Cry of the Hawk (18 page)

“I’ll find you, Jonah Hook. By glory, I’ll find you.”

Hook was damned well relieved that the sun had made a glorious rising this crisp fall morning. Its brightness meant he and the rest had to squint as they marched into that brilliant sunflower yellow orb. Because now no one would see the moistness come to his eyes as he shuffled along in cracked ankle-boots he hoped would last him long enough to make it home to Gritta and the children.

Crying was all right. But it sure as hell wasn’t any other man’s business.

Jonah glanced around him, on both sides of the column of fours, cavalry escort up ahead, wagons loaded with provision for the homeward-bound march at the tail end of the line.

As much as he had tried to deny it the last few weeks, there was something about this place that he was going to miss—although he had admitted it to no man.

At first Hook figured such thoughts rumbled around inside him merely because this was such new country to his eyes and ears and tastebuds. And for the longest time he had figured that newness would wear off. But with the rounding of every new green hill or ocher ridge or yellow-tinged bluff, the scenery never went stale to the eyes. With each new mouthful of buffalo or elk, mule deer or antelope, the tumbling, endless plains of the West became something to be savored with all his senses. With every new scent and sound, or shape to the clouds in the incredibly immense sky that always hung just beyond arm’s length overhead, Jonah had slowly come to accept that his affection for this place was not merely because of its newness only.

Yet lingering still was the doubt that he would ever return to this wild, untamed land where there was no law, and certainly no church for his Gritta and the young’uns. The ache for home and family was far too strong.

It lay heavy on his heart as he moved east across the plains—this doubt he carried with him that he would ever again lay eyes on Shad Sweete’s face in this lifetime.

Yet that medicine wheel lay in the palm of his hand for the rest of that day’s long march. And the next day’s. And the next …

Boothog’s father and
uncle had both known Jubilee Usher’s father, one of the original twelve apostles who came to believe in prophet Joseph Smith and his gold tablets dictating the formation of a new church, under a new people: the Latter-day Saints.

So it had been the natural, expected thing to do out in that western kingdom of Deseret to join Brigham Young’s special, handpicked military arm. With his Avenging Angels, the Mormon Prophet smote those who threatened the sanctity of the State of Deseret. Citing ancient precedent, Young empowered his hundred handpicked Danites, these Avenging Angels, to right all wrongs done the Saints, or the Mormon state.

They were vigilantes, self-empowered men who saw things through their own self-righteousness. Justice in this broad, big western land skewed to their side of the pew.

Year after year, young Lemuel Wiser had come to know the tall, imposing figure of Jubilee Usher, who was rapidly rising in influence among the more militant and self-protective of the Saints. As Wiser grew to manhood, he found the immense tower of a man all the more a capable leader of men, able to inspire and motivate, cajole when needed, threaten when necessary—but always able to get his men to do exactly what he wanted, if not exactly what Brigham Young himself desired as well.

Boothog remembered now when Jubilee first began to lose his hair, early in life for a man. Before one of those first trips east with the Mormon handicrafts for sale in Missouri and other points east. For a time, Usher felt ridiculed for this early receding of hair, then eventually learned to admire his balding head himself. He took to growing what hair there was down past his shoulders—thick and black as sin. And only in recent years had he begun to wear a mustache that curled down into a neat Vandyke beard every bit as glossy black as the boots he had one of the men shine with lampblack and grease each night in camp.

Young Wiser had yearned to take his horse and carry his new rifle along with Usher’s military escort that each spring accompanied a great wagon train of two hundred, even as many as three hundred Saints, rolling east with Mormon-made goods to sell and barter for what Brigham Young’s faithful could not acquire in their own land of Zion. And with each year’s trip east, the Church Train found more and more immigrants from the States and other countries anxiously waiting for this annual journey, so that the newcomers could join in the return trip back—an anointed gathering of Israel in Brigham’s holy valley.

