Cry of the Hawk (14 page)

“Watch out for the women, if there be any, Jonah,” Shad instructed at the Confederate’s side. “But just remember the squaws can be as deadly as the bucks. They’ll fight hard as their men—God bless ’em.
Heya!
”

Hook watched as the old trapper licked the pad of his thumb, then wiped it down the bridge of his nose. Wetting his thumb again, Sweete made a cross just below the brim of his old hat, swiping across the eyebrows. As North kicked his bunch into a gallop with a wild screech, Shad opened his eyes, having made his private medicine. He grinned over at the startled Hook and added his voice to the wild calls of the Pawnee and the not-too-distant cries of the Cheyenne.

“
Hopo!
C’mon, Jonah—it’s a good day to die!”

With the surge of his own hot adrenaline, the sweep of the charging horses kicking up dust and clods of yellow soil into his nostrils, the wild cries of both Pawnee and the retreating Cheyenne, who now understood they were being attacked by Indians and not white men, Hook fought down the bile of fear for the unknown.

His hands were sweating on the reins and as he thumbed back the hammer on the carbine, finding the cap securely hugging the nipple. A trickle of cold ran between the cheeks of his ass as they burst past the stand of alder where the Cheyenne had camped for the night. The odors of their fires were strong in his nostrils as they shot through the grove. Something foreign on the wind as well—it made him think he was actually smelling the warriors who had spent the night on that ground.

Bullets sang through the air, their music brutally yanking him back to surviving in battle once more. But there was no clear battle line. The Cheyenne had spread out on their front, half heading toward the riverbank, and the others hurrying toward the low, chalky bluffs. Already among them were the first of the Pawnee, cutting off the escape of those Cheyenne who stayed atop their ponies.

Most of the enemy had dismounted and were turning their animals loose before wheeling around to find cover and return the Pawnee fire.

The cries of animals and men were loud in his ears—nothing new, for he had been blooded all the way from Pea Ridge to Corinth where the Yankees found him in that scooped-out depression he had crawled into when he could not retreat—not with that bleeding leg wound that seeped his juices in a greasy track across the forest floor.

The Yankee army surgeons had told their prisoner his leg would have to come off. But he had refused their suggestion of help by knife and saw.

“Better to die soon with two legs, than to die the slow death of a cripple prisoner of the Yankees, with no hope of running for it,” he had told them, gritting his teeth on the pain that tasted like sucking on a rusty iron nail.

Instead, Jonah had requested whiskey and got brandy instead, along with sulfur to pour into his own wound. Two days later he dug the Union minié ball out while the surgeons watched, unashamedly amazed at the Rebel’s grit. Pinching that smear of lead bullet up between his fingers, and slowly opening the pink purple muscle with slow strokes of a surgeon’s straight razor, Hook swallowed down more and more of the pain with each heartbeat. Along with more of the brandy he asked for, and poured into the wound when he finished—then promptly passed out.

Jonah found a target ahead, climbing the low bluff just in front of him. Lining the warrior in his sight, a sudden rustle of brush made him glance to his left as a warrior sprang from the alders and willow, yanking up his captured rifle.

There was no time to think, or aim. Jonah whirled and pulled the trigger as he saw the warrior’s muzzle spit a burst of orange. Like jagged teeth scraping across his flesh, the bullet stung his upper arm at the same instant the Cheyenne was catapulted backward into the underbrush.

Jonah stood there, breathing deep, slowly climbing down from the saddle, gripping his bloody arm. Never had he killed anyone so close. The Indian lay there, not moving while Hook quickly glanced at the long, bloody track parting the sleeve of his blue army tunic. He didn’t like wearing Yankee blue anyway.

“Arrrggghhh!”

He had time only to spin, finding a second warrior leaping over the dead body, a small-headed tomahawk held high in the air. Hook met the charge with only his muscle, pushing the weapon into the air with his empty rifle. Both men tumbled, the warrior falling forward, Hook collapsing backward with the force of the collision.

The warrior sailed on over, sprawling on his back as Hook arose, swung the carbine, and connected in the Cheyenne’s rib cage full force. Air exploded from the warrior as he reeled backward, clawing for the knife at his belt.

With a shrill growl that rose to become the Rebel yell, Hook charged the ten feet separating them, driving the rifle butt into the Indian’s chest. The knife dropped. Hook smashed the butt into the Indian’s jaw.

