Cry of the Hawk (12 page)

Lybe said, “Ain’t no use in me fooling you, is there, George? He’s right. I just come from General Connor’s headquarters. For the time being, men—word’s come from Washington City that we have to delay mustering out any of you one-year boys.”

“What the hell!”

Lybe raised both his hands, attempting to calm his angry Volunteers.

“Cap’n—we volunteered for a year. No more’n one year I’ll stay!” Jonah Hook protested.

“He’s right!” cried another. “We even put on Yankee uniforms to come west and fight Injuns. And we’ve fought Injuns for this goddamned army.”

“We fought ’em up and down this river, Cap’n,” Hook continued. “It’s time the army lived up to its promise to us.”

Lybe cleared his throat, pursing his lips in agitation as the sun sank behind the far Medicine Bow Range. “Army doesn’t have enough soldiers out here for General Connor to get done what he needs doing with this expedition of his heading north in a few days. If he musters the lot of you out, you must remember he doesn’t have any replacements for you fellas guarding up and down the road west of here, all the way to Camp Douglas.”

“We signed on with that promise of a year’s duty!” Jonah growled. “I’m fixing to head home when my time’s up.”

“Private Hook—we’re pulling out tomorrow. For Sweetwater Station.”

“And if I don’t?”

“You’ll be considered a deserter.”

Shad could tell Jonah was thinking on that hard, the way a child would roll and roll a mud ball in his palms.

“How long we have to be back at Sweetwater?”

“Till Connor comes marching back here to Laramie.”

The Georgian stepped forward. “And how long that gonna be?”

“Could be November—maybe December.”

“Shee-it!”

Shad inched forward to attempt calming things as the galvanized soldiers milled and muttered, clenching fists and kicking dust up with their boot toes.

“Captain Lybe?” Sweete called. “With Bridger leading Connor north, I’m sure the general will be getting back here before November. Sure as hell he won’t be out to December.”

“Weather, Mr. Sweete?”

“Damn right, Captain. Where Connor’s going—the weather can for certain turn around on him by the end of August.”

“It’s a rainy month, I’ll grant you that—”

“Captain, rain on the northern plains this time of year can spell trouble. What starts out as a little pitty-pat of a rainstorm can overnight turn into a blazing blue norther of a blizzard.”

Lybe straightened as if chastised, then smiled. “Mr. Sweete should know, men. See, we don’t have to worry about Connor being out too long before we can be rotated out and you can be heading home.”

“So what’s the good news you was meaning to tell us, Cap’n?” asked the Georgian.

“Yes—General Connor has ordered that the whiskey be opened for his troops to celebrate one last time before they march out for the Powder and the Tongue. And since we’re here picking up rations and forage, the general agreed Company I could join in the celebrating.”

There was a cacophony of cheering and backslapping as Company I, Third U.S. Volunteers, threw hats into the air and danced around the fires with one another.

Shad was surprised to find Hook not joining in.

“Where’s the whiskey being served, Cap’n Lybe?” Hook asked.

“Why, over there at some tables they’ve set up between the barracks and Old Bedlam. Bring your own tin, boys. It may be the last hurraw we have for some time to come.”

It would prove to be the last celebration of that sort Shadrach Sweete wanted to have himself for the rest of his days. He had gone and had his fill, then wandered back to his bedroll, pleasantly warmed within. The next thing he knew, Bridger was nudging him with his toe, calling softly to Sweete. And everything was black when he opened his eyes.

Shad pulled the robe back from his face. It was still black. No more than a few stars blinked their muted light overhead.

“C’mon, Shad,” urged Bridger. The old trapper had asked Sweete to sign on with General Connor for the impending expedition then assembling at Fort Laramie. “General wants to palaver with you.”

“Can’t it wait till morning, Gabe?”

He dug a bony toe beneath the blankets and jabbed at Sweete’s ribs. “Connor told me to tell you it has to do with that young rebel what’s a friend of yours.”

Shad bolted upright. “Jonah?”

“The one called Hook. Connor wants to see you now.”

“Middle of the goddamned night,” he muttered, clambering out of the robe and blankets he kicked himself free of. “What’d Hook do now, Gabe?”

