Cry of the Hawk

They would never get her mind. Not Usher. Not any of them. She would keep coming here, out of herself. That shrinking shell of what she had been, something that seemed to dry up and fall in of itself when she left her body, each time Usher wanted it for himself.

She left her body behind and feared going far away, forcing herself to remember, and look, and still feel something. But felt something less and less each time. Afraid now the last few weeks … or was it months? She had no way of knowing and grew afraid of that as well. Afraid mostly that she was losing her soul.

More and more now it was like stepping first with one foot, then the other, into that wide, yawning pit of quicksand—with nowhere else to go but into the pit. Then turning, reaching out for a limb, something hanging over the pit to help pull her out.

For the longest time there, she remembered the faceless man standing at the edge of the pit. And felt, more than knew, it had been Jonah. Him—reaching out for her … first with his hand. Then with a stout limb … then there was nothing left for him to do but stand on the edge of that pit helplessly watching her sink deeper and deeper into the quicksand of insanity.

After all, if she couldn’t help herself …

Hancock’s campaign along the Republican River and Custer’s campaign along the Platte had accomplished nothing but to stir the tribes to a boil.

“Like jabbing a stick into a hornets’ nest,” Shad Sweete had told Jonah that late August afternoon as the entire command finally marched back to Fort Hays. A hot, steamy summer evening coming down slowly on the central plains.

“There’s talk everything west of here’s shut down,” Jonah said.

“Construction on the K-P ain’t no more. Workers skedaddled back east to safety. Wagon road from track’s end west to Denver City is closed down. No man willing to take the ride into Injun country now. What I was a’feared of most is just what happened.”

“What didn’t you want to happen?”

“I came along with Hancock and Custer to try my level best to see that the army talked with the tribes this time out—’stead of charging in shooting and slashing.”

Jonah had snorted quietly, without needing to say a word.

“I know,” Sweete agreed. “A foolish thing for me to think, weren’t it, son? Figuring I could help these bands by going along with the army.”

“Don’t grumble so much, Shad Sweete. After all, you was the one talked me into going along with you.”

“Should’ve listened to Toote all along.” Sweete looked up from the lodge peg he was carving on to watch his wife hauling water up from Big Creek.

“She figure it wasn’t such a good idea riding with the army?”

“Not so much that as much as she just wants us long gone from this country.” He jabbed the pointed end of the lodge peg into the dry, flaky soil. “We ain’t got no business staying around here where so much trouble’s bound to boil over. She wants to wander on west, over the mountains again. Says we’ll be safer … she’ll be happier there.”

“Maybe you should listen to her.”

Shad watched Toote carry the sloshing kettle of water in through the lodge door. “It ain’t like I never thought of it myself, Jonah.”

The voices from inside the lodge grew louder, more strident. Sweete glanced up at Jonah’s face as the angry words penetrated the buffalo hides.

“It’s hard on them both,” Shad explained, seeing Jonah become self-conscious when the ex-Confederate was discovered overhearing the argument. “They been doing the best they can, what with being Injun and Cheyenne and come up here to this soldier fort looking for a white man to boot.”

“Ain’t that many women around, Shad. And them two happen to be some of the best looking a man could set his eyes on.”

“I oughtta send the two of ’em north—live up there with the Northern Cheyenne on the Powder and Tongue.” He scratched at the ground with the peg. “It isn’t that the soldiers give ’em a hard time here—we all come to figure on that. It’s something else—something Toote or me can’t put our finger on. Unless …”

“Unless what?”

Shad gazed at the Confederate’s face a moment before answering. “Toote says it’s the girl’s white blood making her crazy the way she is.”

He chuckled. “That’d explain a whole lot, wouldn’t it? We white men seem just about as crazy as folks can get to the Injun, don’t we?”

He sighed, feeling better for having talked about it. “Perhaps you’re right. We don’t do anything what makes sense to an Injun. Especially an Injun woman. And when you mix in my white blood with that girl’s growing up a Cheyenne half-breed—it just makes things all the harder—”

The young woman burst out the lodge door, shoving aside the antelope hide roughly, storming off as Toote burst out on her tail, squawking her disapproval in a sing song Cheyenne. Pipe Woman kept right on going, headlong for the creek and the timber, where she could disappear, while mother ground to a dusty halt a few yards from the lodge, balled her fists on her hips, and stomped a foot angrily into the dried grass.