Cry of the Hawk (43 page)

Sweete knew his son would likely be among them. Riding with Roman Nose or Turkey Leg, Tall Bull or White Horse. Every bit as likely as the fact that the main bands of Dog Soldiers would soon be coming together for the fall hunt. Breaking up only after the first good cold snap, that first early snow foretelling of the harsh arrival of winter.

As certain as the sun rose each new morn, Shad knew his son would be in on that hunt this autumn. Like every year gone before, the bands would be laying in the meat that would see them through the winter.

Except that this year—the bands would be hunting some new game: two-legged game.

36

September, 1867

P
E-TAH-HAW-EE-KAT
is what they called themselves. Living Above Pawnee.

Company B, under newly promoted Captain James Murie and Lieutenant Issac Davis.

Each of the four bands of Pawnee had been formed into a formal company of scouts. Which meant that the army hired three white officers to command each company. In this case, the sergeant of Company B was one Jonah Hook.

Company B had just received orders to find the bunch that had destroyed the tracks west of Alkali Station. Hunting Cheyenne ranked right high on the list of what the Pawnee liked to do. And word had it that the Cheyenne were getting bold enough to make another raid on the track.

Frank North made it plain he felt the rumor was just that—not worthy of belief. But he determined he would ride out for Plum Creek with Captain Murie and Company B.

“I’ll be go to hell,” North muttered, the men around him stunned into silence.

“Sounds like you didn’t believe we’d find ’em. At least not this quick,” said Hook, his eyes scanning the far hills where at least 150 warriors sat their ponies, breaking the skyline.

Company B had just ridden down to the ford at Plum Creek, closing on the old bridge near the abandoned stage station, in no way expecting to find the Cheyenne so quickly.

“I truly didn’t,” North replied. “Captain, let’s get this bunch into battle order!”

Something easier said than done.

Every one of the forty Pawnee had already spotted the Cheyenne, their ancient enemies. Their blood instantly hot, the scouts were already stripping for battle, hollering at one another, working one another up for the coming fight. They checked their weapons, straightened the little bundles of war medicine each man carried tied around his neck, maybe under an arm, perhaps tied behind an ear or adorning the long, unbraided hair that stirred with each hot breeze.

Murie and Hook were among them, the captain shouting his orders in English, waving his arm to show his meaning. The ex-Confederate on the other hand rode up and down the entire line of the brigade, hollering in his crude Pawnee, getting his wards to spread out on a wide front to receive the coming assault.

“We must cross at the bridge, Captain!” North shouted, his cheeks gone flush with adrenaline.

“This bunch will cross ahead of us at the ford if we don’t get moving,” Murie hollered back against the din of screeching raised by the Cheyenne warning their women and children away, against the noise of the ringing war songs of the Pawnee as they tightened saddles and bound up the tails of their ponies.

“Hook—order the scouts to cross at the bridge. Warn them that the ford may be filled with shifting sand and unpassable. Everyone is to follow me!”

“Yessir, Major!” Hook reined about to deliver his order as North and Murie trotted down to the old bridge fifty yards off.

He was too late explaining the danger in crossing at the ford. Already the first of the eager Pawnee were in the water, their army horses fighting them, head-rearing, snorting, bogging down in the mud of the crossing as the scouts called out for help from those yet to enter the water.

In a mad scene of confusion, a dozen not yet gone to the water wheeled about and tore down the bank toward the bridge, crossing on the heels of their white commanders while the rest soon abandoned their horses in the water. One by one and in pairs, the rest dropped from their saddles, plunging into the creek that rose above their knees—as the Cheyenne opened fire.

Bullets smacked the water. Slapped into the old grayed timbers of the bridge long used by the stages bound east or west from Plum Creek Station along the Platte River Road. Snarled overhead madly like angry hornets.

As he reached the far end of the bridge, the Cheyenne were slowly backing into the nearby bluffs, already carrying five of their own with them. On the north bank of Plum Creek lay a wounded Pawnee calling out to the others. Nearby lay another scout, past all caring, his body lapping against the sandy mud and willows on the bank.

