Cry of the Hawk (11 page)

“You seen that with your own eyes?”

“Several fellas held up them privates for show at a opera house in Denver City last winter.”

Jonah’s mouth worked a moment, trying to form some words.

“I pray my woman and child are safe down in Indian Territory right now, where no soldier going to touch ’em, Jonah.”

Hook swallowed hard.

“Lord, Shad—it’s like all this is a big hole gets opened up in me, and I can’t fill it or close it no way I try. Lord watch over me, but how I wish I was home with Gritta and the young’uns. Home.”

Shad turned away to stare at the sky when he saw the tear tumble down the young soldier’s dirty cheek.

The next day, after Sweete and the Shoshoni had delivered their urgent dispatch and the hostiles had apparently cleared out, Captain Lybe led his detail of Third U.S. Volunteers on down the Laramie Road. They had pushed several miles east of Deer Creek Station when Shad spotted a cloud of dust ahead of them.

“Indians?” Lybe inquired.

“Don’t think so. Leastways, not down there. Don’t make sense—them bringing a big camp with women and children this close to Laramie. Sioux and Cheyenne like to fight the soldiers off and away from the fort.”

The captain wiped the back of his hand across his cracked, rosy lips. “Go see for yourself, Sweete.”

Shad came back a half hour later to find Lybe’s men sitting in what shade they could steal among the alder and cottonwood, escaping the late July sun.

“Soldiers, Captain,” Sweete announced as he rode in among the anxious soldiers.

“Thank God,” Lybe said.

“Thank General Connor and Jim Bridger,” Shad replied.

“Connor?”

“Bridger’s leading him this way.”

“How many troops?”

“A shitload.”

“Bet he’s coming this way, loaded for bear. For certain he’s heard of the attack on Platte Bridge Station.”

General Patrick E. Connor was indeed marching upriver to bolster what forces he had left along the upper North Platte. There was some considerable cheering when the general ordered his troops into a short halt there with Lybe’s men bound for Laramie.

“Going in for supplies, General. And the men haven’t been paid since they were assigned posts in May.”

“You’ve got reason to celebrate then, Captain Lybe,” said Connor as he knocked dust from his blue tunic with his gauntlets.

“Getting out of that scrap against the hostiles with our hair?”

“Perhaps that,” Connor said as Sweete and Bridger walked up to the soldiers. “Perhaps because the war’s over.”

“War’s over, General?”

Connor was smiling. More soldiers surged around him suddenly. The troops with the general from Laramie were joyously informing the upriver boys of the news as well.

“Lee surrendered to Grant in Virginia.”

“Lee surrendered?” Jonah Hook croaked, unable to believe it.

“War’s over, son!” Shad Sweete pounded the Confederate on the shoulder. “You’ll be going home soon.”

“Soon as I get mustered out,” Hook said, his eyes moist and his voice colicky with emotion, “that’s where I’m heading, straight off. Home.”

Her eyes smarted
with the stinging sweat.

Gritta Hook stopped her hoeing and took the tattered bandanna she wore around her neck to swipe across her forehead, leaning against the hoe handle.

“You go get us another bucket of water from the well, Zeke,” she said to her youngest, six and a half years old now, and more help in these fields with every week.

Without a word he pitched his hoe aside and went galloping past the other two children, Jeremiah and Hattie. It was hard enough raising these three on her own without Jonah, but with the added burden of working the fields behind the mules twice a year, clearing the irrigation sluices, and chopping the wood all added to what she had done before Jonah took off to ride with General Price to keep the Yankees out of Missouri—some days she just ran off to the cool cellar her husband had dug down by the spring and there she cried where no one would hear her.

And it always made her feel better, stronger, able to walk back up the slope to the cabin once more and face her three children and what she had to do alone to hold this family together. More and more during the hard seasons like this, Gritta found herself falling asleep at night as her head hit the feather pillow, her arm by rote going over to Jonah’s side of the rope-and-tick-mattress bed. Dropping immediately into sleep before she could even whisper her prayer for Jonah—and for herself and the children.