“A heap of trouble from the way Connor’s acting—like a nose-stung honey bear. But I don’t know no particulars.”

By the time Shad Sweete stood red-eyed before an angry General Connor, the story had emerged full-blown and fleshed out.

“I figured some of the boys would become rowdy if I opened up a whiskey barrel for them,” Connor explained, tapping the top of his desk with the point of a knife, “but never figured it to boil over like this.”

It seems Jonah had poured down a lot of whiskey, and quickly, intent right from the start in tying on a big load.

“He got a bellyful of puggle—then what happened?”

“Sergeant, tell Mr. Sweete,” Connor said, gesturing to the sergeant of the guard at the door.

“The Rebel picked him some fights, busted some heads—then announced he was taking off tonight for home. Hollering out that if any others was of a mind, they could come along home with him. He was done with the army and … and—”

“Say it, Sergeant,” Connor ordered, staring at Sweete.

“The army and its lying, whore-banging ways.”

“That’s what got you riled, Sergeant?”

The old noncom glared back at Sweete. “This army been good to me, mister. And long as I’m serving this army—ain’t no man going to desert if I got anything to say about it.”

Shad turned back to Connor. “You really think Hook was trying to desert?”

“Said he was heading out.”

Sweete slapped both palms down on Connor’s desk. “But—do you believe he was going to do it, in the cups like he was?”

“I can’t have any man deserting now—or even bragging that he’s going to do it.”

“Man what brags he’s going to do something while he’s got a bellyful of saddle varnish, is only letting his whiskey do his talking for him, General,” said Bridger.

Connor sighed, then looked back at the tall mountain scout. “That’s why I called you here, Sweete. You’re his friend. I don’t plan on shooting him for desertion—lord knows I should make an example out of him.”

Shad sensed a flicker of hope fill his cold belly right about then. “So here you sit, General, cogitating on how can you still make a point of him—but get him out of your hair?”

“Right, Mr. Sweete. I can’t send him back to his station with Captain Lybe. He’s a poor influence, shall we say.”

“How ’bout if I take him under my wing, so to speak, General?” Sweete asked.

Connor flicked his eyes at old Bridger, who smiled back with only his eyes.

“You’re heading out with me in two days, Mr. Sweete, are you not?”

“I am, General. And that boy can go with me. I’ll keep him out’n your hair. Just ask Bridger. He’s trained some of the best—like Mitch Bouyer, who’s going along. Right, Gabe?”

Bridger nodded.

“All right, Mr. Sweete,” Connor sighed, laying the knife down and sinking into the horsehide chair behind his desk. “He’s your responsibility. And if he gets one step out of line—it’ll be your ass hanging over the same fire that Confederate’s is slow-roasting over.”

No man could really blame the general for being on the edgy side these last few days as the summer mellowed. The supplies he had begged of Department Commander General Dodge had still not arrived by the first of August after Connor had assembled his troops at Laramie. It seemed that with every day of enforced waiting there since the beginning of July, Bridger had reminded Connor that the army’s campaign season was growing old. The high plains had a way of turning on a man come the autumn of the year. Better get, Bridger told the army—while the getting was good.

Connor decided he was going to wait no longer.

Through all those weeks of waiting he had been planning his expedition, deciding to assemble the campaign in three wings, all of which were to rendezvous the first of September in the Tongue River country.

The very heart of prime Sioux and Cheyenne hunting ground.

The two additional wings of Connor’s assault were already pushing their way across the plains. Colonel Nelson Cole was at the head of two regiments already moving west from Omaha without incident.

Not so with the other wing commander.

After his Sixteenth Kansas Cavalry had become disgruntled because they were forced to serve past the end of the war and threatened to mutiny to the point he had to order artillery turned on them, Colonel Samuel Walker finally got his troops under way and marched north for the Black Hills country of the Sioux.

While Cole and Walker forced their reluctant soldiers into that unknown of the northern plains, Connor could himself boast of marching north at the head of the finest cavalry then to sit a saddle in the West. Besides having enlisted such proven guides as Bridger, Sweete, and Sioux half-breed Mitch Bouyer, Connor also had along a newly formed battalion of Pawnee scouts under the capable Major Frank North, as well as Captain E. W. Nash’s contingent of Omaha and Winnebago scouts.