The warrior collapsed, his mouth spurting shiny crimson across his yellow face paint, splattering his chest. He growled back, like a wounded animal, dragging feet under him, preparing to rise.

Taking the rifle barrel in both hands, Hook swung it just as he had battered axes at trees in both the Shenandoah Valley back in Virginia, and on that land he cleared to build a home for Gritta and their children. That quiet, narrow valley back home.

Blood splattered on him as the buttstock cracked against the skull.

The Cheyenne collapsed like a damp lampwick.

Jonah Hook stumbled backward one step, then two. And on the third, he collapsed as the creeping darkness washed over him.

10

August, 1865

“G
REAT
G
OD A’MIGHTY
, Jonah—you blooded yourself in this scrap!”

Hook blinked his eyes, things watery at first, then slowly swimming clear. Up there blotting out a big chunk of sky hung Shad Sweete’s gray-bearded face.

“Take ’er easy. Looks of it, you had yourself a real tussle.”

Jonah sat upright with a jerk, wincing at the wounded arm. Near his feet lay a warrior, blood drying on the side of his head and face.

“He dead?”

Sweete smiled. “As dead as he can be. You whacked him hard enough to drive him on into the Other Side.”

“Other Side?”

Sweete poked his hands beneath Hook’s arms. “Where the Cheyenne go when they die. After taking a long walk in Seyan—that star road up overhead in the nightsky.”

His knees felt weak. “Sweet heaven.”

“You got the idea, Jonah.”

“I didn’t mean heaven like that.” He looked at the second warrior lying still, collapsed in the underbrush, a bloody, bluish hole in the middle of his chest.

“Don’t make no difference,” Shad replied.

All around them Hook heard that the shooting had stopped. Replaced now with yelps and laughter, hoots of joy and wild cheering from the Pawnee, who were scattered over every one of the Cheyenne bodies.

“How many we get, Shad?”

“Twenty-four,” he answered. “Every last one of ’em.”

“We … we killed ’em all?”

“And you got two for yourself. They yours—scalps and plunder both.”

“Plunder?”

“Guns, knives—whatever you want off’n the bodies. Along with the hair.”

He glared at Sweete, suddenly angry at something, perhaps the cold knot in his stomach. “Ain’t got no use for the hair.”

“You better let me take it for you then, Jonah,” Sweete said quietly as a half dozen of the Pawnee ambled up, shaking their black and bloody trophies, showing some interest in the white man’s victims. “This bunch will think you’re yellow if’n you don’t scalp them two bodies.”

“Told you,” Hook snarled, pushing away from the old scout. “I don’t want the goddamned scalps.”

“Then I’ll take ’em myself,” Sweete snapped, grimly pushing past the young Confederate.

Jonah watched as the Pawnee scouts closed in a tighter ring while Sweete stopped beside the first body. The old trapper yanked a short knife from his scabbard and kicked the Cheyenne over with the toe of his moccasin. As the young soldier’s eyes widened, the old plainsman pulled the black hair back, set the blade at the brow line, and dragged the knife around, over and behind the ear. Lifting the long, loose hair adorned with feathers, Sweete continued the knife’s path down to the nape of the neck, back up and around the ear to the brow line once more. Wiping the knife off on his buckskin britches, he stood and placed a hand on the back of the warrior’s neck. Tugging carefully at the bloody edges to start the scalp ripping from the skull, the dark skin finally gave way with a sucking pop.

“Here, Jonah—you best hold it for me.”

“I can’t. Told you I won’t.”

“Goddammit!” Sweete growled. “You’ll never hear the end of it from these Pawnee sonsabitches you don’t hold this scalp for me. Leastways, it’ll make ’em think I’m showing you how to scalp even though you don’t want the goddamned thing.” He held it out, shaking some of the gore and blood from it onto the yellow sand. “Now, do it.”

Glancing quickly at the gathering Pawnee, loaded down with their own scalps and plunder, Jonah found a few of them whispering to one another, grinning behind their hands. He burned with resentment.

“Won’t do you no good, son—though you likely feel like punching one of those faces to a bloody pulp.”

“Gimme that scalp!” Hook snapped, surprised that the old man knew how badly he wanted to pummel some of those arrogant faces. “And your knife!”

