrayed a massive dust cloud.

Hickok came tearing back toward his flankers, reining up and haunch-sliding his mount around in a tight circle, his shoulder-length hair lifting in the breeze from the collar of his red waist-length Zouave jacket resplendent with gold braid. “We got problems, Shad!”

“They’re running, ain’t they?”

“By glory if they ain’t.”

“They torn down the lodges?”

“No,” Hickok replied. “Just bolting off—women and young’uns.”

“Warriors staying behind?”

“They’ll likely guard the retreat.” Hickok reined about. “I’m going to tell the old man!”

Hancock immediately growled his displeasure with the fleeing Indians and ordered Hickok around, dispatched back to the village to find one of the headmen he could parley with.

“Tell those chiefs they better round their people up and bring them back, goddammit! Make sure they understand this is a bad show of faith on their part.”

“To them, General,” Hickok explained from atop his prancing horse, “this many soldiers along is a clear show of what your intentions are.”

“By God—if they want war, I’m here to give it to them!” Hancock snapped. “Now go do what the hell I’m paying you for, Hickok.”

By the time Hickok returned to the advance of the march, the situation had soured. He rode up to Sweete and the rest where the scouts had halted on a low hillock.

“Damn,” Hickok muttered.

“They aim to make a fight of it,” Sweete said, nodding toward the hundreds of warriors who had spread out across a broad front before the scouts and advance guard.

Feathers stirred on the chill spring breeze. The tails of every war pony had been tied up with red trade cloth or strips of rawhide. Shields clung to every arm, a bow, rifle, or carbine held at the ready by the jeering, taunting warriors who urged the white men on.

“Fat’s in the fire now, boys,” Milner said, then spit some tobacco juice into the dust. “I reckon we ought’n go on down there and palaver with ’em afore ol’ Thunderbutt gets up here to stir things with his big stick.”

“Not a bad idea, Joe,” Hickok replied. “C’mon. You and Shad come with me.”

“We showing guns?” Sweete asked.

“By damn if we ain’t,” Milner said. “It’s the only thing these red bastards understand—is gunpower.”

The trio inched off that low hillock into the rolling lowland where the long cordon of warriors waited on their restive ponies. As the white men halted midway between the two lines, a score of the young warriors grew more than verbal. They raced their ponies back and forth along the Indian line, taunting, shaking their weapons in the air.

“Damn if they don’t want war every bit as much as Hancock’s itching for it,” Hickok muttered. He straightened in the saddle. “All right, Shad. Tell their chiefs we want to parley a bit.”

Sweete handed his rifle over to California Joe, now second in command of the scouts behind Hickok. Shad then held his hands up to begin signing as he spoke in the Shahiyena tongue. The white men wanted some delegates to come forward onto neutral ground for a parley, he said. For a few moments, a half dozen of the warriors conferred among themselves a hundred yards away. Then they too inched forward, ordering the rest to remain behind.

“We don’t want no trouble,” Hickok reminded Milner as Joe shifted uneasily on his saddle after tossing the Spencer carbine back to Sweete.

“These bastards won’t mind taking our scalps,” Joe muttered. “Don’t trust ’em a bit.”

“And right you are,” Shad whispered as the chiefs drew near. “Let’s smile and act hospitable, boys. And keep your finger on your triggers.”

The warriors came to a halt twenty feet away, ponies pawing at the new grass flowering across the prairie. The breeze rustled feathers and fringe and the edges of blankets in that great silence beneath the cornflower blue sky while everyone waited for something to happen, someone to speak. A pony snorted. One of the warriors coughed.

“Shad, tell ’em what we want.”

“What is it we want?”

“Hancock wants to talk with the chiefs.”

Sweete once more spoke and signed—telling them the soldier chief wanted to talk with the mighty chiefs of the Lakota and Shahiyena bands.

One of the warriors snorted, loudly. He spit on the ground.

“Who’s that?” Hickok asked quietly.

“Think he’s called Pawnee Killer. Brule chief. Bad sonofabitch if it is.”

“Heard tell of him,” Milner added. “He’s a mean one what don’t know a lick of common sense.”

Sweete spoke after one of the half dozen had signed.

“They’re asking us something, Hickok. Why we brought along the soldiers—both walk-a-heaps and pony soldiers—if all that we mean to do is talk.”

Hickok shifted in his saddle. “I figure he’s got us there. A fair question, but I don’t know what to tell him.” He glanced over his shoulder, his eyes scanning the countryside behind them for sign of Hancock’s columns.

“I know what to say,” Milner growled.

