Cry of the Hawk

July 26, 1865

On the far hills, hundreds of warriors were leaping atop their ponies, kicking them furiously downhill toward the river. They had spotted the tops of the wagons not long after the fort had seen the incoming train, inching along the road on the Indians’ side of the North Platte.

“How many’s with Sergeant Custard?” Shad Sweete inquired.

“I remember him having ten soldiers and fourteen teamsters,” Hook answered.

“Say!” shouted a picket above them. “The Injuns just cut off five of our boys from the rest of the wagon.”

“How many warriors following those five?” Shad slung his voice up the wall.

“More’n a hundred, mister.”

Hook felt helpless, knowing some of those men out there by face, if not by name. Knowing they had families back home, waiting for a husband or father or brother to come marching home. “Ain’t nothing we can do to help ’em?”

“Ain’t a damned thing now, Jonah,” Shad whispered. “Not a damned thing.”

BOOKS BY TERRY C. JOHNSTON

Cry of the Hawk
Winter Rain
Dream Catcher

Carry the Wind
Borderlords
One-Eyed Dream

Dance on the Wind
Buffalo Palace
Crack in the Sky
Ride the Moon Down
Death Rattle
Wind Walker

S
ONS
OF THE
P
LAINS
N
OVELS
Long Winter Gone
Seize the Sky
Whisper of the Wolf

T
HE
P
LAINSMEN
N
OVELS
Sioux Dawn
Red Cloud’s Revenge
The Stalkers
Black Sun
Devil’s Backbone
Shadow Riders
Dying Thunder
Blood Song
Reap the Whirlwind
Trumpet on the Land
A Cold Day in Hell
Wolf Mountain Moon
Ashes of Heaven
Cries from the Earth
Lay the Mountain Low

    for Bruce and Sandra,    
and all they’ve meant to me

CAST OF CHARACTERS

Hook Family

Jonah Hook
Gritta (Moser) Hook
Hattie Hook
Jeremiah Hook
Ezekiel Hook

Hook’s Mentor

Shadrach Sweete     Toote Sweete/Shell Woman
Pipe Woman—daughter
High-Backed Bull—son

Danite Freebooters

Colonel Jubilee Usher
Major Lemuel “Boothog” Wiser
Captain Eloy Hastings
Riley Fordham
Laughing Jack
Healy Stamps
Sam Palmer

Major Military Characters

General William Tecumseh Sherman—Commander, Military Division of the Missouri

Lieutenant-General Philip H. Sheridan—Commander, Military Dept. of the Platte

Lieutenant Caspar Collins

General Patrick E. Connor—Commander, Military Dept. of the Plains

Captain Henry Leefeldt—Co. K (Camp Marshall)

Captain A. Smith Lybe

Sergeant Amos Custard—11th Kansas Cavalry

First Sergeant William R. Moody—Co. I

Major Martin Anderson—Platte Bridge Station, post commander

Captain Henry Bretney—11th Ohio Cavalry

Lieutenant George Walker—Platte Station Adjutant

Corporal James Shrader—11th Kansas Cavalry

Captain Henry E. Palmer—Powder River Exped. Quartermaster

Colonel Henry E. Maynadier—Commander, Fort Laramie

Dr. Henry R. Porter—surgeon, 7th U. S. Cavalry, Ft. Hays

Captain Frederick W. Benteen—7th U. S. Cavalry

Major Wycliffe Cooper—7th U. S. Cavalry

Captain George W. Yates—7th U. S. Cavalry

Lieutenant Myles W. Moylan—7th U. S. Cavalry

Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer—7th U. S. Cavalry

Lieutenant Thomas Ward Custer—7th U. S. Cavalry

Major Joel H. Elliott—7th U. S. Cavalry

Captain Louis M. Hamilton—7th U. S. Cavalry

Lieutenant Lyman S. Kidder—2nd U. S. Cavalry

Lieutenant Edward Godfrey—7th U. S. Cavalry

Pawnee Battalion

Major Indian Characters

Major Scouts

Jim Bridger

Captain E. W. Nash—Omaha and Winnebago scouts (Powder River)

California Joe (Moses) Milner—Hancock Expedition

Jack Corbin—Hancock Expedition

James Butler Hickok—Hancock Expedition

Will Comstock—Platte River Expedition

Major Civilian Characters

Nathan (Nate) Deidecker—newsman, Omaha
Bee

Artus Moser

Samuel Hosking

Eldon Boatwright

Major Edward W. Wynkoop—government agent to the Cheyenne

Colonel Jesse W. Leavenworth—government agent to the Sioux

Sidney Gould—mercantile sutler, Fort Larned

It is not easy to visualize the enormous spread of frontier where these 6,000 [galvanized Yankees] marched and fought and endured the tedium of garrison duties. From Fort Kearney to Julesburg. From Julesburg to Laramie and along the Sweetwater through South Pass to Utah. From Julesburg up the South Platte to Denver, by Cache la Poudre to the Laramie Plains and Fort Bridger …. They made themselves a part of all the raw and racy names on that wild land of buffalo and Indians—Cottonwood Springs and Three Crossings, Lodgepole and Alkali Station, Medicine Creek and Sleeping Water, Fort Zarah and White Earth River, St. Mary’s, Fort Wicked, Laughing Wood, Soldier Creek, Rabbit Ear Mound, Dead Man’s Ranche, and Lightning’s Nest.

—Dee Brown
The Galvanized Yankees

Led by desperate men … the guerillas, most of them only boys, fought a total war. West of the Mississippi they plunged a fairly stable … society into intense partisan conflict that was felt by every man, woman and child. This was not a war of great armies and captains, this was bloody local insurrection, a war between friends and neighbors—a civil war in the precise definition of that term. Here organized bands of men killed each other and the civil population hundreds of miles behind the recognized battlefronts. Here there was ambush, arson, execution and murder; warfare without rules, law or quarter.