Cry of the Hawk

“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.”

37

September, 1867

HE HAD NEVER truly lost his wonder at it—how this wide and rolling land did its best to swallow a man, especially at night.

Not much of a moon to speak of overhead. But a generous sprinkling of stars well scattered in the dark dome that greedily licked every last bit of warmth out of the land like the Pawnee licked every last smear of marrow from the center of the bones they roasted in their fires.

Here Jonah roamed with the rest, eleven of North’s Pawnee, digging among the baggage and folded lodge skins and camp equipment and broken travois poles abandoned by the Cheyenne in their mad flight away from Plum Creek. Much of it looking like black lumps on the prairie beneath the pale starshine—no pattern at all. More like a random scattering of buffalo chips.

With his teeth, Jonah yanked on a strip of dried jerky. Antelope or deer, he figured. One of the Pawnee had found some among the abandoned baggage. The one among them who had the best nose, so joked the rest. They were thankful for that dried meat and marrow bones, especially after darkness smothered the land. The Pawnee extinguished their cooking fires and contented themselves with waiting out the rest of the night. Talking softly among their little knots and drinking sips of cool water from canteens dipped into Plum Creek not far away, eager for the sun-coming.

Jonah leaned back against a bundle of smoked lodge skins, warmly pungent with the fragrance of many fires. It had been a long time since he felt this lonely. Something to do with the overwhelming darkness, for out here, unlike nighttime in the timbered hills back home or the high slopes of the Rockies, the plains magnified the darkness, and the bigness of the land, and hence the smallness of one lonely man.

Perhaps he was more lonely because he was the only white man here among so many Pawnee. But right now he really didn’t want to have to work and strain at translating their foreign tongue to follow their conversation. So he sat by himself, off a ways from the rest as they laughed quietly, poked fun at one another, told of coups from bygone days and what feats had belonged to the day just grown old with night’s coming.

Listening to the horses hobbled nearby crunching the dried grasses aroused a feeling of yearning for a time already gone from his life—of early autumn nights such as this, after the children had been bedded down, wandering outside the cabin into the moonlit yard, leaning against the barn door and hearing the animals in their stalls, working their feed hay.