Cry of the Hawk

As he bolted up, yanking his wool shirt over his longhandles, Shad’s ears picked up the sound of camp dogs snuffling around outside, their own paws padding across the icy crust atop the four-day-old snow outside.

Quickly he yanked on the two buffalo winter moccasins, sewn hair in, and snatched up his long winter capote. He was out through the lodge door, pulling the coat over his arms as Jonah Hook appeared from the backside of the lodge.

He was dragging a man across the snow.

In the pale moonlight that gave a dim, morning luster to the snow, Shad could see the thin, greasy trail of blood beneath the man as he was hauled along behind Hook. The dogs were busy over that track of warm gore, muzzle deep.

“What in glory is going on?” Shad demanded in a harsh whisper, his shoulder-length gray hair and beard brilliant beneath the winter starlight.

“Wanted you to meet somebody, Shad,” Jonah rasped, short of breath.

Sweete recognized a cold light in the young Confederate’s eyes. Something so cold it caused the old mountain man to shiver there in the snow spilling over his ankles that he found himself having to glance away, down to the stranger.

“Who’s this? What the bloody hell is going on?”

Hook knelt, jabbing his fingers into the man’s hair and yanking the head back. The eyes rolled up, attempting to focus on Hook a moment, then flickered toward Shad Sweete. A wild sheen came over them of a sudden.

“Help—help me, mister!” he called out weakly. “I’m bleeding to death, dammit.”

“I can see that,” Sweete replied. None of this made a tinker’s bit of sense. He knelt beside Jonah, the stranger too. “How—”

“This bastard shot me!” the stranger explained, reaching out his hand to Sweete.

Hook brought his pistol barrel down on the back of the man’s wrist with a brutal snap.

“He’s gonna kill me—for sure,” he whimpered. “You gotta help me!”

“You shoot him?”

Hook nodded. Silent in the moonlight.

Then something struck Shad, and his eyes opened a bit wider in its recognition. “This is the one Pipe Woman told us about when she come back to the lodge tonight—”

“He was about to rape her, Shad,” Hook explained, his voice emotionless.

Sweete looked back at the man. “She’s my daughter.” He snagged hold of the man’s throat himself, fingers on one side of the trachea, a big, powerful thumb pinching the other.

Gurgling with some feeble, small animal sound, he flailed with his arms at the grip the big mountain man had on him.

“She came running back here from the sutler’s all worked up, Jonah. I never made much sense of it, from the way she was going on about something happened up there while you and me was over talking to Maynadier at post headquarters. I just figured it had something to do with you—a fight of some kind you got into when I headed back here and you said you’d mosey over to the sutler’s to walk her back to camp.”

“What else she try to tell you?”

“Something about a fight. Toote finally got her calmed down. Talking about guns and blood and you and somebody hurting her. Figured we’d find out come morning. It didn’t make no sense—till now.”

“That ain’t but the start of it, Shad,” Hook said. “I brung him here for us both to hear him talk before I gut him.”

“Bad medicine. Not near the lodge, Jonah.”

“No. I’ll take him off a ways when I do it.” Hook paused, his head coming up, ear cocking as if listening.

Shad heard it too.

A shadow stood ten yards off, a dark monolith punching a hole out of the nightsky, the outline of a riflestock very plain.

“Gimme your pistol, Jonah,” Shad whispered.

“You won’t need it, Shad,” came the voice.

“Fordham?”

“It’s me. Now, just let me come on in, easy.”

“What business you got down here this time of night?” Shad asked.

“Got business with Jonah.”

The deserter came up and stopped as Sweete stood, watching the man’s eyes, and his hand on the action of that rifle. In the moonlight, Fordham gazed down on Hook, his rifle pointed in the Confederate’s direction.

Shad saw Jonah’s pistol pointed right at Fordham’s belly.

“You know ’im, don’t you, Riley?” Jonah inquired at last, in a quiet whisper.

He took another step up, slowly moving the rifle barrel toward the stranger as the bleeding man’s eyes grew bigger. Fordham jammed the rifle muzzle against the man’s jawbone and pushed the face more into the light.

“Yeah. Now I’m sure.”

“You gonna help me, aincha, Riley?” the man begged.

“And he sure as hell knows you, don’t he?” Jonah asked, his eyes narrowing.

Fordham finally dropped the angle of the rifle. “Yes.”

Shad began, “What’s this all about?”

“They worked together,” Jonah interrupted, not taking his eyes off Riley Fordham’s face. “Tell ’im, Riley.”

“What he says is right. This bastard being here can only mean one thing: they’re tracking me. He’s found me. Meaning that the others can too. I’d best be going, fellas. Pushing on to make the trail cold as I can before the rest come.”

Shad snagged Fordham’s arm as the deserter started to turn away. “You’re staying—least till this makes sense.”