Cry of the Hawk (48 page)

“You mind I join you fellas?”

Jonah looked up into the haze of wood and tobacco smoke, enough to choke a man more accustomed to the clean air of the windswept prairie, finding a stranger gazing down at Sweete, his handsome face wreathed in breathsmoke. The stranger held a whole loaf of bread and an entire sausage that looked to weigh ten pounds by itself in one hand, while in the other he cradled a glass and the neck of a full bottle.

“Looks like you’re drinking the good stuff,” Sweete commented, his eyes coming clear enough to study the stranger’s bottle.

“I’m looking to share your table and my whiskey,” he said, shrugging a shoulder at the full room. “Don’t want to stand at the bar, eating my supper. And this here’s the last chair. Besides, you fellas look like good company.”

“Don’t mind company, neither of us,” Sweete said.

“And your whiskey too.” Hook licked his lips, anticipating the taste of the good stuff. If he could still taste the good stuff after so much of the saddle varnish.

“Got enough here to share,” the stranger offered, tearing off an end of the huge loaf of dark bread. “Help yourselves.” He reached beneath the tail of his calf-length coat and pulled forth a large skinning knife he put to work slicing off delicate slivers of the fragrant sausage.

It made Jonah’s mouth water. “Mister, you’re welcome at our table anytime. We was just talking about getting out of here and finding us something to eat.”

“From the looks of it—if you fellas don’t mind me being honest—you boys don’t look like you’re gonna be off anywhere for a while.”

Sweete rocked slightly in his chair. “Damn, but I think the man’s right, Jonah. S’pose we sit here and help this stranger dispose of his vittles, like he offered. Then we can work on finding ourselves a place to spend the night.”

“You fellas passing through yourselves?”

“On our way out of town,” Jonah answered. “You?”

“Up from Fort Dodge a few days back. Didn’t find no work down there. Damn, but I thought there’d always be something for a man to do around a army post—honest money—if he was willing to work.”

“Maybe not this time of year,” Sweete said. “Quarter-master across the creek at Larned might find you something to do keep you fed this winter. But you keep eating this high on the hog, you’ll be busted inside of a week.”

“I got a little money set back,” the stranger admitted. “Enough to feed on. Put me up a night or two when the weather gets bad—leastways until I can get on something regular.”

“Where you been working?”

His eyes went back to the sausage, slicing, slicing slowly in careful, considered strokes like he really knew what he was doing with the sticker. Like he was weighing his answer.

“Been down south of here for some time.”

“You a Yankee though,” Jonah said.

“Damn—but you don’t got no manners,” Shad slurred. “He don’t mean to be rude, mister.”

“I s’pose I am,” the stranger answered. “Leastways, I didn’t do any fighting back east—if that’s what you’re asking. I figure you’re from the South.”

“By God, if you don’t have that right,” Jonah replied. “Where you do your fighting during the war?”

“Didn’t. Nothing more than a civilian—working what I could during that time.”

“Where ’bouts?” Shad inquired. “Out here to Kansas country?”

He tore part of a slice off with his big teeth in that handsome, well-groomed face of his. “Some time out here, yeah. The rest on the borderlands.”

It snagged Jonah’s attention as he stuffed a piece of dark crust into his own mouth. He vowed he would not sound anxious. “Just where … on the borderlands? Down to Texas? Up to Arkansas? Or just in the Territories?”

The stranger poured more good whiskey in the three short, smoky glasses. Apparently disarmed. “No. Mostly in southern Missouri. On the run to keep ahead of … ahead of any army wanted me to do its fighting for it.”

Hook sagged back in the chair, his belly feeling more settled now for the food. His gut more settled, yet disappointed was he that the stranger had not been part of either army that might know something of that band of freebooters that had come marching through his quiet valley back of a time.

“You been south of here, was it?” Jonah asked. “Not much on south, less’n you get into Injun country.”

“Injuns don’t bother me none,” he answered. “Now, that sausage was tasty, it was. You fellas eat up the rest. And,” he said, rising from his chair, “you figure on needing a place out of the snow—”

“It starting to snow outside?” Sweete asked, turning clumsily in his chair.

“Was when I came in. Big ol’ flakes, mister,” said the stranger. “I got me a small room for the night down the street.”

