Cry of the Hawk

Shad sensed the chip suddenly back on the shoulder, as if the soldier had realized he was dropping all that veneer of bravado. “Matters only ’cause I’ve got family myself I’m worried about.”

“Back east?”

“Down in Indian Territory. Cheyenne.”

“You’re a squaw man, ain’t you?”

“Suppose you could say that. But there’s a war going on out here too. And it can be every bit as messy as what’s happening back across the wide Missouri.”

“Didn’t come here looking for a fight,” the soldier explained. “Just putting in my time till it’s over back there. And I can go home and pick up where I left off.”

“Sure hope you can pick up where you left off, son.” He held out some of his twist. “Care for a chew.”

The soldier regarded what the scout held in his hand. “Might taste pretty good about now. Yessir. I thankee.”

They chewed together for a while before Shad spoke again. “You keep your ears open—you’ll learn a lot more about this land than you will flapping your jaws.”

“You’re one to tell me,” he said. “I don’t need to learn about this wide-open desert, old man. I’m going back home when I’m done here.”

“Believe I’ll turn in,” Shad said minutes later. He got to his feet and was ready to stroll off the hilltop when the soldier stood.

“Figure I was a little hard on you, Mr. Sweete. Maybe you’ll forgive me—it’ll make me feel better.”

“No harm done.”

“We both got us family we’re worried about, don’t we?”

“I figure we got that in common, son.”

“It’s all I think about these days.”

“Weren’t no different in prison, was it?”

A shapeless grin moved across his wolfish face burled with a new beard. “Think about it all the time.”

“You watch yourself out here, son. You’ll make it back to that family of yours.”

Shad Sweete took two steps before the soldier tugged on the sleeve of the buckskin war shirt the scout wore on the chill of evening. Turning, he found the young man holding his hand out.

“Glad to meet you, Mr. Sweete. Man needs a friend out here I suppose.”

He smiled, pine-chip teeth glimmering in the new moonlight splaying silver across the rising tableland stretching to the spine of the continent itself. “I can always use a friend, mister.”

“Name’s Jonah Hook.”

“Let’s go find our bedrolls, Jonah. These bones hollering for rest something fierce.”

“I sleep better out here, Mr. Sweete. Better’n I ever have—if it weren’t for the nightmares about my family.”

“Don’t you let ’em spook you. Don’t mean a thing.”

Shad wished he meant it. But as he walked down the slope into the soldier camp, the old scout shuddered with the chill in remembrance of his own recurring nightmare—that burned and gutted camp of Black Kettle’s on Sand Creek.

And how damned lucky his own wife and daughter were to escape the butchery of madness unleashed.

“Our scout recommends you ride on in with us.” Captain A. Smith Lybe dragged a dusty hand across his cracked lips. He had just ridden up to Willow Spring Creek with his platoon of I Company, along with six horsemen from the Eleventh Ohio, to find the wagon train and its Kansas escort making an early camp of it.

“I figure we’re safe enough here,” answered Sergeant Amos Custard of the Eleventh Kansas Cavalry, swinging an arm around their camp. “That scout of yours is a nervous old woman, you want to know what I think.”

Lybe glanced at Shadrach Sweete perched atop his Morgan mare. “When you left Sweetwater Station ahead of us this morning, I was hoping you’d get more ground under you before you stopped for the night.”

“You take care of your own galvanized Johnnies, Captain,” Custard replied. “We’re going home, and we’ll mosey if we wanna.”

Jonah Hook pulled his head back from the cool water of the spring where the rest of Lybe’s small detail had been guzzling, in time to watch the old scout nudge his mare forward until he stood above the sergeant.

“The Sioux been hitting this line regular, Sergeant. But I ain’t telling you anything you don’t already know.”

“That’s right,” Custard said. “If you’re so damned nervous, go on and take the rest of these Confederates with you to Platte Bridge.”

“The farther we come since this morning,” Lybe explained, “the more I feel like I want to make a night march of it into the stockade at Platte Bridge.”

Custard gazed at Sweete a moment more. Then he turned to Lybe. “He suggest you make a night march of it?”

“He did. And I agree. Something’s up, Sergeant.”

“You put in your time out here—like I have, Captain—you won’t be so damned nervous about every shadow or flap of an owl’s wing. And you won’t be so ready to take the word of a squaw-man scout either.”

Hook watched Shad Sweete gently rein his mare away.

“Let’s be going, Captain,” said the scout.

“See you at the station tomorrow, Sergeant Custard.” Lybe put heels to his horse and brought it around. “Let’s mount up and move out, men!”