Cry of the Hawk

46

Early July, 1868

HE WAS THANKFUL the prairie nights cooled off the way they did. As short as that starlit respite was from the growing heat of summer come to sear the high plains.

Lemuel Wiser sat at the big table with Jonah Hook and the rest, fewer now than when they had started fourteen hours ago that very morning after a breakfast of eggs and potatoes and thick slices of ham with gravy served up by the former army mess cook in his smoky kitchen at the back of this saloon. Good biscuits on the side too, washed down with lots of coffee laced with sipping whiskey.

“Gets the old heart pumping for the game,” Wiser had cracked as he tore open the first deck of cards for what had been a long, long day that saw players come and go. Very few of his men tried their luck. Soldiers mostly, in Dobe Town from Fort Kearney for a little recreation—some drinking, some gambling, and most surely some treasured but precious few moments behind those doors out back where the powdered chippies plied their trade.

Army troopers or Wiser’s own soldiers—men always seemed to like the girls better than the gambling. Back there away from things, where a man was no longer self-conscious around his fellow soldiers, where a man could scream and holler and let it all out when the explosion came as he rode one of those fleshy or bony, coffee-colored or alabaster-skinned, whores.

From time to time men dropped in and out of the game, at times there were more than eight ringing the table with Wiser. At times down to no more than four. Yet the gambler in the soul of the new man kept him at the table. Jonah Hook won a little, lost a little, managing to stay just far enough ahead that he could afford to keep a bottle at his elbow through the last fourteen hours. He poured drinks for the other players and himself, and stayed far enough ahead that he was not driven to carding out like so many of the others who gave up and left, empty-handed.

Some of those losers stayed to watch. Others went out the door in silence. A few left noisily, grumbling their complaints as to the suspected lack of honesty in the good-looking stranger with the smooth tongue. It was not the first time Lemuel Wiser had heard such complaints, not the first time he had been accused of having an oily tongue or fast, slippery fingers.

Wiser enjoyed being a gambler in everything he did in life. There was enough boredom after all. And all a man had to do was open his eyes and look around him to see the desperate lives of little men to know that. Long ago, Wiser had promised himself he would not be one of them. He would make things happen, create his own world and along with it create a specific order to that world, mirroring most how he saw himself. So far, he had done well in that regard.

And with Jubilee Usher now returning to Deseret, it just might mean a promotion for Lemuel Wiser. If Brigham Young took Usher up the ladder, then Wiser would be the natural to step into the vacancy: to lead the Danites. To make of Young’s Avenging Angels what only Lemuel Wiser could make of them. To fashion them in his own image.

What glory before God and the Saints!

Yet across the last two hours, with the whiskey growing stale and the cloud of old smoke hung thick about their shoulders, Wiser had steadily lost. Not much each hand. But enough that his winnings were dwindling. Some going here, some there to that soldier. But mostly his money had been dragged across the wide table until it now sat in front of Hastings’s new man.

“I must say, Jonah—you’ve proved to be quite a good card player.”

Hook smiled back, cracking that bony face of his with a disarming grin. “Just lucky, I s’pose, Major. Cards is a funny game like that.”

“Man learns a lot about another man—watching him play cards.”

Hook peered over his cards, tonguing aside a quid of moist tobacco he was chewing. “That so, Major? What you learned about me?”

“You’re good, Jonah Hook. One of the best I’ve played. Not the best, mind you. Because I’ve never lost to any man before.”

“Not even Colonel Usher?”

“I told you! Lost to no man.” He said it a little harsher than he had wanted. But it did not matter. He had spoken.

Soon enough, Wiser told himself. Soon he would be stepping into Usher’s role—Colonel Lemuel Wiser. A man to be reckoned with—by Saint and Gentile alike.

For the better part of the next two hours, the cards moved around the table. And the money moved between the last three of them left sitting at the table, in the center of the ring of onlookers who squinted down through the yellow, murky haze, a glow put to the tobacco smoke by the single oil lamp that hung just above their heads. Three remained. Wiser—sweating with more than the heat of this old summer night. An old soldier—who played his cards predictably as a barracks better, conservatively, and well. Jonah Hook—who now had all but a few of Wiser’s dollars on his side of the table.

“There, Jonah,” Wiser said, feeling a surge of confidence in the strength of his hand. A full house: kings and sevens. Boothog was certain, something in his gut telling him that his luck was about to take a turn for the better. A gambler who wins is a gambler who has to hang in there through a short run of bad luck and bad cards.

And Wiser knew he was truly a gambler.

“I’ll raise,” Hook replied, pushing more scrip to the center of the table.

Wiser watched the money come to the pot, then looked down at what he held in his hand. He studied what money he had left in front of him, next to his whiskey glass. It was as if Hook knew exactly how much it would take to wipe him out. And he suddenly hated the new man for it.