“Hook! Get those men to force their horses out of the river!” North shouted, pointing his rifle at the horses struggling in the creek.

Hammering heels against his mount’s heaving sides, Jonah was among the scouts in a heartbeat, yelling in Pawnee, trying to make himself heard above their own courage-shouts and the rattle of their gunfire.

“We can’t follow the Shahiyena if you do not have your horses to ride!” he screamed at them.

The first to understand rose from his knee where he had been firing at the fleeing Cheyenne and turned back into the creek. Then a second, and finally more rose and returned to the muddy, churning water, snagging up the reins to their frightened mounts, soothing the animals if they could. The scouts got the horses to the north bank, where they quickly mounted and swirled around Hook.

Jonah realized if he did not take command immediately, the hot-blooded Pawnee would go to fight without him. Flicking his eyes at North and Murie, Jonah found the white men waving him to advance with his thirty scouts.

But to do that did not make sense to him. Why go join the officers and their ten warriors … when the Cheyenne were escaping in a totally different direction?

“Follow me!” he ordered in Pawnee.

With an ear-shattering whoop, the thirty obeyed. A rattle of saddle and bit, a grunt of frightened animal, and the shriek of worked-up warrior in each of them drowned out all protests flung in their direction by North and Murie.

But instead of sitting back to watch the chase, North and Murie led their ten to join it.

The Cheyenne were not long in running, stopping after less than a mile among their women and children. The travois filled with lodges and camp plunder had been following the procession of warriors when the men blundered into the Pawnee. Now they were back among their families, where the warriors turned about on their Pawnee pursuers, shouting the courage-words to one another, here to make a stand and protect the weak ones from their tribal enemy.

With screams of panic, the women furiously tore at the baggage, freeing the lodgepole travois from most of the ponies, abandoning their camp gear, putting a child and old one on nearly every animal before turning to scatter north into the hills, away from the charging Pawnee.

Ahead of the broad line of scouts he led, Jonah watched the Cheyenne warriors swirl in among themselves, as if confused, disorganized, until suddenly they reined about with a shout and leapt away from the scene. They left the field littered with baggage torn from the travois and backs of packhorses.

It was now a race. The trail-weary ponies of the Cheyenne versus the army horses the Pawnee rode.

For better than twelve miles the scouts followed the warriors covering the retreat of their village, gaining little of the ground between them. Disappointed, North ordered a halt just past sundown. The command’s horses were all but done in. Lathered and weak-kneed, the mounts quickly obeyed their riders when asked to slow the pace and turn about.

“How many we kill, Hook?”

Jonah quickly asked his men for an accounting.

“Near as they can count, seven—maybe eight.”

“Along with all the camp plunder we can carry off,” Murie commented.

“Or burn,” Hook added.

“That’s the idea, Sergeant. We’ll burn what we can’t carry back.” A grim smile creased North’s dusty, sweat-stained face.

“Don’t forget the prisoners,” Hook reminded the officers.

“The old woman and girl?”

“Them and a boy—maybe ten years old.” Hook looked over his shoulder, watching a half dozen of the scouts bringing the three prisoners up.

At separate times during the wild chase that afternoon, each of the Cheyenne captives had fallen from a pony and been captured by a swarm of Pawnee. A young girl no more than eight years old. An old woman, her well-seamed face still haughty and arrogant in the midst of the Pawnee calling for her death. And the ten-year-old boy. Jonah looked at his dirty face, the wide brown eyes—remembering that Jeremiah would have been ten years old this past summer. He had not seen his son since …

Since Jeremiah was five years old.

That hurt more than any bullet smashing through his insides. The thought was as cold as any pain could be. As he stared at the Cheyenne child, he wondered if he would ever know his son, if he would even recognize Jeremiah after so long a time.

“Tell the men we’re riding back toward that stand of trees, yonder,” North explained. “We won’t go any farther tonight to make camp. But we will send back ten men to guard the camp plunder. With instructions to abandon it if the Cheyenne double back to reclaim it.”

“I don’t figure they will, Major,” Jonah said. “Those Cheyenne have had their fill for one day.”

