Cry of the Hawk

28

June, 1867

SHAD SWEETE WAS every bit as anxious to get out of Fort Hays as was Jonah Hook or Artus Moser.

Trouble was, Custer wasn’t ready to march his ill-fed, poorly equipped command out from Fort Hays until the first of June.

And by that time, the roving bands of marauding warriors had moved north from the Smoky Hill, Saline, and Solomon rivers—north all the way to the Platte River country.

With Department Commander Philip H. Sheridan’s blessing, General Hancock was to have the Seventh Cavalry push north toward the Emigrant Road, that heavily used wagon route that brought settlers and miners west to Colorado or on to California. As well, the rails then being laid by the Union Pacific followed the same valley of the Platte. It was nothing short of vital that Custer’s cavalry march toward Fort McPherson on the Platte, and from there begin their sweep to clear the plains of hostiles between that river and the Republican.

Colonel Andrew Jackson Smith’s orders to Custer read:

The Brev. Maj.-Gen’l Comdg. directs that you proceed with your Command … to Ft. McPherson, at which point you will find a large supply of rations & forage …. From Ft. McPherson you will proceed up the South Fork of the Platte to Ft. Sedgwick …. If every thing is found to be quiet & your presence not required … you may come South to Ft. Wallace, at which point you will find further instructions. The object of the Expedition is to hunt out & chastise the Cheyennes, and that portion of the Sioux who are their allies, between the Smoky Hill & the Platte. It is reported that all friendly Sioux have gone South of the Platte, and may be in the vicinity of Fts. McPherson or Sedgwick. You will (as soon as possible) inform yourself as to the whereabouts of these friendly bands, and avoid a collision with them.

On that first day of June, Shad Sweete watched the long-haired cavalry commander stuff those orders inside the dark blue blouse with gold piping Mrs. Custer had herself sewn for her dashing husband, then give the word to his adjutant, Myles Moylan, to move out.

Three hundred fifty sweating, anxious, and hungry horse soldiers pointed their noses north by west at distant Fort McPherson, some 175 miles away across the shimmering, summer-seared prairie.

“We get up there close to that Platte Road, we’ll find us a place to jump off and disappear,” whispered a soldier to the rider beside him as they passed by Sweete and the rest of the scouts.

“That fella sounds like he’s got the right idea, Shad,” Hook said.

Shad didn’t even look at Jonah. “You like wearing your hair—you’ll give no thought to deserting this bunch. Even up there on the Holy Road, where a man might find more folks to join up with. Ain’t likely any of these soldiers know what’s waiting for ’em they decide to take off on their own hook.”

None of them knew what was in store over the next few days of grueling march beneath the prairie sun, drinking alkali water grown warm in their canteens, breathing the stinging alkali dust that coated every nostril and caked the insides of their mouths in a gauzy swirl that rose like an ache of despair from every plodding hoof along that strung-out, head-drooping column led forever northwest by Custer and his officers.

“You ever dream of whiskey?” Hook asked as he squatted wearily with Sweete at a smoky fire one evening a week later. “Don’t even have to be good whiskey. Just … whiskey.”

“Sure,” Shad answered, honestly. “Dream about the taste of it on my tongue a lot. ’Specially when I’m drinking this warm water that stings my mouth the same way whiskey does.”

“Water does have a sour tang to it—”

A single shot rang out.

They both looked at one another, drawing pistols and slowly standing as the echo of that lone shot faded over the prairie.

“Pistol?” Hook asked.

“Sounded to be,” Sweete answered as the camp quieted once more and men went back to preparing the supper they would force down here at the end of a long day’s march. “Likely some idjit cleaning his sidearm and it went off.”

More than an hour later that eighth day of June, Hickok came to their fire, passing on the story to the rest of the scouts.

“Cooper’s second in command this trip out, ain’t he?” asked Sweete.

Hickok nodded. “Seems the major had a problem with drinking.”

“That what Custer says?” Sweete asked.

“What the rest of the officers say,” Hickok answered.

“I saw the man in a bad way myself,” Hook told them. “Last winter. He wasn’t a drinker like a normal man. Cooper looked like he drank till it made him mad enough at himself.”