In 1857 Boothog had taken his first trip east since childhood. Already tensions had blossomed again among the people of Missouri, requiring Usher to exercise a firm hand on his Mormons, reminding them that these same proslavery Missourians had been the very Gentiles to turn their guns on Mormon brethren.

“We must have nothing but the most limited contact with these sinners,” Boothog had explained to some of his friends, unaware that Usher had been near enough to overhear his admonition during that trip east in fifty-seven.

That night Jubilee Usher had called Wiser to his tent and proposed to take the young man under his wing.

“You will make a capable officer, Mr. Wiser. More than that—” Usher stuffed a slice of game hen into his huge mouth. “You might even take over the reins of this operation from me one day.”

“I could never … never think of ever being as good as you.”

Usher had smiled. “That’s good, Wiser. Affecting the modesty as you have done comes off as quite genuine. It is good that you play the role so effectively.”

“But I—”

Usher waved his hand. “We have more important things to concern ourselves with than your sincerity. What matters most is your faith in Brigham and his prophecies from God Almighty. And how well you obey, without question, the orders of his military commanders. Don’t you agree, Mr. Wiser?”

“Yes, sir.”

So it was that every day Boothog had grown more convinced of the rightness in Usher’s might. No matter the cruelty of the man—Usher carried not only the seal of the Prophet, Brigham Young, himself, but Usher claimed he had been chosen by the Prophet to lead a rebuilding of Zion’s defenses.

Most Mormon men still smarted at the military occupation of Utah by Union troops under General Albert Sidney Johnston from fifty-eight to sixty-one, ending only when the war broke out and Johnston resigned his commission to fight on the side of his beloved Confederacy, and most of the Union troops were recalled east to fight the rebels down south. Never again, the Mormons vowed, would they allow anything like that immoral and illegal occupation.

Usher was all-consumed with rebuilding the might of Deseret’s army when he led Wiser’s military escort for the Church Train east in sixty-two. It was to have been Boothog’s sixth round trip. But in south central Missouri, the great wagon procession was surprised and stopped by an imposing force of proslavers operating under a self-appointed general named Sterling Price. The Confederates moved among the disarmed Mormon men, looking each one over and selecting the best as conscripts in Price’s guerrilla campaigns against the Union.

Price reminded the surrounded Mormons that his Missouri Confederates had not forgotten the problems caused by the Mormons in years past: “My men would love nothing more than to leave you all bleeding here on the road. But let’s see if you
Saints
are men enough to fight the Yankees invading from the North.”

With his new draftees and his ragtag army in tow, Price marched south from there, heading for a place called Pea Ridge, leaving behind the Church Train stripped of its mules, horses, firearms, and ammunition, along with supplies and every able-bodied young male.

It was with that army of Missouri proslavers that Boothog had learned to play poker. A game to this day that he loved to play with some of the men who rode with Usher’s guerrilla band raiding across postwar Missouri. Jubilee called many of the recent converts to Mormonism his cannon fodder. Boothog liked many of the simple, ignorant, fiery Southerners for no other reason than they provided some temporary diversion while the small army waited for Jubilee to decide on moving.

They always did a lot of waiting.

The cold rains of late November were turning to sleet outside the series of limestone caves where Usher’s advance scouts under Captain Eloy Hastings had found them a place out of the weather three days before. In the back of this main cavern was a long, dark drop at the end of which a man could hear the faint splash of any rock he threw off the ledge to amuse himself. Without a lantern to guide him to the edge, he might fall into what hell no man knew waited at the bottom of that deep, black cavern.

Picketing the horses in a nearby grove and stowing their supplies in another cave, Usher’s men had settled in for what they knew would be days of restless inactivity, waiting out the passing of the first winter storm rumbling across southern Missouri.

It wasn’t their first winter in this country.

And they weren’t new at waiting either.

“Who’s next?” asked one of the Danites as he emerged from a side cavern, buttoning the fly to his britches, yanking on his belt.