Wiser smiled, despising Hook. “Here you go, Jonah,” he said with a silver lilt to his voice. “I’ll match you—knowing that you don’t stand a chance of beating me.”

“That’s all you got, Major?”

He held his hands out, guarding his cards. “You see it, Jonah. I’m just going to have to win back some of that money you won from me. And this is the hand to do it on.”

Hook pursed his lips then took a swallow of whiskey from his glass. “I see. You figure you’ve got a hand good enough to beat me?”

“Let’s call and see. What do you say, Jonah?”

He wagged a hand. “Not so fast, Major. If you think you’ve got a good hand—I want you to know I’ve got a better hand. And I’m willing to see just how much a gambler you are. But—you’re out of money … so I guess you don’t really want to play for high stakes.”

Wiser leaned back in his seat, for a moment listening to the muttering of some of the spectators, soldiers and Danites both.

With a flair, he stood, pulling back the flaps of his rumpled coat to expose the two pistols. “You want my custom guns, don’t you? Had your eye on them, I know. They are fine specimens—”

“I got guns, Major. Don’t really need yours.”

“Then …” And he looked over himself, wondering what he could offer. He was growing a bit edgy, from the hours in the chair, enough whiskey to put a sharpness to everything, and from this hired man’s cocky attitude. “What is it you want me to wager?” His words no longer had that silver smoothness to them.

And that crooked smile Hook gave him made Wiser want to take the man’s thin, sinewy neck in both his hands right now and squeeze until the smile was gone and the eyes bugged out, tongue lolling, gasping for air—

“You ain’t got anything I really want. I s’pose the game’s over—”

“More money? Take my marker! When we get to Laramie to rendezvous with the colonel—I’ll honor my note.” He quickly turned to one of the men. “Get me paper and a pencil. I’ll write Mr. Hook my draft—”

“Don’t want any more of your money, Major. Told you. ’Sides, what can a man do with just so much money?”

Boothog slammed a flat palm down on the table, exasperated with the Southerner. He was thumping the clubfoot on the floor noisily, drumming in rhythm with his warning. “You’re trying to goad me, Jonah. And I won’t stand for goading from any man.”

Hook smiled back at the tongue-lashing, which vexed Wiser all the more.

“Few days back, you was telling me how much a gambler you was—how good you was too. Good at gambling in life too. I didn’t figure you’d buckle under and go belly up like this, Major. Just ’cause a man whipped you at cards.”

“You haven’t whipped me at cards, Hook!” he roared, wiping beads of sweat from his brow, swiping the finger off on his vest gone damp in the sticky, still air of the saloon.

Hook peered carefully at the table. “I don’t see you with any money left to call me. Appears I win this hand, and the whole game. It’s over.”

When the Confederate reached in with one long arm to rake back the pot, Wiser caught his wrist. “Hold it right there, Jonah,” he said quietly through his teeth, desperately trying to maintain control of himself and the situation.

“What’s that, Major?”

He started to choke on it. As much as he wanted to crack the man’s skull—it just might have to come to that later. But for now, in front of all these people … in front of these men he would one day command from the top—Lemuel Wiser would have to be just what he claimed he was: a gambler.

“Yes. I do have something you might be interested in, Jonah,” he said, releasing the Southerner’s wrist.

Wiser leaned back, smoothing his vest lapels. “You been a long time without a woman?”

Hook stared at him without expression. “Long time, Major. Why?”

“I have a prize. I mean a really rich prize I can offer you.” Wiser stared down at the money on Hook’s side of the table, glanced at the old soldier who had folded and sat watching them both, and then back to the Confederate. “You say I’m not a gambler? Well, let’s see if you are the gambler you claim to be. I’ll wager what special treasure I have against everything you have—all that money sitting in front of you.”

Hook dragged a hand through his long hair, then scratched a cheek as he gazed down on the pile of money. “This is a lot of money. But you got my interest up, I will admit. Just what you got that could be worth all this money? And what’s this talk of me not having had a woman got to do with it?”

Wiser felt himself leap joyous inside. His tactic would work, he was sure of it.

“Palmer,” he called out, wagging a finger to one of his men. Wiser whispered his orders in Sam Palmer’s ear and watched the man go.

Seeing Hook’s eyes follow Palmer’s exit, Wiser said, “I’m having my wager brought here now to show you, Jonah. I think a man of your needs … you’ll approve.”

Minutes later there was a hush that came over the group, a scraping of boot soles as men moved back and a grin that crept across Wiser’s lips.

“Here is my wager—against everything you’ve got. Winner takes all.”

He watched Jonah turn and look at the girl.

She stood weaving between Palmer and Colby, one of Hastings’s men, groggy and stupefied on laudanum. It was the safest thing to do, Usher had decided years ago. Keep the girl and her mother drugged so there was never any danger of them escaping. He had always wondered what the stuff would one day do to the girl’s brain. But it did not matter now. Jubilee Usher wanted that deserter Riley Fordham so bad that the colonel had promised the girl as a reward to the man who brought back Fordham’s head in a burlap sack.