“He was in a fit—not acting like himself so the talk goes,” said Hickok. “But he was at times a real gentleman. With a quiet sort of normal.”

“Something made him put that pistol in his mouth and blow out the back of his head,” Jonah said.

Hickok regarded him. “The ride. The damn heat. Nothing else to do but ride and drink his whiskey—this campaign is getting to a lot of us, Hook.”

“Man don’t just go and give up like that,” Hook muttered, still staring at the flames. “He leave any family?”

Hickok glanced at Sweete before answering. “Major had a young wife. I understand from Tom Custer that the woman was … is expecting soon.”

“Damn shame.” Hook rose and strode off into the twilight.

“What you figure’s eating at him?” Hickok asked.

Shad pulled a shaft of dried grass from his lips and tossed it onto the small fire at his feet. “Family, Bill. He’s got one—but he don’t know where. And everywhere around him, Jonah’s watching folks go killing off what they do have. The man’s just touchy right now.”

Hickok shook his head. “Jonah’s always touchy.”

Much more of the sad tale had become general knowledge by the time Custer led his command into Fort McPherson two days later, on the afternoon of 10 June.

Kentucky-born Major Wycliffe Cooper had served the Union with honor during the recent rebellion before his manic depression began to take its toll on his career. For months he had attempted control over his life by drinking himself into oblivion. Teetotaler Custer had eventually confiscated Cooper’s supply of whiskey and ordered the major to straighten himself out or suffer court-martial.

“So Cooper put a bullet through his brain instead?”

“They’re burying him tomorrow,” Sweete replied. “Quiet as possible. Custer won’t give him military honors. Says suicide is a coward’s way out.”

Hook glared at the old trapper. “You never thought about it?”

“What, Jonah?”

He stopped whittling on the stick with his folding knife. “Giving up. Just putting a end to it.”

“You ain’t thinking like that?”

He tossed the peeled twig into the dust of Fort McPherson’s parade as the late afternoon shadows lengthened. “Man loses just about all he cares for in life—natural for him to figure there ain’t nothing for him to go on living for.”

“You ain’t lost them, Jonah.” Sweete inched closer, talking softer. “They’re out there. Long as you got hope in your heart of finding ’em—they’re out there.”

He squinted into the far distance darkly veined with shallow, tree-lined rivers, studded and dippled with the flesh-colored, rolling, grass-covered hills.

“Why’s this damned ground so all-fired important that these Injuns ready to kill to keep it? This army of Custer’s ready to kill to tear it from ’em? Where’d it ever say that a chunk of ground got that important—and a numan life was something you just stomped into the dust under your heel?”

“Lots of folks is coming west—”

“Damn them, Shad!” he snapped. “Don’t you think I hate that about people? I was off fighting for someone else’s goddamned land when I was captured by the Yankees. I was out in Sioux hell on the North Platte or the Sweetwater or the Powder River or the Tongue, fighting Injuns for a piece of ground when that bunch come in and took my family from me, dammit! What made ground more important than people anyway, old man? Tell me that!”

Sweete was a long time before answering. “Never owned me a piece of land, Jonah. What I tried out to Oregon, I never bought, never filed on. Didn’t set right with me, son. So take your spurs off when you’re fixing to ride me.”

“By God, it’s you out here leading me on this little journey of yours.”

“This ain’t got nothing to do with land!” Sweete snapped back. “I got me a family. Same as you. Doing the best I can for ’em. You ain’t the only man ever lost loved ones.”

Hook studied the old trapper a moment, finding Sweete would not hold his eyes. “You understand, don’t you? I mean—you’re really trying to understand.”

Sweete shook his head, a sad grin growing there in the midst of his shaggy beard. “You can be a bit slow of times, Jonah Hook. Of course I been trying to understand about how it must be for a man to have his kin took from him—”

“No,” Jonah interrupted. “This is something different. You lost family, Shad.”

“It don’t matter now.”

“Tell me. It makes a difference to me.”

“Sometime, Jonah. Sometime I will tell you.”

Major Wycliffe Cooper was laid to rest at Fort McPherson on the eleventh, the same day General Philip H. Sheridan arrived.

