Cry of the Hawk

That first day Senator John B. Henderson had proposed to the assembled chiefs that the Cheyenne and Arapaho bands be moved south to the Arkansas River while the Kiowas could settle on land farther south along the Red River. As soon as the head men would agree to this proposal and formally touch the pen, the army would distribute the promised goods. First the Kiowa, then the Comanche, followed by the Arapaho, and finally—after many days of debate—the Cheyenne agreed to the white man’s terms.

Two days it took them to decide, two days as well after Jonah spoke with Major Elliott at that little fire beside the gurgling music of Medicine Lodge Creek, beneath the wide autumn black canopy with an egg-yolk moon rising off the horizon to the east.

Their job done after much debate and political posturing, the commissioners informed the chiefs they were leaving now, heading east to inform the Great Father of their success. In leaving, they were ordering the issuance of the promised presents. Tall side-walled army freight wagons rumbled into the meadow, emptied of everything in three huge piles: on the west, a pile for the Apache and Arapaho; on the east, a pile for the Kiowa and Comanche; and in the middle, a pile for the great Cheyenne of the plains.

There was so much there, and the celebrating was much greater than anything Shad Sweete would have ever expected, more than he had ever seen among the Cheyenne.

Little Robe, Black Kettle, Medicine Arrow, and Turkey Leg each sent their warrior societies forward to be in charge of a fair distribution of the presents among their bands. One by one the women were given kettles and axes, blankets and clothing, flour and sugar and coffee and more. Never before had any of them seen anything like this.

Perhaps the white man does number like the stars in the sky, Shad heard them whisper among themselves during that day and a half it took to distribute all the gifts placed on the prairie for the Cheyenne bands.

No man, no woman nor child rode from that meadow back to their villages. Every pony and pack animal they put to use to haul their new riches, stacked high and cumbersome and wobbly on animal backs or on swaybacked, groaning travois. Many times the poorly tied packs fell off ponies and burst open across the grass trampled with the pounding of many moccasins and hooves. Just as many travois poles snapped under the great weight required of them.

Women muttered, complaining of their plight, having to pack and repack and struggle along with their newfound wealth. But they smiled all the same. And no woman among them complained all that much.

With the days growing shorter and the nights colder, Shad watched with the other scouts as the bands moved out onto the mapless prairie, slowly marching into the four winds. Along the bank of Medicine Lodge Creek that last morning, the old mountain man found the water slicked with a thin, fragile layer of ice scum. Winter was due on the high plains. Winter would not be denied.

With the presents distributed, the women happy, and the chiefs satisfied that their hunting grounds had been somehow preserved by touching the pen to the white man’s talking paper, the civilian scouts found themselves out of a job for the coming cold that would one day soon squeeze down on the land.

Sweete thought of Shell Woman. Funny to think of her not as Toote, but as Shell Woman. But then, he had found himself among her own people for the better part of the last two weeks now. And in that time had not really thought of her as being among and surrounded by his own people—where she often camped at Fort Laramie, waiting for his return to her lodge. Perhaps by now she and Pipe Woman were in a winter camp far up in the Powder River or Rosebud country.

But it hurt, thinking on them now as he watched the great cloud of dust rise into the clear, autumn-cold sky above the rear marchers—these Southern Cheyenne going off to find their own winter camps. It hurt, that thought of mother and daughter, Cheyenne both. So only natural now that he think on father and son. One a white man, happy only when he was among an adopted people. And the other a half-breed, a young man denying his white blood and swearing vengeance on all white men.

What overwhelming hate must fill the heart of his son. One day there would be no other white men standing between them. One day, Shad realized, there would be no gulf of time nor distance between him and the son he had long hoped for.

“You coming, Shad?”

Startled, Sweete looked up from staring at the march of the disappearing Cheyenne, yanked of a sudden out of his reverie. Jonah Hook had come up with the horses and that one pack animal they had shared between them this last few weeks. “S’pose there’s no reason to be hanging on here.”