Sweete handed them over to the Confederate, who promptly turned on the closest tracker who was laughing at him. Stopping almost on the Indian’s toes, Jonah glared into the dark Pawnee eyes, reading the sneer on the tracker’s face. Hook held the scalp up right in the man’s face, then slowly inserted Sweete’s knife blade between the Pawnee’s neck and his long hair, slowly raising the braid with the knife.

The smile on the dark face faded like August snow. The dark eyes widened. Boiling inside, Hook rubbed the knife up and down the Indian’s neck.

“You laugh anymore at me, you bastard—I’ll gut you like a Christmas hog and hang you up to bleed to death,” he snarled.

“I figure he got the gist of your message, Private,” said Major Frank North as he appeared on the scene. “Better you take that knife from his neck now—before one of these others decide that you really do mean to kill Half Rope here.”

He turned to North, not removing the knife. “I would, you know. Half Rope, you call him?”

“He’s a good tracker,” North replied. “Just got him a sense of humor gets him in trouble a lot. But the rest of these are stirred up. Their blood’s hot from the fight—and we found the scalps of a few white men on some of these bodies. Likely from the soldiers killed by the Cheyenne at Platte Bridge a month ago.”

“I was there,” Hook said, not taking his eyes off the dark pools of the Pawnee’s.

“Major’s right about their blood being hot right now, Jonah. Best back off now. You made your point—these boys see the elephant for sure,” Sweete said.

“All right,” Hook eased the knife away, then turned quickly and parted the Pawnee as he strode to the second dead Cheyenne.

There he did as the old trapper had done on the first body, then popped the scalp free, holding them both aloft to the yelps and wild keening of the Pawnee—old enemies of the Cheyenne.

“You satisfied, old friend?” the young Confederate asked of Sweete.

“You’ll do, Jonah Hook. By bloody damn—you’ll do!”

Major North’s Pawnee
scouts rode back into Connor’s camp brandishing the fresh, coal black scalps at the end of their coup sticks and from rifle muzzles. They howled like wolves and chanted their war songs. That night they began their ritual dancing around those twenty-four scalps, accompanied by the incessant beating of their small hand drums. The celebration went on for long past midnight and kept so many of the soldiers awake that General Connor had to order North to end the festivities.

For the next six nights, the trackers repeated their noisy dance, ending their celebration, however, by ten each night.

Only a week after that first skirmish with the Cheyenne, the Pawnee reported to Major North they had come across a large trail. North took word of the discovery to Connor.

The next morning, the general detached two companies of Ohio infantry, along with a troop of Seventh Iowa Cavalry, led by both the Pawnee and Omaha scouts. Bringing up the rear of the march was a pair of field pieces—six-pounders. This force would accompany Connor to the Tongue River in search of the migrating hostiles.

Into the rough badlands dividing the Powder River drainage from that of the Tongue, the general marched his trackers and troops. On past the Crazy Woman Fork, drawing ever closer to the bounty land of the Big Horn Mountains, where the men found not only an abundance of game, but fat trout as well in those clear-running streams far different from the alkali-tainted creeks in the Powder River country. The long column skirted the west side of a lake surrounded by ocher bluffs brilliant beneath a bright, summer blue sky.

“Water’s unfit to drink—thick with alkali. Years back, during the shining times of the beaver trade,” Sweete explained to Jonah as they rode past the long, narrow body of water, “this lake was named after the first Black Robe to come among the Indians of these northern plains.”

“What’s a Black Robe?”

“A priest. Name of Pierre-Jean De Smet.” Then Sweete laughed, as if enjoying a private joke. “I remember how Gabe used to tell pilgrims heading to Oregon about the thick oil spring you can find on the far side of the lake. Loved to get those pilgrims wide-eyed and gape-mouthed by telling ’em there’s a vein of coal under that lake they could set fire to, and by stirring up the oil and the alkali—make one hell of a batch of soap!”

It was here as well that they came across their first buffalo herds.

That first evening at the base of the foothills, Shad Sweete and a half dozen Pawnee trackers rode out to a nearby herd grazing near Connor’s evening camp and drove fifteen buffalo back toward the soldier’s bivouac, where the huge beasts were killed after they had been driven into a corral made of the expedition’s freight wagons.