Turkey Leg did
not like licking wounds.

Even if none of them were his own, the old chief did not like having to look over his people and see so many without so much.

They had to leave most of what they owned behind when they ran into the Pawnee at Plum Creek. Turkey Leg’s band had been on their way to a second raid on the smoking wagons of the white man here in the Moon of Scarlet Plums when the Pawnee bumped into them.

So now, instead of being richer for the raid, they were poor. Huddled beneath the cold prairie night sky, gathered like beggars around their fires they would keep going until sunup. No lodges. Few blankets to go around. The little ones crying in hunger and the old ones in need of comfort. Remembering the old days before the white man and his soldiers and their great smoking wagons came to this land thick with buffalo.

Now the buffalo refused to cross the great, endless iron tracks.

Seven women keened loudly at the edge of camp, refusing to join the rest at the modest warmth of the small fires. Instead they mourned the loss of their men in the old way, outside the village circle—slashing themselves, cutting off hunks of hair, chopping off the tips of fingers, and wailing.

The seven would not stop with the rising of the moon, Turkey Leg knew. The keening would echo from the hills all night and into the morrow. He felt like mourning himself.

Spotted Wolf had been wounded. At first it had worried them all that the war leader had been shot through the body by a Pawnee bullet. But though the wound was painful, Spotted Wolf claimed he would be able to mount his pony come morning. He lay now on a blanket by one of the fires with his two wives in attendance, drinking water from a horn spoon. He complained of much thirst.

It was not a good sign, Turkey Leg knew.

The sound of hooves drew his attention onto the starlit prairie. Four, perhaps five, riders. They came on, past the outer guards, past the herders keeping watch on the last riches still claimed by Turkey Leg’s band—their ponies.

“Turkey Leg! We have news!”

He watched the young warrior dismount even before his pony was at a complete stop. “Porcupine!”

The warrior strode into the firelight. “Yes. We scouted our backtrail. The scalped-heads do not follow us,” Porcupine explained, using the Cheyenne term for the Pawnee, indicating their practice of shaving most of the hair from their heads.

“It is good, for we have little left to lose,” Turkey Leg replied. “Tell me of the three who are missing.”

Porcupine shook his head. “We found no sign.”

“No bodies? Didn’t you call out for them?”

“We looked carefully. We called out for the three by name. All six of us called into the darkness. There was no answer from the prairie night.”

The old man felt hollow again where there had been a moment of hope. Three of his people were not accounted for when they finally stopped to build their little fires long after sundown, here in the dark. Yes, here in the dark—the despair seemed to weigh that much more on the chief.

“I was afraid we would find their bodies,” Turkey Leg said quietly, careful that no one should overhear.

“It is better, I keep telling myself,” Porcupine replied. “Better that we found no bodies. The scalped-heads have not killed the three and left their bodies to rot on the prairie.”

“How far back did the scalped-heads ride this night?”

He pointed. “We saw the red light from their fires. A few have gone back farther—back to where we left our belongings.”

“I want to know what they take and what they leave behind when they go in the morning, Porcupine,” the chief ordered. “But more important, I want you to send some of your warriors to look over the main camp of these who scout for the white man.”

Porcupine gazed steadily into the chief’s eyes. He had a grin on his face. “You want to know if the scalped-heads have captured our people?”

“Yes—the girl, the boy, and the old woman.”

“Your mother?”

Turkey Leg gazed at the ground. It was where his heart rested, cold and on the ground. “Yes. My mother fell from her horse in the chase. She cannot see, for the Grandfather Above has put the milky flesh over her eyes. She cannot hold tight to the pony reins, for her old hands are seized with spasms of pain. They are hands that once held me as a child, hands that taught me to walk. Hands that never begged anything of any person—much less her own son.”

“I will find out if the scalped-heads have the three, Turkey Leg. Will you—” He paused a moment, thoughtful before he asked the question. “Will you trade our prisoners to gain the release of our people?”

“You already know the answer to your question, young one.” The old warrior sighed, the cold inside him no warmer. “These scalped-heads must not ever know they have captured the mother of Turkey Leg.”