A man quickly stood, jostling the crate they were using as a card table these days of waiting. “Me. I want a poke.”

Just after leading Jubilee Usher’s band to this series of caves, Hastings’s scouts had been ordered back out into what was then a drizzling rain to ride farther south and see what they could rustle up in the way of women on the nearby farms.

“The men will need a little something besides cards to keep them happy,” Usher had reminded Wiser and Captain Hastings.

“Nigger or white, makes no difference to my loins right now,” Boothog had replied, that devilish grin crossing his handsome face.

So it was the scouts had found a black slave girl no more than sixteen and hurrying toward a Creek Indian farm located close by when the horsemen had surrounded her. From the moment she had been dropped from the horse at the entrance to the cave three days ago, the unkempt sprigs of her black hair dripping with diamonds of sleeting rain, the girl had had little rest.

Boothog had ordered her carried to an adjoining cave, where under lamplight a few of the soldiers stripped her, staked her out, and proceeded to rotate themselves on her body—Wiser claiming first go at their skinny captive. At first she had screamed and thrashed about, until gagged. No man among Boothog’s army minded the nigger girl thrashing in the least. It only added to a man’s fun, and enjoyment.

Wiser looked up from his cards and glanced over his shoulder as the man disappeared into the chamber where the captive lay.

As his eyes came back to the crate table, Boothog thought he caught a flicker of movement from the hands of another player.

He smiled grimly. “Lay your cards down, Billy.”

The man’s eyes grew wide as the rest of the players eased back from the oblong rifle crate.

“I didn’t do nothing wrong, Boothog. Major Wiser, sir.”

“Put the goddamned cards down.”

“Yessir.” He laid them down in a neat stack.

“Count them for us, Billy Baker,” Wiser demanded as he slowly pulled the pistol from his waistband.

The rest of the card players arose suddenly and backed away as the solitary man left at the crate chewed on the end of a finger. With his thumb, Boothog drew back the pistol’s hammer.

“I said—count your cards.”

“Just playing a little poker with you, Major. I fold. See? I fold. Hand’s all done.”

Baker started to shove his cards under some others when Boothog slammed his hand down onto the man’s wrist. With the pistol shoved under the soft underside of Baker’s chin, Wiser slowly spread the cards.

“One … two … three … four—and five.”

“See, Major? Just like I—”

“What’s this, Billy? Why, it’s a sixth pasteboard,” Wiser declared sinisterly as he slowly pulled free the extra card.

Things became a blur in that next heartbeat as Baker attempted to bat the pistol barrel aside and the hammer fell, sending a bullet into the card player’s mouth, crashing on through the brain, and splintering out the top of his head with a wet, slimy explosion of blood and gore.

The body fell backward from the crate of hardtack, trembling in death throes.

Boothog rose after glancing at the rest, their eyes wide and hollow with shock. He walked over, held the muzzle of his pistol inches from the victim’s heart and pulled the trigger a second time. Baker’s shirt grew damp and shiny. Wiser knelt and picked through the dead man’s pockets, pulling out what little money there was.

“Bring me his bedroll,” Wiser commanded. “I get first call on the bastard’s things.”

“Get the body out of here,” Usher’s voice boomed from the roof of the cavern. “It’s beginning to smell a bit in here already.”

Wiser turned, smiling. “It is, isn’t it, Colonel?”

“Men die a violent death like that—they’re apt to fill their britches with shit,” Jubilee replied. “Dispose of the body now, Major.”

Wiser turned to the other players. “You heard the colonel. Take Baker’s body back to the far end of the cave and throw him down.”

One of the players who had hold of Baker’s leg snarled at the others. “I got call on his boots, I do.”

“Hurry up!” Wiser snapped. “Throw him down in that cave and get on back here. I got money to win. And then I want to dip my stinger in that nigger gal’s honey pot again before I take me a nap.”