“I won’t have you starting anything here, Joe,” Hickok snapped.

Sweete watched all the dark, lidded eyes concentrating on the two arguing white men. Behind the delegates, the rest of the warriors were surging, their ponies racing up and down the long line strung horizon to horizon—galloping the ponies about in short sprints to get their second wind.

“We better tell them something … and now,” Shad muttered. “Or our butts may be in the soup.”

He inched his horse forward a few yards, away from Hickok and Milner. Then he began signing.

The soldiers come for two reasons: they come to talk to the chiefs about making peace, so that the Lakota and Shahiyena make no more war on the white settlers.

Two of the delegates glanced at one another, then one moved his hands slowly.

You said the soldiers come for two reasons. You spoke of but one.

Shad straightened in the saddle, slowly moving his Spencer carbine across his lap before his hands went back to signing.

If the Lakota and Shahiyena do not want to talk of peace, then the soldiers come to make war.

The entire half dozen warriors stirred at that.

The white man finally talks straight. Perhaps you should prepare to die.

Shad knew he could not let his eyes betray him. Never that. Instead, he let his eyes continue resting on the dark-skinned speaker.

If it is war you want, then do not wait. Let us begin here … and now.

When his hands finished, they went to grip the carbine, quietly moving it off his lap, held over the horse’s head.

At that moment, a trio of warriors showed up from the east, appearing over the hills to Sweete’s right. They were shouting, waving pieces of blanket overhead. What they said Shad was not able to pick up, only that it was Cheyenne, and not Sioux. The half dozen delegates stirred uneasily. Pawnee Killer savagely wrenched his pony around and tore off toward the long line of warriors.

“Get ready to make your stand,” Milner hissed.

“Not yet, we don’t,” Sweete warned. “I think they’ve spotted the soldiers getting close.”

The big warrior glared at the white men a moment, then signed for Sweete.

You have succeeded in living this day through, Indian-talker. Your soldiers come before we can dare take your scalps.

“You are Shahiyena,” Shad spoke the words in Cheyenne.

“I am,” the big one answered. “You speak our tongue.”

“Your name is Roman Nose?”

The war chief did not answer at first, only staring at the white tracker with less disdain now.

“I am Roman Nose.”

“You are known as a great warrior, a brave leader of your men,” Sweete replied. “I cannot believe a warrior of your stature would find honor in wiping out three white men so outnumbered by your own.”

Roman Nose smiled, reluctantly at first, then broadly. “What is your name?”

“Shad Sweete.”

“Sh-h-a-a-d Sweet-t-t,” he mimicked the words with emphasis on the hard consonants. “I will remember you. As a brave man, and one who talks straight.”

“Let’s get,” Hickok was ordering in a low voice, as calm as he could make it.

Sweete glanced at the heaving, roiling line of warriors, every one of them in turmoil now that the soldiers drew near the villages.

“Tell your soldiers to stop where they are,” Roman Nose ordered.

“They will not,” Sweete replied above the clamor of snorting ponies and clattering weapons, the shouts and jeers of warriors surging, throbbing across the prairie. “They have come to talk with you of peace … or war.”

“The soldiers must not come any closer to our villages,” Roman Nose demanded. “They frighten the women and little ones. Frighten the old ones.”

“If it is peace your bands want—then they have no reason to be frightened.”

The war chief appeared to think on that, then said something quietly to the other four headmen. They reined about and rode back to their wide front of armed warriors. Only once did Roman Nose glance over his shoulder, his eyes finding Shad Sweete.

A rattle of bit chain and a clopping of hooves arrested his attention. Sweet turned in the saddle as more than a dozen soldiers galloped up under a flutter of snapping guidons. A lieutenant held his arm up as most stopped. Two rode on, halting only when they were among the three scouts.

“Do they want a f-fight of it?”

With that recognizable stutter, Sweete glanced at the flushed, excited features of the youngest general in American military history, now relegated to the rank of lieutenant colonel in the newly formed U.S. Seventh Cavalry.

“Don’t think so, General Custer,” he answered. “They’re blustering, but I don’t figure they’ll—”

“General Hancock,” Custer interrupted the scout and turned toward the expedition commander, “let me throw a cordon around their village.”

“Capital idea, Custer! Do it. I don’t want a one of these savages sneaking out on us now.”

Then Hancock turned to Sweete and the others. “You’ve done well, gentlemen. Well, indeed. In a matter of moments, Custer’s Seventh will have this bunch of thieves and murderers surrounded. Then we can get down to the business of punishing the guilty parties.”