“Jenkins place?”

“That’s the one,” he replied.

“What’s a man do to feed himself down in the Territories?” Jonah asked before the stranger was ready to push away into the crowd.

He smiled at Hook. “Whatever he can to keep himself busy, I suppose. You fellas don’t finish that bottle, bring it ’long with you.”

Sweete held up his hand. “By the way …”

“Yeah, I forgot my manners too,” he replied, taking the old man’s hand, shaking it quickly then letting it go.

“Shad Sweete.”

The Confederate held his hand out to the stranger reaching across the table. “Jonah Hook.”

“Glad to meet you fellas. Riley Fordham is my name. You come make yourselves to home with me tonight before I pull out to go talk with the quartermaster out to Larned in the morning.”

“Least we’ll be dry, Jonah.”

Fordham smiled with those big, pretty teeth of his as he turned and was gone through the smoke and tobacco haze and the crowd. The air stirred as the noisy door opened, then closed, shutting out the swirl of wet, icy flakes that had come to settle on central Kansas Territory.

“He might know something, Shad.”

“It’s for certain the man knows good whiskey, Jonah.”

“Dammit—I mean he might know about that bunch disappeared down in the Territories.”

“Been a long time, son.”

“We were fixing on going down there together.”

“Been wanting to talk to you about that.”

“Sounds like your whiskey’s talking now, old man.”

Sweete laughed. “All right. Let’s talk another time about going down to sniff around.”

Jonah gazed through the crowd, through that ill-fitting door, and right on through the icy, swirling mist squeezing down on the central plains.

“I scent me something, Shad. That fella—Riley Fordham … he smells like he just might have something to tell me about Missouri. And the Territories.”

“And that bunch you got a hankering to gut real slow with a dull elk antler?”

With a crooked grin that lit up the face beneath the wolfish, yellowed eyes, Hook said, “Real … real slow.”

41

Late November, 1867

“Y
EAH
, I
KNEW
of a bunch like that,” Riley Fordham admitted, casually. His eyes held steadily on Jonah.

Either he’s telling the truth about all of this and he don’t have nothing to hide, Jonah thought to himself, or the man is a downright cold-blooded liar.

“You know of ’em in southern Missouri?”

Fordham nodded. “Seems I recollect hearing they rode through down there too. Like some others. I hear Missouri was a bad place during the war. Why you so interested in that one bunch of bad characters?”

“I got family mixed up in it.” He watched Fordham cleaning his pistols at the small table against the wall.

Jonah sat on the edge of the bed in the tiny room. Both of them were waiting for Shad Sweete to return from Fort Larned, where the old mountain man had been summoned by the post commander early that morning, red-eyed and plagued with a hangover, swearing he was too old to be drinking that way with young guns like Hook and Fordham. Official business, the messenger from Larned had said.

But this was family business for Jonah. Because of it he felt he was walking on eggshells with the man rubbing the oilcloth back and forth, in and out that .44-caliber pistol barrel.

“Looking for a bunch I understand rode into Indian Territory not long after end of the war come to that part of the country.”

Fordham kept on polishing. “Lots of bad folks always run off to the Territories when it gets too hot for ’em elsewhere. How are you so sure the fellas you’re looking for went down there?”

“I was told.”

The oilcloth stopped. Then after a moment, began polishing again.

“Told, huh? Somebody knew where they were going?”

“I s’pose,” Jonah said, beginning to sense a growing tension from the man at the table. “I guess they didn’t figure on this fella having any reason for talking.”

Fordham cleared his throat. “But sounds like he did—talk that is.”

“Said the man who hurt him bragged that they was going to the Territories—where no one would find them. He said that just before his men burned my friend’s eyes out.”

Fordham gazed at Hook steadily, then finally looked back at his pistol, slipping the cylinder back into the frame. “Pretty cruel torture, I’d say. Knew a couple men once like that. Loved to hurt. One of ’em loved to hurt for a purpose. The other just because he loved hurting.”

“You might know the fellas I’m looking for.”

“What makes you say that, Jonah?”

“Those two you talked about sound an awful lot like the men who burned my friend’s eyes out are the same ones you said you knowed of.”

“Didn’t mean to make you think that now. What makes you figure the ones I heard of are the same ones burned the sheriff’s eyes out?”