The girl no longer mattered.

At last, Wiser looked at Hook, finding on the Southerner’s face a strange, pinched look.

“You don’t want the girl?”

Hook swallowed hard, trying to grin, not being able to. “This one—is she … is she still … a—”

“A virgin, Mr. Hook?” Wiser replied, then laughed easily. “Of course. That’s the very reason she’s worth all that money you’ve got in front of you.”

Eloy Hastings edged from the spectators to bend at Wiser’s ear. “Major, just how you gonna square this with Colonel Usher?” he asked. “I mean—he’s got her promised to the man who brings in Fordham—”

“That’s my concern, Captain,” Wiser snapped.

He’d let the southerner win, if that’s the way the cards ran against him this last hand. Wiser ran his hands over his five cards, lying face down on the table. Then tapped his fingers on them. And after Hook had gone off with the girl—he’d have the men kill the Confederate, just as he was about to sully his young, virginal prize. Wiser would have the girl back before Usher was any the wiser.

“Jonah?”

Hook gazed at Wiser, his eyes narrow, dark slits in his bony face.

“What’s it to be?”

“Let’s play this hand through, Wiser.”

There was something to the tone in Hook’s voice that struck Wiser as different from what he had heard up to this moment. Perhaps it was because Hook knew he might be beat—bested here at the last by a better man. A true gambler. Not just a man who played with money, especially other men’s money. No, Wiser told himself, I’m a true gambler—making a wager on life itself.

“What do you have, Jonah?”

“A full house …”

Wiser felt his throat constrict, swearing he would not let any of the men see him sweat.

“Three tens …”

Seeing those cards, Wiser sighed in relief. That was the best Hook had. And Boothog looked down at his own three kings.

“And two aces.”

Wiser’s throat seized, a hot lump choking him. Very conscious of moving slowly now, to keep from lunging across the table, he leaned forward casually and studied the Confederate’s cards. Then he sank back in his chair, standing finally, turning over his own cards.

“You have me beat,” Boothog said. Then, with a wave of his hand he whispered, “You win the girl.”

Jonah had brought Hattie here as quickly as he could, only briefly joining in the shrill laughter of the others as he dragged her out of that dingy, murky saloon into the clear, cool night air. Heading for the livery at the end of the dry, dusty street, where he told the others he would be bedding down his new-won prize.

That news had inspired more lewd cheering as the others gathered at the yellow-splashed doorway in those dark early-morning moments, bidding him luck, others saying he needed no luck now—all he needed was stamina. Then more crude jokes as the voices slowly faded behind him.

Hook glanced quickly over his shoulder. No one out on the street now. They had all gone back inside. He could hear them yelling and laughing back there, but only faintly.

He could make it out onto the prairie. Sure of it. Get two horses saddled. Get his daughter tied onto one so that she wouldn’t fall when and if they had to make a race of it.

He prayed they would not be faced with that.

Yet he knew Wiser was not the sort to let Hattie stay with him. Never mind that it was Hattie … or any young woman for that matter. Boothog Wiser didn’t seem like the kind of man who took easily to losing at all. Especially losing everything.

He had a pocket filled with Wiser’s money. And he had the reward Jubilee Usher had promised to the man who found and killed Riley Fordham. There was no doubt in Jonah’s mind that Wiser would be coming to get it all back.

With Boothog’s money, Jonah could get someone to take care of Hattie for a few weeks. Maybe a few months. However long it would take to double back and ride west to Fort Laramie—where he would find Usher and … reclaim Gritta from her captor.

His stomach went sour.

Then he looked at Hattie as they pushed through the short door into the fragrant livery. Beyond, a half mile away or more on the flat prairie, he heard someone playing a mouth harp. Maybe a lonely soldier. Maybe one of Wiser’s men in their camp by the river. Jonah could not be sure. He only had to find two horses now. Any two. Saddle them. And get lost going east.

Jonah set his daughter gently down among the aromatic hay in a vacant stall, listening to the snorts and pawing of hooves. He lit a single lamp and hung it on a nail, quickly looking over the stable, finding bit and saddle for two mounts. And hung from a nail some short lengths of rope that he would use to lash her atop her mount for their hard ride.

Better that they head south. He knew some of that country: the Republican, Solomon, Saline, and down to the Smoky Hill. Keep Hattie safe until he could finish with Usher and bring Hattie’s mother home.

Get the girl safe and then he’d have to return to the Platte. It was here he would come to deal with Boothog Wiser.

After that—farther west. To the place called Laramie. Then he’d finally look in the eye of Jubilee Usher.

But first, he had to get Hattie atop this horse, tied on, and led out onto the trackless prairie, praying no man would follow them into the night as black as the heart of hell itself.