Custer was able to report on his meeting with Pawnee Killer, whose village was camped a few miles from the fort, when the department commander arrived.

“While they protested most strongly in favor of maintaining peaceful relations with the white man,” Custer explained, “the actions of their chiefs only served to confirm for me that they had arranged their parley with me for one purpose: to spy on my intentions and strength.”

“You’re learning that the word of an Indian is like shoveling fleas in a barnyard, Armstrong,” Sheridan replied. “Their promises aren’t worth the time it took to speak them.”

“None of us like being played the fool, General.”

“Indian promises are like horse apples. There’s more than you know what to do with—and they aren’t worth a damn. I’ll tell you, Armstrong—these bands need to be taught a severe lesson and soon.”

Custer scowled. “Just what kind of lesson do you and General Sherman have in mind, sir?”

“Something that will last, Custer,” said the short Irishman. “This is your job, I’ll remind you. After all is said and done—you’re a soldier. This is the inevitable clashing of the races: what must occur when a stronger, more advanced race pushes aside the weaker.”

“I take it I’m to serve as the point man for that assault on a primitive culture, General?”

Sheridan smiled within his dark, well-trimmed beard. “Nothing so fancy as that. By god, Custer—I want you to sweep this country between the Platte and Republican—sweep it clean of hostiles and show the rest of the tribes how we’ll deal with them if they attempt trouble.”

He saluted smartly. “With your permission, General, I’ll pass the word to my officers that we’re back in the saddle at six tomorrow morning.”

From Fort McPherson, Custer led his cavalry west along the Platte River for less than fifty miles before pointing their noses due south.

For the next three weeks, the Seventh crossed Frenchman’s Creek, then the Republican River itself, looping first southwest, following the South Fork of the Republican, then slowly turning to the northwest once more, where they crossed the Arikara Fork of the Republican. Nearing the cruel sand hills of the South Platte country, Custer turned his columns back on themselves and recrossed the Arikara, moving roughly east along its southern bank.

Twenty-three days of staring into a merciless white summer sky with eyes scoured by alkali dust. The flour-fine dust still seeped beneath the damp bandanna Jonah Hook had tied over his nose and mouth. He tasted dust. No matter what they had to eat each night—the food still tasted like the dust he had eaten on the march that day.

Everything smelled of stinging, cream-colored alkali. No matter how fragrant was Shad Sweete’s coffee a’brew over the greasewood fires, all Jonah smelled with his crusted nose was the stinging alkali.

“You’ll sleep tonight, Jonah,” said the old mountain man, offering the young Confederate a steaming cup.

He looked down at the tin of coffee. Then reluctantly took it in hand. “Oh, for the want of a cup of some water come out of the mountains.”

“This alkali water giving your bowels the tremors, eh?”

Hook shook his head. “Cold.”

Sweete said, “Cold is what you want, eh? Water born of the high country.”

“Yeah,” he replied, his eyes squinting on those distant but remembered places. “I remember the taste of that water up there on the Holy Road. The Sweetwater, it was.”

“Lord! And so cold it would set a man’s teeth on edge just to drink it.”

“For just a cup of that now. Just one cup.”

“We’ve turned about, Jonah,” Shad said in that confiding way of his. “I think Custer figures he’s not going to find any Injuns this trip out after all.”

He nodded, blowing steam from the surface of his coffee, not relishing the hot liquid here after another scorching and dust-filled fifteen-hour day in the saddle. Jonah scratched at a saddle gall, the inside of his thighs chafed and raw from the nonstop sweat and rubbing of the past three weeks in the saddle crossing the high plains.

“Some of the others, they’ve started to call Custer Old Iron-Ass.”

Sweete glanced at some of the other scouts gathered about the evening fire. Hickok settled, knocking dust from the short leather leggings he had tied over the tops of his boots, stretching from knee to ankle.

“I heard that name too, and another. Some of them boys in Custer’s outfit starting to call him Horse-Killer.”

“He keeps up this pace, chasing smoke on the wind, there soon won’t be many horses able to go on. And if it ain’t horses Custer will kill on this march through hell,” Jonah grumbled, “it just might be the rest of us.”