Hook leaned forward, almost coming off the edge of the bed, startling Fordham. “You do know ’em! Where they’ve been—where they’re going!”

Fordham licked his lips gone dry, watching Hook ease the pistol from its holster and lay it on the bed beside him. “How—how you so sure—”

“I never said anything about a sheriff. You’re the one just come up with that all on your own. You was there when they did it to him, weren’t you?”

The man stared a moment at Hook’s pistol on the bed, then found Jonah’s eyes.

“I damn well had to get out. You’ll never understand what it was like being in that bunch.”

Jonah sagged. “I don’t give a damn about you or how you come clean about what you done. God knows there’s enough hell for all of you to spend more than one eternity with the devil for it. All I want to know is where you took my family.”

Riley Fordham was about to speak when the door burst open and Shad Sweete filled the doorway. In the next heartbeat Fordham shot to his feet, lunging toward that door, when Jonah pulled up the pistol and caught him midroom.

“What the hell, Jonah!”

“Lemme go!”

Hook shoved the muzzle backward into the man’s belly, driving Fordham back to his chair. “Let’s talk some more, Riley.”

“What’s this all about?” Sweete stepped into the room, glanced both ways down the narrow hall and closed the door.

“Fordham here was with the bunch took my family.”

“Now listen, Jonah—”

“You shuddup, Fordham,” Hook snapped.

Shad chuckled. “Jonah Hook. If that don’t beat all. You’re having some fun with this new friend of ours. But from the looks of it you got him really scared. Time to put that six-shoot away and—”

“You best believe me, Shad.”

Sweete’s face drained of color. “This for real, Jonah?”

Hook didn’t answer. The old man looked from Jonah’s face to Fordham’s.

“What he say is true, Fordham?”

The deserter finally nodded. “I run with ’em. And I figure I know who Jonah Hook is now.”

Shad took a step toward Fordham. “You know ’bout his family?”

“We took ’em. The others wanted to use up the woman and the girl—then and there and be done with ’em. But for some reason, Usher took a shine to the woman.”

“Usher?”

“Jubilee Usher. Big fella. Every bit as big as Sweete here.”

“He’s got my wife and children?”

Fordham’s head sank, his hands working, finger in finger. “The boys … Usher and Wiser sold ’em to someone down in the Territories.”

“Sold …” Jonah swallowed hard on the pain of it. “Sold my boys?”

“Who? Where they go?” Sweete wanted to know.

He shrugged. “Someone out of Texas.”

“I oughtta kill you just for the—”

“Hold it, Jonah!” Sweete said, snagging the pistol barrel.

“Don’t blame you if you do, Jonah,” Fordham said. “Took me long enough to decide to leave. I ain’t got anyone else to blame but me for staying long as I did.”

“Why did you?”

“I believed Usher, that he was the new Prophet. Believed God was talking to him—that this was part of our plan against the folks that drove our people out of Missouri.”

“Your people?”

“Latter-day Saints—most of us.”

Jonah looked up at Sweete, shaking his head in confusion.

“Mormons,” Sweete explained. “Usher sold the boys to comancheros, didn’t he?”

Fordham said, “Seems I remember that word being used, yes.”

“Where’s my wife?”

“You said Usher took a shine to her?” Sweete asked as he took another step and towered over Fordham.

“Yeah. He wouldn’t let any of the rest touch her. Keeping her for himself.”

Hook whispered then. “He … he using her?”

Fordham looked away to the single, small window in the room. The icy snow lanced against it noisily in that heavy silence. It seemed he could not bear to look at Hook.

“She’s his now, Jonah. Maybe you best forget and—”

He was across that six feet and had Fordham’s shirt in his hand, the pistol barrel shoved up under the man’s chin so far it made the deserter bug-eyed.

“Goddamn you, Fordham! I never will forget. Not till I find her. Not till I find my children. And make all of you pay for what you done to ’em!”

Sweete eased his big hand down on Jonah’s arm until the muzzle came away from Fordham’s throat. “He’s got every right in the world to splatter that ceiling with your brains, Fordham.”

“I … I know he does. Go ’head. Kill me now. Better that way. Least I won’t have to live with what I done. What I didn’t do to stop all the hurt.”

“This bunch brought hurt to a lot of folks?”