But standing here beneath the hot sun of late July, Gritta prayed, for the strength to remain in her thin body until her man came marching home. The war had been over a few months and she dared not think about him never coming home—just pushed that thought out of her mind the way she had learned to shove and muscle the mules around in the corral, or shoulder over the milk cow when the old girl did not particularly want to give up on a morning.

No, she had decided Jonah was still alive, and he would come walking down that road one of these days before the fall colors came to these hardwood hills that reminded her more and more of back home to Virginia. Besides, weren’t but a few of the others who had marched off to war had already come walking back home yet. She wasn’t the only woman in this narrow holler with a man gone and children to raise and crops to tend.

“Mama!”

She turned at the sound of little Zeke’s call, finding him shuffling her way with the bucket. Jeremiah and Hattie were coming toward her as well, dragging their hoes, looking beyond her and off in the direction where Zeke kept turning, and pointing.

Old Seth, the rangy, ribby blue-tick hound they had brought with them years ago from Virginia set to barking and howling, as if pricked by some faraway danger.

Gritta sensed the cold prickle of fear slide down her spine in a single droplet of sweat cascading beneath the layers of her cotton clothing that gusted with a sudden hot wind forcing the bonnet ribbon hung loosely around her neck nearly to strangle her.

“Someone coming, Mama,” eight-year-old Jeremiah said as he came to a stop beside her. “You want me go and fetch the gun?”

She thought on it, shading her hand and watching the worm of movement as the horsemen eased their way over the far hills at the north end of the valley. Then she glanced at Hattie for a quick flickering moment that brought more moistness to her eyes.

“They don’t rightly look like Yankees, Jeremiah. Leave be the gun for now.”

The riders were inching down the slope into the narrow valley, on the far side of the Hook place, beyond the cabin and what barn Jonah and his uncle had been able to throw up by themselves. How she wished either one of them were here now, not gone off to the war. So late in coming home.

Perhaps these were just some soldiers coming home. They sure didn’t look like Yankee soldiers.

Her heart leapt instantly with bright hope, and she swallowed it down as quickly, still shading her eyes against the hot July sun as she watched the horsemen reach the edge of the yard there between the cabin and the barn.

No, not blue-bellies these.

The tall, hulking man in front with the big, black, dusty slouch hat shading his bearded face waved and said something to the others. She could hear his voice, but could not make out the words as he directed men to cover the cabin with their weapons, another bunch to surround the barn.

Then he nudged his horse forward, with three of his men on his heels. Slowly moving into the rows of mature crops, the tall, lathered horse bobbing its head, flecks of foam at the bit. He reined up before her and the children.

“That water in your bucket, ma’am?” he asked as he crossed his wrists over the saddle horn.

Gritta decided he didn’t sound like a Southern man—but, then—a lot of folks come to Missouri didn’t all talk the same neither.

“It is. You care for a drink, sir?”

“I would be dearly grateful for such refreshment, ma’am.” He removed the hat from his head, and she was instantly struck with the long, flowing black curls that fell past his shoulders. He bowed his head. “Whom do I have the honor of addressing?”

Gritta’s eyes flew to the other three waiting behind the big man. Then she took a step forward, hoisting up the bucket at the end of one arm, the hand still shading her eyes as she studied him for that instant.

“Gritta Hook.”

“Mrs.?”

“Yes. My husband is Jonah.”

“He hard at work today, ma’am?”

For a moment she thought, but could not conceive how better to answer. “He’s away—gone to fight the war. Coming home soon.”

The man pushed the big slouch hat onto his head and then dragged a hand across his lips as he plunged the dipper into the bucket. After he had handed the bucket back to the three behind him, he turned once more to Gritta.

“Lots of men won’t be coming home, Mrs. Hook. Shame, a downright evil shame of it. War’s like that, though. The Lord has seen that so many were cut down—like winnowing the wheat from the chaff.”

He turned to the three. “You there, Major—finish your drink quickly and get on back to the others. See what stock we can take along while the others are to go through the cabin. I want everything we can use.”

Her heart in her throat, she lunged for his tall boot, caked with dark red dirt in the stirrup. “Don’t steal from us! Dear God—the Yankee soldiers already come through and left us next to nothing.”