Using stout discipline each long summer’s day of the march, the expedition covered ground quickly. Despite the problems encountered by a train of 185 wagons, Connor was on the Powder by 14 August. It was there he ordered the first trees felled for what would be a permanent post he christened Fort Connor.

“
I’m going away
, I’m going away, but I’m coming back, if I go ten thousand miles,” sang the auburn-haired horseman as he and the rest let their animals pick their way through the timber-studded hills of northern Arkansas, heading south and west for what they had long known was the security of Indian Territory.

He loved to sing—especially this one, a popular song of the Confederacy.

Lemuel Wiser was a handsome man. Most might even say he was more than that: a devilishly handsome man. Striking in every way, from the slate green eyes above a perfect nose, those bow-shaped lips that made every young woman want to be kissed by him, even the long hair hung in ringlets over his ears and the collar of his canvas mackinaw.

Of medium height, Wiser made most folks forget that he was not all that tall, surely not standing beside Jubilee Usher, the leader of this company of freebooters staying two days ahead of the Union troops who had been tracking them for the better part of three weeks now. But in looking at Wiser, most folks simply forgot his height. He was just so damned handsome, women flocked to his side, and most men wanted to be around Wiser, for that was where a fella could find the bees. Circling the hive.

Even his hands were attractive. How he kept them so clean, especially under the nails, living off the land the way Usher’s outfit was—it amazed most of the others, who stayed away from water and Wiser’s bars of lye soap like the combination had the mortal scent of the plague on it. And no matter what, Wiser always had a splash of some sweet-scented water to pat on his freshly shaved cheeks every morning when he was about his personal toilet. While many of the rest joked each morning before mounting up how good Wiser smelled, how much they wished they could have something so fragrant to curl up with in their bedrolls at night, Wiser went right on the way he went on.

And he figured that was something Jubilee liked about him. And one of the big things that set him apart from the rest of Jubilee’s bunch. In fact, Wiser was Usher’s right hand. The one who passed Jubilee’s orders down to the rest, the one who loved the fact that he drew the lot of whipping those who broke Jubilee’s “Orders of the March.” It was as if dealing out punishment to the rest of the ragtag band was some reward for faithful, unquestioning service to not only Jubilee Usher—but to Jubilee’s wrathful God.

Yet as Wiser stood there this morning, wiping the soap scum from his straight razor, looking over the busy camp of Jubilee’s faithful Danites, Wiser wondered why men like he and Usher had to consort with the likes of these rogues and desperadoes—the unclean vermin it took every bit of his strength of will to control at times.

Jubilee was emerging now from his tent, his long coat freshly brushed by the Negro manservant he had carried along these last few years of wandering the midlands, just off the frontier itself. Usher turned and gave orders to have the tent struck.

“Once you have the woman dressed, mind you. Let’s be quick about it now.”

How Wiser wished Jubilee would tire of that captive woman and cast her aside as he had cast so many others aside. This woman with the light-colored hair and the sun-burnished skin. But even though it had been only a matter of weeks, Wiser brooded that Jubilee would likely hold on to this one. A real prize she was—this other man’s wife Usher had claimed as his private spoils.

Her, and the three children off that hardscrabble farm back in southern Missouri.

With a course hand towel, Wiser wiped the soap residue from his cheeks, gazed back into the smoky mirror, and admired the sharply defined face, its long, bushy sideburns of reddish brown, sweeping down into the meticulously waxed and curled mustache.

Each time he stared into a mirror, it was as if the sinking feeling returned to remind Lemuel Wiser of why he had taken this path in life, each day finishing this ritual by looking away from the attractive reflection in the mirror, and having to stare once more at the crude, handmade black boot that covered the stub of his left foot.

While the right was stuffed into a shiny cavalry officer’s boot, the left was but a terribly deformed clubfoot with which he had been born.

In days gone long ago, children had been cruel. So young Lem Wiser had grown up to be every bit of that and crueler. But by the time he had reached his early teens, Lemuel had taken to allowing himself to be called the nickname that poked fun at the ugly clubfoot that looked every bit like a pig’s hoof.