He gazed down at her as two of the men turned their glistening horses away, tromping straight across the field, hooves digging up some of the rows of ripening crops.

“My dear woman. We haven’t come to steal from you. We are merely appropriating what is rightfully ours by terms of the covenants the Lord has commanded us to follow in this war against the Gentiles.”

She felt fear rising in her, like a thick ball of something that was bound to gag her, make her spill her scanty breakfast on the ground right here in front of the children.

“Take it and go, then … if you must.” Her heart pounded in her ears like the thundering of water over the falls back in the Shenandoah. How she yearned now for—

“Mrs. Hook, don’t be so rude. We have no intention of merely taking from you and riding on.” He reached inside his long black duster and pulled forth two pistols with white handles.

The smile on his face reminded her of the way old Seth would grin, baring his yellowed teeth, that low rumbling growl troubling his throat when danger lurked near.

The guns were pointed at her and the three children. “We’re inviting you, and your little ones along as well.”

8

August, 1865

G
ENERAL GRENVILLE DODGE
had early on asked General Ulysses S. Grant for five thousand Union troops to protect the western frontier.

Grant sent him ten thousand.

Yet most of those began to grumble and mutiny as soon as they arrived at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Protesting that the war with the South was over, most bowed up their backs and said they had joined up to fight the Confederacy—not to fight Indians.

Back east, powerful political pressure was already being exerted upon the War Department not only by some governors, but by the senators and congressmen of those protesting states. During the first half of 1865 alone, thirteen regiments that had reported for duty at Leavenworth and were ordered marched to Fort Rankin at Julesburg were mustered out before they reached the high plains by official orders from Washington City: seven regiments of cavalry, three each of infantry and artillery.

To fill this aching void at this critical juncture, General Dodge turned to his battle-proven U.S. Volunteers. Trouble was, most of the Confederates had signed on for a one-year enlistment. General Patrick E. Connor had to act, and fast, if he was to have enough troops to accomplish his aim of subduing the war-loving bands taking refuge in the Powder River country north of Fort Laramie.

“I’ll come find you when Bridger and me get back from up north,” Shad Sweete told his young Confederate friend as they stood among the bedrolls and supper fires at twilight near the barracks of Fort Laramie. “Trust in that, Jonah.”

“May not be here no more,” he replied. “Lybe says we’re going back to protecting the road and the wire hung over it—back up on the Sweetwater. But I swore this Yankee army only got their hands on me for a year—and that year’s up the end of September.”

“That’s only three weeks off, Jonah.”

“I’ll go back and watch that road and wire for ’em. But any way I figure it, Shad—you can’t possibly be back from that north country in time to see me light out for home.”

“It’s for sure you’re heading home, you ain’t here—right?”

“First and only place I’m going, once this army musters me out.”

“Then I’ll find you there—in Missouri.”

“What for?”

Shad slapped the young man on the back. “Because friends just don’t ride off without saying good-bye. So if I can’t see you off to home when you go, I’ll come find you after you’ve gone back to Missouri.”

“Thought you’d be heading down to the Territories—see your family.”

“Ain’t no reason why I can’t swing on down there and bring ’em with me, can I?”

“You got a Cheyenne wife, son, and daughter.” Jonah shook his head. “That’ll be something, it will. My kids seeing their first real plains Injuns—and what they’ll make of you too.”

“I may not be too pretty, Jonah. But I do make a fine impression on civilized folks. Can even eat with a knife and fork, I have to.”

They chuckled together, then Jonah turned toward the big man, holding his hand out stiffly. He wasn’t accustomed to showing his sentiment, Shad figured. The handshake would have to do.

But Sweete pushed the hand aside to wrap the young man in a fierce embrace.

“I’ll miss you, Shadrach Sweete.”

“I’ll miss you too, my friend.”

“Company I!”

Both Hook and Sweete turned at the call. Something about the way Captain Lybe was trotting up, his pistol holster slapping his left hip, told Shad he did not like what was coming.

“Gather up, men. I got some good news.”

“Cap’n—whenever you tell us that,” replied an old Georgia soldier, “I get feared we’re in for bad news too.”